If you have been doing research into at living an international lifestyle, you may have read about the importance of having a location independent source of income. When you have a location independent income at anytime you have the freedom to go anywhere in the world you want, stay there as long as you want, and still earn your income. This also means that in the event of some kind of disaster or other event you have the freedom to leave your current location without worrying about your finances.
Location independent income can take many forms, but the basic idea is that you should be able to earn your income from anywhere in the world. This gives you a lot more freedom than somebody who has a location dependent source of income, such as a typical office job. A location dependent income such as this won’t enable you to even move to another city potentially without needing to find a new job.
So what are some examples of location independent incomes?
Location independent income:
- Making Youtube videos or other streaming services
- Running an internet blog or other website or digital community
- Writing E-Books (Even physical books can be location independent these days)
- Trading stocks/cryptocurrencies/other
- Most any investments
- Online teaching, consulting, potentially even fully remote employment
- Sell digital courses/podcasts/information
- Dropshipping things on Amazon/Ebay (Check out Amazon FBA)
- Be an affiliate and sell other people’s things for a commission (Check out Amazon Associates)
Examples of things that may not normally be location independent but could be:
- Real estate (Can be location independent if using property management)
- Traditional Office/software job (If entirely a remote company)
Examples of location dependent incomes:
- Most jobs as an employee (any where you have to go somewhere specific any amount of time a week)
- Real estate and doing your own property management
- Running a restaurant (or most any other business with a physical location)
- Any kind of sales where you have to travel to some location to meet your clients
It is certainly possible to travel the world and still earn income by taking jobs in the country you are currently in. Many people travel and teach English for income, but this is a location dependent income source so that will be a topic for another day.
If you are struggling to think of ideas, often you can find a way to do your current job in a way that you are either remote, or performing the same service for clients or as a consultant and do it remotely. You can use a combination of tech, such as: email, text, slack/zoom, videos, docs/pdfs, file sharing, web hosting, web services, Software as a Service (SaaS) and delivery services to create most any business remotely with some creativity.
There is many more examples of location independent income out there, leave a comment if you have any other ideas or questions.