Work for nomads

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An attractive man and woman in their 20s stand in front of their campervan, smiling toward the camera.

Finding work for nomads can be a challenge in some ways, but there are some advantages for you too: you can go where the work is ― economic mobility; you can live on less income and can therefore work a wider variety of jobs; and you can work for things other than money: parking, a place to stay, food, etc. This page lists some of the many options that may be available to you.

Note: NomadLife.wiki makes no endorsements or claims about the quality or reputation of the services, opportunities, and agencies listed on this page. It's up to you to make sure these are a good fit for you and your needs.[1]

Regular jobs

It is common for nomads to work "regular" jobs like anyone else. If you have a job while living in a sticks-and-bricks home, can you keep that job while living in a vehicle? If your job is tied to one physical location (office, warehouse, etc.) you'll need lots of places to stay nearby, because staying in one place is harder than it sounds.

Many nomads work regular jobs but only for a short time before moving somewhere else for a similar job. For example, bartenders, traveling nurses, waitstaff, or electricians.

Jobs with nomad benefits

Some jobs may have side benefits (official or not) that are useful for those who are living nomadically:

Third shift work
If you are able to work nights, you will have an easier time finding parking to sleep during the day. People aren't expecting to find people sleeping in their vehicles when the sun is up, so you'll have an easier time blending in just about anywhere. A significant downside is that keeping cool is harder during the day, and that makes it difficult to sleep.
Home health care
Home health care jobs may allow you to use the house amenities while you work. I had an awesome [home health care job] where we did 24-hour shifts. Depending on the situation at each house, I could use the kitchen or the laundry machines, ... do meal prep, freeze the stuff, and put it in my van's cooler.[2]
Places with showers
If you don't have a shower in your vehicle, getting a job that offers showers for customers may allow you to also use that benefit. For example, gyms, campgrounds, or truck stops. A limited number of hotels with indoor pools have a private shower attached to the pool, or you may be allowed to use room showers. Many hospitals have lockers, showers, and other amenities for employees.
Places you can sleep
Get out of your van periodically by working a job that offers accommodations, such as firefighter[3] or overnight caregiver.[4] Some jobs at campgrounds, ski resorts, and national parks offer accommodations as a benefit.
Geographically-remote jobs
Jobs far from civilization may have a limited number of applicants due to their location, and their remoteness may appeal to certain personalities. For example, certain jobs on BLM and National Forests land[5], wildland firefighting, fire lookouts, scientific data gathering, and so on.

Instant work

These apps allow you to find work "instantly" when businesses need quick help, such as workers for an event or to cover for an absent regular employee.

  • ShiftNOW - jobs at restaurants and other hospitality businesses
  • WorkWhile - jobs at warehouse, light industrial, foodservice, hospitality, delivery, and more
  • Instawork - hospitality, restaurants, warehouses, and more
  • Traba
  • GigPoint
  • GigSmart - inventory, furniture assembly, etc.
  • Upshift - hotels, foodservice, catering, events, manufacturing
  • Bacon.Work - local gig work
  • Qwick - hospitality work
  • Wonolo - retail, hospitality, manufacturing/warehouse, food production
  • Angi Pro - jobs from homeowners for tasks including painting, cleaning, appliance repair, remodeling, etc.
  • TaskRabbit - complete tasks like furniture assembly, moving, and more
  • AirTasker - complete tasks like cleaning, repair, construction, pet care, and more
  • Fiverr - focused on freelance digital work like programming, graphics, writing, marketing, and music production.
  • Offer services on dog-walking and pet-sitting apps: Rover or Wag.[6]
  • Offer your services in person to local businesses; for example, go to a farmer's market and ask each booth if they need help staffing the booth, or ask to wash the windows at a strip mall.
  • Search Google maps (or similar) for "day labor near me" to find local work opportunities, many with same-day payment.[7]


Delivery gig work

Delivery gigs work nicely for nomads since they can "live" near delivery locations before and after deliveries. However, you may not want to put a lot of miles/kilometers on the vehicle you also use as a home, because that will wear it out a lot faster. If you have a large vehicle, your poor fuel economy will eat into your profits significantly. If you have an e-bike or bike, some services allow you to use that for deliveries, which could increase your profitability due to lower transportation costs.

Seasonal and temporary work

For areas and jobs where there seasonal hiring demands, nomads can often arrive early to get the best jobs.

Campground work

Work at campgrounds varies by location. Many campground jobs are unpaid other than by offering a free campsite for the duration of your stay. In private campgrounds, this is generally a site with hookups. Some campgrounds provide a stipend, meals, and free use of laundry machines or other amenities. If working above a certain number of hours each week, hourly wages or other compensation is typically added.

Assigned tasks may include[8]:

  • Checking in campers and taking reservations or other clerical duties.
  • Custodial chores like cleaning showers, bathrooms, and fire pits.
  • Maintenance of campground equipment and facilities
  • Landscaping duties like lawn mowing, weeding, raking, and trimming.
  • Work in camp store.
  • Escorting campers to their sites and helping them connect their campers to the utilities if needed.

Find campground jobs:

  • Workamper
  • KOA
  • Coolworks
  • Search Facebook for "work camping" groups.
  • Check any nearby campgrounds' web sites for job listings.

