How do people make money abroad?

Your biggest costs are accommodations and travel from place to place. The less you move the less expensive it is per day and the better rate you can get at a hostel.

You haven't answered the question regarding your skills and what kind of work you are doing now. That would help with suggestions of what you might do while traveling.

You haven't answered the question about your ages either. If you are under 30 you should seriously look at the WHV schemes as they permit you to work legally and hence make decent money in some cases.

You can use groups like couchsurfing and hospitality club but be aware that folks will sometimes expect you to take them to dinner or otherwise show some appreciation for the free accommodations.

Try contacting Servas if you want to help people and get free accommodations.

Be careful of overstaying visas or visafree periods. Be aware particularly on Schengen in Europe and the rules that you can spend no more than 90 days in a 180 day period within the Schengen zone.

Ruth

The money has to see us through flights and travel too. As awesome as it would be to stay in indo, we want to see a few different places as well.

Thanks paul, what sort of work have you done? unfortunately I am unskilled, doing gardening at the moment, but Kirstie has a diploma in graphic design without any work experience. one thing we have considered is her doing online work through elance, but apparantly it's pretty hard to build up a rep. I suppose that she wouldn't need to make much anyway considering the cost of living. We've just started an online TESOL course through global leadership college, and hoping to be able to find volunteer work.

Cheers for the SERVAS heads up everbrite, seems cool. More than willing to help out with stuff and shout food but I wonder if a couple are less attractive than a solo traveller?

Mike_Travel_Too, hey thanks for the killer website

I think doing an online TESOL course is a great idea, it will give you some real skills that will help with finding good volunteer work. I stayed in a beautiful place about 4 years ago, called the Akha Hill Tribe village, just out of Chiang Rai (Thailand). Just google them. They had a deal with volunteers who taught at the local school. Back then, if they committed to 2 weeks volunteering teaching English they got free room and board, not sure if it's the same.

And also, just generally, I often see that when someone asks a question about volunteering on TT they can be howled down with criticism about their motives. I find this very strange. I've probably spent over 2000 hours volunteering in my 40 years - everything from playing piano in old people's homes, to working in a soup kitchen and visiting asylum seekers in detention.

I can't think of a single volunteer job I've done where I wasn't gaining something for myself from the experience, as well as helping someone else. Sometimes I wanted to learn another language, or meet new people, or even just have something to put on my CV. Just because I had something I wanted to gain from volunteering didn't mean that I wasn't an effective and enthusiastic volunteer. People have all kind of motives for volunteering, and as long as they are intending to do a good job at whatever role they take on, their motives are really no-one else's business.

The OP never said he wanted to volunteer JUST for room and board, or that he planned to get room and board and then do a crappy job. I think some other posters are reading a lot more into what the OP said, that what he actually said.

@ hurricanebertha

really? I've heard it will let us stay there for 6-12months?

Edited by: kirstielee

Edited by: kirstielee

You also didn't mention what you do in Australia. Perhaps you can look into www.elance.com or some similar service (there are quite a few) and do part time free lance work as you travel. This all depends on what skills you have, and from what friends tell me it takes awhile to build up enough trust from good reviews on your work to get a steady income.

But if you are travelling in cheaper countries you might only need a little bit to stretch the budget.

I'm not sure why there seems to be such antagonism when you mention charities. It all depends on what you are doing for the charity, and whether it is worth it. I have a friend who spent 2 years in Afghanistan working for a charity (he was actually paid, though I assume not much) because the charity needed people with business experience to help run the operation. There is a UN website that has lots of paid and volunteer charity work that he used to find the job - but they do want long term commitments and skilled people. When I last looked at it a few years ago there were not many jobs for IT (my field), but plenty for Accountants (my wife's field).

Shorter term charity work (this is just from what I've seen when researching for South America) is going to typically cost something. Sometimes the cost will be lower than what you would be paying otherwise, other times it's quite a bit higher as you are also helping to support the charity in the way that really matters - cash. I think though it really depends on whether you can offer a skill that they need and have trouble finding locally. My wife is hoping to find some work with charities that are trying to expand internationally in some way and need assistance with international accounting standards. We'll see if that works out :)

Sign yourself up to couchsurfing.org, excellent way to network and meet local like-minded people around the world. There are often social meet-ups and events you can tag along to, getting yourself involved in local community is usually a enriching and unique experience. As a couple it might be more challenging finding free accommodation though.

Regarding WWOOFing, a worthy consideration especially if you want to get your hands dirty but know what you're getting into before you sign yourself up to. Usually it's very hard yakka in remote locations. It's not uncommon to be given the worst tasks the rest of the family doesn't wanna do and pushed quite hard, and all for whatever food is available (sometimes scraps) and a bed. Hearing people say it takes away from local jobs is bit of a grey area. Many are poor rural farming families, they ain't got no money to hire someone to shovel cow dung, but getting in a fresh faced foreigner every few weeks eases the burden of their back breaking work. Although a portion of them aren't doing so badly and can take advantage of volunteers' goodwill, the volunteer can walk away feeling like they've learnt nothing from the experience and have been barked at and laboured like a slave. So it's important to be realistic of what to expect.

TESOL is a good option if you're willing to volunteer as a Teacher for short periods. For paid work, usual expectation of work commitment is least a few months. For intermittent and casual work, marketing yourself as a Private Teacher is possible but naturally not particularly stable nor guaranteed.

Edited by: rhythmbug