How much money can you make as a freelancer? About as much as a musician.

Woodbrook, Trinidad

You know all those minimalist traveler dudes, who blog about freeing yourself from the 9-5, becoming a digital nomad, living the dream?

Yeah those dudes are on to something. But that something, is hard to sustain.

I freed myself of the 9-5 a year ago. The 9-5 where I made minimum $22 an hour. Consistently. Week to week. For years.

And now here I am, free, in the Caribbean, a digital nomad; explaining to customs officials who ask how my boss allows me to travel so much, that my ‘boss’ is actually a whole bunch of different people from Nigeria, South Africa and Jamaica who pay me very little for quite a lot of work.

And these projects come inconsistently. One week I am writing 30,000 words, the next, nothing.

And the pay is just as inconsistent. Sometimes I’m making $18 an hour. Most of the time I make $6 an hour.

$6 an hour. For a few weeks. Then nothing. For weeks.

This is the freedom of the digital nomad.

So what conclusions to draw from this? Possibly I’m not doing it right. More commitment, more pitches, more MORE is required to make this work. Possibly.

But to me, after a year of this, the digital nomad idea seems to only work if you have your hand in multiple pies; freelance writing, freelance public speaking, working on an ebook or two, playing the field of site start-ups…all kinds of income streams pulsing away into your paypal account.

Or dare I say it, the digital nomad can only be sustainable as long as you live in a third world country, couchsurf or do REAL, non-digital cash jobs wherever you happen to be located at the time.

In this way, freelancing is like working as a professional musician.

The band that makes their own original music, is rarely booked. The band that does covers, has consistent work. The albums a band bring out are not profitable in themselves, but the gigs they do to showcase those albums ARE profitable.

And fundamentally, your professional musician is likely making more money, more consistently, from teaching kids to be musicians than they make from actually BEING musicians themselves.

So to those considering the free life of the minimalist digital nomad… if you tried the musician thing, and you couldn’t live off the proceeds? Probably don’t expect to live off the proceeds of a strictly ‘digital’ freelance life.

And everybody else considering throwing away their 9-5 in their home country? Make sure you sell all your stuff to have enough money to live off for a while…or you’ll just be setting yourself up for yet another 9-5…only in a different country this time.

But hey, if you ARE out there reading this, making $1000 a month in your freelance work….. help a sistren out nah!