Going Remote: How Much Money I Make as a Digital Nomad

Glitching the system: Sharing the Cheatcode

The allure of working from anywhere, with money to adventure, melting into new cultures, and ditching the traditional 9-to-5 is strong. I've chased that dream and accomplished it, and I'm here to share the real deal. There are ups and downs, and everything in between. Stay tuned to the end where I reveal how much money I have made remotely since I began this adventure more than 5 years ago.

Packing light for life's adventures: the essence of a true digital nomad.

The Rat Race: Cubicle or Cage?

The third alarm on my phone goes off. This means that it is time to actually wake up. The first two alarms are just to prepare me for this moment. It is still dark because my company believes if we start working before other companies that the owner will make more money. I take a quick shower, iron a shirt, and call an Uber to work. Including the Uber ride to the office, this takes about 90 minute and at least $10. With inflation that is like $15 in today's dollars. Sometimes the sun is still not up when I get to the office. We have desks that are like semi-cubicles where the partitions go up to your shoulders. I guess these are meant to give us the feeling of privacy without actually giving any privacy. The carpet is like the carpet you find in the hallways of chain hotels, just a little less colorful. I don't drink coffee at this point in my life, but one of the "perks" is as much coffee and powdered creamer as you want. There is an ongoing uprising for liquid creamer over powdered creamer management is tring to stifle. You have to wear a shirt with a collar, but you can wear jeans instead of dress pants. Do not leave the coffee pot empty without brewing another pot for everyone unless you enjoy being metaphorically crucified by email in from of the entire office. Minutes before 6am, everyone is rushing to get their styrofoam cup of joe before we are expected to be at our semi-cubicles pounding away at the computer and phone to make the owner of the company his money. When our lunch hour comes, we skip it, or eat at our desks while we work. It is considered a weakness to take a lunch and managers regularly note the people who dared take their hour lunch instead of working. They probably keep a spreadsheet. Do not ever let your Microsoft Teams status go yellow. It is how the manager keeps tabs on who is at their desk or not. I changed the settings so that it took longer to go yellow than the default settings. I work like this for over a year, Monday through Friday, and two Saturdays a month.

I remember one time I requested to take my birthday off of work to spend with my family and I had the bankroll of time off to cover it. It was not approved or denied, it was ignored. When I first interviewed for this company they showed me a spreadsheet of all the commission everyone was making. It showed people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and even one person making almost a million dollars in commissions. I never once saw a commission check and I did more business than almost everyone in the office of close to 100 employees. This was life at Total Quality Logistics, working 60 to 80 hours a week for $35,000 per year minus taxes.

I would go on to work different office jobs over the next few years. Some had Red Bulls, but you could only wear jeans on Fridays. Others would let you leave 15 minutes early, but it was a sin to be late. They all had the same dull commercial carpets and they all talked about being a "family". Managers were all so proud of how much commission everyone was making, but employees rarely felt as happy , As a top performer in almost every role at every company I worked at for almost five years, I saw one commission check that was around $100. I decided to stop working commission jobs.

From Choking to a Breath of Fresh Air

Fast forward a couple years. I am commuting 3 hours a day to a job as a Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist that was sucking the soul out of me. We worked in a makeshift office at an airport warehouse. You could hear cattle mooing and smell the shit of live animals that were being shipped around the world. There were flies everywhere and I would pick up shifts on Saturdays to make a little extra money. People counted on me to feed and clothe them. Something had to change. I started studying at university and applying to remote jobs. It took time, almost a year, but a lovey company named Sanford Health called me and offered me a fully remote and full-time job as a Sourcing Specialist for CNAs starting immediately. It even paid me more money than I was making in warehouse.

My responsibilities at Sanford Health included managing recruiting resources and a small recruiting budget to create demand for the jobs offered by Sanford Health. I worked remotely and happily with them for over a year. Remote work is still work, but it is not the soul draining room of cubicles with an occasional potluck you are afraid to get food poisoning from. The choice to work with Sanford Health pivoted me into the world of remote work and I have not worked in an office since. It also helped me develop a set of skills companies secretly and highly demand.

Remote but not a Nomad: The Big Tech Adventures

Sanford Health was great to me. I was treated with respect, the work of hiring CNAs gave me a sense of purpose, and the direct deposit always arrived on time. With my experience there I got better at recruiting and my market value started to increase.

