When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.
- Clifton Fadiman (1904 - 1999)

There are basically two ways to make money. You can either work for yourself or for someone else. For the nomad who plans to really be on the move, changing locations every few weeks, try setting up an income-generating web site. You don’t need to be an educated and experienced computer engineer to design and maintain a web site that brings in money. Anyone with basic computer literacy and knowledge in a specific area can make enough money to travel the world.

You may be surprised how little work it takes to support your nomadic lifestyle. A clever Internet entrepreneur can set up a web site that makes money automatically on a regular basis. If you have enough visitors to your site, with a combination of online stores and affiliate programs, you can achieve the freedom to travel. Once established, it can be maintained with relatively little work. The income from my web sites, fantasyislands.com, thebouncerofblueball.com, themicronariesofmelchizedek.com (forthcoming, scheduled for March 1) and this site, computernomad.com, along with the sales from the associated books, let’s me travel the world. The only work I need to do is a few hours of maintenance and updating the next edition of the books every couple of years. The lifestyle isn’t luxurious. It’s somewhere between frugal backpacker and budget traveler, but it’s freedom. Remember that getting paid in U.S. dollars is an enormous advantage. In most developing countries US$1,000 lets you live an upper middle class lifestyle.

Become an Internet Merchant

It’s possible to get an online store up and running in a couple of weeks. You don’t have to invest hundreds of millions into your business like an Amazon.com or Buy.com. You ought to have a site up and running in less than a week. You can sell your own stuff or arrange affiliate agreements with other suppliers. Almost anything sells on the Internet, from yams to yachts. The first question you may ask is, who's going to process my orders and ship my products while I'm on the beach in Boca Chica?

There are several possible solutions. One is to hire someone to do it for you. Another is to have your supplier drop ship. This is the easiest way to set up an online store. All you have to do is set up a web site, put the appropriate links to your drop shipper, and collect the checks. Of course, you need an attractive web site with plenty of traffic. Set up a store with thousands of books in five minutes. All you have to do is visit doba.com. Choose from thousands of products, from DVD players to books.

Another method is to use a fulfillment service, where a company carries your stock in their inventory. They ship orders for you for either a set fee or a percentage of the price of the item. Some fulfillment services will also process orders. You use their name and address and 800-number. All you have to do is keep them supplied with inventory.

Small operators stand the best chance of success if they specialize in a specific area, such as hot and spicy sauces rather than something broad like Mexican food. It is important to add value and information to your web site. Don’t just sell products. Offer free information such as recipes, reviews of products and links to other related web sites. Interesting, lively articles will also attract prospective buyers. My sites include excerpts from my books, a discussion forum, recommendations and reviews of other related books and products and links to other sites I find useful. It is important that the information be related. If your site is about hot sauce why would you link to a site on hamster breeding?

Don't try to set up a bookstore, for example, with subjects ranging from travel to mystery novels. Travel is too broad a topic for the small Internet merchant. Having a site with a limited selection of topics such as travel books on diving is a better approach. Embellish your site with free articles about diving. Dress it up as a free newsletter. Post articles with reviews of books, maps and diving equipment you market.

If you have a site on scuba diving, for example, you could also provide a directory of hotels and resorts that cater to divers. A diving site such as this might use keywords such as diving, resort, vacation, islands, instruction, beach and boating. Specific countries and regions such as Mexico, Central America, Jamaica, South Pacific and the Philippines might also be used if your store carries books or products on diving in a particular country or region of the world.

It is best to offer as many different ways to order as possible. Include an address for mailing checks and money orders, a toll-free 800 number (remember that many international toll-free numbers cannot be called outside of the home country). A fax order number should also be provided. And finally, you need to provide a way to take orders via on-line secure transaction processing. This is basically a form that is filled out by the customer indicating the products they want, their billing and shipping address, and their credit card order information. Many Internet service providers offer electronic commerce software that let you process secure credit card transactions for an on-line store. A Paypal.com account, the Internet's largest financial services site, will let you easily process credit card orders for a reasonable fee.

Affiliate Programs

If setting up your own on-line store still sounds like a bit of a hassle, don't bother. Affiliate programs are the easiest way to make money on the Internet. They are easy to set up, and sometimes the profit margin is higher. All you do is fill out an online form and put a link to your affiliate’s web site. That’s it. The affiliate program will provide pre-made advertisements that you can cut and paste into your web site. The commissions can vary widely. Discount international airline tickets, for example, may pay only a 1% commission while international dating services may pay as high as 50%.

Affiliates take care of everything for you. They take the order, process and ship it, then send you a check. With on-line stores you have to hassle with order processing and inventory. Choose affiliates that are reputable and offer products that are related to your web site’s topic. Since my book, Fantasy Islands: A Man’s Guide to Exotic Women and International Travel , is related to dating and travel, I offer products and services such as a database of over 10,000 women around the world interested in corresponding or meeting men. Other examples of related affiliates I could add include travel agencies, a travel store carrying luggage, cameras and books or an offshore financial services company. All I have to do is place their ads on my web page.

Look for affiliates where you get commissions on all future sales from customers originally referred from your web site. Once the customer passes from my web site to my affiliate, you get money from all future purchases. Amazon.com has the web’s most recognized affiliate program. Affiliate programs with items with smaller markups such as Amazon.com tend to pay smaller commissions. When choosing an affiliate program, ask for a list of other affiliates to check their web sites on how they are marketing the program. Don’t be afraid to test affiliates for a month or more to determine which ones are giving you the most income.

There are many sites on the Internet that offer information on how to choose an affiliate. Some include reviews and ratings of each affiliate program by category.

