By Roadjunky, Posted Oct 01, 2006
Sections: 101 Ways for the Traveler to Work Abroad How-to #1-13 Hospitality Jobs #14-24 Business (ahem) Jobs #25-44 Labor Jobs #45-54 Intelligent Jobs #55-72 Artistic Jobs #73-91 Skilled Jobs #92-101 Underground Jobs Work Visas and Black Work
Build that resume.
Business Opportunities for the Traveler
Webmaster Import/Exports Street Merchant Vodka Jellies at Festivals Food & Drink Middleman E-Bay Dealing Online Poker Stock Trading Cyber Squatting Talent Agent
The internet has been a major blessing for travelers. Not only has it made it possible to find cheap flights and hostels and stay in touch through email, it now also offers the chance to make money anywhere in the world that you can find an internet café. The number of jobs that can be done by telecommunication grows by the day with writers, designers and programmers increasingly relocating and finding work off freelance sites like www.craigslist.com
However, one of the best ways to make a living on the road through the internet is to build up your own website. All you need is to find some niche where you can draw traffic through your writing, photos or business idea. Then you need to buy a catchy domain name (costs around $10) and you can check ideas on www.domainchecker.com – after that you find a server for about $100 a year to host your site and you’re off.
For many the world of building a website seems horribly complex but to build a simple site all you need is a basic knowledge of html (can be learnt in a few hours) and to learn the basics of promoting your site and all you need to know can be found on www.webmasterworld.com – a forum where all the pros get together.
The number of subjects that you could build your website on are enormous and there are countless untapped niches out there. You might choose, for instance, to build the world’s largest free collection of Cambodia photos, or compile a comprehensive list of Central American street slang. If you can make something unique then there’s a place for you on the net.
Then it’s just a matter of installing Google’s Adsense, a program that reads your pages and places ads from its database appropriate to the content. So pages about Rio de Janeiro might attract ads about ‘Brazil flights’ or ‘Carnival tickets’ – each time someone clicks on the ad, the advertiser pays Google and Google pays you. It takes some time to build up but once you have a site then it’s not too hard to get a few hundred bucks a month coming in.
And all you need is to be somewhere with access to an internet café…
Hammocks going for a song in Guatemala? Cool nomadic carpets available in Turkey? Bundles of incense for next to nothing in India? Reckon you could put them on a plane and sell them back home for 5 times their value?
Maybe you can and plenty of travelers stay on the road by being merchants out of a rucksack but be warned it’s not quite as easy as it looks.
Check out the Roadjunky Merchant On The Road Guide for more.
In theory, the commerce in the Western world is tied up with established shops and businesses owning the only right to take the public’s money. In practice, though, it’s just not possible for the authorities to close down every itinerant merchant and you can still make a good living with your mobile stall.
All you need to do is get a good set up – a fold up table, a good pitch and something catchy to sell and you’re away. Sure, the police might close you down, other immigrant merchants might pressure you, but in the meantime you can make a killing. You need to be bold, a confident seller and optimistic enough not to get downhearted on a bad day.
You can even buy merchandise like plastic rings wholesale in major cities and then walk around to the nearest Metro station, set up a couple of cardboard boxes with a cloth on top and you’re open for business. This job is a little edgy but can be great money.
17. Vodka Jellies at Festivals
You won’t believe this but there are huge amounts of money to be made selling hash cakes, guarana energy balls or vodka jellies at major music festivals. Depending on the size of your operation you might need a car to get your produce into the grounds but it can even be done out of a rucksack to start with.
Get yourself a good recipe for any of the above items and try it out before you go – you don’t want to be selling duds. Then, once into the festival, you’ll find thousands and thousands of partiers desperate to get high or drunk at any price.
There are thousands and thousands to be made doing this but remember that it’s not exactly legal, although vodka jellies are less serious an offence than hash cakes. Guarana energy balls are okay though.
Another factor is that it’s not always that safe. Some of the people you try to sell to may be already drunk or out of it and may not leave you alone. There may be competition from drug dealers who see you as invading their pitch and, finally, if you’re walking around with bags of loot then you might become a target for an opportunist thief – stash the proceeds every now and then so that you have lighter pockets.
If you know how to make some kind of special desert, pie or pizza, then there’s always room for walking around an open market, beach or park with a tray of your food for sale. The profits may not be enormous but if you spend the previous evening making enough then you can earn enough to get by.
As long as you keep moving then no one is likely to hassle you and you’ll make a bunch of friends as go. Alternative food and drink to sell could include slices of melon, Irish coffee, chai or lemonade. A good desert which doesn’t even need an oven is cheesecake – who’s going to say no to a homemade slice served with a big smile?
