It is the era of the internet. Love it or hate it, almost everyone uses it. However, as you are reading this article about jobs for digital nomads, I will presume that you love it. Therefore, we are going to base this article around the best jobs that you can do from your living room to Katmandu.
If you are anything like me, even twelve months ago, then you probably think that work and travel do not go together. Can we blame you for thinking that? No, we can’t. Everyone who works at Nomadific has been in the exact position that you are in now — wanting to get paid to travel. However, although the painted picture is lovely, it is unlikely that you are going to find someone who will pay you to travel the world.
That is where the jobs come in. While you won’t get paid to roam the world, you can get paid while you do it. If you are looking at moving home, then you may have to find a new job nearer to the house into which you will be moving. However, being a digital nomad isn’t the same as that.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of people in the world that have no fixed abode or secure job, and they do exceptionally well. If you want to know more about what it is like living as a digital nomad, then take a look through this article: Becoming a digital nomad.
But now let’s have a look at the parts that you have come here for – jobs.
Top Jobs For Digital Nomads
The best job that you can do as a digital nomad is going to be something that you can already do without having to learn it. However, if you have no skills that you can use straight away, fear not. There are skills that you can start to learn now if you are planning it for the future. So, do not look through this list thinking; I can’t do that, that or that. You need to look through the list thinking, what can I learn?
One thing that you will have to think about, however, is that you need to be able to take all of your work with you wherever you go. Therefore, you are likely to need a laptop and the ability to use it. Although there are more and less popular digital nomad jobs, I won’t order the list in any specific way. That is because I do not want you to think that any are better than others. You have to choose the right one for you.
Marketer
First of all, we will look at the people that will market other people’s companies for them in exchange for a wage to live off as a digital nomad.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization specialists are not scarce. You can find them in many places with ease. However, what you do struggle to do is find ones that are good at their jobs. Unfortunately, SEO is a sector that you have to be very good to do well.
SEO specialists help website owners of all standings to make their content reach the right audience with organic traffic alone. Meaning that when you search for something on Google, the top results are likely to have a pretty good SEO specialist behind them. As of writing this article, there are 1.7 billion websites registered on the internet. Although there are only about 200 million of them that are active, making your website stand out in search engines with that amount is no easy task.
There are many aspects to a website, its infrastructure, and layout that make it stand out in the eyes of a search engine. Getting those things right is crucial for everyone, from businesses to bloggers. However, if you have the skillset, then you can certainly do this from anywhere in the world.
SEM
Search Engine Marketers (SEM) may sound a lot like an SEO. However, the truth of the matter is that they are very different. You may find people who can do both SEO and SEM, but more often than not, they will specialize in one of those areas, and be competent in the other. Next time that you search for something on Google, you will see that some of the top results have a little box with AD in them. The ones that are controlled by SEM have those ad boxes, and the ones without are controlled by SEO.
The search engine will charge an SEM a certain amount to put the ad at the top of the page, and then the SEM will charge the website owner for doing it. There is more to it than that, but you get the gist.
Content Marketer/Writer
Writers, or content marketers, are people who create high quality, engaging material for SEOs and SEMs to market. Their work can range from general article writing to writing scripts for YouTube, advertisement creation, or sales generation emails, and everything in between. Unless you are looking at a personal blog, then it is likely that it is content marketing almost every time you are on the internet.
Having a way with words is a necessity if you are thinking of becoming a content marketer, as is having a lot of time to do it. However, in my opinion, it is one of the most rewarding forms of marketing, as it is what people see when they visit a site.
Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing is what you have probably seen on most of the ads that you see on YouTube. You become a salesperson for a website or a product and then earn a commission on the sales that go through you. One thing that you need to bear in mind, however, is that the ads will make it look a lot easier than it is, certainly at first.
If you get the right affiliate program, and the proper marketing methods though, affiliate marketers can make a lot of income, and almost passively. If you are thinking of becoming a digital nomad through affiliate marketing, I would suggest that you have various income streams that you can fall back on. If one of your products stop selling, then you are going to be stuck in a remote part of the world, with no income.
Social Media
A lot of large companies do not have the time for the training and processes involved in social media marketing. That is why a lot of the time, they will hire a social media manager/operator.
While you are not likely to be able to find a single company that pays you enough to do their social media marketing, you may be able to run a few companies at the same time to become a digital nomad.
Influencer
Influencer marketing is pretty new in comparison to most other marketing strategies in this article. If you are someone who has a significant outreach on social media, such as Instagram, Youtube, etc. then you may be able to start this straight away.
If you do have a large following on any social media, then you are likely to have already had companies contact you. If you have not had anyone get in touch, then you can always reach out to companies yourself to ask if they would like promotion. Be sure to pick someone who has some relevance in your niche, though.
Jobs For Digital Nomads – Entrepreneur
If you already have some of the skills in this list, being an online entrepreneur may be up your street or mountain, or wherever you like! However, as I have said, you will need to have a few skills in your rucksack.
Digital entrepreneurs are people who have started and built an online business, usually on their own, to the point that they can be self-sufficient from it. You will need to be proficient in business building, managing ad marketing your own business yourself,m or have enough income to pay someone to help you.
A lot of the digital entrepreneurs that you see now do not run one business on its own, though. They will usually have one company that they run consistently to keep an income, and then build others to the point at which they can sell them.
Customer Support
Have you ever seen people on the beach with a phone and laptop with maybe a headset on? They very well may be remote customer support. There are pros and cons to this, though.
