IAMA digital nomad who sold everything to travel forever, AMA.

Yes Hello, thank you for doing this, I actually have enjoyed your blog before this AMA. I am planning to set out in June and am trying to save as much as I can now. I'm unfamiliar with being a "digital nomad" as I don't know anything about that stuff (People my age didn't even have email at University) I do want to create a travel blog and would like to make money as I'm traveling so I can keep going (not necessarily from the blog). What would you recommend be the first steps into digital nomadism for someone like me who is not as savvy in these areas.

The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau is a great resource on thinking about what services you could offer that could be location independent. Running a business is the same wherever you do it.

In terms of the technical stuff, I'd consider getting a beginners guide to WordPress to give you an overview and maybe hire a developer for a couple of hours to help get you set up on your own hosting with your own domain and explain the basics of running a WordPress site to you. Once it's up and running, it's pretty easy to maintain and add and edit content.

I see you guys are living in Playa right now. I travel through there almost everyday for work. If you wanna get together sometime hit me up. I'm currently creating a MTB bike park just south of Playa.

Nice! We'd be up for meeting up, email us through our site and we'll arrange something.

You are my new heroes.

Sorry, I don't have any questions.

Aw, thanks.

I would like to do something similar in retirement someday. I currently work between 40 and 50 hours a week in engineering, but I have my hands in a lot of different cookie jars. In my spare time, I build websites to make extra money through affiliate marketing. Any advice?

That's great that you're already starting to build sites. It does take a long time to get sites to a financially viable position. We saved up enough money to keep us going for the first year while we started the business and got our site going.

It's much cheaper to live in some places abroad, so there can be an advantage to leaving and then working on it full time if you have some savings to keep you going.

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Probably that experiences are more important than possessions and that, generally, the world is a good place full of good people just trying to get by.

Was there some huge breaking point in your lives before travel that set you on this path, or was it always the lifestyle you envisioned?

Ha, no, this was never the lifestyle I envisioned—I was going to be a rock star (second photo down, I'm second from the right).

We took a year out in 2007 to go travelling, had a great time, then came back to England in November when it was really cold and wet and miserable. I got a job in web design and development and Erin went back to work for her community arts charity, but we were both pretty unhappy having to commute and work in the cold and the wet.

The actual breaking point came a few months later when we discovered that there were other people out there who were travelling permanently and making a living doing it. We realised the web design stuff was perfect for that kind of life and then we just made the decision one evening at dinner that we could do that too. 9 months later, we were.

What's the most important thing you can do to make the most of every place you visit? Do you most often make long term plans about what you're going to do when you get to a certain place, or do you just go and find out what's there? And how do you keep from feeling lost in new places?

I think getting the most out of a place means different things to different people. Some people love to visit museums and churches, some people want to experience the music scene etc. We are really focused on food so we usually do some research about vegetarian-friendly local dishes we should look out for.

I also love to read novels and travel literature written about or set in a place to learn more about the history and culture.

We tend to do a bit of research before we arrive about food, interesting things to do etc. Although travel planning takes up a lot of time so if we're busy we might just turn up and figure it out there. We're big fans of aimless wandering in new places :)

In some places we do still experience culture shock when we arrive and can feel a bit lost and overwhelmed, but experiencing a new and different culture is part of the fun, and we usually adapt in a few days. On a practical level we use maps on our iPhone.

This is basically my life dream. I envy you and hope I can do it myself after I finish uni.

You totally should. Hope to see you out here one day!

What is the most important thing that helped your website be successful?

Time and commitment. Sticking to a regular posting schedule and building relationships with other travel bloggers has definitely helped.

Sometimes you just can't be bothered to write yet another blog post but it's at those moments you have to push through and just get it done because missing 1 post quickly turns in to missing 10.

Great advice! I'm just starting out, and I'm trying to build as many relationships as I can. For what I've learned it takes a lot perseverance. Luckily I'm that type of person.

Good luck with it! It definitely is hard work but completely worth it for us.

