Make Money While Cruising - List

[GTom]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

make a yt channel and beg on patreon, invite some of the patrons as an incentive - like a lottery. Is it commercial use or just inviting friends? They do not pay for the ride, but it can be illegal gambling?

The beggar's market was probably already saturated years ago, when I first looked at the "top channels". To grab attention (and patreon $$$ - youtube alone doesn't pay much nowadays) you must either hire a first class bikini model or sail to impossible places - best do both. However, the bikini model might charge extra for Antarctic trips...

As for "illegal gambling" and "illegal charter" authorities eyes are opening up more and more, remember when they started to tax cryptocurrency profits (of course forgetting the losses...). As always: early birds get fat, late ones go in the pot...

[mako]

Originally Posted by GTom

I was wondering about the aspects of going commercial: there is a huge gap between the jump-in for nothing or cost sharing crewfinder vs 2000EUR per week charters, 6-700EUR/5days/person(!) sailing schools. Not to mention, even cost sharing might run into a red tape in some countries.

So far I gathered, additional costs:
- more expensive registration & survey, some jurisdictions might require local reg (?)
- the boat has to be in top condition inside and out, equipped for 6-10 passengers
- much more expensive liability insurance
- additional training and certifications
- likely more expensive berthing in a popular place
- advertising

In return: even with the best efforts and lot of work, you'll fill the boat capacity maybe 20% on average. What's the deal here? I don't see much chance for a singe 30-35' boat - then if you want bigger, all boat costs will grow as well.

I ran my 65' motorboat as a 6-pack commercial charter boat (while living aboard) in order to help defray costs. I was running day cruises in the SoCal harbors, overnight charters, parties, and even an "Air-B-n-B" type of thing where they rented the boat out for the night as a hotel room, no motor running. This was years ago.

It was really not worth it. Didn't make too much money, only a little when you consider all the overhead and headaches. My conclusion was in the future just to buy a boat I can afford to own and operate and keep it as a pleasure item, not commercial.

However, living aboard and running an internet based business or home office type business would be great, but not when traveling around.

[GTom]

Originally Posted by makobuilders

I ran my 65' motorboat as a 6-pack commercial charter boat (while living aboard) in order to help defray costs. I was running day cruises in the SoCal harbors, overnight charters, parties, and even an "Air-B-n-B" type of thing where they rented the boat out for the night as a hotel room, no motor running. This was years ago.

It was really not worth it. Didn't make too much money, only a little when you consider all the overhead and headaches. My conclusion was in the future just to buy a boat I can afford to own and operate and keep it as a pleasure item, not commercial.

However, living aboard and running an internet based business or home office type business would be great, but not when traveling around.

That's my feeling too. The leap from pleasure to commercial is simply too expensive to cover with a single boat, part time.

[LadyVicki]

I am into Online dating service..I managing 4 different niche sites.
I would say the maintanace of all 4 sites take up to 2 hours a day aprox including social marketing .digital marketing..SEO.
thanx God today we have so many platforms who helping to almost 100% to the automatization of the marketing part.

[tackleandtax]

That's really impressive LadyVicki. Do you have any tips on how I could get started on that type of thing?

[LadyVicki]

Originally Posted by tackleandtax

That's really impressive LadyVicki. Do you have any tips on how I could get started on that type of thing?

sure , with pleasure
1. you need a good niche idea for the site , try to narrow it so is more interesting and uniq.
2. find a platform ( dont start develope your self ) I am using this guys
http://www.chameleonsoftwareonline.com/
Basicly very easy to manage no need for any developer
3. online and social marketing ( i dont do SEO ) and blog ..very impostant
4. today you can outsource many different workloads expl making logo or content writing http://www.freelancer.com/
or
http://https://www.fiverr.com

how much money you can make? thats the tricky part. some sited doing better then others so always focusing your best niche site.

I hope its helps and good luck

[ben2go]

Marry a wonderful women that have their own boat and become her bilge slave.


I have experience working on OBs and IOs. Some experience on inboard gassers. I have some electrical experience. I planned to fall back on that to help pay for meals from time to time. I do have structural repair and glassing skills but that would be more staying in one place to long kind of work.



If you're handy with certain items that sell well, finding items that sell well, or locating hard to find items that sell well. I used to get paid to scour junk yards and old shops to find automotive parts for people. They would give me a list and a time frame. I would find the parts and call with a price. I usually made a few hundred dollars a week in my spare time. I was young and it was a different era back then.WhatI'm getting at is keeping an eye out while you're meandering through towns for things that might bring a nice little pocket padding.


I help manage some forums and in return, I get to post affiliate links on those sites. Of course I do not spam the site. If a product or service is mentioned. I will join the conversation and if I feel I have something to offer I will drop in an affiliate link. I only do that on the forums I help manage so won't happen here.

[h82goslow]

I did not read all 1492 posts so I don't know if anybody already said this or not. I have a plan that I think might work for me. Since I am just getting into sailing and will be learning the ropes in the next few months, I still have a couple years to accomplish this. It will help if you know the business a little bit too. I have been driving big rigs for about 6 years now. I plan to buy my own truck and get it paid off in a couple of years. Buy a second truck and put a driver into it. Get it paid off a couple years after that. I want 2 or 3 trucks that are paid off. When that is accomplished, I can stop driving and keep my trucks leased to a company with drivers. After all expenses of fuel, insurance, maintenance savings accounts, I will still have about $5000-6000 a month left over. I can have my bank do automatic payments each week to pay my drivers and have a landlubber friend act as a manager for any serious issues with the trucks.

