If you are an English teacher how about creating a set of material in printed and on a DVD that you can sell in various countries?

Wet Willy's Words

evlPanda said...

Outsource to India.

Land some IT roles, outsource to some Indians taking 90% off the top.
Repeat ad infinitum.

An idea I've seriously tossed around.

Can be done...I've actually got a windsurfer friend here in Singapore who does that very thing. He works for Euro clients, so he's free in the arvo and works in the evening - at home.

Mobydisc said...


You should be able to get around $150 a week return on the right sort of investment. My wife works for a bank and they offer capital guaranteed investment products offering around 12 to 15 per cent return per annum.

Hi, which bank and what sort of investment is that?
Cheers, Christian

come over here wetwilly we go find an island that has cheap land am sure there is and with loads of wind make cabanas and you do adverts from your laptop then they flood the island, price goes up we hold out till it goes 20 fold then we sell..proceeds go to buying a smaller island with same wind and then retire..how's that

JP I don't really want to invest in anything that big or involving such a long-term commitment of time and energy...but I'd be happy to share in the profits if you are feeling generous!

most jobs that allow you some level of freedom so you can go sailing as soon as it gets windy are in IT. As a trade of though you will need to work unusual hours to make up for the time on the water... read: don't expect to head off to the pub on Friday afternoon to get pissed with everyone else.

the main problem though is the current skills shortage which generally means there is more work than people to actually do the work which in turn results in it getting hard and harder to just drop everything at a moments notice.

I met a guy here a few months back, (most Melb-based Vics prob know who I'm talking about), anyway, he worked in a w/surfing shop whilst putting himself through uni studying engineering.....got a job working in 'wind' technology, now travels around the coast working with engineering wind towers.......good hours, and goes to the windiest places in Aus following the coastline!


As Bruce would say........Cleeeeever!

As for my situation, in the last year of completing a Diploma in Building Design, so I can work flexible hours, originally so I can spend more time at home with fam......but hopefully able to drop everything and go sailing if weather permits. Money not a driving force for me, but still have to secure an education for my kids, beyond that, lifestyle is my main priority for my family and self.

Do you have any design skills?

What about Webdesign? Nowadays you don't really need to build websites from scratch, most people want CMS's (programs that allow a "no computer skills" way of updating/maintaining web content) and usually all you have to do is modify a free template you've downloaded off the net somewhere to change the graphics a little to their logos.

I do this all year when I'm in Europe on tour. Spend all day windsurfing and 1-2 hours at night fiddling around with websites.

Funnily enough, I get a lot of business that I turn away because I only want to do it for a "little" bit of fun on the side, but if I wanted full time work in this industry it is certainly there. I think you can justify charging people $500 for a fully modified template website with minimal coding which you could build in 1 week quite easily.

All you would need to do is maybe a 2 month BASIC course in CSS/HTML. You only need the BASICS as you can teach yourself everything else very easily (including PHP code) and since you'll be reverse engineering templates you don't need to know hardcore coding to build websites from scratch. You could almost teach yourself webdesign if you are interested in computers and know a little about coding.

I assume you were talking to me? Cause I don't know any "Mark's" who were talking about webdesign on this thread...but saltwater could've made me blind.

Anyhow, I use a 'decent' laptop, but its not state-of-the-art by today's standards. I only have 1GB RAM and its not even one of the newer duo-processors. For the actual coding of websites you really don't need a decent computer at all, as you are just editing "code", which is just text... Where you need some decent processing/memory power is if/when you want to work with graphics and images.

I use Adobe Photoshop for all graphics as its industry standard and very easy to use. I started off with the pirated version (as everyone seems to) but eventually went halves on a real copy with a mate, although we bought an older version which was cheaper; Photoshop 5.0; as the newer versions cost more than my new slalom board. The only thing I would want more RAM for is when you are editing large images in Photoshop, copying/pasting from the clipboard can be slow. But this is for LARGE images (ie +10MB etc) which most likely you shouldn't be touching for websites...

I use Adobe (used to be Macromedia) Dreamweaver 4.0 for all the coding however you really could do this even in Notepad if you really wanted. Dreamweaver has some shortcuts and makes the text in different colours to help you with the code but once you know what you are doing this isn't necessary.

So, in the beginning you could get away with minimal program costs (ie, cracked version of Photoshop/Dreamweaver or be legit and purchase one of the many other programs out there that can do code editing or image editing) and as your Singaporean friends have said, you shouldn't need to get a new laptop. You won't need any new hardware.

As for jobs; this is an open debate. I went down the common path of doing webdesign freelance. That is, just building a cool website for myself (AUS120.com) and then telling people word of mouth that I can build websites for them. As I was trying NOT to get too much business this worked great. Once you have built a few websites for friends etc you should put a portfolio site together (design.aus120.com) and then when you meet new friends/clients who want work done you can show them your skills.

Right now, I've started working with a friend of mine who has an established database/networking IT business but he can't do webdesign, so he outsources that to me if his clients require it. This is great because I can't generate the amount of business that he can pass my way by myself as I have ZERO advervising budget.

So I guess if you want to take it further you can either: if you have friends in the IT industry, tap in with their work and offer your webdesign skills to outsource theirs; continue as freelance worker and just harass everyone you know to build a new website; search for work on Google (as there is many forums out there where clients can describe their job and webdesigners can put in their tenders allowing the client to pick the best designer to go with).

Wow, that was a long post. Must be because its only blowing 5 knots from the West today.

...and thanks for the info - this is EXACTLY what I wanted to know, and I'll take those useless "get rich from the internet" books back to the library right now!

When I've got a good site up I'll let you see and get your expert opinion. I'm buying my first laptop next week - all I use is a crappy pc at work and I only have odd moments to use it, so it's no good for anything like this.

Can't wait to get into this $h!t!!!!

Thanks again! If you ever see me, remind me that I owe you a beer!