Welcome to readers from Pinoycentric who featured this story on their blog! I hope you find my blog interesting and entertaining!
I recently found an interesting article in the Startup Journal, which is The Wall Street Journal’s Center for Entrepreneurs. They have an interesting website, and one particular article caught my eye. The article is entitles “Expat Entrepreneurs Indulge in a Wanderlust.”
The article focuses on how many people in the USA these days are actually moving abroad and supporting themselves through Entrepreneurial enterprises that they start in their new home country. I can certainly identify with the thrust of the article, as in many ways it perfectly describes my life here for the past 7 years. It seems that my lifestyle is becoming a growing trend, as more and more people decide to follow the same adventure that I set out on 7+ years ago.
Mark Abouzeid always dreamed of retiring in Italy, where he’d lived as a child before growing up in America and becoming an investment banker. In 1994, Mr. Abouzeid quit banking, started a dot-com venture and, a year after that, moved his wife and two children from Florida to Italy. By 1991, he was living in a century-old villa in a medieval Tuscan town, consulting to other dot-coms, trading in real estate and making olive oil from his own trees.
For Americans attracted by the promise of living in another culture — or simply bored with life in the U.S. — overseas entrepreneurship can allow them to earn a living in another country while avoiding work-visa rules that make regular employment difficult.
Many succeed, to some degree at least. According to the Internal Revenue Service, in 2004 more than 15,600 individual tax returns reported foreign-earned business or professional income.
Most expatriate entrepreneurs fly under the radar, running home-based businesses that escape official notice.
“It’s the ultimate daydream,” says Robin Pascoe, a North Vancouver, British Columbia, author and publisher of books about expatriates. “Pick a country you want to live in and find something to do that will support a lifestyle.”
Now, 15,600 tax returns reporting foreign earned income is a very small number, no doubt. However, note that the piece of the article that I quoted also says that “most expatriate entrepreneurs fly under the radar,” it would be likely that if they are flying under the radar, a lot are also not reporting their income. It’s just logical.
The article goes on to say that most people who follow this path get into service businesses such as resorts and inns, and English tutoring. However, internet retailing is becoming more of an option. Funny that we have talked about each of these endeavors here on this blog in the past. Remember talking about teaching English to the many Koreans who come here to learn English? There are also tons of expats who have resorts, inns and such, although I find that most of them are unsuccessful in the long run. In my personal view, the internet retailing is the most lucrative of the bunch. I do feel that they have missed a major new source of income for expats, though, and that is blogging. Professional Blogging is coming on strong and offering many possibilities to earn a bit of an income, all the way up to earning huge amounts of money, if you choose to spend the necessary time doing it. I believe that the Wall Street Journal people overlooked this, and in the future it will be the most lucrative way that expats will earn a living.
Anyway, give the article a read if you have a chance. It offers some interesting tidbits on the life that we are either living or dreaming of!
Hi Bob,
I general terms how can you make money out of professional blogging ?
Just curious ..
Scott
Hi Scott – there are number of ways to make money through blogging. The most common is through advertisements that are placed on the blog by sponsors. I have paid ads on a number of my blogs, I also advertise many of my own products and services on my blogs, which makes me money as well.
Hi Bob,
I was interested in your comment about expats who've run inns or such and haven't been successful in the long run. What I noticed during my visit to North Luzon in 2005 was a distinct lack of European and Aussie/NZ backpackers. I believe that there is a huge untapped market there. They are all travelling in SE Asia, they just have to be enticed to hop over to Phil. I have plans to tap into this market in the next few years, but I'd be interested in your comments on why previous ventures may have been unsuccessful. Also, do you get many young European and Aussie/NZ tourists down in Davao ?
Hi Laurence – you are correct, and it is a point I never thought of. Young people from Europe and other places backpack all over SE Asia – especially in Thailand, it seems. We don't see them here, at least not many of them. I recall a number of years ago when I lived in GenSan a small group of European backpackers came to town. They had been backpacking Indonesia and hopped a boat to GenSan from there. As I recall, they were the only such backpackers I ever saw here.
I can't say for certain why expats invariably fail at inns and resorts and such. It is just something I have observed, and also something that I have discussed with other expat friends. It's even sort of a standing joke among us, a new guy will move here and we'll ask each other "think he'll open a resort?" and kind of laugh it off. A lot of expats open bars too, and I think the biggest problem there is that the expat owner tends to drink up all of his inventory!
Bob, I think the problem may be the lack of info on the web. I tried to plan a trip up around Banaue and Sagada but it was impossible to find anywhere to stay via the internet. All you can really go on is the guidebooks (and they're out of date as soon as they hit the bookshelves). Perhaps I should start a business building websites for guesthouses!
Hi Laurence – believe it or not, even now in 2007, a lot of local businessmen just don't believe that the Internet is important for their business. For people who have Inns and other travel related businesses, nothing could be further from the truth! The Internet is their most important key to letting their potential customers know about them, but few of them have a website or even an e-mail address. For some local hotels that I try to help promote on the web, they are even downright hostile toward getting their name known on the web. It baffles me.
Hi Bob, and Laurence, Fuuny I came here while searching for something else .. and once again ran square into the LiP blog. Your SEO mojo is working 😉
Laurance, you have good idea there but a sBob has pointed out I don't think it is going to be viable any time soon. =Eeven as a full-time resident my Filipino wife and I are stymie din traveling or even researching products to buy … it is not a problem of web design, there are many talented designers here … it is aproblem of businesses not only ignoring the 'net but actively avoiding having a web presence. How to break this log jam? Your guess is as good as mine, it's a fact that can't be ignored, though.
And Scott, I can assure you there is money to be made from blogging. Bob gave you the basics, search for "pro blogging" or related subjects … it's a fascinating world and in terms for ROI virtually astounding … virtually no investment at all required to get started …just the desire to share.