Laptop Travel Lifestyle

One of the questions I'm asked most often is, "how can you live on permanent vacation? Is it really possible to make money as you travel, without being cooped up in a hotel room, slaving over the laptop most of the time?" The answer is yes, you can live the laptop travel lifestyle by developing residual streams of income. And the good news is you don't have to wait years before you're ready to head out. Here are a few options that are open to you.

Network Marketing

One of the most lucrative streams of residual income you can develop is a network marketing business. Choose a company with international sponsoring options and you can develop a larger network wherever you travel or live. In fact, you can write off your travels, putting network marketing at the top of the laptop travel lifestyle residual income list.

Robert Kiyosaki in his Rich Dad books, and Robert Allan in Multiple Streams of Income, both promote the addition of network marketing as one of your streams of income.

A network marketing income can provide true walk-away income. This is a stream of income I'm currently researching. Know any good programs I should consider, with a good compensation plan, in the health and wellness industry, with a proven internet-based lead generation system? Be sure to post a comment.

Affiliate Marketing

This is the residual income vehicle I'm most familiar with. I love writing and a few hours a day spent writing for one of my websites today can build a stream of income that will continue to come in even when I'm traveling and taking time off. While part of my income comes from blogging, a well built affiliate site differs in that daily (or at least very frequent) posts aren't required to maintain traffic. Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search provide the traffic. I could be kicking back at GTA Hotels for a week, check my PayPal account and discover I've earned another $2,000.00 during my week off.

If you're considering the laptop travel lifestyle, affiliate marketing is one the best choices for generating the residual income you need to enjoy plenty of time off with a dependable and respectable income. And you can continue to build your income while you travel, if you like. One to three hours a day spent with your ThinkPad Notebooks , publishing new articles, can develop this stream of income on an ongoing basis.

Two years ago I came across an article that changed my life. It put me onto URL: The Affiliate Marketing Handbook by James Martell. I printed the eBook out, three hole punched it and put it in a binder. Then I began feverishly highlighting the pages and making copious notes. In that eBook I found a blueprint for making a very substantial residual income and a way to realize my laptop travel dreams. You're reading this post today, thanks to James Martell :-).

Writing Royalties

If you have a flair for writing, you can make a great residual income writing a novel or perhaps a book on travel. My younger daughter is pursuing a career in writing and one day I expect the royalties will provide her with a substantial stream of residual income.

You could of course write for travel magazines and do copywriting for websites and publications (Helium), but you'd have to write on an ongoing basis to maintain your income, much like the blogs I publish. To fully experience a travel lifestyle, more and more of our income needs to have a residual component.

I welcome your comments, particularly if you know of another way to make a stream of residual income while you travel.

An excellent source of income while traveling is writing for websites, blogs and magazines. I currently write from fifteen to thirty articles each week and thought I'd share a little from my experiences.

Article Research

After you've decided on a blog, website or publication and what type of article you are going to write, the research begins. I've discovered there's a danger with research. Over-researching your article reduces profitability and can often produce bloated articles nobody will take time to read.

At your local library, make friends with the local librarians. They can be a gold mine of information and resources. This can sometimes pose challenges while traveling due to the language barrier.

Become an accomplished Internet searcher. Many search engines have an "advanced" search option that can help you create a more precise search. For most search engines, a plus sign + in front of a word means that that word must occur in any results. (For example, +new +york +pollution) Quotation marks can be placed around a phrase to retrieve those words as a phrase and not just as keywords appearing separately. ( For example, "new york" retrieves that phrase and not entries that refer to "york" and anything "new") More search words are usually a good idea in search engines, but not necessarily in library catalogs or periodical indexes.

Sometimes a story will require interviewing one or several person. If you are interviewing someone, have a microphone along to record the interview onto your laptop computer, or carry a micro cassette recorder.

Remember when interviewing that no matter how famous the person is, they are a real person too with feelings and concerns. Treat them naturally and you will get a much better story.

Don't forget that if it is a telephone interview, you have to tell the person that you are recording the conversation for legal purposes.

Writing the Article

The first step in the writing is to create a motivating opening story. The opening must propel the reader into the rest of the article so they can't stop reading.

After writing the opening for the article, how do you continue? If you've done your research for the article, you will not write 2,000 words for a publication that only takes 500 word articles. In most cases you will have a target length for your article. This word count helps give some definition to your plan.

I write from an outline. Normally my article will have a number of points or illustrations. Write out the different points for your outline. When I write a short story, I use the same approach. What is the beginning, middle and ending? An outline keeps the writer focused on the goal of the article.

Be realistic with yourself and your writing lifesytle. Can you only write for an hour a day or maybe it is only twenty minutes? Are you motivated to write the entire article in one session? Perhaps you like to write only one point from your outline during each session. Whatever your writing goals, it is important to write consistently and keep moving the article toward completion.

After you've written the article, put it away. If you are on a tight deadline, that might involve popping out to Starbucks and then returning to it. If you have the time, it might involve several hours or days. When you return to your article, read it out loud. The ear is less forgiving than the eye. Reading it out loud, will point out areas for you to revise and rewrite.

Good Writing is Rewriting

In evaluating the article, ask yourself if it makes sense. Are there points that are missing in the flow of ideas or storyline? Can you tell some of the stories with more detail and emotion? Is the article focused and targeted for the assigned publication? Does it have a good ending? If the article is a call to action, ask yourself if you feel motivated to take action after reading it.

Scan your article for spelling and grammar mistakes. It's amazing how many articles are submitted for publication with typing errors and simple grammatical mistakes. As a writer, you want to present the best article possible. Give it an additional check. Microsoft Word and other software offers basic spelling and grammer checking. Be sure to use these features.

Submitting Your Article

It's time to submit your material to the publication. In your cover letter to the publication, explain your familiarity with their magazine, blog or website. If you've been taking it for years and faithfully reading it, say so.

Express your willingness to make changes in the direction of the article and make revisions. An editor may like your opening illustration but have a completely different direction for the article. If you've expressed willingness to make revsions, you will have an opportunity for publication. The professional stance is to show flexibility to the direction from an editor.

Book your cruise at LastMinuteTravel.com

Sorry for the lapse in writing to this blog. I’ve been trying to run three businesses on the move, fit in some northern travel and maintain 4 blogs. (Look for a post on the zen of laptop travel in the near future :-).

I was browsing through Mac | Life magazine a few days ago and came across a wonderful solution for maintaining multiple cross-platform blogs. MacJournal lets me write posts, with photos and other media, on my computer in a single application and then post them directly to my WordPress and Movable Type blogs with a singe click. It’s a drag and drop interface so adding pics is a snap. You can download all of your existing posts if you like. It keeps my blogs completely organized.

$40 very well spent!

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For my iPod Touch (works with iPhone as well) I purchased the iBlogger application, enabling me to make a blog post from just about anywhere whenever I get a spare minute.