10 Best Digital Nomad Jobs for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Updated on May 22, 2020
Are you tired of working the same 9-5 every day?
Maybe you’re sick of your cubicle, and maybe you’re in it right now, thinking about how you can change the scenery by getting a digital nomad job. You know, one of those jobs that let you post those gratifying Instagram selfies on the beach living that #laptoplifestyle? The kind of job that could not only grant you location independent freedom, but also equip you with the crucial skills needed to become the boss of your own thriving empire one day.
Many digital nomad entrepreneurs were once in your exact position. They were wondering how could THEY go and live that same #laptoplifestyle that seems too good to be true? Well, the answer for a lot of those entrepreneurs was landing that first digital nomad job.
If you’d like to check out our video we did on how to become a digital nomad fast, check out our video below:
So how can you go and land a digital nomad job? What does a digital nomad job even look like? How can it prepare you to become an entrepreneur in your own right?
Before we dive into some of the best location independent jobs for those looking to gain some experience prior to managing their own successful business one day, we should first discuss what a digital nomad job is.
What is a Digital Nomad Job?
A digital nomad job is like any kind of remote work set up. One of the key differences though is you can live anywhere, on any timezone, in any place of the world as long as you have a decent wifi connection.
Some remote jobs are set up where you still have to stay within the same city or region as the business, versus a digital nomad job allows you to be location free. All you have to do is make sure you deliver the results, and you’re free to be anywhere you want in the world.
The current global pandemic that is going on right now is causing one of the largest work-at-home experiments in history. When the dust settles and things get back to some semblance of normal, we expect many jobs will continue to be remote. Some may even go the digital nomad route of allowing you to work from anywhere you want. Of course… this won’t be all the jobs currently working from home as many will go back to working from the office. With some social distancing and sanitary precautions in place that is.
If you’re worried that your job might be one of those destined to return to the cubicle, then read on.
Here are some of the best digital nomad jobs in 2020 you can grab to make sure you continue to be location independent. These jobs won’t just help you work anywhere you want, but they’ll also give you valuable skills that will help you to start your own digital nomad business when you’re ready.
10 Popular Digital Nomad Jobs in 2020
Now that you know the difference between a remote job and a digital nomad job, it’s time to explore what kind of jobs are really out there. We have a ton of experience working together alongside digital nomads, and have helped many entrepreneurs both buy and sell online businesses on our marketplace. This means we know what kind of jobs can help you get the skills you need if your end goal is to one day become a business owner yourself.
Here are the 10 best digital nomad jobs in 2020 that can get you to that goal faster (and to the beaches faster).
1. Virtual Assistant (VA) and Data Entry
If you come from a customer service or office assistant background, you’ve most likely heard of VAs or data entry positions. Data entry specialists and VAs are a crucial role when it comes to scaling any business model as these positions help to free up the owner’s time to focus on more important growth optimizations.
The problem-solving skills you gain from this type of work is also a huge benefit to learning how a business handles customer complaints and support tracking. Learning which key performance indicators (KPIs) are worth tracking, and learning how this data should stay organized and stored helps you better serve your company’s daily backend operations. This work may also involve a lot of higher-level business management operations which will be useful when needing to understand this information when running your own business.
While these types of jobs might be on the lower end of the pay scale compared to the others listed in this article, this experience is still valuable to have for those wishing to start their own business down the road. Understanding how to organize and track important information into spreadsheets and excel documents is something many business owners often perform themselves, and already having this knowledge gives you the upper hand when you begin tracking your own site’s KPIs and business analytics.
2. Copywriting
Behind every great article title that triggers your inner “read more” mentality, is a great copywriter.
Copywriting is the use of the written word to market your company in hopes that the traffic will perform a certain action. This action could be anything from reading your article, signing up for your newsletter, or using a discount code at checkout for free shipping.
The skills you gain from copywriting experience will not only help you understand what factors determine a great title, but will also give you valuable insights into the sales psychology of your target audience. Understanding what drives your traffic into your sales funnel, to begin with, is what makes copywriting such a great skill to have for those looking to build their own empire.
3. Social Media Management
What was once looked at as a way to share pictures with friends and family around the world, has now become an incredible platform for businesses to also share updates with their loyal fans and customers. Not only to share updates, but to grow their businesses to new heights.
