Ever find yourself daydreaming about clocking out early and still cashing in big? You’re not alone! The secret sauce to working less hours while keeping your bank account healthy is something many of us crave but aren’t sure how to achieve. Well, you’re in luck! This post is all about cracking the code on how to work fewer hours and still watch your earnings grow. From smart hacks that boost your productivity to side gigs that don’t waste your free time, we have a few tips for making the most out of every hour. So, if you’re ready to embrace location-independent work and time freedom, stick around. Let’s dive into the world of less work, more play, and yes—more money!
How to Work Less Hours and Create Location Freedom
Building a business that lets you clock fewer hours is like your golden ticket to location independence. Imagine swapping your desk for a beach chair or your home office for a cozy café in Paris. Sounds dreamy, right? Well, it’s also doable. Crafting a business to work fewer hours isn’t just about more leisure time. It’s a necessary step towards living a nomadic lifestyle.
I’m talking flexibility, freedom, and, yes, financial stability all rolled into one. Whether you’re plotting to be a globe-trotter or just aiming to be free to choose where you work, I’ve got the experience and expertise to help you make it happen. Let’s break down how working less can mean living more—wherever in the world you choose to be. I also want to dive into some highly flexible side gigs you can do remotely while your business income is still growing to support you!
What Creating Location and Time Freedom Isn’t
Creating location and time freedom by owning a business is doable. But I don’t want to create the misconception that it’s easy. It takes a lot of discipline and setting yourself up for success to build a business that genuinely enables you to work fewer hours and do so remotely. There aren’t shortcuts to true location freedom. But – there are ways to ease into the transition faster than you probably realize!
Many digital nomads begin their travels before their business successfully covers their cost of living. They do this by working remote jobs where they can set their own hours. This gives them freedom of location while they still work to achieve freedom of time. These goals typically can’t be achieved through affiliate marketing, MLMs, or traditional employment. It can be achieved in many ways, but central to all of them is owning your own piece of internet real estate. Owning your domain and website gives you a place to sell digital products, advertise a Patreon, or receive profitable brand partnerships. Each of these can be done quite passively and on your own schedule.
Influencers Don’t Work Less
Most influencers who share openly about their success will let you know it is anything but passive. TikTok’s sweetheart Elise Meyers has shared day in the life reels that tell a more honest story. The most profitable influencers and creators often work as many hours as anyone with a full-time job. This is necessary to ensure relevance and growth! Perhaps doing work on your schedule is your goal. Not working fewer hours for you, and becoming an influencer is still a great idea in that case. I do share a lot of information for marketing yourself on TikTok, and it is a great source of income for many people! However, if location independence is a goal on your radar, time freedom is likely as well. This is why I am such a big believer in starting a blog!
How Does Blogging Lead to Working Less Hours?
Blogging income does not start passively. It’s up to you whether or not you will work fewer hours in the beginning. It’s the ultimate income generation strategy because you can scale it as aggressively or gently as you like. I prefer starting blogs aggressively with daily posts and mailing list building from the start. This means I spend a lot of hours doing keyword research, posting, promoting, and optimizing my blog in the beginning. However, I’ve found historically that blogging has a “sweet spot” if you utilize high-quality SEO tactics (which are easier to learn than most people think).
Creating a Lighter Work Load
Once a blog has 100 posts, I will stop updating it daily and move to a bi-weekly schedule. This is because a truly optimized website can generate significant traffic organically through search engines if you are strategic. Once you reach your desired traffic levels, you can back off further and post once a week or even less. Many highly successful bloggers only create new content monthly! This allows you to stay “fresh” in search engines without spinning your wheels creatively. The passive income will come through advertising. I talk about that more in my post about Ad Agency Traffic Requirements.
If you haven’t started a blog yet, or you aren’t sure what income levels are possible, you can read about my personal goals for this website here where I share my 2024 blogging strategies. Another way blogging income can transition to passive income is through selling your blog once it is established. Experienced bloggers know that blogging is quite formulaic. And if we learn to pay attention to the data, we can create multiple successful blogs. Then scale them, and sell them to make multiple 6 and even 7 figure exits.
I highly recommend employing this strategy of creating blogs to sell if you are interested in working for extremely productive stretches of time, and then taking extended time off for leisure! My preference is to always keep one active blog that is mostly passive, and sell secondary blogs.
How Can You Work Fewer Hours While Your Blog is Still Growing?
So, as I’ve shared in prior posts, this exact website is new for me in 2024. Meaning that it’s not yet highly profitable, though it is quickly growing. So, as an experienced blogger who has been out of blogging for a couple of years. I still need to earn an income as the breadwinner for my family. We are fully location-independent and currently living in Mexico. As a family of six, you can easily do this for less monthly income than you may think!
Teaching Language
There are a few jobs that I have enough experience with to endorse doing on a part-time basis. One of my favorites is teaching English as a second language. However, this can be tricky to get started in. The main platform that is always hiring regardless of degrees or certificates is Cambly.
