PhilFAQS

A few of you may know of my friend Aviatrix, a professional pilot from Canada whom I enjoy reading about.  But most of you won’t know her and even fewer would be interested in her blog because (sadly) Americans have been trained to think of those who earn their living in the air as sort of alien creatures … it’s so different from my youth when young people aspired to ‘real’ jobs rather than learning to cheat and steal legally make unsound investments with other people’s money on Wall Street *sigh*

But I didn’t mean to start an editorial here.  What caught my attention was a little post I just read on her blog which probably wasn’t intended to be about making money but is certainly a golden nugget to folks looking for opportunities with their eyes actually open:

The town has a population of 156. Not a typo: one hundred fifty-six. Its points of interest, listed on the town website, include:

• airport
• church
• groceteria / gas station
• rec hall that has both a kitchen and a dance floor
• a covered half-size ice rink
• 3 baseball diamonds
• a soccer pitch

That’s not actually bad for a town of 156 people. And I’m still impressed (my emphasis) they have their own website.

Now what does that have to do with making money, and in particular making money in the Philippines?

Ask yourself this:  how many small towns … in any country .. are similar to the one she wrote about?  The number you come up with should reach into the hundreds of thousands at least.

How may have websites?  The answer will be in the low thousands at best.  The one’s with websites that actually impress anyone will be far fewer.

How many of you have at least at some time or another thought about making money designing, building or maintaining websites?  How many have a friend or relative who knows the mechanics of the Web uttering the all-to-familiar moan, “If only I could make money with my talent”?

Instead of thinking of the web design business as trudging up and down the streets to find a business willing to advance thousands of pesos or Dollars to an unknown web designer, why not be the site owner and operator from the ‘git-go’?

The names, locations and basic information about municipalities are completely in the public domain.  Nothing at all prevents anyone from building one web site or even a single web pages for town after town, city after city as many as they feel like.

Could you make money with a site like this?  The answer is, unquestionably yes.  The reason I am so sure of the answer is, there are already many sites doing this general thing.  Some of them I have followed for some time and they are working at their sites and obviously making money … just from what I see advertised.

Others, and this is a real target of opportunity in my book … only focus on larger towns.

Competition, despite what a lot of you may erroneously think, is a good thing, not a scary thing.  If you are thinking of moving into nay niche or area of business and you check and find no competition?  Bang! A big red flag should appear on your computer screen.  You may, just may have struck a fertile field to pursue, but it is far, far more likely that other have been there before and left, finding more profitable places to spend their time.

So give this a little though if you are planning or even day dreaming about making money online, particularly after you make the move to the Philippines.  Make a site which features towns in as many categories as you want … and impress people with the information you provide … investment?  Virtually nothing except time.  Ability to scale up?  Huge because unlike a venture that depends upon individual talent and writing skills you can train most anyone to look up data, press releases, schedules and local new for any place on earth …Google will even do a large part of it for them, and let your staff just make simple updates to keep things current, while you sit back and supervise and mange the incoming ad revenue.

It’ll work before you move to the Philippines, it will work after you move and you want to earn a living in the Philippines … and all you have to do is remember the key word from the quote … just produce to impress.

Yes indeed fellows and gals, another post on jobs … jobs in the Philippines, jobs in the US to get you prepared to move to the Philippines or making jobs out of nothing at all.  Just one of the subjects we cover here at PhilFAQS, all the FAQS (Frequently Asked Questions) Philippines but a very important and a so often asked about subject.

Yesterday I talked about why you probably shouldn’t even be thinking about having a job here in the Phuilippines and I touched briefly on how you can make a business that is based … cutomers, banking and percieved location back in the USA … (or in England or Australia or any other country you’re interested in) while you, yourself, live here in the Philippines and let your clients pay your bills and build you kid’s college fund … or pay off your debts.

Here’s just one little example I had thought about mentioning yesterday and kind of ran out of time and space … Teleparenting, or perhaps you might want to call it Telenanny or teletutor service … it’s all the same in principle.  This is an idea suitable for anyone 18 through 80 … there’s no degree or other educational requirements, no licensing, no special software skills, only the same Internet and computer setup you’re using now … in short, almost too good to be true sounding, isn’t it?  Well you’ll have to be the judge of that, what you do with the idea is completely up to you.