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We do consider ourselves backpackers because we travel with a small, carry on size backpack each. We sometimes stay in hostels but they're not the best places to get work done. Sometimes we do like to couchsurf.

Don't really feel that homeless, but that's why we like renting apartments, because it allows us to feel at home for a few months.

It's always hard leaving people, but we stay in touch with a lot of people online and try to meet up again when we can. There are some digital nomads that we've met up with on 4 different continents.

Have u guys visited Nepal?? Its awesome place for some trekking and mountain climbing stuffs...

Yes, we spent a few months in Nepal on our first trip and loved it. We did a 5 day trek up in the Himalayas and then went down to Chitwan national park and got to see rhinos in the wild. Amazing country.

What proved the trickiest obstacle to overcome on the way to full digital nomadism?

Self-belief. We still struggle with this, to be honest. Sometimes when projects fail or we don't earn enough in a particular month it can make us feel like we're just not cut out for this lifestyle.

But we've learned that you just have to keep going!

props to you for doing this. it takes a certain kind of person to let go of 'traditional life' aka a life of servitude to society and live your dreams.

Thanks very much. I think that the most important thing is making conscious choices about what I want out of life given the opportunities available to me.

There is a default traditional life that can happen if one isn't paying attention and doesn't take steps to change it. Although, if someone consciously chooses that life, then more power to them. Happiness comes in different forms to different people.

What was your fav location in North America?

San Francisco. We're vegetarian, so the food is amazing for us and we love the multi-cultural artsy vibe. We also have some good friends there.

I imagine you have to generally be indoors (or at least in one place) to do things like web design and app development, so how do you balance your need to do things that make you money with actually experiencing the places you visit?

We don't! Often we end up staying indoors far too long working on stuff until we reach the point where we have to give ourselves a slap and realise that doing this was supposed to give us freedom, not take it away.

We're fans of slow travel and for us renting an apartment for a month or more is the best way to have time to explore a place and get work done.

We tend to mix it up with time focused purely on travel and time focused on work.

Do you plan having a baby together and continue to travel with her/him? That seems an interesting life to me full of experiences and knowledge and learning languages. It wouldn't be all about the money and possessions and growing up in a bubble. But i have little insight on children, just asking. :)

We don't plan to have children, but we've met many family travellers such as Almost Fearless and Raising Miro so it's definitely possible to travel with children.

Fav food that you have experience on your travels?

So hard to choose! We love Indian dosas, all (vegetarian) Italian food, and Jordanian mezze.

I've got two pretty simple questions, but I'm curious:

1. What has been your favourite place to visit?

2. Whereabouts in the UK are you from?

1. That question gets harder and harder to answer but some of our favourite countries are India, Italy and Japan.

2. We grew up in Milton Keynes but lived in Manchester before we left.

What kind of work do you do when you get to a new destination? Do you do more application/web development or do you a wide variety of jobs? Or does your travel wallet app fund everything?

I used to do just web design and development, but now it's mostly just the app and the website. The work came from clients in the US or the UK.

What item that you sold do you miss the most, if any?

I really don't miss anything in particular, to be honest. There were things I owned that I now wish I'd taken more advantage of at the time—I had a home studio for a while and I wish I had recorded more music than I actually did—but I don't miss any particular items, mostly just the opportunities those items gave me. Don't regret leaving it all, though.

Mostly it serves as a lesson in taking advantage of the opportunities I do have now.

Any advice for someone who has no experience in programming or web development whatsoever to get started and hopefully make a career out of it?

Just start doing it. Get stuff out there as soon as possible, even if it's not that great to begin with and it's something everyone else has done. Practicing the art of shipping finished projects is almost as important as the languages themselves.

Lynda.com has some great courses on getting started with web development and I would experiment with everything—HTML and CSS, javascript (including the server things like node.js), PHP, Ruby, Python, MySQL—and find the technologies that makes the most sense to you (although, HTML, CSS and JavaScript are basically compulsory). I'd also suggest getting familiar with the Unix command line so you can learn some basics of server administration.

