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Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

I'd say 95% of digital nomads are just online marketers who market their own lifestyle so that they can sell a course on how to imitate them. And obviously, their customers will imitate them and sell a course on how to imitate them. And so the cycle continues.

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> I'd say 95% of digital nomads are just online marketers

It’s strange ‘cuz I’ve been working in digital nomad hotspots for years and have met very very few people like that. Lots of translators, programmers, and then a complete mishmash of other people, but very few people selling courses, and the ones who _were_ selling courses generally nothing to do with being a digital nomad

Same here.

I’ve been nomading for ten years. I haven’t met a single person who was not legit doing something of value. The closest I came to one was an online poker player in Chiang Mai back in 2010.

Maybe we just hang out in the “right” circles?

It’s probably just like in real life. I have never met anyone offering me a generic (non nomad) Ponzi scheme. But I sure had several legit investment opportunities thru my circles.

> I’ve been nomading for ten years.

The most i've ever been able to do was half a year. How can you choose to be without a real home that long?

> How can you choose to be without a real home that long?

Depends what you mean by "real home" I guess. I have a tiny apartment in Bangkok, where we would normally spend ~ 8 weeks a year in total a year, and then we rent ad-hoc or stay with family the rest

Ah ok you are married. Do you have long term friends locally ? Is your wife your anchor to a local community ?

> Do you have long term friends locally?

Not really sure what that means, but most places we go we have friends we’ve known for many years, and those are often other nomadish types.

> Is your wife your anchor to a local community?

No, she’s from even further away than me

Right but actual roots / connection to a local community, besides fellow travelers / tourists?

I personally never felt more than a temporary resident in most places i've been.

I've travelled single and as part of a couple. Doing this as a couple is hands-down easier. Cheaper, less stressful, and a lot less lonely. Not only because constant companionship, but also because striking up random friendships is easier if the whole "is he hitting on me?" thing is off the table because the girlfriend is right there too ;)

I didn't say I was homeless :D I have a home base, but I spend 6 months or more outside of my home country.

I mean a home with local ties and roots, not just someone else's airbnb :)

Yes, I do have a home with ties and roots. We use it a few month per year, while travelling the rest of the time.

Good plan ! :)

What utopia have you found? I couldn't stop meeting these people on the road.

Last year I was in Kohub, Hub Hoi An, Outpost Penestanan, and some time at Hubud. This year, due to Covid, just Kohub.

Kohub is the coliving on a thai island right? I've been really interested to check that out but never ended up making it there.

My email is in my profile. I'd be really interested to jump on a chat with you for a few minutes and hear about your experience if you are open to it. Get in touch if you are open to talking.

Yeah, Hubud is cool, or was last year. I understand the whole of Ubud has been shocked by COVID killing the tourism industry so it'll be interesting how it goes when we can travel again.

But yeah, you won't find the budget backpackers trying to scrape a couple hundred bucks a month monetising their awesome travel blog about their amazing life in Hubud. It's too expensive (relatively speaking). Find a cafe close to a cheap hostel, that'll let you spend the whole morning abusing their decent wifi for the cost of a single americano. You'll be able to tell them because of the number of inappropriately-dressed white folks somehow covering an entire 4-seat table to use their 13" MacBook.

If you can afford to rent a table in a coworking space, then you have already separated yourself from the other 95% of digital nomads.

When I was working remotely from Asia, I sometimes went to cafes in the backpacker areas and there would be lots of people working online and posting selfies about their dream life, but their entire monthly budget was like $300. Even in Asia, that's not enough to rent a good office, let alone for apartment +office +food.

Also, maybe you just didn't dig deep enough. I myself was once feeling quite impressed about someone getting rich from making iOS children's games. But when I had issues with my own apps and asked him for advice, it turned out that he was actually making a living from selling an Udemy course on how to get rich by selling apps... And as usual, the revenue from Udemy was presented as if it had come from the apps.

I've fantasised about the vanlife, living the nomad lifestyle out of a van. When looking for build inspiration videos on YouTube, I ended up seeing a lot of vanlife "influencers", but what I notice is many videos just have a few thousand views, which is surely not enough to make a living..

I also fantasized about vanlife. Eamon & Bec is an awesome channel if you want to learn about that sort of thing. They certainly grew their channel enough to be comfortable.

vanlife, digital nomad, etc. It's all the same. You are only presented with the highs, not the lows.

Most influencers can't make a living. There's so many of them that it's a buyer's market.

When I was still selling naughty bikinis online, I did a few promotions with Instagram yoga teachers and I was always surprised by how low their asking prices were.

I guess most of them valued having any success to show for it much higher than being paid a livable wage.

It's a meme, man. I did the van thing for a year while working in Australia on the NBN (big fibre optic project). Drove around and spliced and oversaw fibre projects.

It gets old pretty fast, has tons of hidden costs, and looks quaint and romantic to people who've never had to do it. Fun for a year, but I probably would have paid almost as much just booking into hostels or AirBnB's and renting a car on occasion.

I was able to go and see some cool places -- but breaking down in remote South Australia was scary and frustrating. And you get really, really tired of the lack of space.

What made it tolerable was being able to get out of the van and chill in places like the library or a coffee shop-- likely all no-gos in the COVID era

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