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I have been reading articles on digital nomad-ing.

Here are some of them:

Being a digital nomad in Bali

This guy built his business by the beach

Joel Gascoigne of Buffer (11 cities in 3 months)

I am a remote worker myself. My 'office' is my laptop. But, I have never really tried living the life of a digital nomad where I stay and live in a different place for extended periods of time.

How can I be successful as a digital nomad?

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  • You could join programs like Super Nomad Friend Squad. It eases you into this new lifestyle, so you wont get lost or lonely while becoming a digital nomad. You’ll get to live in 4 or 12 cities in a year with a group of like minded people, therefore helping you find what remote jobs you could do to earn money.
    – user13135
    Jul 20 '16 at 8:20
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I am currently in the process of becoming a digital nomad myself. I have been investigating this for a few months now.

You must sort out a few things

  • Earn money: Ideally, you want several income streams to reduce risks.
  • Legal status: you want to make sure this is sorted out as without that you probably will have trouble charging anyone for your services.
  • Legal address: you will still have mails coming from organizations & you will need a good system to make this work. Either get a friend or relative to help you, or get a professional service (i.e. in Switzerland the post can scan your mails & email them to you).
  • Banking: you must have an excellent bank providing cutting edge online services. Forget about old fashion banks & switch to something reliable at anytime from anywhere.
  • Health insurance: you must have a good international health insurance, you'd easily find yourself in big trouble if you have any health issue. see https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/776/long-term-travel-what-insurances-can-should-i-get
  • Gear: you must make sure you have the right tool for the job, once you are away it can be difficult to buy it. Some inspiration on http://www.grownupplayground.com/travel-gear-backpackers-long-term-travelers/
  • Insure your gear: you want to insure your belongings, it won't save your work but at least it'll reduce the financial impact of getting something stolen.
  • Protect your gear: uglify your gear so it's less likely to get stolen & buy appropriate housing (shockproof, waterproof, & so on) to prevent physical damage.
  • Protect your data: encrypt sensitive files: use tools such as Truecrypt or BitLocker to only allow yourself to access your sensitive data.
  • Protect your data: digital backups: you will probably want to have digital backups of your work. You want a strategy that works smoothly so that if you loose your work (ie. lose your computer in a sailing accident), you can not only access all the lost work but also setup the new gear as the original one in a minimum amount of time.
  • Work place: you might want to make your life easy & start by moving to a location that is known for welcoming digital nomads, it'll save you tone of time & you'll be able to learn from others
  • Store what you can't take: you want to have a safe place to store valuable things you can't travel with (i.e. paperwork & electronics). For instance, Shurgard self-storage in Berlin has containers starting from 1m cube (this one costs 30€/month): it's very safe, has 6am to 10pm access, it's temperature+humidity controlled (no damage even storing for 1+ year) and your belonging are even insured. Put all the things you really care about in such space and then store all the rest in a less safe/expensive place (i.e. in a friend's basement). Regarding access: even if you need something from this storage while on the other side of the globe, all the access is through combination locks, so you can send a trusted person to get whatever is needed (no need for signature or else).
  • Car or Van: rent, rent, rent! With services such as Drivy and many apps for car rentals by the minute, there are only very specific cases that can justify owning a car. Owning a car or converted van sounds ideal to travel around a continent (i.e. Europe), however it is a big administrative burden and a rather high cost. This involves: dealing with insurances (regular & breakdown), yearly car check (MOT, TÜV, or whatever the name: it is at a given deadline in a given country), occasional repairs, occasional accidents, occasional police fines, storage when traveling without it & so on. It will cost you a lot of time, money, and might force you to be in a given place at a given time (for admin reasons): so think twice.
  • Voting: "Brexit, Trump, what's next!??" You will be away from your country and who knows for how long. But you still want your voice to be heard. Setup a way for you to be able to vote (i.e. power of attorney). Some countries are terrible at this (very slow setup), so prepare that well in advance.

Further resources to get started on being a digital nomad

Good luck

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  • Hey Adrien. Is it possible to summarize some of the points in the links? What we are ideally looking for is the answer to the question to be hosted here, on this site. If the links were to break, your answer will be useless to future visitors with the same problem. Thank you.
    – jmort253
    Jul 31 '15 at 7:03
  • @jmort253 I'd like to but I do not have the time for this. The amount of information in the provided resources is too big to be summarized. I'll try add a few points that can help the OP to get started however.
    – Adrien Be
    Jul 31 '15 at 7:31
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    I think that would suffice to include a brief summary, perhaps a paragraph or two. Thanks for putting the time in to collect these resources. It is a fascinating topic.
    – jmort253
    Jul 31 '15 at 7:38
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    done. I hope it's enough. I think that'll be some good guidelines for people getting started with this
    – Adrien Be
    Jul 31 '15 at 7:43
  • Hey Adrien, this is absolutely fantastic. Thanks for sharing these resources and for briefly summarizing them into points. Should be of great help.
    – Carlo Borja
    Aug 3 '15 at 6:27

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