Alternative living tips and income strategies for nomads.

In 2017, Kristin stumbled upon an article about Michelle Schroeder-Gardner's blog, Making Sense of Cents. In it, she learned that Michelle was making $100,000 per month through blogging.

This got her interested in the idea and she started researching more about it. As a former journalist, Kristin has always enjoyed writing and interviewing people.

Being in the media, she was aware that stories about alternative living were gaining a lot of traction and hence, she decided to start a website where she could interview nomads and publish articles about their lives, living in vans, buses, and boats.

Thats how she embarked on the journey of creating her own blog.

Kristin purchased hosting from Bluehost and followed the steps to install WordPress. Then, she got to work designing with Divi and created the best website she could.

The entire expense of launching her business was probably around $50.

An email list was her primary customer acquisition channel. She used Convertbox to create a variety of opt-ins for my website and build her emailing list.

She also invested time learning SEO and focused on creating articles that rank on Google. Her top keywords include:

• Turning a school bus into a camper
  
• Shipping container homes for sale
• Tiny house 10000 euro

Online courses teaching aspiring bloggers to monetize travel content.

Shelley, a former travel magazine editor, started a travel blog after leaving her corporate job.

In just two years, she became a six-figure blogger and taught others how to achieve similar success.

Through her courses and blog, Shelley has generated significant income and plans to continue expanding her business and creating more courses in the future.

Shelley choose WordPress as her content management system due to its popularity and extensive use across the web. Her websites are hosted on Lyrical Host, and domains are purchased through NameSilo, ensuring reliable service and ownership.

For website optimization, she uses Rank Math for SEO, WP Rocket for page speed, and Short Pixel for image optimization, which helps in maintaining a fast and SEO-friendly site.

For creating and selling courses, Shelley chose ThriveCart for its payment processing capabilities, offering a cost-effective, one-time payment solution. She creates course content using Canva Pro for presentations and Loom for recording, ensuring high-quality, engaging material.

Additionally, she sources stock photos from Canva and DepositPhotos and uses Canva for promotional materials, maintaining a consistent and professional look across her content.

Email marketing is managed through ConvertKit, which integrates with ThriveCart for seamless product and service sales via email.

Finally, she uses Affilimate to track and analyze affiliate marketing data, calling it the "Google Analytics for affiliate data," which underscores its value in her affiliate marketing strategy. Shelley’s approach is a comprehensive and well-thought-out combination of tools that facilitate content creation, optimization, marketing, and sales.

Her main customer acquisition channels have been organic searches and organic social media. she has invested in SEO to ensure her blog ranks for relevant keywords such as:

• Travel Mexico solo
  
• Safest places in Mexico
  
• Puerto aventuras uber

Shelley also started a Facebook Group called Affiliate Marketing for Travel Bloggers, which grew to 1,200+ members in five months.

Short-term storage marketplace for urban travelers.

Cody Candee, the CEO and co-founder of Bounce, came up with the idea for his business after experiencing the problem of carrying luggage while traveling and the inconvenience it caused. He wanted to create a solution that would allow people to store their belongings easily and eliminate the burden of carrying them around. After sitting on the idea for three years, Cody launched Bounce with his co-founder Aleks in 2017, and the business quickly gained traction, reaching over $100k of annualized revenue within the first 7 months.

Aleks and Cody Candee, the founders of Bounce, began the development process by creating a basic landing page for bag storage and delivery in New York City within just three hours. They used a simple landing page builder and integrated Adwords to attract their first customer almost immediately, illustrating a lean startup approach. Initially, they physically fulfilled requests by biking around New York, but soon realized that the logistics of coordinating exact times and places were impractical. To solve this, they shifted to a model where customers could drop off and pick up their items at designated "Bounce locations," which were local businesses with extra space. This iteration allowed them to simplify logistics greatly. They set up this new version quickly, building the core functionality in about three weeks. For their mobile applications, they utilized React Native, which enabled them to simultaneously launch on both iOS and Android platforms, streamlining their development process. This intense and rapid development approach, however, came with challenges as they struggled to balance speed with product optimization, especially since the mobile app development temporarily detracted from enhancing the existing web platform.

Google Search

Bounce attracted a significant number of customers through Google search right from the start. People frequently searched for "luggage storage," a popular keyword, which naturally aligned with Bounce's service offering. While they didn't focus heavily on SEO in the beginning, the organic demand for luggage storage solutions helped them grow.

