photo by unoguy on Flickr

As future expats, most of us will need to earn a living overseas. Writing, photography, teaching English and art are all eminently portable.

Coaching is also a portable profession: most coaches conduct their sessions over the phone, making them location independent.

Here’s a little bit about what it takes.

Qualifications

I asked our six coaches first what background and qualifications do you need to be a coach?

There are no formal requirements. Anyone can call himself a coach. However, there are certification programs, and if you’re considering coaching as a career you should go through a recognized program.

In the US, the ICF (International Coach Federation) is the top dog. You can learn about their credentialing program here.

Louise belongs to the UK-based Association for Coaching.

Margarita pointed out that there are many accredited coaching schools to choose from, so you need to find one with the best fit for you.

If you can’t access a coaching school nearby, some offer classes by phone teleconference.

CTI, Coaches Training Institute was recommend by Margarita and Emmanuelle, and Coach U by Evelyn.

How Did You Become Interested in Coaching?

I asked each of the coaches how they became interested in coaching as a career.

After ten years in the corporate world, Emmanuelle was tired of office politics and wanted to go into business for herself. She wanted to contribute to her clients’ lives and successes. Since she travels and moves frequently, “coaching seemed a perfect fit for a portable career.”

Anne also came out of the corporate world — over 20 years worth. She, too, wanted a portable career, and she likes “helping others thrive no matter what they do or where they live.”

Heather “fell entirely in love with the positive growth coaching has for both clients and coaches.”

Throughout her adult life in investment banking and then as an expat accompanying partner, Evelyn found herself drawn to helping others in similar situations. “Eventually, as I learned more about coaching, the realisation that this was the profession for me dawned and I really haven’t looked back.”

Margarita had to find a portable career when she started traveling with her husband with the US Foreign Service. Along the way, she met a life coach. She began training and loved it, “and I was hooked.”

Each of them found they had a strong connection with other expats, so the niche of expat coaching was a natural evolution.

Where Do You Find Clients?

Anne, Heather and Emmanuelle have been positioned to find clients through word of mouth and in-person meetings at conferences and workshops, as well as online.

The internet is also a great source of clients for all six coaches. Margarita states that most of her clients find her through her blog or social media — Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Since Anne moved to Brussels, most of her clients come from LinkedIn.

Louise finds clients exclusively through the internet, although she plans to develop a local presence when she moves to mainland Portugal in the fall.

How Do You Get Paid

Since many of their clients are in different countries, I was curious about how the coaches get paid!

PayPal is the venue of choice — it’s cost effective and anyone can use it. Emmannuelle also takes checks (actually, since she’s in Canada she takes checques) and credit cards.

What Advice Would You Give Someone Who’s Interested in Becoming a Coach?

Heather told me:

“It’s a gift, but also a lot of hard work — both getting certified and hard personally as you get to know parts of yourself you may not like! And getting clients — if you have the love for coaching, and the ambition to be aggressive about handling various aspects of a business, this is for you! Also, make sure to attend different intro sessions for the programs out there — understand what you want out of the coaching (certification, accreditation, just fun…) And i’d recommend a program that offers in person and telephone coaching.”

Louise pointed out a sobering statistic:

“Talk to coaches about their careers. Investigate whether you want to work in a company as a coach or start your own business.

If you want to start your own business consider all the issues involved in starting a business – cost, investment and think carefully about the coaching niche you will position yourself in. Don’t think you can become a coach and then people will just come to you. It is reported by Dan Bradbury in the UK that 95% of UK coaches don’t make an adequate living from coaching. Now he is marketing to exactly these people so perhaps take this figure with a pinch of salt but even if it were only 70% – it still is a lot of people struggling to make a living!”

Evelyn pointed out:

“You’re going to need two types of skills: coaching skills, and business skills. You can be the most gifted, most dedicated coach in the world – but if you don’t know how to market your services and sell yourself, you won’t stay in business for very long. So take the time to craft a solid business plan and a well thought-out marketing strategy, to ensure that your coaching business thrives.”

Emmanuelle stated:

“Make sure that it’s really what you want to do as its hard to coach people on finding their inner truth if you’re not living your own. Coach U offers a short course called Becoming a Coach if you think it might be for you.”