After over a year with Sanford Health, I found full-time and fully remote contract job working as a Technical Sourcer at Linkedin. This is essentially major league for recruiters because the LinkedIn Recruiting platform is considered the gold standard of recruiting software and the LInkedIn social network is positioned for professional connections. I worked for LInkedIn through a 3rd party staffing company and my income would be doubled. I became a master of Linkedin Recruiter and connected with some of the brightest data scientists in the world. In a way though it was difficult. The people I worked with seemed to think they were superior to others and it showed constantly in emails and video calls. Still, I am thankful for that opportunity.

Contracts are set for a certain duration. Sometimes they end on time, sometimes they are extended, and sometimes they end early. I finished up my contract at LinkedIn and it was time for my next play. That next play would be another contract, but this time at Amazon supporting their Alexa AI devision hiring AI Software Engineers and Product managers. At the time Amazon had the largest amount of recruiters of any private company and you could feel it. We were not coworkers, we were competitors. I was still using LinkedIn Recruiter to source candidates and also a tool called Beamery. When this contract ended I felt relief that I was getting out of there.

Going International: From Remote Worker to Digital Nomad

When my contract at Amazon ended I did not have any other work lined up. I was in Denver with a massive rent payment, a distaste for freezing temperatures, and no income. The pandemic was winding down and travel restrictions were lifting around the world. I decided I was going to take a trip. Skyscanner.com had a cheap flight to Medellin, Colombia and I bought a one way ticket. This would prove to be another life changing decision.

Since I did not have a job, I was applying and interviewing while on vacation. About three weeks into my trip I lined up a well paying, fully remote and full-time job on contract with Uber as a Technical Sourcer. I would be recruiting Software Engineers for their Uber Eats Platform. It was similar to working at Amazon and LinkedIn because we used LinkedIn Recruiter and Beamery for most of our tasks. It was initially supposed to be a 6-month contract, but they liked me and extended it. I tried to keep it quiet that I was abroad, but my manager was from Medellin and I found it strategic to share my situation. I worked there for about. a year, as a digital nomad in multiple countries, saving my USD and enjoying the low cost of living abroad. It felt like I found a loophole.

Now, I have been living abroad for over three years and working remote for over five. I made the jump from cubicle, to remote worker, to digital nomad, and what an adventure it has been. I have tried food some people have never heard of, and I still wear Nike from top to bottom.

Sometimes the sky is bluer on the other side of the equator.

The In-betweens: My Online Money Side Quests

I have made a few other attempts at steady online income worth sharing. Unfortunately, for me most of these did not make any money. Fortunately for you, I am going to tell you which ones were losers so you do not have to find out the hard way.

My first attempt at making money online was a company named Mineral. The plan was simple. I would create an online store that used a subscription model to sell clothing basics like socks, underwear and t-shirts. I decided to start with socks. I designed 5 models, their packaging (with the help of a designer from Fiverr.com) and sourced a manufacturer in China using Alibaba.com I formed the LLC the traditional way by going to the state website, inputing my information, and paying the fee. Then I signed up for Shopify.com and built the store and brand. I set a budget of $1000 and decided that if I spent that before I made $1000 in revenue, I would shut it down. I quickly made a couple sales after launch, including to customers around the world, but I quickly used up my budget and realized I had failed. It takes a lot of money to market a clothing product and produce enough units to get a good price on manufacturing. I shut the company down and was left with a box of socks and an informal education in business administration. Still, I did not give up.

The next idea I implemented was a remote recruiting company. See, I had been a recruiter at some of the biggest firms in the world. I saw how the business worked, including the financials. I realized I was the product the companies were selling and they were charging a very high price for my service. If I could start my own firm, my overhead costs would be lower, I could offer the same product to clients, and maybe do it all remote for a living. I used Legalzoom.com to set up the LLC, get a domain name, business insurance, and even a website. It took about a week to get Trustful, my new recruiting company, set up. I got to work contacting potential customers and soon I had signed up a very famous celebrity who wanted to make a fashiontech product. I would be helping build the team to bring the product to life. Recruiting contracts are interesting though in that you do not get paid until someone is hired, and usually still another 60 or so days after that. This meant that there was no guarantee I would make any money for my work, and even if I did, it could be months until I saw the money. At the time, I still had not worked my first remote job or made any money online. I shut the company down when Sanford Health, discussed earlier in this blog, offered me my first full-time and fully remote job. I lost about $500 - 1000 starting Trustful.

