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passportandplates · 8 years ago

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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products and services I use and love.

It seems like everyone who has quit his or her job to travel (and there are a lot!) is now a “digital nomad” (myself included).

But what exactly does that mean? In short, digital nomads are people who are location independent. Their jobs can be done entirely online, meaning they can work anywhere they have WiFi. Sounds like the dream, right?

It is (most days). But that’s for another post. This post is for all you readers out there who want to work and travel at the same time. It’s possible and I’m here to show you how.

There are really three main ways to work and travel and not all are created equal. Opportunities to work while traveling typically fall into three categories: working online (aka digital nomading), working abroad (aka being an expat) and traveling long-term (aka vagabonding).

The lingo

Digital nomad: A digital nomad is someone who works online and consequently can work from anywhere with internet access. This gives you the freedom to be location independent – you can spend three days or three months in one place as long as you get your work done. I fall into this category as a remote social media manager and travel blogger.

Expat: An expat is someone who works in another country and is NOT location independent. Typically, expats have been sent to work abroad by their companies at home, but they can also choose to move willingly. While this limits your ability to travel frequently, it does offer you much more stability – in addition to access to another country and culture. Bonus: if you happen to be an expat in Asia or Europe, you’ll have access to cheap flights within the continent too – score!

Vagabond: I first learned about the term “vagabond” from Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. That title alone gives you the definition of a vagabond. Essentially, it’s someone who does seasonal jobs, odd jobs, work exchange, and more in order to travel. Typically, vagabonds aren’t working to build a career – they work to fund longer term travel.

So now that we have the lingo down, I’m sharing my favorite resources in all three categories. These are the best travel jobs and resources to help you work and travel.

The Jobs

As a digital nomad, you’ll live and die by good wifi (and your self-motivation), but it certainly offers the highest level of flexibility.

Using my TEP portable wifi device to work at the beach 🙂

Teach English online

One of the beauties of the internet is the ability to work right from the comfort of your home…or from a coffee shop in any city. The demand for native English teachers around the world is booming, resulting in an online teaching revolution. Most companies allow you to teach for a minimum of 10-15 hours per week, leaving you plenty of time to travel. I recommend getting TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certified first. Not only will this enhance your skill set as a teacher, but it will also likely increase your pay – most companies pay more for TEFL-certified teachers. Get certified HERE (35% OFF with code PASSPL35).

Resources: VIP Kid, Lingoda, EF English First, and BoxFish (just to name a few)

Teach ANY skill online

Who says your teaching skills have to be limited to English? There’s a huge demand for online teachers in pretty much every field. I’ve taken online courses in photography, blogging, WordPress and more! This option will take some time investment up front to create a course, but it can easily provide you with passive income once it’s online and marketed well. UDemy is my favorite platform for skill-based learning.

Resource: UDemy

Freelance write

Let’s face it. Travel blogging doesn’t pay the bills. It starts to pay off a bit once you’ve been doing it for a while, but it requires long-term audience building and influence. However, if you have a unique writing style or are just a particularly amazing writer, why not do some freelance writing? There are tons and tons of companies, magazines, and blogs out there looking for writers…all you have to do is start pitching!

Resources: Copypress, Zerys, Writer’s Access, ProBlogger

Freelance…anything

Maybe writing isn’t your thing, but something else is, such as video animation or translation or IT support. You can even be a virtual assistant – that’s a thing! There are several websites that are hubs for freelancers looking for work in a variety of categories. You have to do some digging and advertising (and unfortunately, compete with people with lower rates). However, I know several people who have found long-term clients on some of these websites.

Resources: Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, PeoplePerHour, Guru

Work in tech or marketing

Let’s say you’re already incredibly skilled at your current tech or marketing job. Maybe you’re a developer, a customer service specialist, or an account manager. If you are looking for something full-time (for the most part), then check out the below websites. This is probably the most extensive list for people who are looking to continue a career they already have, rather than enter a new industry.

Note: Several of these job boards overlap and some offer both remote and non-remote jobs.

