[DaveR]

As far as visas are concerned:

- Spain: there is a visa for self-employed people. You'll need to show proof of non-Spanish income of about 3000 Euros per month.
You may also be eligible for a retiree visa. I don't think there is an age limit -you just have to show non-Spanish income.

- Ukraine: You'll need to set up a company and appoint yourself as a director. The following man can assist you: http://www.bbcu.com.ua/centre.html

- I would not recommend Russia unless you're planning to study or can find a job paying more than two million Roubles per year. For residency you'll need to pass a language test.
Some are using 3-year visas, but it's very easy to be denied entry for minor infractions when staying in Russia that way. Also, there are some proposals in Parliament at the moment to change entry procedures and reintroduce time limits, so that loophole is probably not going to stay around for long.

[Beyond Borders]

(05-23-2015 10:10 PM)JJH Wrote:  

You can also easily get 1 year business visa to Cambodia - just pay few $
With little hassle you can get 1 year business visa to Thailand
You can stay pretty much how long you want in Vietnam, just pay for renewal to an agency

To add to the Cambodia bit, you don't have to leave after the one year either. Just keep giving them money.

I've been here over two years and can't remember the last time I spoke to immigration. I just give my passport to the travel agency and it comes back stamped. They'll even come pick it up for a little extra.

Not everyone can stomach Cambodia, but it couldn't be easier.

[DaveR]

Also, something that came up in one of the gay marriage threads - you could make an arrangement with a Spanish girl or even a fellow forum member. Spain has very liberal naturalisation requirements for spouses.

If you're determined to leave the US permanently, a foreign citizenship would be a better option and opens the possibility of renunciation of your US citizenship.

[gandt]

In terms of starting an online business, what kind of questions do you guys want answered?

[samsamsam]

(06-29-2015 09:22 PM)gandt Wrote:  

In terms of starting an online business, what kind of questions do you guys want answered?

Something easy that makes money. Sorry, I bet that is unrealistic.

[CleanSlate]

(06-29-2015 09:22 PM)gandt Wrote:  

In terms of starting an online business, what kind of questions do you guys want answered?

The mechanics of it.

How did you bring an idea to market, from inception to the very first sale?
How you market yourself?
Did you build lists of people to call or email?
What kind of online presence you have
How you scaled your business
How you manage the technical stuff like taxes, accounting, finances, contracts, and any legal stuff.

[Brodiaga]

^A couple more questions

-How many things/ideas have you tried before something worked out?
-Are you going to a new business in the future or just continue doing what you are doing?
-The biggest challenges, what would you have done differently?

[Global Entry]

I'm not going to provide a treatise on this, as I've covered it elsewhere on the Forum. I was a tax attorney before I switched to entertainment and technology. I practiced for ten years, and did a lot of international tax work for multinationals. I didn't do work for individuals, but I have a good sense of the basic rules.

If you spend at least 330 days outside the USA each year, you'll be exempt under the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. I believe the exemption is 99,200 for 2015 (it changes each year).

You have to make sure you don't exceed your time in country, but if you don't you can make that much without paying income taxes to the US fed. As you wouldn't be resident in any US state, you shouldn't owe state income tax either (but that may change if you have real or personal property in some states that assess on that basis - I believe Florida does).

People should really not provide advice on complicated matters based on a single conversation with someone, even an expert. This isn't making milkshakes.

[gandt]

(06-30-2015 11:43 AM)Global Entry Wrote:  

People should really not provide advice on complicated matters based on a single conversation with someone, even an expert. This isn't making milkshakes.

Appreciate your addition to the topic. I don't think anyone was giving direct advice per se. But I have found reading other people's experiences have helped me sort of figure out the road map to how I might incorporate and move overseas.

People come from different countries with different tax laws which make it quite difficult to navigate this kind of stuff so the more information you can draw from the better in my opinion, regardless if you are an expert or not.

From my experience, even the so called "experts" in this field aren't really experts.

[gandt]

Internet Business Datasheet:

(06-27-2015 01:40 PM)browser Wrote:  

Can we hear more about how you made stable online businesses in 4 months? What industry and sort of work did you get into? Roughly how much are you reeling in as well?

