Pranburi is a hidden gem two hours south of Bangkok. Phu-Noi, its white-sand beach, runs along Dolphin Bay. (The bay was named for a pod of rare pink river dolphins that call it home.) The beach is free from the hawkers and Jet-Skis found on more popular beaches in Thailand. And from there, you can bike to a national park and take a 20-minute hike through the jungle to explore some spectacular caves. One in particular has a statue of a much-revered Thai king inside a small temple. An opening in the roof of the cave allows sunlight to shine in.

I haven't visited Pranburi. A gentleman named Chris Clancy gave me the description I just gave to you. He's an American who “retired” from the rat race to live in Thailand. It had been a dream of his for years.

“In the evenings,” Chris says, “I like to play a round of golf at the government golf course. It's only 300 baht ($10) for 18 holes. Everyone is so friendly and helpful there. Last time out, I played with three Thai policemen who didn't speak a word of English. It was great fun!

“And if I feel like getting away for the weekend, I simply catch a cheap flight to Thailand's southern islands. Koh Samui or Phuket, the heart of Thailand's tourism industry, are about an hour away.”

Because Asia has some great budget airlines, he can afford to fly to neighboring countries, too. (Pretty much whenever he wants.) So far, he has visited Cambodia, Malaysia, Laos, Singapore, and China.

“When you live in Thailand,” he says, “you have an entire continent on your doorstep.

“How is Chris doing this? Not with a million-dollar retirement account but with the income from teaching English part-time.

“The job gives me the time to seek out and enjoy everything this remarkable country has to offer,” he says. “I get three months of vacation each year: March, April, and October.

Like Chris, my friend Madhu N moved from busy Delhi to a small town in the south of India called Coimbatore. She wanted to retire happily with her husband, away from the hustle and bustle of a big Indian metro.

As she explored and took her time setting up home in a new place, she decided to teach English in a nearby primary school. This was the start of her post-retirement career. She could work flexi-hours, stayed connected with the young and continued to impart a skill that she already had, thanks to her Convent education and graduation in English. All she did was a refresher course in English Language Teaching (ELT) online to get her updated on the new teaching methodologies.

For my friend, the association with the students gave her the opportunity to connect with more locals and their families. She was often invited over for tea to their homes, picking up recipes of vada-sambar as she chatted and got acquainted with the local customs. What's more, she could go off for weekends to nearby Kerala and take in the mountains at Munnar.

She managed to do this all because she didn't have to continuously dip into her retirement fund. The money she got from teaching gave her that little extra to indulge in her own small luxuries. But more than anything, her job as a teacher gave her a great sense of belonging to the district and its people. She attended cultural events, took part in festivals and even picked up the language.

English teachers wanted in India

The demand for English is not new to any of us. In a country where a majority of the schools are government run regional language schools, the number of students graduating with poor spoken and written English skills is on the rise. This is truer of tier two and tier three cities than of metros. But metros also have increasing numbers of students who are not proficient in the language for either further education or employability.

As India surges forward, the single factor that pulls many of our students down is their poor command over the English language. Their comprehension suffers and when they go into higher education, they are unable to cope with their studies. And this gets only further enhanced once they enter the workforce and language becomes more technical. It is here that you can play a role. You can look at how to improve the future of these bright minds. And what's more you can earn money while doing it. In India, both public and private school teachers are paid very well. And now with the influx of International Baccalaureate (IB) schools, the demand has only increased and the earnings have been enhanced.

And if money doesn't drive you, how about the opportunity to stay alive? To continue learning, researching and being with young students. Teaching is often more about passion than knowledge, it's about telling a good story, about learning and relearning, and about igniting young minds.

Discover New Countries As You Teach

You might not think of the ability to speak English as a financially valuable skill. But in many countries, it is. And you can make a pretty good living teaching it-even if you have no formal experience. If you're a native English speaker-and you are willing to complete a simple training course-you can get full- or part-time employment all over the world. And that can translate into a very nice retirement lifestyle. Consider the benefits…

You can live practically anywhere. Thousands of Indians are currently teaching English in many parts of Asia like China, the Middle East, and even in Africa. In fact, according to one TEFL website, South Korea and China hire 1,000 English teachers each month.

You can live your “perfect day.” Your schedule can be very flexible-especially if you do one-on-one teaching. (Which is often the most highly paid.) You can work just a few days per week or a few hours per day. This means that you can give yourself as much time as you like to do anything else that interests you. You can live in a city, in the country, in the mountains, or at the seashore. And you don't have to stay in any one place. Because the demand for English teachers is so great, you can go from one exotic location to another, as the spirit moves you.

Am I making this sound too good to be true?

I hope not. Because this is not a pie-in-the-sky idea. As I said, thousands of Indians-young and old -are living this lifestyle right now. And there are not nearly enough of them to meet the demand.

