Living Life as a Worldschooling Digital Nomad Family
We need a variety of digital nomad tools as well as entrepreneurial resources to help us fulfill our desire to be location independent and live life to the fullest. As we slowly hop across time zones and around coworking spaces, these are the things you’ll see and hear us talking about or find on the many browser tabs Colin has open!
(While we write blog posts, deliver location independent jobs and develop other profitable online income opportunities that help improve our financial independence!).
In short, a digital nomad toolkit that helps keep us happy, healthy and sane (!)
Where is your focus today? What type of support do you need?
Choose a category/sub-category to see the digital nomad products, tools and entrepreneurial resources we regularly use to live location independently
‘Parenting’ Tools and Resources for Digital Nomads
Leaving the security and routines of a home, car and local infrastructure; e.g. well-stocked grocery stores, requires adapting and being flexible in how you function as a family on a day to day basis. The following apps, services and tools have all taken on more importance in our pursuit and enjoyment of location independence. If you want to live your life to the fullest, we highly recommend you give some of these services a try.
Community
We know from personal experience the one thing that seems to stand out amongst many full time traveling families is a common desire to feel a sense of community. With that in mind, the following resources have been massive to us in finding and connecting with other digital nomad, location independent or worldschooling families and other like-minded souls. (You can find some of them here)
Project Worldschool
Family Summits
The goal of Project Worldschool is to inspire temporary learning communities around the world. We attended our first Project Worldschool Family Summit in 2018 in Chiang Mai, Thailand and it was a real turning point in finding our tribe.
We Are Worldschoolers
Facebook Group
The We Are Worldschoolers Community welcome all who are interested in learning from the world. We’re active members and use this group a lot for Q&A, making connections as well as giving and taking encouragment and support for like-minds.
Worldschooling Central
Worldschooling Info Hub
Worldschooling Central is an evolving community designed for families that love travel and educating their kids through experiences. They have an active Facebook group and a website that act as ‘hubs’ for shared learning and experiences.
Education
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Home Education Accelerator
A Training Program for Home Educating Parents and Carers
Supporting your children’s learning at home doesn’t have to be overwhelming! In fact, it can be one of the most rewarding experiences in your life! Homeschoolers and unschoolers will love the holistic approach used in this online program.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
SkillShare [FREEMIUM]
Watch, play, learn, make and discover!
SKILLSHARE is an online learning community where you can explore thousands of classes in design, photography, business and more. Get started with a free trial to get unlimited access to the entire Premium Membership catalog.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
What We Read | Our Top Book Recommendations
Health and Fitness
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Xero Shoes
Footwear made for feet!
We all wear Xero Shoes! These barefoot, minimalist shoes are our first choice for footwear in our slow-travel lifestyle. They’re super flexible and versatile and are designed to help your feet move and function like feet should!
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Elly’s Fitness Essentials
Apps and Entertainment
Essential Apps
Entertainment
‘Passports’ Tools and Resources for Digital Nomads
It is often said that ‘moving house’ is one of the most stressful periods in our lives. So how do you overcome such stresses when ‘moving house’ becomes a way of life!? The following digital nomad tools, products, services and apps all help us enjoy the journey rather than the destination. Once again, we highly recommend you give some of these services a try.
Accommodation
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Air BnB
A global community and a world of belonging!
AirBnB has been a great accommodation choice for us in many places. They have discounts for weekly and monthly stays, and it’s often easier to immerse yourself in the local area
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Trusted Housesitters
Want to house and pet sit?
TrustedHousesitters is our go-to housesitting platform as it has a high volume of house sits available all around the world. As a family we have enjoyed a number of great house sits via this site.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Online Travel Agents
Hotel and flight booking sites such as booking dot com, Expedia and Skyscanner can help you find nearly all the major services you’d require when planning accommodation and travel around the world. Meaning they can save you the hassle and time of trawling through an endless list of websites to find the right room, flight, things to do, cruise, car etc.
But not everyone knows Booking Holdings and the Expedia Group are the parent company for a vast number of other well known online travel agents; such as Agoda, Kayak, Travelocity, Hotels dot com and many more. Or that Skyscanner is now owned by one of China’s biggest online travel companies.
Consequently, we find the real difference in the following services is rarely price. It’s often more about convenience, ease of use or more often than not, good old familiarity and personal preference.
