21 Fantastic Location Independent Business Ideas To Quit The Rat Race

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On October 31, 2021

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The famous Greek philosopher Epictetus once said “Freedom is the right to live as we wish”. These words are really powerful for people who understand them and are looking to live without being dependent on a job or a certain location. One way to aim towards this goal is to design businesses that “live” on the internet and which can be managed from anywhere in the world.

Contrary to what people think, this is achievable with planning, hard work and it can be done in more industries than most imagine.

A location-independent business is a type of venture or organization that does not have a physical office or requires the owner (or the team) to be together in the same location – i.e. an office. As a counter-example, for a surgeon, a nurse, or a plumber would be impossible to operate such a business without being in the hospital or the field.

But why is the location independent income (also called by some “digital nomad lifestyle“) so popular nowadays and everyone is going crazy about it? Well, there are a few solid reasons for that. The major one is the freedom to travel, explore and live in other countries whilst generating income f using virtual assistants, outsourced logistics suppliers, and employees distributed across the world.

Another great justification for running a location-independent business is the ability to create money in more developed economies – in as stronger currency, whilst living at a higher standard in a developing country and spending the money there. Imagine for example what you could afford in Thailand with British Pounds by selling products or services in Great Britain and charging everything in pounds.

Location independent entrepreneurs come from hundreds of different industries, including tech, fashion, health, entertainment, and even the culinary world. This people have found ways to setup their business in such a way that it can be managed using internet software and mobile phones or VOIP in some cases.

In this post, we’ll provide 21 examples of location independent businesses, what they mean and how you could create one as well.

Maybe one of the most popular locations independent businesses at the moment, an eCommerce store is a great way to market to consumers that want to buy goods and services online. The great part about this business model is that you don’t need to be present in the store as everything is online, including the management of stock if needed.

The true strength of eCommerce stores is having access almost instantly to a global market to whom you can sell whilst being anywhere in the world as a business owner.

Building this type of e-commerce store in Shopify or Woocommerce comes with more responsibility than the more common Amazon FBA. If you decide to go the “my shop” way, you will have to buy your domain, purchase Shopify, configure, manage the store, and also the order placement yourself.

A quicker alternative to start selling products online globally is via Amazon FBA. Amazon currently owns 50% of the entire US ecommerce market and is probably the easiest way to enter the ecommerce market. However, it is also very competitive so make sure you do your research very well before opening up the store. A comparison between the two methods of ecommerce can be found here.

A top tip is to offer fewer products but to aim for items with a significant markup. The success of an eCommerce store relies heavily on branding – focus on creating a strong brand with a niche target market.

This is one of the most lucrative location independent business ideas if you carefully choose the right niche and focus your marketing efforts on the right audience.

Once you built your first stores, they can be scaled and replicated on other niches using the same techniques.

Getting published is indeed difficult and even the best authors have been rejected numerous times.

But the digital book market has made becoming a published author and making money a far easier business model and yes, because it’s digital, it can be done from anywhere. Anyone can self-publish an eBook and sell them on websites as big as Amazon and it’s completely free. And there are other alternative marketplaces where you can sell them like Gumroad and so on.

The biggest advantage of this location’s independent business idea is that the monetary startup costs are minimal, but it will require a significant time investment for writing and selling an eBook it.

The secret to success when it comes to eBooks is finding your niche – the smaller the niche, the better as you’ll limit your competition.

The best thing you can do to boost your sales is to invest in making your book as professional as possible. Get a professional editor, or at the very least a professional proofreader, to check your work. Finding a professional to create good covering art and to format your book can also go a long way to boosting sales.

SaaS comes from software as a service and is a business model where customers purchase software solutions online on a subscription basis. The software is hosted in the cloud and can be accessed anywhere at any time.

An online SaaS business is a great option for those with knowledge of coding and building software. Similar to membership sites, it’s a good idea to offer something for free. Usually, this is a free trial with an expiry date or a freemium with limited features which might lure the clients to upgrade.

