One of the interesting challenges of relocation and striving to work as a professional services provider is identifying opportunities that are suitable depending on location. In my last residence in Peru, the internet connection and convenient proximity to North America, made it reasonably easy to work with clients based in the United States or operating in the western hemisphere.

With a relocation around the world to Central Asia, it seems that a different approach to teleworking or virtual employment may be required. While many activities – copywriting, online research, content updates and website management – might not require perfect synchronization with a client’s home time zone, it is a reasonable expectation that as a contractor, a client should be able to reach you during their working hours.

An alternative or, more appropriately, an option for supplementing client work is to look at content publishing (e.g., information entrepreneurship) or affiliate marketing through content publishing. Some networks that are prominent and well-respected in this industry include PepperJam Network, Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareASale and Clickbank.

There are numerous sites available that teach linking and basic site development techniques to aspiring affiliate publishers and marketers. As part of the several themes on this site, future blog posts will include comments on different networks, what it takes to become an affiliate publisher, and comments about tools people can use if you are looking to develop your skills in this area.

A post on Boagworld caught my attention when it highlighted the question of working for free. This is a real question for freelancers and independent professionals to think about before they go too far down the road of developing their business.

The Boagworld posting points out a few of the reasons you might want to think about working for free:

• Good publicity – I agree with the idea that all of the work that goes into a reasonably decent project cannot be balanced out by some modest publicity. The example in the posting is the redesign of a website. This is no small task! While it certainly would be nice to be associated with a well-designed site, there is definitely something to be said for placing a value (however minimal) on professional work. Getting your name up in lights is nice, but it doesn’t make it easier to pay the bills.
• Building a portfolio – having a portfolio is definitely important if web design or web development is your professional focus. However, it would be tough to gauge the value of “free” work since neither you nor the person who received the free service had agreed on what it should have been worth.
• Supporting a charity – I definitely like the idea that is mentioned in the post about charging for a service and then donating the income to a charity. One of the risks, in my opinion, of working for “free” for a charitable cause, is that it becomes difficult to define “success” in a project. Since there are no limits placed on the project through a monetary budget, it is difficult to reasonably evaluate the good that is being done for the charity. Also, the charitable organization would likely benefit from knowing what it costs to, for example, set up a website and maintain it so that future maintenance and development is not neglected or put off because of the previous experience of getting something for “free.”

Getting a good price for a service is always a welcome thing. However, there is most definitely truth to the idea that you value what you pay for. When it comes to web development services, it helps both the client and the service provider to feel as though they are investing in a contract for services rather than wonder how much the “free” option is really delivering.

It was an unfortunate and, quite frankly, sad event to see the closure of the University of Alaska Anchorage’s American Russian Center (ARC) on January 5,2009. The local news station had an informative report on the event. What makes the closure notable is the loss of an historically significant and useful set of institutional connections with academic and commercial groups in the Russian Far East.

To be fair, I am not currently in Anchorage but I am familiar with the length of the program and its evolution since 1993. Having served as a Branch Coordinator for ARC in Yakutsk and Magadan (1995-1998), I can confidently state that the diversity of activities and depth of connections are not something that will be easily replaced. The opportunity to engage with Russia has been elusive and the evolving political situation does not suggest that times will be easier in the future. However, it is unquestionably important that the USA maintain and expand its connections with one of the most powerful countries in Asia and, let’s be honest, the world. As a trading partner for services, products and energy supplies, Russia is increasingly significant and requires the attention of diplomats and businesses.

It also seems appropriate for the future development of Alaska to seek greater ties that offer opportunities outside of natural resource extraction or tourism. While both have a legitimate role in Alaska’s economy, it seems logical to look for other areas of cooperation and collaboration that build upon the economic and geographic similarities shared by Alaska and the Russian Far East. I hope that other institutions and organizations recognize the need to stay connected with Russia both politically and economically. The American Russian Center will be missed.

Technorati Tags: Alaska, ARC, American Russian Center, Russia

The analysis offered in the slide presentation from Mary Meeker is a compelling assessment of the current economic outlook. The potential for growth in the mobile internet underscores the importance of developing good content and services if you expect to survive the recession.

Since establishing a viable business is of interest to me and to others, such as expats and spouses of people with overseas jobs, I thought the content below might be useful. Some of the information could be regarded as “USA-specific” but other resources can assist with the practical aspects of starting a business.

Top 12 Resources for Start-Ups:

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Top 12 Resources for Start-Ups

Every now and then I get asked to provide a list of resources to help small business owners get started and growing. Here are some of my favorite recommendations.