Resources: Remotely Awesome Jobs, Modern Day Nomads, Go Remote, Remotive, Remote Ok, We Work Remotely, Working Nomads, Power to Fly, Travel Me World, Home Office Careers, Skip The Drive, Virtual Vocations, TopTal, Vitamin T, Angel, Who Is Hiring

Sell things online

Yeah, competition is stiff to be an Etsy, Amazon, or eBay seller, but it isn’t impossible! If you have unique crafts or know how to source a bunch of products for cheap and resell them, then there’s your skill.

Resources: Etsy, Amazon, eBay

Do your current job online

Do you have a job that you can do from home or pretty much anywhere? Depending on your line of work, you might be able to turn your occasional work from home day into working remotely indefinitely. Back when I was obsessively searching for jobs, I used The Muse for all my job-seeking advice…and lo and behold, they have an article on how to get your boss to let you work from home. Good luck!

Note: There are SO many jobs you can do online to help you make money! If you have any sort of skill, it’s highly likely you can sell it online, whether it be on a full-time remote basis or a freelance / part-time project basis. (And if you don’t, start learning on UDemy). Get creative!

Live the expat life. Moving abroad for a year or more is an excellent way to deep-dive into a new culture and establish a home base.

Iguazú, Argentina

Teach English

There’s a reason that so many bloggers and expats started their careers teaching English. It’s one of the easiest ways to get a long-term work visa and is a job that’s available in a significant portion of the world. Plus, it can be pretty lucrative in most countries. There are often two ways to go about this: either you can get a job that is sponsored by the government (typically as a teaching assistant) or you can get TEFL-certified and get placed by the academy.

You can get TEFL certified online or in your target country. Getting certified online is cheaper, easier and faster, but you do miss out on the hands-on training that comes with getting certified at a physical school. If you choose to take the online certification route, I recommend taking a course at an academy that offers job placements in your country of choice, which you can typically find in their ‘jobs’ section. I’ve been told that teaching English is much more lucrative in Asia and the Middle East than it is in Europe. I’m not sure about South America nor Africa. Note: Although I’m not currently teaching English, I am TEFL certified. I recommend it for anyone who plans to spend extensive time abroad.

Resources: myTEFL, 35% off the course with code PASSPL35.

Go on a Jobbatical

I understand the dilemma. You’re a few years into your career and you really want to spend a year abroad. But, you don’t want to give up your career entirely, take a career break, or teach English. I have a solution for you: Jobbatical. Jobbatical allows you to do a one-year professional placement in another country. Companies advertise their positions and start dates on the site and you apply accordingly. Note: most opportunities are in tech, marketing, sales, and business development. For some positions, you may need a work permit. However, it’s definitely worth perusing the site to see what’s available…you may find your dream job abroad!

Resource: Jobbatical

Become a tour guide

I know it sounds a bit counterintuitive to be a tour guide abroad, but hear me out. Lots (not all) of tour guides are trained on the job, so you really just need to have an engaging personality and be comfortable leading groups (and have other important tour guide skills). You typically have to have a permit to work in the target continent as well. Be sure to search for jobs at both large travel companies and at smaller locals ones as well. Alternatively, you can market your unique knowledge and skills in a new destination. For example, if you cook a really good paella but happen to be living in the U.S., then market a paella cooking class for people traveling in the U.S. Again, creativity is key here.

Resources: Context Travel, Vayable, With Locals, VizEat, Intrepid Travel, G Adventures, The Travel Corporation

Au pair

Basically, if you like children and taking care of them (and maybe doing some housework), then au pairing might be a good option for you. Au pair jobs usually include accommodation, meals, and a small stipend. Depending on the family, you’re usually given 2-3 days off per week. Plus, it’s a great way to learn about local culture directly from locals themselves.

Resources: Au Pair World, Great Au Pair

Request a company transfer

While this is the most obvious way to have your cake and eat it too, I know from personal experience that it can be a challenge. Getting a company to sponsor a work visa is an extensive and expensive endeavor, and those visas are usually saved for senior positions. Still, though, it never hurts to ask – some companies are more flexible than others!

