Sustainable Travel: 700 Miles of the Appalachian Trail with an iPad to earn Money

So I’ve made a few bad decision in my life.... a few. Hiking part of the Appalachian Trail wasn’t one of them.

I started March 19th at Amicalola Falls, GA with roughly $300.00 in my PayPal account. The food choices I made were horrible. I decided to go low-carb (with the inability to run out and cheat on my diet spur of the moment). As a result, I was drained of glycogen and water, falling asleep midday on top of moutains like Sassafras and the like. I made my first food stop before hitting the 30 mile point (Neels Gap) in Dahlonega, GA.

My largest bill every month was my phone bill which also powered my iPad. This was a necessary bill. Many people who hike the Appalachian Trail find that they don’t need phone service. In fact, if you download your maps, keep your phone in airplane mode and use GPS to navigate. You can save a lot of money and increase your battery life by doing this.

The distance of my hike isn’t that impressive. 700 miles over a 3 month period. I stopped a lot, partied a lot, and made a lot of friends. I spent a lot of time at hostels and hotels. Anytime I could get into town and work, I would.

The work I did... that is the part people might find interesting and actionable (People can find all kinds of innovative ways to create a sustainable travel plan, mine is just one of many). I write papers for college students.

Apps I use

1. WhatsApp: Communication with international clients presently going to college in the United States.

2. Microsoft Word: This ended up not working out when I couldn’t figure out how not to have extra spaces in the document. Switched to Pages.

3. Pages: Works great. Send fast when sending. Have to “export” the document into a Word version of it and then select the Gmail app to send the document. The only problem is that I can’t find a way to change headers on page one only, as per APA manuscript style guidelines.

4. PayPal: It’s pretty easy to teach my clients, who have bank accounts and debit cards to use PayPal to make payments. You can have an actual PayPal debit card as well. If you’re not eligible for one, use a PayPal prepaid card. There is a monthly fee but they are worth it. You can order backup cards and only transfer what you’re about to use from PayPal to your prepaid card balance. This might be annoying

Why an iPad? Mainly, its super small and there are a lot of compatible keyboards. I use a zag keyboard. It’s risky bringing fragile electronic devices on a hike of this magnitude, but if you’re careful, you can manage.

How I gained clients

Gaining clients is another story. The secret to gaining clients somewhat fast is to approach International Students with fliers on college campuses. My brother designed fliers for me and I handed them out to college kids while Uber driving. I didn’t hand out many. Maybe 15 fliers total. That was enough to fund my trip to St. Louis for a month (work hard, stay in a hostel every night, drink beer), and it was enough to fund my hike.

You can do this now. You might be hesitant to throw yourself into it, you may even think it requires some high level of intelligence, but in reality as long as you make sure you can follow instructions and, in some cases, you can search through online databases effectively, you will be fine.

Pricing

$20.00 per page is the high end of pricing for me. That used to be my only price. After gaining a lot of international clients, I began lowering my prices because they were spending a lot of money and I was projecting.

Collecting from Unwilling Clients

I’ve only turned one student in to her institution. Her unwillingness to pay stemmed from the fact she was a crystal meth addict more than anything else. I let her wait to pay and she was terminated from her institution before she paid. I turned her in, still, but that was to keep the signal of the Jolly Roger potent.

As long as you have enough information about a client to contact their institution, their incentive to pay is very high.

If you want me to write more on this subject, comment, share, follow, and let me know. You can reach me at [email protected]