Touring - Earning money while touring?

There is something very appealing about being able to earn money as needed while touring.

If anyone has any ideas, or has seen anything that works or might work, please post.

Day labor on farms?

Working while touring is what I'm working toward ... and these days "working toward" is an understatement ... I feel like I'm climbing a very tall mud-covered brick wall trying to reach my goals right now.

Nevertheless ....

I'm in my third year of my Bachelor of Education. When (or if) I finish my Bachelor of Education, the plan is to travel the world, and teach here and there. I don't need a Bachelor of Education to teach English (or some other subjects) in many countries ... all I need is some sort of Bachelor's degree. But I thought that a Bachelor of Education would increase my chances of teaching in more countries, and teaching a wider range of subjects.

My wife and I have been supporting our (5 1/2 years and counting) bike tour by writing books and publishing a website. We are not getting rich but the years on the road have been worth it. I am currently redesigning it but you can check out our web site www.DownTheRoad.org (http://www.downtheroad.org) to get an idea of what we do.

My wife and I have been supporting our (5 1/2 years and counting) bike tour by writing books and publishing a website. We are not getting rich but the years on the road have been worth it. I am currently redesigning it but you can check out our web site www.DownTheRoad.org (http://www.downtheroad.org) to get an idea of what we do.

Does your website make you money? If so, would you be interested in passing along some tips. I've got a website too, but it isn't making me any money. :)

met some great folks around mendocino county, they go on craigslist and search out odd jobs in larger cities. they had been very lucky so far, as for when we had met them, about 2 months into there circle trip.

tim or cindy, did collin angus mention you in his book regarding his circumnavigation? your site rings a bell for some reason. anyways, way to go!

http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Bayou/3385/MPJoe2.jpg
Maybe this guy can tell you.

There's always work on Craigs List...maybe not what you want, but it does pay.

Traveling gigolo?

Does your website make you money? If so, would you be interested in passing along some tips. I've got a website too, but it isn't making me any money. :)

www.stevepavlina.com has some information on how to make money with your website.

Well there is making money while touring and then conserving money by doing volunteer work for example in exchange for room and board, which may be easier due to visa restrictions.

If you have some website skills, I have seen people exchange the design of a website for room/board/free tours (think for a tour company trying to attract foreign tourists, for example). We are thinking of trying this in the coming months.

WWOOFing is a good way to get free eats and sleeps in exchange for a bit of work on the land.

For a long-term, steady trickle of funds:

If you are a good photographer, investigate the online microstock companies. As a contributing member, you can upload photos which are in turn bought by others. The photos remain there and can be purchased any number of times. Establish your online portfolio while still at home and add to it while on the road from all the photo ops you'll find. Few people make a fulltime living doing microstock; most bring in tens or hundreds per month. But once you've done the initial work, it's all passive income, and from photos you'd likely have taken anyway.

Try http://www.istockphoto.com/ for starters. They're the largest microstock company and are well-regarded.

There are a variety of ways to make some money to extend a tour or to just survive. I have done all of the below at one time or the other.

I washed dishes on a couple of tours to make money. Restaurants always have trouble finding dishwashers. make sure the restaurant will pay you cash at the end of the workday (or week). I usually could negotiate to get a couple dollars more per hour than minimum wage. these are still easy jobs to find.

Day labor through companies like Kelly or Manpower is another possibility in large cities. Work varies from dishwashing to construction cleanup to warehouse work. nearly all pay daily but take out taxes and sometimes other fees. You will often be working alongside drunks and druggies and other dregs of the earth. you need to put on your tough persona for this gig.

Blood and plasma banks, Commercial Blood and plasma banks pay cash for a pint. I'm not sure what a pint of blood goes for these days ,Plasma I think you can still give as often as twice a week. I'm told it pays $20 to $40 a pint these days . It may sound creepy to sell your blood or plasma, but the people whose lives it may save will be just fine with it.

