Jungle Boyz
Posted on January 20, 2008
Filed Under Weblosophy
I live in the jungle in Thailand and make my living on the internet
yes I do admit it. The closet shopping mall is a 4 hour drive down the mountain to Chaing Mai. But for some odd reason, I have DSL in my house and with internet I am a step away from the rest of the world.
I left the Bay Area permantly in 2001 on a one way ticket to India. At this point I was 2 years out of College and already fed up with the Bay Area rat race. I remember saying to myslef that even if I went and achieved all of my dreams and goals, I would still shurg and be unsatisfied.
So I left for the Jungle, and in the process creating an virtual operation using my network of dropout developers from across North America and Europe (Thai developers are good with Graphics, but cant be trusted with code) who all hide out in Thailand never wanting to go back to their country of orgin.
It is a life of midnight VOIP calls to California, stuffed envelopes passed at girly bars in exchange for code and a few Hong Kong incorporations. But I get to live in the jungle. My village has about 5,000 people and in the mornings I can drive my motorcycle ten minutes to a natural hot spring bath.
We put up websites for love and for profit.
- Corporate customers from across the globe
- Design and promotion of our own affiliate marketing sites
- Sites and campaigns for good causes
- personal experiments and weblogs
- This interesting Web 2.0 Social Startup that we are building in conjunction with partners from the Bay Area.
All in all our operation is virtual. the only tangible things that we touch are the computer and the cash from the ATM.
So how did I do it?
Pure necessity.
When I first came to Thailand over 5 years ago I had a bit of savings from my previous job. Within a few years this was starting to dwindle and I was getting bored with philosophy and wanted to put it into action
- It starts with eBay. Collecting Antiques and Thai handicrafts and flipping them on the auction
- That soon dovetailed into a retail website dealing in Asian Antiques
- Eventually I realized that physical inventory and post offices is a fools game.
- Everything can be done as an affiliate for others and due to not having issues of scalability , the potential for profits was amazing
I wont tell you all my secrets, because then they wouldn't be secrets anymore, however I am a firm believer that the information is not so as important as the people implementing it. therefore I encourage you to regularly check back and I will share some of the tricks and strategies that allowing me to kick my feet up and mange my business from a little house deep in the jungle
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3 Responses to “Jungle Boyz”
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Hi there,
I’m doing a bit of research for television re corporate type people giving up their jobs / life, packing up and taking themselves and their families to live in the jungle – giving up consumerism, civilisation etc. Do you know of such people searching for an alternative way of life away from the rat race like you??
Best wishes,
Lisa McCann
Wow interesting story. Living in another country is tough though.
Congrats, sounds like you found a way to make a living in another country.