Electronic Publishing

Another way to make money on the Internet is to sell electronic information. There are two basic ways to market electronic information in cyberspace. One way is to simply sell subscriptions to the information on your web site. A number of services, such as Paypal.com, allow you take and process credit cards online. Your subscribers will then either choose a login name and password or have them assigned automatically. Operators of the thousands of adult web sites have used this method successfully for years.

Another method is to sell ebooks or special reports for download. Using the example of the diving site mentioned above, you could offer special reports on particular locations such as Phuket, Thailand and Puerta Galera, Philippines. Para Publishing is a good example of a site that not only sells electronic information, but also information on how to become an electronic publisher.

The following are sites that will store and process your information as ebooks:

Clickbank
Charges $49.95 setup. Commission is 7.5% plus $1.00 on each sale.

Payloadz
No charge for setup, sliding scale based on monthly sales. Up to $100 is free.

Lulu
No setup fee, commission of 20%.

Ebookmall
$19.95 listing fee plus 50% commission.

Of these, Clickbank is the biggest with the most traffic. They have a sophisticated affiliate network that can significantly increase revenue. Lulu can handle not just electronic information, but can also print, warehouse and distribute your book while you are iceberg hopping in Greenland.

You don’t have to sell information on your web site to make money, though. Besides affiliate programs, you can also sell advertising on your web site. Some advertisers pay on a set amount every time a browser clicks their ad on your site, which takes them automatically to the advertiser’s site. Other advertisers pay a set fee like advertisers in magazines and newspapers. Google has a program, called AdSense, that pays you to run keyword ads on your web site.

There are also numerous other similar sites on the Internet.

Web Site Promotion

Once your web site is up and running do your best to get a top listing in the major search engines and directories such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Google has 50% of all search engine traffic, Yahoo! 24% and MSN 9%. Over 80% of the visitors to your web site will probably come through search engines. The competition for high listings with search engines is fierce. Think carefully about the keywords that you want to associate with your site. Don’t even think about trying to get listed in the top ten with simple keywords like “computers” or “sex”. Your site will get lost among countless other hits. The people who visit your site will probably have little interest in your product because the keywords are not focused enough.

It is better to concentrate on a more specialized and brief keyword phrase. Let's say, for example, that your site is called The Southeast Asia Diver. You carry products including books, special reports, maps and diving equipment for people interested in diving in countries like Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. There are numerous keyword tools on the Internet. Google Adwords will help suggest keywords and show how popular they are. Type in "diving" and Google will offer a list of dozens of related keywords.

Besides search engines, there are also directories. Yahoo! and Google both offer a directory in addition to their more popular search engines. Directories, unlike search engines, are usually compiled and written by human beings. When submitting to a directory you are asked to write a description. An example of a title for a directory such as Yahoo! is The Southeast Asia Diver: Books, maps, and diving equipment on Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. A description, typically a maximum of 200 characters, is required when you submit your site for a listing. This information, along with the name of your site, is an important decision to make. It can mean success or failure for your site.

Think hard and long about this, and carefully edit your description. Pack your description with appropriate keywords. Keep in mind that you want to avoid duplication of keywords because it is a waste. You want the directory to list your site as high as possible when someone types in your most important keywords. When you have identified those keywords, list them and then write a description that makes use of as many of the keywords as possible. Use the 200 character maximum but still keep your description readable, descriptive and grammatically correct. You can't just list all your keywords as a description.

Search engines use the information on your web page. All search engines use different schemes to determine the order in which web sites appear based on the keywords you enter. Generally, they look for the frequency of how the keywords appear in the title, description, meta tags and body text of your web site. The method search engines use is constantly being revised. A software product called WebPosition shows you how to optimize your web site for a high ranking on the major search engines. It helps you select keywords, then shows you how to write your site to maximize keyword recognition when it is scanned by major search engines. You can use it to run comparisons of your site with other sites that have the top ranking for your keywords on the search engines you want to target.

How to Hire a Consultant

If you don’t feel you have the time or technical expertise to develop or promote your site, you can always hire a consultant. Since the design and content of your web site play such an important role in getting a high ranking, your consultant should work closely with you in selecting keywords and working them into the text of your web site. Many consultants use WebPosition software to promote their client’s sites.

When evaluating consultants consider hiring one consultant to design the graphics and layout of your site, but hire another to edit and promote it. Most promotion is geared toward the major search engines. They look for pages based on incidence of keywords in the title, address and body of web pages. A specialist is more likely to understand the nuances of either design or promotion. It is possible to find someone who has good expertise in both, but you may have better success using specialists in one or the other. A lot of web developers will say they can also promote your site, but what they really mean is just submitting your site to search engines. Simply submitting a site through one of the many software programs designed for this is not likely to give you a high rating. You don't need to submit to the major search engines anyway. They will find your site automatically.

There are many consultant directories on the Internet. A good way to find a web designer is to simply use a search engine to locate other sites similar to the one you are planning. Choose one you like and check to see if the name of the designer is posted on the page. It is usually located near the bottom of the home page. If not, try sending an email to the page’s webmaster asking the name and email address of the designer. Another method is to browse the myriad companies under the category of web page design in any directory. Any good designer's web site will have links to other web pages they have designed. Always ask for at least three professional references from any consultant before you hire one. Some web page designers specialize in certain fields such as dating services or computer technology.

Consultant Directories

The following are directories of consultants on the Internet. These can also be useful for marketing your own consulting services:

Guru.com
This directory of “gurus” has lists of gigs and gurus. Many job postings specify whether the work is to be done on-site or off-site.

Consultant Directory
This is an extensive directory of consultants listed by category with keyword search functions. There is no listing of job postings.

Freelancers Network
Another large database, this consultant directory also has listings of thousands of consultants worldwide along with extensive search capability. You can also search and post specific projects.