Once you get the basics of programming down—loops, variables, conditionals, functions—switching between various languages becomes a lot easier.

Be a sponge, make all the mistakes and enjoy the ride.

Good AMA. I had two questions. First: Do you and your partner find yourselves much happier being digital nomads? If so, in what regard? Second: Do you notice any common trends/behavior among humans in the countries that you have traveled so far?

Yes. Much happier. It comes in different forms. At the moment, because we're focused on work, I'm getting a lot of joy out of the freedom and possibility of producing my own apps. I have a wide variety of creative interests and I have nothing except the fear of poverty stopping me from pursuing them.

Then there are the times when we're walking on the beach while the sun's setting, or we're sitting at a little Burmese food stall chowing down on tea leaf salad, and I just feel this immense feeling of happiness from just being. A kind of "Holy crap, life is awesome!" feeling.

We spend a lot of our time focusing on the differences, but they are really, really insignificant compared to how similar we all are. People act like people everywhere—they mostly act in their own self interest but with huge dashes of empathy.

Music is a big one. Everyone loves music and everyone loves to party (though not necessarily with alcohol). The importance of family and food is also pretty universal.

Great story, would have loved doing the same when i was younger. just wondering how stuff stuff like insurances (if any) and taxes really works. could you elaborate?

We have travel insurance, equipment insurance and we're registered as self-employed in the UK. All of the business dealings goes through the UK so we pay taxes there, filling in online tax returns as necessary.

We've actually just written about this very thing so there are more details there.

If you don't mind sharing, how much money have you made via app sales thus far?

We haven't actually made any money from it yet as it was only released in December and we haven't received the first payment from Apple.

Our main income to date was from freelance work and from the blog and we've taken a big risk with the app as it was a lot of work up front and we don't really know what the rewards will be yet.

How does it feel to be British?

It's a privilege. Being born a middle-class white British male makes me one of the most privileged people on the planet. Traveling has been a great way to remind myself of just how amazingly lucky I am and just how much injustice there is out there.

Do you speak any other languages, if so what ones? And if not did you find yourself hindered in any way by a language barrier?

We started our trip in South America where we spent a year. It was the perfect opportunity to learn Spanish so we spent a few months in Buenos Aires studying it before travelling around the continent. We have a decent level and can get by without speaking English.

Erin speaks Italian as well.

Most of the time we learn a few phrases of the local language but English is spoken in many places and there's always a way to communicate. We've never had any problems but sometimes the language barrier stops you being able to get to know local people better.

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We love Buenos Aires! The obvious thing is seeing some tango, but we'd recommend skipping the tourist tango dinner shows and going to a milonga where you'll hear a tango band and watch locals dancing (and join in yourself if you're brave!). They sometimes have lessons beforehand. We also went to see a modern tango fusion band which was amazing and very off the beaten track.

The other things is the Feria de Mataderos which is on the outskirts of the city and gives a completely different perspective. The gauchos come into town and compete in horse competitions, there are stalls, traditional food, folk bands and dancing.

You can see more of our highlights here: http://www.neverendingvoyage.com/buenos-aires-highlights/

And info about the feria here: http://www.neverendingvoyage.com/exploring-argentinas-gaucho-country/

We have never wanted children but we have met many travelling families including these guys who have a 2 year old and another baby on the way: http://almostfearless.com/

About traveling slowly. How long do you like to stay in one country? One city?

Depends on the country, but we could easily spend 6 months here in Mexico. We were in Thailand for 7 months last winter. More expensive countries like Italy and Japan, about a month.

2-3 months is our ideal length of time for one city if we're in work mode, otherwise usually a week is enough.

This is a great AMA. You say you sold almost everything in the beginning. What were some things you couldn't bear to sell though probably didn't physically need?

My drum kit. I studied music at university, was in some great bands and there are a lot of memories tied up with that kit. Couldn't bear to let it go so it's in my mum's loft though we probably should get rid of it at some point.

We also left a few photo albums.

Is it difficult at times to find/get funds for food?

