I have been working on my websites for a while now and I started with this travel blog and branched out to other smaller niche sites as years go by.
Over the years, I have experimented with a variety of stuff I learned online about: the design of my sites, font, colors, SEO, style of writing, pictures, ads placement and all the other mind-numbing stuff relating to blogging and earning online.
Along with the experiments came the mistakes of course. I have messed up my sites a lot of times, deleted a couple of them accidentally, installed a plugin that made my blog unreadable, lost all data and other stuff that drove me crazy and sleepless until I fixed them again.
In the last decade of living my dream as a digital nomad, I have learned so much and I want to share a few of those learning that I know are very important especially for those who are thinking of doing the same thing.
Here are my top five tips for digital nomads:
1. Backup
Our files are very important to us. A lot of digital nomads who are working on travel blogs and other websites that uses tons of pictures know that we should all backup our files twice or thrice. I learned this the hard way just a couple of months ago. I was so lax and thought that one portable hard drive is enough until I lost all pictures that I have taken in the past four years. Luckily, there are programs that can help you restore lost files. After that incident, I bought another hard drive as a secondary backup, arranged all my old files and saved it in two hard drives and in my laptop. You can also save it online if you have subscription to cloud/online storage services.
2. Build Good Relationships
Just like any other businesses, a good relationship with your fellow digital nomads will help you a lot. I remember when I started a few years back, I don’t know a single thing about blogging, SEO, HTML coding, WordPress etc. Yeah, all the information is available online but it became easier for me to understand when it was explained to me by those people who have done it already. I’m deeply grateful for my fellow bloggers who didn’t hesitate to answer my questions about variety of blogging related things. Also make sure that you pay it forward and assist those who are seeking your help.
3. Save Money
I’m not earning a lot but I’m earning enough to keep me afloat. My earning is not as stable in comparison to when I was still employed so what I am doing is not to spend every single penny I earn. I make sure to save some money that I can use in ‘drought’ times.
4. Protect Your Resources
Aside from saving money, I also make sure that I take care of my belongings especially my gadgets so I wouldn’t be prompted to buy a replacement immediately. My smartphone and laptop both have anti-virus and VPN. I always take necessary precaution when logging into public wifi. I also make sure that I don’t just click on any email attachment that I’m suspecting to be spam to avoid the possibility of acquiring virus or malware on my laptop. As a digital nomad, I consider my laptop as my main working tool and I need to make sure that it’s always working efficiently and effectively.
5. Continuous Learning
Everything changes so fast especially in the online world. The applicable things now might not work anymore the following day. I make sure that I spend an hour or two reading industry updates, tech updates, travel related news and other stuff that I know will directly affect my livelihood. I also followed a variety of bloggers that write about these kind of stuff so I could always keep myself updated.
Not many people are lucky enough to work remotely and be free to explore the world, remember to always try to have a good work/life balance, and to enjoy the experience.
Do you have any recommendations? Let me know below.