Get a working holiday visa

Depending on which country you’re from and where you’re trying to work, you may be eligible to get a working holiday visa. This is essentially a one-year visa that allows you to work in a specific country, with some restrictions. U.S. citizens can get working holiday visas in Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, and Ireland, but each country has different age, work, and savings requirements. This guide from Global Goose provides a good breakdown of the different locations and rules. These visas allow you to work full-time, so you don’t have to worry about spending an entire year income-less.

Join the Peace Corps

If your idea of a great career includes challenging but meaningful work, then perhaps you should consider joining the Peace Corps. You can utilize your skillset to make a difference in the world, although you won’t necessarily get to choose where you’ll work. You do have to commit to two years with the Peace Corps and the pay won’t be great (you’re a volunteer, after all), so this is an option that requires more dedication than some of the others.

Resource: Peace Corps

Become a vagabond: When the goal is simply “travel longer,” you have plenty of options to get you to your next destination…and no, begging isn’t one of them.

Taking photos for Geckos Adventures while traveling!

Work at a hostel

I recently stayed at a hostel in Barcelona where almost the entire staff was made up of travelers from other countries. Hostels will typically hire someone for a minimum of two weeks, and offer various positions in exchange for room and board. While the front desk job is the most common placement offered, you can also work as a housekeeper, chef, tour guide, and more.

Resource: Worldpackers

Do a work exchange

While Worldpackers focuses primarily on hostel work, there are tons of opportunities out there for people who prefer a different work experience. Work exchanges are typically unpaid but do include accommodation (and sometimes food). These websites offer a wide range of options – everything from picking fruit to crewing a sailboat to setting up a café. The sky is the limit!

Resources: Workaway, HelpX, GigRove, WWOOF, Volunteers Base

House Sit or Pet Sit

Did you know that there are people out there who hire sitters to live in and watch their houses while they’re away? I know, it sounds too good to be true. But it isn’t. You can house sit or pet sit all over the world, and while you won’t get paid, you’ll definitely be getting some awesome accommodation. In order to house sit successfully, you have to be flexible with your timing (and know that you likely won’t be in the heart of the city center), but if you can prove yourself to be a good house-sitter, then you can save thousands on accommodation.

Resources: Trusted Housesitters, Mind My House, Nomador

Deliver goods

Grabr allows people to order goods from any country in the world and have travelers deliver them, for a fee. If you’re already heading to a destination and have access to certain goods, why not do a few “grabs” and bring them along? It’s a painless way to make some extra money, especially if you’re already heading in that direction.

Resource: Grabr

Work on a cruise ship

Not only are there a multitude of different jobs on a cruise ship, but there’s also lots of fun entertainment on board too. Room and board are included, naturally, and since your expenses are limited, you can easily save money! Visiting beautiful places around the world is a given.

Resources: Cruise Ship Job, All Cruise Jobs

Bonus: Find a job that allows you to travel frequently! Consultants, flight attendants, and traveling nurses immediately come to mind.

In the end, there’s no “right” way to make money while traveling. Some people want quick work that will get them to their next destination, whereas others prefer to build their careers and spend years in the same place. While working while traveling may seem like a dream job, the reality is that it comes with its own unique set of challenges and sacrifices. I’ll save all that for another post, but I hope this one has shown you that working and traveling don’t have to be mutually exclusive if you don’t want them to be. So get out there and make your work and travel dreams a reality!

Tell me: Did I miss any of your favorite resources or websites? Or do you have any tips for people looking to work and travel? Share in the comments below!

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Work and Travel: The Best Travel Jobs for Travel Lovers Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products and services I use and love. It seems like everyone who has…

#digital nomad #resources #Work and travel

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charllieeldridge · 5 years ago

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10 Best Free WordPress Plugins Every Travel Blog Should Have

If you’ve been searching for the best free WordPress plugins for a travel blog, then you’ve come to the right place. After you’ve chosen a travel blog name and learned how to start a travel blog, you’ll then want to customize it and make it your own.