[Marc1]

Any business can be managed remotely from a boat providing you have means of communication that work. So asking how to make money whilst cruising is a bit of a "how long is a piece of string" since there are millions of business that are profitable. Managing it remotely adds just another layer of complexity and requires an additional amount of acumen.
Having said that, if someone needs to ask "how to make money remotely", I wouldn't recommend anything else but a business online ... providing you have some experience with online dealings.
Out of all the possible online businesses there is one that shines for it's capacity to be done from any corner of the world and that is selling on Amazon. You can buy products and ship them to Amazon warehouse and they will advertise, sell, ship, collect the money and send your money minus commissions to your bank of choice. No other business does such a complete and trustworthy job for the online business.
Sure you can do better with your own website but it will require a ton of hours more, and a dozen added unknowns and risk and way more experience.
In my experience anyway.

[mako]

Marc1, my buddy and I have been having these discussions lately, mostly centered around soon to be semi-retired and wanting to make "some" money while cruising. Since neither of us are computer programming geeks, we've both drawn the same conclusion as you.

[Olivier_51]

Originally Posted by Agility

In the back of my mind I've always wondered if there is a good set of marketable skills that many cruisers have that I could somehow create a business around and hire cruisers. Maybe this list could help somehow.

I've seen ads asking folks to sail into the massive garbage dumps of plastic in the oceans and provide back data. That's one that I've wondered if it could be monetize-able.

I've also wondered if folks could crowdsource highly accurate charts. Meaning, have everyone send in their depth and GPS information while moving around. Pay a small amount to create the waypoints and charge a little for the more accurate charts.

But perhaps this list would simply open up some new ideas on how folks are making some money right now?

Thinking of collecting plastic using my boat. Larbe volume indicate to laminate it and melt it ? I saw people doing this on ground land in Philippines and Africa... seems our so called civilized countries are not able to really do it. And those make incredibely usefull things out of that plastic, like tiles and bricks, pavements and more.
But on a boat might be difficult to have a plastic cutting machine and an oven.. . But then therer is only a weight capacity on board. Moulds would also be welcome to produce those usefull things on board and sell them right away... Am I a daydreamer ? Any further idea on how to achieve this is really welcome ! And if really good I buy it !

[Olivier_51]

Some people do it discreetly by scanning paper charts and changing the output for a readable format... and software like OpenCpn is more friendly for this !
I bought a world set of maps for OpenCpn in some island and the guy installs it on your laptop for the price of his working time !

[Jaimesan]

There is the neverending discussion about making money and covering costs.
I was thinking of preparing a plan for the total cost of the yacht, its maintenance expenses, the reparations and running costs for a period of lets say 10 years. This amount divided by the same 10 years is around 1,000 euro a week.
That means that to cover costs you should have paying guests to produce 4,000 euro a month, which with a 4 cabins yacht it can be done if you get enough people (a hypothetical full yacht would mean 8 people and for a week they would definitely cover the 4,000 euro).
If these hypothesis are just ok, my point is that I don't want to sit in the same harbor or same shore forever but move around, which means have to change from country to country and getting the documentation in each country can be complicated (EU would be easy), asia would mean a local partner and other complications. I wonder if the covering costs would be enough to justify the "collaboration costs" which actually they are collaboration and can be proved by the business plan above explained.
Question is how to explain the collaboration concept and not generating benefit concept to an Indonesian policeman, for example.

Originally Posted by Pblais

Some skills are illegal. Not that you would be criminal because of what you do, but because you do them as an illegal alien. Learn from the workers that cross the US border. Stay off the radar, don't get caught, and be smart enough to know when you could be. Stealing a high tech job from a local - busted! Competing with the lowest level workers - busted. At worse you'll get under cut so bad you wouldn't try. Easy jobs that don't take much - don't pay much! People who think you might will turn you in.

You can't work in a country legally without a work visa. You need to think like an alien. Do what they do to keep from being captured.

Doctors and RN's usually work well because they need them so bad that they look the other way or can get the paperwork so it can. Not too many jobs fit that level of golden.

[mako]

Jaimesan, I believe in most of the world, if you embark passengers in one country but disembark them in another, it simplifies the whole issue of legalities and work permits within any one particular country.

So you pick up 6 passengers (max) in Malaysia and then sail to Indonesia where they leave onward with airline tickets.

This would be in line with your desire to wander the world.

I used to run charters on my 65' and have to say that a boat for chartering is very particular and different from a personal cruiser, unless you are running adventure/remote area cruising where people don't mind hot-bunking.

[ben2go]

Originally Posted by Olivier_51

Thinking of collecting plastic using my boat. Larbe volume indicate to laminate it and melt it ? I saw people doing this on ground land in Philippines and Africa... seems our so called civilized countries are not able to really do it. And those make incredibely usefull things out of that plastic, like tiles and bricks, pavements and more.
But on a boat might be difficult to have a plastic cutting machine and an oven.. . But then therer is only a weight capacity on board. Moulds would also be welcome to produce those usefull things on board and sell them right away... Am I a daydreamer ? Any further idea on how to achieve this is really welcome ! And if really good I buy it !

Check out Dave Hawkkens at https://preciousplastic.com/ and youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqA...Ui5ou0isB27mgg He and his team show people how to get started recycling plastics cheap and make some income from it. They also go into detail on stepping up into small production shops. I'm not affiliated with them. I find their ideas and implementation fascinating.


BTW, I figured out how I'm going to make the millions while cruising, but I can't disclose that info. OK, Amsteel bracelets. Think para-cord bracelets but more boaty.