There’s actually a lot of different niches and specialties you could tie into this idea but the one that prompted me to write this post is applicable to so many people who write me for help … the folks who feel they have no modern, marketable skills.

You feel you want to move to the Philippines, but your job is something “old tech” like driivng screws into a part on an assembly line or even walking the aisles at Wal*Mart watching the company get richer while your net pay just stagnates or gets even smaller qas the manager cuts back hours in response to decreasing sales.

(Do you know that in the Wal*Mart stores in China the employees get free health care and guranteed hours per week?  But in the US the company can’t “afford it’?  yeah, right)

Maybe you’d retire today and move to the Philippines but you just don’t have enough time in at your current job, or perhaps you’re already retired and you are suffereing from the common retirement malady … month left over at the end of your money.  Or maybe you have a wife, girl friend, other family member here in the Philippines whom you want to set up to earn a decent living, (so they don’t have to go to Saudi to clean some oil sheik’s toilets) but you don’t want to fall for the common, usually disastrous “internet cafe”, “jeepney route” or “Sari-sari store” money sinks.

You do know how to raise and mind children, don’t you?  Most of you reading this have already done it.  Those few reading here who may be new parents or not yet a parent certainly were raised by parents and already know how the job needs to be done.  (In fact if you’re 18 or younger you probably know a lot better thna your parents how t’s supposed to be done ;-)).  Well, this Bud’s for you.

In the US there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of “latchkey kids”.  Children of school age who come home every day to an empty house because both mom and dad have t work to make ends meet.  Parents have a tough choice in this area.  To provide proper, licensed day care for these kids often means that there’s no profit at all left from one or both parent’s jobs after they pay for day care … why work every day just to transfer the money to the day care center that is getting richer?

Of course in many cases it’s ok just to let the kids come home on their own … but you never know … what might they get up to, and what might happen while there is no adult supervision in the house?

That’s your work from the Philippines (or any other location on earth) opportunity for today.

• You list yourself in free directories in the areas you wish to provide your service.  It’s free on huge resources like Craigslist.  Investment?  Zero.
• You get yourself a completely free or extremely cheap US phone number for them to call … Skype, MagicJack, etc.  I’ve writtne plenty about VOIP already.
• The parent/client tells you the rules they want followed and gives you contact numbers so you can report any trouble to them and coordinate as required.
• The parent/client (if they don’t already own one) installs one or more cheap, simple web cams in their home where the children are supposed to be spending their after school time and gives you password protected aceess … built into most free web cam software.
• As an optional service the parent can furnich “Net nanny” software for the same hme computer that gives you access to the web cams, so you can supervise the children’s online activities as well as making sure they aren’t destroying the house.
• You set up a free PayPal account to be able to receive their money in their home country currency and draw it out, in cash here in the Philippines with an ATM card.
• You’re now in business. (In the Philippines but not of the Philippines)

Talk about getting paid to surf schemes … this one is a no-brainer.  Every night you check that the client children got home when they were told to, you check that thier activities are appropriate, you help with homework if desired (an extra cost option in my view), you make sure their online messaging is safe and that they aren’t chattng with some online pervert, and if nayhting goes wrong you call the parent (or 911 if the house is on fire) and let the client deal with the actual problem.

Without exageration you could monitor four ot five household’s worth of children while still providing good service and not driving yourself crazy.  How much can you charge?  I haven;’t hired a sitter in the US for years but you can use Craigslist and/or online newspapers and a Google search to find out what the rate is where you want to have your clients … I think after school programs where the parents have to drop off and pick up students easily cost $40 or $50 a week, per child … and you would be saving the parent the drop off/pick up hassles.

Providing a useful, even badly needed service, to honest folks, for an honest pay check … evrything run online is certainly not a scam … and as I said in the lead-in, there is hardly a person reading these words who is not qualified for this job.  If you raised children, are raising them or have been raised, you’re qualified.

Are you still in the US and don’t know when you’ll move to the Philippines?  Easy, start the business while US based.  It will move with you when the time is right.

