One thing I’ve had to deal with while running this blog is that I’m not doing it in a vacuum; as much as I might sometimes want to simply bury myself in my blog, there are other things going on in my life.  During the nearly two years I’ve been running this blog, for instance, I’ve had several different jobs, lived in three different locations, and recently I’ve begun grad school again.

Looking back on all this, it occurred to me that while trying to do a blog or similar ‘side hack’, you face some distinctly different challenges if you do so while you’re in school compared to doing so while working.  There are many things that are the same between both types of situations, of course; the restrictions on your time and the desire to rest (rather than keep working on a side project) when you get home being two of the big ones.  But the differences are significant, and students and workers face their own challenges while trying to build a side income.  So, let’s take a look at some of the advantages each group has while trying to get a side business started.

(Before we begin, though, one quick note: I don’t know about you, but I have very distinctive images of ‘students’ and ‘workers’ in my mind, namely a young, early twenty year old living on campus and a middle-aged fellow with a wife and kid working 9-5, Monday through Friday, respectively.  Obviously, that’s not the situation for all students and workers, and basing the advantages on those stereotypes will end up rather skewed.  In the notes that follow, I’ll try my best to not let such stereotypes influence the pros of each type of situation.)

Power to the (Student) People!

-More Time (Theoretically) Available for Side Projects: Compared to the typical 40 hour work week (at least, here in the United States), the typical college schedule is rather skimpy: 12 hours a week can let you be a full time (undergrad) student, 18 hours is a very full schedule, and 20 hours a week in classes is typically considered an overloaded schedule.  While many students have family or jobs that occupy a sizable amount of that time, in theory, they have more time than the average worker in which to ply an (outside) trade.  (In practice, as we shall see, this is not always the case…)  None of this includes the sizable summer and winter holidays that most schools offer (as well as Spring Break, if you can avoid the siren call of Cancun).

A student, hard at work.

-Access to Numerous Resources: One advantage of school campuses is that there is all sorts of useful equipment for the would-be entrepreneur.  Computer labs with internet access, professors and instructors who can help share their knowledge and possibly aid your goals, and libraries full of books (and in the modern college library, magazines, CDs, and DVDs, to say nothing of more of those computers) covering just about every subject you could need a boost in, all just outside your classroom doors.  Add to that the possibility of taking an elective or two in any number of subjects to help your understanding, and it’s hard to imagine that you can’t get the information that you need directly.  But if you can’t…

-Plenty of Other Students Who Could End Up Helping You: Perhaps one of the most important resources you have at a college campus are your fellow students.  While your skills are undoubtedly limited (don’t worry; everyone’s are), a college serves as a melting pot of individuals with different skills and talents.  You could, with limited effort, find an artist, a writer, a computer programmer (in any of the numerous computer languages that you might need), an accountant, a skilled translator, or any number of other specialized (pre-)professionals, many of whom would be happy to meet with you and help you to build your business (for the chance to share in the potential profits, of course).

So, quite a few advantages held by the students (not that surprising, given the number of companies, particularly online companies, started by college students *cough*Facebook*cough*).  But current employees have their own advantages when it comes to starting a business on the side.

Workers of the World, Unite (And Start Companies of Your Own)!

-No Homework: It’s easy to forget if you haven’t been in college for a while (I certainly did), but while the hours you spend sitting in a lecture and copying down notes/sleeping are limited, the hours you’re expected study outside of class aren’t.  Between writing papers, doing practice problems, and simply studying, it’s easy to turn preparing for your classes into a full time job (particularly if you follow the adage to spend 2 or 3 hours preparing and studying for each hour you spend in class).  While working for forty hours a week at a job eats up a lot of time, so does spending every other weekend studying for another test.  Speaking of which…

-Only One Boss (At Least, Most of the Time): It’s a rare full time student who is only taking one class (most schools frown on that type of thing), so most likely if you are a student, you have 4-6 different professors, all teaching different courses.  (To say nothing of lab instructors, supplementary instructors, TAs, etc.)  As hard as it can be to keep up with the demands of one boss, having to keep up with the studying and assignments from half a dozen professors, most of whom have no problem scheduling tests and assignments that end up conflicting, can prove to be nigh impossible.