• SBDC – Counselors trained to help you find the local and national resources you may need – located in most metropolitan areas – Find an SBDC chapter
• SCORE – Service Corps of Retired Executives Find a SCORE chapter – Retired business owners volunteer and share wisdom.
• StartUpNation – Resources to help you start your business and growing community of folks interested in starting.
• SBA – Small Business Planner
• IRS – Starting a business checklist
• Business Know-How – Tips on starting a business
• Microsoft – Small Business Resource Center
• Entrepreneur.com – Guide to starting a business
• Inc.com – Guide to starting a business
• Business Owner’s Toolkit – Guide to starting a business
• AllBusiness.com – Tips for staring a business
• BPlans – Business plan help and advice

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Technorati Tags: Entrepreneur

The recent post at Business Blog Summit – Starting a business blog: what does your next web site need to do? – highlights a topic that small business owners should consider as they look at launching or re-launching a business website. The variety of functionality that most businesses seem to want are, in fact, found in blogging tools. The trick is explaining this functionality in terms that business owners can both appreciate and apply to their marketing and e-commerce needs.

It is tempting to go into great detail about the amazing features of systems such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal that enable the sharing of website content in various formats. However, I think the more relevant conversation is looking at how these tools can offer a means to put content on the internet and facilitate its update on a regular basis. Small business owners are busy enough without having to view their website as yet another “ball” that they have to keep in the air while running their business.

While thinking about this post I was doing a bit of research via Bloglines and Technorati but I wasn’t able to find any relevant posts to freelancers working on the international market. I tried a variety of keywords such as “international,” “freelancer,” “freelance consultant +international,” and “Foreign Service freelance” and some other related iterations. However, none of them seemed to yield any relevant results. (ASIDE: I did manage to find some experts in construction and management consulting who happen to have the word “international” in their firms’ names.)

The point, I suppose, is that there doesn’t appear to be a well-indexed list of freelancers who are working in an international setting for content development and web design/development. In some ways I suppose this is due to the relative difficulty of moving overseas without some sort of job offer or incentive. Visas are rather tricky to obtain without demonstrating that you will have gainful employment in a foreign country.

Another option is that the people who are living an international lifestyle and might be inclined to become freelancers are not very well-represented on the internet.

After a brief search on Elance.com, Freelancewriting.com, JournalismJobs.com, and AssociatedContent.com there was a small selection of jobs emphasizing international themes. The majority seemed to talk about jobs writing for the Spanish-speaking market. Also, there were some jobs seeking writers with skills for translation and web content development for languages such as German, French, Russian and even Arabic. Based upon this very preliminary research, it seems that there is a market for writers and content managers with international living experience and language skills. This doesn’t even begin to look at what the market might be for people with international development experience. (This is a subject worthy of a separate blog post since there are numerous websites on this topic.)

The bottom line is that while there may be people out there working as international freelance consultants or content developers they don’t seem to have their own marketing efforts in place. As I mentioned in the past, it seems odd that there might be writers out there who don’t take the time to set up and maintain their own websites. I also think it is doubly important for international freelancers to have more aggressive self-promotion tools. The reason for this is that they might have uniquely valuable knowledge to specific international markets and they, quite possibly, will be traveling more frequently than U.S.-based freelancers.

Some useful ideas to consider if you are thinking about international freelance consulting:

• Be sure to have a language specialization. Speak, read and write the local language. It wouldn’t hurt to learn about the local culture as well.
• Learn what is valuable to companies or individuals who might be looking for your services. How can you as a locally-based freelancer help a company that does business internationally? Is it your skills? Is it your experience? Can you offer a cost savings since you live in the international location that the company is interested in?
• Set up some sort of internet presence to advertise your availability – even if you are looking for part-time work. Because if no one knows you are out there, how can they find you? Think about using an inexpensive, but professional, approach such as a hosted blog or your own domain with a few professionally designed pages that will be readily visible to search engines.
• Network in the real world and online to share experiences and build friendships. If you are living an international lifestyle and expect to be relocating overseas you can never have too many friends.

I was recently contacted by a family friend and asked to comment on a layout and draft content design for his blog. This was a nice compliment since I am still working on getting my blog designed and (hopefully) read by at least a few people. It was pretty educational to try and provide recommendations on how my friend could plan content, try and build links with other blogs, and even come up with the right name for his blog.

One big question was how much he should emphasize messages of self-promotion on his site while trying to balance it with offering some conversation and free services. My suggestion was that he consider putting the services that visitors could benefit from as the core part of the blog and then build in self-promotion as a normal part of engaging with visitors via comments and regular blog entries. The best part of the blog, in my opinion, is that it is about writing and targeted at writers. With this kind of focus it shouldn’t be too hard to keep the entries fresh and really build a regular set of visitors.

In trying to figure out what it is that writers write about online I came across such sites as Keep Writing, Writers Online and several other freelance writer-related domains that were simply parked and had no content. It seems like there is a proliferation of well-intended writers who have gone out and purchased domains but then have failed to follow through with the tricky part of actually writing content. It seems a bit ironic that writers, or their proxies, are able to imagine having a website but then fail to actually make it happen. To be fair, I went on to blogger.com and did some searching and came across such blogs as Freelance Content Writing, Content Done Better and Writer’s Weekly. These seem to have a bit more ‘on the ball’ than other sites I have come across.

The bottom line is that there is plenty of room in the blogosphere for some more well-written and intelligently tagged blogs and sites about writing. I think my friend’s blog will be a welcome addition to the online community and as soon as he gets it up and running I will be one of the first to put his feed on my blogroll.