Freight lumping, Part of the cartage contract that truckers often have with shippers is that they ( the trucker) has to unload the truck upon delivery. This is particularly common with produce and groceries. The trucker often will hire "lumpers" to unload the truck. Payment is cash and is based on flat rate not hourly you can make upwards of a $100 for 4 hours work. Grocery warehouses, and farmers markets ( the big ones) and truck stops are the place to look for these jobs. Make sure you get at least 1/2 the money up front. Trurkers will "F-O" a lumper if they can
I know one guy who used to carry a small portable CB radio to solicit lumping jobs.

Just find where the cash-only day laborers congregate in the mornings.

If your tour is mainly in a country where you hold a citizenship, the doors for all sorts of options are wide open for you ... definitely check out temping agencies. I work for two different temping agencies here in Canada in between my semesters of University and they're great! Good jobs, benefits, etc.

And if you are under 30, you can usually go to another country and pick up odd jobs here and there ... in Australia for example, if you're under 30 you can arrive from another country, and work the harvest trail. There are several possible jobs you can get, and the backpackers and HI hostels (and their magazines) are full of want ads. If you are under 30 you can also work at the backpackers and other hostels for a free night's stay.

BUT ... if you are over 30 and trying to get work in a country where you do not hold a citizenship ....... good luck. In order to get a working VISA, most of the countries I've looked into require that you hold at least a Bachelor's Degree, and if you also have some sort of skill in an area where they need skilled workers, you increase your chances of getting in and working. But even with great credentials, you are still not guaranteed a working VISA. Also, count on at least 3 months of negotiating with the local government to get that VISA.

This is why I'm desperately trying to get my Bachelor of Education - it will provide me with that Bachelor's degree, and a desireable skill. And then maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to pick up work in other countries.

In a number of countries you can teach English at language schools. They'll help getting you all the permits/Visas you need if you sign a contract for a specific number of months.

If you are somewhere with a reasonable pay scale [not India for example] you can probably find work under the table if you are skilled and don't mind working for less than the going rate.

Does your website make you money? If so, would you be interested in passing along some tips. I've got a website too, but it isn't making me any money. :)

Yes, our web site is keeping a tent over our heads, tires on our rims, and spaghetti on the stove. The first and most important thing any web site needs to generate revenue is high traffic. To get this you need lots of good content. DownTheRoad.org has over 1,700 pages, almost 6 years of daily journals, and over 20,000 pictures posted on it. It took several years of bicycle touring to build.

We also earn money from our web site by selling our book. Writing and editing a book is an incredibly huge project but it can be done. We are currently in New Zealand finishing our second book about our travels in South America. The surprising travel fund source for us has been our downloadable Audio Book. You can see more information at http://downtheroad.org/Publishing/

I hope this help you and I wish you luck

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your replies, and for the website and book, and your journey.

Once a book is written and edited and printed (and all those hurdles have been passed), there is still the marketing or selling, and I wonder (since I've never tried it) how difficult it is to make some money selling a book (assuming it is reasonably well written and designed, and is interesting) -- and what approaches to selling a book have worked best for you.

I noticed that Heinz Stucke was able to make some money to support his long distance tours by selling a booklet with writings and photographs about his travels. It seems that many people are drawn to touring cyclists, and are already curious -- having a loaded touring bike and being a long distance cyclist can be seen as one step toward interesting people in a book.

Selling in person as he did is one approach, but there are others too -- website, Amazon.com, bookstores, etc.

Have you found some approaches that have worked best for you?

... And then maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to pick up work in other countries.

I've met some people who have taught English in a variety of countries. As far as I know, if you have the right (ESL?) certification(s), it gives you some more and better options. Apparently, there are quite a few opportunities in many different parts of the world. Sounds like a perfectly viable option.

Many thanks to all for the interesting responses in this thread.

