Your burning questions about being a digital nomad answered

In September 2021 we hit the two-year milestone. Two years ago, we transitioned into the digital nomad lifestyle to be able to travel full-time. Because the digital nomad lifestyle is still quite uncommon (but desired by many!), we decided to write about this topic. We will answer your burning questions about being a digital nomad in this blog article!

How it all started

Our transition into the digital nomad lifestyle was a consequence of a few unhappy years before. To read more about the lead-up to our transition, click here. We went all-in after making the commitment to the transition. Since our previous work experience wasn’t something we either wanted or could do while traveling, we learned a bunch of new skills. We learned about topics such as (digital) marketing, sales, content creation, web design, and copywriting. We took the learning phase seriously, so we decided to join a mastermind that guided us along the way. Up until today, we are a part of this mastermind, which still boosts our success as digital nomads. We can honestly say that we wouldn’t be living the full digital nomad lifestyle right now if it wasn’t for their support and guidance. If you feel your time is the most valuable asset, we encourage you to explore joining a mastermind yourself as well. You will quickly see unlimited results!

Different sources of income

One of the most asked questions is how we earn money as digital nomads. While we started with just one source of income two years ago (affiliate marketing), we now make money through 7 different income streams. This might sound like a lot, but when stepping into the digital nomad world, you will quickly learn there are hundreds of potential income streams. A summary of the different sources we work with are:

1. Affiliate marketing (higher priced)
2. Working as a virtual assistant
3. Working as a copywriter
4. Working as a web designer
5. Trading
6. Investments
7. The Green Stamp (mainly lower-priced affiliate marketing)

Some services we offer combined. For example, we work for ethical brands with an all-in-web design & copywriting package. We feel it’s important to point out that some of these income streams are actively generated, whereas others are passively generated. Though we aren’t financial advisors (let’s repeat this: we are NOT financial advisors), we will dive a bit deeper into this difference at the “Tips & Advice” section at the end.

A digital nomad couple, living & working together

How the f*ck do we do it?! Firstly: GOOD question! If you told us 5 years ago, we would be living the digital nomad lifestyle together, we wouldn’t have thought that to be possible. Our adventure started with regular dating, before jumping into the business together. During the first few months and years in our relationship, we faced some challenges. Those challenges have established a constant communication flow out of sympathy for each other. There are days we don’t flow as well together, and afterward, we are always able to continue this incredible journey together.

Now that being said, how do you work together as digital nomads? Quite simply: Carmen does completely different things compared to Marijn. Yes, we run our business together, but we don’t do the same things. Carmen focuses on generating the active money, Marijn focuses on transitioning this into (more) passive money. We both have different skills and areas of expertise that we trust and utilize.

Besides the division we work with, we outsource certain elements as well. We work with a financial advisor and work with a social media manager for The Green Stamp. These are elements we don’t want to do ourselves (and in some cases also can’t do ourselves because we aren’t qualified for those). Not having to do everything yourself as a digital nomad, is something we really enjoy.

The digital nomad life into action, how do you work & travel at the same time?

While writing this, we are in Tirana — Albania. We decided to go to Albania for a few reasons. The first reason was that we wanted to stay within Europe, due to family circumstances. The second want for our next destination was to be able to hike near mountains. These first two reasons opened the conversation with others, who had been traveling through Europe. Within one week we were told three times to explore Albania because the others had found it incredible. That was our third reason to go to Albania. And since we are free to go wherever anyway, why not?!

When arriving in a new country as digital nomads, there are a few things we arrange:

• A nice apartment or a villa for the two of us, with:
• GOOD Wi-Fi! This juicy elixir is a must
• A local SIM-card
• Our gym membership

As you can tell by the things we arrange, we travel at a slow pace. When settling into a new country/place, we usually intend to stay there for at least one, or two months. This way we don’t feel rushed: we work a few hours per day, or per week, while we have enough time to explore the country.

We work on average around 24- to 30 hours per week. This can vary though. Some weeks we focus more on exploring and traveling, while other weeks we fully invest our time to work.  We don’t have set days per week we HAVE to work. Besides being able to work location independently, we are also time-independent.

Digital nomad & the pandemic

For the observant readers, that connected the dots: we became full-time digital nomads during the pandemic. We were able to move to travel to Greece, move to Indonesia, and now to Albania. All of this we did without breaking any rules and with all responsibilities taken care of. We learned during the past 1,5 years that being able to live our digital nomad lifestyle, we mostly had to prepare a lot more than we did before. This wasn’t a problem for us. We wanted others, and ourselves, to stay safe and healthy. All precautions needed we implemented with love and careful dedication (such as doing a mandatory 5-day quarantine in Jakarta).

Want to be a digital nomad? Tips & Advice!

Let’s end this blog article by sharing some tips out of our experiences so far:

• Become a digital nomad tip 1: Tony Robbins (for those who don’t know him, make sure to Google his name) claims that success is 20% skill, 80% psychologically. Our number 1 tip, therefore, is to create a rock-solid mindset. We learned over time that the stronger our mindset became, the more success we were able to achieve
• Become a digital nomad tip 2: We briefly discussed this at the start of this blog article and want to point this out another time. To grow your skill-set, grow your mindset, and widen your network (and therefore, all the opportunities) join a mastermind or some sort of online community. Literally, all the active income streams we have right now are established by opportunities offered within our network/mastermind.
• Become a digital nomad tip 3: Work with goals. Sounds cheesy right? But gosh, how having crystal clear goals will help you ACTUALLY achieve them. How many new paying clients do you want to start working with, for how many hours per week, within which price range, per when… You get the picture: set clear goals and start taking action!
• Become a digital nomad tip 4: We get requests for work from my network occasionally. Some requests we do ourselves, some requests we simply can’t (or want to) do. No need to turn down the request though! Since you’ve grown your network (as we mentioned in tip number 2), there will always be someone you can reach out to. When you refer someone to a new client, you might be able to ask for a referral fee.
• Become a digital nomad tip 5: We already briefly touched on the active and passive income difference. The active money is earned per hour we invest. The passive money is earned through different investments, so without any hours invested. We personally first learned the skills to be able to, always, generate an active income online. By having these skills, you can basically launch any kind of business you like. With the earned active money, we slowly started investing to generate passive income. For this, we follow one important rule: only invest what you can miss.

We hope our blog article has given you new insights on how to become a digital nomad. There are countless ways to successfully work remotely. Make sure to explore, look around, and feel in the way that resonates most with you. In case you have another burning question for us, make sure to drop it in the comments below.

Written by: Carmen Castricum

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