More than 10 years ago, I left America to teach English in Thailand. Initially thinking I’d be gone for a year, a decade later I still live overseas and travel to countries all over the world often. That’s because during my first three years in Bangkok, I figured out a way to travel around the world while working only part-time.
Years later, I’m still doing the same thing, with a home base in Thailand and trips to various other countries throughout the year. If your dream is to travel around the world while working only part-time, here are a few things you can do to make sure that happens. Some things I do myself, other things are done by people I know who have the same lifestyle as I do. All of them can be done by anyone who puts their mind to it.
Start a website about your travels – One thing many people do who travel around the world, but don’t want to work more than part-time is to start their own website about their travels. If you set it up a few months before you leave, publish a slew of articles, promote the site as much as you can and add something like Google Adsense or ads from independent advertisers, you could find yourself easily making a few hundred dollars a month from it by the time you leave.
The wonderful thing too about running your own website is it only takes a few hours a week to update, and you can do it from any hotel, coffee shop or anywhere else with Wi-Fi anywhere in the world.
One of the best known success stories from someone who travels the world while running his own site is that of NomadicMatt. His website is one of the most-read sites in the world, and he’s been making enough money from it to continually travel the world since 2006.
Website design – If you have website design skills, designing websites for people and for businesses can be a fabulous way to make enough money to only work a few hours a week yet be a world traveler.
I have a friend who spends most of his time traveling around China, Tibet, and Nepal and while he’s doing so he runs a successful part-time web design company. All his clients come from various agencies he’s signed up with and contacts he’s made along the way. He told me recently he’s making so much money from only working 15 hours a week, he’s even managing to sock away money in investments and retirement while still traveling to anywhere he pleases and staying in some quite nice hotels.
Freelance writer – Do you have decent writing skills? If so, you can make very good money writing for a variety of websites, all while you travel from country to country.
Most of my income comes from the freelance writing work I do for companies like Yahoo, as well as for a variety of online writing agencies, and for private clients in Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
As I started to find new clients in Thailand, I discovered there are so many companies in Asia looking for native English speakers to write brochures, advertising copy, reports and more that I was soon starting to turn work down.
Nowadays, I work around 25 hours a week, yet I always have money to live a nice lifestyle in Bangkok as well as travel to Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Spain, and various other European countries several times a year. To find out how to solicit your own private clients so you too can write on a freelance basis while traveling, read this article to see how I did it.
Teach English online – Online learning, and specifically online English learning, is such big business nowadays, the amount many teachers are being paid to teach someone halfway across the world from their computer is astounding.
Most teaching is done via Skype or with other online audio/visual services and you must have prior teaching experience and some type of qualification to teach English as a Foreign Language. With these, however, you could soon find yourself making $30 to $50 an hour.
There are many agencies that are constantly looking for teachers to teach English online. Get started by looking at Global English or English First’s English Town.