Accompanying partners – do they or circumstance influence their career choices?

Recently I was talking about the services that I offer to accompanying partners through Success Abroad Coaching with some friends ‘back home’. I was explaining that finding fulfilling and meaningful work whilst abroad can be quite a challenge for many partners.

Friends turned to look at me in surprise and one said:

“Not working is an issue? I’d love to not have to work, to have some time for myself, to pursue some hobbies, study, take a career break”

Certainly from afar the life of the expatriate partner can seem very appealing. Escaping from ones old life can be exciting and an initial career break is often very attractive. However, for some, the luxury of no work deadlines can soon start to fade after a while.

I know this to be the case from my personal experience. I have lived abroad for over twelve years in total. I remember enjoying my first six months of employment freedom in Madrid. However I soon became desperate to get back to the world of work. Too much time spent alone with my Spanish grammar convinced me that I was not cut out for this rather lonely version of a “life of leisure”.

And it would seem that I am not alone in this respect. According to the Permits Foundation Report in 2008, 89% of expatriate male partners and 73% of expatriate female partners do want to work whilst abroad.

However, only 35% in total reported that they were working in their host location whilst 90% had been working prior to relocating abroad.

This statistic quite honestly shocked me. Yes I want to work, but I wasn’t aware that at least seven out of every ten accompanying partners that I meet are also harbouring a desire for employment.

We Want to Understand

As I started to think about this I realised I wanted to understand this issue in more depth. What are the factors that mean that partners often keep their career aspirations as exactly that – aspirations? What role do practical issues such as work permits and non-recognition of qualifications play? What other factors influence their decision to put careers on hold?

In order to better understand the issue of career choice and the accompanying partner, I (Louise Wiles, Success Abroad Coaching) and Evelyn Simpson (The Smart Expat) have launched a survey designed to uncover the career aspirations and motivations of accompanying partners.

We hope that by understanding better the partners motivations and aspirations and the factors that impact on their career choices, organisations can be encouraged to provide more targeted and therefore effective career assistance for accompanying partners.

The survey will help us to better understand the key factors that most commonly influence the career choices of the accompanying partner. It will also help us to understand what impact not working has on the personal fulfilment and life satisfaction of accompanying partners?

The survey only takes fifteen minutes to complete, is totally anonymous and we would really appreciate your participation and honest feedback. Please go to this link to complete the survey.

If you would like a copy of the summary report which will be available in the Spring of 2012 then please click DONE on the final thank you page and you will be taken to a new page where you can leave your name and email address. You will also be added to our prize draw where we are offering a number of books and coaching packages.

If you are able to forward this article and link on to other accompanying partners we would be very grateful. The greater the number of participants the more reliable and representative the results will be.

Thank you.

Louise Wiles is an expatriate coach and founder of Success Abroad Coaching. She works with potential expatriates as they work through their relocation decisions and then provides ongoing support as they relocate. Her business focuses on helping accompanying partners create fulfilled lives in their new locations.

Louise’s partner in this survey, Evelyn Simpson, is the founder of The Smart Expat. She works with the accompanying partners of expats as they adapt their lives and identities in their new countries and find ways to lead meaningful lives without their familiar work, activities and support systems.

photo by cogdogblog on flickr

1. Best Expat Banks, a list of banks that do well by expats, based on home-country currency
2. Best Expat Jobs in France shows a list of jobs available for English-speaking expats there
3. 10 Friendliest Expats Cities. It’s easy to find lists of the “best” cities for infrastructure, economy and other “hard” measurements, so it’s about time someone came up with a useful measurement like “friendliest.”
4. Five Best Places to Teach English Around the World. This needs no explanation. If you want to develop a portable career as an English teacher, check this out.
5. Top countries for Expat Families. Want to move abroad with your young family? Check this list out. They let you know where child-care costs are low, schools are good, and other issues important to parents of school-age (and under) children.
6. The Best Expat Restaurants in Korea. If you’re in Korea and craving comfort food from the US, this list’s for you!
7. 2011 Best Expat Blogs
8. Top Expat Destinations Throughout the World
9. Expat Retirement: Ten of the Best Places to Spend Your Twillight Years

Do you have a favorite expat Top 10 or “Best of” list you’d like to share? Add it to the Comments!

photo by sam_churchill on flickr

The book is aimed at the expat who works for a company that sends him on an overseas assignment, but there are lessons which expats by choice can learn to become more effective entrepeneurs overseas as well.

