Making Money Abroad – Restaurant

Making Money Abroad – Restaurant

by Richlion

Opening a restaurant seems to be a popular business that a lot of foreigners do when they live in another country. It should be no surprise, as foreigners in America have been doing this for over a century. You have Chinese, Italian, Mexican and about 50 other nationalities. So, why not an American steak house or an English pub in South America?

One thing you can be sure of is, that you will get a lot of your fellow ex-pats as customers. That is, of course, you have good service and food as they are used to back home.

To open a restaurant requires a lot of money and a lot of work, but if you already have a business like this now, then it will not be much different abroad.

As you know, most people who go into business fail within the first year. Just because you are abroad and you have the first English restaurant in a town in a country of your choice does not mean that you'll be a success.

Location and knowing a lot of people will not guarantee success, either. You have to have something unique about your business. I will give you just one example to show what I mean.
Say you want to open a restaurant and you don't want to compete with them, you'll have to have what is called 'a unique selling position'. What is it that you can have that will make you stand out from the rest?

If it's a restaurant, why not make it the best restaurant that specializes in breakfasts. First, you would probably be the only one that has breakfast 24/7. then you will have all kinds of breakfast, from the Continental to the English to the Southern style (American) breakfast.

You would give large portions, have friendly and good service and a nice atmosphere. When you specialize in one area and you are the best in it, soon your name will get around and the local people will come, too.

It will still be a lot of work, but if you do it right, at least you'll be making a profit from the go. By specializing in one area of food, you will cut down your cost by not having to stock all the other kinds of food and the spoilage that goes with it. You will also not have to worry about getting a good chef that knows how to cook meat and fish dishes and all the varieties that go with it.

I think that a breakfast restaurant like this would be a success no matter where you set up business – even in the town you currently live in.

For a possible place to live, check out my property in Ecuador website.

(viviun.com/AD-136030 )

Making Money Abroad – English Book Store

by Richlion

One thing I've notice when I lived and travelled through other countries is an English book store business. Where you have enough ex-pats living in a country or tourists visiting it, you'll see an English book store.

Naturally, there has to be enough people who speaks English that lives in or visits a country that could support a store before you start one. But if you live in such a country, you can make enough money with little work. In fact, there are many countries where there are a lot of citizens that speaks English as a second language. These people would also be customers of your English book store.

The English ex-pats might know the local language, but they always prefer to read in their native language.

Some countries that have English book stores are: Russia, Ecuador, Spain and Cyprus, and Holland to name a few.

You will want to have the store in a city and preferably where tourists go. You can also have it in a sub-division where there are a lot of English speaking ex-pats living there.

Then, you'll have to arrange for shipments of books to come in. When you travel back to your country, you can buy books very cheap in used book stores, flea markets and even from stores that sell new books. Then put them on a container and ship them to your adopted country.

I've met several people who have their own book stores and make enough money to support themselves and also to travel back to see their family.

With books, you don't have the import duties as you do with other items, such as cars and electronic goods. Custom clearance is usually easier. With each shipment you do, the more you learn how to navigate around the laws.

You can also supply local bars and restaurants with books for their clients. You can also have a book exchange where the books come back to you.

Get a stamp with your book store name and phone number in it and stamp each book. This is good for book exchanges, as you will only want to exchange with past customers. However, you can buy books from tourists if they have something of interest.

Old books or books that are not selling, you can have a basket where you sell them cheaper, say $1 or 50 cents each.

Your mark up can be as high as 10 times. This is usually on books that you can buy at some flea market back home for 50 cents and sell them for $5 in your store.

Have book markers made with your company name and phone number. This along with the stamp will make good advertising.

Starting a book store will cost more money than say, teaching English, but if a book store suites your style better and you have a few extra thousand dollars, then this might be the business for you.

Now, for what country would you can you buy property cheap and that has a growing ex-pat community? You can check out my site at: www.viviun.com/AD-136030/ And if that doesn't interest you, there are a lot of other property by other people on this site.