Booking.com
Booking’s strength can be found in its comprehensive customer support options such as web forms, FAQs and local and international contact numbers. Good for single bookings such as stays and car hire as opposed to packages.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Expedia
Expedia’s strength can be found in it’s one-stop shop portal for everything from accommodation stays, car hire, flights, things to do, cruises and packages. Also has 40+ global sites so you can sign-up from your preferred country.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Skyscanner
Specifically focuses on flights, hotels and car hire. Skyscanner is often our first port of call when we’re searching for flights. You can quickly compare prices across several airlines, and set up alerts for specific flight routes.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Experiences
Some of Our Favorite Experiences (so far!)
Transport and Travel
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12Go
Travel Planning in Asia
Use 12Go to check and book trains, flights, buses, transfers, ferries, hotels, day trips, insurances, car hire/rent and other travel inventory all via the same platform for comparison and interline ticketing!
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
World Nomads
Simple and flexible travel insurance
You can buy and claim online, even after you’ve left home. Travel insurance from WorldNomads.com is available to people from over 130 countries. It’s designed for adventurous travellers with cover for overseas medical, evacuation, baggage and a range of adventure sports and activities.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Digital Nomad Gear and Gadgets
Our Main Travel Gear and Gadgets
Digital Nomad Day Pack [Gear & Gadgets]
‘Profits’ Tools and Resources for Digital Nomads
These are the most valuable online marketing tools, services and products we use as a digital nomad family to help us develop and earn location-independent online income. Without them, we would not have the ability or confidence to deliver something of value to the marketplace. Or that we could automate many day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out, month-in, month-out tasks to gain the desired freedom we seek.
For example, online tools for entrepreneurs that can save you dozens of hours per week, automate key and/or routine tasks, and save you thousands of dollars on contractors or staff.
A quick side note!
Whilst we have chosen entrepreneurship and self-employment as our preferred route to earn remote income, remember you can still live a location independent life doing remote work for a full or part-time employer. The co-working spaces we frequent are often a mix of local entrepreneurs, freelancers and remote workers. (If you are looking to work remotely, click the link for an excellent guide from our friend Mike over at Hobo With A Laptop).
Online Marketing
Email Marketing and Automation
ConvertBox
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Kit [Freemium]
Don’t be at the mercy of social media platforms when it comes to getting your message out to the world. Email marketing is alive and well and Kit makes it easy to manage your email list and set up automations.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Search engine optimization (SEO) is key to making friends with the search engines and growing your organic traffic. In addition to a bunch of SEO related Chrome extensions, we use the following SEO tools and services on a regular basis.
KeySearch
Keyword research made easy! Keysearch helps us find profitable, low competition keywords in seconds as well as provide us with many competitive analysis keyword insights!
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
SERPStat
SERPStat is an affordable, powerful and smart search engine position tool we use for Backlinks Analysis, Rank Tracking, Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis and technical SEO Site Audits.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy [for YouTube] is a FREE extension for your browser that integrates directly into your YouTube dashboard to help you manage, optimize and grow your channel more easily.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Social Media Tools
Social media has the ability to completely suck your time and energy. The following social media automation tools have all played a part in helping us use social media more efficiently and effectively. You can usually expect a free entry-level option, or trial period, which allows you to get going and become comfortable with a particular platform.
However, as soon as you get some traction and know social media is giving you a return on investment, we recommend upgrading depending on the channel and need.
Recurpost [FREEMIUM]
We’ve found Recurpost one of the best free social media management tools we’ve come across. We use it to automatically schedule reposts of our evergreen content so it can be seen by new followers.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Tailwind App
We use the Tailwind App primarily to help automate our Pinterest accounts. It lets you schedule multiple pins and gives you the all-important analytics you need to be able to best decide what and when to pin.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Website & Landing Page Tools
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Bluehost
BlueHost (webhosting and more)
Your website needs to be hosted somewhere safe and secure. Bluehost have years of experience and make it incredibly easy to get a new site up and running with their one-click automatic WordPress Blog installation.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Convertri Funnel Builder
Convertri lets us quickly create sales pages and funnels with a built-in payment gateway. The page-builder is easy to use, you get great support and the end result is fast-loading, professional web pages that help you get paid.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Thrive Architect
Part of the Thrive Themes suite of ‘conversion-focused’ WordPress tools. Using the Thrive Architect page-builder proved a valuable turning point in our ability to more effectively create websites capable of converting visitors into subscribers and customers.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Divi Theme Builder
The Divi themebuilder was a step up from our page-builder experience and proved a game-changer in finally giving us complete flexibility and control over all aspects of creating and maintaining our websites. Including split-testing!
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Kit [FREEMIUM]
Free landing pages for your next idea
If you’re just starting out Kit‘s freemium package gives you quick and easy access to well-designed free landing page templates. Meaning you don’t even need a website to start gathering interest and email addresses!
