Making money while volunteering abroad

Travelers who are abroad for lengthy periods of time think only of how much they are going to spend. International volunteers, gap year individuals, career breaks, and students who are abroad; all budget for the length of their stay. They plan to spend as little as possible so that to make sure they don’t run out of money. Most of them forget that while they are volunteering abroad, they can also make money. There are various creative ways to make the most of your holiday by making money while at the same time enjoying it. Although it can be more intimidating looking for a job while you are abroad there are many creative solutions that are available for you to use. These money making solutions won’t make you rich but they could help you extend your holiday and give you more opportunities. They are:


Blogging

Starting a blog is free, and many websites offer you an opportunity to start a blog. There are Google blogs, yahoo blogs, MSN blog, Wordpress blogs and many others. Starting a blog is not hard, all you need is to blog about something you love, you can write about where you are volunteering, what you are doing and where you have been. The blogs can be just about anything and if they have good quality content and have a huge following you can make good money. You can popularize your blog by telling your friends and friends of friends to stop by and read it. You can make money on your blog through running Google adwords; infolinks, affiliate marketing and paid advertising. When you blog long enough and consistently (like 2 or 3 times a week), your blog will become more popular and you will have more readers. With the increase of readers it will lead you to get more money from the blog. There are people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars because they have been doing it for years, but as an individual doing it as a hobby you could earn up to $ 2,000 to $ 3,000 per month. Start blogging now so by the time you are on your holiday you will be earning money while abroad. Note that blogging takes time and patience.


Article writing

Writing articles is like blogging but a bit different. You could write articles about something you also love and know well about. When you have a topic to write about, go to Google or any other search engine and research about your topic. You article could be 500 to 700 words, well researched and presented. Writing a good article takes between 30 minutes to an hour. After writing an article you could sell your articles to publishers, and magazines. Publishers are constantly looking for new and fresh content on the net and they are willing to pay money for the articles. Most online publishers will pay $ 7 to $ 15 per article. If you are able to write an article per day or two per day during your free time and sell them in a month you will earn $ 500 to $ 1000. The tricky part is selling the articles to online publishers. Once you have a constant market you will make good money. Writing articles is like blogging you need patience and consistency to start making good money.


Pictures and videos

While you are abroad you experience and are exposed to new things. You can document your experiences through photos and videos. Many people would love to see your photos about a village in rural Kenya and videos of their homes. There are companies which will even pay you for your videos and photos like for example National Geographic. Apart from taking photos of common land marks and tourist sites, look for unique photos which could tell a story. Travel companies and other organization could pay you a large amount for what is in your camera.


Making money online

There are websites like Squidoo and Hubpages who pay you when you write lens or hubs on the website. They each have different criteria on rewarding their users. On Squidoo they use tiers to pay their website users. The best part of these online ventures you can write about anything and you can start making good money after 6 – 12 months depending on the quality of your work. Once you have made a lens or a hub it will always make money for you until it stops being popular. Go to their websites for more information.


Offline methods
You can get paid voluntary work with some volunteer travel organizations, but they don’t pay you too well. They give you just enough to pay for basic needs. You can also apply for white collar jobs where you don’t need work experience or any qualifications or a work permit. Jobs like working at a book store, working at a mall, waitressing, and as an aupair. You can also work as a tour guide. Other good ideas are working on an organic farm (WOOF) whereby you are given a room and food to work on the farm. This kind of job is preferred to by gap years and it’s also physically intensive.