If you’re over 50, living the nomadic lifestyle, and looking for ways to generate income from your laptop, you’re in the right place!
As a digital nomad, having a reliable source of income is crucial to sustaining your adventures. Fortunately, there are numerous side hustles that cater to your unique lifestyle and skills.
In this blog post, we’ll explore 20 practical ideas for side hustles that you can start today, right from the comfort of your laptop. From freelancing and consulting to online teaching and e-commerce, these opportunities are tailored to help you monetize your expertise and passions while embracing the freedom of the nomadic lifestyle.
Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your nomadic journey, this guide will provide you with a wealth of inspiration and actionable steps to kickstart your side hustle.
Get ready to discover new ways to fund your travels and achieve financial independence on the road.
Why Turning Your Side Hustle Into a Lifestyle Business is Ultimate Freedom
As I write this I’m sitting in a cafe in Phuket, Thailand, supping an Americano before picking up my daughter, who’s just finishing up exams at an International school here, and meeting a friend for lunch at the beach.
Tonight I’m heading off to see another friend compete in a Muay Thai boxing match in Patong and this weekend we’re off to Singapore for a few days.
My life, my time, and my location are my own and I generate an income via several unique side hustles I talk about below.
Some are simpler than others, none are easy, and most certainly not one is a way to ‘get rich quick’. To generate a steady, recurring income online takes time and dedication, but it is doable and, if you pick something you enjoy doing, it’s fun!
Because at our age who wants to grind away doing something we hate everyday?
So let’s have a look at all the different methods of starting an online side hustle, which, if you choose, over time can grow and turn into life changing income.
20 Potentially Life-Changing Side Hustles for 50+ Nomads
1. Become a Freelance Writer
Do you love to write, but haven’t yet published your best selling novel?
If that’s the case, consider embarking on a career as a freelance writer. This allows you to showcase your writing skills and get paid for your talent.
Decide the kind of writing you think you could take on such as blog writing, copywriting, ebook writing, creative writing, business writing etc.
Then simply sign up and create a profile on upwork.com, fiverr.com, or writersaccess.com. These platforms provide a vast marketplace for freelance writing opportunities. Once you’ve set up your profile, you can start exploring job listings and even set up job alerts to stay updated on the latest opportunities, and start bidding for weekend and remote jobs.
Pick topics and subjects you’re interested in and are confident you can do a good job with and earn anywhere between $0.04 – $0.20 a word depending on your skill levels.
You can even utilise AI Tools like ChatGPT or Claude to help! (Always check client requirements and rules around AI use)
Elna Cain started as a freelance writer and now runs her own freelance writing academy.
2. Become a Freelance ‘Anything’
I started with freelance writing as it’s one of the most popular and versatile freelancing jobs, but you can essentially freelance in anything. It depends what your particular set of skills are.
Perhaps you were a highly paid corporate PA in your previous life and would make an excellent virtual assistant, maybe you’re a whiz at accounts, love deep diving into research, can build Notion templates or have a degree in using Excel (it feels like you need a degree to work it out!)
Start by assessing your skills and interests. Then have a look through sites like upwork.com and fiverr.com to see what people are offering and for how much. On upwork you can also browse through the types of jobs available to pitch for.
When my husband had a go at freelancing a few years back he was getting paid $50 an hour for 20 hours a week job within his first couple of weeks on the platform. That’s how fast you can get started and earn enough for your travels!
Embracing freelancing as a side hustle can empower you to utilize your skills and contribute to the success of various businesses while enjoying the flexibility of remote work.
3. Become a Published Author
Sticking with the writing theme, it’s never been easier to publish your writing. No agent needed or publishing house required. You can manage the entire process from your laptop and have your book available to the world for under $100.
E. L. James, one of the most famous self-published authors, has a net worth of $150 million from her Fifty Shades trilogy, which started out as Twilight Fan-fiction. James’s success demonstrates that you don’t have to be established (or even a good writer!) to make it as an author.
That said, it helps if you give yourself a fighting chance. Innumerable authors never strike it rich writing their own fiction stories. But there are plenty of writers making a good living as authors of non-fiction books that educate and solve readers’ problems.
