Working on the road

[Bob_Vaughn]

I repeatedly read of people working on the internet while traveling and have not been able to figure out what they could be doing to make money on the internet while traveling?

[tatest]

westernrvparkowner wrote:

tatest wrote:
Some of the people I know making (big) money on the Internet are selling their knowledge about how to make money on the Internet. It is a whole new world for a whole new breed of entrepreneurs. It is a lot like multi-level marketing, but without a physical product, the product is information. Many are part of several similar business, and might be multiple web sites, working social media, and services like YouTube. I had no idea about all this until I started traveling alone, meeting affluent people the age of my children who seemed to have no need for a job to enjoy their plush lifestyle, and started talking to them about how they make their money.

All you really need to do is make up a business plan for an interesting new product or service (think Shark Tank), make a great presentation on the Internet, and people will start sending you money to get the business going.

Or you could invent a great new kind of car (or some other product in that price class), put the proposal on the Internet, and start collecting deposits for first deliveries. I've seen evidence of deposits collected for more than five years without any actual production. That would never have worked without the Internet as a sales tool.

Taking deposits without delivering a product is fraud. So is making up a fake business proposal and getting investors. Spending investor money for personal gain will earn you several years of free accommodations in some of the government's finest resorts. BTW Ponzi schemes, fake investments, stealing deposits and the like predate the internet by several thousand years.

Elio thinks he is safe so far with his non-refundable deposits. The Internet crowdfunding programs make it clear that the donors are not investors. But living on the edge explains why some of these folks have residency in Costa Rica.

[westernrvparkow]

tatest wrote:
Some of the people I know making (big) money on the Internet are selling their knowledge about how to make money on the Internet. It is a whole new world for a whole new breed of entrepreneurs. It is a lot like multi-level marketing, but without a physical product, the product is information. Many are part of several similar business, and might be multiple web sites, working social media, and services like YouTube. I had no idea about all this until I started traveling alone, meeting affluent people the age of my children who seemed to have no need for a job to enjoy their plush lifestyle, and started talking to them about how they make their money.

All you really need to do is make up a business plan for an interesting new product or service (think Shark Tank), make a great presentation on the Internet, and people will start sending you money to get the business going.

Or you could invent a great new kind of car (or some other product in that price class), put the proposal on the Internet, and start collecting deposits for first deliveries. I've seen evidence of deposits collected for more than five years without any actual production. That would never have worked without the Internet as a sales tool.

Taking deposits without delivering a product is fraud. So is making up a fake business proposal and getting investors. Spending investor money for personal gain will earn you several years of free accommodations in some of the government's finest resorts. BTW Ponzi schemes, fake investments, stealing deposits and the like predate the internet by several thousand years.

[guidry]

Retired police detective, now working when I feel like it as a private investigator. When I get a case I can take the RV and wife to the location and make a trip of it in between working.

[tatest]

Some of the people I know making (big) money on the Internet are selling their knowledge about how to make money on the Internet. It is a whole new world for a whole new breed of entrepreneurs. It is a lot like multi-level marketing, but without a physical product, the product is information. Many are part of several similar business, and might be multiple web sites, working social media, and services like YouTube. I had no idea about all this until I started traveling alone, meeting affluent people the age of my children who seemed to have no need for a job to enjoy their plush lifestyle, and started talking to them about how they make their money.

All you really need to do is make up a business plan for an interesting new product or service (think Shark Tank), make a great presentation on the Internet, and people will start sending you money to get the business going.

Or you could invent a great new kind of car (or some other product in that price class), put the proposal on the Internet, and start collecting deposits for first deliveries. I've seen evidence of deposits collected for more than five years without any actual production. That would never have worked without the Internet as a sales tool.

[pa_traveler]

Wife graduates from medical coding ICD 10,after internship,she can work from road on internet.

[2gypsies1]

Our daughter works from home via the internet but her job could easily be done by a traveling RVer. She sets up companies with their tax programs. Bass Pro Shop is a new customer for her.

She also puts in much more than 40 hr/week which is only what she's paid for. However, her hours are flexible so she can go to the kids' school activities and games.

If you go into an office building nowadays, you will see everyone on their computers doing their work. Very little paper gets passed around.

Working from a RV you definitely would not be using a park's Wifi. You'd need to supply your own and be in an area to get good internet connection.

[RavensFan24]

I'm in Internet Marketing and have been working from home for 10 years. I see no reason for a majority of companies to have in office staff. Everything people are doing these days are on computers, so why make them commute? Why pay huge rent on a building? A lot of time and money can be saved by allowing telecommuting. To me, packing people into an office every day is like adult high school. No one can speak their mind, everyone has to follow the rules and if you're late you get in trouble.

