Travelling the world as a digital nomad is an eye-opening experience. Armed with just your laptop and a drive to explore, you’ll learn countless things about yourself and the world around you. It can be one of the most fulfilling experiences to have, but it’s also important to realise that you can’t do it without having a source of income or a very large trust fund.

Travelling is extremely expensive. Even if you constantly stay with friends, you’re still going to need a source of income to help you pay for transport, food and other expenses. One option is to start a business that you can operate as you travel, but that’s not the easiest thing in the world to achieve and it can be fairly daunting to start your own company, especially when on the road. However, it doesn’t need to be as formal as you might think and there are lots of different ways to secure a source of income while you travel. So in this post, i’m going to share a couple of tips to make it easier for you.

Get yourself a physical address

Services like www.physicaladdress.com are great for digital nomads because it allows you to set up a physical address that can be used for business purposes. If anyone needs to send you a package or letter, it can be sent directly to this physical address and then forwarded to wherever you are in the world or just scanned and emailed to you. This is a great way to establish a professional appearance since you’ll have an, often prestigious, address attached to your business.

While most people tend to send emails nowadays, you might still get some companies that are adamant about sending physical mail. Especially if you are a blogger and receive samples and gifts from brands. However, even if this isn’t a concern for you, having a professional-looking physical address can make your business stand out and look more reliable. You can even pay to use these virtual address companies as a registered office address for Companies House.

Understand that working in different time zones is hard

If you travel a lot then you might find yourself in situations where your timezone is drastically different from a client or supplier. As a result, you’ll need to adjust when you expect replies so that you can stay in contact in a timely manner.

It’s also difficult to set up meetings across multiple time zones. Before you engage in any serious discussion or talks with businesses and clients, make it clear that you may be difficult to contact in some circumstances. You won’t always be available when they are.Make sure you have multiple ways to get online

Having access to the internet is incredibly important if you want to get work done as a digital nomad. Make sure you look for ways to get online while travelling and always havea backup plan. If you know you’re going to be in a country for a while, then it helps to get a reliable source of WiFI such as a new sim card or a portable WiFi device that you can rent from various locations.

However, you could also make use of public WiFi in areas such as coffee shops, airports and hotels. Wherever you go, make sure you identify the various WiFi options available before you venture out as it’ll make things much easier when you arrive in an unknown destination.

Stay organised

Part of the appeal of being a digital nomad is that novelty of being free to roam where you choose and when you choose. However, if you want to run a successful business, you will need to sacrifice a bit of this freedom to ensure that you are organised enough and reliable enough for your customers/clients to trust the service you provide. Research apps that will allow you to keep track of your business. For example, invoice apps will remind you of invoices due and there are receipt scanning apps to track your expenses.

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