Hi all,
I'm an American living in Brazil. I work in AI at a Brazilian firm on a Brazilian contract.
So here's the thing: Before I accepted this current work contract it was a real struggle for me. I was thinking to myself, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if I was earning in US Dollars down here, that would surely give me an advantage." I tried applying for US jobs but there simply not a lot of firms that want to hire an employee living in Brazil. I tried following a bunch of digital nomads on Instagram and they keep talking about how easy it is to make passive income digital marketing or on PInterest, or some other site, I just can't understand how I could get involved with something like that. I tried freelancing on Upwork in my area and couldn't find many opportunities. I tried looking on remoteok and other digital nomad sites where programmers could get hired. There were barely any postings that went to AI. And most of them went to very senior front end developers with LOTS of years if experience. Finally I applied to local jobs down here and got an offer.
Which brings me to my question, how exactly do you guys make money as digital nomads? It seems like everyone but me has a get rich quick scheme going on or some digitial marketing thing and I just can't get it. Are people lying and just getting some money on the side from their parents or something?
While I currently am not living abroad, then I have basically for 2 years had a job that could support it. To continue I would just need to setup a VPN or local server and I could continue doing my job abroad. I get paid for how much I work and can scrape in anywhere from 1k to 5k USD a month based on time and task availability. This is my part time job, while I currently also work as a consultant in ERP, which is my future hope to turn into a legit nomad job which hopefully I can use to work remote with a little more experience and network. But I would say, unless you have your own digital business or have some skills that can land you good jobs abroad or allow you to work abroad, then expect it to be nothing more fancy.