And here we have an white collar fellow, similarly hard at work

-Money, Money, Money: As a general rule, students aren’t paid for going to school.  (Even us grad students don’t exactly rake it in.)  If you’re a full time student who’s not working on the side, chances are you don’t have much money available to put into side projects.  While there are side jobs that can be started with no (or small amounts of) money, being a full time worker and getting a regular income can give you many times as much, providing a decent starting capital for any of your entrepreneurial aspirations.  (Assuming you don’t spend more than you earn, which hopefully, if you’ve been following my blog, you aren’t.)

Alright, so clearly there are some advantages to being a wage slave who wants to break into a side project, as well.  That just leaves us with one question…

Which Group Has An Easier Time Doing Side Work: Students or Workers?

Well, as with many such questions, the answer is ‘it depends’.  As mentioned at the beginning, I’ve been running this blog as both a student and as a worker, and there are challenges aplenty in both situations.  (Even when unemployed, when limited time is much less a factor, there are difficulties, from limited money to (at least in my case) an undeniable pessimistic sensation.)

The key to starting something like a blog or any other source of passive income is to play to your strengths and use what you have available.  If you’re a student who has free time (also known as ‘time to party’) and talented, enthusiastic friends to join you, starting an online company could be your ticket to financial success.  On the other hand, if you are the typical worker, you might not have the time during the week to start another job, but you can use some time on the weekends to research investments and put your money to work.  The key is simply to apply the resources you have available to the task of increasing your income, using whatever methods seem to fit you better.  Regardless of your work/school situation, enjoy the challenge of building up a side income!

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I was reading through some of the newest comments I’ve gotten for my ‘Unemployment and Motivation‘ post (still one that attracts the most attention, thanks in no small part to MSN featuring it in a story), and something that was left in the comments made me think.  (Yes, I do read and attempt to respond to all the comments I receive, even if it takes me a while.)  A reader who called him- or herself DW left a message about going abroad to find employment opportunities, since all the jobs seem to have been outsourced from the US.

That got me thinking.  There does seem to be an increasing number of people who are going abroad to make their fortune, or at least are considering doing so.  (Austin of Foreigner’s Finances has been living that dream since before he started blogging, to cite just one example, and he seems to enjoy his life greatly.)  Add to that the fact that people have been coming to the United States to find a way of making a living since before there even was a United States, and going to a foreign country to work and live has a rather long history.

Plus, this could be the view out your window

Which brings us to the question I raised in the title of this post: Should you outsource yourself?  Is it worth going to a foreign country in order to find employment?  Do the pros of going abroad outweigh the cons?  Well, let’s look a bit closer:

Let’s Go Abroad! – Pros

-Exposure to a Foreign Culture: One of the biggest reasons we go to foreign countries, whether to work or simply to visit, is the opportunity to experience a new and different culture.  While you might get a superficial idea of what a country is like from a two week visit, working in a foreign country for a year, a semester, or even a month will allow you dive deeper, getting a better feel for the country and immersing yourself deeper in the culture.

-Building Connections Around the World: In the same vein, working abroad allows you the opportunity to meet and get to know people in cultures and parts of the world to which you’d otherwise never have exposure.  While visiting gives you opportunity to see the sights, take some photos, and maybe grab some souvenirs, living and working in a foreign country presents the opportunity to dive deeper into the culture and form connections with the people there.  If you’re hoping to have a collection of friends from all over the globe, there are few ways to do so more effectively than spending some time working abroad.

-Money, Money, Money: Let’s be honest, one of the biggest reasons to work abroad is the same as the main reason we work, period: Money.  Just like working at home, working abroad is the opportunity to earn money.  But because you are working in a foreign country, which uses a foreign currency, you have exchange rates and different costs of living thrown into the mix, as well.  If you move to a country with a lower cost of living, where your dollar (or pound, or Euro, depending on where you are reading this) can stretch further, your savings may be enough to provide you with a higher standard of living abroad, or last longer than you thought in said country.  In a similar manner, a strong exchange rate for the foreign currency you are making could lead to higher levels of wealth when (or if) you go back to your home country.  Think of it as similar to Forex investing; profiting off the differences in exchange rates, and the changes in said rates over time.

