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Hi guys,

I’ve been using Codeigniter for some of my freelance websites here in the US, but now me and my wife are thinking of working abroad… at least temporarily.  I don’t really have any contacts in other countries, and I’m assuming that most jobs require the employer to sponsor you. My wife and I are both 25 yrs old and have completed college, so I guess that takes my chances away from most kind of student work abroad programs.

Does anyone have any tips on this?  I don’t really want to teach English in another country (which seems to be the simplest choice in my situation) and I was hoping to do some web coding and codeigniter stuff while still being able to experience a new country.

I’ve been looking around at sites like bunac.com and it seems that Australia and New Zealand seem lax on their work visas…  but we’re pretty much open to anything. 😊

Thanks,
Jericho

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Does anyone have any tips on this? 
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Maybe get some tips here

Thanks for the info… but I guess I was looking more for the getting the work visa stuff.

Have a look at bunac.org You can get 1 year work visas to work in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand right up until you’re 30yo.

EDIT: Sorry about that. Seems you’ve already discovered bunac. So with that as a choice I’m not sure what other questions remain to be answered?

I am gearing up to work abroad as well.  I am not not going to bother with a work visa.  Because I work remotely I don’t need to work locally.  I don’t know what the laws are.  Working in a country without a work visa is probably illegal but I don’t see how anyone would catch me.  And anyways, I am a tourist and still paying taxes in the U.S.

Here are my tips…

—If you need to rely on your web work to eat while abroad then you should probably wait until you have a steady stream of work.  You might want to switch to freelance work full time and build up your business before you leave.  If you can’t live off it in the U.S. then you shouldn’t assume you can live off it anywhere else.

—Without a work visa, most people do visa runs.  That is, you enter the country a get a tourist visa.  The duration of the visa depends on the country but often you can get one for 3 - 6 months.  Before the visa expires you leave the country and then re-enter and this renews your visa.  Rinse and repeat.  Check into the country you want to move to before you go.  You might have better options available if you get a visa taken care of in the U.S. first.

—Another option you can look into is languages classes.  For instance, I have found schools in Taiwan and Thailand which will give you an education visa (good for as long as you are going to school) which offer classes as short as a couple hours per day and as cheap as $100 - $300 USD per month.  Different schools have different prices and schedules.  The perk is you learn the language.  The negative is that you pay for the classes with time and money but you have to weigh that against time and money spent on doing visa runs.

—Make sure you have a good cushion of savings (like six months of expenses and a plane ticket home.) 

—Do all your planning well ahead of time.  Consider that moving regularly will be highly time consuming and juggling this with freelance work will be very tricky.

—Or maybe you can just jump in.  I don’t know your situation.  Maybe you have a trust fund and don’t really have to worry about work.  Maybe you can just travel around out of a backpack for a year.  Some people just go and find work and everything works out.  There are always exceptions to the stories of what you can or cannot do.  I prefer more planning though.

—Check out the Location Independent blog for more tips.

Wow that is a great idea. If you are in a team you could all come together in some exotic place enjoying a beautiful beach view instead of a grey building view. Is there anyone who wants to start a traveling webshop 😉

Wow that is a great idea. If you are in a team you could all come together in some exotic place enjoying a beautiful beach view instead of a grey building view. Is there anyone who wants to start a traveling webshop 😉

I think many web shops are already like that.  Not one of my gigs has been with anyone local.  Not even close.  Several have been from another country.  Several have been working with people from multiple countries in one project.

The way i understand it is that most webshops that have multiple country developers/designers/... they do not meet in person.

Hey guys… thanks for the info.

I have been doing some research and this is what I’ve found so far:

- If you are a college student or recent graduate, you have a handful of countries to choose from that let you to get a Working Holiday Visa (eg Britain)

- If you are not a student, most countries require that you have a job offer (eg Canada) or must be sponsored by the foreign company (most of European companies) in order to get a Work Visa.  The only two exceptions I found are Australia and New Zealand.  You just need to be younger than ~30.

- Bunac.com which is a popular site that helps you get work (/holiday) visa for other countries, only does that… get the visas.  It does not get you automatic work.  The work resources they have access for are mostly restaurant/bar/hotel jobs. If you want to work a office/computer/anything skilled you will need to search for it yourself.

I found out a graphic designer friend used Bunac to get the visa for Australia.  She had a Sydney contact with a potential position there.  She went and didn’t like Sydney, so traveled around to Melbourne and put her resume/portfolio out with a graphic design recruiting agency there.  Didn’t like it there and did the same thing in Brisbane. She like Brisbane and was able to find a job there.  Nothing pre-arranged there, just some luck.

I kind of like the idea of traveling around till i work… and I have decent savings if I remain thrifty. So according to Bunac, I guess only Australia and New Zealand allow this type of Temporary Work Visa without need of a sponsor….

I’m just wondering if there are any other countries like this???

If you find a trick in one country, you are likely to find the same trick in any other country.

Just take a vacation to travel to the country you really want to go to and try to get a job while you are there.  Even better, just work remotely and stick with the tourist visa.  When your visa is up, do a visa run.

And why do you want to get a work visa?  Dude, you are doing this to see the world.  Check into one country for a few months and then move to another country.

Look for expat forums specific to the country you want to check out.  For instance, the Thaivisa site is excellent for info on Thailand.

 
 
I was amused to read about Thaivisa.com being an excellent site for information since I have been living in Bangkok for the past six years and was once a regular Thaivisa forum poster.

Another good site for Bangkok and Thailand is StickmanBangkok. The author is a Kiwi schoolteacher and has been running his site for about 8 years. The site is very popular and has some excellent articles on living, working, accommodation,  visas, etc. Last Sunday he advertised for someone to upgrade his site - bottom of this page

From past experience of trying to find a job locally in a foreign country I have found that local employers, being business men, take the opportunity of employing Expats at less than the local rates with virtually no benefits. This may be acceptable but it is far more lucrative to obtain a contract from outside the country. Unfortunately it may not be so easy.

Another possible source of employment is to register with employment agencies. Managing one was one of the jobs I had in Tehran.

As mentioned before use Google to find expat bulletin boards such as British Expats

I remember being on a UK Government managerial employment course and an unemployed quantity surveyor said that it is harder and more time consuming looking for a job than actually being employed!
 
 

Nice, I would like to check out Bangkok.  I want to live somewhere in SE Asia for a while.  I first thought about Hong Kong but decided cost of living is probably too high and Taiwan might be a less hard core China.  I also thought about Thailand because it seems like it would be cheaper.  Now my uncle is moving to Dumaquete, Philippines and that is probably where I will go at first.  The Philippines is also cheap to live and English is widely spoken there. 

Actually, it doesn’t really matter where I go though.  I will probably end up just going from one place to another a few times a year.

I would stay in India for 10 dollar a day, so it would be sufficient work each day only for a few minutes to survive - and for the rest of the day doing Yoga and stuff like that and laying in the sun :coolsmile:

Meeting with new people and exploring new culture is always fun. Thus, Working abroad must be full of fun.

Kind Regards,
Micheal Burns

The convenient thing about Web based jobs is that you can always get work from the U.S or the U.K through sites like oDesk and elance and still do it from any location…I’m not uop on the work permit area for this kind of job..it can be a gray area in many countries