Thank you!

Okay so a bit about my background. I don't have any coding skills, so creating my own revolutionary product was out of the question. However, I did know how to make wordpress websites that had ecommerce functionality. So I could easy set up a website in 4 hours that would allow me to accept payments via paypal.

I learned wordpress in about a day. After about a week of playing around it became VERY easy to make basic wordpress websites. Hop on youtube and there are thousands of tutorials. You can buy pre-made themes from themeforest.net or if you want to really scrape by you could torrent them. Although I wouldn't recommend it as some nulled themes can contain viruses.

Okay, so now that I had the basic website skill covered the next thing I needed to figure out was what I was going to sell.

Without giving away my niche or idea… What I did, was take the SAAS (software as a service) business model and created an offline monthly subscription product. I heavily researched all the software that people use across different industries and determined the best one that I could offer as a monthly service to clients. As an example; the types of softwares could be anything from Auto-Cad to photoshop to social media content management to website copywriting to running online ads as a service.

Okay great, now you have your monthly service you can offer customers. Come up with three tiered packages on your website for the customer to choose from.

I figured out that the initial service I launched wasn’t so great, so I workshopped the service to come up with something that would be more valuable to the customer. Essentially, I learned that the more work and stress you can take off of the customer the more they will pay you.

In terms of money, the first two months I started I was probably only making $1,000 - $2,000. Once I refined my product offering and made it monthly subscription based it became easier and easier to make more money as the months went on given the accumulation of recurring customers. Within 3 months I was up to $10k. By the 4th I had a shitload of customer referrals and business went up to $20k. Right now I have been fluctuating between $25-$30k in monthly revenue. Expenses are around $1k-$2k/month. Although that will be increasing as I am outsourcing more and more things. But that’s the beauty of doing business online - low overhead, high return.

(06-29-2015 09:55 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  

Something easy that makes money. Sorry, I bet that is unrealistic.

Not as unrealistic as you might think. If you try and do every part of any business yourself you will always have a hard time running a business. But if you take the steps to outsource parts of your business (i.e. marketing, customer service, etc...) then your "something easy" becomes very realistic. But once you find something that works, if you are a motivated individual you will just want to keep finding more things that work which will make you work harder. So for people that really want to succeed and continue to build on their success, I think the 4 hour work week is a little bit of a fallacy.

(06-29-2015 10:25 PM)CleanSlate Wrote:  

How did you bring an idea to market, from inception to the very first sale?

Kind of touched on that process above.

(06-29-2015 10:25 PM)CleanSlate Wrote:  

How you market yourself?

Ah, now this is the most important part. Most people create a website or service but then have no idea how to promote themselves. It can be a little tricky if you have a small budget too. But there are various cost effective ways to drive traffic. This was the part that probably took me 5-6 months behind the scenes to learn. But once you learn how to effectively drive traffic then you can easily make money.

Long story short, I used various softwares to drive traffic to my sites initially. Now I have created custom marketing softwares that are more advanced and tailored to my needs. Not going to post them publicly but if you wanna send me a PM I can point you in the right direction.

(06-29-2015 10:25 PM)CleanSlate Wrote:  

Did you build lists of people to call or email?

Yes, email lists are so crucial. I never went into phone sales but I have read stories of people who have created million dollar businesses just through phone sales.

(06-29-2015 10:25 PM)CleanSlate Wrote:  

What kind of online presence you have

Wordpress website and a presence on every social media platform.

(06-29-2015 10:25 PM)CleanSlate Wrote:  

How you scaled your business

Outsourcing certain tasks like customer service and some marketing that was consuming a lot of my time.

(06-29-2015 10:25 PM)CleanSlate Wrote:  

How you manage the technical stuff like taxes, accounting, finances, contracts, and any legal stuff.

I have an accountant but I also track my own records in excel as I have a business background. I have a buddy who is a lawyer but haven’t needed any of his services yet.

(06-29-2015 10:29 PM)Brodiaga Wrote:  

^A couple more questions

-How many things/ideas have you tried before something worked out?

