---
title: 'How to Become a Digital Nomad for Beginners | Full Tutorial'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZvrWewI6I-g'
video_id: 'ZvrWewI6I-g'
date: 2026-07-10
channel: 'Fit Nomads'
---

# How to Become a Digital Nomad for Beginners | Full Tutorial

> Source: [How to Become a Digital Nomad for Beginners | Full Tutorial](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZvrWewI6I-g)

## Summary

This video provides a comprehensive guide for beginners on becoming digital nomads, based on the creators' 15 months of experience traveling and working remotely. They share their personal journey, actionable steps, and practical advice on destinations, visas, banking, insurance, and income generation.

### Key Points

- **Becoming Digital Nomads** [00:00] — The creators share that becoming digital nomads was the best decision they ever made, allowing them to travel and work while living their envisioned lifestyle.
- **Background and Motivation** [00:59] — Before becoming digital nomads, they were based in Melbourne. Abby owned a personal training studio for five years but always wanted to move overseas. After meeting, they decided to pursue their shared dream of working remotely and traveling.
- **Sacrifices Made** [02:10] — Abby had to sell her part of the business, give up her dog and house. The other creator left his engineering job but stayed with the company for three months as a safety net while starting to earn online.
- **Connecting with Other Digital Nomads** [03:08] — They recommend watching YouTube videos, joining Facebook groups, and sliding into DMs on Instagram to ask questions and learn from others.
- **Choosing a Destination** [04:08] — They started in Asia (Thailand) due to proximity to Australia, good Wi-Fi, beautiful beaches, low cost, and existing digital nomad community. They also traveled to Central/South America and Europe, noting Wi-Fi issues in the former and time zone challenges in the latter.
- **Key Factors for a Destination** [05:37] — Important factors include reliable Wi-Fi, comfortable accommodation, community (e.g., gyms), and cost of living. In Thailand/Vietnam, one can survive on $1,000-$2,000 per month.
- **Visas, Banking, and Insurance** [07:08] — Visas vary by country; some have digital nomad visas. They use WISE for international banking and SafetyWing for health insurance (monthly). They also used Qantas travel insurance for the first year.
- **Ways to Earn Money Online** [08:35] — Options include remote jobs (via LinkedIn/Indeed), freelancing (Upwork/Fiverr), and building a personal brand to sell digital products or coaching. They caution against Amazon FBA and dropshipping due to high upfront costs and advertising expenses.
- **Current Income Streams** [12:11] — Abby is an online fitness coach with clients worldwide, offering training programs, nutrition services, and digital products. The other creator started with a faceless Instagram page, then a TikTok, and now runs Digital Creators Club teaching digital product creation and monetization.
- **Advice for Beginners** [14:50] — Be consistent with any business model. Have a financial safety net (e.g., $15k savings). Mindset: take the leap, you only live once, and you can always go back home.

### Conclusion

The video emphasizes that becoming a digital nomad is achievable with planning, consistency, and a willingness to take risks. The creators encourage viewers to start their journey, connect with others, and build online income streams.