To make money from selling software, your service must run without interruption and have a good value for money proposition for the clients. In the beginning, you’ll dedicate a lot of your time to fixing bugs and troubleshooting. Once you’ve got a streamlined product, the business is relatively automated; all the updates will become available to the users automatically and the onboarding for new clients will be streamlined as well. One huge advantage of the SaaS Models as a location independent business is that it can scale very quickly and you can have remote teams around the world without having an office and HQ.

SaaS is a great business model as customers are usually loyal and stay with the service for at least a few months. A must-have for this business to succeed is a real in-depth knowledge of the industry.

This is probably the “most digital” business model which you can have as an independent business person.

This business runs entirely online, and the physical resources to build and distribute replies entirely with the technology. Just like blogging or vlogging, the biggest investment at the start will be your time if you want to start this type of location independent venture.

Digital products are anythinthatch you can download online. The lack of physical presence and raw materials means minimal resources, no production costs, no storage costs, and so on. The most time-efficient and cost-efficient products you can sell are PDFs templates for emails, CVs, cover letters, business cards, calendars, etc

You can produce a template for almost anything with very little information. Make them even more valuable by designing them in a very creative manner and this way people will purchase them and give you the bucks

The advantage of digital products is that they can be sold relatively cheaply and are free to produce…from anywhere in the world making it a location independent business idea.

Other examples include eBooks (recipes and ‘How to’ books are very popular) as well as selling research and online papers. You can even sell audio files, music, and videos on your store as well as fonts, logos, backgrounds.

This business model is one of the most varied and cost-effective options for making money online. One of the biggest expenses will be marketing because both customers and content creators will have to find your store online.

According to research, each minute, YouTubers upload a total of 400 hours of content. YouTube has paid out more than 2 billion dollars to unique Content ID creators. YouTuber Creators have produced more than 10,000 videos in YouTube Spaces. Successful YouTubers make a lot of money in ad revenue from video views.

To get started, all you need is a camera and topics within a niche – the entry barriers are low. It is free to create an account and publish videos.

Although there’s serious money to be made on YouTube, for most vloggers, achieving YouTube fame takes years of hard work and a lot of content production.

The best way to earn money is in ad revenue or paid partnerships with brands, which you’ll only secure by having a big following crowd. Building a subscriber base requires consistent, regular, and above all, innovative content.

The key to success on YouTube is to find your niche. With so many people doing it, you need to offer something different. Lifestyle, health, fitness, and beauty are already crowded niches so try and find a different one that could attract followers and it’s becoming somehow trendy. Do the research.

If you are a creative person who likes to read, write and entertain people, then maybe blogging is for you.

A blog, which is nothing more than a search engine optimized website, is a digital space where you can share useful information, build a community and ultimately monetize it as well. Like all the businesses above, this too can be done from anywhere in the world as it can be managed with just an internet connection and a laptop.

Remember though, building a profitable blog requires the creation of regular, high-quality content to keep readers coming back. You’ll also need to decide on a niche to be successful because millions of blogs exist on the internet ao you’ll need to narrow down your target audience. Choosing a niche is also critical for attracting revenue.

The most commonly used free content management platform for blogging is WordPress.

Once your traffic is improving and you see traction on your website, you can think about monetizing it with strategies like affiliate marketing, eCommerce, or building up some courses on the interest and hobbies of the niche.

Use the expertise you have in a field and your social and presentation skills to start a webinar business. These live-streamed virtual seminars are your platform to deliver your educational content, allowing your viewers to interact with you from wherever they are.

The ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report 2021 shows the use of webinars increased 162%, with 60+ million people attending and engaging with 61+ million hours of content.

You can attract an international client base, as your attendees can be based anywhere in the world giving you the possibility to teach also from any location with a decent internet connection.

Webinars are particularly popular in the technology and financial service sectors field. To get going, you’ll need to decide on a specialist area and select appropriate webinar software. On top of that, you’ll have to research potential clients that you can invite and also the topics you want to touch upon to solve your audience’s needs.

This cool idea for a location independent business can be monetized by using your webinars to advertise affiliate products relevant to your field like video software and also by attracting sponsors you can mention briefly in the webinars.

Almost any professional who has a decent career can produce an online course and help other people online to boost their own careers. Alongside expert knowledge on your subject matter, you’ll need to consistently produce and edit media that can deliver the training, in the form of videos, podcasts and / or written guides.

