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Nomad List 5.0 — 🌍🎒Explore the world and work remotely
Exactly five years ago, I launched the first version of Nomad List on Product Hunt. Since then I've lived all over the world and the site has inspired thousands of people to do the same. Now I want to show you Nomad List 5.0
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👋 Hi hunters!
Today it's exactly five years ago, I launched the first version of Nomad List on Product Hunt. It changed my life and it's been a crazy adventure since then. I've lived all over the world and the site has inspired thousands of people to do the same.
💫 Today I launch the fifth iteration of Nomad List, I've worked on this with 💉blood, 🥵sweat and 💧tears, and lots of love. I made everything on this site by myself so I'm super nervous, launching is so scary 🤯
🎥 I made this video to explain why Nomad List exists:
🧠 Nomad List now has over 1,000,000 data points for almost every major town and city in the world with a significant population. That's data that ranges from climate throughout the year, to gender equality, to the average income of people living in different cities. You can sort by data point in the top right.
🙂Travel profiles are re-designed and now show a world map with the countries you visited colored. Just like that IRL scratch off world map! This was requested by @jelmerdeboer and @marckohlbrugge
📈 Data science is really interesting to me, so I've built a mini data studio into Nomad List. If you click CHART, you can combine two data points and see the data for all cities in an X/Y graph. It also figures out if the data correlates significantly (with a p-value). And you can export any data to a spreadsheet CSV, to analyze yourself. Government agencies from South Korea, Indonesia, Spain, Ireland, Georgia and Hungary have now used Nomad List to improve their cities, so this might help. https://nomadlist.com/chart
🗺New map view with 3d view, which went viral on 9gag: https://twitter.com/levelsio/sta...
🥰A big challenge for nomads is loneliness. For that reason I've built a matchmaking app into the site. You can set what you're looking for on your profile (like travel buddies, friends, relationships) and your interests, and the site will match you up with people. If you both like each other, you can hang out.
🌎 Cities now stretch across 5 continents, I even have the only two places in Antarctica with inhabitants (mostly scientists): https://nomadlist.com/antarctica
👩🌾 @ajlkn requested me to focus on the rural remote work revolution that's happening, especially in the U.S.. Many people are moving out of the big cities to places more far out, to get more affordable living, while working remotely for companies in big cities. With fast internet, that's now possible. That's why I've added hundreds of smaller towns in North America for you to explore. https://nomadlist.com/rural-tiny...
💬 After visiting cities people are now asked to review them. Reviews are fully anonymous, so this give you an honest perspective on the city. Pure data gives you only a limited idea of how a city can be, whereas someone writing about a city can give you a better picture.
🖼 All photos of cities now come from the amazing Unsplash, and I built a crowdsourced engine at https://nomadlist.com/photos, so that people can vote what's the best and most accurate pic for each city. This gives you a better idea what the place you're going to looks like. Also each city now has a photos tab. Requested by @marckohlbrugge: https://nomadlist.com/photos/ams...
☕️ There are now 300,000 places to work (like cafes and coworkings) indexed in the site in partnership with Foursquare, Coworker.com and Workfrom.co. I use language matching to figure out if a cafe is suitable for working (like power outlets, fast wifi etc.). For example in Berlin: http://nomadlist.com/coworking/b...
❤️ You can now add cities to your wishlist, by clicking the heart when hovering over a city. This was requested years ago by @andreyazimov! Kinda useful if you want to make a selection of cities to go. You can also hide cities with the X.
🔍A new useful search that you can find cities, countries, continents and people with, and like or follow them.
🛬Nomad List Chat is now integrated with your travels and shows when people arrive in the city.
🤯Recommendation engine that figures out what places you will probably like based on where people like have you gone before (and how they rated those places). Requested by @johnonolan.
🎟Startups can now advertise on the site with friendly non-intrusive text ads for pretty cheap. This also supports the site and helps monetize it a bit more. Also jobs from Remote OK are reposted to Nomad List to help more people find remote work: https://nomadlist.com/promote
🛂If you're traveling with your partner, I built a Visa Free Partner filter: you can select your country, and your partner's country, and Nomad List will show you places you can travel visa free with both your passports! Requested by @camerondare
So yes, that's LOTS of new features. I hope you like it. I'd love to hear what to improve. I'm always improving my site, it's my 👶baby, and I'll take your feedback and use it!