Why it worked: The inherent demand for luggage storage meant that potential customers were already actively searching for Bounce's services. By having a web presence that matched these searches, they naturally captured attention and bookings without needing extensive SEO strategies.

Referrals

A substantial portion of Bounce's customer base came from referrals by satisfied users. This type of word-of-mouth promotion proved invaluable, bringing in new users who heard about the service from others who had positive experiences. Although they initially hadn't formalized a referral program, the natural referrals demonstrated the product's desirability.

Why it worked: Happy customers become ambassadors, sharing their experiences with friends and family. This organic referral process spoke to the trust and satisfaction users had in Bounce, making it one of the most effective ways to gain new customers without any additional marketing spend.

Advertising

Bounce utilized paid advertising, including Google Adwords, which allowed them to quickly gather traffic and customers even when they were just starting. This targeted approach helped them reach potential customers who were searching for similar services, providing a quick boost in visibility and engagement.

Why it worked: Paid advertising, particularly on platforms like Google, reaches users who are already searching for related services. By investing in Adwords, Bounce ensured they appeared in front of a relevant audience, leading to direct bookings and increased brand awareness.

Personal Need and Frustration:

• The idea for Nomad List sparked from Levels' personal desire to escape the 9-5 grind and work from anywhere in the world.
• Many of his other projects originated from personal needs or frustrations. For instance, he created Remote OK because he saw a gap in the job market for remote positions, aiming to make it easier for individuals to find remote work opportunities globally.

12 Startups in 12 Months Challenge:

• In 2014, Levels set himself the challenge of launching 12 startups in 12 months.
• This experiment wasn't just about building businesses but about learning rapidly, understanding the market, and identifying what works and what doesn't.
• This challenge led to the creation of several projects, including Nomad List.

Desire for Autonomy and Freedom:

• Levels has always been motivated by a desire for autonomy, freedom, and the ability to work from anywhere.
• This personal philosophy has driven him to create platforms that empower others to do the same, by providing tools, resources, and communities that support a location-independent lifestyle.

Solving Problems for Digital Nomads:

• He recognized the unique challenges faced by digital nomads, such as finding the best places to live and work remotely.
• Levels sought to address these issues through his platforms, creating a suite of tools and resources that cater specifically to the needs of this community.

Automation and Minimalism:

• He is a proponent of automation and running lean operations.
• This philosophy has not only influenced how he builds and manages his businesses but also what kinds of projects he decides to pursue.
• He focuses on creating efficient, automated systems that require minimal ongoing maintenance, allowing him to manage multiple projects simultaneously.

Tech Stack:

PHP: For server-side scripting to generate dynamic page content.

JavaScript: To create interactive elements on the website, enhancing user experience.

jQuery: A JavaScript library used to simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation, as well as event handling and animation.

Leveraging Existing Data:

He started by compiling data on various cities around the world, focusing on factors important to digital nomads like cost of living, internet speed, and climate.

This data formed the foundational content of Nomad List.

Crowdsourcing for More Data:

Understanding the power of community, Pieter incorporated mechanisms for users to contribute their own insights and updates about different locations, enriching the database with real-world experiences.

Automation from the Start:

To manage the growing platform with minimal manual intervention, Pieter implemented automated processes for tasks such as data updates, user submissions, and content moderation.

Rapid Development and Deployment:

He emphasized quick development cycles, pushing out features and adjustments rapidly to test ideas and respond to user feedback. This agile development process allowed for continuous improvement based on actual user needs and behaviors.

Minimalist and Functional Design:

The initial design focused on usability and speed, ensuring that users could easily access the information they needed without unnecessary frills.

SEO Optimization:

From the outset, Pieter paid attention to search engine optimization, ensuring that content was structured and tagged in a way that made it discoverable to those searching for digital nomad-related information.

His approach to growing his businesses, particularly Nomad List and Remote OK, can be outlined through a series of strategic steps and philosophies he adopted over time:

Launch with Public Interest – Pieter launched Nomad List in 2014 by publicly sharing his idea on Twitter, generating initial interest and feedback even before the site was officially live.

Rapid Iteration – After launching, Pieter quickly iterated on feedback, making constant updates to Nomad List based on user suggestions and needs.