Of course, in order to do that successfully… you need someone to manage it.
Brands and services will continue to seek professional social media marketers for years to come. The good news is that many entrepreneurs that excel at social media marketing are looking to hire and train people to manage their social presence. With these skills under your belt, not only will these companies want to hire you to manage this for them, but they will also give you the hands on experience to prepare you for running your own social media marketing campaigns. Having the opportunity to scale someone else’s social media following will give you the competence to grow your own social presence based on this previous experience.
4. Programming
Programmers are digital wizards who use the language of coding and algorithms to communicate with a computer’s operating system in a way most wouldn’t begin to understand.
There are endless job opportunities for those with the coding skills to navigate both the front end and back end of any website.
Finding a digital nomad job as a programmer is actually quite easy for those who have mastered this trade when you consider the time and difficulty in learning this skill. The demand for those with an expert level of understanding will also continue to rise as more companies turn to adding more positions within their tech departments.
Programming positions, data analysts, and any other digital nomad jobs that require a great understanding of coding or analyzing data, are also some of the highest paying remote jobs on the market today.
Of course, running your own business can be more lucrative, like when we sold this programmer’s SaaS business for $106k in two days. Gaining work experience as a programmer not only drives your value up in the job market, but also gives you the skills needed to start your own successful software business if that happens to be your online career goal.
5. Website designer
Where programmers are seen as digital wizards, those who design websites using platforms such as WordPress and Joomla are more an adolescent Yoda (sorry, baby Yoda was taken). This refers to those who don’t quite have a complete mastery of what it takes to build a site from scratch like a programmer would, but enough knowledge to still drive a strong presence in job market demands.
Website designers are responsible for the design, layout, and look and feel of the website’s frontend user experience. Designing websites (and WordPress sites to be exact), is in my own personal opinion, one of the best digital nomad jobs anyone could have experience in, simply based on the different avenues you could take with this knowledge at any given time during your online career.
From building sites as a freelancer for different services such as hospitality and small business clients around your community, to building a complete content publishing warehouse where all the content is outsourced, and all you need to worry about is maintaining the site itself.
Once you’ve gained these skills through client projects or working for someone else, you will have a better understanding of how to optimize your site’s layout and design when taking that next step in designing a website for your own business.
6. Affiliate Marketing
In the past few years, affiliate marketing has changed quite a bit from where it once was. The term “influencer” has now taken over the once common celebrity endorsement role for many startup companies, and has opened the door for aspiring entrepreneurs to provide a similar marketing outcome for a business at a fraction of the cost.
Affiliate marketing is when an individual earns an affiliate commission for promoting another company’s service or products. These sales are tracked via links used within the affiliate’s content and video descriptions detailing their approval or review of the product.
Social proof, such as testimonials, reviews, rating scores, and the number of followers you’ve gained has become a new currency for a companies’ digital marketing growth. What better way to grow this currency than to spread the marketing efforts among many sources while providing those same contributors a share of the profit. This is where affiliate marketing has opened doors for aspiring entrepreneurs all over the world.
Starting your own website publishing content about other people’s products through several different affiliate programs is a great experience for those who would like to jump straight into managing their own business right from the start.
With this experience, you will have a better understanding of how to market your own products or services, building the fundamental skills needed to optimize your marketing strategy when that day comes.
7. Blogging and Content Specialists
With every great review, top 10, best of, and how to guide you see on the search engine results page (SERP), you will find a piece of content by those who love to write.
If you love blogging about your travels or discussing home remedies you’ve found helpful in curing your “C” virus lockdown boredom, blogging might be the best digital nomad job to get you up and running before branching out and scaling your own content site.
Companies are realizing that publishing the best quality content they can provide plays a huge part in moving up the SERP based on what Google has penalized in the past.
Knowing how to write valuable content that captivates your audience is perfect for those looking to start their own business as well. More people are turning to content now than ever to engage their followers and keep them within their marketing funnels, longer, in hopes of converting that audience when the time is right.
Once you develop a formula for publishing quality content with the reader in mind, you will be better prepared when planning your own marketing strategy within any niche or market you choose to focus on.
8. Illustrators and Graphic Designers
If you wanted to jump straight into finding and managing your own projects, then finding freelance illustration and graphic design clients might be a great opportunity for you to explore.