One main advantage of this remote business model is that once you’ve produced your educational content, if it is good enough, it will bring passive income for years.

As an online course provider, you may consider putting your courses on platforms such as Udemy, Skillshare and Teachable to create an audience and start monetizing them.

Facebook Groups have become insanely popular since 2019 with some of them having millions of members.

If you’re the admin of a popular Facebook group (over 10,000 members or more), you can quickly turn your page into a profitable business.

The first thing you want to do is define your audience tpe and be attractive to brand sponsors and advertising partners.

Other ways to make money with Facebook Groups are affiliate marketing, selling their products or services for members, and charging for being part of the group. You can even find a sponsor for the cover photo of the Facebook group.

We’ve written an extensive guide about how to monetize a Facebook group with practical tips here.

As a lead generation business, your task is to source potential clients for companies in one or multiple industries. Companies will pay for qualified leads to prospective customers who have a genuine interest in their products or services.

This location independent venture is all about collecting data of people interested in certain products, and then passing it on to your business clients.

The best way to collect data is to place an ad for a product online that redirects the consumer to your landing site. Here, the customer fills out their details in the hope of getting more information on what they’re looking for. Once they’ve given their contact information, you’ve generated a lead, which gets sent automatically to your lead buyer through your lead software.

A great channel to generate leads is Facebook because it can reach huge volumes of people very easily and knows how to tailor ads to likely consumers.

Finding clients should be relatively easy– you can do this via email campaigns or online advertising and choose an in-demand niche. So do some thorough research before you start this business.

Convert recorded speech into a text document for clients in law firms, courts, meetings, and trade associations. If you’re a competent typist and enjoy working solo, this is a great way to earn money or you can hire more people to scale this location independent business if you decide to take this road.

To start a remote business like this, you will need transcription software such as oTranscribe, Inqscribe, or Express Scribe, a good headset, and a word processing program (Word, OpenOffice, or similar). You can use platforms such as Fiverr to generate freelance work and find clients. If you have a specialist background or skillset you can charge more for your services.

Another role you can take on is a medical transcriptionist, which involves transcribing recorded dictation from doctors or nurses into a written format for patients’ medical records, referral letters, or other documents.
One of the biggest challenges in the transcription business is to make out words that are difficult to interpret for various reasons such as strong accents, fast speech, or background noise.

Digital marketing services are in great demand these days. With a lot of companies going through digital transformation and migrating to the online world, there is a need in the market for services like digital strategy, paid advertising, and social media management.

For example, Facebook ads are a powerful way not only to increase website traffic and result in increased sales and revenue. It’s time-consuming and becoming more complex, which is why many companies are happy to outsource to somebody who can maximize their Facebook advertising.

Once you’ve learned the process, it becomes easy to replicate for other clients and is a straightforward business to run from home

If you want to take over the social media accounts from companies, you will work alongside individuals, brands, and companies to build and run their social media presence.

In theory, you can be location independent whilst running this business and have a distributed team of analysts and creatives around the world.

Some of the daily tasks consist of monitoring, measuring, and engaging the performance of their client’s social media accounts and making appropriate changes to improve their online presence. Familiarise yourself with all the most popular social media platforms, build your accounts as your portfolio and aim for small clients first to manage their accounts.

If you want to build a digital marketing firm, create a website and use your social media pages and the study cases from your very first clients to procure others.

Small or big, all companies must have a website at the moment to attract more customers and be successful.

As a web developer or having people employed to do that, your mission will be to find small and medium companies who need this service and deliver

Being a service in such high demand, however, means there are tonnes of web developers out there. The best possible way to make money as a web developer is to choose a niche. Either focus on a specific industry or a particular type of website design: eCommerce, Dental Practices, Community Platforms, etc.

Promote your business on all channels– start by creating social media accounts for your business, reach out to your network or LinkedIn or even family friends, and attract leads. Promote yourself LinkedIn, Twitter, and why not Instagram.

Make sure to have an advertising budget running on keywords and social media.

Finally, make sure your website is flawless. Customers will base their purchase on the quality of your website – this is your portfolio, and it needs to be the best example of your work.

