Location independent income

Attaining location independent income is relatively easy, and I would say that nearly everyone can earn money online abroad.

Yes, that includes you – although you might have to put in some work to learn a skill, set up a website, or whatever you want to get going.

That being said, there are several levels when it comes to digital nomad income streams, and I’ll explain them all, going from suboptimal to ideal:

Working for someone else from home

The first layer of these remote income strategies is working for someone or something else, from home.

This is a regular job where you can just work from home and never have to actually show up somewhere.

Examples would be live-chat-customer-service-agents (unless they need to work from a call center), SEO managers and off-base marketers.

Why you should avoid this form of digital nomad income streams

In this scenario you are still heavily tied to the location of your job.

If the company you work for is located in, say, Germany, and Germany goes down (which it will), so does your income.

Or if the company decides to fire you, you lose your source of income.

This is not a great option at all, and it is barely a step above location dependent income where you do need to report to a specific location at certain times.

Keep in mind once again that if you rely on a pension, you fall under this category as well.

If something happens to the government which gives you this income, you are fucked.

And please realize that hoping or strongly asserting that nothing will ever happen to your pension for this and that reason is a poor strategy for your long-term happiness.

And it’s doubly foolish to rely on such a system if you’ve looked at the data and you’re at all convinced the West is going down.

When it will collapse is a matter of “nobody can predict this for sure” and “when does it actually reach the level of collapse”, but in general, there’s very high chance of it going down or at the very least seeing significant, negative changes during your lifetime.

Working for yourself online

The next level of location-independent income is working for yourself and earning money online from a specific country.

You cannot get fired and you are your own boss, so this is definitely a step in the right direction.

However, because your income is still tied to a specific country (probably even a Western one), a lot of things can (and probably will) go wrong when something happens to that country (not if, when).

I have a few digital nomad income streams which are tied to a Western country too, and I fully expect to lose most of them within the next decade.

But the main thing is: I’ve planned for this, and they’re nowhere close to being my only source of income.

Redundancy and flexibility are two extremely valuable principles I’d strongly urge you to implement, however you want to earn money online abroad.

Self employed with location independent income

If we move further up the ladder, we come to the absolute minimum requirement for moving out of your Western country:

Be self-employed and have location independent income from multiple, different, ideally non-Western countries.

This means that you are your own boss and your income does not depend on any one nation.

Instead, it comes from several countries, of which there are a few unaffiliated non-Western nations, so even if the West collapses, your prosperity does not take a big hit.

Self employed with multiple sources of non-Western location independent income

The next step on the ladder is being self-employed with multiple different sources of location independent income, and all of your digital nomad income streams come from outside the West.

If you’re at this level, you are absolutely good to go, and you are almost guaranteed to do well wherever you move to (provided the level of your income has hit the required threshold, which we’ll discuss later on).

Personally, I’m not fully there yet, because like I said, I still have some sources of Western-based income, but I expect to shed these within the next few years, gradually.

Multiple sources of passive income

You can take it one step further and achieve the highest level of financial independence: Attain multiple sources of passive income, all of which are globally based, enough to cover all of your needs.

Is your passive income location independent? Then you’re doing better than 99% of basically everyone else.

This is the nec plus ultra, and something every man or woman who wants to escape the West should strive for.

Personally, I’ve got a few streams of location independent passive income, and working diligently on increasing them!