101 Best Travel Jobs To Make Money On The Road

The best travel jobs that can earn you money while you’re on the road. This is the most extensive list of travel jobs that you’ll find anywhere online.

When it comes to travel, there tends to be many motivating factors, but only one major hurdle… money.

You want to travel the world full-time, explore the unknown, meet new people, experience new cultures and taste new cuisines, but all of these things cost money and those costs can add up quickly.

Dariece and I started travelling back in 2008 and ever since we left our home country of Canada, we scoured the planet for the best travel jobs.

We wanted to find jobs that could pay us money while we were travelling so that we never had to return home to work a regular 9-5 again.

In our job hunt, we personally worked dozens of different jobs including bartending, volunteering, teaching English, pet-sitting, and eventually, we landed on the ultimate travel job… running a travel blog.

But in our quest, we interviewed dozens of travellers who have worked all sorts of travel jobs all over the world.

This blog that you’re reading is dedicated to finding ways to earn money online so that you can travel/live abroad for as long as you want.

We eat, sleep and breathe travel and our entire life since 2008 has been committed to finding ways to sustain our travel addiction and share it with the people who read this blog!

In this post, I’m not keeping any secrets.

I’m going to share with you all of the best travel jobs and passive income ideas that you can find on the road, but I’m not just going to list them.

I’m going to tell you where to find each job, what the jobs entail, what requirements there are, and perhaps most importantly, what each travel job pays.

I want to make it easy for you to leave your 9-5 job and (if you don’t enjoy it) never return. We are living proof that your amazing vacation, gap year or world trip never has to end. 

We’ve been at it for over 10 years and today we get flown around the world on all-expense-paid trips while earning six figures a year. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not, read on to see what travel jobs you can earn good money from while on the road.

Jump to any section using the Table Of Contents.

What Makes a Good Travel Job?

To me, the best travel jobs are those that offer you freedom and flexibility.

While there are plenty of great travel jobs that still require you to work 9-5 (like teaching English, working at a hostel, working at a restaurant etc.), the ones you’ll want to look for are travel jobs that allow you to choose your own hours.

That’s why I’ve decided to break down this list of the best travel jobs into different categories. You can jump to any one of these categories below if you’re interested in a specific type of work.

How Much Do The Best Travel Jobs Pay?

In our own personal experience and the experience of the many people who we’ve interviewed for this article, we’ve found that the best travel job (travel blogging) can pay $10,000+ per month.

We personally earn that much from this blog, but know many other travel bloggers earning far more.

Most travel jobs won’t pay this much. Cruise ship workers, experienced English teachers and social media stars probably earn the next best salaries.

Your main goal with a travel job shouldn’t necessarily be about how much it pays though. You should make sure that the line of work you choose makes you happy, is fulfilling and is something you’re passionate about.

Let’s get started!

This list has 101 different travel jobs that can earn you money while on the road. I strongly recommend that you read and consider each one.

Many of our readers decide to try numerous jobs at a time. Many of these jobs don’t require very many hours per week, so you can do a few at the same time and maximize your profits.

Running a Website – The Best Travel Job

I really can’t help but sing praise about this amazing blogging job.

When we started this website a few years ago, we didn’t know the first thing about blogging. We had heard that it was possible to earn some money from it and we knew we loved travelling, writing, and photography, so we gave it a shot.

We weren’t professional photographers in any way, we had no prior writing experience and we didn’t know the first thing about blogging and yet, in just a few years we grew this blog to be a money-making, travel-supporting machine and we couldn’t be happier!

This lifestyle is so amazing that we’re always telling the readers of our blog and the followers on our social media accounts about it. We love it.

Companies contact us for paid press trips, we earn a good income while only working on our laptops 10 – 15 hours per week and we get to travel and live abroad full-time (at the time of writing this post, we’re living in a pool villa on the water in the Caribbean).

There’s a lot to travel blogging though.

Learning how to start a travel blog is easy. These days, you don’t even have to think of a domain name right away (ie: www.yourdomainname.com).

But building a blog to the point that can earn money takes time. That’s why we’re offering a Free Beginners Blogger Course for anyone who starts a blog through this step-by-step guide.

If you’re interested, click the links, follow the steps to create your own blog and we’ll teach you how to set up WordPress and grow your blog quickly (many of our students have earned free travel and an income in as little as 6 months).

#1 – Travel Blogging

To be a successful blogger, there are actually many travel jobs that branch off of the main title of “being a travel blogger”. In order to really earn money, you need to diversify your income portfolio.

