How To Afford Long-Term World Travel pt 5: List of Income Sources While Traveling

Lash teaching scuba diving in Thailand

How To Afford Long-Term World Travel

pt 5: List of Income Sources while Traveling

In this post on my series How To Afford Long-Term World Travel, I present a list of the many different ways that myself, travelers I’ve met and travel bloggers I know are earning a living right now to finance their world travels. As it turns out, there are many ‘travel the world jobs’ available around the planet!

This list is primarily a compilation of parts 2, 3 & 4 (How I Do It – How Other Travels I’ve Met Do It – How Other Travel Bloggers Do It) in condensed version. I’ve also thrown in a few other jobs that I remembered after posting the previous sections.

Passive Income Sources

Passive income is money that comes in without you having to do any work for it. Passive income sources include income from rental properties, interest earned on investments, income from businesses that you own but don’t physically work at, and royalties from intellectual properties you’ve created such as books, music, photographs and phone apps.

People with passive income have most definitely worked previously to create these income sources, probably a lot of work. But now that their book, photos or investments are completed, the happy owners can just sit back and let the money roll in, a credit to their vision and hard efforts.

In my opinion, becoming independently wealthy by living off of passive income is the absolute best way to go through life! I managed to do it for a couple years at the beginning of my world travels by investing the money I earned in Japan and living/traveling off the interest.

Quite unfortunately for me, the 2000 stock market crash, and my lack of investment expertise, ended that great lifestyle. I’ve been working ever since. But I hope one day soon to create enough passive income sources that I can continue traveling the world, work free.

In the meantime, I’ve met several other long-term travelers doing just that. They earn money from:

1. rental income from apartments, condos, houses or retail space

2. royalties from selling their books, photographs or phone apps

3. affiliate income from selling other peoples’ books and products

4. passive income from various websites they’ve created

5. retirement income

6. pension income

7. interest income from financial investments

 Jobs that allow you to live and/or travel overseas

Many jobs entail that employees either travel or live abroad. They include jobs in the travel industry, at large international corporations, at language schools and casual work in other countries. I’ve met people doing all of the following overseas:

8. teaching English abroad

9. working for corporations

10. working for hotels and resorts

11. working on cruise ships

12. crewing on private yachts

13. teaching scuba diving

14. working for airlines

15. guiding tours for a tour company

16. doing casual work in local restaurants, bars and shops

17. fruit picking and other farm labor

18. seasonal work that allows them to travel several months per year

19. nursing

20. modeling and acting

 Entrepreneurial ventures travelers do to earn a living

A majority of long-term world travelers become entrepreneurs, finding or creating ways to earn a living for themselves in order to continue traveling the world. I’m one such nomadic traveler. I’ve met dozens and dozens of others earning a living from the following ventures:

here I am cutting hair

21. cutting hair

22. doing piercings

23. teaching yoga

24. giving massages

25. doing physical therapy

26. doing acupuncture, acupressure and/or holistic medicine

27. making and selling jewelry, bags, clothes, etc.

28. street performance

29. imports/exports – selling things from other countries at shops, markets or festivals

30. owning a resort, B&B, restaurant, bar or other business

professional photography by Beth Salvon of Beers and Beans

31. running a tour company

32. travel blogging

33. SEO work

34. website design

35. phone apps design

65. website entrepreneur

37. freelance travel writing

38. freelance travel photography (or other photography work)

39. day trading (trading stocks)

40. teaching courses on blogging, writing, photography, web design, SEO work

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This extensive list proves that there are literally dozens and dozens of ways to earn a living around the world and to finance a long-term travel lifestyle.

Besides this list I’ve compiled, Wandering Earl has created his own list of 42 jobs that travelers can do overseas. Some of the income sources on our two lists are the same, but Earl has suggested many others. Check out Earl’s great list for even more ideas on how to earn a living overseas.

And if you’re truly serious about world travel, especially long-term world travel, I highly recommend Earl’s very informative, inspirational and thorough eBook: How To Live a Life of Travel. In this book Earl goes into much more depth on one dozen jobs people do overseas. In addition, he covers many other aspects of travel life.

Read my review of Earl’s book

Check out Earl’s book yourself

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Next up in this series I tackle another very important aspect of affording long-term travel: minimizing costs. I’ll be dishing out ideas on how to minimize costs on accommodation, eating, water and beverages, personal needs, transportation and other stuff. Looks like it’s going to take a few more posts to cover it all! So stay tuned…

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You might also enjoy:

How To Afford Long-Term World Travel pt 3 – How Other Long-Term Travelers Do It How to Afford Long-Term World Travel pt 4 – How Travel Bloggers Do It TRAVEL TIP: HOW TO AVOID JET LAG, pt 2- FOLLOW UP REPORT TRAVEL TIPS: OVERLAND TRAVEL FROM KUALA LUMPUR TO SINGAPORE