This 22-year-old makes $11,000 a month as a ‘digital nomad’

By Molly Derrick via SWNS

This 22-year-old digital nomad is earning $11,000 a month whilst traveling the world.

Louise Truman's journey began with a trip to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in 2019.

After completing her exams that summer, she got a job as a digital marketer while studying a degree in Spanish and History virtually at King's College London in the UK.

She said studying online due to the pandemic gave her the perfect opportunity to "invest" in herself and she had secured a stable digital marketing income by 2021.

This allowed her to begin traveling the world while working remotely - visiting countries such as Costa Rica and South Korea.

After posting on TikTok, she developed a following and social media and content creation soon became her main source of income.

She now makes about $11,600 USD a month (£10,000 GBP) as a digital nomad, sharing her adventures with her 139,000 followers.

Louise, from Guildford, UK, said: "Becoming a digital nomad was entirely accidental, but nobody around me was surprised.

"It was the best decision I’d ever made."

Her love for travel began when she was just 13 when she enrolled and fundraised for a scientific expedition measuring radiation in Greenland.

She said: "I went purely so I could spend three weeks trekking across glaciers, climbing mountains, and avoiding the occasional polar bear."

At 17, she and her best friend saved their money from supermarket jobs to jet off for a weekend in Barcelona, Spain.

After completing her exams at age 18, the pandemic hit, meaning her degree in Spanish and History moved online.

Louise had also secured a job as a digital marketing assistant, which went fully virtual as well - but it turned out to be an invaluable stepping stone for her.

She said: "However tough the pandemic was for me mentally, I have never had such an opportunity like that to invest in myself.

"Over the first six months of lockdown and tentative reopening, I networked like crazy on LinkedIn.

"I picked up two new freelance marketing contracts, learned incredible amounts from mentors, and started a social mobility project to help university students."

By spring 2021, as the world started to open again, she had secured herself a "reliable and consistent digital marketing income."

She said: "I had never seen that much money in my life.

"During my time working remotely as a marketer, I had one five-figure month. This came entirely from my marketing work and investments - specifically the sale of sweat shares."

Sweat Equity Shares are shares in a company, normally a startup, that are issued to employees for a reduced price - which can become very lucrative if the business becomes successful later on.

"It’s risky," she said. "But it works well when you’re working for a startup that you see a huge amount of potential in."

She added: "This shows you certainly do not need a social platform to thrive as a digital nomad."

But Louise said despite her successes, she was left feeling burnt out, and was desperate for a change.

She said: "I felt like my levels of Spanish had actually regressed. So, I decided to go to Costa Rica.

"I guess that’s when I became a digital nomad."

Since then, Louise’s source of income has become more content creation-based, specifically getting her £10k a month from brand deals.

She explained: "It wasn’t that I got bored of my remote marketing job, it was simply that a better opportunity came along thanks to TikTok.

"I started posting publicly on TikTok in January 2022, so only a few months ago, but I have grown my account very quickly."

Now she boasts 139,000 followers and her account has amassed more than 7 million likes in total.

She puts this down to her digital marketing experiences - knowing how to create her personal brand and price her content creation.

She said: "As a content creator, most of my time is focused on creating content.

"I do a few brand deals each month – it’s not something I want to oversaturate my socials with – and because these are so well paid, I don’t have to do much to exceed my previous levels of income."

She revealed for the past two months, she has generated £10,000 each month from content creation alone.

She said: "The best part about that is that as my socials continue to grow, I’ll be able to charge more for the same amount of work.

"It’s already a much happier work-life balance.

"I’m so excited to see where it goes over the next couple of years."

Louise is currently in Vietnam for a brand deal for her TikTok - and her next stops over the coming weeks will be across South-East Asia.

"That's for pretty much back-to-back brand deals, which is incredibly exciting."