Margarita emphasized the need for business savvy:

“Know how to run a business. Marketing and being out there for clients to find you takes a lot of effort, time, and energy and, as a coach, you must be prepared to spend a significant amount of hours on that.”

Anne made an interesting suggestion:

“Get a mentor coach to figure out what are your motives, understand what it takes to run a small business, marketing strategies, what is best cost effective training for you (it can be quite expensive,around $3,000-5,000)”

Want to discuss coaching as a career? Add a comment below or “like” Future Expats on Facebook to join the discussion.

If you plan to start a business overseas — and most of you indicated you’ll have to generate some income to finance your overseas lifestyle — Panama is the country to look at. According to Kathleen Peddicord, publisher of the Overseas Retirement Letter, the country’s friendliness to business is why she and her real estate developer husband moved from Paris to Panama two years ago.

Kathleen explains:

“In the past few months, since my How to Retire Overseas book was published, I’ve been interviewed by at least two dozen members of the media…and every one of them has wondered:

” ‘You moved from Paris to Panama two years ago? Why would you do that?’

“Here’s the truth. If we had no children, no business, and no agenda beyond pursuing the best possible quality of life, we’d have stayed put in Paris. For us, the City of Light (from which I write you today…we’re here for the month of July) is the best place in the world to call home.

“However, about 2 ½ years ago, I did have another agenda. Having sold out my participation in the International Living group, where I’d been publisher for more than 23 years, I decided I wasn’t ready for retirement. What I wanted to do, I realized, was to start over…to build a new business from the ground up.

“France, I knew from experience, was not the place for this. The French are not the nasty, rude people many Americans imagine them to be, but one French stereotype is real: They have little tolerance for the entrepreneurial imagination. The red tape, the bureaucracy, the taxes, and the labor law in this country make it one of the least appealing places on earth to start or operate a business.

“Lief and I knew we’d have to relocate if I wanted to make a real go of a new business venture. But where?

“We took stock of our previous entrepreneurial adventures. By that time, we’d run businesses in the United States, Ireland, France, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Panama.

“When deciding where to base a business, you want to consider five things: the labor pool (how educated and at what cost); the infrastructure; relevant tax rates; the doing-business climate; and local labor law. Considering the world map and taking into account our own experiences, we concluded that, all things considered, Panama is the top choice worldwide if you’re in the market for a place to launch the kind of business I was in the market to launch.

“No place in the world is as entrepreneur-friendly as the United States when it comes to labor law. Nowhere else, for example, can you fire at will (without incurring costly consequences). The rest of the world favors the employee over the employer. We used to joke in France and Ireland that employees were for life. You hired a new one understanding that you were taking a big risk and incurring a long-term liability.

“This is much less true in Panama, but, still, sometimes, we miss the good old days in the States when we could ask an employee to leave on the spot — without written notices, without witnessed warnings, without the calling of tribunals — if his performance warranted it.

“That aside, Panama checks every box you want checked when you set out to start a business. We’ve been delighted by the eclectic pool of labor we’ve been able to tap into in Panama City. In our downtown office today, we have a Romanian, a German, two Russians, three Americans, and four Panamanians. All are educated and hard-working.

“In our high-rise office, we have high-speed wireless Internet, a VOIP phone system, and a telephone number that’s toll-free when dialed from the United States. As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to source bigger and more sophisticated IT and web-support systems, including an American IT pro in the city who responds immediately to our calls for help.

“Panama business taxes? We aren’t liable for any. Structure your business in this country properly, and you won’t be either. Depending where and how your revenues are sourced and, again, how your company is set up, you can operate corporate tax-free.

“The doing-business climate? Panama’s current President Ricardo Martinelli, a successful businessman himself, couldn’t be more pro-entrepreneur. Martinelli has made it his administration’s mission to make Panama the most business-friendly jurisdiction in the hemisphere, and he’s making good progress.

“At a recent American Chamber of Commerce meeting I attended, the Vice Minister of Commerce reported to the assembled group on his ministry’s efforts to attract mega multi-national companies to Panama. They’ve signed on more than 40 big-time international operations to date. Their goal is 100 by year-end.