## Transcript

Becoming digital nomads is honestly the best decision we have ever made. It has allowed us to travel the world and work and live the life that we have always envisioned for ourselves.
But getting here, it didn't happen overnight. In fact, it took a lot of trial and error. So, in this video, we're going to talk to you a lot about our story, how we managed to start working remote.
And we're going to give you actionable steps so you can start doing the same thing too. We've been traveling the world now and working remotely for 15 months. This is a full breakdown and a guide of everything that has worked and everything you need to know to get it set up yourself.
Make sure you like this video, subscribe because we've got so many more videos coming your way. And if you have any questions, drop them below because we are so happy to help.
So, before becoming digital nomads, we were based in Melbourne and I owned my own personal training studio. I had owned that for about five years, but I always had an urge to move overseas and live overseas.
Pre-COVID, it just never really happened. The timing wasn't right, but I always used to look at people online living their best life overseas and get so ridiculously jealous. But then COVID happened and I kind of parked it in the backburner, didn't think it was possible.
I was turning 30 and I honestly thought it was too late to make a change because society tells us that we should be settling down and having kids at 30. So, I kind of put it on the backburner until I met.
Nice. We shared similar dreams and aspirations of moving overseas. So, one day when we were sitting on the couch just chatting about our goals and where we wanted our life to go. We kind of both realised that we had this dream of working remotely and travelling the world and living overseas and we both hadn't done that yet.
So, we just decided to go for it and I think a couple of days later we booked a one-way ticket to Thailand in nine months time and started planning everything. So, it was a very scary, scary thing, but also very exciting at the same time.
It did mean that I would have to sell up part of my business because I owned a gym in Melbourne with business partners. So, I sort of had to walk away from that which was scary. I owned a dog, I owned a house. So, there was a lot of change and a lot of things that had to give up in order to make it happen, but for me it was worth it.
So, that's a bit of a backstory about me. Yeah, and it was a similar story for me. There was a lot of times where I wanted to move overseas and work overseas. But I just hadn't had the opportunity yet and things hadn't lined up until I met Abby and then we booked the date and moved overseas.
And I was working as an engineer, a consulting engineer for the last three years at the same firm. And it was something that I was never really passionate about, but you know, you settle.
So, luckily I was able to work and stay with that company for three months while we moved overseas. And that was a really nice safety net to begin with while we started earning money online and started doing the digital nomad thing.
But before that, we're going to get into some tips about becoming a digital nomad that you need to know. The first thing that really helped us was connecting with other digital nomads. And at the beginning, it was really just watching YouTube videos and looking at what other people were doing.
Where people were staying, what looked cool, what we should be doing. Should we be staying in a van, should we be traveling to multiple places, staying in a place for a long period of time. Connecting by watching those YouTube videos was very helpful. Also connecting by joining some Facebook groups and asking people questions.
Because we did have an idea that we wanted to go to Thailand to begin with. So, we joined a few Facebook groups, asking questions, identified what the visa situation was, all these sorts of things.
And we found that super helpful. So, it was something we would really recommend for you to do as well. Yeah, don't be afraid to slide into people's DMs as well. I found people on TikTok and YouTube and then found them on Instagram, mainly because it's easier to ask people questions through Instagram.
And most people that replied to me were really lovely and are happy to give you advice. So, don't be scared to ask as many questions as you need. So, picking the best digital nomad destination, we started off in Asia purely because it's nice and close to Australia.
And the Wi-Fi is good, the beaches are beautiful and it's super cheap and affordable. We went straight to Thailand and stayed there for three months and absolutely loved it. So, if you're thinking about heading to Thailand, it is a hell yes from us.
The Wi-Fi works great. There's so many places that you can work from cafes and digital nomad spaces. And they also have a lot of digital nomads there already. So, there's a really good community if you're after that as well.
We also have traveled to Central and South America. Now, there's not as many digital nomads around there, but we would also recommend it. Thailand and Asia is definitely easier. The Wi-Fi in Central America and South America were a little bit hit and miss. We found that quite stressful at times.
But other than that, obviously that part of the world is absolutely stunning. And then Europe as well was fantastic. So, we did Italy and Turkey and working from there was actually fantastic as well. The only thing that we struggled with a little bit was the time difference from clients in Australia.