One of the most significant advantages to it is that they can work from anywhere that they have network coverage for phone and internet. However, one of the most significant downsides for this being a job for a digital nomad is that you either need a lot of roaming ability on your network, or you need to work in other countries languages.
Tech Support
Tech support is a lot like customer support concerning being able to do it. However, if you are more technical minded, then you may be able to look into this as one of the jobs for you. Bear in mind, though, that you may need to have specific product training to carry out this job. There are a few types of technical support that you could look into:
Some companies, such as engineering or IT companies, will have engineers with issues that they cannot resolve on their own. That could range from programming issues to fault finding on equipment that they produce and maintain.
Internal tech support. – Internal tech support engineers are people who work on electronic lines of communication or software. If you have a good background in IT engineering or fault finding on specific software, then you may be able to look at this as a job for the digital nomad.
External tech support. – External tech supports are people who can read schematics of electrical and mechanical drawings and fault find based on symptoms that the engineer on the phone sees on the equipment. If you have the expertise for a specific product type, there are always people looking for you.
Teacher
Not all teachers teach in a classroom. With the innovation of the internet, comes platforms explicitly created for learning. English has become the language that most people now want to speak, and with that comes great opportunities for people to teach it.
Many websites allow you to become an English teacher. But that is not the only subject that is widely in demand.
If you have a set of skills that you think may be useful to others, and these days, there are plenty of people wanting to learn a lot, then you can create your courses. They can include your very own curriculum, ebooks, documents, etc. All you have to do is produce them and put them onto the learning websites. Then people will pay you to teach them.
If you do not want to teach on platforms and pay their fees, then you can always make your website to do it. However, this often takes more time and effort to set up, as well as marketing.
Programmer
Programmers are one of the most abundant of digital nomads. However, it is possibly one of the harder things to learn if you are not already fluent in computer coding. However, if you are, then there are a lot of people and companies that are looking for specific software.
The great thing about that, for you, is that a lot of companies do not want to pay for an in-house programmer if they only have one or two projects that they require. It is much more cost-effective for them to outsource to a digital nomad than it is to hire someone full time.
There will never be a shortage of requirements for programmers in the digital age that we are in now. So, if you have the talent, get out there and make use of it wherever you want to travel.
Website Developer
Website developers are another type of programmer who works in a smaller niche. Instead of making code for programs, they create websites. However, they don’t only create them. They fix bugs and change parts of sites to the customer’s requirements.
They can work with many different types of website design platforms, such as the more complicated live Java, CSS, and HTML, to the more friendly Content Management Systems like WordPress. Therefore, there are a few options that you have if you are looking to become a digital nomad website developer.
You can learn the more basic options, and offer it as a service, and learn the more complex as you go along. However, do not be fooled; they are not easy to learn.
App Developer
App developers are a lot like website developers. They both require a pretty extensive knowledge of coding. However, coding languages are different.
An application developer’s work can have a pretty broad range of work. You could be developing anything from a small mobile app to a game, or a complete PC application. However, the process is the same for all of them. You get given an initial idea and develop that idea into a functioning app.
You can also be an app developer and diagnose and repair bugs and faults on existing applications.
Designer
If you have a specific knack for the artistic side of life, and you have transferred that to the age of the internet, then you can quite possibly use it anywhere in the world. Unlike programming, the great thing is that the language of art is as personal as you are.
Every image, ad, video, or website has a lot of design work in it. There are so many niches in the digital world. That means you are likely to be able to fit yourself into a specific design niche and stay there for a long time, even if you do not remain in the same location while you are working.
Video Editors/creator
The number of Vloggers or Video Bloggers are on the increase every single day. People try to gain coverage and exposure through the video giant YouTube to earn money themselves. While Vlogging is an option for you that we will talk about in a minute, vloggers all have something in common. They all need to edit their videos.
One issue that they have is that they require video editing skills and a good enough computer to do it. That is where you could jump in with your abilities. If you enjoy and a capable of editing videos, then you have a significant advantage that vloggers need. Again, there are sales platforms that you can use to promote yourself. Or you can create your website. However, as with the other sections in this article, you will need to advertise that site too.
Remember, though, if you are traveling a lot as a digital nomad, then you may well want to vlog and edit your videos for the same reasons!
MORE: 9 Ways to Find Clients for Digital NomadsPhoto Editor/creator
As with the videos, people always want their photographs touching up or editing. If you are a Photoshop whiz, then it is likely that there will be an abundance of holidaymakers, website designers, and bloggers requiring your skills!
Blogger
Perhaps one of the hardest but most rewarding jobs for digital nomads is blogging. The majority of bloggers are very similar to digital entrepreneurs. However, they do not offer a service or product. They provide content and experiences.
There are many styles of blogs that you will see on the internet now — ranging from knitting to fashion, engineering to making money, and everything in between. The topic that a blogger covers will usually be very prominent in their lives, and about something that they are very passionate.
The great bonus that you have wanting to become a digital nomad and a blogger is that you can blog about your own experiences as a digital nomad.
And if you’re looking for more, you can find more jobs on Jooble.
Conclusion
Becoming a digital nomad is not easy, but having a job certainly makes it possible. The great thing about being a digital nomad is that you have free roam of the world and what you do in it. If you have looked through this list of the best jobs for digital nomads and see something that you like and can do, then go for it. If you have read it all and think that you have a different idea, then please, share it with us below so that we can continue to help the community.
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