“What’s getting the attention of the presidents and CEOs of some of the world’s biggest companies?

“They’re looking at the same things I looked at 2 ½ years ago–the labor pool, the tax situation, the infrastructure, and the doing-business climate.

“For them the stakes are much bigger. For my part, I can tell you that our little operation is thriving.”

In recent months, we’ve explored writing, photography, art, running a B&B, teaching English as a foreign language and other options for supporting yourself in your new overseas life. Some – running a B&B and teaching – require you to be in a specific place. Others – writing and photography – allow you to move around and get paid almost anywhere.

Another location-independent avenue for creating income is by establishing an online business represented by a website or blog. The good news is, you no longer have to be a tech-savvy coder or programmer to set it up yourself!
As long as you have an internet connection, you’re in business.

Click here and here for some information on the quickest and easiest way to get a website up and running.



This is an extremely broad topic, so I’ll just give you the rough outline here, and get into more specifics in future posts.

There are three basic ways to earn money through a website:

1. Sell a service
2. Sell a product
3. Earn commissions and fees by selling someone else’s product or service

Sell a Service

If you want to develop a location-independent lifestyle, you probably don’t want to promote your services as a plumber, dog walker or anything else that ties you to one spot.

However, there are many services you can offer “in the cloud.” Anything internet-related falls into this category – programming, writing, video editing, creating Power Point presentations and recording voiceovers are just a few examples.

With the ease and inexpensive cost of communication services like Skype, webinars and podcasting, your choice of service offerings is greatly expanded.

Some examples of non-internet services might include:

• Consulting (as long as you don’t have to do it in person!)
• Teaching
• Coaching
• Putting together guided tours

Sell a Product

The first product-based business I think of for an expat is import/export. If you live in a country that’s known for its textiles, or pottery, or silver jewelry, buying and selling those items is a relatively easy business to start. You can set up a website to display your wares and take orders for them.

If you’re a photographer, you can market your fine-art prints through a website.

E-books and courses are also popular to sell online. You can create your own, or sell someone else’s.

Sell Someone Else’s Product or Service

If you don’t already have some retail experience or if you don’t want to deal with physical inventory, packing and shipping, you can set up a website and collect commissions for selling someone else’s stuff.

Affiliate Programs

Most companies with any significant internet presence today offer affiliate programs, where you receive a commission when a visitor to your website clicks on a link to that company’s product.

For example, at the end of every book and movie review on this site, I include a link to buy that book or that DVD from Amazon. If you purchase the item from one of those links, I receive a few cents. It’s not much, but if hundreds of you do so, it adds up. (You can click here and scroll to the end of the review to see an example.)

Some people receive a nice income each month by creating websites that sell hundreds of products through affiliate links.

If you want to go this route, you should be aware that some companies insist their affiliates be US residents, so watch for this as you investigate becoming an affiliate.

Advertising

Once you’ve developed a website with a reasonable amount of traffic, you can sell advertising. You can do this indirectly, by allowing Google to display its ads on your pages, for example, or by selling space directly to individual advertisers.

The Hybrid Approach

There’s no reason you can’t combine the different methods. On this site I use affiliate links, and I run a couple of ads in the right-hand sidebar. I also promote my own services as a writer and WordPress guru.

OK, I’m Interested. Where Do I Learn How?

There are plenty of resources available to help you learn everything from the mechanics of putting together a website or blog to how to monetize it. Here’s a partial list:

