Can you really make a living from that?

“This sort of life doesn’t suit everyone”

Timo Eckardt, 28, digital nomad

To please my family, I actually signed up for university, and studied business and sociology. But once I graduated, I immediately started working as freely and independently as I’d imagined doing in the first place: I teamed up with a colleague and started a “Podcast for Digital Nomads”. It’s pretty well received. So far, we’ve had about three million downloads.

We also offer a starter package with various coaching sessions for aspiring digital nomads. We’re very successful at it and have now got an annual six-figure turnover. So I’ve got to a position where I can now make a living from it and work from just about anywhere. In recent months, this has mainly been Hamburg, Malaysia, Poland and Latvia. It feels great to be able to travel so much and work from wherever I fancy. I’m happy with the way things are.

But – as great as all this may be – there are also downsides, of course: you’ve always only got yourself to rely on. You work at your own risk and you’ve got no safety net. You’ve got to carry the entire responsibility yourself, be very structured and make provisions for all possible scenarios, for example if a customer pays late or you fall ill. Some colleagues end up failing – this kind of life just doesn’t work for everyone.

Nevertheless, I think we’ll be seeing an increasing number of digital nomads in the coming years. This is probably also due to the influence of social media, which portrays digital nomadic life in a very glamorous way: laptop in hand, relaxing in a hammock at the sea, here and there a few palm trees in the background – but when you really give it a go in reality, you quickly realise this is only a superficial picture and that there’s much, much more going on behind it.

“Right now, this lifestyle suits me perfectly”

Michael Hörnlimann, 28, digital nomad

I spoke to lots of people about it, but they all had their doubts. They used to say: “Are you absolutely sure?” or “What if it doesn’t work out?”. My reply was that the only way I could find out was to try. I quit my job – and felt free at last. Just like a hamster who steps off his little treadmill and starts thinking about what else there is to discover.

I’ve now been self-employed on a full-time basis since April 2018. I can decide on my own when, where and how I work. The only requirement, of course, is that I have access to a stable and fast WLAN connection. I’ve been travelling abroad a lot, to Argentina and New Zealand, among other places, and each time I worked on the road.

My clients are private individuals or small and medium-sized companies. I’m able to make a decent living. On the one hand, I do earn less than before; on the other hand, I also spend less compared to the times when I was employed. In addition, I also keep my fixed costs as low as possible. And I’m happy with that: right now, this lifestyle suits me perfectly. I never think about quitting.

And I’m not the only one living like this; the trends is upwards, with the number of digital nomads on the increase. But from my point of view, it’s not a significant rise. In my experience, people in the US are quicker to decide in favour of working remotely than in Europe (especially Germany, Switzerland and Austria). The need for social security is simply very high here.

Still, I expect working on the go to become even more normal in the future – and working from home and in cafés more common. Many companies, whether large or small, will most likely go global to find the best workers in their respective fields.

“A very hard way to make a living”

Michaela Nick, 47 years, clickworker

That’s why I’m trying to earn a little extra money as a clickworker. An online search for ways to “make money” – during which several clickworking platforms came up – gave me the idea. I signed up to all the platforms and got my first job right away: transferring the addresses of web pages into a table. For this, I earned 0.05 cents per address.

What followed was a whole lot of different assignments: surveys, multiple-choice tests, that sort of thing. I earned between 0.02 cent and 15 euros for this work – but unfortunately, not only are the well-paid assignments very rare, but they always get snapped up quickly too. That’s why payment per click is almost always only at a rate of well under a cent.

I work about six hours a day as a clickworker – not however with a fixed 10am to 4pm, but rather whenever it suits me. I really appreciate the fact that I’m free to arrange my working hours to suit myself. I’ve even done jobs from four to six in the morning. I also work my six-hours-a-day at the weekend – but normally there are much fewer jobs on Saturdays and Sundays; most are during the week.

I accumulate around 180 hours of clickworking per month, maybe even a few more, and I earn about 150 euros. Calculated in terms of an hourly rate, it’s very poorly paid, of course. In addition, I’m not covered by social security or protected in any way. If things don’t go smoothly, I can hardly defend my rights – or only with great difficulty. One time, for instance, I didn’t receive any money, although I’d done the job.

If I’m honest, it’s a very hard way to make a living. But I still keep doing it because I can’t do without the money. 150 euros is a great deal for me and it makes a real difference. But if I had a wish, I’d like to stop clickworking and start a normal job – maybe as a carer or companion for an old lady.

“A nice side job to supplement the salary”

Alexis Gentzsch, 36, clickworker

I signed up on what is probably the most popular copywriting portal. That was quite easy and I was able to start almost immediately after my sample text had been accepted. The assignments were divided into categories and requirements for the copywriter. It was also the first time I’d heard about clickworking and said to myself: this is a fantastic way to get started and earn a few extra bucks.

So while I was writing webcopy, I was also taking on clickworking assignments on the side: my very first job as a clickworker was a little Google search. The task was to search for terms and enter the top search result. After that, I ventured into product descriptions and things like typing out sound recordings or making my own voice recordings for an AI.

In the meantime, I still take clickworking jobs, but not on a regular basis. Sometimes I accept 20 jobs a month, sometimes only two or three. My earnings depend on the client. I like simple surveys; I get paid one euro per piece. Company descriptions are also easy to type; I get three euros per piece for 160 words. For 220 words the payment increases to nine euros.

But, unfortunately, well-paying jobs are very scarce. I’d even go so far as to say that 80 per cent of copywriting jobs are borderline exploitative – I find it outrageous when you’re supposed to make a video of yourself in return for a few cents. If you’re not willing to type or click your fingers to the bone, clickwork can never be the foundation for earning a living.

It’s more like a nice side job to supplement the salary. But if you look at clickworking as such, it has real benefits: you get paid quickly, you can work from home, manage your time freely and decide for yourself how much you want to do. Therefore, I believe that there’ll be more clickworkers in the future. Especially if someday the jobs are paid at least a little bit better.