For those of us who don’t have any website design or development background, WordPress plugins are the way to do this. They will help both the look and the functionality of your website.

Think of your new blog as an empty house with no art or decor to spruce it up.

Installing WordPress plugins on your blog is like decorating it with free paintings and decorations that have been pre-made by professionals.

They work well, they match your design and they’re easy to implement. But just like a house, you can quickly over clutter your blog with too many plugins, so be careful and make sure you keep them to a minimum and only download and keep the ones you really need.

In this article, I’m going to list the top 10 free WordPress plugins for travel blogs.

These free plugins are 10 that every single travel blog should have (plus another 6 bonus plugins). Some of them are specific to only travel blogs, but most of them are vital for any new blog, so even if you’re a food blogger or a mommy blogger, these plugins could help you grow your blog faster and more efficiently.

These plugins have all been approved by our developer and our SEO team to ensure that they’re not too heavy for your site and should not noticeably hinder your existing speed rating or Google traffic. It may be a good idea to backup your database and run a speed test on your site before and after any new plugins are added to make sure they’re not affecting your load times.

1. HTML5 Maps

Interactive maps are a great way for travel blogs to show countries that they’ve travelled to and where they have content about.

These maps have clickable regions or countries to bring people to specific categories on your site. The paid Interactive Maps Plugin ($21) is more intuitive and has more features and map options than HTML5, but for a free plugin, you can’t beat HTML5 Maps.

They won’t give you all of the maps without upgrading to premium, but at least you’ll be able to embed a sleek looking map on your destinations page to get started.

It’s worth noting that these maps can load slowly depending on your caching system and hosting plan. If you find that they’re loading slowly, it may not be worth it to have this plugin on your travel blog.

DOWNLOAD HTML5 MAP PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

2. Yoast SEO

One of the most important factors of growing any new blog is to make sure that your website has a solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization) foundation. This is going to help your site rank in search results like Google and thus, drive traffic to your site.

At the time of writing, Goats On The Road receives over 75% of its traffic from direct organic Google searches. That shows just how important it is to keep search engines and SEO on your mind while building a new site.

Yoast SEO is a free plugin that allows you to not only optimize your site map and readability of your blog, but also optimize your on-page SEO directly from the Edit Post screen in WordPress.

If you have Yoast, then after you’re done writing a post you can scroll to the bottom of the page and check the SEO health of your post before publishing.

Yoast tells you how good your SEO is with a handy green, yellow or red light and gives you dozens of tips on how to add to the post to give it an SEO boost.

The plugin will count your keywords, check readability, allow you to edit your metadata, check for optimal length and more.

No blog should be running on WordPress without this handy, free plugin.

DOWNLOAD YOAST SEO PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

3. SEO Smart Links

This is my favourite plugin that you won’t find on other “Best WordPress Plugins” lists. That’s simply because not that many people know about it.

SEO Smart Links allows you to automatically add internal and external links to your blog by simply choosing which words to auto-link.

For example, let’s say you just wrote an amazing post about budget travel and you want to drive traffic to it.

With the SEO Smart Links plugin, you can easily set it so that any time the words “budget travel” appear on any page, post or category on your site, it will automatically link to your budget travel guide. (note: use variations of the anchor text)

I love this plugin for travel blogs because you can go in and add the keyword for every city, region, country and continent on your blog and auto-link them to appropriate posts/pages.

The plugin also allows you to auto-link all of your categories using the slug as a keyword, which is perfect for travel blogs as most have continents and country names as their categories.

Similarly, you can also link outward using the same tactic. If you have a great affiliate for Booking.com, you can set SEO Smart Links to automatically link the words Booking.com (the plugin is in action now, automatically linking that term for me), or any time you type “book a hotel room” it can link to your affiliate as well.

You can even set it to make all external links from the plugin “nofollow”.

Do you have a favourite travel camera that you always talk about on your blog? Make it so that every time you type Canon G7x into your blog, it automatically links to your Amazon affiliate for that product!

