7 ingenious ways to make money while you travel

Making money while you travel isn’t as difficult as you might think.

I’ve been doing it during most of my trips over the past 3 years. It’s a great way to prolong your travels, and it means you won’t have to save up as much of a lump sum before you head off.

If you’re smart about it, you can even make enough money to fund your food and accommodation costs, meaning that you can basically travel for free!

Travellers everywhere have found countless ways to make extra money on the road. Here are 7 things you could be doing to make money while you travel.

1. Sell stuff online

This one takes a little effort, but once you’ve got a shop set up you can make money from anywhere in the world. I’ve put together a guide to selling on Etsy, but you can also sell on Shopify, Squarespace, or even on your own website.

The trick is to choose a product that you can sell from anywhere. Maybe you could sell digital products, or make jewellery or knit scarves, then you can sell your products as you create them?

2. Busk your heart out

Got any performance talents that might impress people? If so, use them to make a few extra dollars while you’re travelling!

This one may require carrying around an instrument or some props for busking, but it might be worth the extra weight – there are plenty of people who make a living on busking alone. If you’re really good at something and choose the right places to display your talents, you can make a killing.

3. Freelance your current skills

If you have a few hours here and there that you can use to do some work online, why not freelance your skills to make money?

Popular freelancing skills are travel writing, photography, social media management, graphic design, web development, consulting, and photography.

So how do you find freelance work? You can try these places to search and apply for freelance jobs, or do a shout out to everyone you know.

I often do stationery designs for my friends and family, and my husband occasionally does freelance web development for people he used to know at work. There’s always someone who needs something done, you just need to let everyone know that you’re available for hire.

4. Advertise your services in a hostel

Can you do something that people would pay money for? Maybe you can cut people’s hair, host a yoga class, take people out on a surfing lesson, or run a tour of an area you’re familiar with.

Ask the front desk of your hostel whether you can put up signage for a few days, then print out a simple sign that advertises your services. You might be surprised at how much interest you get!

5. Use websites/apps like grabr

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve asked people to bring back something from a trip. Just the other day, we needed some Australia-themed party decorations and they were nowhere to be found in New York, so we ended up asked a friend to bring some back from his trip to Australia.

You can actually get paid to do this for people! Grabr is a shopping and delivery network where people list the items they want, and then travellers like yourself can purchase those items and post them back, making a few extra bucks in the process. Easy money!

6. Get hired to staff an event

There are so many festivals, trade shows, and carnivals happening around the world every day, and often these events need temporary staff to work them.

So if you’re going to be in a city for more than a few days, why not look up what events are happening? There will often be short-term jobs available for people to help out with setting up events and selling tickets.

There are 2 ways you can go about searching for these jobs. Let’s say you’re travelling to Berlin in July – you can type ‘Events Berlin July’ into Google and see what events come up, then check each event to see if they are advertising for staff through their website, or try looking on job search websites and type in ‘Event Staff’ and the location into the search.

7. Rent out your home

While we were in Boston, I leased our apartment on Airbnb. It was booked out for one of the two nights that we were away, but the money we received from renting out our apartment actually added up to more than what we spent on 2 nights of rent! Since that trip, I’ve repeatedly rented out our place on Airbnb while we travel.

You’ll have to make some careful calculations for pricing, including how much your rent/mortgage is per night, what the occupancy rate will be, and how much your cleaning costs are, but if you calculate it correctly and charge slightly more than your costs, you should be able to come out ahead!

Note: Before jumping into any of these options, remember that making money while you travel will take up time, and that means you might get less time for sightseeing. You’ll need to consider this when making your travel plans.

*This post is sponsored by Grabr. I’m proud to be an honest and transparent blogger, so every opinion expressed on AGWT is a true review of my experience.