• How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites.This program teaches you how to start from scratch, decide on a profitable niche, and build a site very quickly. Author Nick Usborne makes an extra $4,000/month or so from just one of his sites.
• Inside the Third Tribe: Internet Marketing Strategies that Work (Without Being Obnoxious).
  The name says it all. This is a membership site put together by four of the best bloggers in the business. As a member, you’ll have access to all of the seminars and instructional materials. Best of all, you’ll be able to join the discussions in the member forums where you can interact directly with the founders, your peers, and with a bunch of bloggers who know a lot more than you do and who will happily share their advice and expertise.
• ProBlogger: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog
  Darren Rowse, author of ProBlogger.net, has designed a 31-day program for blog improvement that really works.
• BlogMaster’s Club.
  Six-figure blogger David Risley’s coaching program to help you build and develop your blog and your income from blogging.
• Inner Circle.
  This is a membership site established by David Risley where he shares ongoing new content, ideas, information and tips on growing your blog, improving your traffic and conversions and generally creating a fantastic site that pays you well. This is not for beginners, so if you’re new to blogging you should start with BlogMaster’s Club (above).
• Wealthy Web Writer: The Writer’s Roadmap to Making Money Online.
  This is another membership site which enormous amounts of content. You can learn the basics of putting together a website, and every aspect of how to make money online by writing. I have earned some money from these folks by writing for them as well.
• AWAI.These folks publish multiple programs that can help you learn how to set up a site and how to make money from it as a writer, photographer or graphic artist.

If you find this information is helpful, click here to subscribe to our RSS feed and receive an email in your inbox when a new post is published.

Sun, surf and white sand beaches. . . glamorous evenings. . . gourmet meals. . . what image does life as a travel writer conjure for you?

Travel writing is indeed a glamorous career, and it might be just the ticket for you to pay for your overseas life.

Earlier this evening I joined a teleconference with Jennifer Stevens. Jen has spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer and has traveled through 23 countries writing about the best locales for travel, investment and retirement. She was an editor for International Living. She’s also the creator of a program that teaches people how to become travel writers — the subject of this teleconference.

According to a poll I conducted last fall, 80% of readers here will need to generate income overseas. As one of that number, I enjoy researching location-independent opportunities for earning money for myself and for you.

Here are some of the highlights of Jen’s teleconference.

Get Paid to Travel — Then Get Paid Again to Write About It!

As a travel writer, someone else pays for your travel, and then you get to earn money by writing about it. You experience a place differently when you’re writing about it, because your status as a writer gives you an excuse to ask questions and go places you might not go as a tourist.

Usually you’re not hired to write lengthy, literary articles. Instead, editors want short pieces and guidebook-style narratives.

You don’t just write for travel magazines. Lots of magazines, newspapers and online publications will publish travel articles — a knitting magazine might publish a story about an interesting knitting shop in London, for example. You can use your knowledge of hobbies or other interests to create travel articles.

You Can Make a Full-Time Living as a Travel Writer

By full-time living, Jen specified an income of $50-60,000 annually. For that you have to write quickly, be good at it and have some regular clients.

However, if you’re living in a country where it doesn’t cost as much to live — Mexico, Malaysia or Panama, for example — a full-time living might be half that amount, allowing you to live comfortably and enjoy a fair amount of leisure time. Or you could work hard, earn your 50K and sock away some savings.

Travel magazines pay anywhere from $75 for a short piece to $2,000 for the cover story in an airline magazine.

If you can take some photos to go with your article, you can double your earnings.

You Can Sell Travel Articles Without Leaving Home

Think about it. Wherever you live, it’s likely a travel destination for somebody. I’m currently in Central Florida, so I could write articles about Walt Disney World, Sea World, Universal Studios, Kennedy Space Center, beaches, and a lot of other attractions and offer them to newspapers in the northeast or other parts of the country. Or sell them to foreign English-language publications.

The Perks are Fantastic!

Hotels, airlines, tour operators, state and country travel and tourism agencies are great sources of freebies. It’s worth their while to give an empty hotel room or airplane seat to a writer in hopes of getting some free coverage, which carries more credibility than an advertisement.

Once you’ve had a few assignments published, lots of perks like this are available.

How’s the Demand?

According to Jennifer Stevens, there’s a great demand for travel writers who understand what editors are looking for. There are print magazines and newspapers with their corresponding websites. Newsletters and e-letters offered by tour operators are another source of assignments.

How Do I Learn How?

As mentioned above, Jen has developed a program that teaches people how to become travel writers. It’s called The Ultimate Travel Writer’s Program and it’s available through AWAI. (In the interests of full disclosure, I have purchased several of AWAI’s programs, including this one, and I also do some freelance writing for them. Both these links are affiliate links.)