I mentioned before I started with one idea and then refined it into a monthly service. So I would say 1.

(06-29-2015 10:29 PM)Brodiaga Wrote:  

-Are you going to a new business in the future or just continue doing what you are doing?

I have actually been investing a shitload of money into building new online businesses. I have three other (more advanced platforms) that should be launching in the next half year). I think the most important part is to build on your initial successes. I have no idea how much longer this current site will be fruitful so I am always eager to diversify.

(06-29-2015 10:29 PM)Brodiaga Wrote:  

-The biggest challenges, what would you have done differently?

As I mentioned before, I had very limited technical knowledge when it comes to web development. As a result I got scammed by this so called “web development” company for all of my savings, which really hurt me. It was a tough lesson but a necessary one. So if I could go back I would have spent more time researching and not rushing into business with the first person to come up with a pitch. I also would have spent more time trying to curate a team of skilled and reliable freelancers. Now I have a great team of front-end and back-end developers and things are going very smoothly.

Another thing I would go back to do more of was browsing internet marketing and entrepreneurship forums on a daily basis. Tons of gold nuggets in these forms but there are also a lot of scams so you need to be careful. If you PM me I can send you links to some forums.

Disclaimer:

This is just my first foray into the online business world. So by no means am I any guru with a proven track record of dozens of successful companies. So take what I write with a grain of salt and ultimately use your own judgement. Hope this info helps/motivates some people.

[Chick Magnet]

^You went from zero to netting $20K in 4 months? That's pretty impressive.

Could you tell us more about your SAAS model? I don't see how some of the things you mentioned (ie copywriting) could be packaged into software.

[Phoenix]

Yeah I'm not sure how you can set up an SaaS when you don't know any software development. Aren't coders expensive?

[gandt]

(06-30-2015 08:47 PM)Chick Magnet Wrote:  

^You went from zero to netting $20K in 4 months? That's pretty impressive.

Could you tell us more about your SAAS model? I don't see how some of the things you mentioned (ie copywriting) could be packaged into software.

Yeah I see what you mean about copywriting not being very scalable. But then again that depends how you structure your copywriting business. If you develop a vast repository of good articles and then charge customers a monthly fee to have access to them, then it's totally a scalable business.

Damn, that's a good idea actually

Not to be rude but I'm not going to divulge specific info about my saas business model. Always available in PM for more detailed questions however.

[gandt]

Seems like this thread is more of a business/entrepreneurship discussion so if the mods want to move it over that's fine.

[Phoenix]

Sure, but how would you say your time has been apportioned between "construction work" (you personally doing marketing, building websites, writing software, customer support etc) and "directing work" (recruiting people, managing them, working with contractors and buying from vendors etc)?

This could be insightful for getting the "time vs capital" balance right. Doing everything yourself can be excessive and wasteful use of time, but delegating everything can be an excessive and wasteful use of capital.

[RawGod]

OP has really cracked it. Zero to hero in four months! Despite knowing so little at the start that he got scammed by one of those shady web dev companies, he created a bunch of custom SAAS tools and SEO'd the shit out of it all. What about a master class program charging a grand or two for the course.

That is, if that kind of chump change would be worth the effort for him. Still, the proceeds could be tracked in Excel, no big deal for someone with a business background.

[ElJefe1]

SEO is your friend.....

[DaveR]

So by SAAS, as I understand: there is a piece of software that a certain niche needs to run its business. It's difficult and/or expensive for small businesses to purchase, install and maintain that software. So you recognised the opportunity to install and maintain it on your servers and let customers use it remotely (via remote desktop, citrix, etc.). The customers pay you a monthly fee for the service. Have I got that right, and how difficult was it to deal with the licensing aspects?

[CleanSlate]

(07-01-2015 09:54 AM)DaveR Wrote:  

So by SAAS, as I understand: there is a piece of software that a certain niche needs to run its business. It's difficult and/or expensive for small businesses to purchase, install and maintain that software. So you recognised the opportunity to install and maintain it on your servers and let customers use it remotely (via remote desktop, citrix, etc.). The customers pay you a monthly fee for the service. Have I got that right, and how difficult was it to deal with the licensing aspects?