(Any others are also welcomed.)

http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Bayou/3385/MPJoe2.jpg
Maybe this guy can tell you.

From what I remember, he wasn't very successful.

From what I remember, he wasn't very successful.

Yep- lost money most of the time

tim or cindy, did collin angus mention you in his book regarding his circumnavigation? your site rings a bell for some reason. anyways, way to go!

If we are mentioned in Collin Angus’s book we are unaware of it. We are always answering several requests to appear in different publications and it may have slipped through.

It looks like he writes great books and I am trying to convince Cindie to let me buy one and have it sent out here (New Zealand) She says that I carry too many books to climb the mountains here. Marriage if full of compromises – I just need to find my angle

I've met some people who have taught English in a variety of countries. As far as I know, if you have the right (ESL?) certification(s), it gives you some more and better options. Apparently, there are quite a few opportunities in many different parts of the world. Sounds like a perfectly viable option.

Yes and no ... right now there are still some countries who will accept people with little or no education as long as they speak English, and yes, if you do have reputable (key word there) ESL certification, you can get slightly better jobs. But more and more countries are requiring their teachers to have at least a Bachelors degree and the reason is because the "third world" countries want to have the same standards as "first world" countries.

I looked at several ESL programs (and the more reputable ones are not the 1-week courses!!) Most would have taken a month or two of intense study, and would have cost quite a bit. They would have allowed me to teach in "third world" countries, and some areas of the US, but not in most areas of Europe, and nowhere in Japan, Australia, or Canada. Most areas of Europe, and Japan, Australia, and Canada (and probably several other countries) require a much higher standard of education for their teachers.

So, I decided to go for a full Bachelor's degree. :)

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your replies, and for the website and book, and your journey.

Once a book is written and edited and printed (and all those hurdles have been passed), there is still the marketing or selling, and I wonder (since I've never tried it) how difficult it is to make some money selling a book (assuming it is reasonably well written and designed, and is interesting) -- and what approaches to selling a book have worked best for you.

I noticed that Heinz Stucke was able to make some money to support his long distance tours by selling a booklet with writings and photographs about his travels. It seems that many people are drawn to touring cyclists, and are already curious -- having a loaded touring bike and being a long distance cyclist can be seen as one step toward interesting people in a book.

Selling in person as he did is one approach, but there are others too -- website, Amazon.com, bookstores, etc.

Have you found some approaches that have worked best for you?

You are correct, as difficult as writing and editing are the biggest challenge in self-publishing is letting the world know the book exists. Our web site is, by far, the best vehicle we have found in accomplishing this. Amazon is a distant second and they take over 50% of each book sold. Bookstores, libraries, bike shops and other retailers trail behind.

We have never really tried selling face to face. Although I may try it in the future, I would have a hard time with it. On tour I am more interested in listening to others, finding out about their culture, what motivates them, and how they look at life than telling them about my book. I prefer to let our web site do that work for us and concentrate on producing a constant stream of quality content.

Teaching sounds like one of the good ways to get to know people and their cultures.

There is a book, Across African Sand, by Phil Deutschle,

http://www.amazon.com/Across-African-Sand-Son-Law/dp/093162536X/ref=sr_1_3/103-5174799-8230239?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193269243&sr=8-3

written by a teacher who spent time in Africa. It is interesting the way he lived and saw from inside the cultures.

(There are some reviews that can be accessed by scrolling down the Amazon page.)

Like Tim and Cindie, and their cycle touring book "The Road That Has No End (http://downtheroad.org/Publishing/)", we have self-published a book about our Volkswagen trip. While we are not getting rich from the proceeds we are earning just enough to continue an adventurous life.

We've done roughly 75 talks about the trip and have found it the most successful way to connect with potential readers. It is surprising how many organizations will allow you to come and speak (some actually pay), then allow you to sell a book afterward and permit you to keep all of the revenue. On average we draw about 75-125 people to a talk and sell about 25 books.