Yet another location independent business that can be done with an internet connection, your brainpower, and talent.

In this field of business, you and your associates will have to identify client’s goals, assess the strengths and weaknesses of their business, and create a structured plan where you outline how to achieve the set goals on the web

Essentially, this means advising the client on selecting the correct web-based applications to increase their competitiveness in the market or improve communication among (remote) employees and with customers as well as their visibility online.

So many businesses are migrating online that you’ll be highly in demand as an internet strategist and the great part is you can do this from literally anywhere in the world. Experience in business strategy and digital marketing could help boost your credibility so make sure you mention that on your website or CV if you have it.

For this kind of business, cold-calling is an excellent way to procure clients. You may also use email campaigns and online advertising to attract customers.

With remote working trending and more decentralised team around the world, many businesses are turning to online training events to incorporate more of their workforce. You can start an online business producing training events in any subject. If you’ve got a particular skill set, you can create or hold training sessions or informative talks which can be live-streamed to clients.

It’s an attractive option for companies who want to reduce training time in their offices and also minimise cost.

If you want to develop your business, experienced online trainers use platforms such as ClickMeeting, Livestorm and GoToWebinar to host events.

An email marketing company works with businesses to improve their email communication and step up their marketing campaigns to convert more leads or sales.

In this job, consultants help clients to assess and improve their email communication in the marketing mix. They can go as far as creating and setting up email campaigns.

It means advising the client on the body of the email, the titles, the content, and testing different copy strategies to obtain higher opening rates and ultimately conversions.

The initial startup costs for this location independent venture are low, you’ll probably need some presentations for your sales pitch and a minimalistic website.

The more background experience you have in marketing and advertising, the more you can charge.

With more and more remote workers and large-scale, international companies, many businesses are turning to online training events to incorporate more of their workforce. You can start an online business producing training events in any subject. If you’ve got a particular skill set, you can create or hold training sessions or informative talks which can be live-streamed to clients.

It’s an attractive option for companies who want to reduce training time in their offices and also minimise cost.

If you want to develop your business, experienced online trainers use platforms such as ClickMeeting, Livestorm and GoToWebinar to host events.

Buying and selling online has a lot of avenues. Another popular option these days is to sell private label products on Amazon.

Private label products are goods sold by a retailer with their branding and packaging but created by another company.

You can create your private label by creating a brand and buying products from a supplier. Websites like Alibaba and Aliexpress manufacture most of the products you see online. Yes, it’s pretty crazy.

Then Amazon offers a Fulfillment-by-Amazon (FBA) program where you can create a buyer account on Amazon and sell your products through their platform without you ever touching the merchandise. As part of this scheme, Amazon will take care of the picking, packing, and shipping for you, which massively minimizes your costs. Amazon’s vast online footfall will help you scale your business and find clients. You can even search Amazon itself for hot products.

Pro Tip: Avoid products that come with specific seller regulations, such as electronics, beauty cremes, baby food, and so on.

Coaching helps an individual to discover answers to their problems for themselves with a bit of guidance. A typical coaching session involves a form of a conversation between a coach and a coachee where the coach asks open questions that will encourage clients to reflect on the issues on which they want to work.

Mentoring is about passing on valuable skills, knowledge, and insight to a mentee to help them develop their abilities. While coaching is used in a variety of fields, mentoring is usually employed in organizations as a way of efficiently transferring valuable competencies from one person to another. Therefore the mentor and mentee tend to have different seniority levels. To provide these services online, you can set up a website or blog and conduct sessions via Skype or by using video presentation software such as Emaze, Powtoon, or Slidedog.

In general, coaching and mentoring professionals usually focus on the following areas: advice for small businesses, career, executive, soft skills, parenting, marriage and relationships, personal life, spirituality, fitness, and nutrition. Center your business around one or two of these areas and make sure you have the necessary credentials and certificates to legitimize your service.

The podcast industry has exploded since 2018. Podcasts are a solution to commuter life and can be consumed on the go. Podcasts are hugely variable, offering entertainment, information, or a combination of both. Podcast providers produce digital, audio-based files. Listeners have greater access to podcasts than ever before, via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, BuzzSprout, Podbean, Simplecast, and Captivate, to name a few.