This plugin is amazing and it’s definitely one of my favourites.

DOWNLOAD SEO SMART LINKS PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

4. WordPress Editorial Calendar

It’s extremely important that you publish articles on a strict schedule on your blog. Just like a newspaper or your favourite TV episode, everyone wants to know exactly when they can expect new content.

Google also rewards websites for being predictable because they know that users want to receive their content on a predictable time frame.

WP Editorial Calendar is the perfect plugin for organizing your posting schedule and seeing what’s next.

The plugin shows an easy to use, drag and drop calendar. All of your draft posts appear on the right side of the screen and you can simply drag-and-drop the titles onto the day in the calendar that you want it to publish.

You can set the time of publishing and schedule it right from the plugin!

A properly organized calendar with posts going out three times a week should look like this:

Any new blogger who’s trying to follow our 6 Day Success Schedule To Explode Your Website Traffic should definitely use this plugin. It will help you organize your posts and make sure that you are giving your readers their content when they expect it.

DOWNLOAD WP EDITORIAL CALENDAR PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

5. Shortcodes Ultimate

Shortcodes are a bit of coding that you can put in the edit post screen of WordPress to show a specific bit of content. For example, if you have the Shortcodes Ultimate plugin and you type this into the edit post screen of your WordPress dashboard:

It would look like this when it appears on the live post:

10 Best Free WordPress Plugins Every Travel Blog Should Have

12 Top Safety Tips For a South African Road Trip

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Pretty cool hey? There are literally dozens of different shortcodes that you can choose from to create different bits of content on your site like tables, carousels, styled boxes, galleries, dropdowns, accordions, buttons and more.

Just look at all of the options.

DOWNLOAD SHORTCODES ULTIMATE PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

6. WP Hide Post

WP Hide Post is a great free WordPress plugin for travel bloggers, because we create a lot of content that doesn’t need to be seen by all of our readers.

Maybe you’ve written an article simply for the purpose of SEO, but it’s not something all readers need to see.

With this plugin, you can simply hide the post from your audience by ticking a few boxes in the edit post screen. This will help your blog to earn money, while not appearing too “advertisy” to your readers.

If you’ve written a post that’s great for your “Indonesia” section, but doesn’t necessarily have to appear on your home page, then you can click a box and hide it.

You can choose to hide it on the front page, on category pages, in feeds, on author pages and more. It’s also great for creating one time sales pages or hidden content that you only want people to find if they click on a certain link on your site.

DOWNLOAD WP HIDE POST PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

7. Wordfence Security

Every website is prone to getting hacked at some time or another. Facebook has been hacked, Instagram has been hacked and even Google Drive has been hacked, so don’t think for a second that your WordPress blog is immune to viruses, malware and hackers.

Our site was hacked earlier this year, but luckily we caught it early and updated our Wordfence Security plugin to prevent it from happening in the future.

To combat the ongoing online crisis of hacking, you need to protect your site using a security plugin. Wordfence is powered by a constantly updated Threat Defense Feed and Web Application Firewall which helps to stop your site from getting hacked.

If you’re reading this post and you don’t have any sort of Malware security plugin installed on your blog, you should stop reading this right now and go download one from the plugin directory. We use Wordfence and it seems to do the job (so far).

DOWNLOAD WORDFENCE SECURITY PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

8. Akismet Anti-Spam

As your blog starts to grow (and even beforehand sometimes) you’ll start noticing a bunch of spam comments appearing in your conversation feed on your blog posts.

“Hey, great post! Check out my new broom that sweeps for you! [insert spammy link here]”

This kind of annoying spamming can never be completely avoided, but Akismet Anti-Spam helps to limit your spam comments to an absolute minimum.

The plugin can be free if you “name your price” at $0 and all you have to do is install it, add your Akismet.com API key and it will clean up your site from unwanted spam.

To date, this plugin has cleaned our Goats On The Road blog of over 500,000 spam comments! That’s a lot of time saved and outgoing links blocked by simply running this plugin in the background.