If you’re not sure you want to plunge in right away and invest in the program, you can sign up on the AWAI website for free e-letters that give you loads of information about travel writing as well.

Click here to see other posts on generating income overseas.

It's a Widget!

A couple of weeks ago I posted a piece titled Dumb Suggestons for Finding Freelance Work Overseas. In it, I disagreed strongly with the author of an article who had suggested using Craigslist, Elance.com and Freelancer.com to come up with freelance gigs to support your overseas lifestyle.

I won’t re-hash my arguments here, you can go back to the original post and read them for yourself if you’re interested. Instead, I’d like to expand on them.

A few days after I posted that piece, I was listening to a teleconference by Nick Usborne, a veteran copywriter, coach and writing teacher. Nick articulated clearly what has bothered me about these sorts of websites for a long time, but which I was not able to express nearly as well as he did.



Nick said that, if you participate in these sites you are agreeing that your skills — whether writing, editing, shooting video, photography, creating databases or any other freelance endeavor — are simply a commodity. You put yourself in the position of being one widget among many. And when you commodify your talents, the only level of competition becomes price. That is the true reason why freelancers who participate in these demeaning online auctions are severely underpaid.

In order to separate yourself from this widget crowd — to be perceived as a uniquely able freelancer and be reasonably compensated for your work — you must offer specialized knowledge and authority.

Specialized knowledge doesn’t come overnight. It’s not just another commodity. It comes with education, time and practice.

So if you want to support yourself in your new country by writing (and I keep using that as an example because that’s what I do), the time to start preparing yourself is before you leave your old country.

Perhaps you have some specialized knowledge and expertise from your home-country career you’d like to leverage after your move. Great!

What should you do if you don’t already have that authority? Decide on a specialized niche and work to develop that expertise now, before you move. Take classes, hire a coach, subscribe to websites that provide what you want. Borrow books from the library and apply what you learn. There are lots of ways to gain knowledge.

After you’ve learned something, you need to put feet on it, put it into practice. Then do it again. And again. And again. Find the freelance work you want — here, now, before you go — and start developing a reputation.

If you plan properly and implement your plan, by the time you move overseas you will have an existing client base and a well defined group of prospects who will be willing to hire you for freelance assigments at a good rate of pay.

Is it easy? No. Especially if you’re already holding down a full-time job. Will you be able to make money immediately? Probably not, unless you’re already doing similar work or have tons of insider industry contacts. It takes work and dedication.

You can use this approach to become a travel writer, a copywriter, or any other kind of freelance writer. I’m sure you can also use this approach with non-writing types of freelance work, and I’d love to hear from some of you with those other areas of expertise.

It will pay off, though. Instead of working your butt off at menial, slave-wage assignments through a site that turns you into just another widget, you can work fewer hours at assignments that pay better, and have more time to enjoy your new surroundings.

Here are some links to companies and programs I have personal experience with that may help you get started. I have done business with all of them (taken courses, enrolled in membership sites, etc.), and one of them AWAI, has recently hired me for some freelance assignments.

• The Versatile Freelancer
• Turn Your Pictures Into Cash
• The Travel Writer’s Life

If online content is more your thing, there are some excellent courses, seminars and blogging gurus out there to learn from. I’ve worked with — and recommend — the following:

• Blog Master’s Club
• David Risley’s Inner Circle
• Third Tribe
• Wealthy Web Writer (a division of AWAI)
• 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

There are tons more resources available, but the most important thing to remember is, if you want a freelance career and don’t want to be treated (and paid) like a commodity, you must set yourself apart.

Do you have helpful resources for aspiring freelancers you could share? Click the comment link below!

Earlier today my eye was caught by the headline, “Finding Freelance Work Overseas.”

“Great!” I thought. “Maybe I can pick up some tips and pointers for making my work location independent.” (I’ve posted about this before.)

In a word, wrong!



The author wrote:

“The following are some helpful resources to get you started working freelance jobs overseas. These are just a couple. The internet is full of resources to find freelance work abroad, but these three I have personal experience with so I feel comfortable recommending them. ” Read the entire article

She then went on to announce that she’s a writer and editor. Well, I’m a writer too, so you’d think her recommendations would be worth something. Here’s what she suggested.

