Weirdest Ways to Make Money Abroad

Most of them I don’t recommend

Living abroad as an English speaker can make you more or less of a commodity depending on where you live. I’ve found plenty of jobs where being a native English speaker was the one and only requirement. When I first moved abroad, I was teaching English in Moscow. While teaching English alone can easily pay the bills, I was always looking for another side hustle to start building a nest egg — a novel concept to me at 22. Throughout undergrad, I worked three part-time jobs simultaneously: office assistant, tutor, weekend waitress. The money I earned covered my living expenses, but never did I have a penny of savings.

In Moscow, for the first time, I started to work smarter instead of just harder. With these slightly kooky odd jobs, I made big bucks. Or rubles.

Teaching English to a “Businessman”

A businessman looking to improve his English can be a good gig to supplement your income as they usually offer higher hourly rates than other types of students. On the flip side, these very serious, very important businessmen are often prone to cancelling. My businessman, as I will affectionately refer to him, would cancel even 5 minutes before the lesson. His assistant would come out, hand me an envelope with my lesson payment, and say, “Mr. Busy is in a meeting now. We’ll see you Thursday as usual.”

Another time, he was rushing out of the front entrance as I walked up to the building. His raised eyebrows told me that he had forgotten our lesson again. He pivoted 45 degrees and beelined in my direction. “Perfect timing! I have to go across town. Can we do our lesson in the car today?” Already he was ushering me into the town car as he spoke. So, we chatted about his day until the car stopped thirty minutes later and I got into the metro. I used to like teaching him silly idioms like “a day late and a dollar short” hoping he would try incorporating one of them. It tickled me to picture his serious face yelling, “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush!” in a board meeting. Alas, after one too many late cancellations, his secretary stopped scheduling our lessons.

Teaching English to a Baby

Like a baby, baby.You know, the kind who make goo goo ga ga noises and nothing else? Yeah, I was paid to go teach English to a baby twice a week. I don’t know, maybe that’s a normal thing to do. I’m not specialised in infant learning but I just didn’t feel like there was any purpose to these lessons at all. I would show up to the house armed with my animal flashcards, puppets, and boombox full of English nursery songs. If you ask me, the baby was way too young to benefit from these lessons. While I embarrassed myself with song and dance, the baby sat clueless on her Mother’s lap. Even weirder yet, the Mother knew English relatively well. She could have taught her daughter the animals herself. I suspected that as a young mother she just wanted the company herself, so after the lessons I would have a cup of tea or coffee with her before leaving. Still, I couldn’t, in good conscience, keep this gig up for very long.

Children’s Theatre

On weekends, I used to wake up early to teach Drama classes for children ages 6–10. The idea was that they would learn English through acting warm-up games and role play. It’s actually super effective and engaging for kids. Every year, the theatre also hosts plays and productions for the children in English. In the name of learning English, I have dressed up and acted the part of a Witch, an owl, a mouse, and a Gruffalo. I remember stomping around the theater in my green Gruffalo costume, making the children scream with terror. At one point, I looked at my painted mouse face in the mirror and asked, “how the heck did I end up here?”

Honestly though, this was a great way to earn extra cash and I loved putting on the performances for the kids. If you live abroad, you could probably get involved in a similar way. If there’s not a children’s theater or English drama classes where you live and you feel qualified, why not start one?

Voice Acting

I always thought that voice acting was a profession that required loads of training and experience to break into the competitive field. Imagine my delight, when I got a FB message from an international group member asking if I could head to their studio the following day for a ‘project.’ Mysterious! After quick research to make sure the person and the studio were real and I wasn’t going to be kidnapped, I agreed. For fifty bucks an hour, I read the lines for the English dubbing of a Princess in a children’s film. After that, the same studio got in touch to record the audio for female video game characters, narrate a children’s audio book, and more. When you’re living abroad, random things just happen like this. You don’t have to be a professional, or even trained, to land yourself random opportunities like this. You never know what sort of odd job will crop up if you get involved in your host community.

TV Extra

Okay, this one is a bit of a cheat. While in Italy, my friend saw an Extras Casting Call for a new TV show by her favourite Italian director. The casting was specifically for American speaking and non-speaking extras roles. Why do we have to be American if we don’t speak???? It beats me. I witnessed some people at casting who had American passports but were native Italian speakers get turned away. Apparently your English level matters to the camera even if you’re not speaking? I told you that just speaking English can get your foot in some strange doors… So, my friend and I were both given the green-light to be extras (again, non-speaking). The cheat part is that we never showed up for the filming of the show. Still, the idea is a good one if you’ve ever fancied being on television. Of all the positions, this one was by far the least paying at minimum wage.

Dining at Restaurants

Once a week I would get to dine out at newly opened restaurants in Moscow for free. There are thousands of restaurants in Moscow offering every cuisine imaginable. It might not be a sign of a healthy economy, but restaurants are constantly opening and closing in Moscow. On the high street I lived on, the cafe and bar signboards change with semi-annual frequency. My job was to try the main dishes at new opening restaurants and to write up a short blurb about the food and atmosphere of the place to be posted on a Moscow food guide website. While this job did not pay, the complimentary meals were a worthwhile perk and definitely boosted my social status as a bearer of free food.

Online Troll

People joke about Russia churning out reams of fake online content. Are your favourite Twitter jokes written by Russian trolls? Possibly. I know for a fact that there are certain kinds of content being produced by trolls. I know because, for a short time, I was one of them. This is not a job or a fact that I am proud of. I only take solace in the fact that, as far as online trolling goes, I was miserable about it. A certain online gambling website paid me an obscene amount of money to make fake accounts and post advertisements of their website. This work was limited to poker and gambling forums. Moreover, every single time I made a post obviously plugging their website, I would get banned from the forum. Which meant I was just constantly creating new accounts just to get banned again. It was innocuous work. Mostly boring, repetitive, and really, really ineffective. I couldn’t believe they kept paying me to do it.

Poker Player

Eventually, the company must have realized that my efforts posting on forums generated little-to-no traffic. Instead of letting me go as they should have, they gave me a new task. See, in between getting banned from the online gambling forums, I was actually reading and engaging with other players. Somewhere in this process I got addicted to online poker, which my ‘boss’ found out about. So, he asked me to play on their website and post honestly about my wins and losses. This new task seemed more morally palatable to me. Plus, it combined writing and poker: two of my favourite hobbies. There’s only one thing I can say with certainty from this experience: gambling is addictive and online gambling sites are extremely hard to profit from.

I’m not claiming that these are the strangest jobs that exist in the world. Sure, one could be a panda taxidermist or a rare insect collector or a snake venom milker. Those jobs sound way more exotic than the ones I’ve listed here. Still, none of these jobs are your sort of run-of-the-mill Indeed posting. Not your average copywriter/ marketer/ sales representative position, anyway. And anyone who lives abroad has the chance to make respectable income or supplemental cash doing work they’ve never dreamed of before. Besides the financial incentives, I am infinitely grateful for all the kooky experiences I’ve had and all of the interesting peopleI’ve met along my travels.

I plan to follow up this post with another about how to find, and in some cases, make your own opportunities freelancing abroad. No matter where you go, work will not just fall into your lap. If you want to work and travel, it’s important that you know how to make the right connections. More on that next time.