💖 Thanks everyone for always supporting throughout the last 5 years! It's been incredible and insane to experience all of this and I'm still shocked every day that I can wake up and work on my site which people actually use and pays my bills. THANK YOU!!!
🧠 Nomad List now has over 1,000,000 data points for almost every major town and city in the world with a significant population. That's data that ranges from climate throughout the year, to gender equality, to the average income of people living in different cities. You can sort by data point in the top right.
🙂Travel profiles are re-designed and now show a world map with the countries you visited colored. Just like that IRL scratch off world map! This was requested by @jelmerdeboer and @marckohlbrugge
📈 Data science is really interesting to me, so I've built a mini data studio into Nomad List. If you click CHART, you can combine two data points and see the data for all cities in an X/Y graph. It also figures out if the data correlates significantly (with a p-value). And you can export any data to a spreadsheet CSV, to analyze yourself. Government agencies from South Korea, Indonesia, Spain, Ireland, Georgia and Hungary have now used Nomad List to improve their cities, so this might help. https://nomadlist.com/chart
🗺New map view with 3d view, which went viral on 9gag: https://twitter.com/levelsio/sta...
🥰A big challenge for nomads is loneliness. For that reason I've built a matchmaking app into the site. You can set what you're looking for on your profile (like travel buddies, friends, relationships) and your interests, and the site will match you up with people. If you both like each other, you can hang out.
🌎 Cities now stretch across 5 continents, I even have the only two places in Antarctica with inhabitants (mostly scientists): https://nomadlist.com/antarctica
👩🌾 @ajlkn requested me to focus on the rural remote work revolution that's happening, especially in the U.S.. Many people are moving out of the big cities to places more far out, to get more affordable living, while working remotely for companies in big cities. With fast internet, that's now possible. That's why I've added hundreds of smaller towns in North America for you to explore. https://nomadlist.com/rural-tiny...
💬 After visiting cities people are now asked to review them. Reviews are fully anonymous, so this give you an honest perspective on the city. Pure data gives you only a limited idea of how a city can be, whereas someone writing about a city can give you a better picture.
🖼 All photos of cities now come from the amazing Unsplash, and I built a crowdsourced engine at https://nomadlist.com/photos, so that people can vote what's the best and most accurate pic for each city. This gives you a better idea what the place you're going to looks like. Also each city now has a photos tab. Requested by @marckohlbrugge: https://nomadlist.com/photos/ams...
☕️ There are now 300,000 places to work (like cafes and coworkings) indexed in the site in partnership with Foursquare, Coworker.com and Workfrom.co. I use language matching to figure out if a cafe is suitable for working (like power outlets, fast wifi etc.). For example in Berlin: http://nomadlist.com/coworking/b...
❤️ You can now add cities to your wishlist, by clicking the heart when hovering over a city. This was requested years ago by @andreyazimov! Kinda useful if you want to make a selection of cities to go. You can also hide cities with the X.
🔍A new useful search that you can find cities, countries, continents and people with, and like or follow them.
🛬Nomad List Chat is now integrated with your travels and shows when people arrive in the city.
🤯Recommendation engine that figures out what places you will probably like based on where people like have you gone before (and how they rated those places). Requested by @johnonolan.
🎟Startups can now advertise on the site with friendly non-intrusive text ads for pretty cheap. This also supports the site and helps monetize it a bit more. Also jobs from Remote OK are reposted to Nomad List to help more people find remote work: https://nomadlist.com/promote
🛂If you're traveling with your partner, I built a Visa Free Partner filter: you can select your country, and your partner's country, and Nomad List will show you places you can travel visa free with both your passports! Requested by @camerondare
So yes, that's LOTS of new features. I hope you like it. I'd love to hear what to improve. I'm always improving my site, it's my 👶baby, and I'll take your feedback and use it!
💖 Thanks everyone for always supporting throughout the last 5 years! It's been incredible and insane to experience all of this and I'm still shocked every day that I can wake up and work on my site which people actually use and pays my bills. THANK YOU!!!
@levelsio congrat for the work achieved. I have checked and I think there is many cities >50k inhabitants missing on the platform. For example, France has 125 cities above 50k inhabitants and only 20 on Nomad List.
@raphael_chabaud You're right, changed that in the comment! My goal is to also include all those towns, so I'll go and make a list for France to add, thanks :)
Hi Pieter! I am in love with the site and had a couple questions, thought I'd ask here so others can see too!