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Audio and Visual
Being seen and heard is a vital aspect of any marketing initiative. All the following apps, products or services play a role in the way we show up in the online world.
Canva [FREEMIum]
We mainly use Canva to create standard size templates for website images, recurring social media posts and YouTube video thumbnails. Plus anything else that might need a bit of creativity such as banners and logos.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Envato Market
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Ecamm Live
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Primal Video
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
TubeBuddy
Why we love TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy [for YouTube] is a FREE extension for your browser that integrates directly into your YouTube dashboard to help you manage, optimize and grow your channel more easily. We use the Pro plan.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Portable Podcasting & Video Creation
This is the kit we either own or have on our shopping list for improving our podcasting & video content creation
Business Platforms [How to Make Money Online & Get Paid Online]
Together with SEO affiliate marketing, partnerships and sales are a core focus of our long-term strategy to generate recurring and/or scaleable online income streams from anywhere in the world. As we evolve as parents and people, as well as online entrepreneurs, the following services help us to find new income stream opportunities and to get paid regardless of our location or residential status.
AWIN
The AWIN affiliate program is a global affiliate network for advertisers, agencies and publishers to expand their reach. It allows content creators to find affiliate partners they might not necessarily have access to directly.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
MagicLinks
MagicLinks is the global leader in social commerce for video influencers with tools to help creators share products they love and earn income as their fans shop. We mainly use them for easier integration of YouTube affiliate links.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
SkimLinks
The SkimLinks affiliate program lets us turn regular links from online merchants into easy affiliate links. We use it to monetize promotion of purchases or experiences where we don’t need access to the assets of a full affiliate program.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
GeniusLink
Maximize your global affiliate revenues
The geniuslink app is an incredible tool for helping capture potential lost revenue from global affiliate partners such as Amazon. When a user clicks your link, it automatically detects their location and routes them to the best purchasing page for them.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Living location independently invariably requires changing time zones and currencies on a regular basis. In the same way, having location independent income requires knowing how to receive payments regardless of where you are in the world. In other words, when it comes to getting paid from different countries you will need an easy way to open one or more foreign bank accounts. Both Payoneer and TransferWise have helped us do that.
Payoneer
Having location independent income requires knowing how to easily receive payments regardless of where you are in the world. Payoneer makes that possible so it’s great for freelancers and non-Americans using Amazon’s affiliate program.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
TransferWise
TransferWise fees are significantly cheaper than banks, fully transparent and their exchange rates are real time. We use their global currency tools to help us with everything from getting paid, paying rents and using local ATMs.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Productivity [‘Time Management’] & Project Management Tools
Our comprehensive list of digital nomad tools and resources would not be complete without some references to project management, productivity and how we manage our time.
Time is the only properly defined limited resource applicable to us all. This makes it your most valuable resource and although you can’t manage time, you can manage how you use it. While we are working, we use all the following tools and services on the mathematical basis that if you can save ’10 minutes a day’, you effectively earn yourself a week a year! How valuable is that!
LastPass [FREEMIUM]
This simple password manager has been a productivity game-changer for us. No more ‘cryptic’ manual password updates! LastPass is the secure and easy way to share passwords with associates and VAs across multiple devices and browsers; i.e. LastPass for Safari and Chrome.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
GetFriday Virtual Assistants
GetFriday is a Virtual Assistant company that can do any manner of jobs for you. We have been using them for years across different businesses and continue to use them now. Using a VA company means THEY replace and train the new VA if a single person decides to move on.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Dropbox [FREEMIUM]
The primary document and photo storage system we use for syncing and sharing ‘static’ files. In particular Colin has found the ‘dropbox view only no download’ Smart Sync feature of Dropbox Professional a gamechanger in preserving storage space on his laptop.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Evernote [Freemium]
We pride ourselves on being paperless and Evernote plays a large part in making that a reality. It is Colin’s go-to information and idea capuring tool that lets him collect, grab and store anything that might use up space on a desk or energy in the brain!
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
Trello [Freemium]
We have found that simple task or project management is how we best answer the question ‘what is trello used for?’ Trello is a collaborative, web-based Kanban-style list-making application and now the main tool we use to manage communication and resources to get jobs started and finished.
$ | This is an affiliate link |
$ | This is an affiliate link |
If you’d like some deeper insights about how we use any of the above digital nomad tools or entrepreneurial resources, please feel free to reach out to us. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Disclaimer: This article/page contains affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these recommended service provider links, like an insurance broker, or a travel agent, we may earn a commission – at no extra cost to you. [For our full disclosure, please see our DISCLAIMER page).