But other than that, we would recommend Europe for sure. Yeah, some of the things you need to focus on when you're looking for a destination to go work at is number one Wi-Fi. Because you need really good Wi-Fi and it's going to be really annoying and really hard for you if you don't have that.
So, that's really important. Secondly, you need a nice place to stay because you want to be feeling comfortable where you're staying. So, making sure you can get good accommodation that is in a good location is really important.
Thirdly, the community aspect. So, going to places where there is a digital nomad community where you can connect with people. I think a lot of people will underestimate how much you need community, how much you need people around you.
For us, we love gyms and we love training. So, we always make sure there's good gyms and where there's gyms there's usually a good community. So, that's why we settled in Copenhagen most of the time in Thailand because it's got all those sorts of things for us.
The other thing is the cost of living. This is super important because it kind of sets your living standard. And so, depending on how much money you're earning, you can live better in Asia or in other places.
But, for example, if you were in Vietnam or in Thailand, your cost of living is super low. So, the pressure on you to earn money online is much less. And in fact, a lot of people can earn only $1,000 or $2,000 a month and survive in Thailand and Vietnam absolutely fine.
And also, we made a video on the cost of living in Vietnam and so, if you want to watch that, we'll put it up here and check it out. It's really cool. So, it's handy to know all of the things like visas, banking and health insurance whilst you're over there as well.
So, in terms of visas, every destination is different. We are not the best people to talk to when it comes to visas because we've made a lot of mistakes, especially in Vietnam. But, in terms of most Asian countries or Thailand as well, you can get short-stay visas and then you can also do visa runs.
But also, I think some places around the world also have specific digital nomad visas. So, depending on where you want to go, make sure you do look that up and apply before you go. That would be our biggest tip for that. In terms of banking, we use WISE and also our home Australian banking still. WISE is a great app that you can use and you can transfer money internationally anywhere and it's super quick and it's low fees. So, we love WISE.
And then lastly, we use safety wing for our health insurance. So, that's month-to-month payment instead of getting like travel insurance if you're staying in one place for a while and planning on being away from Australia.
For a while, safety wing is great, but in saying that our first year of insurance, we did get Qantas travel insurance and you can get in around the world's 12-month travel insurance from Qantas and they give you Qantas points. This is not a plug, but we found that really helpful as well.
Mainly for the Qantas points. Okay, so now getting into how to become that digital nomad to fund this lifestyle, you need to earn some money somehow. And there are so many ways that you can do this. And in fact, I've tried a fair few of them.
So, the first one is remote jobs. You can search for remote jobs online so going to indeed or LinkedIn and searching for remote jobs. If you go to Google and you search for jobs, you can filter for remote jobs specifically and that's probably the best way to just get jobs like a virtual assistant jobs, customer service jobs, all those sorts of things that you can do from anywhere in the world.
Okay, so that's one way to go about it. And a little tip, if you are going to go for one of those jobs, I would recommend to actually reach out to people through LinkedIn that are already working those jobs. You'll get a higher response rate and much more likely to get a job that way. The second thing is freelancing. So things like video editing, any sort of services, even counseling, all those sorts of jobs are freelancing.
So if you can do that and if you have a client base already or if you can build a client base from doing those sorts of things, it's a great way to earn money online as well. And one way to offer these services is through things like Upwork and Fiverr. We had definitely hire a lot of people from Upwork and Fiverr, so there is work out there, I can probably see that.
And yeah, that's a really cool way to make money online for sure. The third one is to create a personal brand and to document your own journey or perhaps if you have some sort of skill that you want to teach. You can start an Instagram page, you can start a TikTok and grow your following that way through content creation, building a community, and then offering your services either like one-to-one coaching or creating digital products around what you teach as well.
Or creating a YouTube like this. Or creating a YouTube like this, which we are not monetized yet. So we tried so many different business models before, well I tried so many different business models before we got to where we're out now.
The first ones that I did were Amazon FBA, and I tried this quite a while ago, it is a plausible way to make money, but there is a high investment cost. So when you do Amazon FBA, you need to buy the products, send it to the Amazon warehouse, store the products, and then they take a cut when they ship it out.
So big upfront cost, plus if you do any advertising, extra cost there. The other one was drop shipping, kind of a similar sort of business model to Amazon FBA, except most of the stuff comes directly from China, and then this is a high upfront cost as well because you need to pay for advertising.
