3 Ideas for Traveling Businesses
I’ve been looking for a way to make money while traveling without applying for a job. I want to have some kind of traveling business. It is clear that just a blog wont do the trick at the rate, at least not for a few years at the rate I am going. So I need to figure out how to take my interests and skills and make money from them without a permanent location.
Here are the front runners so far, based on the ease of getting customers and transporting materials from place to place.
Table of Contents
1) Traveling Masseuse
Everybody knows how to give a massage. Although I’m still fuzzy on the details, I’ve heard a few strongly worded opinions of people who insist that you need to be licensed in order to sell massages. I’m not sure I agree with that.
I think it would be easy to get customers; you just set up by a beach or in a hostel, hang a sign, and be open for business. If on a beach, you wouldn’t even need a massage chair or table- just have the customer lay down on their towel and get to work.
The main con I see to this, which may be silly, is that I wouldn’t know how to handle uncomfortable situations. Id need to come up with a way to politely turn down clients who I just don’t want to touch.
2) Traveling Jewelry Salesman
Making crafts is just something I enjoy doing- it doesn’t have to be jewelry, but jewelry can be small and easy to transport, and can potentially be sold for a high price. I’m sure there are plenty of places where you could just set up on the street and sell to tourists and make some pocket money to fund your trip. Even better, you could find local art fairs and participate in those. Plus, this is something that you could build on with time, if you have a brand name and a website. The more people that like your jewelry when they see it in person, the more are likely to go to your website and buy at a future date.
As for a website, I recommend using Etsy or something similar, rather than creating a site with your own domain, at least to start. The cost is much lower and everything is already set up for you to just upload details about your crafts and wait for people to buy them. But the job of marketing is still your responsibility.
Visit my Etsy store it is very small now, but I hope to grow it slowly as I learn about the business of selling handmade jewelry online.
3) Sell Small things on Ebay
Well that’s the key, isn’t it? Find something tiny, with a high profit margin, that you can sell on Ebay. I lucked out this summer and found a product that I can buy, modify, and sell for a much higher price- and I can fit hundreds of them in a few ziplock bags and bring them wherever I go, then mail them out in regular envelopes as people buy them. The key to Ebay is brands and trends. I’ve been all over Ebay in the past month, and it is a very different site then Etsy. Etsy is for beautiful handmade goods, but these things don’t sell at all on Ebay. The most interesting trend I’ve seen recently is steampunk fashion, especially goggles I don’t really know what to think of it- the fashion is pretty cool for costumes but people are wearing these things in real life.
Id love to hear your opinions on the matter, whether you have experience making money on the road with your own small businesses or whether you’ve got some great ideas you think other people could use!