1. Craigslist.org
2. Elance.com
3. Freelancer.com

Let’s take them in order.

Craigslist

I like Craigslist for selling furniture. But for jobs? Not so much. Just for jollies I looked in the edición/escritura (editor/writer) category to see what’s available for freelance writers in Mexico, one of my possible country choices. Out of five listings, two were mis-categorized. One was for a freelance journalist/stringer, location didn’t matter. Two were in Mexico City for a copywriter and online content writer, respectively. OK, so realistically two possibilities. Except one required bilingual fluency in English and Spanish, so realistically one possibility. And the listings were old.

So I checked my other country choices. Ecuador, no listings. Malaysia, no listings. Panama. OK, here we go. Four listings (dating back to March 29). One was identical to the Mexico freelance journalist listing, two were for travel writers based in Panama, and one actually looked interesting. However, it did not appear to be a freelance position but a full-time staff spot.

Of course, you don’t have to find listings specific to the country you’re in — that’s the beauty of the internet. But I know from extensive personal experience that finding freelance writing gigs on the US version of Craigslist is pretty much a non-starter as well. I’ll admit I haven’t checked out the UK, Australia or New Zealand locations, but any postings there are most likely looking for writers fluent in British English or Aussie English, not American English. (Yes, there are significant differences.)

Elance

On elance, as a freelancer you “bid” on projects that interest you. You’re competing with “writers” from India, China, and the Eastern bloc countries who are apparently willing to write for 50 or 75 cents per 600 words. Depending on the writer’s knowledge of the subject, that could take an hour or more to write. If you add research time, it could eat up three-four hours. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to work for 25 cents/hour or less!

Freelancer

Similar to Elance in that the freelancers “bid” for jobs. Here are a few I found:

“Need 150 Articles – Quick” for the generous sum of $150. That’s $1 per article. Articles must be 500 words.

“Need Blogger/Article Writer for 100 Posts/Reviews” also for $1 per article, alternating between 250 words and 500 words. They also require an image to be submitted with each post and they retain copyright.

Here’s one that’s more generous. “I need writers who are able to produce 10 articles of 500 words per day.” OK, let’s do that math. 500 words, figure an optimistic average of 2 hours per article. 10 articles per day would be 20 hours. For $3.

Can anyone spell “s-l-a-v-e l-a-b-o-r”?

I’m not saying that nobody ever makes a reasonable wage for taking on a project from these sites, but how much time do you have to spend sifting through the garbage before you find something that’s even worth “bidding” on?

For those of you considering taking on freelance assignments to finance your life overseas, please don’t depend on Craigsist, Elance or Freelancer. You can do better than that — much, much better!

And Cathy Brown of Expat Daily News South America, you should be ashamed of yourself for these recommendations.

Are you a freelancer? Do you have sources for getting assignments that you would recommend? I’d love to hear about them. I’ll be putting together a post of sources I recommend in the near future, and would be happy to include yours. You can send them along by posting a Comment below, or sending me an email.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any kind of list, so I thought I’d give you a look today at some of the expat blogs I follow, and that you might find helpful, too.

1. Empty Nest Expat. Currently living in Prague, the blogger describes herself as “an American expatriate bursting with enthusiasm to GET OUT AND EXPERIENCE OUR GLOBE! ”

2. Living In the Sun. This is a website with four offshoot blogs, each dealing with a European/Mediterranean country. There’s one for France, Portugal, Spain and Greece.
3. Soul Travelers 3. Two fifty-something parents and a nine-year old travel the world in “an epic odyssey: open-ended, years long slow trip around the world as a family adventure, unschool, spiritual journey and lifestyle.”
4. Expat+Harem. A Berkely, CA native living in Istanbul with her Turkish husband.
5. My Several Worlds. The author is a traveler and photographer. Originally from Ottawa, Canada, she currently lives and works in Taipei. Her site features gorgeous photos, as well as information about teaching English abroad.
6. Career by Choice. Megan Fitzgerald helps expats develop their careers abroad.
7. Traveling4Health. While not specifically an expat blog, this is a terrific resource for anyone interested in health care abroad.
8. Mid-Atlantic English, the blog of an American who’s lived for an extended time in the UK.
9. The Cranky Yank. This is the personal blog of Dan Prescher from International Living, and he always has a unique perspective.

   Do you have a favorite expat blog? Share it by clicking on the Comment link below.

   ]]> http://futureexpats.com/9-expat-blogs-to-follow/feed 7 http://futureexpats.com/earn-a-living-in-your-new-country-as-an-artisan http://futureexpats.com/earn-a-living-in-your-new-country-as-an-artisan#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:08:12 +0000 FutureExpat http://futureexpats.com/?p=1731 If you paint fine paintings, sculpt, write poetry or novels or compose music, you’ve probably already considered financing your new overseas life by selling your creative products. And the process probably isn’t very different from doing it in your home country.

   As a side benefit,the move will probably stir your creative juices and give

   Continue reading Earn a Living In Your New Country as an Artisan

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   If you paint fine paintings, sculpt, write poetry or novels or compose music, you’ve probably already considered financing your new overseas life by selling your creative products. And the process probably isn’t very different from doing it in your home country.

   As a side benefit,the move will probably stir your creative juices and give you more subject matter to draw on!
   
   But have you considered making a living in your new country using handicraft and artisanal skills that may be just hobbies for you at home? Fine craftsmanship is often more highly respected and more saleable outside the US.

   Andrea Jensen, a former Oregonian, moved to Puerto Rico and became a licensed artesan. (I know, Puerto Rico is not officially another country for a US resident, but that’s a political reality, not a cultural one. Culturally, PR is a Caribbean island nation.) She tells her story in Escape from America magazine.
   

   
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   Andrea melded the traditional island higuera gourd art with tole painting techniques. She applied for her license and began attending craft shows all over the island, successfully selling her artwork.

   The takeaway here isn’t specifically what Andrea did or where she did it. It is that learning something about her new home — the way local calabash gourds were used as art — inspired her to reinvent something she already knew how to do, and to generate income with it.

   What skills do you have that you could reinvent in your new country to earn a living with? Share your ideas by clicking the commment link below.

   ]]> http://futureexpats.com/earn-a-living-in-your-new-country-as-an-artisan/feed 1 http://futureexpats.com/live-to-photograph http://futureexpats.com/live-to-photograph#comments Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:37:37 +0000 FutureExpat http://futureexpats.com/?p=1733 Photography falls somewhere squarely in the middle between an art and a craft, but either way it could help you earn your living in your new international location. For most of us, “photography” means grabbing the point-and-shoot and clicking away at kids, pets, grandkids and special events. That’s not what I’m talking about. Frankly,

   Continue reading Live to Photograph? Or Photograph to Live?

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   Photography falls somewhere squarely in the middle between an art and a craft, but either way it could help you earn your living in your new international location.
   
   For most of us, “photography” means grabbing the point-and-shoot and clicking away at kids, pets, grandkids and special events. That’s not what I’m talking about. Frankly, you may have the cutest grandkids in the world (and I don’t think you do because I know mine have that honor!), but nobody’s going to pay you for taking snapshots.

   However, the distance between snapshot and saleable stock photo is not that great, and it’s a distinction you can learn.

   Photographers can make a good living taking pictures and selling them through online micro stock sites like iStockphoto.com, Shutterpoint.com and Fotolia.com. Stock photos are used by ad agencies, publishers and all sorts of businesses and need to be generic in nature (no logos on the t-shirts or baseball caps, please!).

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   Finance Your Life Overseas

   Turn Your Pictures Into Cash
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   A microstock agency generally sells the image more than once, and the photographer earns a royalty each time it sells. Unlike fine art photos which can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars, royalties for microstock might be under a dollar for some images so they’re affordable by almost anyone. As your photograph collection increases, those royalties can add up quickly.

   If you think photography might float your boat or pay your rent, do some research.

   Shutterpoint offers a free e-book guide for its members called Marketable Photography. It discusses finding a subject for your photos, taking the pictures post processing and uploading them to Shutterpoint.

   Many community colleges offer photography courses. Online classes are also available through a variety of individuals and institutions.