Once you have your blog set up and you’ve established an audience (sometimes as quickly as a few months), you can start using these methods to earn money from your blog:

• Sponsored Content: Most blogs start this way. A company basically contacts you via email (or you reach out to them) and asks you to write a review about their product or brand. They pay for this review and the link to their site (between $200 – $750 USD / article). This is known as a sponsored post or sponsored content. Learn how to ethically create sponsored content following Google guidelines in our post, here. 
• Affiliate Sales: Instead of getting paid for the link, a better way to arrange payment is via commission. Affiliate marketing is when you link to a product or service from your blog and when one of your readers makes a purchase through your link, the company tracks it and sends you a percentage of the sale.
• Banner Ads & Direct Advertising: Basically running ads that are placed around your blog, when someone views an ad, or when they then click / purchase, you get paid. Currently, there is a company called Mediavine that provides the highest paying in-content ads. You’ll see them once in a while on this blog. Even though we hardly show any ads, we’re still able to earn $2,000 – $3,000 / month just by having these ads on our site.
• Brand Ambassadorship: A brand asks you to continuously use their product/service and write about it, and they pay you a monthly salary.
• Press Trips: This is literally getting paid to travel. A tourism board or tour company invites you to their country to write about your experiences. They do this because your blog has large numbers and they want to introduce your readers to their tour or destination. Press trips and FAM trips typically include flights, all transport, food, travel, and entertainment for the duration of the trip and you can charge for your services on top of this (upwards of $10,000/ two-week trip). Tourism boards even invite bloggers on trips who haven’t grown a huge audience. They often choose based on the quality of content and target audience, rather than numbers.

The reason I’ve gone so into depth about travel blogging is that we think it’s the ultimate travel job. It’s clear that because you came to this post, you love travel! Well, travel blogging encompasses everything travel, offers you free travel, you can get paid to travel and you can share your travels with the world.

Once you learn the skills, they are also transferable to other travel jobs.

You’ll find that many of the jobs on this list can branch off from your main travel blogging career, which is another reason why we think that travel blogging is the best travel job of all.

Online Travel Jobs

These are all jobs that can be done from your computer as long as you have an internet connection while on the road.

In our opinion, the absolute best way to earn money is from your laptop because it gives you the freedom of location independence. There’s simply nothing better than remote work!

#2 – Online Tutor

If you have any particular expertise on a subject, you can make money teaching others with platforms like TutorMe. They offer over 40 subjects mostly revolving around study and test preparations, so there’s bound to be something you’re able to teach.

It’s great if you’re a college student, teacher, or even a professor. With Italki and Cambly, the tutoring you’ll be doing is language-related.

⇒ Learn more about becoming a tutor in our post: Online Tutoring Jobs – How To Easily Find Work Tutoring Online

#3 – Teach Online

It’s really not that hard to find a job as an online teacher. If you’re a native English speaker, you’ll earn more money, but there are jobs for teachers of all languages. These jobs pay up to $30 / hour and you can teach multiple classes per week.

Teaching online will give you the flexibility to make money while you’re travelling and can also be a nice income supplement to other on-the-road jobs. Most companies require you to have a university degree, but some do not.

Check out our Teach English Online post to read more about how to find work, how much you can make and what to expect from a job teaching English online. If you have your online TEFL certification, it’ll give you a better chance of being hired.

Also, have a look at our other online teaching posts:

• How To Become a VIPKID Teacher and Earn $22 / hour
• Teach English With QKids – A Step By Step Guide
• Make Money Teaching Online With EF Education First 

 

#4 – Search Engine Evaluator

For anyone that’s a little tech-savvy, there’s a nifty job you can do from home known as a Search Engine Evaluator. There’s a handful of companies you can choose, but Leapforce is one of the best. You’ll need to pass a series of tests before you can start working, and then you just follow their searching guidelines and report back your findings.

What I like most is that it’s not a traditional customer service job, so you won’t ever need to take calls or purchase any gear (like headsets), and there are no fees to become an evaluator. You can set your schedule, working as much (or as little) as you like. When you’re just starting out, expect to earn around $10 an hour, though this will improve as you gain experience.

#5 – Digital Marketer

Growth Hub is an online community dedicated to educating marketers and provides a number of resources for success. But it’s their job board that’s the real winner. Here’s where you’ll find the best opportunities for digital marketers, paid search consultants, search engine optimization and more.