That's pretty much it. But after thinking about this some more, I still have more questions than answers.

One of my questions is that if one doesn't code his own software, how does he insert himself as a the middleman between the software maker and the customer who needs the software? In other words, how do you make money by licensing software that is not yours (in terms of intellectual property)?

I mean, if I tried that with Adobe Photoshop, and don't correspond with the maker while just distributing it to users on a subscription basis, I can't imagine all kinds of sticky legal issues I would get myself in.

So I'm still not quite getting it just yet.

[gandt]

(07-01-2015 09:54 AM)DaveR Wrote:  

So by SAAS, as I understand: there is a piece of software that a certain niche needs to run its business. It's difficult and/or expensive for small businesses to purchase, install and maintain that software. So you recognised the opportunity to install and maintain it on your servers and let customers use it remotely (via remote desktop, citrix, etc.). The customers pay you a monthly fee for the service. Have I got that right, and how difficult was it to deal with the licensing aspects?

Precisely. I haven't run into any licensing issues.

[Chick Magnet]

(07-01-2015 12:52 AM)gandt Wrote:  

(06-30-2015 08:47 PM)Chick Magnet Wrote:  

^You went from zero to netting $20K in 4 months? That's pretty impressive.

Could you tell us more about your SAAS model? I don't see how some of the things you mentioned (ie copywriting) could be packaged into software.

Yeah I see what you mean about copywriting not being very scalable. But then again that depends how you structure your copywriting business. If you develop a vast repository of good articles and then charge customers a monthly fee to have access to them, then it's totally a scalable business.

Damn, that's a good idea actually

Not to be rude but I'm not going to divulge specific info about my saas business model. Always available in PM for more detailed questions however.

Sure. I don't expect you to give away your niche or anything. But I'm just a bit confused as to the model.

I assume you're doing something like Aweber or Leadpages.

But that's quite an undertaking. Most SAAS type business have an army of developers and resources a guy starting from scratch wouldn't have.

So I'm just kind of curious as the baby steps you took to get there.

How'd you go about finding your developers? And how did you get traffic, and build your customer base that rapidly?

[worldwidetraveler]

(07-01-2015 10:30 AM)gandt Wrote:  

(07-01-2015 09:54 AM)DaveR Wrote:  

So by SAAS, as I understand: there is a piece of software that a certain niche needs to run its business. It's difficult and/or expensive for small businesses to purchase, install and maintain that software. So you recognised the opportunity to install and maintain it on your servers and let customers use it remotely (via remote desktop, citrix, etc.). The customers pay you a monthly fee for the service. Have I got that right, and how difficult was it to deal with the licensing aspects?

Precisely. I haven't run into any licensing issues.

Most licensing is on a per user basis. The reason for not running into issues is more than likely because they haven't found out what you're doing yet. That can change quite quickly and if you're making good money might lead to lawsuits for damages. You are cutting into their profits by offering this service. I most definitely would go after anyone who tried to sell the programs I spent years and a ton of money to create.

I strongly recommend you not doing this unless you have the "ok" from the company that creates the program.

[CleanSlate]

^ In general, I agree. But maybe that doesn't apply to his specific situation because it's somehow different.

[192]

Got one last month via Siam legal.

As a word of warning the Australian embassy that issued it called me and basically said this company is a sham, however after a chat you sound ok so we'll give it to you this time but don't expect it to work again.

The company Siam use is called Vanguard and is set up specifically for pumping through non immigrant b visas. My thai ex also read through their paperwork and was like wtf is this?

I got the result I wanted but I think this method of obtaining a visa is now looking shady. They will often issue them for 3 rather than 12 months and you don't know until after you've paid.

Additionally the Sydney and Brisbane embassies have stated they rarely issue 12 months now so the visa firms get you to send them to Melbourne or Adelaide further adding to the dodginess.

That said I'm now waiting to board a one way flight to Bangkok.

[Nascimento]

Gandt walks the talk. His work is exemplary.

Thanks for sharing.