Offshore Telecommuting Jobs for Expats

How to live and work abroad under your own terms by telecommuting and using your Internet access to reach the office

Mention offshore telecommuting jobs and most people will think of someone in India looking through a timetable to tell you the time of the next train to Milton Keynes, whilst asking you “vat about dat Deirdre Barlow den?” Well, that is offshoring or offshore outsourcing, it is not offshore telecommuting…

Telecommuting is the term used to describe people who use current communication technology to work from home.  They don’t have to waste time travelling to and from work because as the telecommuters’ motto goes, “work is something you do, not something you travel to.” Take it one step further and you have offshore telecommuting. 

With high-speed Internet connections available practically everywhere nowadays you can relocate your office anywhere too.  After all, if you are working from your home in Slough, you could just as easily be sat using WIFI overlooking a beach in the south of France.

So how do expats find offshore telecommuting jobs?  Well, the best prospect is to speak to your existing employer before you become an expat!  Depending on the work you do there may be an option to relocate your work to a location to suit you.  Companies are more open to staff working from home these days as it cuts down on their own overheads, and your company may well be amenable to you living overseas and maintaining your existing job. 

This would give you the double advantage of being able to work abroad without having to go through the rigmarole of finding another job.  You may also find that a similar job in your new country pays less than you currently receive. 

If you own an Internet based business it’s of course a no brainer - what are you doing still living in the UK? 

You can run an Internet based business from anywhere in the world.

For those of us who are not fortunate enough to have understanding bosses, who don’t have our own Internet companies, or moved overseas before thinking about the ideas above there are other ways to find work offshore telecommuting, or teleworking overseas as it is sometimes called. 

While many jobs require professional qualifications such as IT programmers and web designers, there are plenty of other jobs that will pay you to offshore telecommute without having to have professional qualifications such as data entry clerks, writers and sales generators to home based travel agents. 

There are plenty of scams involved with offshore telecommuting too though, so you need to do your homework before committing to anything, and any site that’s promising easy cash is probably only generating easy cash for the owners.  There are two good sites to start your research, the telework association has a membership of 7,000 individuals and businesses and offers a weekly bulletin with jobs, and the homeworking UK site also has good information, advice and jobs for offshore telecommuters, as well as a forum to speak to like minded individuals.  So, fire up the lap top, book yourself a ticket abroad and work from the beach, Pina Colada in hand.