The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Internet

It was 1999. I had a Harley Davidson on order, and I was about to purchase the smallest laptop I could find, a Sony Vaio with only a 40 gig hard drive for the small reasonable price of $4,000.

At the time I was finishing a tour of duty in Keflavik, Iceland, and was just about to head back stateside where my motorcycle and laptop would be waiting.

Dreams of cruising around state to state, with a laptop in tow, as I hopped onto the internet at my various stops to check my current stock investment stats (more on that later).

Around the same time my son, Craig, was conceived… to make a long story short. I canceled the order for the Harley, and the laptop and used the money to buy stuff like a crib, diapers, etc.

But wouldn’t it be great to be able to travel the world, with just a laptop in hand, and be able to build a business along the way?

This is exactly what my good friend Vince did when he decided to make a radical shift in his lifestyle, and set off to travel the world. Plus, along the way he learned exactly what you need to do when trying to combine work and vacation (a.k.a Workations).

So, if you dream of throwing your laptop in a backpack and catching the next standby flight to Europe, or Costa Rica, or Thailand, but still want to be making money from the internet, I have some cool tips to share.

Here is a snapshot of Vince’s travels over the course of 9 months, and some notes on which countries were the least internet friendly.

1. Panama - In Panama the Internet was very slow, although cheap accommodations. At the time, Vince was still doing his skin cream, and it required him to be online a lot. So this resulted in him cutting his travels short here.
2. United Kingdom
3. Hong Kong
4. China – There is good internet, but lots of firewalls, which limits what you can do. Places to get access: hostels, hotels, and internet cafés.
5. Tibet – Internet was really hard to come by here, and also had Firewalls.
6. Nepal – Internet was hard to come by. He was only able to check stats every few days. Luckily, the system he was using was running on autopilot by this point.
7. India (Slept in the airport) – No internet at the airport.
8. Thailand – Internet Café’s on every corner, lot’s of WiFi. Slow connections are common, but limited Firewalls. This is where Vince had a big breakthrough in his business. After a scuba diving trip in the Similan Islands, he went back to his hotel, logged in to check some stats and discovered he was now making $1,000 per day.
9. Philippines – Pretty decent internet connectivity. Still have to search for Cafés, but they have good Wireless SIM cards.  There are Starbucks at all the malls that offer free WiFi.
10. USA
11. Costa Rica – Slow, but manageable. Best place is in the hotels.
12. Germany
13. Sweden – Very Fast.
14. Slovakia – Slow connection.
15. Hungary
16. Romania
17. Moldova
18. Ukraine
19. Prague
20. Croatia
21. Netherlands
22. Portugal - Most European countries you won’t have a problem getting a good internet connection.

Keep in mind at the same time he was traveling to all these cool places, he has just discovered a new monetization system that was working like crazy. In fact, when I first met Vince, he was struggling online. At the time we were both in a mastermind for the supplement industry.  Since Vince is actually a Medical Doctor, his first attempt at business was creating a anti-aging skin cream. He soon found that he was creating was another job, and not a lifestyle.

The supplement business is not an easy one to tackle. Lot’s of overhead. You have cost of goods, call centers, fulfillment houses, and the FDA. But there can be good margins, if done right.

If you plan to hit the road, but want to be able to spend a few hours here and there building websites, checking stats, or sending email and do it from a beach in Costa Rica, here is what you are going to need:

1. Laptop – Small and light is preferred so you can pack it in a backpack, and have it as a carry on.
2. Portable Mouse – To ensure you can work just as fast as you can on a desktop; a USB mouse goes a long way.
3. Headset w/ Mic – This way you can still Skype, record audio if needed, and of course listen to Pandora while you work.
4. Travel plug / Converter
5. Dropbox to backup files across all your computers, and to have access to essential business information anywhere.
6. Email in the cloud – Instead of having your email in Outlook or Thunderbird it is recommended to move it over to Google apps for Business.
7. A good backpack with a padded section for your laptop.

But here is the most Ninja part of it all. Here is how you can get unlimted wireless internet access from just about anywhere in the world.

This is by far the cheapest, most reliable solution I have found for getting internet on my laptop anywhere in the world, for one low monthly fee. Highly recommended.

Also, in some countries you can purchase special SIM cards just for that area so you can hop on the internet via a wireless USB modem. I use this personally anytime I go to the Philippines because it’s so cheap and fast.

If you’re curious to the business model Vince discovered, I will be sharing it in exact detail in my next blog post. It’s called Content Locking, but leveraging lots of free traffic. He was able to generate $213 thousand dollars over the course of those same 9 months. Here is a little montage’ of Vince’s travels:

Tagged as: Content Locking, Laptop, Travel