DOWNLOAD AKISMET ANTI-SPAM PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

9. TinyMCE Spellcheck

I have no idea why WordPress doesn’t have a built-in spell check and grammar check in the edit post dashboard, but until they do, the TinyMCE Spell Check plugin is an absolute must for travel bloggers.

I’m not saying that it catches everything. If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you’ve still probably seen a few grammatical errors and spelling errors, but this plugin easily cleans up 90% of your incorrect English.

Your readers will expect you to be somewhat professional in your blog posts, and if they’re forced to read through a slew of mistakes, then you’ll immediately lose credibility and they’ll likely click away to another website.

The TinyMCE Spell Check adds a little ABC icon to the WordPress Edit Post screen and when you click it, it will underline all of your spelling errors. It also checks for grammatical mistakes and it will offer suggestions if there are multiple ways a certain sentence or phrase can be written.

Update: you don’t actually need this plug-in anymore unless you want it. I recommend the free Grammarly browser extension instead. Click here to get that.

DOWNLOAD TINY MCE SPELLCHECK PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

10. W3 Total Cache

A caching plugin is vital to ensure that your website is running as fast as possible. But what is caching?

Basically, web browsers like Google Chrome and Safari actually save data from websites that users visit frequently. So if you visit Goats On The Road, your browser will cache (or save) some of our images, website layout and videos so that the next time you visit, you don’t have to wait for your internet to load the content, it will already be cached in your browser.

To ensure that your website is caching your content and serving it to web browsers around the world, you need to have a good caching plugin.

W3 Total Cache has long been one of the most recommended caching plugins for WordPress and it’s pretty easy to install and implement.

There are 16 pages of settings for this plugin, but you don’t really have to tinker with any of these settings. The plugin will optimize itself for your site and you can pretty much let it run right out of the box.

DOWNLOAD W3 TOTAL CACHE PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (FREE)

A Few Bonus Plugins To Check Out

The below plugins are not essential, but could add a lot to your travel blog and give it a good boost in speed, traffic and conversions. They’re all free except for OptinMonster and have been approved by our developer and SEO team.

P3 Plugin Profiler: The more plugins you have on your site, the more you can potentially slow it down. The P3 Plugin Profiler plugin analyzes your site and checks for errors and analyzes MySQL queries as well as speed and compatibility issues between plugins. The plugin hasn’t been updated in 3 years, but still works with most themes and is secure.

Smush: This plugin will compress your photos automatically on upload. Photos are likely one of the biggest slowing factors of any travel blog. With WPsmushit, not only can you auto-compress images on upload, but you can also batch compress previously uploaded photos saving up to 70% of the space and not losing out on visible image quality.

jQuery Pin It Button: Everyone is gung-ho over Pinterest these days and for good reason. It drives huge traffic to travel blogs if implemented correctly. This plugin is an easy, one-click solution to give your site a big Pinterest boost. It simply ads a hover-over Pin It button to any image on the site making it easier for your readers to share your content to their boards. You can even use alt tags and size restrictions to narrow down which images have the button and which do not.

StopBadBots: If your site is growing and you’re finding that you have a lot of downtime due to overusage, there’s a good chance it’s mostly because of bad bots crawling your site. There are two things you can do. Pay your host a bunch more money to upgrade CPU and RAM, or, add a bunch of code to your .htaccess file in order to block the bots. StopBadBots plugin does the latter for you and updates the code as new bad bots appear on the web.

MailChimp: MailChimp is one of the best WordPress solutions for fast-loading pop-ups and lead generation technology. If you’re not already capturing emails with your travel blog and starting an email conversation with your followers, you’re missing out big time.

This plugin makes it easy to implement stylish plugins that won’t slow down your site.

Note: We’re currently using Thrive for pop-ups and lead generation, and while we’re happy with the service, it’s not free, so I didn’t list it here.

Which Plug-Ins Did I Miss?

There are new plugins being added to the WordPress directory every day, so surely there are many new plugins that I haven’t included in this list. What plugins do you find the most useful? Please share in the comments below and tell us why they’re so indispensable!

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