Becoming a podcaster is a hugely flexible job and again can be location independent. To become a successful podcaster, you should, once again, choose a niche you love, find interesting topics in it, and start approaching your future guests.

Decent podcasting software and equipment can cost as little as £50. Reputable recording software includes Logic Pro for Mac or Audacity for Windows. Make sure you have a good microphone and of course, a good internet connection.

With over 800,000 podcasts in existence, it’s crucial to find a unique concept to attract listeners.

21. location independent Freelancing

Many location independent workers start as freelancers or transition into these roles later on. We’ve seen people who are freelance writers and designers, software developers, and even freelance voice talent. That’s the great thing about being a freelancer in today’s world – you can find work in nearly any industry.

Why it works as a location independent career: Freelancers tend to be in charge of their schedules and can do their jobs from anywhere thanks to technology. Work and travel programs are a great way for freelancers to grow their professional networks and even potentially find new clientele. They can count on being inspired by the variety of destinations that they live and work in while on the program and can rely on their community to keep them productive and focused on their passions.

Software developers are some of the very first digital nomads on record.

This job works great as location independent career or business because software developers use software and their code to deliver digital products. Yes, it’s true they also have meetings, but nowadays everyone is on Zoom or Team.

Anyone with a feel for technology can become a software developer by taking some of the online courses which will give you basic skills and then practice with smaller clients. For freelance jobs, some of the best websites to find gigs are UpWork and Freelancer.

ACCOUNTANT

As a bookkeeper, you are responsible for keeping track of a company’s spending to ensure that the business’s financial accounts are in good order. In practice, this means processing invoices, receipts, and payments, completing VAT returns, identifying expenses on bank statements, repairing cash flow statements, helping to prepare financial statements, and producing management accounts. Some of the most popular accounting software programs are Sole Trader, Xero, and Quickbooks.

The clients can send you the digital version of the receipts and you can work on them without being stuck in a certain location.

TEACHER/Tutor

Even though many teaching positions are still based in a classroom, there are a few different kinds of education-based roles that can be done remotely. For example, online K-12 schools are becoming mainstream and there are many online ESL educator openings available. If you’re looking for a higher-level position, some assistant professors have the ability to teach online.

Online schooling has become a thing during the COVID lockdowns with teachers no longer confined to working within the four walls of a class room and also more people got used to the online way of learning.

Another option is to create your own course and live classrooms for your students in the field you teach. Whatever way you chose, this represent an solid option for a location independent activity.

Software developer

CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE

Customer service is a crucial part of any business offering a product or service. A good customer service process can be the difference between losing and retaining customers and implicitly business and revenue. Many companies choose to outsource customer service, which is where you step in.

To work in customer service, you must have a noise-free environment so that you can listen to customers and respond appropriately. One essential requirement for this is a very good internet connection to use a VOPI phone so you can do this gig by being location independent. Businesses that provide home-based customer support opportunities include Arise and LiveOps.

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Many designers use their skills to break into user experience design, while others venture into social media, website, or mobile application design. Whatever the case, there is a key factor to this job that makes it ideal for location independent living: the word ‘graphic’.

Why it works as a location independent career: Graphic designers create many (if not all) of their visually appealing projects on a computer or a tablet. They are not beholden to traditional studios or workspaces to do their jobs successfully

. By switching to video meetings when they’re needed, graphic designers can still actively participate in these important discussions, while maintaining a flexible lifestyle‍

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

Marketing managers and social media managers make up a sizable cohort within the location independent community. These messaging and visual gurus are in charge of teams within their organization that create consumer-facing marketing materials. Although their influence stretches to nearly every medium, marketing managers and social media managers can certainly become location independent and do their jobs from the road.

Why it works as a location independent career: So much of what marketing and social media managers do can be done online. They are in charge of coordinating a team to create a desired result for the company, and much of that communication and organization takes place over email or instant messaging applications. Once these employees open their minds to taking their meetings over video instead of in-person, they will realize that their days open up and allow them to think about big picture strategies, not just the details of a project.