A few months ago, I proposed a crazy idea to my husband, Mark.
“What if we became digital nomads and traveled the country?”
To my surprise, he didn’t have many objections to leaving our little row-home in Philadelphia to pursue a life on the road. He was basically all in from the start and eagerly began researching different ways we could travel and work full time.
For work, we run a branding and web design agency called Wicky Design, where we help people quit their corporate jobs to start their own businesses. We also run a travel blog called Must Love Traveling, where we give readers budget travel tips and honest opinions on the places we’ve been.
If you’ve done any research on digital nomad life, you’ll see a lot of people saying “all you need is a laptop and internet connection”. While that’s true, there’s another tool that we use to make our digital nomad lifestyle possible: WordPress.
How WordPress Made Full Time Travel Possible for Us
Affordability
WordPress is a free, open-source platform, which helps keep the costs of running our business low. We build all of our clients’ websites exclusively on WordPress, using the same process and tools for each site. On top of WordPress, the tools we use for every site build are:
These three tools work seamlessly with WordPress and allow us to deliver beautiful, functional, and secure websites that our clients can easily maintain themselves. The affordability of these plugins allows us to keep our costs low while still delivering an excellent end result for our clients.
Our clients are hands-on, DIY types, so they love having the ability to update their website without having to learn code. As their businesses grow and change, they can stay on top of their websites themselves instead of relying on us to do it, which is more affordable for them in the long run.
Community
The WordPress community is second to none. The help we’ve received through forums, Facebook Groups, and online communities has allowed us to grow our business to what it is today. We’ve been able to connect with people from all over the world and have developed strong partnerships with fellow users that have lasted for many years.
In addition to the great online community, WordPress has created, we’ve met great people through WordCamps. If you are a WordPress user and have never been to a WordCamp, we suggest you go to one in your area. The community is welcoming to everyone no matter what level of WordPress user you are. The talks at WordCamps are informative and fun, and the price (around $20 a day) can’t be beaten.
We attended our first WordCamp US in Philadelphia a few years ago and have been hooked ever since. We’ve met great people of all ages, backgrounds, and skill levels, and the information we’ve learned through WordCamp talks has been pivotal in growing our business. We’re excited to attend more meetups throughout the country as we travel throughout the United States.
Scalability
WordPress has given us the ability to scale our businesses in ways that would not have been possible on other platforms. Our design business has changed a lot since going on the road, and WordPress has made it easy for us to add and update our website and bring more attention to our digital nomad life through our blogs and video content.
Using WordPress has also given us the opportunity to quickly scale our travel blog. What started out as a hobby quickly turned into a business. In one year, we went from brand new to an online community of thousands of followers and a site that makes us money every day. This couldn’t have been done without the variety of great plugins, SEO features, and ease of use that WordPress provides.
WordPress Is an Essential Part of Our Business
WordPress is one of the most important tools we use for our businesses. The open-source platform makes it easy for us to build high-performing sites for our clients and explore new business opportunities for ourselves. We’ve developed great partnerships through the WordPress community that has helped us take our business on the road and connect with people from all over the country. Without WordPress, it would have been a lot harder to live the digital nomad life. We are so thankful that this platform exists!
Wicky Design
Hi! We are Barbara and Mark, the husband and wife team behind Wicky Design, a traveling branding and web design agency. We help entrepreneurs quit their 9-5 to start their own businesses. Our strategic branding and web design process gets you up and running in just weeks, not months or years. In 2019, we became digital nomads. We are currently traveling the United States, working from wherever we land next. Want to learn more? Visit our website at wickydesign.com or follow our adventures on Facebook and Instagram.