Upwork was my next and probably most successful side quest into the world of online work. Upwork.com is a gig platform used mostly by digital companies and workers. I built a profile and highlighted my skills, specifically in the realm of HR consulting and recruiting. I quickly learned about the fierce competition and the constant hustle for gigs. The biggest challenge? Fighting for $100 jobs amidst a sea of proposals. My strategy was to prioritize my reputation on Upwork, building a complete profile and maintaining excellent stats like my Job Success Score. I was upfront with clients, emphasizing that their satisfaction was more important than any single job. This approach helped me secure long-term contracts and earn a near-perfect rating. I still take UpWork jobs and in fact just started a new one this week.

My next attempt at making a living online was a YouTube channel. A Digital Adventure, was an ambitious project where I would hire people from around the world using Upwork.com to film city tours. It seemed like a great idea. But $2,000 and six months later, I had less than 500 subscribers and a hard lesson in the costs of content creation. You have to have 1000 subscribers and meet a few other metrics to get monetized on YouTube. If I could do it again, I'd be more focused on which cities I chose to film and extra conscious on how much I was paying my videographers. Still, if you want to see high-quality videos from places like Bangkok, Thailand, Quito, Ecuador, Mexico City, Mumbai India, Medellin, Colombia, or like 20 other beautiful places, you can check out the channel. Overall, a fun experience that taught me a ton about video editing a creating a youtube channel, but a fail.

Another try at getting rich online has been my journey on Coinbase.com. I've made about $100 in rewards over a few years, but the volatility of crypto investing makes it a risky game. For those interested in crypto investing, Coinbase staking, and anything blockchain, it's important that you know the risks. There is money to be lost. I am not qualified to give investing advice so I would recommend you find someone who is if you want to invest in crypto.

Online poker? Not a sustainable income source. A week of playing on swcpoker.club cost me $100 and a lot of sitting still. Gambling isn't a reliable strategy. For those interested in playing poker online, realize the same. There is money to be lost. Some people develop online gambling addiction where responsible gambling is impossible for them. Beyond those extremes, it just gets really boring sitting at the computer all day watching hand after hand, or game after game, trying to calculate a profit. Not many people make a profit either, so you have to deal with the feeling of loss constantly.

My most recent go at making money online is this blog, remoteandrich.com. I figured that since I was able to make money online and travel the world, that I should share that story. There must be other people out there who want to travel, and if so, I can help them by showing them where I made money and where I lost it. So far, I have not made any money on this blog, but I have a good feeling about it.

So, out of all my online money side quests, most have been a failure and taken a ton of time. That being said, I think I am profitable on the side quests only thanks to UpWork. Can you make money starting an online clothing company or making YouTube videos, I thinks so, but my experience doing the same was no so great.

The Numbers: How Much I Have Made Online

So you have made to the end. Probably the only part of the blog anyone really wants to read. How much do I make working online? Let us get to it. I have worked online for just over 5 years and made about $227,000 USD. That's about $45,000 per year, $3,800 per month, $873 per week, or $124 per day. For some, they spend this on a vacation every year. For others, it might be a dream to make almost $4000 per month working from their computer wearing a hoodie and slides. For me, It is my story of pushing and pulling for 5 years to make something work, and I hope it is just the beginning.

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Whats next?: The Experiments

I recently started teaching English online at the University of the People and consulting at a budding staffing firm. I hope to continue these ventures while performing detailed experiments on income generation that I share on this blog, remoteandrich.com.

I plan to test the freelancing sites like freelancer.com, tutoring sites like itutor.com, and many more online platforms in a systematical and documented way so that I can bring you the cheat codes to making money online. Similar to the format of this exact blog. I want you to know how much time and money I spend on these platforms along with the return on investment (ROI), so that you can decide if it is right for you. This is where Remote and Rich shines. Other blogs just google info and make blogs without testing anything they type. Here, I go to the field and come back with the intel that you need.

Adventure on!