You can also work in Filipino helpers, for pay or or family opportunity as you go.  When you do make the move, the business moves with you, absolutely seemlessly.

Want to go back to the US on vacation?  Or maybe share your time between the home coutry and the Philippines>  Again, the business follows your location, it doesn’t tie you down to any particular place.

Just one of many. many ways you can supplement your income or earn an hobnest living on line right now, today with virtually no investment ot special education.  So what’s your excuse now?

(for those who want to know wven more about earning while staying at home. this is a great resoucrce .. well worth the price and 100% money back guranteed … Click Here!”

Also I almost forgot.  I have so much working on line, working from home information … honest opportunites not the scam stuff, that I have started anew blog, just for the telecommuting subject. Feel free to visit as it grows from scratch.

I get a lot of questions and searches here at PhilFAQs, the source for Living In The Philippines information, about jobs for foreigners in the Philippines.

Well, they do exist, although decent ones, especially ones that yu can find from within thePhilippines are few and far between.  At the same time, though, I think the Philippines can be a great place to earn a living … for those astute enough to realize you don’y have to be singed up with a company, commuting an dpunching a time clock to earn.

For those of you who haven’t looked at my overall “job philosophy”, rather thna re-invent the wheel I let my fellow blogger Steve Pavlina say it, because he explains so well why you probably should never have a job.

So if you don’t have a job, what else can you do to earn aliving?  Well I recommend this book, by my freind Bob Martin who has been living very well here in the Philippines for more than 8 years now.  Bob doesn’t have a job and doesn’t need one.  He also doesn’t get any checks from the government or any outside support … Bob’s far from the only guy earning a living here, so it is certainly not impossible.

Today I read a post on another blog reviewing a service, run by some folks in China, offering “virtual assistants” to offices in the US and other countries who need office help and don’t want to go in for the overhead of hiring a live assistant in their home city.  The bottom line is, they offer a full-time (40 hour a week) assistant service for as low as $900 USD per month, which is about one fifth the total cost of providing office space, computers, and even minimum mandated employee benefits for equivilent service in the States.  Read the review and see if it doesn’t awake thoughts in your mind as it did mine….

Outsourcing All of Your Professional Needs

Conventional thought would lead you to believe that you should get yourself a brick-and-mortar office and populate it with full-time employees. That may be well and good for certain kinds of businesses, but it may not be the most cost-effective solution. The single greatest selling point that BPOVIA uses in selling its virtual assistant service is that you are able to save a lot of money by taking the virtual route rather than the in-person route. … full article here.

If you took the time to read the review you’ll see that the company, in my view, doesn’t really have it together so far as a service I would want to buy … but they are on the right track.

A person liivng in the Philippines who can provide basic office assitant services, or who can hire and supervise folks here who have those skills ought to be able to put together a similarr service here in the Philippines and do much better.  The costs to provide a place to work here are minimal, a computer, the Open Office package, an Internet connection and maybe a 1-800 number in the US which rings at your deak here in the Philippines is about all you would need.  $900 USD a month is more than 3 times what an average office worker is getting here, so you could hire talented people, pay them well and still be making a very nice profit.  When I worked for defense contractors in the US who provided workers to replace government workers as if they were part of the government agencies themselves, (a body shop)  we always tried to get a price double the salary we were going to pay the worker and made out very well at that 100% markup.  Marking up 200% gives a pretty significant profit margin.

Food for thought.  There’s a Lot of ways to make mney in the Philippines.

A while back I wrote about making money in the Philippines with a phone, which was mainly a link to a free book on outsourcing that I thought was very valu8ble … mainly for its suggestions on ways to run businesses over distances.

I intended to add some more specifics about phone, what you can do with them, what I recommend and how they can certainly fit in with your plans to live in the Philippines, retire in the Philippines and even to earn a living here in the Philippines.

First of all, you need to change your phone concepts if you’re over 30.  For years we were brought up with the notion that phone calls were a scarce, expensive commodity … and indeed they were.  So the idea of using the phone frequently, especially for trans-oceanic calls.