Happy travels!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

How was your Christmas? I hope it was a good one.

Here are some Christmas Pictures of my wife, Jayne, and I. We spent the 24th and 25th in a hotel in Cyprus.

We hope you spent your time with your family and gave thanks for the things that we take for granted.

Why buy a home in a third world country?

Why Buy a Home in a Third World Country?

By Richlion

There are many reasons to buy a home in a third world country. Here are the most important ones:

Your money goes a lot further
Police State
The wealthy are doing it
Getting back to family life

There are other reasons, to be sure, that it's a good idea to own a home in a third world country. For this article, I'll just talk about the above.

Your money goes a lot further
Unless you are rich, you should look for ways to make your money go further. For most people, buying a home is their biggest purchase, and if you can save money in this area, you will be making the most saving on a single purchase.

If you buy in a third world country, your savings will be the most. If you move to another first world country where the same type of house in your own country is only 5% cheaper, you won't save much. If it's in a country where it's 40% cheaper, we are talking about big savings here.

Police State
If you live in America, Canada or the UK, there are many laws that take away your freedom in one way or another. That is why millions of people from these counties have moved out, or at least they own a home in another country. For many, this may not be politically correct, but many people don't care what others think when they see changes before their eyes that effects their family and business.

The wealthy are doing it
The fact that many wealthy people have homes in other countries, should make you think that they know something that we don't. The wealthy don't just have a second or third home in some other country that is expensive, they also have homes in poor countries.

Many actors and actresses, for example, have homes in the Caribbean and Central American countries.

Kevin Trudeau, who is a multi-millionaire has a home in Ecuador. Mike Adams, the big alternative health advocate of NaturalNews.com, has a home in Ecuador, too. Do they know something about Ecuador that we don't. (Do a search for their names and learn more about them.)

Getting back to family life
If you are 50 years old or more, you have seen many changes in the social way that people treat each others. It seems that good old family values are out the window. In fact, if you say you are a Christian, you'll get negative looks. What is this leading to?

In many of the second and third world countries, people still hold on to 'old fashion' values. Think about this...if a person doesn't have respect for human life, how safe do you think you'd be?

Reading today's newspapers, you'll see that crime that is happening now is not like the crime that happened when we were growing up. Some people are getting more and more sadistic and younger people are committing such crimes, too.

The above are just a few of the reasons why people are buying homes abroad.

For a home at a great value, check out this villa in Ecuador.

Happy New Year 2010

What the Extremely Wealthy Are Doing

The year 2010 is now here!

What are your economic plans? Have you made any? If not, you should.

I recently heard Kevin Trudeau, a multi-millionaire, talk on radio. He said that he knows someone who put $8,000,000,000 (that's 8 BILLION) into gold. He also knows of another very wealthy man who put 3 billion dollars into gold quite recently.

What they told Kevin is, they can afford to lose 30% of their money, but they can't afford to lose 70% of their money. In other words, the most that they will lose by putting their money into gold is 30%. If they put their money into stocks and other paper assets they could lose 70%.

Though your net worth is much less than a billion dollars, ask yourself this, can you afford a loss of 70% of your money? If you are like me, as small amount would be devastating.

You must put your money where it's safe.

Now, before you go out and buy gold coins or bullion, consider the wealthy men who bought gold. Also, consider Kevin Trudeau, too. You can be sure that these men have homes that are paid for. (They probably have several mansions that are paid for.) These people put priorities first. They made sure that the home that they are living in is bought and paid for. It might not produce the returns that they are looking for, but at least they are not worried about the bank collection agencies coming to their doors.

Another great asset is money in a home. Sure, it might go down in price, but at least you have a roof over your head. And one thing you can bet on is, the value of your home will not fall as much as stocks have done – even Blue Chip ones.

Here's great home in Conoocoto, Ecuador.