There is a growing community of people who realise that it is more fun, fulfilling and often cheaper to live a life of location freedom.
These are people of all ages, often with children and responsibilities and very settled lives, who realise that there is more to life that what we are conditioned to expect.
Location freedom is the ability to earn from any location, in the world.
Location freedom comes in all shapes and forms – it can mean being able to:
- work from the kitchen table instead of in an office
- follow the seasons and work where you can ski or surf daily
- have clients and earnings in a strong economy and live and spend in a cheaper economy
- take the family to live in a new country on a regular basis
- travel the world at your own pace
So how do you make a mobile business?
There are thousands of possible ways you can create a mobile business, here are the fundamentals that you can get creative with.
Your mobile business will need:
A platform
This is the place where your business exists for your customers. For many businesses this would be your website or newsletter. For freelancers this may be a freelance website. You need a place where you can be found, where you communicate your latest updates and where you can collect money for your products or services.
If you have a website already, think about how you can better use it as a the base for your business. Can you add or better utilise a blog or a shop?
If you don’t have a website or blog, or if you want to learn the basics check out: the Website Launchpad. This course starts on the 9th December and takes non-technical people through setting up and marketing their own website.
Product or service
You need something to sell! It could be your time and expertise as a consultant, writer, designer, or any kind of freelancer.
It could be digital products or information, or physical products. You could be a middle man or affiliate, aiding transactions and promoting other peoples products and services. Whatever you choose, consider it carefully, research the competition and look at how you can solve peoples problems, stand out and be different.
Payments and banking
When you want to live with location freedom you need to consider how you will collect money and how you will manage it once you have it. Paypal is the most common payment gateway and allows you to take payments from other people who have Paypal or credit cards. You can link Paypal to your bank account for easy withdrawal of your funds.
If you are travelling long term as we are, it is also essential to have accounts with at least two different banks and internet banking so that you cover any bumps in accessing your money.
There are some WordPress plugins like WooCommerce that help you with slick eCommerce. And plugins like Gravity Forms that can extend the options you have when using Paypal.
Communication
It is important to decide how you will communicate with your audience and customers. Unless you are pursuing a business model like affiliate marketing, you will need to be available in some way to your customers. For those who need to speak in person there are plenty of great (often free) tools like Skype, Google Hangouts and Facetime.
For email marketing you can use tools like Mailchimp for creating professional emails, newsletters and auto-responders. Some people use social media pages like Twitter and Facebook pages for communication.
Marketing
It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is if no one knows it exists. You need to spend as much time marketing your products and services as you do everything else in your business.
There are plenty of great opportunities for free marketing available with a little bit of learning and practice. Some of our favourites include:
- using social media like Twitter for business
- using the basics of SEO
- free PR opportunities with Sourcebottle
- guest blogging
- running competitions
Consider creating a blog marketing checklist to make the most of your new content.
Workspace
With location freedom, you need to know that you can create a productive environment where ever you are in the world. For me this means having my laptop, headphones, access to the internet and plenty of background noise generators.
Being able to create a good environment means that you have enormous flexibility – so analyse your “happy working place” and look at how you can pack that in your bag!
Website Launchpad – only 2 weeks!
Once a year I show 30 business owners and aspiring business owners how to create a professional website from scratch for less than $50.
The skills and experience learned in the course will set you up with a foundation you can use for almost any business, social or personal project you think of in life. It is exactly what we have done to create location freedom.
There are 8 weeks of presentations online and you can attend from anywhere and the course starts in two weeks! For more information check out the course page.