Legitimate "work from home" opportunities while living abroad?

November 12, 2007 8:41 AM

What are some legitimate "work at home" opportunities for someone looking for something to do while in "early/semi" retirement and living abroad?

I know the topic has been discussed here previously, but usually in the context of work at home while living in the US. My question is more along the lines of what opportunities are there for "remote work" or "work at home" while living abroad?

One of my acquaintances has recently moved/retired to South America. The recent dollar crunch means she may have to supplement her pension income. She has some health issues, so working from home is the only realistic choice.

She has a law degree and used to work in the financial sector but has been out of that for a few years now. She has OK (but not great) computer skills and has high-speed Internet at home (typicaly latency back to US is in the 100ms range). Unfortunately, she has some hearing problems, so transcription work may not be an option. On the plus side, she is fluent in multiple languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese and French).

Any suggestions for legitimate work that she can get involved into?

Thanks in advance!

posted by fsmontenegro to Work & Money (6 answers total)

She might want to look at translation work. The major companies (SDL, L10nbridge, WeLocalize) hire freelancers.
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 9:47 AM on November 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Depending on how her hearing is, teaching English remotely may be an option as well. I can't remember the companies' names right now, but there are a few companies doing online English instruction (I think mainly for Korean & Taiwanese students). I looked into that a while ago, and it seems like the pay is around $10/hr, with the catch being an uncertain number of hours/wk.

Maybe worth checking out...
posted by allen8219 at 10:19 AM on November 12, 2007

Does she have any teaching experience? With a law degree, she may be able to teach online for an undergraduate program that requires a basic course in government, business law, or so on. The larger ones hire a fair amount of adjuncts.
posted by ejaned8 at 10:54 AM on November 12, 2007

Phone sex.

There are tons of granny lines.
posted by InnocentBystander at 11:45 AM on November 12, 2007

As you point out, the question has been asked numerous times before.

I think they might be helpful- often working from home in the states correlates with working from home abroad, especially when the majority of the responses deal with the interwebs.

Check out this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

There's more, but I'm tired of typing "this"

I'm pretty sure I saw a similar post two days ago, but can't dredge it up. If your friend is uninterested in the sex operator positions (and the long distance might add up from S. America) what about Amazon Mechanical Turk? You do very simple things and earn small amounts of money. If she's speedy, that might be enough?
posted by arnicae at 3:08 PM on November 12, 2007 [2 favorites]

Consulting. She can make much more per hour than at these other jobs. She probably won't have trouble working without a visa, since it's a business endeavour (IANAL). She could do research, writing, financial planning, all sorts of things, since she has an LLB. I'm in Canada, but I've done consulting for companies in other countries.
posted by acoutu at 4:03 PM on November 12, 2007