Thankfully, not yet. Right now we earn enough to cover food and our expenses but, like any business, we have ups and downs. We also have a savings account that we can dip in to should we have lean months.

Living the dream, man. What you're doing is fucking awesome.

Thanks!

Also, how do you get paid and where do you store your money? Did you keep your original bank accounts? Is converting currency a big drain on your financially?

We get paid by paypal mostly and sometimes by direct bank transfer.

We kept our original UK bank accounts. We have a couple of savings accounts and a couple of current/checking accounts. For our main account we chose a bank (Nationwide) that didn't use to charge foreign transaction fees but unfortunately they started to since we've been away and it's now hard to open a new bank account (we don't have proof of address). So we do get hit by foreign transaction fees - about 2% of ATM withdrawals we make but it's affordable.

We've written a post about managing your money while travelling and listed some better bank accounts that don't charge you to withdraw money abroad: http://www.neverendingvoyage.com/manage-money-when-travelling/

Do you truly believe you'll be able to keep going forever?

It's true that forever is a long time, but we can't see any reason why not. Probably what'll happen is that we'll just end up going slower, maybe staying places for 6 months or a year instead.

There are a lot of places that we still haven't been that we'd like to go to, plus a whole bunch of places we loved that we want to go back to. Three years in and we've barely scratched the surface.

If you had a fear about not having money/ending up on the street, how did you overcome it?

I didn't. It's still there. Every month, when the tallies come in and we've found we've spent more than we've earned, I get a sinking feeling like "this is it, party's over. Beginning of the end."

But then we just take stock of our situation. We have savings, so we're OK for at least a few months. We have gained a ton of useful experience—social networking, building websites, creating content, developing and launching apps—that has got to be valuable to somebody somewhere and we have the freedom to go to where the work is, if necessary.

Doing something like this gives you a broad range of skills and opportunities that you don't really get in a regular job. You can follow whichever rabbit hole you care to jump down and learn a ton of useful things on the way which opens up more opportunities.

The other thing is that our expenses are low and if we really needed to we could just head to a country where we can live really cheaply, rent an apartment for a few hundred dollars a month and work harder. In a way, we're a better position than those who could lose their jobs any time and still have to pay their expenses every month.

But it's definitely still a fear we have.

Thanks for your honesty- that's very helpful! Just a quick follow-up - would you be as adventurous as you are if you were by yourself?

Nope, that's all Erin. She would be just as adventurous if she was by herself.

We do meet plenty of solo travellers and digital nomads, though.

do you actually use your own app?

Totally. Really, we built it for us. Trail Wallet is for tracking travel expenses which we've found is one of the best ways to stay on budget. We used to try to remember what we spent at the end of the day and enter it into a spreadsheet but having an app take care of it while we're out and about makes it a lot easier.

Are you vegan, or just vegetarian? I am a vegan, and I'm curious how hard it would be to travel for me.

We're vegetarian, so we eat dairy and it can be difficult enough for us in some places. South America is hard but Southeast Asia is easier because there's less dairy there.

Plenty of vegans do travel, like these guys.

My wife and I walked 3100 miles across america last year, doing volunteer work with our dogs. It was awesome, and now we don't like living in one place. I have a few questions:

What age were you and your partner when you unplugged and hit the road?

How long have you two been together?

Do you ever want to have kids?

Godspeed, and safe travels!

Thanks, and that sounds like it was an amazing adventure. Kudos.

We've been together since we were 18 and we were both around 30 when we left. We don't plan to have kids.

good for you. We did much the same but had 4 kids and an RV. We traveled for some 4 years and settled down in Mexico. Nothing better than being on the road though. Where in Mexico are you currently?

We're currently in Playa del Carmen. Where are you based?

Did you draw up some kind of business plan before you set off?

What are your approximate living expenses once you're settled somewhere, not including the money it takes to travel there?

How do you make money through your blog?

Are the flats you rent pre-furnished or do you have to spend money on furnishing them with things which you then leave behind?

