Here’s How I Make Money Traveling the World as a Teen
Being a 19-year old who dropped out of college at the age of 18 and now makes money traveling the world for a living, the most common question I get is: “How do you make money traveling?” or “How do you fund your travels?”
Well here’s the truth…To fund my travel lifestyle, I use a few different ways.
The sources are constantly changing. So the way I make money now might not be the same way I will be making money while traveling in a year or two.
However, because it’s The Big Question I get asked way too often and everyone wants an answer to it, I’ll try to clarify this burning query for you today. You’ll learn exactly how I’ve funded my travels in the past — along with my plans to continue indefinitely into the future.
How I’m Paid to Travel the World!
When I dropped out of college I was inspired by all the stories of travel bloggers and people quitting their jobs to travel the world. I was completely enthralled with their photos and stories from exotic destinations.
When I started traveling myself, I didn’t have a lot in savings in my pocket. If I remember right, I had barely 200$ that I saved over birthdays and Christmas. My goal was to pay for my travels by earning money on the go.
Make Money Traveling
Every day I get so many messages from old friends from high school, they usually go along the lines of “OMG! You are so lucky!” and later the questions are always the same
“How exactly do you make money?”
“How do you fund your travels around the world?”
“Are you paid to travel the world?”
Before I dropped out of college, I dedicated my free time to developing new skills and learning new things thanks to the infinite knowledge available to everyone reading this, called the Internet.
Here’s how you can learn almost anything for free!
Let me tell you one thing, I’m not lucky. I worked. I worked countless coffee-fueled nights and weekends doing hundreds of hours of research to learn about how I could make money online, while my friends were out partying.
When I finally left for Nepal in April of 2016, I had started this blog and I used to freelance to make ends meet.
Eventually, my freelancing business stopped as my blog grew and started to make enough to pay for my travels!
Travel Blogging
Over a year ago I started my blog, Think Travel Lift Grow, and I started it for less than 100$. Now I am occasionally making more than that 100$ in a single day, even if I don’t post something new, even if I sleep the whole day.
Whenever I share my favorite travel gear, books, hotels and other products with you, I include affiliate tracking links to those products. It means that if my viewers decide to click through and buy a product, I’ll receive a small commission. The price remains the same whether you use my special link or not.
Most of my affiliate links are for Amazon.com. However, my personal policy is that I never endorse a product or service I didn’t actually use or believe in.
When I just started my blog I remember I made barely a dollar in my first month! But I kept on putting in the work, so slowly I saw a little money coming in. Once that started happening I focused more of my time on making it bigger and better.
Learning new skills to write better. Learning new ideas that would help me grow the blog to what it is now. Everything I know is out there, just pick a book.
Freelance Travel Writing (Past)
I used to get paid to write travel-related articles for other websites. Many travel, lifestyle and adventure related websites on the internet need content, and I have a lot of stories to share.
It can be a decent source of income, but it wasn’t something I was passionate about doing. Now that my blog has grown, I don’t have to do this anymore as I’m able to earn more working on my own site rather than writing for others.
Freelance Website Building (Past)
In the process of building my blog, I taught myself how to build basic websites. That simple skill was my second biggest source of income during the first 6 months of my travels. I’d built websites for hotels, cafes, restaurants, hostels and also quite a variety of blogs for other people.
I would struggle to get clients online as I didn’t have a portfolio or a degree so I decided to go cafe to cafe and ask them if they needed a website! And by the end of the day, I had a client, but I also realized why everyone had an excuse for why they couldn’t do something with their life.
Every time I entered a cafe it was awkward, and awkward was the best scenario. The most common answers were rude or condescending.
But the more cafes I went to, the more awkward situations I put myself in, the more condescending the comments, the more I got made fun of, the less I started to give a shit.
That’s the variable, ain’t it? They are always going to be people who complain about not being able to get clients while the few that succeed actually put in the work.
There’s no secret or hack! It’s hard work and patience and doing what most people aren’t willing to do, to live like most people aren’t going to be able to.
I don’t do it anymore and focus on growing semi-passive income, i.e. income I earn in my sleep (or while surfing, haha).
Marketing Consulting
Over the past couple of months, I began focusing on self-awareness and learning what my true skills are. What I realized is that, I’m not an amazing writer, I’m good but definitely not great! Hell, I wasn’t even very good at building websites. I was alright but I won’t be building the next Facebook anytime soon, what I was good at was marketing myself as the guy that could build websites.
I took the same approach with my blog, with the 1000s of travel blogs being started every day how do I stand out?
So many companies create products and services that may be amazing but guess what? Nobody wants them! So I took the smarter approach with my blog and started giving people quality information of what they want.
I never wrote a lot of articles instead, I focused on writing a few really good quality ones, updating them and sharing them with people who would benefit from it.
My marketing philosophy is based on the ‘Give, Give, Give, and then Ask”.
With my blog, I try to give and help as many people as I can!
I have people from all ages message and tell me how my blog inspired and helped them, make more money or get a new job or start learning their passion and it’s the most humbling feeling in the world!
I plan on helping other businesses do the same in the future and hence I am in consulting now, mainly social and SEO focused. There’s a reason why my articles usually come on the first page for “dropping out of college to travel the world” and on the second page for high competition queries, even though my blog is only a year old!
I’ve just started SEO consultations for small businesses, as I realized that this is something I want to do in the long term and marketing has always been my best skill.
How Much Money Do I Make Traveling The World?
I know, I know. You want details. Asking someone how much money they make is a very personal question, and it’s not something I’m entirely comfortable posting, but I’ll give you an idea.
I have earned over 400$ in a single day, but I also have days when I have earned less than 20$. I make enough to make ends meet and also invest in my future!
Now, those aren’t amazing numbers for most people but for sure they are for me. I’m from a country (India) where the minimum wage is 3$/day, yes a DAY! I’m not really very materialistic, that’s why everything I own weighs 5kgs. I could care less for that flashy gold watch. I’m really young, insanely young if I do say so myself, 19, and I’m working towards the long term benefit and not the short term gain.
I put most of my income back into my blog or in starting other businesses in one form or another. All businesses need investments to grow, including blogs. My blog is only a year old but now it pays for me to travel around the world, and I plan on growing it even more.
I can travel for the rest of my life if I chose to, settle in any country I like and work on the go and I only need Wi-Fi, my phone or laptop, and coffee. Especially coffee!
The reality is that I actually have no idea how much I’ll make next month. Or the month after that. It’s one downside ofworking for yourself. In exchange for freedom, you often lose some security.
I’ve chosen freedom over security.
But I’m not that worried about ever going broke because that’s something I have already experienced. I once had a week when my bank account was negative and all I had was a jar of peanut butter for my meals for 3 days until I got a new cafe as a client. Having hit rock bottom and making my way up from there taught me more that college ever could.
I love what I do, and will continue to learn new skills and work towards living a life being true to myself. I don’t ever have to get a “job” and I can live life on my own terms.
I believe that anything is possible with hard work, patience, and dedication.
Don’t be shy to say hi 🙂 on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Instagram.