Leave Your Cubicle Behind

September was a learning month for me. One of the things digital nomads need to do is create a reliable source of money. As a digital nomad, you are most likely your own boss. Maybe not. Maybe your boss lets you do work from the beach. That’s cool. You have a salary. You’re golden. Yet the majority of digital nomads and cubicle escapees end up as their own boss or trying to make an online business.

I went with the online business. I support myself through my travel websites. And my money comes in from 5 different income streams. But something in September happened- after four months of steady improvement, my income for September dropped about 20%. What happened I asked myself? Where did I go wrong? And what can I do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

I had become too reliant on two sources of income and in doing so I got lazy. These two sources of income were easy to do, made good money, and seemed abundant. In fact, they fueled about about 60% of my income. It allowed me to spend money back into the business and outsource a lot of the work I simply didn’t want to do.

Then crash. A slow month. Now I’m in precious position. I let the other income streams just be mediocre and now I don’t have any balance.

What is the less here?

If you don’t always try to support all of your revenue sources, then one day, you can wake up in trouble.

When you become too reliant on a few things that are easy, you get lazy. You get complacent. You follow the easy money. You think it will last forever? Have I built up my adsense websites or tried to do affiliate ads? Not at all. Whereas I might have peaked with my income sources, there is potential growth with these two. And I haven’t done anything about.

Just like with your stock portfolio, you should always rebalance you income sources. Whether that means income streams like my example or clients, or websites, you don’t want to be reliant on one thing for money. This is especially true online because the nature of the internet is always changing. What works today might not work tomorrow and you don’t want wake up one day and find that your way of life suddenly doesn’t exist anymore.

Moving forward I plan on always building up the weakest part of my income stream while strengthening the strong ones that. That way eventually, I’ll have strong income streams across the board. And a bad month for one can be balanced off by another.

So take my lesson as an example that the life of a digital nomad can change rapidly and without hard and diligent work, income can fluctuate widely.