Sorry for the bunch of questions. This just looks like such an incredible lifestyle. Having to resist the urge to fling myself at your digital feet and wail "TEACH MEEEEEE"

Honestly no we didn't have a business plan. We aren't the best business people! We just saved enough to keep us going for a year while we figured it out on the road.

It really depends. In Chiang Mai, Thailand we spent $1350 for the two of us but we rented a really nice apartment. We know some people who spent $500 a person there.

In Playa del Carmen, Mexico we are spending about $1500 a month (for us both). Usually when we rent apartments and stay for 1+ months we spend around this.

We make money on the blog mainly through advertising, with a little bit of affiliate commission from recommending products we love. More info in this post.

We always make sure we get furnished apartments that have everything including furniture, towels, sheets and kitchen equipment. Occasionally we might buy a few extra things for the kitchen if we are staying a few months. Our latest apartment in Playa del Carmen is the first time we bought more than that - we bought a few chairs to make it more comfortable, but the apartment was below our budget so it all balanced out.

You can see the apartments we rented in the last year and how we found them here

It is an incredible lifestyle. It's also really hard too sometimes but completely worth it for us. Good luck if you decide to do it!

Thank you so much for such a comprehensive response!

Did you have a sizeable online presence in terms of blog popularity etc before you started this or has it grown with you?

No problem :)

We only started the blog 10 days before we left so it has grown with us.

(I'm feverishly reading through your blog now. :) )

So is your main expense the rent of whichever apartment you live in at the time, generally?

Also, what made you decide to make this leap? It's such a huge and brave thing to do...

Yes, that's the main expense.

The decision felt quite natural to us really. We travelled around the world for a year in 2007-8 and when we came back it was really hard to settle back into life in England. We knew we wanted to travel again but thought we'd wait a few years. Then we discovered the concept of digital nomads and with Simon's web design skills it just seemed the natural thing for us to do. 9 months later we did. I think the previous travel experience made it easier for us.

Favourite place(s) in South America?

Bolivia and Argentina. In particular we loved Buenos Aires and NW Argentina (there's a Salta-Cafayate-Cachi road trip that's amazing), and the salt flats jeep tour from Tupiza to Uyuni in Bolivia.

How are you planning for the future? Do you have health insurance? When you are older and begin to face deteriorating health, how do you plan to support yourselves?

Not trying to be a dick, but I spent over two years on the road on 4 continents and returned because I didn't have answers to those long term questions.

We have travel insurance which covers us for medical emergencies while we are travelling. As we are British citizens we are still covered by the free healthcare on the NHS (we pay tax there) so if anything really serious happened we could always go back there. Healthcare in places like Thailand is really affordable too so that's always an option.

We don't have a retirement fund but we do have savings that we hope to grow over time. The world is changing and we think the nature of retirement isn't the same any more. We don't do manual labour so we won't need to retire as early as people from previous generations. We work on things we love so plan to do that as long as we can. Also we're building things that bring in passive income so hopefully that will increase over time too.

We don't have all the answers and honestly we don't know what we'll do in our 70s and 80s but we're not going to let that concern stop us from living the life we want to now.

I think it's great that people go out and travel. Everyone should do it.

I do have a problem with people that go and travel with the mind set that society will take care of them later - whether it's healthcare, housing, retirement necessities, etc. That means that people that have worked and paid into the system now have another person to support.

Please don't think I'm saying you fall in that category. I suppose I'm just on my soap box because I met people like that and it really pissed me off.

I agree that's not fair. We don't expect anyone to look after us.

I think you should visit Sana'a. Old Sana'a is amazing!

We've actually wanted to visit since seeing the film A New Day in Old San'a set there. It looks stunning! I'm not sure it's safe to visit Yemen at the moment though - the British foreign office advises against all travel there. Hopefully in the future though.

Yeah, they do advise against travel to Yemen as a whole, but read some of the recent reviews on travel. If you avoid demonstrations, Sana'a is relatively safe. Many people go there without event. Keep in mind Sana'a has military installations right there, so it's more secure. I would recommend it, even while the more northern parts of Yemen are at odds. I think you'd be surprised by the people there. Good people, friendly, and tourist friendly (even now).