It is just not the same world anymore.  You can call me any time on 1-719-966-4295.  That number rings on my computer and if I am here, I’ll answer it.   If I’m away, it will go to voice mail.  Cost to me?  Zero.  Cost to you … only what it costs to call a 719 number from your home.  Skype … check it out.  If you haven’t made the move to the Philippines yet, many of my friends recommend Vonage.  Basically unlimited calls for a low monthly7 rate, and although Vonage doesn’t ship their boxes here, they work here just fine in the Philippines.  I often call my American friends on their US Vonage or Skype numbers, it’s much cheaper for both of us than using our cell phones or Philippine land-line long distance.  If you are already here and want to know how to get a Vonage box or another equivalent service, just call me, or drop me a line via my secure, no-spam contact page.

So why am I talking about these free or very cheap telephone services?  Simple.  making a living here in the Philippines can be very problematical to a foreigner.  Making a living, especially as a part-time venture in the US, Europe, Australia, Canada, et al is quite a bit simpler.  So you have to stay home until you grow old like me before you can live your dream, right?

Absolutely dead wrong, my friend.  If you can make a living … and believe me, there are ways to make a good living writing, providing services to others, basically finding a need and filling it, then there is typically no reason you can’t work the same business from the Philippines.

A woman I used to work with made a good living setting appointments for real estate agents.  The agents found her services invaluable because she would insure that clients were ready to be shown houses and that property owners, whose houses were going to be shown, were ready for the realtor and prospective clients to arrive.  A pencil, a calendar and a phone were her only tools.  Absolutely no reason a business like this wouldn’t work here in the Philippines, with the only real issue being you would have to adjust your work/sleep hours a bit.  You don’t need a web site, you don’t need to join any "soap selling" schemes, you don’t need a license, college education, business license … nothing except a desire to make money, a pleasant speaking voice and the courage to stop listening to the nay-sayers. 

Frankly, when I used to sell for a living back in the US I would have leaped the chance to hire this lady … service like this is not limited to real estate.  It’s an absolutely proven sales technique for a salesman or woman in any field to double or triple calls made on prospects by having a third-party call and set appointments.  people who think nothing of slamming down the phone on a sales cold call will almost never do the same to a polite lady who says "I’m trying to set an time for Mr.s Smith to call on you and present the information."

Oh, and do you think you need callers from outside a local calling area in the US?  Ones who might balk at the specter of using "long distance" to call to your business?  Just get a local 1-800 number company in the US or Canada to provide you a toll-free number that will ring on any phone n8mber you specify.  I had one for years for my GPS tracking business, cost me a grand total of $2.95 USD per month plus the per-minute charge of people calling me … 5 to 7 cents a minute.  believe me, I loved it when people rang me on my 800 number.  Not only were they typically much more inclined to talk and tell me about their business needs, the 800 number service automatically stripped out call blocking so I had real-world phone numbers to call clients back on and detailed tax and sales record information, automatically.  Once one of my major competitors called me using a blocked number …while saying hello and making nice nice at the beginning of the call I called up the number calling in via my 1-800 number management screen and found out who it was … let’s just say when they asked me questions about pricing and other offers I was featuring they did not quite find out the answers they thought they would

So, there’s just one business idea, you need nothing more than a phone and a pencil, and I already told you how to get the phone.  What else is holding you back?  The only real reason you aren’t here in the Philippines already is that you truly want to be where you are more.

There’s always a lot of interest in the subject, "How can a foreigner (or a Filipino, for that matter Make Money in the Philippines?".  To the majority of folks reading this, making money equates to having a job.  Foreigners can find jobs in the Philippines, but there are many hurdles and many jobs are not very suitable.  I can’t help much with the job market, since I opted out of that some years back while still in the US.

It is totally possible, legal and even easier than some might think for a foreigner to make money in the Philippines.  In fact my friend Bob is writing a book on the subject … it’s going to be good, I know and you can pre-order by just sending me a note on my secure, no-spam contact page … I’m on the list myself, anxiously awaiting publication.  one of the reasons I am looking forward to Bob’s book is that he told me he is going to focus on off-line business ideas … and I certainly am open to learning a lot more in that department.

