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.