Tag Archive for 'Blogging'

Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.

Published on November 17, 2008 in Buenos Aires. 3 Comments Tags: , .

As I’ve gotten more involved with the expat community in Buenos Aires, I’ve come across a whole gaggle of talented bloggers.  It’s fun to read their sites when I can, but I decided it would be nice to create a community where every blogger could participate.  So to facilitate that I decided that a Buenos Aires Bloggers carnival was in order.  If you’ve never heard of a blog carnival, you can see what all the fuss is about here. It’s a link exchange on a grand scale.

I’m hoping some of my readers are bloggers from around here, and will submit some articles.  The first edition focuses on the question of why people decided to live in Buenos Aires, and what initially attracted them to the city.  I’ll be hosting it here on my blog on December 1st.  Here’s hoping it’s a success!

While I think it’ll make for a great community builder, I’m also hoping (a bit selfishly) that it’ll allow me to network with other writers and bloggers who know a thing or two about the freelancing profession.  Hey, I told you I’d be exploring the business side of blogging a bit more didn’t I?

Freelancing

Published on November 14, 2008 in Buenos Aires and Expat Advice. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

I mentioned in this post that I was looking into freelancing, and after doing some research it seems that a lot of expats have had the same idea.  There are plenty of resources out there for someone looking to get started on their telecommute, and these are some of the ones I’ve come across that I think are very well written:

Freelance Writing Jobs

These guys put out daily links on job openings for bloggers and writers, listed by type and location.  They’re a great way to generate leads when first starting out, and I’ve begun to apply for the ones that fit my particular skill set.  Subscribe and you can get them sent to you every day!

Freelance Switch

Very nice blog that offering all sorts of hints and tips about how to live and work as a freelancer be it writing, design, etc.  They also have published an amazing e-book that covers every single aspect of freelancing.  Anything you can think of they’ve covered, no joke.  Oh, and they have a free podcast.  Can you tell I like this site?

Write to Done

Another site for writers, offers daily tips on how to improve your writing and such.  Not necessarily aimed at freelancer, it’s more in the vein of general writing.  I’ve been using this one for a while on how to improve this blog.  Good stuff.

Hopefully these sites will play an integral role in getting me my first gigs, and help other Buenos Aires expats find something a bit more fulfilling than the usual English teaching tap dance.

Freelancing, Blogging, and Entrepreneurship

Published on November 2, 2008 in Buenos Aires and Expat Advice. 5 Comments Tags: , , , .

After teaching TEFL English for the last month and a half or so, I’ve come to one conclusion about living down here: if you want to do well for yourself, you need to either start your own business or secure a stable secondary income.  Expats don’t have many job options to begin with, and those that are offered pay meager salaries.  With that in mind, I’ve got a couple of ideas that have been bouncing around inside my head.

Freelancing

I’m working on this right now.  As soon as some of my content is published on MiniHostels, I’m going to start shopping my services around.  There are plenty of magazines and websites that I have in mind.  The key here is to have some kind of written content to show them, and my articles that I’m writing right now can provide that.  My immediate supervisor at work has a lot of experience with freelancing, and she’s going to help me in starting out.  I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated.

Blogging

This blog originally began as a personal site I wrote for fun, but as more and more people have commented or emailed me saying they enjoy my writing, I’ve decided to really build the blog as a personal brand.  There are lots of expat sites for people coming to Buenos Aires, but not many that speak to those coming fresh out of college.  I think I can address that niche.  I’ve already started putting together an informative e-book that I’ll be selling on here.  It’ll be directed towards young expats and offer insight and how-to methodology for a lot of the problems they’ll need to solve before and after arriving.  So stay tuned on the blog front, there’ll be more informative posts, but I’m not going to lose my quirky writing style any time soon.

Entrepreneurship

Over the last few weeks I’ve met a couple of young business owners down here, and it’s definitely the way to go if you’re the enterprising type.  I’ve had a couple of ideas, but I think the one that would offer the best fit for my lifestyle and talents would be owning a youth hostel. I’m going to be interviewing local hostel owners for work anyways, so I’ll be sure to pick their brains once that gets going.  I’ve checked out a lot of how-to sites and forums that offer advice on how to start and run a hostel, and I’m going to keep fleshing out a business plan over the next couple of months.  I think it’s something that I would really enjoy and could potentially do very well at.

Wrap-Up

What about some of you other Buenos Aires expats that have been reading my site?  Any advice or insight about these ideas?  I know at least some of you have started your own businesses down here!