But as you are reading this article you are looking at the best chance of making money, in the Philippines or in any other country … the Internet.  No, I don’t mean setting up some e-commerce site and selling things online … although that makes good money too.  (this is a site I am building up on that subject, you can feel free to visit and subscribe, I’ll be adding a lot of information just this coming month alone.)I’m also not talking about blogging for money … not quite as easy to make the big bucks with that, but certainly can be made into a real living.  What I am talking about is what you already know!

Most people reading this today are earning a living … that’s what pays for the computer you are using, isn’t it.  What skills do you use in your current job or small business?  Unless you are fresh out of high school I will wager you have a _lot_ of skills and experience, no matter what your job.

One way to think about making a living here in the Philippines is to examine your own skills and consider innovative ways to put them to use.  I wrote just recently about transcription opportunities (most people think ‘medical’ when seeing the word transcription, but there are thousands of opportunities in the legal and commercial fields … every day there are thousands and thousands of records and documents that must be recorded.  About all you need for this is a computer (you can get your phone service through the Internet.

But there are many, many other job-related services that can be performed over the Internet, no matter where you are located.  It’s the job skills that are important not your location.

Here’s a great eBook I came across with literally thousands of ideas for working for yourself at home or finding people to do work for you at home.  It’s free and there is no squeeze page or sales letter to negotiate.  Have a look if you would like some ideas about how to be independent of where you live and who bosses you around from day to day.

The cry often heard on the street from educated Filipinos who have no job prospects is … if only I could find a decent paying job here in the Philippines without going overseas to clean toilets in Saudi Arabia or build roads to make some ultra-rich oil sheik even richer.

The cry often heard from foreigners who want to live in the Philippines is … if only there was a way I could get work in the Philippines at a salary I could support my family on … I’d move in a heartbeat.

Well there’s an answer, suitable to many.  read my friend Bob’s blog post here.

Check out this site for more information.

Years ago in Colorado Springs when I had a 300 baud dial-up modem and my online hobby was reading and posting on BBS’s (Bulletin Board Systems) I was amazed to find out that several friends made a decent living online.  There wasn’t even an Internet to speak of, just a lot of isolated hobbyists tinkering about.

One of those money-making fellows had a software development business incorporated in Colorado with lot’s of nice contracts and profit, but no programmers.  All his developers were in Russia and he sent and received all work assignments via modem connection.  I’ll write moire about software development in the future if there is an interest, I know of at least one fellow in my neighborhood here who works for a firm in the US, at US wages and lives in the Philippines.

But the subject of today’s post … medical transcription.  The other money-making friend caught my interest when he mentioned he had 20 phone lines and 19 modems in his house … and wanted more but the phone company couldn’t supply the lines.  20 phone lines?  Wow!  Doing what, Thom?  the answer was, Thom’s wife, Vi, had hundreds of doctors as clients .. clients who would fax their handwritten records … a few sent audio files … of their prior days patient visits.  Vi, who had worked as a transcriptions in a doctors office, had a couple dozen transcriptions … most of them "stay at home" moms, who dialed in every day to receive their assignments and upload their completed transcriptions … Vi and Thom would print the transcription work and FedEx it regularly back to their clients.  The dynamics of the business were such that Vi could charge doctors about half what their on-site costs would be and yet pay her workers quite a bit more than they would have received in a transcription office environment. 

Today, with the Internet, the prospects are only better than this fascinating "early days" real-world story.

Here’s why medical transcription (and many other sorts of transcription, such as legal depositions, accident report interviews, etc.) is a real opportunity the Philippines should push for:

• Minimal degrees, exams, certifications needed … much less than say, nursing.
• Can be done any where on a minimalist computer.  Broadband is not really needed, either.
• Even for Filipinos well-versed in English, accent and "Filipinoisms" often add difficulty to customer contact jobs.  transcriptions don’t even have to be able to speak English, as long as they can read and write accurately.
• The biggest reason … the one I wish the President and other leaders would spend more time thinking about … no need to leave the country and produce yet another financially "dismembered" family. 

An honest, profitable way to earn a living at home.

