Nomadic Designer Profits from Writing About Life in a Bag

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hey, hey, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. Welcome back. We are approaching the end of the week.

Got a story for you today about a designer who follows the sometimes well-trodden path, perhaps a cliched path, some might say, of leaving his corporate job to travel and work remotely. He then realizes that his nomadic lifestyle hacks are a hot topic and a profitable one as well. Now, here at Side Hustle School, our mission is not to tell everyone to go and quit their job and travel around the world, work remotely. In a lot of ways, I started this project almost as a counterpoint to that message because not everyone wants to do that. Even though I travel a lot and work remotely, I think the greatest thing about location-independent work is the ability to do it.

Whether you actually choose to do it or not is up to you. So that's why my mission is to help people have more security and options so that they can do what's important to them. And for a lot of people, that means staying in their job but also creating a project on the side to make money. So in this story, I'll talk a bit less about the nomadic part of what he's doing and a bit more about how he's actually making money 'cause I think that's important. And what he's doing to make money is something that anyone could do anywhere.

So whether you're interested in travel and remote work or not, I think you can still learn something from this episode. And for those who are interested, I'll also share three resources at the end of the episode, three recommended places you can go to learn more about this topic. All right, so let's say thank you to today's sponsor and then I'll bring you today's story. [Music]

In some ways, Tom Whelan's story is a familiar one. He had a prestigious job at Apple which might be every designer's dream job or at least it's a dream job for many of them.

But he couldn't suppress the urge deep within to see and experience more. Tom didn't want to stay cooped up in an office, even a highly rewarding one. You see, he wanted to travel. He wanted to see the world. So he left Apple and took a remote job as creative director and designer for the Infatuation, a quickly growing restaurant review platform.

This new position allowed him an opportunity to embrace his dream of traveling while still bringing in a steady income. Like many up and coming nomads, Tom spent months planning out his perfect travel setup. He needed a lightweight yet comfortable backpack. He needed to carefully select his clothing so that he wouldn't have to check a bag on flights. And he needed to discover what was essential to his dream lifestyle and what wasn't.

It was a long process, but by the time Tom moved out of his New York City apartment and left for a one-way flight out of JFK, he was confident in his gear selection. After a couple months of nomadic work experience, in July 2016, Tom wrote an article on Medium entitled "Everything You Need to Travel the World in One Backpack." He added a few affiliate links for amazon.com in the blog, but he was really more interested in sharing the research he'd done in the hopes that it would help other aspiring nomads in their purchasing decisions. Before he knew it, his article had been read hundreds of times within just a few days. Tom checked his Amazon affiliate account expecting about $5 in income and mainly from his supportive mom. But instead, he had $25.

After a few more weeks, he'd made over $100 from one post without doing anything else from it. And even though it was just $100, he knew he was onto something. People wanted to learn more about strategies for the nomadic life. In particular, they wanted honest reviews about gear and equipment. Tom had been toying with the idea of a new side project and it occurred to him that he might've found it.

So in February 2017, Tom uploaded his first video review of a travel beard trimmer. He put that video on a new YouTube channel called Pack Hacker. Shortly after, he began working on his website, packhacker.com, from a co-working space in Bali, Indonesia. He built a site with some help from a friend who was a programmer. His startup costs were extremely minimal, just web hosting, a small lapel mic, and a tripod for his iPhone so that he could record videos for that channel.

Now it just came down to putting together content. And since he already had all the travel gear that he would initially review, it was pretty easy to do. The site launched in May and Tom began publishing content each week. What was that content? Well, some of it was interviews with other nomads.

One of these nomads mentioned how much they were in love with a certain kind of backpack. This was called the Everyday Backpack, made from a company called Peak Design, and Tom knew he had to try it for himself. Tom decided to reach out to Peak Design after the interview to see if they would be interested in sending him one. He felt a little sheepish and jokes about how long it took him to write the perfect email asking for free gear. At the end of the message, Tom noted that he wouldn't guarantee a review, nor would he sugarcoat his thoughts if he did publish anything.

It was important to him that his Pack Hacker editorial remained independent. Peak Designs replied and offered to send him a pack. Less than a week later, Tom had an Everyday Backpack in his hands, and then another week later, he had published an extensive review. For those first several months, readership was low, but it grew steadily. Within three months, he was bringing in a couple hundred visitors a day.

Some of those visitors would click an affiliate link, and if they made a purchase, Tom would get paid. He says his fairly quick rise in traffic came about because he was making content that hit the mark for readers around the world. He looked for more companies to build relationships with and more gear to review, but that's when he ran into a challenge. Shipping a lot of backpacks and other items around the world was tough, and his reviews were always better when he could physically touch and play with the products rather than just reading about them. This logistical problem led to Tom establishing a home base in Detroit, Michigan, where it's much easier to work with brands, shoot videos, and create good content.

True to form, he still plans to travel three to four months a year. These days, Pack Hacker gets over 5,000 visitors a day, has over 20 detailed backpack reviews, and gets about 10 gear review requests from brands per month. So now they're coming to him instead of him going to them. The pace has picked up quite a bit, especially considering that the site is just one year old, and those affiliate links are now bringing in over $1,200 per month in profit after expenses. Tom is now trying to figure out what comes next.

He's got more travel coming up, of course, and more work on the site. And if he can go from $1,200 a month to $4,000 a month, the topic of our most recent weekly recap, he just might have more than a side hustle on his hands. [Music]

All right, for those who are interested, I promise to give you three resources, three things you can go and look at if you'd like to learn more about the process of living and working remotely. These are actually three friends of mine that I'm gonna give shout outs to. But unlike what Tom does in today's story, there aren't any affiliate links.

We'll put these on the show notes page for you, of course. My first recommendation is intentionaltravelers.com. This is run by two friends, Jed and Michelle Chang. And their site, their theme is discover travel beyond the typical vacation. And Jed and Michelle are truly location independent.

They live for a few months at a time in different parts of the world. They both work on the World Domination Summit with me, so they're in Portland, Oregon a few months of the year. But this year in particular, they were in Vietnam for a few months. They were in, well, I forget, a bunch of other places, Italy for a few months, all over the world. They've been doing this for a number of years.

So when you check out their blog, you can learn more about it. Second recommendation, another friend named Sean Ogle, who's been a friend for I think a decade now. I wrote about him in the Art of Nonconformity book many, many years ago. He's gone on to do a lot of stuff himself. We actually profiled him on the show for a totally different project.

He's got multiple projects going on. But one of his original projects was called Location Rebel. So we'll link that up in the show notes as well, locationrebel.com, I think. And then last, a Canadian who has been traveling the world for also a decade, maybe more than that now. Nora Dunn goes by the moniker, The Professional Hobo.

So we'll link up her website as well as a book she wrote for unconventional guides called Working on the Road. Today is episode 490. So all those resources are gonna be at sidehustleschool.com/490. That's 490. Thank you for listening today.

As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. I'll be back tomorrow with a new weekly recap for you as well as a preview of some fun things to come. We are always trying to advance here, make improvements, go beyond what we used to do, as we learn more and more about the amazing community who are listening to the show and taking action. So wherever you are, I hope you have a wonderful day. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Sodasleschool.

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