January 05, 2016

How The Crowd Can Help Fund Your Travels

39 minutes

So often we see examples of people who don’t travel simply because they wont permit themselves to. In this day and age many people have jobs that will let them hit the road – two such examples are Evo Terra and Sheila Dee. Evo’s work as a digital strategist (and Sheila’s as an instructional designer) gives them complete freedom to work from anywhere, and with their child now of adult age they saw no reason to stay at home.

In January 2015 they headed off covering much of Western Europe before heading down under via Thailand, China and Vietnam. We caught up with them in Australia where they shared their definition of what opportunistic travel is all about. As part of their strategy the two don’t rely on any one source of income, running their own podcast and receiving funds through their crowdfunding site on Patreon where they offer supporters postcards in return for patronage.

You can follow their journey, listen to their podcast and support their postcards at www.shevo.wtf

What I learned from talking with Evo and Sheila:

They have been inventive with their income sources using crowdfunding site Patreon to offer postcards from their journey in return for a monthly contribution. Although having only started this year they are already achieving over $300 per month from the site – enough to feed them for a month in many countries.

Skyscanner is a big favorite for Sheila’s flight planning and the couple like to specialize in hunting out the flights that others won’t take.

Work like your internet won’t last. Being digitally dependent can cause difficulties if you have tight deadlines and a poor signal. Don’t put yourself in the position of relying on the internet at the last minute.

You really don’t need stuff – as Sheila says why would 2 people need 3 televisions! Cutting things out of your life won’t deprive you of what really matters – the experiences that define your life.

Despite events that have happened overseas – in some cases around the same time that they were visiting the countries, both Evo and Sheila are very conscious of how the media can make events seem bigger and more dangerous than they are. Tragedies do happen, and you need to be wary, but they have not felt unsafe at any stage of their adventures on the road.

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