The authors point out in the introduction that:

“Even if you want to work for a “national” company, that option is rapidly disappearing. You are part of the global economy, and most probably a multi-cultural working experience, whether that was your career plan or not.”

The authors provide a ten-step plan for becoming more globally aware and better able to work with people of other beliefs, customs and languages. These steps include:

1. Think global
2. Learn to work multiculturally
3. Travel
4. Learn a language
5. Learn how to learn when you’re outside the classroom
6. Go virtual but stay “real”
7. Treat multicultural teamwork as a core skill
8. Build your network
9. Raise your global profile
10. Manage your time when dealing with friends, family and colleagues in different time zones

Each chapter contains real-life examples from global workers’ lives, suggestions and exercises.

In the chapter about learning, the authors point out that in the global workplace, it’s not so much what you know as how you can apply it in varying mileu:

“Conceptual and theoretical learning. . . will becomes less and less relevant. New concepts and new ways of thinking will be needed — but what you learn will need to be applicable to a variety of different job situations. Remember, you are . . . likely to work in a variety of locations, with many different people from a variety of different backgrounds.”

One of the discussions I found most interesting cropped up in the chapter on multicultural teamwork. “What happens when we disagree?” the authors asked.

While disagreement can be a healthy and productive way to weigh the pros and cons of a particular action or strategy, some cultures perceive disagreement as downright disagreeable. How does a Japanese worker tell his boss his idea is lousy, when it’s considered inappropriate to disagree with a boss at all?

Global team leaders must become adept at helping team members work through these and similar shark-infested waters.

On the whole, The Global You presents a strong case for becoming a global worker, and shows you how to transform yourself into one.

If you’re considering an expat assignment for your employer, or if you plan to start a business overseas, I recommend reading it.

I’m Giving Away a Copy of the Book

I was given a copy of the book for review, and as you know, I’ve been getting rid of books in preparation for my own move abroad. Therefore, I’ll give this copy to one of my readers!

Just leave a comment on this post before March 15 telling me how you think the book can help you achieve your expat goals. I’ll choose the person I think most deserving of the freebie, based on the answers submitted. This will be a totally subjective decision on my part.

Just make sure, when you leave your comment, that you provide an email address where I can contact you to get your mailing address!

(If you’re not fortunate enough to get the free copy, you can buy one here.)

So, once again, to win a copy of the book, leave your comment (if you’re reading this in an email, you’ll have to click the link to go to the website to do so). Persuade me that The Global You will help you achieve your expat goals, and you’ll be in contention.

They do it by using the blog to sell something.

As I wrote recently,

There are basically three ways to make money from a blog:

• Sell your own product
• Sell your own service
• Sell someone else’s product or service

If you want to live the untethered expat life through a blog, you’ll most likely start, as I did, by selling someone else’s product or service.

Sell Someone Else’s

You can use a blog to sell a product or a service, or even a combination of the two.

The most common ways to sell someone else’s stuff are:

• Affiliate marketing
• Advertising
• Partnerships

Affiliate Marketing

When a company wants to expand their online marketing without hiring a bunch of new people, they can do it through affiliate marketing.

Basically, they agree to give you a percentage of the sale if you refer someone to their site who makes a purchase. Referrals are tracked through specially encoded links.

If you’ve spent more than five minutes online, you’ve probably come across affiliate links. Amazon.com has an affiliate program. So do office products giant Office Depot and DVD rental company Netflix.

Here’s an example of an affiliate link to a book on Amazon.com. (Disclaimer: It’s a book about affiliate marketing. I haven’t read it, so don’t take this as a recommendation. It’s just an illustration.)