Also, we've had some luck with publicity. A Senior Editor of National Geographic Adventure came across our website and wrote a nice article about us last October. When we returned to San Diego a few weeks ago we dug through our mail to find a check for the photos they used in the story. This month Amanda was featured in MORE Magazine (November 2007). Since the magazine hit the newsstand on Monday we've sold 27 books through our site and Amazon. That's a very good week.

The important thing (and most difficult) is to start writing. Once you have the polished manuscript, (polishing it is the second most difficult thing to do) lay it out in the proper PDF format, apply for an isbn number, fill out the library of congress form, file the copyright, make a bar code, create the cover and email it to a printer. We used United Graphics in Illinois. Printing does not cost very much.

And one day the books will be delivered to your doorstep. Then the selling begins.

If you want to continue to sell books while you travel, Amazon has a program called Amazon Fulfillment where they warehouse your books and ship them through the Amazon system (for a fee, of course). You can sell through Amazon Marketplace which takes roughly a 20% cut (As opposed to the 55% Tim mentioned above which is taken by the Amazon Advantage program) Also, selling directly through your own website allows you to keep all but the transaction revenue charged by PayPal or Google Checkout.

I certainly encourage anyone with a good story to self-publish as it is the only way to make real money in the publishing world these days, unless your first name is J.K.

While much of this is advice on how to make money from your tour, Tim and Cindie have certainly proved that it is possible to make money from self-publishing while touring.

Thanks Amanda & Richard:

How exciting to hear that you are back home in San Diego. We already have our tickets from Christchurch, New Zealand to Anchorage, Alaska (May 2008) and will pass through southern California on the way to winter in Mexico. We hope you are still there in about a year from now so we can catch one of your talks, buy a book, and see if public speaking is something we want to do in the future.

Also, thanks very much for the compliments!

We have considered doing a book too but how do you distribute it while on the road? A few thousand books is going add a wee bit of weight to my panniers :o We don't have anyone at home who will be the 'post office' for us unfortunately.

"Writing and editing a book is an incredibly huge project but it can be done."

Inspirational stuff!

I went to this local seminar on how to write books. This was not an arty affair, but consisted of describing what the format of commercial books in all maner of subjects needs to be. How to quickly write content, with exercises, and how to sell the books. A gimmick in it's own right, but it did help me a lot. There are a lot of very successful books (obviously due to either the notoriety of the author or topicality of the subject) that are writen to a standard well below what this seminar was pitching, so it wasn't ridiculous, and the bottom line is that it should be a relatively quick process. One point the guy made was don't write about stuff you don't know anything about, which applies to a variety of subjects, like "my ongoing trip around the world". Of course advice like that is probably best ignored if you want to write seriously, either personally or are a researcher, etc... But there is a lot of crap written out there that pays without the pain of actually having to say anything serious at all. I published mostly in how-to publications, but stopped almost as soon as I started. Sorta a feeling where one thinks it will never happen, turns out to be easy, onto the next thing.

"But more and more countries are requiring their teachers to have at least a Bachelors degree and the reason is because the "third world" countries want to have the same standards as "first world" countries."

Except the more they ratchet up the standards the more expensive it gets to qualify for a job that pays poorly and in which many people who start a career don't finish. So the end result is that they actually end up with more people brought in on short term contracts with zero degree, which presumably is what we are talking about.

Sell your bike and all your gear while on the road then buy a bus ticket back home and you'll have money left over. Just kidding...duh!

Writing a book is a great idea; or riding for non-profit cause are good ways to earn a little cash while donating to a worthy cause. There are non-profit organizations that will allow travel expenses if you get enough sponsors and will ride an unusual amount of miles like 10,000 miles in one trip and the sponsors donate X amount of dollars per mile.

There used to be a person on this site who's career was doing medical transcriptions. All he needed was his laptop and intermittent internet access for file transfers. I think he made pretty good money, too.