1) Is the group fairly active on Slack?
2) Is there somewhere I can learn about specific sponsor details? (I'm working on a community space where worldschoolers can get together online and plan their month out. Basically do the "travel hygiene" things, like budgets, weekly reviews, checklists for businesses/maintenance back home, etc.)
We've been slow traveling since 2015 and this is exactly what I've been searching for! Thank you :D
I remember when the beta launched - it has literally moved a generation. The data did get better over time luckily. Kudos for keeping it going and constantly pushing it to evolve as the concept and world evolve. @levelsio keep it up and can't wait to see your next experiment!
Happy shipday 🚢 @levelsio!
Nomad List has been a big part of my travelling life for the last 5 years, and has come such a long way from where it started out. Where do you think the nomad movement will be in another 5 years from now - and how will that influence the direction of the product?
@johnonolan Hi John! 😊You've been a big part of remote work and especially the nomad scene yourself for a long time. Also, I know your whole life you've been living in different countries, since being a kid.
You're interesting because I think you're a great example of what will become an increasingly normal way to live your life for billions of people in just a few decades. People seek opportunity, and the internet creates opportunities in almost every facet of life: career, relationships, love and creativity. What's different is that the internet is non-discriminatory about where those opportunities are.
You can be born in Africa, work remotely for a company in San Francisco, date a person from Europe, have friends in the Middle East and live in Asia. We know that story by now, but it's still powerful I think. The next 5 years will only make this more commonplace and more normal.
We know we'll have succeeded when we can stop calling it "digital nomads working remotely", and simply people living how they want to live their life wherever. That's my vision!
This means I'll have to keep adapting Nomad List to move with the subculture niche that nomads were in 2014, to being more commonplace now in 2019, to mainstream in a few years. And I hope Nomad List can help normalize remote work and living in different places than where you're born.
Congratulations! And thanks for showing two important pioneers in your video, people who not only predicted the future but invented it.
luvvv the videoooo! we need more of these things! awesome features too, keep up the good work mister president of nomadia @levelsio :D
Great work, @levelsio! Totally agree of a growing Nomad trend, but at the same time people keep on being attracted to the big cities world wide. I would have thinked that would have stopped thanks to good connections, but people want to stay close to work and people too, it seems.
Congratulations on the launch! I’m excited to try the new stuff out.
I saw your recent additions to the countries-you-visited and have a suggestion:
With global heating being one of the major problems humanity is facing, and with flying being by far the least environmental mode of transportation per passenger it leaves an unwell feeling to see the “celebration” / gamification of visiting many countries, mostly by flights. One flight overseas and back is equivalent to between 1 and 2 years of a person’s global averaged individual annual carbon emissions quota — more than all other sources — or efforts to reduce them — combined!
I see a big opportunity for NomadList to have a positive impact. There are services like atmosfair.de which allow to make up for the additional emission of CO2 caused by your flight. A suggestion for the donation amount is based based on the flight you took. People can donate money and it is used to help reduce CO2 emissions in other parts of the world - thereby making up for the additional emissions from their own flight. In NomadList, when users enter the countries they’ve been to, you could add an “I-compensated-the-CO2-for-this-flight” checkbox with a “learn more” link. The lines of compensated trips could appear in green instead of red on the map. This would encourage people to make up for their emissions, and it would spread awareness. Of course users might even donate months after the flight took place and make up for their previous emissions now, thereby making their map greener.
As an example, I flew to Bali this year (and attended one of your house parties - thanks for hosting 🍸) and compensates the flight by donating around 120€ iirc. I could now mark that flight as CO2-compensated on NomadList 🌳
Sorry, this got long!
@dferber90 Hi Dominik! Yes, actually great points. It's more on my radar now especially with the current heat wave in Europe, which is reported be a direct result of climate change.
Most nomads will start off moving around places fast, let's say every few weeks. That gets tiring though, and they'll slow down to 3/4 months in one place (that's the average on my website). Personally I'm moving towards staying in one place for 6 months. The more easy long term visas become available for people, the less nomads will move around. Most people I know move because they reach their visa limits (e.g. 30/60/90 days).
About the emissions:
- One flight from Amsterdam to Bali is 0.9 metric tons of CO2 (https://calculator.carbonfootpri...).
