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0 pointspracticalpants11y ago0 comments

Well, I hope your aims are sincere... I am getting a little annoyed with these digital nomad 'startups' that just want to make money off of other digital nomads, like they're any other market segment to fit a product to. "The Digital Nomad Space." Sucks where it's heading. Like the recent poster doing a similar thing as you but more pricey with a REIT investment group potentially backing him (he's also promoting you, so I don't know, maybe you, him, the nomad list guy are all working together... not that it really matters)... or the "nomad year" venture where you throw down a ton of money to have everything planned out for you (kind of the opposite of being digital nomad IMO), or that IMO unjustifiable digital nomad 'insider' forum where you have to pay simply to chat with other digital nomads. I'm not a cheap person, I just want to keep SV profiteering out of digital nomad land. There are some main culprits, individuals, that come to mind (nobody I'm going to name)... but oh well, what can you really expect?

On the bright side, there's a huge opportunity for someone to sweep through all of this and just offer free concierge services for digital nomads. I met someone working on this, I imagine there are others. That will ultimately take the day when someone gets that formula right. Something more of the spirit of couch surfing.

I'm ranting. Anyways, if you can manage cheap rates at really cool pads, in a way that's better than just splitting an AirBnB with other nomads, then that is something pretty cool.

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ashark11y ago

From the outside, the blogging culture for "digital nomads" already seems like hopeless, sell-out garbage. Frequent low-content posts that have the same promising-but-never-delivering feel as "long copy" marketing, blog-format where something more like a privately-editable Wiki or simple traditional informational site (do people still do those?) would be far more helpful (but, crucially, may have worse SEO to drive traffic to their "funnel"! [vomit]),

"Sign up for our newsletter!" pop-ups.

"Learn how I make money to travel using credit card affiliate links (spoiler alert: it's by writing articles about how I make money from credit card affiliate links)".

"Buy my awful book! Here's a crappy CG render of what it might look like if I had even bothered to on-demand print it!"

It's like all those "growth hacking" marketing sites that started popping up a few years ago. Or Mister Money Mustache, for that matter ("how I live free and cheap and don't even have a job! Spoiler alert: it's by already being kind of rich so I avoid most of the expenses and risk that poor people have, and in fact I work three part time jobs, one of which is this website, so that was simply a lie. Click my affiliate links!") I haven't read Timothy Ferriss, but I see him referenced all the time in relation to these sorts of things. Is he responsible for this explosion of cynical, manipulative, garbage websites that now infest the Internet, or is someone else to blame? The whole thing feels like Amway.

To sum up: speaking as someone on the outside of all this, I'm not sure throwing a few start-ups in to the mix could make the digital nomads' public online presence much scummier[1].

[1] NOT saying even a substantial fraction of people living this life are scummy, mind you!

[EDIT] Tim Ferris -> Timothy Ferriss

archagon11y ago

Well, HN is kind of self-selecting in that respect. I imagine that a more "mature", less SV type of nomad house won't be advertising themselves too much, lest the nomad bloggers come pouring in. (Who, by the way, I have nothing against, but it's not my kind of community either.)

atudoute11y ago

Awesome feedback. We are on the same page, and I will try to be the cool solution between AirBnB, Hotel, Hostel and other co-living space.

Thank you.

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