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In my previous article Part 1 I gave a little bit of background explaining why I was so open to living a life as an expatriate. Believe me, an expatriate lifestyle is not for everyone. While there are many attractions if you are of the right mindset as with most things in life there are considerable drawbacks as well. I’ll try to made you aware of some of the advantages and disadvantages as we move along.

The latest chapter in my expatriate life came about due to a medical crisis (not my own) and a few years later a financial crisis (altogether mine).

After living overseas for over ten years I returned to the States for a visit at my Mothers home. Not long afterwards my stepfather had a stroke and my mother needed some assistance. Thus a planned visit of a few weeks extended into two years.

I had retired from my forex trading position in Taipei and Hong Kong prior to returning to the States. While at the time I felt I was at the top of my games as a trader I was physically exhausted. In Asia I was trading the North American and European markets and this meant working all night and trying to sleep during the day. Several years of this and the pressure of constant market movement had taken their toll. Forex is tough for an old guy.

After being back in the States for awhile I wanted to get back to work. But what to do? I was in my mid fifties and had worked overseas for so long I was out of the loop in the States. This is one of the disadvantages of being an expatriate. Unless you pay a lot of attention to your contacts back home they will be difficult to connect with should you ever return to your country of origin. You will also probably find that your interests are no longer the same since your lives have taken such different paths.

This was back in 1997. I had developed an Interest in the Internet while living in Taipei. One of my friends there, a very interesting half Frenchman, half Italian man , who has lived for many years in The Philippines and Taiwan, was one of the first operators in the world to sell computers and computer related goods in a major way over the Internet. In the early days he did exceedingly well, buying computers cheaply from Taiwanese manufacturers and then reselling them over the Net to a world market.

He told me as the Internet was taking off that it would be a big deal and that I should get involved in some way. So I decided that Internet business was the way to go, bought a computer and went to work. Since I knew that my Taipei friend had done so well with computers I naturally thought that might be a good place to start. So I searched the net for companies offering computers for sale using an affiliate distributor sales force.

It didn’t take too long to find one that looked great. So I launched my first Internet venture as a computer marketer. I soon found that the real money was in building a large sales organization so I began to do just that.

In 1997 and 1998 it was fairly easy to get top search engine listings. I soon discovered that with Infoseek I could build a simple page and if I covered all of the Infoseek bases it would be indexed within a few minutes to an hour or so.

This was fantastic as I could build a page and if it didn’t immediately rank within the top ten I could tweak it a bit and within another hour or so see how it ranked. It didn’t take long before I had an army of 24/7 sales pages that were selling computers like crazy and attracting thousands of down line distributors into my marketing organization.

I couldn’t believe how much money I was making. Within four months are so I had “made” over $100,000. There was only one problem. The company that looked so good on the Internet (what a website they had) was only able to deliver a handful of poorly build computers to the customers and distributors. For all of my hard work I was paid zero, nada, zap.

Welcome to the world of Internet business schemes and of bitter disappointments.

One thing I did learn from this eye opening and purse draining experience was that there was a big market for computers on the Internet. So I took more care to search for another company offering computers through multi level marketing. Bingo. Within a week I was a distributor for Hand Technologies of Austin, Texas.

Hand really did look like the real deal. It had been founded by two former top executives of Dell Computer. It had several ex Dell Computer employees on board. Perhaps more importantly Hand had attracted large sums of venture capital and looked all set to ride the Internet Dot.Com boom of the late 90’s to fame and fortune. I thought that this time I surely was on my way.
While my previous venture with computers came to a fast sad end the contacts I had made there proved to be invaluable in building a large Hand marketing organization in no time at all. My downline distributors in the failed company realized that computers were hot and loved what thay saw in Hand. Onward and upward was the cry of the day.
Off the back of my failed venture I made Director with Hand within two months. This stunned the Hand home office. No one had ever come close to doing that before. As Director I was getting a handsome monthly override check from my organization. Most of my income was passive income. Ahhhhhhhhh, you have to love the Internet.

As the medical crisis at home was over with my new found income stream I decided to move back to Honolulu. Honolulu is a great place if you have money. Thank you Internet.

About two years after moving into a luxury penthouse apartment on the 36th floor of a Waikiki condominium building the unthinkable happened. Hand even with it’s impeccable pedigrees became just another Dot.Com busted company. I woke up one day to a notice on the website that said that the business had closed. For good.

This was a financial crisis of the first magnitude. Having foolishly thought that I had locked in a nice mostly passive income forever I found I had an overnight reduction in income of about 80%. Fortunately, I had developed a few other income streams in addition to Hand Technologies but they were small in comparison.

What to do? Having been an expat for quite a number of years I immediately thought of relocating overseas. I certainly couldn’t afford the good life in Honolulu with my remaining income.

Finally I’m getting to the advantages of the Internet part. About time. eh?

Since my business was Internet based I realized that I could carry on from just about anywhere where decent Internet facilities were available. But where? Hong Kong and Taiwan are expensive cities to live in. I couldn’t afford to set up in those countries. With my reduced income I needed to find a place that offered real value.

I decided on Thailand.

While living in Hong Kong and Taipei I had vacationed in Thailand a number of times and had always had a great time. I liked the food, the fact that Thailand has good inexpensive accommodations, the people are generally very friendly and helpful. English is widely spoken. There are fantastic things to do and see. The infrastructure is good and getting better all of the time. And compared to most places Thailand is still cheap.

In terms of buying power I could immediately regain most of my lost income by moving to Thailand. It was a good decision as I shall reveal in Part Three. I shall also chat about the things that you will likely need to do if you decide to become adventurous and set off to live overseas.

Visit again soon. I’ll carry on I promise. The link below will soon be live.
My Expatriate Life and the Internet - Part Three

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