Just choose “remote” in the Locations category, and you can browse what’s available. Depending on the company posting the job they often specify expected salaries, which is a good thing.

#6 – Translation & Editorial

Are you bilingual or at least able to correct mistakes in your native language? Check local newspapers around the world and you’ll almost always find job postings for translation and editing. Although most jobs are looking for native English speakers, there are plenty of places that will hire you as long as you have a good grasp on written English and English grammar.

Try Upwork, Gengo, Freelancer.com or Lingosaur to find job listings.

These jobs aren’t just for English speakers though, there are multilingual newspapers & magazines in almost every country.

#7 – Transcribing

If you’re a super-fast typer, you can make money as a transcriber. The toughest part about this job is that your grammar needs to be on point, but if you’re good, you’ll have plenty of work available.

There are plenty of sites online to get jobs transcribing, like FocusFWD.com. To apply you just need to download and complete a transcription test, and if you meet their quality guidelines, you can start accepting projects.

Companies like Focus Forward pay per audio minute, ranging from $0.40 to $0.65 as a rough average, but realistically you’re only going to be able to type out 15 to 20 minutes of audio in an hour.

#8 – Customer Service Rep

If you have some people skills and don’t mind spending time on the phone, you may consider becoming a customer service rep. With this job, you can work from home, but you will likely have set hours.

Apply for a call center job with Alorica, and you’ll get to work from home, taking customer service style calls from a wide range of clients.

Depending on the client, you may also need to respond to live chat or reply to emails. They’ll also pay you during the training period which is a nice touch, but the only downside is you have to be in the United States.

#9 – Web Developer

For this job, you’ll have to have a lot of experience as a developer, but it can be a lucrative travel job.

StackOverflow is the largest online community for developers. This is a place for learning, one where you can advance your skills and also find your next opportunity.

Just head to their jobs page and click the filters. Under perks, you want to check the box marked “offers remote.” At the time of writing, there were 69 jobs available for remote developers, across a range of different programming languages.

Even if you’re not a web developer, you can master Thrive Architect and be able to build professional looking websites pretty quickly. You may then find some local businesses that need simple websites built and you can help them to create them.

Other websites for finding work as a developer:

• AuthenticJobs.com
• GitHub.com
• Jobbatical.com
• Krop.com

#10 – Sell T-Shirts

This may sound funny, but we actually know of some people who have made decent money creating cool travel shirts and selling them.

You can create your own designs at lots of different shops around the world, then sell them on the streets, at your hostel or online. There’s one guy who was interviewed on TheHustle.co who earned $100,000 in just 5 months from selling t-shirts on teespring.com!

#11 – Web Designer

There are plenty of companies out there who will hire web designers for a good income. If you have web design experience, you can check out sites like 99designs.com, coroflot.com, crowdsite.com and dribbble.com to find work.

#12 – Drop Shipping

Basically drop shipping is a very low-risk way to start up a business selling products online. Traditionally if you wanted to do this, you would have to create a product, market it, store it in a warehouse and ship it out yourself, while having to deal with refunds, returns, etc.

Finding a manufacturer will be one of the hardest things to do. Simply typing “drop shippers” into Google won’t give you very good results because only big drop shipping manufacturers that do business with big drop shippers will have the money to invest in SEO (search engine optimization), which allows their website to be seen first in Google.

It’s vital that you find a good dropshipping manufacturer if you want to earn a reliable income as a drop shipper. A website called www.abetterlemonadestand.com has put together this great list of dropshipping suppliers that can help you get started.

#13 – Play The Stock Market (Day Trading)

If you’re a gambling person, this might work for you. There are people who are earning enough to travel purely from stocks. One successful travelling day trader named Kunal said this about his best income earning:

“I ended up making $40,000 in three days, which was my best three-day run ever. I didn’t really see it as a big week as this was years in the making. Every year I learn and work my butt off to get better each day. I have a lot of process goals on how to improve each single day. That week was just the culmination of years of work and building my skills. Then when I saw the right moment to really hit it I was truly ready to take those profits.”

#14 – Affiliate Marketer

You don’t actually have to be a travel blog in order to earn a bit of money as an affiliate marketer.

If you use and love a product or service, why not recommend it to your social media friends, email list and WhatsApp contacts? If they end up making a purchase through your affiliate tracking links, you can earn a commission.

The best part about affiliate marketing is that once you have something in place, you can earn money while you’re sleeping. This blog currently earns around $5,000 per month from affiliate marketing, meaning we earn that $5,000 without having to do anything!

