So you’re looking to travel the world on a budget and Workaway sounds like the perfect fit for you.
From our personal experience, Workaway has opened up some amazing travel opportunities for us and enabled us to travel for much longer than we anticipated. I could go on for ages about the all the the opportunities available, and you can read more about that on our last blog post.
There’s only one problem… you hop onto the Workaway website, excited to start contacting potential hosts and WHAM! You find a sea of hosts by the thousands. I speak from experience when I say that it can be quite overwhelming to try to find a host that is the right fit for you when there are so many options available.
The last time I checked Workaway boasted of having over 50 000 hosts in 155 countries around the world and these numbers are growing. That means when you set out to find the right host for you, you have a big sea of fish to choose from. Feeling a little overwhelmed at this point? Not to worry, I’ve got some great tips that will help you to narrow down your options and find a host that is the best fit for you.
Without further ado, how do you find the right workaway for YOU?
Browsing The Best
When you hop onto the workaway website you will immediately see some hosts profiles popping up from across the globe (France, Cambodia, Mexico, you name it) giving you a taste of the different options available. Generally, these hosts would be well rated and reliable. If you aren’t too sure about which country you would like to visit yet, or the type of work you would like to do, you could browse these options to see if anything catches your eye.
However, if you already have some idea in mind about what you’re looking for or where you would like to travel to, then you can go ahead and click on the ‘find a host’ option and you’ll be greeted with this page. NOTE: you can use either your mobile or desktop to access the website, but I recommend using your desktop. I personally find it much easier to navigate.
You can start by entering the country you are planning to travel to. Most of the time, depending on the country you choose, you will have hundreds of options to look through. So how do you narrow this down even further?
Filters Are Your Friend
First things first, you will need to think about what’s important to you. What will make or break a workaway/host for you? Are you traveling with a partner/travel buddy? Do you need a strong internet connection for work, etc.? Do you want food and accommodation to both be included in the deal? Do you want to work with animals or people? Do you have specific dates in mind for a particular workaway/country?
Hopefully, considering these questions, has helped to give you get a clearer idea of what you’re looking for. The next step includes clicking on the magical little ‘filter’ button which will help you to narrow down your options to the hosts that fit your criteria.
There are a couple of reasons why you would want to narrow down your options and be quite specific when applying for different workaway hosts.
Firstly, not all hosts will respond to your message and some of your requests may just never receive a response. Which can be very disheartening, and it can be very tempting to just send out hundreds of messages to all sorts of hosts without really looking into what the hosts are looking for and what they offer. But this will not end well. Ultimately, getting a positive response from any host that will take you could end in a very bad experience for you as well as your host.
Workaway is very much a ‘give and take’ and is designed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement rather than just a way to get free accommodation and food. And each workaway is a unique arrangement between the workawayer and the host.
Which means it’s really important to know what’s expected of you and what you can expect from this workaway. The best way to find this out before arriving at the workaway is the host’s profile.
Some hosts are very specific about what they are looking for in a workawayer and they state this in their descriptions. While most hosts offer food and accommodation, other hosts may only offer accommodation and not food. Another host may only offer accommodation for one volunteer at a time, and may have a very weak internet connection or no internet at all. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.
The only way to ensure you get the best out of your workaway experiences is to put in time and effort when researching and reaching out to potential hosts. Which brings me to my next point.
Read EVERYTHING
I have to admit this is definitely not my favourite part. But it’s really important to read through a host’s entire profile for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this is where host’s give you information about what to expect from this workaway. The type of work you’ll be doing, the food and accommodation arrangement, how many hours you’ll need to work, some host’s even give you tips on what to do in their area in your free time.
Some host’s will put something very specific in their description allllll the way at the end to see if you have read through their whole profile before applying. For example, something like this, “Which dish, maybe even a typical Swiss meal, would you like to have one day with us? We are looking forward to the answer to this question in your message to us.” Let me just say that host’s REALLY appreciate it when you read through their entire description and this will definitely set you apart from other Workawayers apply to the same host.
Last but certainly not least.
Feedback Is The Golden Goose
A host can say a lot of things in their description, but nothing speaks more truth than the genuine review of a fellow workawayer who has worked with this host at their workaway. Reviews are at the very bottom of the page when looking at a host’s profile, but I would say this is the most important part of every profile. If you are looking to save yourself more time when it comes to reading through dozens of profiles, I would even go as far as saying you can read the reviews before going through the effort of reading the rest of the profile.
One Last Thing!
Just before I sign off, there are a couple other things to look out for on a host’s profile that will help you decide whether to apply.
‘Reply rate’ – this percentage tells you how often a host replies to requests sent in. Depending on how high or low this rate is, you can decide whether it’s worth your while to apply and if you do apply to a host with a low reply rate, you could put extra effort into your message to try and get a positive response from the host.
‘Last activity’ – this tells you when last the host was on the workaway site. Meaning, if the last active date is over a year ago, you can save yourself the effort of applying because you probably won’t get anywhere with this particular host. On the other hand, if the last active date was yesterday or a few days ago, this is a very good sign that this host is still active and looking for help.
‘Availability’ – Hosts use this to communicate ‘when’ they need help. Green means they are definitely looking for help in that month, yellow means maybe, and red means they don’t need help or they have already booked workaways for that month.
Finally, sometimes you find hosts that are ‘last minute’ these are very good hosts to apply to. This means they are looking for help right away and are very likely to reply positively to your application.
There we have it! Our tips for finding the best workaway host for YOU. We hope these will help you on your workaway journey. Happy travels! And as always, if you have any questions feel free to drop us an email. We always enjoy hearing from you.
If you are interested in testing out workaway for yourself or seeing what it’s all about, we would really appreciate it if you used our link below to sign up. If you join Workaway using this link, at no extra cost to you, you will be helping us by extending our yearly subscription. 🎉
Our workaway link https://www.workaway.info/invite/1X783BD5
PS if you have any more tips you think we missed out, please feel free to leave a comment below to help out any fellow Workaway travelers.
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