Illustrators and graphic designs help in creating visuals and design imagery used on anything customer or traffic facing. These could include anything from photos to graphic design work used on the front end of your website, to the brand’s trademark and logo designs.
More social media content is turning to visual design work and illustrated marketing techniques every day, and the demand for those with both of these skill sets will continue to grow. As marketing and ad campaigns scale with a business overtime, eventually an in-house designer will be needed, and thus, the demand for this particular experience will always exist in the job market.
Obtaining these skills will not only drive your value in this growing market, but will give you the tools needed to visualize and execute your own brand’s illustrations and graphic designs as well. Acquiring this knowledge is great for those who would like to expand their graphic and visual content while maintaining complete control over the design quality should they choose to outsource this operation to focus on scaling their client base over performing the actual services being offered.
9. Video Production and Editing
The fact people are performing in-home video production now more than ever offers a huge opportunity for those looking to start their digital journey in this field. Producing and editing video content is becoming one of the top mediums for brands and creators alike, offering plenty of growth opportunities for those who learn these skills.
Once you’ve learned the ropes, not only are you able to create quality video content your company’s audience will love, but you will also gain insight on some of the best practices in video production and editing at the same time.
Once you’ve mastered these skills to publish high quality video content for your company or freelance clients, you’ll be well on your way to knowing what will be required when producing and editing video content for your own brand’s marketing campaigns. Understanding the whole process from start to finish will give you the upper hand when scaling your business as you will be better equipped to handle most of this training in-house, fine-tuned to your standards.
10. Teaching Online
Teaching online is not only great from a location independence perspective, but it also gives you the flexibility to plan out your own schedule, set your own hourly pay and course rates, and offers the ability to repurpose a lot of your content into other forms of reusable information for your audience to enjoy.
Once you have mastered a particular skill, or have been awarded a certification that others might need help in learning, why not teach this skill set to those who would be more than willing to pay you for this knowledge. Using platforms like Udemy and Skillshare can give you the opportunity to not only build a following, but also add to your social proof of others who have taken the course and gained value from the experience. Over time, you will begin to build up a large enough following where you could branch out from those training platforms to increase your margins further.
Knowing how to train someone from start to finish is also something many business owners contribute to their success. If you can train someone with zero knowledge on the subject to comprehend your material by course completion, you are one step closer to building the team that will one day form the building blocks in leading to your entrepreneurial goals.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of every known digital nomad job available in the job market today, but at least this will give you some insight on where to gain valuable experience before owning your own business if that is your career goal. Once you have the experience and training mentioned above, you will be well on your way to running your own successful empire.
Do You Have The Skills To Run a Successful Online Business From Anywhere In the World?
Each of the jobs above, whether it is designing a site or filling it with persuasive copywriting, represent the varied skills that successful entrepreneurs use every day in their businesses.
All of these skills you can learn either through your own research, or by landing yourself one of the digital nomad jobs we talked about. Gaining these skills will also give you useful hands on experience that will benefit you in your own business ventures.
With these skills already under your belt, you can skip the start up time and sweat equity investment most businesses will usually consist of, and jump straight into scaling a business that has already been established.
Fasttrack your digital journey today by skipping the time required to build a business from scratch and optimize an already cash flowing business that compliments the skills you already have. From there, you can use the knowledge you’ve gained from previous work experience to scale the business in areas you might have more experience in compared to the previous owner.
When you acquire a profit-generating business that matches your current skill sets, you can focus on maintaining and growing this investment without the vexation and uncertainty of starting something from scratch.
If you are ready to take the next step in your path to becoming an online entrepreneur and ready to use similar skills mentioned here to scale your own empire, then schedule a buyers call with one of our business analysts today. When you speak with one of our knowledgeable advisors, they will match you with the perfect business that meets your skill sets and investment goals.
Not quite sure if you’ve gained enough experience to run your own empire yet?
When you schedule a criteria call with one of our business advisors, they can walk through your business goals to determine what the perfect business would be for you, based on the skills you already have. When a business meets your specific criteria and goes live on our marketplace, one of our business advisors will reach out so you can begin the first steps to acquiring one of the best digital nomad jobs for entrepreneurs of them all: Managing your own business.