Transparency – From the early days, Levels built trust by being highly transparent about his revenues, costs, and the challenges he faced.

Community Building – Recognizing the importance of community, Pieter integrated community features into Nomad List, such as forums and Slack groups.

User Experience Focus – A significant part of his strategy was focusing on the user experience, making his websites fast, accessible, and easy to use.

Automation and Efficiency – Pieter automated as much of his workflow as possible, allowing him to operate his businesses efficiently as a solo founder.

Direct Engagement on Social Media – He used social media not just for marketing, but for direct engagement, answering queries, and joining conversations.

Leveraging Data for Decisions – Pieter made use of the data collected from his sites to make informed decisions about new features, targeting, and improvements.

The idea for Savvy Nomad started when my co-founder, Jameson, was traveling in Morocco and met a group of Californian surfers who had been living abroad for years but were struggling with the complexities of the U.S. tax system. Jameson, with his background in accounting and experience in tax-free Nevada, saw an opportunity to help expats and digital nomads legally reduce their tax burden.

While I didn’t come up with the original idea, my journey to Savvy Nomad was shaped by my experience founding Taxarity, a startup focused on making taxation transparent and client-friendly through digitalization. My vision was to build a global marketplace where people could compare and seamlessly move between tax regimes with automated paperwork.

Because of my previous experience, I immediately saw the clarity of its value proposition—a service that directly helps nomads establish a legal tax residency in no-income-tax states without unnecessary complexity.

Instead of overcomplicating things, I focused on scaling, refining the offer, and optimizing pricing to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Now, Savvy Nomad generates $30K/month, helping hundreds of expats legally optimize their taxes while embracing location independence.

Failing at Taxarity was one of the best lessons I could have had—because it led me to build something that truly works.

The first step was researching existing solutions, and quickly realized that while there were options for full-time RVers and retirees, there was nothing built specifically for digital nomads and expats. That was our green light—we saw a clear gap in the market.

SavvyNomad started with around $15,000 in initial costs, and honestly, $13,000 of that went straight into legal fees and research. Since we’re dealing with tax residency and compliance, we had to make sure everything was airtight.

From day one, the business model was subscription-based, and it’s still the same today. It just makes sense—tax residency isn’t a one-time thing, so offering an ongoing service was the best way to provide real value while keeping revenue predictable.

We bootstrapped everything using our savings, which gave us full control over decisions without outside pressure. For building the product, we used Bubble for the application and Framer.com for the website, which helped us move fast without needing a full development team.

It took us three months to launch the first version, not because of technical challenges, but because of the crazy amount of legal details we had to sort out. We started with South Dakota, since it was already popular for tax residency, and later expanded to Florida, which offered even more benefits for nomads.

Honestly, it was harder than we expected—not because of the tech, but because of all the little nuances about residency and domicile laws in different states. But looking back, all that work paid off.

Our main growth channels have been SEO and Google Search Ads. These two bring in the majority of our customers, and over time, we’ve refined them to be highly efficient and scalable. We’ve also experimented with other strategies like influencer marketing, video content, and affiliate partnerships, but so far, these only make up a small percentage of new customers compared to search traffic.

One of our most successful strategies has been tapping into an unmet demand. Initially, our core focus was helping nomads establish domicile for tax savings, but we discovered that many Americans abroad needed a reliable U.S. residential address. We created a new landing page, ran targeted Google Search Ads, and it immediately took off. Now, it’s one of our main growth drivers, and we’re spending around $8,000 per month on Google Ads. This worked because we found a high-intent search market where no one else was running ads, allowing us to dominate the space with little competition.

Another major driver of growth has been content. I’ve personally written over 110 articles covering state residency, tax strategies, and U.S. expat taxation. I focused on deeply researching each topic and used LLMs to speed up the process while ensuring the content remained clear, practical, and easy to read. Most tax-related content is full of legal jargon, making it difficult for the average person to understand. Our articles stand out because they are written in a straightforward way, are well-structured with visuals to explain concepts, and go deep into specifics that people actually need.

The biggest lessons from growing the business have been the importance of building scalable acquisition channels early, listening to demand and adjusting accordingly, and understanding that high-quality content can drive long-term growth if done right. Initially, we didn’t plan to offer U.S. residential addresses, but when we saw the demand, we launched fast, and it became a major success. Writing detailed, well-researched content took time, but it has now become a consistent driver of traffic and leads.