Check out these affiliate networks for great products and brands to recommend:

• CJ.com
• Awin.com
• Shareasale.com

#15 – Go on Fiverr

Get paid anywhere from $5 – $40 selling your services on Fiverr. You can pretty much get hired to do anything, from translation and dictation to design and photo editing, you’ll find a job on Fiverr.com.

#16 – Accounting

We met a guy in Mexico who was making good money helping companies organize their finances in spreadsheets. Depending on the company, you may not need to have a degree, but just a good understanding of spreadsheets and mathematics. There are numerous online accounting jobs available. Click here for our full article. 

#17 – Editor

There are millions of blogs online and many of them need an editor. We have editors on Goats On The Road that go over our content before it’s published to make sure everything is okay. Editing jobs can pay anywhere from $7 – $40 / hour and they can typically be done from anywhere in the world.

#18 – Selling Ebooks

This job is particularly good if you already have a blog because you’ll have already honed your writing skills and you’ll have an audience to sell to. There are a few ebook authors out there earning six-figures or more from ebook sales, but generally they have a lot of ebooks.

I know one person who makes a decent income and produces an ebook every couple of weeks! He basically writes posts and instead of publishing them on his blog, he sells them in PDF format on Amazon.

When I sell my ebooks, I write 10,000+ words in Google Docs, then I head to Canva.com (a free online design tool) and design the book to look professional using their templates. I then sell the books (or give them away for free) on this blog and on Amazon.

#19 – Selling e-Courses

This is definitely one of the most lucrative travel jobs on this list and it’s another one that goes great with having your own travel blog.

You don’t necessarily have to own your own blog to earn money selling courses though. You can create and sell your training on websites like Teachable.com and Skillshare.com and they will display it to their marketplace.

That way, you’re essentially using their audience to sell. But if you own your own blog, you’ll likely sell far more copies of your course because people will already know and trust you by reading your blog.

We have one course for sale currently for $99, but we also offer it for free to people when they start a new blog. We have also created an affordable Advanced SEO Course. Many similar courses online go for as much as $1200!

Just think, if you can create an epic resource that walks people through a step-by-step process to achieve a goal, they’ll be happy to pay for that.

If you charge $300 / course, then you only have to sell 2 courses per month and you’ll be able to live in the worlds cheapest countries full-time.

#20 – Blog Management

For this job, you will need to have a considerable amount of experience with blogging, social media and all things that go along with the industry.

If you already have a blog and have experience, you can earn a pretty good living from this. We know because we pay our blog managers between $1,500 – $3,000 per month depending on their work duties and we know of other websites that pay much more.

#21 – Copywriter

A copywriter is when you write content for someone else’s blog or website and it’s one of the best travel jobs out there. There are literally thousands of websites looking for people with experience in thousands of different fields to write posts for their blogs.

You don’t have to only write about travel either. There are parenting, mechanic, tech, fishing, outdoors, sports and many other types of blogs who are looking to pay writers to write for them.

We have personally written for dozens of blogs as freelancers and have been paid between $75 – $500 per post.

At one time, we were able to earn over $3,000 per month from freelance writing alone.

Having a blog can help you get freelance jobs because you’ll already have an online portfolio that you can use to pitch new websites.

The best way to earn a full-time income as a copywriter is to try to become a columnist on a website. You may get paid a bit less per article, but if you can land a job that guarantees you 5 articles per week at $100 each, you’ll be earning $500 / month from that one client.

See Also: How To Make Money & Travel The World as a Copywriter

#22 – Freelance Writer

I’ve separated freelance writing from copywriting because it’s actually quite different. I like to call a freelance writer a person who writes in print, while a copywriter is someone who writes online. To become a freelance writer, you may have to have a bit more experience, but the pay is higher.

It’s generally harder to land print writing jobs. Try to contact your own local newspapers and magazines to pitch them. For travel, airline magazines and guidebooks tend to pay their writers the best.

See Also: How To Make Money as a Freelance Writer

#23 – Selling Photos

This is a difficult job to earn money. If you have a blog, once you have it online, you may just find that a lot of companies will start contacting you and asking you to buy your photos. T

hese opportunities rarely come, but they can be lucrative with some photos selling for $500+. There are also lots of websites where you can post your photos and hope to find buyers.

If you don’t have a blog, you can post your photos up on sites like Shopify, iStock & ShutterStock and if they’re good, you may be able to sell some.

#24 – Selling Videos

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