He Who Wanders

Look. I’m a college kid. Money is always on my mind. We desire what we don’t have, right? Colleges are ruthless. Oh! You worked really hard to make extra money this summer. It’d be a shame if someone TOOK IT!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!

So, how the hell do I fund a trip to and through Europe? Well…

Options

1. Au Pair

So, this is an interesting option. Interesting because it’s a fancy name for foreign babysitter. Yep. Basically, you stay with a family and watch their kids. It seems like a simple way to get paid to go abroad. If a teenage girl can babysit kids, why can’t I?

Well, unless those kids want to go on a road trip with me, I’m stuck. Sure, I’m stuck in a foreign country, which is thrilling, but the point of travel is to…travel. Besides, I only know Russian and English. Some au pairs are hired to speak their native language only, so the kids can learn a new language. Even so, knowing a country’s language is important if you have to stay there a while.

In terms of payment, I don’t know if the income would be enough to compensate for the cost of moving abroad and living abroad. Even if it was, I doubt I’d get paid ahead of time to help pay for a plane ticket. Meh…not for me.

2. Teach English

Similar to Au Pair, teaching English abroad requires you to stay in one place. I’m sure income varies based on location, duration of instruction, and so on. Whether or not thepay is better than au pair, I can’t say. Perhaps it is, but now you have to worry about finding a place to stay.

Also, keep in mind, knowing a foreign language seems pretty important. Let’s say you’re in Russia teaching English, and you know absolutely no Russian. A kid raises his hand and doesn’t know how to say what he wants in English. So he says to you, “Извините, мне нужно писать!” You might respond with a shrug. Meanwhile, the poor Russian boy wets his pants because you couldn’t understand that he needed to pee.

3. Travel Photography

Simple. You travel, take pictures, sell pictures, and rake in MILLIONS! Whoa whoa! Slow down, tiger. Psh, you guys get so excited. Two questions should be on your mind: where do I get the money to travel and to whom am I selling these pictures?

The first question has me stumped, so let’s ignore it and assume there’s already a ton of money sitting in the bank. As for the second question, you have a variety of choices. You can sell to journals and magazines (I hear that’s tedious), to stocks like ShutterStock or iStock, and sell to clients (I hear that’s where the money is). Where are these magical clients? Get your work out there in other ways, and they’ll find you. Or if you’re impatient, you can weed through every corner of the web until you find them yourself.

4. Travel Blogging

This ties in with travel photography. Looking for a place to put your pictures? Try your blog. Hey! I have a blog. Sounds right up my ally.

So what is the secret of making money? You can promote other organizations or products. Basically, they’ll pay you to write something nice about them. And if you promote a product from your blog, you’ll get a share of the profit when someone buys the product from your blog. The trouble is getting enough traffic on your blog so companies notice you. *Ahem* Companies. *Ahem*

Additionally, you can advertise. Google adSense will help you out. They have to approve your website first, though. An alternative is Media.net. Advertisements are annoying and tons of people have adBlock nowadays, but those ads are making someone money. And if advertisements help me make money, I can’t complain.

I just need to figure out how these darn ads work.

5. Freelance Writing

Maybe you don’t want to make and maintain a travel blog. It’s more work than you think. So much work, in fact, that people will hire you to add to or maintain their travel blogs. Now, you don’t have to write about travel. The gist of freelance writing is that someone pays you to write what they want. This can be a long-term or short-term job. You’ll probably want long-term if you’re traveling long-term.

You can find a ton of sites for freelance work, but one popular site I’ve found is Upwork. There are new job offers every minute. Work varies from translation to creative writing to web development to consulting. You can do whatever you want wherever you want. You just need to get hired first.

6. Desperate Fundraising

Congratulations! You’ve reached rock bottom.

Ask and you shall receive. That’s the idea anyways. I’m not telling you to beg your parents for money or compete with the Girl Scouts for cookie selling territory. Maybe try a crowdfunding website. Here’s a list of websites: Crowdfunding.

Keep in mind, you’re competing with people who are in actual need of money due to some tragedy. But a crowdfunding campaign raised over $25,000 for grilled cheese, so it’s not impossible.

With that said, if you’d like to make a donation, that would be super. I swear, I’ll love you until the end of time. I’ll name my first born child after you, whatever the gender. Heck, take the kid. It’s yours. 😀

——>Donate Here<——

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That is not for grilled cheese, but I will gladly make you one if you’re hungry 😀