Thanks for the info!

I didn't immediately see your ages but do you ever worry about your future, in terms of retirement plans? I'm curious because most people have to work pretty hard when they're younger so they don't have to kill themselves when they're in their sixties. I'm not trying to be rude or anything but I'm interested in your outlook.

We're 31 and 32. Honestly we don't really worry about the future.

We don't have a retirement fund but we do have savings that we hope to grow over time. The world is changing and we think the nature of retirement isn't the same any more. We don't do manual labour so we won't need to retire as early as people from previous generations. We work on things we love so plan to do that as long as we can. Also we're building things that bring in passive income so hopefully that will increase over time too.

We don't have all the answers and honestly we don't know what we'll do in our 70s and 80s but we're not going to let that concern stop us from living the life we want to now.

That sounds fascinating! I have a couple questions.

• Had you planned this voyage before commencing it or was it an impromptu decision?
• When you and your partner started traveling, what specific goals did you have in mind?

We planned it 9 months before we left, which gave us time to save up a little money to get us going, sell most of our stuff and start building a web design portfolio by doing work for family and friends.

In terms of goals, we mostly just wanted to see the world! That's since expanded to building a location independent business that allowed us to work anywhere.

Do you travel in an RV or by car? Do you hike any of this never ending journey? I have always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail in it's entirety.

We mostly travel by public transport but occasionally we rent a car like we did in Tuscany this summer. We also had a moped in Thailand for 5 months last winter.

We're not massive hikers, we do day hikes sometimes and we did a 5 day trek in the Nepal himalayas which was amazing. We're actually planning to do a US road trip in April from Utah to San Francisco and are looking forward to hiking in the various national parks.

The Appalachian Trail would be amazing—have you read Wild, by Cheyl Strayed, about hiking the Pacific Crest trail?

Do you do drugs because I've heard that nomadic people tend to have a dependency to certain drugs?

Does coffee count? I'm crazy addicted to the bean.

We don't do illegal drugs and it would be crazy to risk it in some of the countries we visit. You wouldn't want to risk some of the jails.

We know many digital nomads and none of them are dependent on drugs as far as we know.

Coffee is a drug my friend

Don't I know it. There is some rubbish coffee in the world, too. Those are the bad days.

Have you found yourself in the midst of war at any point? Or anything close?

The riots in Vancouver when they lost the Stanley Cup! The centre of town was a bit of a war zone then...

Otherwise, no, no wars. We did get stuck for a few days in the town of Huaraz in the Peruvian Andes as they were protesting and the roads were blocked. It was more inconvenient than dangerous, though.

What is the biggest mental obstacle of long term travel? How do you deal with it?

Travel burnout affects every long term traveller we know. We get tired and stop appreciating the places we're visiting, only noticing the tricky parts.

That's why we prefer slow travel. We find that helps a lot. Also, splurging on a nice hotel when we need a break and realising that we don't have to go and see all the "must see" tourist attractions and that it's OK just to sit on the beach and stare at the sea for a few days!

What is the funniest thing that you have witnessed on your journey?

Japan was full of weird quirkiness, especially funny signs and statues (see photos 2 and 3 here.

We're always amazed at just how much you can fit on a moped in Thailand. We've seen a family of 5 whizz by, three on the seats and two kids standing on the foot plate. Dogs are commonly on them as well.

Digital nomads usually work in webbuid/design, copywriting, web optimization and more... For which type of job do you see the biggest opportunity in the next few years?

Web design and development is definitely the most lucrative. The web is evolving fast at the moment and if you can keep up to date with the advances then there's always going to be work.

With the explosion of mobile devices and the advent of retina screens, a lot of the web is being rebuilt so there's a huge demand for competent designers and developers.

How do you decide where, and when, to travel somewhere new?