Someone should really start a blog that laid things out the way I think they ought to be laid out … regarding how you should go about getting out from under the yoke of regular, mind-numbing nine-to-five work, how you can find yourself through your own contributions in life … work is love made visible … and, in general cutting through the crapopla and getting right to the heart of the matter.

Oh, someone did.

This is always one of my popular and searched for items … personally, if I had to have a J*O*B I’d rather have one in the US, but who am I to tell others what to do.

Jobs for foreigners in the Philippines have traditionally been hard to come by … at least decent ones that pay anything like US-style wages.  There are some number of Western corporations with operations here and living allowances with those sorts of jobs tend to be very good … but it’s very difficult to get into something like that from the outside .. typically folks in those positions are workers who have been with the company for years and were selected internally for what is usually regarded as a "plum" position.

A example as to how good working here can be with the right pay and benefits package would be the US State department folks at the US Embassy.  Some reliable info I had last year indicates Foreign Service jobs in Manila are traditionally the most sought after of all the State department positions, and more than 85% of the folks selected to work here ask to extend their tours … but I doubt I have many Sate department prospects among my readers.  Also, this information was gathered before the US dollar started down the tubes.  devaluation of the US dollar is a real consideration for any prospective overseas worker who is going to be paid in dollars … the ‘greenback’ isn’t what it used to be.

You must have permission to work in the Philippines .. either a specific ‘work visa’ which must be applied for by the company who wants to hire you, or be a legal permanent resident, such as a 13a, 13g or SRRV holder.

Many jobs are available in the ‘Teaching English as a Second Language’ filed.  In general these tend to be relatively low pay and long hours, as the schools involved cater mainly to students from Korea who are looking for bargain education in the Philippines.  600 to 1,000 Philippine Pesos per day is a common wage and you can plan on 6 days of work per week.

The current ‘boom industry in the Philippines is what’s loosely called ‘call centers’, which typically come in two flavors, inbound and outbound.  Inbound call centers take calls for customer service, online sales, requests for catalogs and information, etc.  Outbound centers are mostly in the telemarketing sales area, calling businesses to solicit space in directories, setting appointments for sales calls and making add-on sales to customers who have already bought something from a company.

But the biggest growth area is in BPO … Business Process Outsourcing which covers areas such as data entry, transcription of doctors and lawyer’s case notes, entering sales into accounting ledgers and numerous other ‘back room’ chores that big businesses need warm bodies for.

Foreigners are typically sought as language coaches and trainers and may advance to team leaders and other second-level supervisory positions.  18,000 to 30,000 PhP per month is a ballpark pay figure, normally for 5 day work weeks, but remember that night time here in the Philippines is when the work needs to be done and customer service style positions are going to require 24×7x365 coverage, so new people are looking at a lot of weekend and midnight shift work.

I recently came across a pretty comprehensive listing of jobs in the Philippines, centered on Cebu, which i am happy to pass on … http://www.cebu-philippines.net/philippines-jobs.html

If working is your think, hopefully this can help …if you are interested in earning money without a job at all, you might like to visit my other blog, www.retirepay.com or my friend Bob’s on-line Virtual Earner blog

One of the questions that comes close to topping the list of queries from folks thinking about living in the Philippines is, what is the job situation there?

I’m happy to say that I don’t have a job.  I make my income from two sources, a retirement that I did earn from a long-term job and from a number of Internet ventures.  Since I have been retired and living in the Philippines I have been amazed at the ways to make money that are just out there, waiting for people to work at them.  Never the less I know some people, in spite of what my friend Steve says about the 10 reasons never to have a job , are bound and determined that they will have a ‘real job" and so I’ll try to help a bit.

Recently I came across a new totally free service called IpsoJobs.  It’s a small effort genned up by a couple innovative guys in Spain who started out with enough ambition to get the job done … they only want to serve every city in the world.  And, they want to do it totally free for both job seekers and employers looking to hire.

How do they propose to cover the whole world?  Easy, they let anyone who asks "adopt" a city.  I personally signed up for several Philippine cites since I live here and have access to local knowledge (anyone in the Philippines reading this can probably get on any city they want, just visit the site.)

I’m already getting listings in Makati, I suspect more will follow.