- The American average is 16.4 metric tons of CO2 per year.
- That means one long-haul flight is 5% of an American's total CO2 in a year.
- If you fly back (round trip), add another 0.9 metric tons.
- That means 10% of an American's total CO2.
- Nomads probably do a few city trips locally (e.g. Bali -> Thailand and back). That's another 0.44 metric tons. Let's do 4 city trips: 1.76 metric tons of CO2.
- Now we're at 0.9 + 0.9 + 1.76 = 3.56 metric tons of CO2, or 21% of average American.
- Now some good news: nomads usually only have a backpack so they can't really buy a lot of useless stuff that an ordinary household buys (and they're usually minimalist and anti consumerist), they also don't rly drive a car and usually live close to their coworking space.
- That means an average nomad probably emits less CO2 than an average American. About 5x less.
There's a lot of assumptions here admittedly, but this is if I base it on nomads around me. There'll obviously be nomads not fitting this picture and emitting more than an average American. But I don't think most do.
Personally I've been switching from flying to using the train whenever it's possible. I've taken the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, from Seoul to Busan. I've also taken the ferry from Busan to Fukuoka and from Busan to Qingdao (China). I think a ferry is less emitting but not sure.
I've also added CO2 emissions to Nomad List profiles, so you can see how much you're emitting and can consider flying less:
It's important to consider and I also want to help in whichever way possible to keep the world not exploding in heat in the next decades!
It's important to consider and I also want to help in whichever way possible to keep the world not exploding in heat in the next decades!
@dferber90 Love this idea. A visual indicator (Green vs red lines, or similar) is a great way to motivate people, too.
@levelsio It's very nice to see that you've taken some first steps and are welcoming the idea. I'm not interested in discussing whether nomading causes more or less CO2 than staying in the same place. I also don't want to shame anyone for flying either. I flew quite a lot while traveling around the world in the last three years myself.
No matter whether nomads cause more or less CO2 on average, flying adds CO2 (and other bad substances) - and it would be great if making up for it through donations was encouraged by NomadList.
The Atmosfair project I suggested above avoids adding more CO2 emissions by e.g. building energy-efficient stoves in Ruanda, Nigeria and Lesotho which only need 20% of wood compared to the stoves used traditionally. This saves 31.000 tons of CO2 per year in Nigeria alone. I'm sure there are other projects around the world doing similar things. Donations to these projects allow to "make up" for the CO2 caused by flying.
Encouragement could happen by spreading awareness of the option to compensate through donations. A plain "I compensated the emissions of this flight" checkbox with a "Learn more" link could help. Additionally, making lines of compensated trips green on the map would encourage donations.
As someone with a lifetime subscription, I hope NomadList promotes consciousness of these issues.
PS: Sorry for "hijacking" the announcement. This suggestion has been on my mind for a few weeks but would have been a pain to communicate on Twitter. I support NomadList and didn't want to shine any negative light on anything you're doing. I hope it is not received as such. Best of luck for the future, and I look forward to seeing you again in person some time :)
PPS: Regarding the calculations, something especially bad about flying is that the effects of emitted NOx in high altitudes lead to the production of more ozone compared to the emission of the same amount on ground. This in turn leads to a greater global warming effect. So direct comparison of emissions is skewed a bit.
@dferber90 sure, I'll consider Atmosfair when building new features, would be interesting to do something around it. I'll have to think how that'd look!
And no I don't take it wrong at all, it's an important topic, especially now!
@dferber90 As an aside to this, I would love it if Nomad List helped make it easier to plan train trips through Europe and the rest of the world. Perhaps a easier way to book the whole route?
To be fair, this is a huuge undertaking and probably a project/product in its own right, so maybe not something that should live inside of Nomad List.
Woah, good job! Love the addition of rural towns!! Cannot find it through the web navigation tough, is there a similar list for Europe? :P Keep inspiring! :D
Amazing work Pieter! Did you get anyone to help you in building all these new features? Or you really did everything yourself?
BTW: please add my hometown Sassari (population 123K): we have coworking and great cafés!
@frizurd Thanks Frizky! Was a hell of a lot of work last few days editing it together. Music is by Simple Technique: https://soundcloud.com/cyberfunk...
How about importing into the travel history. Like from a GPX track or google history? :-) Was a bit too lazy lately to enter everything.
Shisharka Land