Now, with SEO and paid search as our foundation, we’re continuing to scale and grow.

Adventure hiking planning with digital guides and GPS mapping.

We came up with the idea for TMBTENT after hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc in 2017. Most hikers on this famous trail stay in mountain huts, but we opted to camp to save money. Once we were back, we realized there was a huge gap in information for hikers who wanted to camp on this trail and that we could provide a resource with all the information others needed to camp on the trail.

We started our website shortly after that and six months later we were selling a digital guide to the trail. We started with a super simple PDF ebook to prove out the idea, and when that started selling well we added more and more resource to the guide.

From there, we've added other trails and continued to refine our product!

Here are the exact steps we followed to build the first version of our product:

1. Started a WordPress site (www.tmbtent.com)
2. Wrote a series of blog posts related to camping on the Tour du Mont Blanc.
3. Once those started gaining some traction on Google, we created a PDF ebook that outlined camping locations on the trail.
4. We used a super simple WordPress plugin (now defunct) that let us sell ebooks directly from our site and collect payment via PayPal.

We spent only about $100 that first year, mainly on website set-up and some software costs to be able to create some simple map graphics for our guide.

Overall, it took us about six months to get to the point of selling our guide, and it quickly became apparent that people were willing to pay for the information. We sold the first version for $2.99 - a ridiculous price looking back on it, but something that quickly let us prove the concept.

Since then, we've moved our guides over to Podia, so every customer gets a login and can access not only a PDF guide but also GPS files, video overviews of the hike, tutorials on how to use GPS files on their phone and more. We also charge a much higher price point, typically between $36-$44 depending on the trail.

It was definitely a labor of love to pull the guides together, but we love planning trips and helping other with complex logistics of hiking some of these trails. And as a bonus this side project helped fund more hiking trips for us!

The table of contents from our very first PDF guide.

Growing the business really focused on SEO and adding more trails to our guide offerings. We also added content on our site related to camping, hiking, and other outdoor pursuits that we didn't sell a guide for, but that attracted some good traffic to our site.

That worked for a long time and got us on Mediavine, which was a great revenue source, but times have changed with the HCU and Google updates proving difficult to navigate.

Now we are focused on getting more in depth on specific trails with some new websites and hoping to develop some online tools to help hikers plan their trips.

Social media will be a big focal point for us going forward as well, as we have had almost no presence to date - a big mistake!

Flight disruption compensation service for non-English speakers.

Olga, a Slovakian first-time entrepreneur, founded Flywize after realizing during her first flight that most travelers are unaware of their compensation rights, costing them €8 billion annually. Leveraging her background in Airport and Aviation Management, she helps secure €20,000 to €30,000 monthly for passengers affected by flight disruptions.

Kristan de Graaf leveraged his passion for luxury cars, tourism, and the sea to launch Elite Rentals Dubai with inherited money. By analyzing market gaps and investing $50 million, Kristan and his co-founder Julian now generate $12M per month from their fleet of over 50 yachts.

Women-led travel tours for solo female adventurers.

Mar Pages, along with her business partner Meg, grew Solo Female Travelers from a small Facebook group in 2015 into a million-euro travel platform by 2023. Despite launching their tours amidst the pandemic, their emphasis on women-led, women-focused travel resonated deeply, propelling them to 300 guests across 14 destinations with unwavering organic growth.

Customizable online registration and payment management platform.

While working as a Fulbright scholar at Berkeley, Asaf Darash pondered creating a meta-programming application with unlimited variables and outcomes for non-programmers. Realizing the high demand for customizable onboarding and payment systems, he founded Regpack, which now boasts 31 employees and over $800k in monthly revenue.

Travel blog sharing budget-friendly adventure tips.

Agness and Cez, the founders of Etramping, started their business in 2011 as a personal site to share budget travel hacks for backpackers. Their passion for travel and their own experiences of backpacking on a tight budget drove them to share their knowledge and help aspiring adventurers explore the world. Since then, Etramping has grown into a thriving community, offering unique itineraries, travel hacks, budget tips, and buying guides for travel gear. With consistent content, strategic partnerships, and a focus on their audience's needs, Etramping has attracted and retained a loyal customer base.