Cambly
Cambly is reputable; they pay promptly, and they have a large library of lessons you can utilize if needed. However, most clients you encounter on Cambly are fluent already. Normally, they are just excited to have a good discussion and sharpen up their English skills. So, it’s low demand, but the dark side of this is that Cambly also doesn’t pay very well. Around $10 an hour can be expected. I still recommend tutoring with Cambly. Take the time to get the experience on a part time basis, and then switch to a different platform!
Preply
Preply is a superior platform to cambly in my experience. They allow you to set your own rates (they do take a portion so keep this in mind!) And they also pay promptly and have a large resource library. However, to excel on Preply you will need to be able to boast that you have experience (which you gained on Cambly). Because you set your own prices, if you want to be selected by students, you will either need to be the lowest price or have a really robust profile. So having experience is a major plus! You can easily make between $15-$20 an hour tutoring on preply, which in many countries is a highly respectable salary that can cover the cost of living for a family.
Transcription
Transcription is another well-paying option usually done remotely and on your own schedule. The pay can vary greatly from one company to the next, and you will need to pass a test with any company in order to work for them as a transcriptionist. Though I have leaned into teaching English as a second language for our secondary income in this season. I do have experience with and recommend the companies below if you think you’d prefer transcription.
Transcribe Me
Transcribe Me does not pay the highest rates in the industry, but it is a great place to get your footing and practice the skill of transcription remotely. The average monthly income the website boasts is $250 a month. Meaning the majority of workers are working very part-time. However, scouring some message boards, I have found quite a few people that earn a full-time income by working full-time hours. So if you want to embrace location independence and earn an income while still building your business. This could be a great direction to take.
Rev
Rev is another good option that boasts similar pay averages and shares their high earners are bringing home closer to $1500 per month. It’s important to note that if you are new to transcription there is a learning curve. The amount you earn at first should not reflect what you earn per hour after a few weeks. The good part about working for Rev is that there is always a large amount of work available and it can be completed on your schedule.
Copywriting
And here’s a little secret from the digital nomad’s playbook: copywriting. Diving into copywriting as a side gig is like finding a treasure chest in the world of working less hours and living that location-independent dream. Copywriting is not just about selling content; it’s your ticket to freedom while building a business. It’s flexible, it’s in demand, and best of all, it can be done from anywhere in the world with Wi-Fi.
So, copywriting might be the gig you need if you’re looking to fund your adventures or just craving that café-hopping lifestyle without being tied down. Let’s dive into how wielding the power of words can support your quest for fewer work hours and ultimate location independence. Who knew your way with words could open up the world to you?
Fiverr
Fiverr is the best place to begin your copywriting journey. For most writers, it is not the most profitable. However, competitive pricing will allow you to build your portfolio and switch to more profitable platforms quickly. Here, you will set up a copywriting profile and offer articles of varying lengths; you can upcharge for a higher word count or additional services (such as keyword research, etc…) When I worked on Fiverr to build my initial profile. The baseline service needed to be $5. I spent a month working full-time on Fiverr and wrote over 100 articles. This gave me a very healthy portfolio and a few great customer reviews I could boast.
Constant-Content
Constant-Content is my favorite platform for finding clients and selling copywriting content for a fair price. It has stringent requirements, and you must pass an exam to access its platform. However, this is a good thing. Because if you have the skills to be a quality copywriter, you do not want to compete against others with poor skills and low prices. In my experience, the best way to start with this platform is by writing a handful of articles for your catalog in areas of expertise. This allows prospective clients to purchase a sample of your content. And frequently, when they see your writing they will reach out to you to write additional content for them – this is how you can create a sizable income with copywriting.
Finding Other Reputable Remote Income Options
The goal is still working fewer hours and earning more income. This isn’t going to be possible while you are still doing hourly work instead of running your own website, but as we have already discussed, that is a process. To support yourself with location freedom prior to full financial + time freedom, you can find countless remote options on websites like RatRaceRebellion or Flexjobs.com.
Both are quality options, and Rat Race Rebellion is free, but they do try to vet out their jobs. However, as hard as they try, sometimes scams or jobs that just aren’t great get through. This makes flex jobs my preferred option. I have found traditional employment that was remote, as well as contractor gigs using flex jobs personally. The businesses posting jobs have to pay to receive resumes through Flex Jobs which totally eliminates fraud in my experience!
The Last Puzzle Piece: Working less Hours and Earning More Money
The final consideration for adopting greater freedom in your lifestyle is the cost of living. To work fewer hours while earning more money is more achievable for someone with a moderate to low cost of living than it is for someone living in large cities like New York or LA. Many countries have even higher cost of living estimates than the United States, and that should be thoroughly researched before making any significant moves.
Many of the lifestyle choices we have adopted in regards to work ethic have come straight from Benjamin Hardy. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading his book Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success. He gives so many examples of how work/life balance can be achieved without being gimmicky or overwhelming!
As a final call to action, if you have appreciated the content of this blog and are interested in building a business that can eventually replace your full-time job and any side hustle income. Sign up for my free “Passive Income in Your Sleep Planner” it gives you the step-by-step processes I have followed to create profitable blogs that generate income passively!