It really depends. Sometimes we have dates where we need to be in a certain place for a wedding or a conference so we'll base our travels around that and explore nearby countries—we like to spend around 6-9 months in a region.

Other times we just go to the place that's calling the most, like last year when we left Asia for Italy as we were craving the food.

We also try to follow the summer as we don't like the cold. Our "winter" is usually a trip back to the UK to visit family in the British summer.

I am a student studying mobile app development right now and I dream of doing the very same thing you are doing. Any advice you could give on getting started? Also is your app development on contract on a particular project or do you get paid hourly through telecommuting jobs?

Thanks for your time!

Get stuff out there and start building an audience. Getting found in the App Store is hard, but if you have a community out there supporting you it can make things easier.

Freelancing might also be a good way to get some real-world experience without having to do all the marketing like you will with your own apps.

I haven't done any app development contracts, just doing my own apps for the moment, but for my web design and development stuff it was just freelance project stuff.

As for the work that fund your travels, how to you attain new clients? Are they referrals that are part of your network in the UK? Or are they new clients from new places you visit - if so how do you advertise your services?

I've actually stopped doing client work to focus on app development, but it used to be a mixture of referrals from previous clients and new business that came through our travel blog.

The majority of my clients are from either the UK or the US and not from the new places we visit.

Here's a post where we cover our work stuff in detail.

When traveling are you ever concerned dangerous wildlife. For example, poisonous snakes or spiders? What about hostile locals? Do you mostly travel to developed areas of the world? Or rural and poor areas as well? Speaking of that, did you have to get several vaccines before you left? Do you like talking to locals or other travelers more? Do you have any funny or crazy stories that happened with the locals on your adventure?

No, we aren't really concerned about dangerous wildlife. Australia has a bad reputation for snakes and spiders but we never had any problems. It was quite exciting the few times we came across a snake and we just stayed out of their way.

We've never come across any hostile locals. Most people are really friendly and welcoming. We travel in developed areas (the US, Japan, Italy) as well as poorer rural areas too (India, Sri Lanka, Laos, Bolivia etc). Although these days we can't spend as much time in rural areas as we need a good internet connection for work. That said, it's amazing how well connected many parts of the world are now.

We did get vaccines before we left. We share the list here: http://www.neverendingvoyage.com/practicalities-of-being-a-digital-nomad-part-1/

We like talking with locals as well as other travellers. Meeting locals is definitely the best way to learn more about a place.

How did you prepare yourselves for this trip, workwise and financially? ( did you learn new skills or built new networks, how much money did you save?)

We cut our living expenses right down and managed to save 75% of our joint income. We managed to save £23,000 to keep us going while we built up the business.

Business-wise, we didn't really get started until we left but I'd been improving my web design skills which I'd been doing as a hobby, built up my portfolio by doing work for family friends, and I worked for a web agency for 9 months (my first actual job in web design).

We only started the blog 10 days before we left but I'd been networking with other travel bloggers on Twitter and by commenting on their sites. Here's a post with more details on our background and how we got started.

Where do you live mostly? Hostels? AirBNB? Hotels? Short term rentals?

Also, by what means do you travel usually? Hitchhiking, plane, bus, etc?

We rent apartments a lot of the time or hotels/guesthouses for shorter stays. We used AirBnb to find a really affordable apartment in Italy.

We travel by bus most of the time or train when it's an option, and plane when we need to. Occasionally we'll rent a car or moped.

Being web designers you probably carry some expensive equipment, such as high-end laptops and storage devices, have you ever had problems with the security of theft of these items?

Thankfully, we've never had any problems, but when we stay in hotels we make sure they're locked up inside our backpacks which we chain sometimes secure to an unmovable piece of furniture with a light cable lock. Obviously, this isn't super secure but a lot of it is just about making it more difficult to steal from you than the other guy.

We only have carry on luggage, so we take our stuff with us on buses and planes. Never put the gear in the hold or below a bus.

We also have Time Machine backups that we put in each other's packs and we use SugarSync to send up the most important data to the cloud.

