[netsharc]

I've fantasised about the vanlife, living the nomad lifestyle out of a van. When looking for build inspiration videos on YouTube, I ended up seeing a lot of vanlife "influencers", but what I notice is many videos just have a few thousand views, which is surely not enough to make a living..

[blaser-waffle]

It's a meme, man. I did the van thing for a year while working in Australia on the NBN (big fibre optic project). Drove around and spliced and oversaw fibre projects.

It gets old pretty fast, has tons of hidden costs, and looks quaint and romantic to people who've never had to do it. Fun for a year, but I probably would have paid almost as much just booking into hostels or AirBnB's and renting a car on occasion.

I was able to go and see some cool places -- but breaking down in remote South Australia was scary and frustrating. And you get really, really tired of the lack of space.

What made it tolerable was being able to get out of the van and chill in places like the library or a coffee shop-- likely all no-gos in the COVID era

[fxtentacle]

Most influencers can't make a living. There's so many of them that it's a buyer's market.

When I was still selling naughty bikinis online, I did a few promotions with Instagram yoga teachers and I was always surprised by how low their asking prices were.

I guess most of them valued having any success to show for it much higher than being paid a livable wage.

[ryanar]

I also fantasized about vanlife. Eamon & Bec is an awesome channel if you want to learn about that sort of thing. They certainly grew their channel enough to be comfortable.

[seppin]

vanlife, digital nomad, etc. It's all the same. You are only presented with the highs, not the lows.