If you click on that link and make a purchase, I’ll earn a small percentage of the sale, only a few pennies. Darren Rowse, owner the the Digital Photography School website, does better as an Amazon.com affiliate because he’s promoting cameras and accessories which cost more than a book does.

Some people make an annual six-figure income as Amazon.com affiliates, but their websites have to attract a huge amount of traffic to do so.

Affiliate links work best when you choose products or services which closely relate to the subject of your blog. That’s why I’m affiliated with expat publishers International Living and the Overseas Retirement Letter.

Generally, you need pretty high numbers of site visitors to make money from affiliate links.

Advertising

Selling ad space on your blog is another way to earn money by promoting someone else’s product. You can join an advertising network, or you can sell ads directly to individual businesses.

Google AdWords is a commonly used network. Here are a couple of examples.

Here’s an example of a couple of ads that were probably sold directly.

Partnerships

Partnerships are unique and individual. They occur when two (or more) people join together to accomplish a common goal. If you want to partner with someone to market his product or service, you’d better have solid, up-to-date online marketing skills before you start.

This is the second post in a very basic series about blogging as a way to fund your expat life. I’m considering adding to this series once a week. If you’d be interested in a regular “WordPress Wednesday” post, please leave a comment below.

If you’ve ever considered blogging to finance your overseas life, there’s a tremendous resource available. Since you can only get it for a few more days, I need to tell you about it now.

I mentioned it when I posted here about supporting yourself overseas with a website or blog, but I just found out they’re closing their doors on October 31, so I wanted to bring it to your attention once more.

A-List Bloggers Club

Some of you may be familiar with Leo Babauta, founder of a very successful blog called Zen Habits.

A while back, Leo teamed up with Mary Jaksch, another successful blogger in the minimalist/zen realm and they created a coaching program they called the A-List Blogger Boot Camp. It was an intensive session to introduce people to the arts and skills needed to start and run a successful blog.

Since then, Leo and Mary have offered several more boot camps, and a few months back they created the A-List Blogging Club.

Membership in the Club gives you

• access to all previous boot camps and materials
• attendance at current boot camps
• a forum where you can talk directly with other bloggers as well as Leo and Mary
• some serious help with improving your blog no matter what stage you’re at in your blogging career

And the price if you join now? A laughable $20 a month. (What’s that — about one Starbucks coffee per week?) If you join now, you get the upcoming boot camp as well, a coaching session that would normally cost $285.

I don’t normally post such blatantly commercial messages here, but this is a super deal and I’d hate to have you miss out just because I’m reluctant to sound like an advertisement.

If you’re blogging now, or if you’ve considered starting a blog, you owe it to yourself to check this out. Doors to the Club will close at midnight, October 31.

Click here now to learn more

You’re going to be seeing some big changes around here in the next few weeks — some of which come directly from what I’ve learned as a member of the A-List Blogging Club. If you haven’t already, please take a moment to complete the poll here to help determine some of those aforementioned changes.

Basing a writing business on a website or blog is an option. But what if you just want to write, without dealing with the mechanics of setting up a website or finding or creating products or services to sell?

Get involved with blogging as a freelance writer! Lots of big blogs need freelancers to produce content, and some of them are even willing to pay reasonable rates. You’ll get paid for your writing without the headaches of marketing and technical stuff.

According to author Paul Cunningham,

“Freelance blogging is a simple, flexible revenue stream that you can use to earn a little extra money on the side, or scale up to a full time living income. It all comes down to how much time you want to put in, and what you want to get out of it.”

Paul Cunningham has done just that. An Australian, Paul developed some blogging gigs to bring in some extra income after having a child.

He’s written an e-book titled How to Become a Successful Freelance Blogger, which I recommend highly if you’re interested in going this route.

The book covers the basics, from information on how money is made from blogs to setting goals, deciding on what rates to charge, finding work and lots more.

One chapter deals with finding work through job boards. He advises caution about using sites that drive prices down by gathering lots of competition, but then includes some of them in his list of suggested sites. I won’t rehash my views on commodifying your talent — you can find them here if you’re interested.

Other than that one caveat, if blogging is in your future, this is a worthwhile book to have.

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.”

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.

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!