I tried this many moons ago and unless you have some sort of unique, valuable skill that new clients will put up with limited communications it will be really, really hard. I was able to gain clients in the city but after I left and the project finished I was left dry. Most of the nomads I've met already had a long standing, ongoing relation with their job (ie. the server admin that knows and ran the platform at one time, the webapp programmer that was in the office, built the stack, and now just updates it from time to time).
It was me working in some internet cafe somewhere in SE Asia versus the guy that can be down to their office for a face to face in 30 minutes. While there are successes on rentacoder and odesk these are the exception. Mostly you'll be competing against some guy with much lower overhead in a developing country.
After a while I realized that my objectives were orthogonal to the clients. I wanted to travel first and work second. They wanted the work done on demand and didn't care if you were 2 days away from your next port of call.
If you want to be a nomad, be a nomad first. That means taking whatever job you need to raise money. I've done app dev, translation, babysitting, bartending, ushering, and electronic repair. I've met ex-developers from the dotcom bubble who were now working as crew on a yacht.
It was me working in some internet cafe somewhere in SE Asia versus the guy that can be down to their office for a face to face in 30 minutes. While there are successes on rentacoder and odesk these are the exception. Mostly you'll be competing against some guy with much lower overhead in a developing country.
After a while I realized that my objectives were orthogonal to the clients. I wanted to travel first and work second. They wanted the work done on demand and didn't care if you were 2 days away from your next port of call.
If you want to be a nomad, be a nomad first. That means taking whatever job you need to raise money. I've done app dev, translation, babysitting, bartending, ushering, and electronic repair. I've met ex-developers from the dotcom bubble who were now working as crew on a yacht.