Tourist attraction work

Many hotels and towns that are in or around National Parks in the western United States will need to hire staff for housekeeping, front desk, kitchen and retail positions for only 3-4 months of the year, and many will even provide basic housing. There's also often seasonal jobs with the National Park Service directly, doing trail maintenance or other minor construction work. It's very normal for the people doing these jobs to live in vans or RVs in the campgrounds while working, and the locations are typically very beautiful with lots of outdoor rec opportunities.

Ski resorts are another frequent location that needs a lot of temporary jobs filled during the ski season which don't have a lot of preexisting requirements. They'll also often provide accommodation, giving the nomad a chance to settle down for a few months and earn some money before bouncing onto their next adventure.

Theme parks, water parks, and similar attractions often require lots of summer workers. You might get permission to stay in their large parking lots.

Skydiving dropzones are a great place to find seasonal gig work packing parachutes, and dropzones are often highly accepting of van-life. Plenty of skydivers themselves live in vans, and many dropzones have campgrounds attached to them with varying levels of amenities.

   More info on skydiving work

It's a highly physical job but isn't hard to learn, and can pay very well (often in cash). You don't need to be a skydiver to pack parachutes, although usually spending a lot of time at a dropzone leads to a desire to start skydiving (which leads to spending all your money). If you're interested in pursuing "packing", it's best to start at the larger dropzones which have a huge volume of jumpers passing through. The big two are Skydive Arizona and Skydive Chicago, a lot of skydivers and packers rotate between them on a seasonal basis. On the east coast, Paraclete in North Carolina and Sebastian or DeLand in Florida are the big places to start.

Remote work

Digital nomads are folks who "work from home", but living in a van means they can be working from anywhere. Stable internet connections tend to be critical for all digital nomads. Some career paths like photography, graphic design, writing, proofreading, marketing, transcription, or medical coding may have a relatively lower barrier to entry. Many customer service positions that were formerly done in call centers have gone fully remote. These jobs require a quiet environment without much background noise.

Tutoring and teaching

If you can help others learn, you can provide online teaching or tutoring services. In many cases, you don't need a teaching degree to get started. Search online for things like "remote tutoring", "teach ESL" or "teach EFL" (English as a second/foreign language), etc. If you can teach your own course, look for services like Outschool, MyTutor, AmazingTalker

IT jobs

For field technicians, find gigs anywhere at Field Nation. Typical careers that have good remote potential are usually highly technical in fields like software development and many avenues of IT.

   More info on IT jobs

Getting one of these careers often follows these steps: 1. Get skills that are in high demand; 2. Get any job that's probably in person, push yourself to learn a ton, and stay for 12-24 months. 3. You are now in high demand because you have skills and experience, so now you can find a fully remote job. If you are new to the IT field and your goal is to do remote work, it is HIGHLY beneficial to learn as much as you can about the large cloud infrastructure providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Learning more traditional IT skills isn't a bad thing and they are still useful, but if your goal is fully remote work than it makes sense to learn the technologies that enable that. Both Azure and AWS have official training programs (Amazon's is here), however an inquisitive nature and some googling can teach you almost everything you need to know for free. (Seriously, just go on YouTube and search for "Getting started on AWS". You can spin up a Virtual Private Cloud and some tiny Ubuntu servers at no cost).

Phone jobs

Many jobs that require making or receiving phone calls all day can be done remotely. This includes call center jobs, customer service, remote order taking, political phone surveys, sales, etc.

Content creation

You can earn some revenue from creating engaging content online. For most people, this will not produce enough income to live on, but it may be a way to earn extra money doing something you enjoy.

  • Big content producers ("influencers") can survive on monetization, but it's hard work to get there! Your content will likely competing against hundreds of other content creators on just about any subject matter. You may wish to start with the YouTube Partner Program or Earn Money on Instagram.
  • Writers on Substack can offer paid subscriptions for readers
  • Writers on Medium can join their Partner Program
  • WordPress shares ad revenue for premium customers

Affiliate income streams

While affiliate programs aren't going to generate a lot of cash, even a little bit helps. Sites like Amazon and WordPress pay for referrals and it doesn't cost the consumer anything extra. This wiki includes some affiliate links.

Tax issues

See the taxes page. These states have no income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.[9] Note that the state you are in and the state where the company is located may both have tax claims.

Non-monetary compensation

A camper parked at a WWOOF location.

Instead of getting paid in currency, these opportunities give you a temporary place to park or live.

Work relationships

One topic of debate is whether to tell employers or co-workers that you live in a van. Reactions can vary from curiosity to hostility to jealousy at your freedom. The reactions of co-workers have more to do with their own relation to work than to your living situation.


Resources

Resource Description
Work from Home While You Roam E-book detailing additional remote work opportunities
We Need WorkCampers Private Facebook group with 55k members as of August 2024. "A place to find work camping jobs. A place to list said work camping job."
Workampers Public Facebook group with 161k members as of August 2024. "... for discussing workamping jobs, seasonal, and/or remote onsite employment for RVers."
Money matters forum A sub-forum of VanLivingForum.com
Search forums and groupsSearch van life discussion groups for "work for nomads"
Search related sitesSearch van life sites for "work for nomads"
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Some or all of the content on this page was originally sourced from this page on RVWiki