Well, we're hightailing back to Bangor, almost finished with our cross-country Wi-Fi adventure. We've learned a great deal about using Wi-Fi for business while enjoying a nomadic lifestyle typically reserved for retired folks. If you too want to take your Internet business on the road, here are a few tips:

1) Make your business truly "virtual" -- It is infinitely easier to live this lifestyle if your participation in your business is entirely virtual. Our publishing company, Booklocker.com, provides an infrastructure that allows self-published authors to easily market and sell their works online and off-line, but we don't actually touch the physical products. Our ebooks are delivered automatically and the printer drop ships our print books directly to customers. Our ezine, WritersWeekly.com, is the primary marketing vehicle for our publishing business and it's also entirely virtual.

2) Automate, automate! -- When we find ourselves working longer hours, we automate another one of our business processes. This lets us do more with less and we save thousands by not needing any full-time employees (we have three telecommuting contractors working for us). The nice thing about having a completely automated online store is that your business is open 24 hours a day but you don't need to be there for customers to buy your products.

Angela & Richard hard at work at the office.

3) Have a back-up connection -- You should prepare to have multiple options for getting online. As described in the first installment of this series, we primarily use Wi-Fi, but we also have cellular data service, cell phones, and standard dial-up service. Avoid situations where you're completely disconnected from your business.

4) Insist on a good Wi-Fi spot! Campground staffers usually know which areas have the best Wi-Fi connection. Ask before they assign your space! We learned the hard way about parking, unpacking, and then discovering we were in a dead zone.

5) Ditch the phone & punt voicemail -- When we started our Internet business, we decided we did not want to do business by phone. Let's face it, phone calls disrupt your workflow and usually contain a lot of chitchat that, while pleasant, is often a waste of time. We've found email to be far more efficient because we can answer incoming correspondence on our timetable (usually within a few hours) and we can give a more detailed answer. In addition, both parties can go back and research past email conversations if questions arise. This decision to be phone-free was fortuitous given our current desire to travel.

6) Keep the home fires burning -- We had a contractor at the home office collecting our physical mail, forwarding faxes, depositing checks, and keeping an eye on the house. You can do this, too, or you can have your mail forwarded by a friend, or even hire a mail-forwarding service to receive and process your mail. You can pay your bills online if your bank offers that service and you can also send and receive faxes online with services like eFax.

7) Be content to remain a small business -- When our business started growing faster than we expected, we discussed how big we wanted Booklocker.com to become. Did we want to have offices and employees or did we want to work at home, by ourselves? We opted for the latter. We'd rather limit our workload and income to a comfortable amount and enjoy life while the children are still at home (and on the road!) with us.

When we started this journey, our biggest fear was wondering if we'd fall behind on our work. Could we really run the entire business while traveling cross-country? Would days without Wi-Fi hurt our productivity? (There were very few times we couldn't find a Wi-Fi connection nearby.) Would six-hour driving days keep us offline for too long? (We experienced very few dead spots with our T-Mobile card, and whoever wasn't driving could work while on the road.) Would anybody complain about a delayed response to an email? (Nobody did!)

We're a bit melancholy that this trip is coming to an end. The good news is we've been tracking our expenses and now know we can easily afford to take these Wi-Fi road trips whenever we want. So, we're already planning our next adventure! In October, we'll be testing Wi-Fi technology from Maine to the Florida Keys! Until then, you can check out our daily adventures at http://www.wirelesstrips.com.