by William Beaver, editor

Americans who live and work abroad face some interesting problems if they want to make extra money.  Basically you have two options: income earned from activities related to your primary job, or secondly, money earned from a small business you create. Suppose you decide on the second course, starting a small side business. What do you do if you decide to move another country? Can the business be packed up and moved like your household furniture?

    I have lived in Kuwait since 1992, and my work is as busy and hectic. Yet, I have managed to build a successful and profitable side business on the web. When the Iraqis massed on the Kuwaiti border in 1994, it looked as though evacuation may become necessary, and in the years that followed, this possibility never seemed to disappear. What if I had to leave tomorrow? Would I be able to support my family back in America or somewhere else? With the advent of the worldwide web, a solution presented itself. I could build an internet-based business that I could grow at a size and pace that fit my schedule, and more importantly, if and when I moved, I could take my business with me without interruption.

This article will explore what I have learned about such an enterprise, and what others have shared about how they earn extra money abroad.

Diana Ward
Forward Productions -- Web Sites and E-zines... http://forwardproductions.com

When we were in Ukraine before, we had a private Advanced English class in our home, for adults, and enjoyed it immensely. We are planning in the near future to move back to Ukraine, where my husband and I will teach English, and we all will work at our business.

We have a family (myself, my husband, our son and his wife) business on the Internet. We started it two years ago last May, for the express purpose of supporting ourselves wherever we choose to live in the world. We do Web design, Web site hosting, e-publishing services, and teach computer basics.

Several of us also are working at doing some travel and fiction writing, and two of us are artists. The home business actually gives us more free time, as we can apportion the work to whomever is the least busy with outside work. Working together and being self-employed allows us to support ourselves and still have time for the travel and personal pursuits that we all love.

Jeni Eldridge, Funseekers Travel and Cruise
www.Funseekerstravelandcruise.com

I am a third grade teacher and I also run a travel agency from my home. I am an outside travel agent for the largest trainer of outside agents in the world. It does not interfere with my teaching as I do it after school hours and on week-ends. I am hoping to build a big enough clientele that when I retire this is something I can continue to do and also this business has all the travel perks. It can be operated from any country in the world since all you need is a lap top and a mobile phone and you are in business anywhere you go. 

Anthony Maulucci
www.lorenzopress.com

I own and operate a small book publishing company in my spare time. I do the bulk of the work in the summer and continue to promote during the school year whenever I have a free moment. Lorenzo Press was founded in 1995 and has four titles in print. We specialize in fiction and poetry by Italian American authors and plan to publish works by European Italians as well.

Bill and Anne Jordan
www.wwteach.com

I run an internet site that generates income...Yes it is successful makes enough to cover the cost of my ISP, and it does not conflict with teaching duties. It started out of my interest in the web and a self challenge to see if my site could make money. It is very portable, since it is in cyberspace.

Jerry Schenkel
www.thesoftwarepros.com

I have been a full time faculty member at a community college for 16 years. I have successfully run a custom software development business (up to 6 employees) for 17 years. As most of our work is web based, location is fairly independent. It started with one customer in the early eighties and has not stopped since. All we do is give good service at a fair price.

Why a small web-based business might be a good idea for you

Let's make a few assumptions about your situation:

      Maybe you already work overseas, and want to add some extra money to your bank account. Although you're busy, you still find that you have enough time for starting a small business. Or perhaps...

     You are planning to move abroad, or to return overseas, and would like to start the business now while you have some extra time, and then "take the business with you."

     In either case, starting a business is risky, but potentially rewarding. Think for a moment about what kind of business you are looking for:

      a. The business must not be too big, and must fit into your schedule.

     b. You must be able to control the amount of time you spend growing it.

      c. The business will be one that sells either products or services, but in your case, products are better. Why? Because ideally you could sell them while you sleep. With a service such as tutoring, your time and expertise becomes the commodity sold. Your service needs to develop a reputation and if you move, you must start that reputation all over again at your new location.