Amazon KDP is the platform that enables you to publish your manuscript and make it available to millions of Kindle e-book readers. You can set your own price, and you keep 70% of the profits.
Know all about Gardening or Yoga? Write down your guidance in a way that solves problems for readers. Kindle books are often impulse purchases, and millions are sold every year.
You don’t have to write a long book, either. Short 70-page books are common in the non-fiction categories.
4. Become a Videographer (or Photographer)
If you’re already travelling, chances are you’re taking loads of photos or video footage. And if you fancy yourself a bit of an amateur David Bailey, then becoming a modern-day photographer, videographer, or video blogger could be for you.
So many companies and small businesses want to tap into the image/video-based economy we’re now living in and so honing your photography or videography skills will go a long way to creating a lucrative side hustle.
If you already have a million photos gathering dust in google photos or iphoto, why not start monetizing by selling images to stock photo sites like depositphotos.com or istock.com?
Even better, upload your photos to an Etsy store and sell them as wall art or digital images.
As a photographer, you can even take advantage of print-on-demand sites like Redbubble.
5. Sell on Redbubble
Redbubble is a print-on-demand marketplace, meaning they house a catalog of blank products for you to add your designs to.
Products include t-shirts, mugs, canvases, face masks, clothes, candles, home decor, etc.
Your job is to create your own Redbubble storefront on their platform, add your images to their products and then sell like crazy.
If you’re a natural graphic designer, love playing with apps like Canva, or have a stack of unused images you want to monetize, a site like Redbubble could start to generate regular income for you.
These days you can also get creative using AI powered digital art on sites like Dall.E and Midjourney.
Please note though, success on Redbubble means creating hundreds if not thousands of new products on a very regular and consistent basis.
6. Start a Blog
Blogging has changed significantly just in the last 12 months.
Google is preparing for the new AI landscape with their SGE (Search Generative Experience), which means niche sites once able to rank easily for long tail keywords can’t rank at all anymore, and have pivoted from Google to Pinterest and Social Media to drive traffic.
The days of throwing up a site in a targeted niche, proliferating it with content and waiting for Google to send you loads of traffic are gone. However, I still love the blogging model, and although my site is part of my larger brand, there is still a way to start and monetise a niche blog.
Here’s how;
- Pick a topic you feel happy creating a ton of content around and most importantly has a passionate target audience. Think gardening, pets, health, relationships, parenting etc.
- Create a simple website using WordPress (I recommend WPX for your hosting).
- Start creating valuable content with your target audience in mind. Pick headlines that would work well on social media (simply research your niche on Pinterest, Facebook etc for topic ideas).
- Create a Facebook Page using the same name as your website and start posting daily memes, images, tips. Anything that will resonate with your audience and that they can identify with (hence the passionate audience).
- As your audience grows, begin to publish your posts to drive traffic to your website.
- Create a lead magnet and start a weekly newsletter to grow a subscriber base around your topic and increase traffic further. Plus you’re building a list of people you can make other offers to, or accept advertising or sponsorship.
NB: This whole process is significantly accelerated by the use of ads. Facebook Ads & Pinterest Ads in particular. To make that work without losing your shirt, you’ll need a funnel and an impulse product that a percentage of people buy when signing up to pay for your ads. That’ a whole other post, but this at least gives you an idea of how to get started.
To monetise, you’ll have display ads on your website or you can offer physical or digital products or even services. The world is your oyster!
7. Sell Products on Amazon
If you’re prepared to put the work in, this model is life changing. I know that because it changed our lives!
Amazon has a program called FBA (fulfillment by Amazon). This means that they handle all the picking, packing, and distribution of products from their warehouses.
Your job is to source products to sell on the Amazon marketplace, negotiate with manufacturers and suppliers, ship the products to the warehouses, then list and promote your products on and off Amazon.
While this does require upfront investment to purchase stock, it’s a very lucrative business model. However, it’s not the easiest business model out there and Amazon are not the easiest company to work with.
My husband & I generated over 7 figures within a year on Amazon and you can read our story here.