The English-Speaking ExPat’s Guide to Making Money Abroad: Can You Write?

In the first part of this series, we’ve been looking at a number of highly viable options that you – the English-speaking ex-pat can apply to not only survive, but even grow and prosper while living in or extensively visiting a foreign country or region. If you’re going to be abroad a year or more, you’re all set to cash in big time in numerous ways. However, if your time abroad is going to be limited to a few weeks or so on foreign soil, don’t despair – you can still get some useful, money-making mileage out of the trip, perhaps even for many months to come.

Can You Write?
Can you write fairly well too? Great. How about writing stories, poetry or short articles about your former home as well as your new one? Articles about your new home would be of interest to newspapers, magazines, websites and other periodicals back home. The “Jerkwater, USA Times” may well be interested in the local holidays, foods, clothing, customs and culture that now surround you. Local newspapers, magazines and periodicals in your new digs will appreciate you as a source of first-hand information about you hometown. What did you eat? What’s the food like? All Americans don’t live off of fast food like the world-renown hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries and apple pie we all know and love.

What foods and snacks do you miss? For me it’s the warm, soft pretzels sprinkled with salt and topped with mustard from Center City Philadelphia. The loaded-with-grease Philly cheese steaks cross my mind too often too. I can’t seem to get a really good knockwurst wrapped with a slice of fried bologna where I live now either. What are yours?

Don’t forget holidays, local festivals and typical celebrations from home either. They’re all fodder for lots of money-making venues. In Pennsylvania Dutch country we celebrated “Faschnahct Day” on Shrove Tuesday every spring. How about where you were from?

Can You Cook?
Not only do people want to know about your previous customs, habits, celebrations and food, but they’d like to taste it too. Don’t worry if you’re not a Pasquale Carpino. How about a small outdoor café in your front yard or breakfast nook in a portion of your living room? What about a portable stand that features a few of your hometown favorite snacks? If I made pretzels here, they’d likely sell like hotcakes since nobody else makes them. Heck, for that matter, almost nobody even knows what they are! Whatever your prime dishes are, I’ll be you could get a few decent recipes off the internet or from family or friends back home. What do you think?

One of my ex-pat co-workers who originally hails from Texas stunned the neighbors when she started to make old-fashioned corn dogs. No one had ever seen (or tasted) anything like them! She now has a flourishing food business from her house selling all manner of hometown-style goodies, sweets and snacks. Oh, and guess what? There’s no competition either, because nobody else knows how to make any of these foods. She’s effectively created and cornered the market.

What are the specialty foods, snacks and goodies where you hail from? Can you re-create local versions of them? If so, you just might have a top-notch money-making scheme on your hands. It’s all the better too if you and your family also like to eat them yourself.

In part three of this multi-part series we’ll look at several additional money-making opportunities you can seek out or create for yourself while living or traveling extensively abroad that have the potential to provide you with income, not only now, but for months or even years into the future.


Larry M. Lynch is an English language teaching and learning expert author and university professor in Cali, Colombia. Now YOU too can live your dreams in paradise, find romance, high adventure and get paid while travelling for free. For more information on how to get your copy of his full multi-media, hypertext-linked pdf ebook, “The English-Speaking Ex-Pat’s Guide to Making Money Abroad” by send an e-mail to lynchlarrym@gmail.com with "Making Money Abroad" in the subject line. Contact the author directly if you need professional, original content for your blog, newsletter, e-zine or website, want more information, have a comment or special request?