The 6 million dollar question is "How can i legitimately stay, work, live successfully in Thailand?"
This has been a subject of contemplation for myself, many other foreign nationals and Teakdoor members who have not met the ripe age of retirement and can draw on their pension/s, this i hasten to add with the current economic climate is no guarantee of solvency in LOS.
So this topic is engineered as a quick reference tool and would be useful to members to have it pinned with constructive opinions and references.
From my my research and some experience i have researched the following legal ways to earn money in Thailand.
1, Teaching English in Thailand is a decent and fair way to make money in Thailand, it does have it’s pitfalls though. Most people who come to Thailand see Teaching English as an easy way to make money and more often than not are not trained to do so. There are many trained teachers who come to Thailand seeking a teaching job, but it’s not for everyone. Most English teachers make around 30,000 baht per month, this is a good wage in Thailand and you can live of that but the hours stress and general unwillingness to learn from the Thai students may have you questioning why you decided to take the job. The perks however are you get 4 months vacation per year while still getting paid, though on a meager teachers salary there’s not much you can do in that period of time. If your trying to make a lot of money in Thailand Teaching English is NOT the way to do it. In order to teach English you’ll need to get a TOEFL certificate and do some training, the market is very competitive and don’t expect pay rises as you gain experience. For Thai people the salary you get will seem high to them already and will be unwilling to pay more, you can make extra money and perhaps more money if you do private tuition or open your own language school.If you don’t already have your TEFL certificate
2, The most common thing I’ve noticed with all the successful eBay sellers in Thailand is that they all test their products and they all have only new items for sale with great photographs.
The thing about eBay is you don’t need a million items though that approach does work it requires a lot of capital. What you want to find are those identical items that can sell 20-100 times a month at a mark up of 4 to 1 but a better ration is more like 8-1. Basically an item you can buy for 300 baht then sell it on eBay for 8 times as much or 2100 baht that’s roughly $69.95 at today’s rate of 30 baht and do that 100 times a month on the one product. Have 10 products like this and you have your eBay empire made.
A ten dollar item like the one you picked up is still just a $10 item it’s your job to make people want to pay the $69.95 amount and the way to do that is to get a professionally designed graphic and photographs of your product and make it look like the amount are asking for. People shop on eBay for bargains sure but they are also shopping for dreams make it seem like your product is the best of it’s kind and come across as a professional. People are always willing to buy quality when you sell something of quality and the markup is great you begin to make more money for doing less work.
3,It helps that the timeshare industry seems to have outgrown an earlier image problem. I didn't have a high impression of the industry; timeshare had a bad reputation. When people hear timeshare, they cringe because they've all been through the 90-minute time pressure sales pitch." But concerted efforts by the industry have cleaned up the image and professionalized timeshare operations. Indeed now the rewards for a sales person can be as high or a low as you desire, it's all about you and your motivation. The resorts also supply work permits.
4,Invest in a farm, not for the faint hearted or novice although there is a wealth of information on here to assist you in your venture be it breeding pigs, shrimps or working a rubber farm.
5, AdSense is a great way to get paid for doing what you love to do: blogging! AdSense allows you to show targeted ads on your blog and earn revenue from your traffic. It also helps your visitors find things they may be interested in, based on the content of your blog posts. Best of all, AdSense is free and you have the option to remove the ads at any time.
The AdSense system shows ads relevant to the content of your blog and you can easily customize the look and feel of the ads to match your blog. If your blog is about shoes, you may show ads for shoe designers or clothing stores. If your blog is about cars, you may see ads for car dealerships or auto shops. Using filters, you can have control over the content of the ads you display by choosing to block categories of ads or even specific advertisers.
With the free suite of powerful Ad Sense reporting tools, you can pull detailed reports that will help you track your revenue and identify opportunities to earn more money.
6, Open a guest house with a restaurant!
Running a guest house is a bit like having a new baby - lots of early mornings and laundry, a seriously diminished social life and the constant need for energy. But if you love caring for people, don't mind having strangers sharing your living space and are always able to give service with a smile, it's all worth it. Your biggest outlay will be on the premises - either buying an existing guest house or adding lots of en-suites to your home. Top earners can hit live comfortably, but the lower rungs are anything from loss-making upwards once the financial pressure of a big mortgage has been chucked in.running a guest house is no easy feat. Expect very early mornings (everything has to be ready for when guests wake up) and say goodbye to weekends and most ventures out (as someone always has to be on-hand should a guest need you).
Day-to-day activities will be repetitive: having to undertake the same tasks you did yesterday, with the knowledge they'll have to be done again tomorrow. Cleaning rooms, making breakfast, doing laundry, repairing broken fixtures, greeting or saying goodbye to guests, and keeping strict accounts are all part of running a guest house.
The personal touch is what draws people to guest houses, and things like learning guests' names and advising them on what to do during their stay are really important.
Above all, your job is to make sure guests enjoy themselves and want to come back again, or at least recommend to others.
7, Another possibility is diving instructor.
There are many variable involved regarding how much you earn including the contract you have, if you are a full time employee, if you earn a salary and commission, or you work just on commission. The most popular is salary and commission, this normally works out well for all concerned.
Although new instructors, by definition do not have much experience they are in demand as:
New instructors will have more enthusiasm than an instructor who has been teaching for a number of years they will "never" get bored of teaching DSDs or OW courses. If and experienced instrutor was to teach a DSD tomorrow they would not have the same enthusiasm that a brand new instructor would.
New instructors are much easier to "mould" into the kind of employee that the Dive Center owner or Course Director wants in their dive center.
Once you pass your IDC and IE and get yourself out there you would stand a very good chance of getting work, obviously this depends on your personality and if your face fits.
On average on Phi Phi rent for a bungalow is about 6,000 - 8,000 THB per month for long term rental of a bungalow and full time instructors earn about 30- 40,000 THB.
If you looked for a 12 month average, and again it does depend on where you are working as Phi Phi Instructors typically earn more than Phuket Instructors but the cost of living is higher, You should be looking at 30,000 to 40,000 THB per month.
High season may be up round 40 to 60,000 THB. Low season maybe 25 to 30,000 depending how low and of course who you are working for and what your contract is.
Good luck in whatever venture you decide and i look forward to more input on the subject.
CCC