I've made money during stints of living on the road in a car by doing database contract work, and I could do it on bike tour, too, if I was willing to haul around a laptop.

But, it's not the kind of thing most people can just decide to do. I paid my dues as a full-time cube-dweller for a bunch of years, first.

My wife and I have been supporting our (5 1/2 years and counting) bike tour by writing books and publishing a website. We are not getting rich but the years on the road have been worth it. I am currently redesigning it but you can check out our web site www.DownTheRoad.org (http://www.downtheroad.org) to get an idea of what we do.

Wow, what an adventure. Very interesting web site.

We have considered doing a book too but how do you distribute it while on the road? A few thousand books is going add a wee bit of weight to my panniers :o We don't have anyone at home who will be the 'post office' for us unfortunately.
I believe there are companies that do the storage and shipping for a reasonable fee. "Fulfillment" seems to be a term that is often used for this.

[I'm sorry I don't know of any specific companies. Does anyone know of any good ones?, or whether this is a good option?]

There are fulfillment companies out there that will fulfill book orders from wholesalers and retailers. Another option is fulfilling your book through a print on demand distributor. Sounds simple but it isn’t, these companies can have all kinds of fees attached and you need to weight the advantage of having a book in print and paying for it against printing a book when it is ordered.

We use a fulfillment company to fulfill our book orders while we are on the road and are in the process of weighting that against using POD for our second book.

From this article: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1030/p04s01-woap.html

We were discussing the possibilities of teaching english abroad. I saw this and thought
many of you may be interested. 'Nova', Japan's largest school chain has filed bankruptcy,
not paid rents for teachers that were deducted from their paychecks, stiffed each teacher
for over $4000 each, and hasn't refunded student's tuition. Sounds like a real cluster fornication.

I do web development and all I need is a desk, electricity and an internet connection for some five days every other week. I toured 1.5 years in New Zealand like this and I'm currently in the UK doing the same.

I just keep in touch with my existing projects and clients and let them know whenever I might be out of touch for some days so they can ring me if there is anything really urgent.

Of course that traveling trough remote areas might pose problems but I will still have to see. So far with wifi spread almost everywhere it has been fairly easy. I'm also set up to work offline and with my small laptop I can get around 8 hours battery time so I have even managed to do some work from the "comforts" of my tent while camping in the middle of nowhere.

Thanks for all the good feedback and ideas here.

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I ran into someone who makes his living writing magazine articles. Dennis Coello has also done some of this.

It doesn't often pay very well, but a frugal bike tourist can probably make it work.

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[side note, and obscure but interesting point: Colin Wilson, who is one of the more interesting writers I've come across, wrote one of his best known books while bike camping.

He camped in a park and rode his bike to the British Museum to use the library whenever it was open. He wrote The Outsider in this way. [If you haven't read it, it's a very good read IMHO.]

Some of us bike tourist types certainly have a certain sense of resonance with being an outsider.]

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Crafts: There are a number of crafts that could work out.

Some of them only require minimal or lightweight tools and materials, and the end products themselves can be light, compact and portable.

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There are also art forms that fit.

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There may be some services that also require only minimal weight in tools.

Can somebody outline the process involved with self-publishing a book? We wrote a book about a year-long bike trip we took in India back in 1990-91 and it is just sitting in a box. If it isn't too much hassle to self-publish I might consider doing it.

thanks!
Nancy

Hello Nancy,

We used the Self Publishing Manual by Dan Pointer as a guide. It is very helpful. I would be happy to help you with specific details (send me a pm as they are beyond the scope of Bike Forums).

Right now I trust in divine grace and the kindness of strangers. It works amazingly well!

I write but rarely run into anybody who wants to pay me for what I write. Video journaling seems to fit into the same place.

A friend offered to set me up with a kit so I could bead jewelry and sell them as I go. It seems easier to just ask for what I want and gratefully accept whatever I get. Survival doesn't require much.