There are a ton of options for making money online while allowing you to travel. Affiliate Marketing is what I'm specifically focused on and I was doing this while traveling cross country for 3 months a while back. Unfortunately, my girlfriend works in an office that only allows telecommuting a couple days a week. Otherwise, I'd be on the road all the time.

[DwnSth]

I'm a programmer and my wife is a real estate agent. We only travel about 4 or 5 full weeks a year. I can work almost from anywhere as long as I have an internet connection and phone. My wife can coordinate members of her team when we're traveling and can almost work full deals. I don't particularly like working while on vacation but we are very thankful for the fact that our jobs allow us to travel at least some. I guess my job actually could allow full time but that's not something we have interest in pursuing.

[Geocritter]

I'm a geologist and have been doing research/writing for the oil industry. It was a nice gig until this past year when oil prices plummeted.

Steve

[path1]

Deleted please...to much info that didn't pertain.

[NCWriter]

I have no doubt that people in many occupations work from RVs. You can even be paid via PayPal.

I edited various Caribbean boating-related magazines and other publications for years. Our work evolved in the early 2000s until the editorial end was done entirely online. The publisher was (still is) a great guy who left the editorial entirely in my hands to manage while he supervised ad sales.

For my main job, the monthly finished product was roughly a 100-page color magazine the size of Time or Newsweek, distributed throughout the Caribbean.

I never met most of the design staff nor 95% of my writer-photographers in person, and some of them lived aboard sailboats. They pitched ideas and emailed articles and photo files to me. I organized the whole enchilada every month and uploaded all the edited pieces to a password-protected FTP site (File Transfer Protocol) for the designers to download.

The designers did their page work, inserted the ads, and I downloaded their proof files to correct. They uploaded the final files to printers - one was in Miami.

I just needed a laptop and Internet connection periodically, and worked from odd places all over the world, including a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. So an RV is a piece of cake. I didn't need a printer.

I eventually retired from full time editing - obviously work is work even when you control your schedule and workflow. I still write travel articles occasionally, and easily keep in touch with my editor via a 4G or wifi connected iPad as needed. I've worked for her for four years and we've never met in person.

[tjfogelberg]

I'm in the tax business and work in a traditional office from Jan 2 - April 15th. During the off season, I stay connected and continue working from home, the office or the RV. In the RV I carry an inexpensive Epson XP-410 printer/copier/scanner, a 2nd monitor which plugs into my laptop, and a Verizon Jetpack. It works very well and there is little interruption of client service. If someone drops something off at my office, someone scans it and sends it to me through a secure portal. I love technology! I can now travel for 3 or 3 months a year with no problems.

Todd

[NYCgrrl]

Fizz wrote:
Just about any type of office work can now be done from home.
Before you go thinking how soft that is.
Your hours can be tracked to the minute. You may be at home in your PJs but you're always on the job. Sitting having supper when you remember something, next thing you know its 11 PM and you're still at the keyboard.
Mind you sitting out on the patio enjoying a nice day while plugging away is kinda nice.

x2

No tracking of hours for me since I'm self employed but it does allow me to go on long vacs and still get earn my monthly fees.
For me this required discipline since there is only my data plan available at the campground so I'd do things like combine laundromat or supermarket shopping with access to free WI-FI. Saved my data mostly for the occasional movie or TV show and of course responding to and monitoring emails.

[westernrvparkow]

allenm wrote:
I assume by working on the road you mean from a campground. OK, so here is my pet peeve - the bandwidth at most campgrounds. The strength of the WiFi signal is a completely different issue. I carry a WiFi extender which works pretty well if I'm out a couple hundred feet from their antenna and am getting a weak signal.

But an extender does nothing for bandwidth. Most smaller campgrounds have about the same service you have at home. Works great for 1-2 users. Maybe ok for 3-4 users. But much more than 6 users it bogs it way down. Whatever bandwidth they have gets divided between users.

Larger campgrounds are probably going to have multiple WiFi hosts, but even that bogs way down with so many users these days trying to stream video and audio.

I got so frustrated I went out and got my own G4 WiFi hot spot. I haven't found many campgrounds where I couldn't get a good signal but that would probably be a different story out west.

It's costly. It's also surprising how much data one uses for normal tasks. My wife and I don't stream any music or movies. We just do email, transfer normal spreadsheets and docs and some browsing. We normally use up our 20GB plan sometimes go a little over.

If you need exceptional bandwidth for your employment, you need to provide it. The wifi at the RV park is not designed for guests to use for commercial activities. You would get the same results if you tried to use the other campground services for commercial activities. For example, our septic and waste disposal services are not sized for someone to staying with us to run septic pumping service waste through it. Our fresh water system is not sized to allow a fire fighting outfit staying in the park to fill their water trucks.
Working on the road often will require you to provide ALL the resources you need. You shouldn't depend upon others.

[Calicajun]

Thought about RV'ing and taking my photography and hypnosis business on the road while we travel.