In selecting options for the Retire Next Year series, I have a number of criteria. So I ask myself these questions:

Is this a realistic lifestyle for many of my readers? Or will it work for only a few? Does it have an extra-income component? And will that be worth at least Rs 1000- Rs 2,000 per hour? Is the extra-income component flexible? Can it be done part- or full-time? Does that extra-income component require any special skills or certifications that are difficult to acquire? And finally-and most importantly: Is this something I'd be happy to do myself?

The option we are exploring this month-teaching English overseas-qualifies on all counts. If you are a fluent English speaker, which you are if you are reading this, and are willing to take a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course or two, you can do this.

Sara Beth Baxley, for instance, had no teaching experience. Even so, a school offered her a basic package given to first-year teachers in Hong Kong. This included her flight from home, health insurance, a furnished apartment in the heart of the city, a stress-free job singing with young Chinese children, and many weeks of paid vacations to travel to some of the world's most exotic corners. “It's a 12-month contract,” says Sara Beth. “No strings attached. My background is in Spanish and business, not education. But even I am able to teach English!”

It is certainly possible to make $50 (approx. Rs 3,000) per hour doing this. In some parts of the world (some Arab and Asian countries), you can make much more than that. And the hours can be very flexible. Some teaching jobs are part-time. Some are full-time. A baby boomer couple teaching English in South Korea report that they're actually saving $40,000 (approx. 24 lac rupees) per year!

Their expenses are very low. Housing is included in their deal. Cable, Internet, and utilities are inexpensive. They don't need a car, as they can use public transportation or take a taxi across town for less than $2 (approx. Rs 120). Their health insurance costs them less than $50 each per month. By the way, I have some experience teaching overseas myself. I taught English language and literature in Africa in the mid 1970s. I did it for two years. And those were two of the best years of my life. If I were retired and looking for a way to bring in some extra income, I would happily do it again

A Respected Identity

Often people interested in retiring abroad worry: What will I do when I get there? How will I stay busy?

Well, as an English teacher, you've already got an “identity” in town. A respected one, at that.

It positions you to meet people, make friends fast, discover what the country's culture is really like… and get paid to do it!

Steve Marchant, who's teaching in Quito, Ecuador, describes it this way:

“I can't think of a better way to integrate yourself into local society. For many Quiteños, having a private English tutor is quite a coup. They almost wanted to show me off.

“Suddenly, I had more invites than I could handle. Drinks out with young professionals… visiting school opening days of the children I taught… … weekend barbecues on sunny lawns…

“The end of the last evening class more than once saw me sitting on a sofa downing a beer with a student's family while watching Ecuadorian soccer.”

It's Incredibly Flexible

You may think of teaching English as something done in a classroom with young kids. And that is one option. But there are lots of others. For example, you can work as a private tutor for the children of wealthy families. Or you can work with businesspeople. Businesspeople in foreign countries are eager to improve their English skills. Why? Because English is the international language of commerce. I read one study that said that 80% of all business transactions are conducted in English. I've also heard that more than 1 billion people worldwide are learning English at any given time. You can also get a job with a college or university. Several of my friends are spending their retirement years doing just that. Point is, there's a market-a huge market-for teaching English abroad. It is a very doable way to fund your retirement. You don't have to work full-time. You can earn good money working 10-20 hours per week. Even if you teach in a school, you can limit your workload to a few classes.

What Courses You Can Take

Teaching English is a smart way to retire in your own country or overseas. It can provide you not only with extra income but with a rich and interesting lifestyle. Work is always more rewarding when you feel that what you are doing is meaningful.

Teaching English can give you that sense of purpose while allowing you the time to enjoy the fun, freedom, and adventure of being retired. No Teaching Experience Necessary. Really! As I said, it doesn't matter if you have never taught anything before.

There are many good TEFL programs. And nearly all of them will give you a certificate upon completion. These programs will familiarize you with the theory and the practice of teaching English as a foreign language. They will also provide you with lesson plans and exercises to help you build your confidence.

One program in particular gives you a step-by-step blueprint to show you how you can get an English-teaching career started. It is called Speak English and Get Paid: Your Guide to Teaching English Overseas for Fun and Profit. You can learn more about it or order it here.

Mastermind Winton Churchill and Kary Vannice, an experienced English teacher in Mexico, developed the course. Kary has taught for many years. She has taught elementary and secondary students. She has taught large and small classes and has given private lessons too. The program also gives you advice and insights from other people who are living the dream. For example: Bob Persiko, an American retiree living in Germany, is teaching business English. Bob will tell you how he got the job, despite being “unqualified” to teach.

Steven Johnson will give you the inside scoop on teaching English outside a classroom setting. He'll tell you how to get paying students within three days of arriving in a country… How a friend of his bet that Steven could start an English school by handing out business cards, and he did it! Steven will reveal insider secrets about how to find space to tutor in, free… Where to find groups of paying students in all sorts of unusual places… How to target professionals who need English for work… And lots more…

Here are some other resources for you to consider if you're serious about doing this:

Transitions Abroad allows you to search for teaching jobs by either region or country. The website also features links to programs for ESL training and certification.

i-to-i TEFL is a leading TEFL course provider. It has trained more than 127,000 people in the last 18 years. It offers both classroom and distance learning courses. It also has a job search engine for locating opportunities abroad.

