October 8, 2026

How to make money on the road as full time travellers

So the biggest question everyone asks is, how do you make money on the road?

Unfortunately money makes the world go round, and as much as we don’t work the Monday to Friday 9-5 we still need money in order to be able to travel.

We’ve met fellow van lifers on our journeys who do lots of different things in order to make money.

Ideally you want to have sold your house and got a load of money in the bank for it and are travelling on that, but not everyone has that luxury.

I don’t think there’s any one perfect job or situation because everything has its pros and cons. Unless someone just pays you to travel, with no work required, but we’ve not met anyone like that yet.. the closest to that is people who earn from their travel social media pages. But that in itself is a lot of work, sometimes working 6-8 hours a day!

We’ve met people who rent property back at home and that gives them a monthly income but when things go wrong with tenants or the property, it is highly stressful and expensive when you’re thousands of miles away.

We’ve also met retired people who are living off their retirement, which is also ideal but then they are at a different stage in life where their health is a priority so certain things they are restricted from doing: long hikes, staying up partying with locals, etc.

And we have also come across people who work Monday to Friday 9-5 in their vans so they don’t travel far but at least they are away from the office.

Obviously everyone is different and peoples budgets are very different too. Some people really live off a shoe string whilst other enjoy the more extravagant things in life. I’d say we lean more towards the shoe string budget, but we aren’t afraid to spend a little on an experience as we know it will be a once in a lifetime thing.

So how do we make money?

Teaching English online as a foreign language

There are many platforms that allow you to do this, like Cambly, Engoo, Palfish, etc. and you don’t need a degree or to have been a teacher before. We just took a £20 course on TEFL which helped us get our foot in the door.

I teach on Cambly and have done for 5 years now, I have a steady flow of regular students as well as meeting many new students every day. I work roughly 19 hours a week which I spread over 6 mornings Wednesday – Monday. This allows me to have my afternoons free so we can do any travel stuff we want to do. My calendar is also flexible so if there is something that needs a whole day or a few whole days I can always block off my time. The pay isn’t great, but if you’re travelling in cheap countries then you can make it stretch a long way.

Selling jewellery

Stacey has been making macramé bracelets and also some earrings as well which we try to sell whenever we are near a beach or river and there are plenty of people. Obviously it’s not guaranteed income, but it’s another way of collecting some pennies!

Match Betting

Match betting is not betting, it’s a form of using betting websites and the offers they have and laying against all of your bets, which in turn allows you to make a small profit. We average around £10 a day from this, which isn’t a lot but it’s an extra £300 plus a month which certainly helps!

Writing music for other people

I’m a musician by trade, it is what I studied at university and it allows me to help other people write songs, lyrics or just music. I use platforms like Fiverr and AirGigs which are freelance based websites where I set my own prices and they take a percentage. Once again this isn’t guaranteed income and it fluctuates monthly, and I’ve certainly noticed a drop since AI has joined the game, but it is still a nice side hustle.

Website design

And lastly I also dabble in a bit of website design on platforms like Wix and WordPress. Again I use Fiverr for this as well as having a couple of clients from when I was in the UK whose website I help maintain. This is again a side hustle, but sometime it brings in a substantial amount of money if I get a big order.

Social Media

We have just started to monetise our Facebook page, albeit not a lot at the moment, we reckon it’s an extra $50 a month. We are still trying to monetise our YouTube account by sharing our travel content. This is a bit of a long winded process and takes time to build up a strong fanbase. In the meantime, we have used “buymeacoffee.com” to encourage our followers to support us by buying us a beer or helping us to feed the strays.

User Testing

There is also Userlytics, which is User Testing where you review apps or websites and get paid. It really is hit and miss as to whether you qualify for each test as it is very user specific, but every once in a while we might make an extra €10-50 depending on the test. We can’t rely on it though as an income.

Conclusion

So there you have it, our ways of making money on the road. It’s a mix and match of things, but it somehow manages to scrape together to allow us to live pay check to pay check whilst enjoying beautiful places around the world. The slower we travel, the more we save, so generally we are quite slow travellers!

If you have any questions or want to know more about any of the ways we make money, then feel free to drop us a comment or send us a message. We are happy to help!

You can watch our YouTube video on it all here: