Choosing a Niche for Your Portable Career

Minnie Mouse at Animal Kingdom

Which way will lead to a more profitable portable career? Offering to do “everything” in your industry, or offering a service or product that’s very specific? If you’re a writer, will you write everything for everyone? Well, maybe you could, but how would you market your services? How do you stand out from the crowd? [...]

What do Internet Research, Social Media and Dancing Girls have in Common?

Eighth Day of Christmas

Let’s move right along with our Gift Guide for Expats, your guide to Christmas for the expats in your life — how to find gifts that won’t take up room in a suitcase or shipping container. On the Eighth Day of Christmas On the Eighth Day of Christmas, my expat gave to me. . . [...]

Expat Skill Sets, Movies and Ho, Ho, Ho

On the sixth day of Christmas

Christmas gift buying for expats — it’s a minefield. That’s why we’re offering our 12 Days of Christmas guide to presents that will help the expats you know with their untethered lives and portable careers, and won’t take up room in a suitcase or container. Almost halfway through. . . here we are on Day [...]

Black Friday Shopping List for Untethered Expats

Black Friday at Target

If you’re about to move abroad, you certainly don’t want to collect more doodads, tchotchkes, knicknacks and other stuff you’ll have to store or move. So what do you give a soon-to-be expat for Christmas? I thought we could join the rest of America in some Black Friday shopping, but for things that will help [...]

So You Want to be a Travel Writer or Photographer?

photographer_anon

Somehow travel writing, photography and the untethered expat life just seem to naturally flow together. What career tools are more portable, after all, than a laptop and a camera? If you can write or photograph, you have the means to support your overseas life. If you can do both, you can carve out a big [...]

Portable Careers for Expats: Stock Photographer

photographer

Photography is a wonderfully portable career. But even if your shots aren’t up to National Geographic or haute couture standards, you can make a nice living creating and selling stock photography. What is “stock?” It’s a picture that’s licensed for specific use by advertisers, journalists, travel writers and others. Newspapers, magazines and other media love [...]

Support Yourself Overseas as a Travel Photographer: 6 Resources to Get You Started

statue of photographer

Photography meets our definition of a location-independent career. You can do it anywhere in the world, and in this digital age you can sell your photos from anywhere you find an internet connection. But what if — like me — you’re not an experienced photographer? How do you graduate from taking point-and-click snapshots to shooting [...]

Free E-book: Untether Yourself

My new e-book Untether Yourself: 5 Portable Careers to Support You Overseas is now available as a free download. 80% of you have told me you’ll need to earn a living overseas, and none of you expect to do it in a traditional job. So what’s an expat to do? Lots of you turn to [...]

Live to Photograph? Or Photograph to Live?

make a living with photography

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 [...]