19. Middle Man – Taking Your Cut
When most travelers go somewhere new they usually have no idea of the value of things and probably don’t speak the language or know the culture. If you can do all three and can make good contacts in the place that you choose to live then you have a good chance to make a living as a Middleman (or ‘Middleperson’ but it just hasn’t got the same ring to it).
There are plenty of places on the road where travelers rest up for a while and absorb the destination in depth – Rio de Janeiro, Goa and Bangkok are a few examples but most major cities experience this phenomenon to an extent. If you know how to arrange cheap apartments, tours of the city, translation service, score dope locally and generally solve problems then you have a living on your hands.
The basic trick is to hang around the streets in backpacker areas and get to know new arrivals as quickly as possible. Take them for a drink somewhere (backpackers are so tight that they fall in love with someone who gives them something for free) and then see what you can do for them. Plus your foreign face and accent will make the average traveler trust you more than the locals.
Alternatively you can meet travelers at bus stops and train stations and bring them to a cool, cheap hotel – make sure to arrange your commission from the manager first. You can also take them to carpet/gem/handicraft shops for tea and get commission on anything they end up buying.
Kids who haven’t reached puberty are making a living buying and selling on E-bay these days. It’s the world’s largest marketplace and you can bet there are plenty of idiots out there selling stuff way below its actual value. If you know your books/records/clothes then you can do well just by snapping up bargains and putting them back on sale later on.
You can also contact collectors or specialty shops who might search for a buyer for you.
All it really requires is a pay pal account, a knowledge of the value of stuff (can be quickly learnt by carefully studying the auctions) and a steady address – or, failing that, a long-suffering friend or grandmother who will receive and post the items for you.
Online poker is one of the biggest businesses on the web, just behind porn. Adverts are everywhere these days, touting the idea that ‘you don’t need a poker face to play online’. Which is quite true but what do you need is a grasp of elementary probability and the discipline to play tight according to the odds.
Fortunately for you, most people who log on to play don’t have either of the above. Provided you stick to the tables with small stakes, it’s not too hard to find a bunch of amateurs who will stick to the final round, hoping beyond hope that the ace of diamonds will turn up to complete their straight flush.
To make a living as an online poker player you just need to learn the odds (there’s no harm in having them on a piece of paper beside you as you play), learn the rules of the game and play tight. Just don’t get too excited and head to the tables with the bigger money because there are bound to be other sharks there fleecing the weak – and it could end up being you.
You may only average 5 bucks an hour on the smaller tables but that’s more than enough to be living in some parts of the world if you work 20 hours a week.
Seems like we get emails all the time these days, inviting us to make a million on shares in pineapple farms or condom factories. The stock market used to be a room full of frenetic, squabbling brokers, yelling out prices and developing stomach ulcers. These days though it’s all done by computer and so there’s no reason why you can’t join in.
It’s a gamble though and you can just as easily lose all your savings as double them. But if you put some time into learning how to play the markets cautiously then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to make a modest income.
Of course, you might not want to subscribe to the whole sick capitalist system in the first place but as Woody Guthrie sang:
‘I’m looking for a job with honest pay, oh lord, and I aint gonna be treated this-a-way’.Once upon a time, when the internet began back in the early 90’s, you could buy anykindofnameyoucouldimagine.com for $100. Back then few people could quite imagine what kind of force the internet was going to become and a few now-very-rich people bought up names like computers.com business.com and teensex.com
Now every single 3 letter domain has been bought and the 4 letter names are almost gone as well. The prices for buying a domain have come down to $10 but there’s precious little choice left these days – try out a name on www.domainchecker.com and you’ll see what we mean.
If you can get hold of a cool name that suddenly comes into fashion such as www.thenextbigmovie.com or www.thenewsexyboyband.com then you could have a small fortune on your hands – traffic will pour into the site and you can make $$$ through advertising or you may be able to sell the domain for any amount you care to name.
The important thing to remember is that you mustn’t appear to be cyber-squatting – that could make it look too opportunistic. So you need to put a little time into developing the site – a few written pages with some nice photos should do the trick.
Finding a domain name that will one day be worth money isn’t easy but if you were to find out in advance who the next democratic candidate might be then buying www.presidentoprahwinfrey.com could be worth a fortune one day. Keep surfing that web and maybe you’ll find a new celebrity, movie, book, new product or catchphrase that hasn’t been bought up yet…
Foreigners are actually in demand to work all around the world. English schools in Asia, Hostess Clubs in Japan and film and TV production studios all need travelers to come and work. Most of the jobs name above have a high turnover and sometimes they ‘just can’t get the staff these days..’.
As an agent for any of these businesses you look for people to teach English, girls who want to become hostesses or anyone who might look good in a commercial and take your cut if you can get them a job. The travelers don’t pay you anything, the employers pay you – they won’t rip you off as they need you to bring them more.
You can either search for talent in the street in backpacker ghettos in Asia or else work online, making yourself known in traveler forums and advertising.
