Remote Work Salaries: How much money you can make working remotely
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Instagrammers sell the digital nomad lifestyle to those who dream of escaping the 9-5 to work remotely while traveling the world. Although the digital nomad lifestyle looks glamorous, many people wonder what digital nomad salaries are and how much money remote jobs pay.
Wondering how much money you can earn as a remote worker is a fair question.
I’m going to do my best to answer this question because I always hated the response “it depends”. The reality is that how much money you make as a digital nomad does “depend” on many factors. However, I’m going to outline what factors you can consider to help you gauge how much you can expect to earn as a digital nomad.
Digital Nomads Have Real Jobs
The first thing to understand is that digital nomads aren’t backpackers taking on random jobs to survive. Digital Nomads have real, legitimate jobs. How digital nomads make money online are often by working remotely for a distributed team, freelancing or they are entrepreneurs.
That being said, any digital nomad who has a remote job can expect to earn the same as they would if they were in the 9-5. For example, if you’re a social media manager at a brick and mortar agency and earn $55,000/ year, there’s no reason you could expect to earn any less working remotely. Working remotely is not a privilege, it’s a smarter way to work and remote teams understand this. It saves them money by not having to pay for overhead costs like office space and it allows their teams to be more productive because they can work when and where they’re most productive.
As a remote worker, it becomes more about the value you add, rather than office politics.
Digital Nomad Salary Stats
Let’s look at the hard stats on how much money digital nomads and remote workers make. According to a report done collaboratively with FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics, the average annual income for most remote workers is $4,000 higher than that of non-telecommuters.
Another FlexJobs report indicates, “18% [of remote workers] report making six figures or more and 22% make between $50,000 and $99,999.“
Needless to say, there is money to be made as a digital nomad. The only time I see people getting paid less than what they should is when they’re looking in the wrong places for a remote job or they don’t realize their worth and are undervaluing themselves.
Online Salary Report Generator
Since digital nomads make comparable salaries to those in the 9-5, we can also explore some online tools that provide salary benchmarks for different career paths. The great thing about these online tools is that they consider more factors than just the role itself, self as years of experience.
PayScale
PayScale is a popular online tool that generates a salary report of how much you can expect to earn based on a series of questions. The questions asked include the role you’re considering, how many years experience you have, your highest level of education completed, any additional certifications etc.
You do need to enter a location for this, so I would suggest you just enter your current location. That being said, to translate location into a remote work equivalent, I would suggest choosing a state that has “mid-range” salaries. For example, salaries in New York and California tend to skew higher because of the high cost of living so if you enter that as your location, you might get inflated salary results (unless you work remotely for a remote company based in New York or California).
Once you complete the questionnaire PayScale will generate a customized report for you that outlines:
Market salary range
Bonuses
Your market worth over time
Pay by experience level and gender
Recommendations of similar roles and how in-demand each role is
Here is a sample report I did for a copywriter, 26 years old, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Here you can see the median salary for a copywriter is $46,000/year, along with the market range.
Then, the PayScale report shows similar roles and how in-demand each role is which can help you gage what remote career path to pursue.
Dice
Dice is another great online tool that provides salary predictions. Dice requires less information in order to generate your report. You just need to enter the role, location, and years of experience. Again, to determine a remote work equivalently for location, I would suggest entering in your current city or a city that would offer a mid-range salary. Again, places like New York and California tend to pay higher because of the high cost of living which means if you enter either of those places you may get skewed results.
Here’s a sample report I did for a marketing manager in Toronto, Canada with 2 years’ experience. What I like about Dice is that they show how much you can expect your salary to increase depending on the various skills that you can add to your profile.
Determine Your Future Career Path
Dice also has a career paths page, which I love. Again, you enter the same information as before such as role, location, and years of experience, then you can generate a career path report. For the report you can select:
Most common transition
Most in demand
Salary increase
Your career path report will then show you different roles you could transition to. Your report will include:
Salary prediction
Top 5 skills required
Other similar roles you could consider
Here’s an example of a career path report I did for a marketing manager in Vancouver with 2 years’ experience.
Paysa
Paysa also generates salary reports to determine how much you could expect to learn in a certain role. For this report, it asks you to enter a company, job title, and location. However, you can still get a full report just by entering in a role. The Paysa salary report will include:
Average compensation
A list of different companies that are hiring for that role and what they’re paying
Income variants based on location
Common skills required for the job (this is a great way to see how you stack up against the competition)
Related job titles
Here is an example of a salary report for a “graphic designer”. What I love about this report is that this particular report is “data based on 251K profiles.”
The skills section is also quite detailed and provides a lot of insight. It includes information such as, “47% of graphic designers have 0 to 2 years of experience. 73% of applicants have a Bachelor's Degree.” It also includes other skills graphic designers have such as the percent of graphic designers that know how to use Illustrator or Photoshop. It also includes the type of design such as what percent of graphic designers do “logo design” or “brochures”.
Salaries at Remote Companies
The online salary report tools are a great starting point to get an idea of how much you could expect to earn as a remote worker. However, it’s also good to look at what remote companies are paying their employees. Although not all remote companies include how much they offer for salaries, these companies do:
Buffer
Buffer, a popular remote company, posts online access to all their employees salaries. At the time of writing this, the lowest salary appears to be $65,000 USD/ year, the average salary appears to be $85,000/ year and many employees seem to be making over $100,000 USD/ year. Here are some screenshots from Buffer’s employee salaries:
Toggl
Toggl is an online time tracking tool who also posts salaries with their open job postings. As of writing this some salaries include:
Backend Developer - €50,000 annually (approx. $64,000 USD)
PPC Specialist - €45,000 annually (approx. $58,000 USD)
Product Designer - €48,000 annually (approx. $62,000 USD)
Benchmarking Your Remote Salary Based on Your Current Salary
If you’re considering to stay in the same industry/space as your 9-5 but just want to do it remotely, you can expect to make a similar salary. You shouldn’t expect a pay cut just because you’re going remote. Remember, remote work isn’t a privilege it’s a smarter way for companies to do business.
Remote Work is About Adding Value (Not Office Politics)
In the remote working world it’s about how much value you add to a company, not office politics. If you can show your value and add value to a company, you will be paid accordingly.
Creating Your Own Remote Career Path
If you’re unsure how to make the transition from your current 9-5 to going remote check out 1:1 remote career mentoring. During the program we will uncover the best remote career path for you to pursue and get to work on making it a reality. You can also check out these online courses that guide you through the process of landing a remote job.