Another source I seldom see serious job searchers mention is CraigsList.  They’ve expanded a lot in recent months, I see pages and pages of job listings for the Philippines, everything from part time bloggers to international hedge fund comptrollers.

My good friend Bob Martin started a job board mainly for foreigners on one of his sites a few months back.  Just checked and it doesn’t seem to be doing so well, but you can always post on the positions wanted side of the listings.

So who else knows about jobs in the Philippines, or wants to know more?

Just came across this new service on John Chow.  I’ve been intimately involved with the Philippines and in particular people wanting to move to the Philippines and find jobs in the Philippines for more than 8 years now. 

How can I find a job there is a very frequent question.  Often, for a foreigner, there isn’t a good answer.  See a few samples here, and here and here.  My friend Bob has been running a "Find A Job" list for some time now and the offerings seem slim.

But here’s a service that is just starting and you can use it to find a job, or, use it to help people find jobs while potentially making a little money

I’m talking about a very brand new service called IPSOJOBS that has set itself the goal of being the world leader in on-line job listings … for free … hard to argue with that.  here’s the gist of how it works:

Years ago when the earth wasn’t quite cool and a 300bps modem was the standard two friends of mine, Thom (RIP, Thom) and Vi Foulks were the first people I ever heard of making a living online.  There was no World Wide Web, there was no Google … heck Sergey and Larry were in elementary school … and side from a software guy I knew who had some programmers in Russia (yes it was the Soviet Union then) sending him code in return for him sending them Levi jeans I had never heard of a cent being made on line.

Vi had been a nurse and a practice manager for a busy doctor’s office and she knew the importance of medical transcription (the insurance companies require tons of documentation on a doctor’s every action … and for a pediatrician these have to be kept at least 20 years, until the child can no longer be used as the object of a suit by the parents … gotta love the American way, eh?

Anyway Vi also knew how hard it was for moms to work from home, so she and husband Thom set up a system of TRS-80 computers, 300 bps modems and standard phone lines into their home in Colorado Springs and put out the word that she could provide experienced, on-line transcriptions.  Whenever a candidate signed up, Vi and Thom would ship the lady a TRS-80 and a modem.  Every doctor Vi took on as a client used a Dictaphone (something else you could look up on Google and dropped off or messenger the "belts" to the Foulks’ home.  From there Vi either put the belt into a playback machine and had the transcriptionist list to it via phone line, or messenger the belts to the worker .. the end result was a verbatim transcript was uploaded, at 300 bps to Vi and paper copies were printed on a daisy wheel printer for the doctor’s files as well as an ‘archival" copy on 8 inch floppies … yes, there were 8 inch floppies.  Tom and Vi made a good living from this business and provided work for a lot of people … and he best part of this trip down memory lane?  The idea is still as new today as it was then.

On the front page of today’s’ Philippine Star is a story about the "new wave" of remote medical transcriptions in the Philippines being the second-highest salaried employees in the medical field.

In addition the article points out that while "contact centers’ (call centers) are growing at a better than 25% annual growth rate, medical trancriptionist positions are growing at an annual rate of 90% … yep, 90% growth rate through at least 2010.

If you know how to use a computer and go on line, if you know or can hook up with anyone with medical transcriptionist training and/or offer the training yourself … and you can’t make business out of that?  Then you deserve to be sent back to the 300bps modem days.  OBTW, it’s not only doctors who need this service.  lawyers, business executives … ever see the records of board meetings a corporation needs to keep these days … the list goes on and on.

Many times people search here for information on Philippine work visas.  In general I still give the same advice I’ve always done … fugedabout it … but it seems that a lot more foreigners are finding work here … or, as this article postualtes, that the Philippine government is just enforcing the rules better.

Over 3,400 foreign nationals have been issued pre-arranged working visas by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) in the last six months, Commissioner Marcelino Libanan bared Friday.

Libanan also said there has been an upsurge in the number of foreigners applying for working visas during the same period. The number of visa applicants from June to November this year was 83 percent higher compared to the same period last year.  See the full article on the recent increase in Philippine work visas here

So, for sure, some Americans (and other foreigners) are finding work here in the Philippines … against all odds I would guess.

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