Making a living while mobile
A gentleman contacted me today and mentioned that he was looking for something a bit more mobile than working from home, and so I put this together to send him, as well as some information from a post I put up on a discussion board the other day that some of you might be interested in.
I personally understand the desire to be mobile. That’s the direction I’m going as well. I don’t have anything like a pension or sufficient savings to retire yet (I’m 29), so I have to keep working, but I’ve already decided that I want to join the ranks of the full time RV crowd by this coming spring.
I’ve started transitioning my CD sales on Amazon, for example, to a digital download model from my own web site, so that I don’t have to be around to physically ship goods. I’ve also started selling on eBay, which permits digitally downloadable products.
In terms of work, one of the best things I’ve ever come across is something called field inspections. These can be done anywhere, and they encompass a wide variety of services. Eventually, I’m going to add a section to my web site about doing these, because they pay well ($25-$80 per inspection) and can be done by any reasonably intelligent person with a computer, digital camera, and good attention to detail. Getting into a complete description of it here is impractical, but start reading at the web site for the Society of Field Inspectors :
Keep an eye on my jobs site for an update with my info about it if you’d like.
I also make a bit of money every month from various types of affiliate marketing. Google Adsense, for example, plus other programs. I’ve got a CD I recorded about affiliate marketing, feel free to download the MP3 of it here:
http://www.weblaunch.org/Audio
Unarchive that compressed file, then there are the CD tracks in MP3 format.
In the spirit of the holidays, I’d also like to offer some of the other important recordings from the online business startup sequence that James and I recorded this summer. Most of this stuff is really, at the core, about marketing.
http://www.weblaunch.org/Audio
http://www.weblaunch.org/Audio
http://www.weblaunch.org/Audio
http://www.weblaunch.org/Audio
http://www.weblaunch.org/Audio
If you want to just do stuff online, my advice is to get a lot of little tiny niche things set up. Although a lot of the “gurus” out there will try to tell you how easy it is to make millions from one web site, I’ve not found that to be the case, at least for myself. But, it’s pretty easy to make a few hundred bucks a month, and if you can do that 5 or 10 different ways, you can make a pretty good living. That’s the approach I talk about on all the recordings linked to above.
I do want to also mention retail merchandising. If you’ve got some hands-on skills and, for some work, your own basic tools, merchandising can be great work, and it can be done anywhere in the country. Many positions actually involve quite a bit of travel, going from store to store setting things up. Merchandising is a huge field that includes the people handing you free cracker samples at Sam’s Club and the people that set up merchandise displays at retail locations and the people taking inventory of all the Frito-Lay products at the convenience stores in a city. These positions are usually contract positions, and the pay isn’t great, but it’s significantly better than flipping burgers or scrubbing floors. $12 an hour is a common wage. The central location for finding this kind of work, anywhere in the country is the National Association for Retail
Marketing Services. I get two or three new job notices a week from them, asking me to apply. Go to:
and put together a profile in their system, called the Recruiter.
I hope this info has been helpful to some of you. Enjoy the season and Merry Christmas!
-_