   American Writers and Artists Inc. in Delray Beach, FL offers a course called “Turn Your Pictures Into Cash.” They also offer photography workshops all over the world. So far this year they’ve been to Ecuador and Morocco, and they have expeditions planned to Paris, Rome and Thailand as well. (I’ve not taken any of their photography classes, but I have taken advantage of some of their other offerings including their Ultimate Travel Writers Program.)

   A decent camera, a laptop and an internet connection might just be your ticken to financing your new life overseas.

   Are you a photographer? Do you have some suggestions for fellow future expats who might want to explore photography as a way to earn some money overseas? Click on the comment link below to share your thoughts.

   ]]> http://futureexpats.com/live-to-photograph/feed 1 http://futureexpats.com/why-we-don%e2%80%99t-talk-about-investment-here http://futureexpats.com/why-we-don%e2%80%99t-talk-about-investment-here#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:00:12 +0000 FutureExpat http://futureexpats.com/?p=1699 Last August, I ran a poll and discovered that 75% of you will need to generate income overseas. We’ve looked at a few options – teaching English, writing, starting a business. One thing we haven’t discussed is investing. Nor will we. The Founding Fathers stated that a political system depends upon the consent of the

   Continue reading Why We Don’t Talk About Investment Here

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   Last August, I ran a poll and discovered that 75% of you will need to generate income overseas. We’ve looked at a few options – teaching English, writing, starting a business. One thing we haven’t discussed is investing.
   
   
   
   Nor will we.
   
   The Founding Fathers stated that a political system depends upon the consent of the governed, the social contract. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with that phrase, you can see a brief discussion of it here.)

   The Social Contract and Acts of Conscience

   As a baby boomer, I was taught that the social contract extends to the responsibilities we have to our society outside of our immediate selves and family.

   Civil rights are a product of the social contract. Acts of conscience and civil disobedience are products of the social contract. Supposedly, the Greek philosopher Socrates had the opportunity to escape from prison and leave Athens before he was put to death, but he turned that opportunity down. He believed that, since he was willing to live all his life in Athens he had accepted that social contract and had no right to violate it even when the laws he had accepted were against his self interest. As we all know, Socrates was eventually executed, forced to drink hemlock.

   I’m an idealist. I believe that it’s my responsibility to use my money in ways that enhance and support the social contract. For years I never bought Nestlé products (even though I LOVE Nestlé’s Crunch candy bars!) because the company did terrible, abusive things in order to sell its products in third-world countries. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. I don’t go to movies that feature Scientologist actors. These are all small things, and I’m sure they make no difference to Nestle, Wal-Mart or Tom Cruise, but they are acts of conscience which make a difference to me.

   By now you’re probably wondering, “what does all this blather about Wal-Mart have to do with investing my money?”

   I believe a company has an obligation to honor the social contract. If they are permitted to operate, they have obligations to their stakeholders. I’m not talking about law here, but about what’s right.

   It’s not right that mining companies are able to rip the tops off mountains and dump the results into local waterways. It’s not right that Enron was able to sell electricity to Californians at an artificially inflated price. It’s not right that the Supreme Court recently gave corporations the power to decide our elections.

   It’s not right that a bunch of elected officials decided to reach down into my pocket and yours to shore up Wall St. firms. Banks and investment companies in the US have completely abused their position. They’ve treated our IRA’s, 401K plans and pension funds like their own private mad money. They have abrogated any trust we should place in them, they have defied the social contract, and they won’t get their dirty hands on any more of my money.

   So if you’re looking for investment advice, you’ll have to look somewhere else.

   Americans today are angry at their government, and rightfully so.

   No matter how you dress it up, no matter whether you’re a left-wing, bleeding-heart liberal or a staunch right-wing conservative, I think we all understand that the social contract has been violated beyond recognition. That’s one of the big reasons so many of us are planning to move overseas.
   
   

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   Finance Your Life Overseas

   Turn Your Pictures Into Cash
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   I recognize that my viewpoint is out of the mainstream. Please share your thoughts on the role of financial investments in financing your international move. Just click the Comment link below to weigh in.

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