Let’s Stay Home! – Cons

-The Language Barrier: This may or may not be a problem, depending on where exactly you do (and what language(s) you speak), but it could end up being a doozy.  Particularly if you’re an American, you may not have any skill speaking in a foreign language, and if you move to a non-English speaking country, there will inevitably an adjustment period as you try to learn the language and otherwise get acclimated to your new situation.  Even when you learn enough to communicate with the citizens of your new country of work, you’re still likely to have an accent and get funny looks from the natives, even if you could otherwise pass for one.  Speaking of which…

-Distrust and Isolation from the Natives: Let’s be completely honest here: not every country is warm and welcoming of foreigners who want to work in their borders.  In the US, you can see this in the reactions that immigrant workers get when trying to cross the borders to find a job.  Yes, there are countries that will welcome you, even encourage you to come and work in their borders (to go back to Austin, he’s working as an English teacher in Japan, a position I’ve been led to understand the Japanese highly encourage Americans to take), but in many places, you could find yourself mistrusted, or even feared, by your new country mates.

-Homesickness: Unless you have no friends or family that you’re leaving behind, you’re liable to miss your home at one point or another.  While the numerous advances in communication and travel technology make it much easier to stay in contact, even across the globe, there’s still no way to work in one country and still climb into bed with your significant other in a country hundreds, even thousands, of miles away (although, the first person who invents such a method will find themselves with a LOT of orders from eager business travelers, among others).  Depending on your personal life, this fact alone could destroy any hope of living abroad; at the very least, it is something you should consider.

Should You Seek Your Fortune Abroad?

As you can probably guess, there’s no hard and fast answer to whether it is better for someone go abroad in order to make money.  I think, thanks to improvements in communications and transportation technology, as well as the increasing mobility of people throughout the world, that it’s easier than ever before to go abroad, whether for a short period or for the rest of your life, to find work, and to live in a foreign country.  (Even one where you don’t speak the language) But whether that’s the right choice for you is up to you and your loved ones.

Would you consider working abroad?  If you have worked abroad, would you recommend it to others?  (I’m looking at you, Austin!)  Do you think that advances in technology make it easier to work abroad nowadays?

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Well, I’ve completed three days on the job, so I thought I would share a little bit about how my new position is working out.  I’m a Quality Control Technician working at a company called Sharp, which serves to package numerous commonly encountered drugs, both prescription and over the counter.  Currently, I’m still in training, working on a packing line that fills pouches with a soluble allergy medication.

The work is pretty straight forward; I pull several samples off the line twice an hour, weighing each pouch and making sure the machine is filling the pouches to the proper level.  Once an hour, I also make sure that all the information is correctly being printed on the pouches, the boxes into which they are packaged, and the shipper containers we use for the boxes.  I also verify that the pouches are waterproof, subjecting them to vacuum conditions underwater.

It’s surprisingly time consuming; the weighing takes about fiften to twenty minutes (although I’m slowly getting faster) and checking the printing and waterproofness takes about ten minutes, meaning I have fairly little time each hour to get from one part of the lab to the other.  To say nothing of having more work to learn that will take even more time.

The busy schedule does mean that the night moves pretty quickly.  It’s not the most mentally challenging work by any stretch, but given the current economy and the trouble I’ve had jobs in the recent past, and I’m happy to have work, at least temporarily.  So far, things have been rather uneventful; do some work, learn a bit more, repeat.

However, last night was an exception: one of the girls working on the production line ended up fainting.  I don’t think it was anything to do with the lab itself; although it is a bit on the warm side, it was far from hot.  There is powder that we use to fill the pouches that was in the air, so it’s possible she had a bad reaction to that (although, we’ve been packaging the same compound the whole time I’ve been working, so she probably would have had a reaction earlier).  It was startling, but the paramedics were called in, and hopefully, she will be healthy and happy by tonight.

Some excitement, then, of the less than good variety.  But, so far it’s been a pretty good week, and I do like this position.  We will have to see where things go from here.

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