Digital Nomads by Rachael A. Woldoff and Robert C. Litchfield

Author:Rachael A. Woldoff and Robert C. Litchfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Freelancing

Although some digital nomads work as remote employees for a company, and some informants told us that the number of nomads with this type of income source is growing, we found that freelance contract work was the most common form of income in Bali’s digital nomad community. We define freelancing simply: selling a professional skill on an hourly or contract basis but without the obligations or continuing benefits available to full-time employees.6 Freelance work ranges from short-term gigs such as updating a website or conducting internet research to larger projects such as developing a firm’s digital media campaign, to ongoing client retainers.

Sociologists have been highly critical of freelancing due to the many ways in which it divests workers of stability and benefits compared to traditional jobs,7 but digital nomads reject this negative view as missing the point that the so-called stability of traditional work is often illusory and generally not worth the sacrifice in personal freedom. Freelance income is central to digital nomadism because it allows individuals to enter and sustain the digital nomad lifestyle without a traditional job, significant savings, or a successful business.

Contrary to what outsiders might imagine, most nomads we met began their travels with limited financial resources and without full-time employment or entrepreneurship revenue. Instead, they depended on their professional skills to secure freelance employment in order to meet their expenses. Some nomads’ skills were readily transferrable to remote freelance work, and these individuals seem to have the easiest adjustment to digital nomadism. Often, they were able to arrange freelancing contracts with their former employers or bring freelance work with them on the road that they had obtained before leaving. These nomads could bill their services at the typical Western rates while also working with employers who were accustomed to remote freelancers. These individuals strive to retain their freelance contracts, making sure they deliver quality work on time and carefully cultivating ongoing work relationships that originated back home. Typically, this required some effort, with our informants reporting that they often had to work odd hours in Bali to match up to their clients’ work hours in time zones elsewhere in the world. Those with multiple freelance contracts in different parts of the world also had to take care to limit the disruption to their own lives that juggling client meetings across multiple time zones might cause.

Not all nomads were so readily able to transfer their skills online. Those who lacked easy access to gainful freelance work faced the challenge of how to pivot their skills to fit remote opportunities. These nomads were more likely to use web-based marketplaces for gig work such as Upwork.com, Fiverr.com, and Freelancer.com to patch together employment and scrape by. To get started as nomads, some worked as virtual assistants (VAs). Virtual assistants perform a range of tasks. Some are relatively simple, such as conducting online research, making slide presentations, and arranging travel schedules, but others are more sophisticated, such as project management for online businesses. Though VA work is an entry

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