What a world that we live in these days. You can roam the world in your van and make money at the same time. Not only are people choosing the van life these days to detach from the norms of a world that doesn’t seem to be working much for people. Now, you can also make quite a bit of money with the van life digital nomad lifestyle.
The days of living like a nomad that conjures up images of hippies selling grilled cheese sandwiches at Grateful Dead concerts are no longer relevant. You can just as often find the CEO of a startup behind the wheel of that van.
Most digital nomads these days travel by plane and stay in comfortable hotels for the free and stable wifi so they can get work done. Luckily, things are a bit easier on the van lifers that want to work from their rolling home. In this article, I will give you some tips on how to do it yourself. If work was the only thing keeping you from hitting the road full time, then read on!
Charge Up
As a van lifer & digital nomad, you know how important it is to have a steady source of electricity. If your work depends on having a powered up laptop or PC, then it takes on added importance. Make sure that you upgrade your power source if you are serious about working out of your van while on the road. If you are relying on charging up when you stop somewhere to use the wifi or take a break, then you may find yourself out of luck. If you are working on tight deadlines, then this will be a real problem so you don’t want to brush it off.
Get yourself a good solar panel that has a battery to store the excess power. You never know when you are going to need to charge your laptop or plug in your PC. These days there you can find Lithium batteries for sale that should be at least 33Ah that can handle charging multiple devices at once. The battery capacity that you need depends on your power needs. If you only want to charge your laptop and maybe camera, then 33Ah is enough. If you have lots of van life appliances that run on electricity then you will need more, much more. People get up to 200-300Ah and even more to run things like fridge, lights, fans, stove etc…
Lithium batteries and more often used in vans – LiFePo4 batteries have a huge edge over regular deep cycle camper van batteries. They are lighter, you can use almost 100% of their power (with regular batteries you can only use up to 50% before recharging, or you will destroy them) and the last longer. So even though they are more expensive, they just might be worth the investment.
The best rule here is – you can never have too much batteries in your van. Get the best system you can afford and you won’t regret it.
Get Connected – WiFi Options on the Road
The biggest challenge that you are going to face when working out of your van is connecting to the internet. How you do so will highly depend on the type of work that you need to do. If you are mainly doing freelance writing or something that doesn’t require a lot of data, then you could probably get away with using a mobile hotspot. This is similar to tethering your smartphone to your computer and using the data to use the internet.
However, this can eat away at your data plan and you don’t always get a strong signal from your phone. A mobile hotspot has a much stronger radio and can get a good connection even when your phone is not showing much. Even if this is not going to be enough for you to work, it is a good thing to have to do your banking or other financially sensitive tasks rather than use a public wifi that is not secure.
Alternatively, you may want to be out amongst the people occasionally and use public wifi. There are so many coffee shops out on the road that give you free, fast and stable wifi for just the cup of coffee and a sandwich for a few hours of work. If you feel funny about sitting in a coffee shop and working, then find the local library and get to work there.
Coworking spaces are probably your best option. Some of them will allow you to sign up for a day, or a week without committing to a long term situation. This is ideal not only for the comfort of using wifi and not feeling bad about hanging around a coffee shop all day, but you also could end up doing some valuable networking with the other people working from the same office.
Many of them also have free coffee and snacks and a quiet spot to get your work done.
Find the Right Kind of Work
You may be tempted to simply blog about your van life/digital nomad journey and make money that way. And it isn’t a bad idea, but you will have a lot of competition to deal with and it will take a long time to make money. If you don’t already have a job that allows you to work remotely, then it’s up to you to create something. You don’t have to be a programmer, but if you are then doing freelance coding is always a very good idea.
Any skill that you have is worth starting a business around. You can freelance write for blogs or do copywriting for businesses even without experience if you take the time to learn the tricks of the trade. Also, things like data entry, medical billing and other types of office work are in demand. If you are very organized, then you can consider being a virtual assistant for somebody’s business which is sort of being like a remote office manager.
Even if you have no relevant work experience, you can learn any kind of skill or get a solid knowledge base to work doing just about any kind of job that interests you. Sites like Udemy and Skillshare are great at giving practical courses on just about any subject you can imagine. This can be a good jumping off point for you to find your next job.
Be Serious About Your Work
It’s easy to feel like you’re on vacation when living out of your van so the last piece of advice is to make sure that you devote the right amount of time to your work. Whether you have deadlines or want to grow your online business, you will need to have the discipline to work when it needs to get done. The most successful bloggers, youtubers… all digital nomads work really hard! The beautiful part of being a digital nomad is that when you close the laptop, you are already on vacation!