Being a digital nomad is all about having the freedom to work from anywhere, anytime. Living and working in beautiful places like Bali, Portugal, Thailand, and Mexico has become more feasible than ever for anyone with a laptop, an internet connection, and the drive to make it work. Emphasis on the drive to make it work, as there are countless who try, but only a few that make it. What are the best careers to consider and what tools do you need to ensure that you succeed?

Here are some of the best freelance jobs and tools that can enable you to earn good money and don’t require being anchored in any one place.

Video Production

Freelance videographers are able to make a good living in any of the hotspots listed above if they have the right business sense, and technical and creative skillset. With video becoming the most important format for marketing campaigns in the last decade, the market for video has expanded tremendously. Despite the growing number of videographers due to lower barriers to entry, the pie has grown so much that the opportunities are endless. You can edit social media content for marketing departments and simultaneously do full video production for local hotels, clubs or real estate agents.

What are the tools you should master to do this work remotely from a tropical island paradise? If you’re going to do professional quality work, you’ll need a mirrorless camera, a high quality mic, and probably a gimbal and a drone. With a paper thin laptop like the MacBook Air being the ultimate digital nomad machine (light and easy to travel with), you’ll need video editing software that doesn’t require much power to run smoothly. Our online video editor elevate.io is perfect, as it doesn’t matter how powerful your laptop is or how much hard drive space it has. It’s also ideal for remote work, as your clients will be able to review your timeline directly without needing to export and send large video files back and forth. Your client (let’s say, in New York City), can upload the footage on their fiber connection, send you a link to the project, and you can jump right in and start co-creating with others in your browser. Your light travel laptop is now a fully capable collaborative video editing machine. The best part is, elevate.io is completely free to use for digital nomads. Sign up here.

Sound Design

Sound design is a great option too as a less competitive choice. Despite being less glamorous than videography, it is a highly sought after skill. As the quality of social media video content has increased, way more emphasis is being put on great audio. Podcasts have also exploded in popularity in the last five years, creating even more opportunities for revenue.

You’ll need to master audio recording and editing software and have access to music and sound libraries. Some of the best audio apps are Audacity, Pro Tools, FL Studio, Reaper, Logic Pro X, and Adobe Audition. For music and sound effects for commercial usage, some great libraries to check out are: Epidemic Sound, Soundly, and Artlist.

Graphic Design / App Design

If you have graphic design or UI/UX design skills, you’ll be able to earn a good and reliable income while living as a digital nomad. With a good business sense, you can succeed as a freelancer, otherwise being employed by a fully remote company is a great option too.

The best design tools for remote work are Figma and Canva, as they let you work in the cloud, making collaboration with others seamless. Clients can easily leave comments and feedback on your work, no matter the time zone difference, so that you know exactly what needs to be done.

Programming / Web Development

Being a coder is a fantastic profession for a digital nomad. If you have a strong portfolio and an active GitHub profile, you’ll be able to find clients yourself through networking and cold-messaging or platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork. Alternatively, if you prefer more stable work, you can be employed by a company or agency that has a good remote working policy.

No coding experience, but interested in learning how to program and make this your path to being a digital nomad? Check out free courses like Harvard’s CS50: Introduction to Computer Science or The Odin Project.

Social Media Content Creator

Digital nomad hotspots like Bali or Cancun are vibrant hubs of the content creator community. Both ambitious new starters and established creators with millions of followers gravitate toward these places to be fully immersed, network, grow their social media following, and get their creative juices flowing.

If you’re looking to join this community, it’s best to have the gear and tools necessary to get right into it. Whether it’s YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, you’ll need a camera and microphone to shoot your content. Depending on your niche, you can go from a low range cam like a GoPro Hero all the way to a Sony A7S3 or Canon EOS R5. For microphones, Rode is a great brand for social media content. For drones, it goes without saying to get whatever suits your needs from DJI. Laptop wise, you’re best off with something that’s light, thin, and ideal for travel.

Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop are the undisputed champions for photo editing. Both now have handy mobile apps that save your work in the cloud. For video editing, elevate.io works in the cloud on your browser, no matter how thin or underpowered your laptop is. Another benefit of elevate.io is that you won’t need to lug around external hard drives for all the footage you capture on your travels, as everything is saved in your workspace in the cloud. It’s the ideal video editing setup for digital nomads.

Stock Footage or Photos

If you prefer creating content for others, being a stock videographer or photographer is a great option. Travel, shoot, and distribute your work through stock websites like Shutterstock, Storyblocks, and Unsplash.

Digital Marketing

If you have a marketing background, there are plenty of opportunities for fully remote digital marketing roles. Social media managers or SEO managers can do their jobs remotely without a hitch, as long as they have a laptop, access to a good internet connection, and possibly a nice cafe with great coffee? Bali has the latter in abundance. Social media management tools like Later, Sprout Social, or Hootsuite make it possible to plan and populate the social media calendar collaboratively wherever you are. SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs are also all cloud based and empower you to optimize websites for a high rank on search engines.

Teaching English

Being an English teacher can also be a lucrative job as a digital nomad, depending on the countries you base yourself in. And even if you choose to stay in places with less local demand, you can use platforms like Engoo or Cambly to give 1-on-1 or group lessons to people anywhere in the world.

elevate.io

Running in your browser, elevate.io is the ultimate video editor for digital nomads. No matter how underpowered your travel laptop is, if it can run Chrome, it can run elevate.io with ease. You also won’t need to pack a bag full of hard drives, as all your footage lives in your workspace in the cloud. If you’re collaborating with others, you can co-create in the same workspace in real-time. elevate.io is completely free to use.