Boat Life

Making Money Online to Live on A Boat

One of the most common questions that I get is:

– How can I make enough money to live on a boat? Sometimes the question varies … such as:

– how can I earn money while sailing?

– Or, how can I make enough money to sail around the world? Questions like that.

As you can see, I've not posted to my blog here for some time. To be honest, I kind of ran out of things to talk about. Life on a boat is just normal to us – the everyday stuff is just not that exciting, and it just got hard to write about the mundane stuff. However, I thought that I would write one more post about how someone with little money and some time could easily build an income to the point where you could sail around the world … or just live life at the dock.

For the past year I've been writing. A LOT! So has my wife. I had always been searching for a way to make money online so that we could be free from the 9-5 job, free to take time to raise our kids and maybe even free enough to sail around the world if we chose to. Having a land based business really ties us to the dock, in fact, I sort of resent having to leave my boat to go to work each day. I searched out several methods of making money online including product sales, ebooks, etc. I finally settled on writing as the simplest and quickest way to make money online.

My wife already had a very successful scrapbooking blog (www.scrapscene.com) where we sold some simple advertising and a few ebooks. This worked out well for her as she was able to pursue one of her passions (scrapbooking) and make money doing it. The problem was,  posting everyday … keeping up with what is new … and generally coming up with new and enticing information is a labour intensive project. She likes it, but some days it just feels like a regular job to her. However, our experience with ScrapScene did show us that money could be made writing, and with the experience we gained from her blog we searched for other methods of writing that could generate money while not being so daily labour intensive. We finally found an online school that promised to teach us how to write and what to write to make money online: The Keyword Academy.

We joined the school for a nominal fee and quickly went through the teaching videos. What we found there was a systematic, step-by-step methodology outlining how to pick a topic, set up a blog and promote that blog to make money. We were hooked! Since then we've been writing … and writing … and writing! And it is beginning to pay off! Last month we earned $980.57 from our writing. This income is from writing that we did 6 or 8 months ago and is totally residual income. We really don't have to write another word and would still earn close to that each month for the foreseeable future.

The Academy is composed of a couple of guys from the US (Court and Mark) who have been teaching people how to make money online several years. They have thousands of successful students, a great learning website and a vibrant forum community where literally hundreds of students share ideas, groupthink solutions to problems and generally encourage and support each other. They have a video library that teaches you the basics of their method. They also have several live video teaching sessions each month where they address specific topics, answer questions and generally address current issues. They also supply all the online tools you will need to develop your online business. In short, The Keyword Academy is an online school that teaches you how to make money online.

Yep – this sounds like a sales pitch … it is. For those of you who are dreaming of living on a boat, or sailing around the world, or even just breaking free from your 9-5 job, this is the best advice I can give you. I know it works because it has been working for us for months now. Give it a whirl … the first month is free, so you don't even have to put out any money to give it a test run.

If you do sign up, be sure to say hello to me. My user name is Strathy.  

11 Comments

  • Ib Frohberg

    Hi Strathy !
    Your for sure a new Mark Twain………..But not me. Just a swede
    babbling swedish and writing bad english, anyway
    Nice  You are back in Your bubble-carped housboat again so there  is
    somethin to reed again. By the way , how on earth do you make it
    stay put in a jolly good portion af a nice winterstorm ?
    Cheers
    Ib

  • Russell Smith

    Hi,
    I am thinking about joining TKA but you post does not sell me. Most of  these type of things lack detail in their descriptions and not enough "meat & bones" information about their program.
    thanks,
    rs

  • strathy

    Hi Russell,

    Not trying to sell you anything with this post.  Just telling the many people who have been asking what I've been doing for the past year.  Further, the program is free for the first month – with nothing held back, so if you need detail, or 'meat & bones', all you have to do is sign up and read (or in the case of TKA, watch videos and read.)

    …. or you can do nothing – that's what most people do, so you would have plenty of company.

  • Jamie

    Glad to see a post – I was wondering what was going on in your world. I smiled when you mentioned that it's hard to write about normal life. I noticed too that it was easy to write a post every day when I first moved on; everything was novel and interesting to me. After 5 years, it's hard for me to even remember what's different about this – it's just what we do, nothing remarkable. Do keep posting when you can – your writing is very entertaining to read and it's appreciated. Cheers, J

  • Luke

    I can understand the difficulty in writing about the everyday life.  I just started a blog about a week ago and still have some ideas about posts I want to be on it for reference, but I am hoping I will be able to continue with them and keep an interesting blog going.  I see so many blogs out there that have several months worth of regular posting, then they seem to fade off never to be posted on again.

  • Garth

    I'm about two years away from beginning my new life on a live-aboard sailboat and am very interested in learning about different ways to earn money while sailing. While the training from The Keywork Academy looks like a good resource, does anyone here have any experience actually completing an on-line course such as this and can you offer an assessment of its "Level of Value" (on a scale from 1 – 10 with "0" being no value and "10" being extremely valuable).

  • julius bantigue

    Hi,
    I, too, have been trying to figure out how to make a living online.  I moved to the Philippines five year ago to try to do that.  Now I'm liivng on Guam working as a teacher.  My brother and I tried starting an online magazine from the Philippines, but the idea soon went Kaput when he got a little greedy on who will manage it.  I think hiring writers locally to write about an emegencing society and market is a good start.  Asia is where it's at right now.  Everything that comes out of this area are gems in people's eyes. 
    And that's what I'm thinking of doing one I get settled in here Guam.  I'll use my somewhat still strong dollar buying power, start an online magazine, and hire local writers that will write articles of interest to not only to the people of Guam, but to the rest of the world. 
    Julius

  • Kim

    We live on a sailboat too! We are out growing our boat and I am always trying to find some way to earn extra money out here so we can get a bigger boat!. I sew and sell my things on etsy and that is our main income, my husband gets boat work. I was wondering if I already have a blog is this something I could do with the one I already run?! OR is it a secret unless you sign up? How long did it take before you started earning money, AND do you need to be a writer, I stink at storys~ If there is anything else you can share will you please?
    Thank you, Kim

  • Simon

    Making money from a website is hard, however if you can find a niche you may be able to capitalise on it to fund your boating life.
     
    If you run a blog, use google adsense to try and monetize it a bit, or see if there are any ways your can monetize selling digital boating products….maps, GPS data??
     
    I've heard of a guy that has been mapping the ocean floor in his travels and sells the data to cray fishermen….maybe a goer?
     
    Just some ideas, good luck! I also am trying to fund my boat doing some online work.

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