So unless you're doing organic traffic with social media, which there's better ways to monetize will go into it a bit later, then you're going to be paying quite a lot to test ads. And people will sell you on the dream that you can pay and test ads quite quickly, but I invested up to $5,000 or more testing ads and was not profitable.
So just keep that in mind, if you want to start that sort of business. And the third thing that I did was remote sales, and this is a very valid way of earning money remotely and a lot of people do this.
So remote sales, you just need to learn the art of sale, learn how to run a sales conversation, and then you need to find people to work with. So there's lots of people in e-commerce, lots of people who have brands that need people to take sales calls for them, and then you take the sales call and if you close the deal, you earn a percentage on whatever that sale was.
But the best way of making money in that we would recommend is building a personal brand or building a community on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, and then creating some sort of digital product around that.
So that is what I do now. I am an online fitness coach now and I've got clients all around the world and I offer up training programs, so they can download my app and they go to the gym and they have their workout right in front of them. I offer them nutrition services, we have catch-ups weekly, so that is all done online and then I also sell digital products like courses and e-books and recipe packs and all of that as well.
So that is how I monetize all of my knowledge, my fitness and nutrition knowledge. If you are looking for an online nutritionist and you would like some help with your fat loss journey, then I'll put all my information down below.
For me it was a little bit different. I started by creating Instagram faceless page and I had never posted anything online before, so this was my first new experience into the space.
Abby definitely guided me a lot in the beginning. I created this page and it was around manifesting and I grew that page quite quickly. So we learnt the power of Instagram through this page and we learnt that if you get enough eyes onto an Instagram page or onto a social media page, then you can create sales and create income and we did this using the digital products.
So I created a manifesting journal and some other things to sell through that page and it ended up being quite successful. So it was very exciting. It meant that there was a path forward for me especially. Abby already had her path but I needed to create mine.
So after I dipped my toes into the world of social media on that Instagram faceless page, I started a TikTok face forward page and I was teaching people about what I'd done creating digital products and how it sort of changed our lives and changed what we did.
And what I did was I actually sold digital products on that through that page but then I also told people to come across to my Instagram and I talked more about what I was doing and this is when people started reaching out to me for coaching.
And so now that is what we do. We started a community called Digital Creators Club where we teach people how to create digital products that they're proud of and then monetize them through social media pages.
We also teach people how to resell popular digital products that are very easily monetizable so you can sort of monetize quite quickly. But if you're thinking about doing something like this, we'd love to help you do that. We do it through Digital Creators Club and there's the information down below.
Just click there. Reach out to us. Ask us any questions. We're happy to help. The biggest piece of advice that I could give to you starting your digital nomad journey is to be consistent.
Any business model, anything you choose will work. It has worked in the past but you have to be consistent and the moment that you stop being consistent then everything else stops.
And it's definitely what I've experienced that I definitely know that I've been experienced it as well. So just keep at it. One percent better every day and you will get to your destination. I'm going to give you two pieces of advice. One is more practical and then one is more mindset related.
Practical first, if you're heading over and you don't have a job yet, if you're just diving in, going for it, yolo, you'll see what happens and we'll make it work when you're over there. Then set yourself up with a little bit of money to cushion you, I guess. A little bit of a safe net.
We went over, I think, about 15k in our savings account and that really did help us just feel more secure. We knew that we had some money to fall back on if we needed to so we would definitely recommend having a bit of money in your bank account before we go.
So that's probably a no-brainer. The second thing is more mindset. You only live once and if you're worried about going over and not being able to find a job, not connecting with people or that it won't work out, you never know unless you try.
So our biggest advice is just take the leap, go for it because you will never regret it and you will learn so much about yourself. You'll learn so much about the world and you will have the best time I guarantee you and if you don't, then you can just go back home but you will have the best time and it's going to change your life completely.
So that's probably my biggest advice. The ever. Awesome guys, thanks so much for watching this video. Again, if you do have questions, please drop them below as I said before, we're so happy to help.
But hit that subscribe button because we've got so many more videos coming away and check out some more of our videos here if you're wanting to know more about the cluster of living in Asia or just where you could start your digital nomad journey.