How to Become a Digital Nomad

If you want to know how to be a digital nomad, I will help you in this article talking about how to prepare yourself for a digital nomad lifestyle.

To become a digital nomad, there are a few things that will help you along the way: first, you should know where the main places are that you want to go and mainly the first place you will visit; second, you need to understand how you want to travel, which will help you define how you'll sleep and eat; third — not the most important point, but one without which you'll face a lot of difficulty along the way — is how you'll make money (unless you already have plenty, in which case you only need to think about the other parts of the plan).

This article will help you understand these things, and I hope it encourages you to start planning your own journey to becoming a nomad.

Where Are the Main Places You Want to Go?

First things first: to define where you want to go, think about places you've never been, places you'd like to get to know, and your type of travel. The world is big, and you'll find places where you can walk in nature, or go to cafes and restaurants, make friends with new people (or even network for your job), improve your foreign language skills, or simply party if that's what you're after. All of these types of trips are amazing and can help you find yourself.

Based on that, you can research online to get ideas for places to go. Once you have your ideas, go to Google Maps, search for each city or place you want to visit, and save it (you can save it under the "Travel Plans" tab) — the places you save will then show up as red dots on the map, as you can see on the image attached, I marked the "Rota das emoções" trip in northeast Brazil and it shows the cities as red dots. This can help you stay organized and see which places are quicker to reach.

You can do this both for entire cities and for specific places within a city, building a route of spots to visit and optimizing transport time, looking for places that you marked and understanding how much time you need to travel or just to get an Uber or a bus to the spots.

Another way to do this is defining only the first place that you wanna go. After you arrive, you look for the next spot and then plan for that place. You will need some type of money and tickets preparation to do this, but this is a good way to travel because you can go with the winds to places you never expected.

Once you understand where you want to visit, you can define how you'll travel between those places.

How Do You Want to Travel?

If you're planning to start a trip, one of the most important things to know is how you'll travel between cities. I've met people who travel using public transport like buses, trains, and airplanes. But you could also travel in a motorhome, or in your own car and camp along the way, or rent a place to sleep each time. You can travel by bicycle or even on foot — I even saw a guy who traveled by skateboard once.

The ways to get from point A to point B are vast, and you can choose yours based on how much time you want to spend between places, what your budget is, and how much comfort you need. For that, you can see the sections below and understand pros and cons for each way.

Bus

If you decide to make a trip by bus you should consider the tickets price, how many time you spend travelling between places and you have to be minimalist with your things because of the luggage space, most companies only let you bring one or two bags and the space inside the bus for anything else is small.

The good part is that bus is usually the cheapest way to move between cities and you don't have to drive, you can sleep, work on your laptop if the wifi holds up, or just look at the landscape. The bad part is that schedules are fixed, stations are sometimes far from where you're staying, and a long route can take a full day you could've spent working or visiting the place you just left.

Car

I planned for a year and bought a car, so I can travel between cities, and for each city I want to visit I rent an apartment on Airbnb (for long stays, they offer a 40% discount on the total value). Think carefully about your way of traveling and take some notes on it, because you'll need a safe place to sleep, a way to prepare your meals, and time to visit the different places.

Having a car gives you a freedom that public transport doesn't, you decide when to leave, you can stop wherever you want along the way, and you're not tied to a station timetable. The downside is the cost, on top of the car itself there's fuel, tolls, insurance and maintenance to think about, and if something breaks down somewhere you don't know, it can take days to sort out.

Motorhome

A motorhome mixes the freedom of a car with not having to book anywhere to sleep, you carry your bed, kitchen and bathroom with you. I've met people on the road who spend months moving between campsites this way, staying a few days in one place before moving to the next.

It solves a lot of the logistics, but brings its own list of things to manage, finding legal spots to park overnight, fuel that costs more than a regular car because of the weight, and a vehicle that's harder to move through small city streets or park near the center of most places. It also needs more upkeep than a car, since you're dealing with a water and electrical system on top of the engine.

Bicycle

Traveling by bicycle is a different pace, you move slower, cover fewer kilometers a day, and feel more of the route than you would from inside a car or a bus. People who do this usually carry their gear in bags attached to the bike and camp or find cheap places to sleep along the way.

The cost is low once you have the bike and the gear, but it asks more from your body and more planning around weather, road conditions, and how much water and food you can carry between towns. It works better for shorter distances or for people who have more time than money.

To finish, let's talk about how you'll make money along the road.

How You'll Make Money Along the Road

To be a digital nomad, you need a sustainable way to keep moving, and how you make money plays a big part in that. I work at a company that's remote-first, so I don't have to go into an office. That's one way to do it, but you can also do freelance work on websites like Upwork. You can work as a freelancer in the places you're visiting, which can work well for photographers and artists. Or maybe you're a creator who makes money online by posting videos or writing articles on a blog like this one.

There are many ways to make money while traveling, but the most important thing is to find a balance between your work and the free time you need to visit the cities.

You Just Have to Start

Where you want to go, how you want to travel, and how you'll pay for it, these are the three things that will shape your trip. You don't need every detail locked down before you leave, but having a rough answer to each one will save you a lot of stress once you're on the road.

My girlfriend and I have been planning for a year, and we still feel like we don't have everything figured out. There's always a place we forgot to check, a route we're not sure about yet, a spreadsheet that needs updating. But the most important thing is: you have to start, planning forever without a date on the calendar is just another way of not going.