Over the past few years my life has changed unimaginably.

I’ve gone from being stuck in an office in Australia to being able to travel the world continuously and live the life of my dreams.

Now I want to share with you how I’ve done it.

It was my 25^th birthday and I was sat in an office in Australia winding down them clock. I knew this was my last day of ‘real’ work. I didn’t know how I was going to do it but I knew that I was never going to be in this situation again.

Somehow. Anyhow. I would not work in another office.

Just over 12 months ago, I was on my working holiday visa in Australia and it wasn’t working out. I’d been living and working in Perth for 6 months and I’d begun to realise this life wasn’t for me.

You see, I’d already been travelling for a year previously, after selling my stuff and quitting my job in England order to travel the world.

Now it was 18 months later and I was in exactly the same situation, just in a different country (nice work genius).

The problem was that I never made a long term plan – I just saved up a certain amount, went to a few countries and watched the money I’d saved slowly disappear (maybe some of you can relate?).

I decided I needed to change my mentality.

I WAS NEVER GOING TO WORK IN AN OFFICE AGAIN.

That was my mission.

I was going to do whatever it took to earn money online and live wherever I wanted. I realised that the best placed to do this in the short term would be South East Asia.

It’s beautiful, has a good infrastructure (meaning mostly decent wifi and good hostels), I’d been there before so knew what to expect and most importantly – the cost of living was low.

READ MORE: 7 Best Countries to Work Online

I started out offering web design to friends and family and picked up a few gigs, earning enough to keep me going with the savings from my job in Australia (roughly $4000).

This is when I began my video blog about learning to ‘Travel the World Continuously’. I had limited video editing experience as I’d half-heartedly tried to create a YouTube channel before but really, I was a complete beginner.

I made a video compilation of my previous year’s travels and I asked absolutely everyone to share it. With the help of my friends and family that video started to go viral. It wasn’t that I was a master editor – I just took about a month and half to edit it, using video tutorials whenever I ran into trouble.

So I traveled and worked online for the first few months, picking up a few gigs here and there. I even picked up a client that wanted to pay me $2500 to create them a website!

I worked long hours to make sure I finished the website but… the client never paid. To this day, I haven’t seen a cent of that money.

Obviously that was a big setback and didn’t help my dream of travelling continuously, but I kept going regardless and carried on with the video blog, trying to upload at least every 2 days. The most important thing about this part of the story – I CARRIED ON AND KEPT GOING.

After about 3 months my video blog was beginning to pick up some traction and people were finding me. I lived as cheap as I could and found anything I could online to make small amounts of money.

After 6 months of continued effort and learning, I had reached about 7000 subscribers and was making a couple hundred dollars a month from my videos.

I don’t believe it wasn’t because my videos were amazingly shot or edited that I was gaining popularity, I think it was because I was continually improving and trying to make each video better than the last (mainly through trial and error and watching YouTube tutorials).

READ MORE: How to Start a Travel YouTube Channel (Do THIS First)

I was now 6 months into my journey and running low on money. I’d been living as cheaply as I possibly could but still my savings were running low and I wasn’t bringing in enough revenue with my current strategy.

I decided that I could either spend more time doing web design or double-down on what I really wanted to do and spend more time and effort on the video blog. I went for the video blog. This decision was when my life started to change.

All my time was now devoted to making videos and other content. Through my efforts on social media and approaching sponsors, I lined up my first press trip. It was an all expenses paid trip to China for a 2 month residential Jiu-Jitsu course.

I had just about 8000 subscribers at this point and the opportunity was incredible (thank you to GJJ China, Ferdinand and Alison for all their support). It wasn’t paid but all expenses were covered i.e. food, accommodation and training included.

Not only was this an incredible experience but it also allowed me to really concentrate on growing my video blog without worrying about the money.

I believe this was instrumental in creating the YouTube channel I have today and although I understand that it was a fortunate opportunity, I also believe that you have to recognise these opportunities when they come along and make the most of them.

From here it just spiraled. I continued to create videos every two days, constantly trying to improve my quality and relate back to what my growing audience wanted to see.

I made the most of any money-making opportunities I could i.e. licensing videos, ad revenue, affiliate links (more about all of this in a future post) and soon enough my next sponsorship came along – a luxury cruise with Royal Caribbean!

I won’t go through all of the companies I’ve worked with and places I’ve been since, if you are really interested then you can check out my YouTube channel here.

The point I am trying to make is that my luck really began to change when I REALLY went for it. It was when I really committed to the video blog and began to put all my effort into it that I started to notice the rewards.

I would happily work 12 hours days behind the laptop in order to make it work.

I would share my videos absolutely everywhere, constantly thinking of new ways I could find subscribers. I employed the idea of marginal gains, making sure I found new subscribers every day, in order to create a large audience in the long run.

From my experience, that is what I would say is the essence of growth on social media – CONSISTENT MARGINAL GAINS.

Making sure that you are growing every day, making sure that you are making new connections or learning something new EVERY DAY.

That has been, in short, my secret to success over the past few years.

There are always some days where you grow more and some days where you grow much less, but as long as you are consistently putting in the effort every day then you will always be growing.

2022 Update

This original article was written over a year go and so I decided it’s time I gave a little bit of an update. Firstly, I recorded this video to give you a breakdown of everything that’s happened since I started out on this nomadic journey.

It’s now seven years into traveling continuously and each year is better than the last.

Besides travelling to some destinations that I have been on my bucket list for a long time, I have also begun host the Travel Continuously trips, including first Travel Continuously summit in Coron, Philippines.

This was a chance to bring together 8 aspiring nomads from around the world and pass on some of the things that I have learned from travelling over the past few years.

It was an incredible experience to be able to pass on some of my knowledge to a new wave of content creators and it’s something I want to do a lot more of in 2022. Sure, travelling the world is great but the main thing that keeps me creating content is the fact that I can inspire other people to do the same.

If you are interested in joining the next summit then make sure to check out our events tab for all the latest information!

Some Things To Remember

If you consistently put your content out there then people will find it. Keep going, keep creating content and employ the philosophy of marginal gains and who knows where you will be in a years time.

Tips to remember:

• Continual improvement & learning

• Make an upload schedule (at least once a week, more frequent the better)

• Share your content everywhere

• Make consistent marginal gains

• COMMIT.

If you want to learn more then make sure to check out my YouTube channel

Jordan Simons

Do you travel continuously? Are you a full time traveller, digital nomad or expat? 

We would love to hear from you! Get in contact to share your story with us, to be featured on Travel Continuously, to let us know what we’ve missed, what you want to hear and even what we’re doing wrong! Together we can help inspire others to follow their dreams and travel the world!

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