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32 (well Erin's still 31 but will be 32 in March)

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We spent 6 months in the evenings and weekend slowly getting rid of it all. It was an exhausting process and some things were hard to let go but ultimately it felt very liberating.

We sold a lot on ebay which was really time consuming.

Our easiest and most profitable method was actually setting up a "stuff blog" where we listed items we were selling with photos and a price and then sent the link around to our friends and colleagues and encouraged them to send it to theirs. People really liked it as they got bargains and it was much easier than ebay for us. We sold almost everything listed there and was a good option for furniture that we wouldn't have been able to post.

We also sold books on Amazon marketplace. We gave a lot away to charity shops in the end as well.

We've actually written a 3 part series detailing exactly how we sold everything: http://www.neverendingvoyage.com/how-to-sell-all-of-your-stuff-part-1/

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It is hard work but start small -maybe set yourself a goal of a certain number of things to sell per week. If storage is costing you then it might also be worth giving away a lot of the low value items and focusing on selling the more profitable things. Good luck!

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• We make between $1,000–3,000 a month from the blog
• I've cut right down on the freelance web development to focus on the app development, so now it's only between $200-500 a month
• Mostly referrals. People say nice things about me to other people, and those other people hire me. A lot of my new business came through the travel blog—we'd talk about my freelance web stuff, they'd go visit my portfolio and then hire me.
• I do both front end and backend, from designs and layouts in Photoshop, to custom WordPress theme and plugin development, writing javascript, database administration. I have also built web apps using CakePHP, and have done some Ruby.
• At the moment, I'm working up to 12 hours a day on designing and developing apps and creating sites. When we're focused on the travel, then maybe an hour or two.
• I grew up building websites, but only for my own personal enjoyment. I got in to PHP in 2007 but it wasn't until 2009 that I got a portfolio together and got a real job for a web design agency.
• Absolutely. The most important things are passion and persistence, everything else can be learned.

Not interested in AMA. Just came in to say, as someone who is moving soon too and has a friend who does something similar to what you do. Goodluck. You will have fun times! and meet many people. You guys are in for a ride and i wish you the best of luck!!!!

Thanks! We've been going for three years so far and it's been fantastic. Lots more to look forward to!

Good luck with your own move.

What is the most dangerous situation you have found yourself in so far?

We've actually been really lucky that we've never been in what we'd consider a dangerous situation. We were almost mugged in Rio once by a gang of kids and their adult ringleader but they just aimed at the handbags of the girls we were with and they didn't manage to get them.

Some of the buses in Bolivia were a bit unnerving, too. Driving along mountain roads through thick fog without slowing down was a little nerve-wracking.

How do you differ from a hobo?

A hobo has better dress sense. They also have those cool barrels of fire.

But, yeah, like watersign says, we work, we buy things, we pay taxes. We try to build stuff that is hopefully useful to other people but instead of doing that in an office, we do that in a hotel by the beach or an apartment in an interesting neighbourhood of an interesting city.

I've taken a quick look at your blog and I must say it sounds and looks awesome. i've thought a couple of times about this kind of life, but I'm so lazy I don't know if I could make it. Anyway, I'm only 15 right now, so I'm not in a hurry as for deciding. :) As for questions, I have two: * did you take all those photos in your blog by yourselves? They're wonderful! * do you know anyone who leads a similar life, but exclusively on a boat? Do they like it? Because I've mostly thought about a "boat" life. :) Thanks for your time!

Thanks very much! Erin takes all of the photos for the blog.

This couple live on a boat so it's definitely possible: http://sailingaroundtheglobe.blogspot.mx/

Good luck if you decide to go ahead.

Did you have a threeway with your wife and any thai hookers while in Bangkok?

No.

Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck, or a hundred duck-sized horses?

(Traditional q. for Reddit. Has to be done. Sorry).

The horse-sized duck. Getting attacked by lots of little things freaks me the hell out.

Plus, it'd have to waddle around on those ridiculously impractical feet. Have you ever had to walk in diving flippers? Wouldn't be hard to tie it up in knots.