If you are going to sell products of some kind, then ideally the following conditions are present:

     d. The product costs you only a fraction of the selling price and at times, it will cost you absolutely nothing other than your time, especially if it is some sort of information product that you write.

    e. The product is easy to ship, and easy to keep on hand. Better yet, you have the option of having your product drop shipped for you or even have it available as an automatic "download" to help reduce your headaches and increase your free time. You shouldn't have to worry about renting a warehouse to store inventory, or worry about how difficult it is to package and ship the product.

    f. The product requires little support, is very easy and simple to use, and is self-sufficient. You  don't want to spend hours on the phone or answering a lots of emails with customers explaining how to use the product.

     g. The business should cost very little money to start.

    There are businesses selling products that fit this description and many of them are found on the web. Selling information products for example, allows you to create electronic files (even something as simple as a Word document) based on your expertise and sell them to a global marketplace. Your files are stored on a computer somewhere, so there is no "warehouse" and an automated system can be set up to sell the files while you sleep. These could include things like recipe books, teaching aids or anything else the springs from your own knowledge.

    Another example of selling products that has moved to the web is what used to be called drop-shipping. For example, you could set up a bookstore in affiliation with Amazon.com, based on your love of traveling in France. Your website has articles that you write, maybe a discussion forum and most importantly, a selection of books chosen from Amazon's catalog, specifically related to traveling in France. Your readers and site visitors simply click on a link with a special code that identifies your website as the source, and when they order a book from Amazon, you get paid a commission ranging from 5 - 15%. Amazon ships the book and provides the customer support.

     The small book shop I have set up on overseasdigest.com is a good example of how this works. All my books are related to living and teaching abroad. Because of the statistics provided by Amazon, I know for example that from November 10, 1999 - November 11, 2001, visitors to my website clicked through to my book selections from Amazon 11,935 times.

   Literally hundreds of other companies do similar affiliate and associate programs like this. But in order for their programs to work, you would need a website build around some subject that you find interesting, since it is your passion that will help sell the products, whether they are books or something else.

     You may be thinking (just like I did when I first started), "what could I possibly do or sell on the web?" For me, the answer became fairly simple after I stumbled onto an excellent website and ebook called Make Your Knowledge Sell. This site offers a range of resources that help you work through developing a web-based business on a scale managable by someone like a teacher living abroad. It's based on a simple idea: There's a book in everyone, including you. You know something that other people would pay to know. It can be right under your nose without seeing it. Make your knowledge sell is a proven system that shows you how to find "the infoproduct within," how to create and publish it, and how to market and sell it.

     Just by way of example, I had overseasdigest.com running for three years before I found Make Your Knowledge Sell. After working my way through the material, I developed the ebooks that I now feature on this site. My wife was amazed when I started showing her the checks arriving in the mail from the ecommerce company I was using. Suddenly,  what she had thought of as a hobby site became a way to pay for our vacation, save money for our children's future education, and put money in the bank.

     The best part was the last point. Because we live in Kuwait, I receive the checks from the ecommerce company, and then send them with a deposit ticket back to my bank in the States. I never cash them here, so it's like forced savings. And if I really need to access the cash, I can always use my state-side atm card.

     One further advantage of a web based project is that you can still take a vacation without interrupting your business. Last year, we spent three weeks in Guildford, England. I would simply go to the internet cafe in town every day or two to check my email and make sure orders were being processed. There wasn't even a need to take my laptop with me.

     I should point out that the company that produces Make Your Knowledge Sell has since developed a new concept that would be excellent for people who move around alot.   Called Site Build It, the program is web-based and has all the various elements that a person needs to build a thriving on-line business. The beauty of the concept is that everything you need to build a website, from developing your product to actually building a website, is connected together.

Paying Taxes

Certainly if you have a business overseas, there are tax implications. To find out more, check out our article called US Taxes and Your Small Business Abroad.