CIEE: the Council on International Educational Exchange helps provide both TEFL training and job placement in seven countries, including an in-country orientation.

You Don't Need Much To Make a Start

In India, a degree in Bachelors in Education (B.Ed) is mandatory for schools and colleges but if you would like to take classes as visiting faculty, all you would need is a graduation degree, a reasonably good command over English, some amount of work experience and a willingness to teach and be amongst a young age group. You may also need to do a refresher course in teaching and particularly English Language Teaching (ELT). These courses can be done online as correspondence courses or you can even attend short courses that some institutes offer. British Council provides the Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CELTA) teaching course, an internationally recognised teaching qualification which follows a four-week curriculum designed by the University of Cambridge. CELTA is good for people with little or no previous teaching experience. It includes new ways of teaching language and one can gain an internationally recognised qualification. The course by British Council at their Chennai, Kolkata and New Delhi centers.

Another such course is available by American TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Institute's 3 weeks TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course in Kolkata and Kochi. This is an accredited course that can help you pick up work as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher while globetrotting. It imparts a comprehensive training on the skills and techniques required for teaching English abroad.

Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning offers a diploma course in English Language Teaching to help students develop proficiency in the methods of teaching English. This program trains students to learn different aspects of the English language, from a teacher's point of view.

In addition, several state universities also have courses in ELT. Depending on where you're located in the country, take a look at the courses and see what works best for you in terms of time and need.

If you think you might enjoy living overseas-even moving from one country to another every few years-this is a retirement option you should consider. English teachers are in demand from Ecuador to China… Spain to Mexico… Morocco to Thailand… Costa Rica to Bali. All over the world, there is a demand for people like you who speak English…

Teaching English overseas is fun-and it can give you a sense of purpose. (Something it's hard to get from golfing five days per week.)

Teaching English provides a flexible income that you can tailor to your own needs to fund the life you want. But the greatest benefit of teaching English overseas isn't the fact that it's a fun, flexible, meaningful way to fund your life. It's the richness of the life it hands you. As Kary puts it: The freedom and income that come with teaching overseas are great. But what I really appreciate is the gratitude of my students and the connections I make with them and with other people in the community. I didn't expect that…

The people who choose to teach are amazing people with such passion. And it's a real pleasure to get to know them. I've so enjoyed walking down the street and having my students introduce me to their parents. I love being invited to dinner…

Teaching English, I've had such a bright and vibrant and enriching experience overseas. And it's like that every day…

Best, Mark

*

Editor's Note:

In my professional career, I spent a lot of time living in China. When I spent a few weeks in a small apartment in Shanghai, I would routinely be fed 'ghar ka khana' by my neighbours, the Subramaniams from Bangalore. They had moved to China a year before, with a contract to teach English at a small private school. Neither of them were teachers before, but had chosen this path because they had wanted two things - early retirement, and a chance to experience life in another culture.

This experience was not new to me. In every place that I lived, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal, even Portugal, I had met Indians living there who would adopt me. Some ran Indian restaurants, other had businesses, and many were teachers. In fact, when I lived in Phnom Penh, one of my friends came to spend a few months living with me, and she made enough money through three months of teaching to then travel around Asia.

In the box titled 'You Don't Need Much To Make a Start' we have included resources that you can access - there are various options, some online ones, and others are classes. Certification is not always necessary to get English teaching jobs, but it will expand your options, and increase your monetary value as a teacher as well.

I have great respect for the teaching profession, and as a writer, I have faith in the power of good communication. But for me, nothing beats the experience of a new culture, whether it is in my country or another one. If you have spent your whole life living in one place, this is your chance to get out there and explore. And for that, you have a ready skill, and the world is your oyster.

Anisa Virji Managing Editor, Wealth Builders Club

A club member named P.D. recently wrote me to complain about some advice I'd given. He wrote that he didn't have “lacs of rupees to invest in real estate” and that he'd tried copywriting five years ago but found he wasn't “cut out to sit at a desk and write copy.”

“I need to start making MONEY NOW!! And I thought that was what the Wealth Builders Club was about.” I explained to P.D. that copywriting is only one of many wealth-building programs we provide for club members.

So far, the Extra Income Project has introduced members to copywriting, photography, blogging, and e-book publishing. I will be suggesting other moneymaking ideas (such as import/export and taking your hobby online) in future issues.

But I have a feeling that P.D. might not like any of those, as well. Why? Because he admitted in his letter that he was unemployed, and I didn't sense he was excited about pursuing more income (having it dropped in his lap would have been okay).

In answering his letter, I asked, “Why are you unemployed?

“Why aren't you out there washing windows or sweeping floors? There is no excuse whatsoever for being unemployed. I know the unemployment statistics, but anyone who is not seriously disabled can find some sort of work if they have the desire.

“If I were in your situation, I'd be working 15 hours per day. I'd find something-anything-to provide income now, and in my spare time, I'd research more long-term employment.

“So that's the first thing you must do. Get off your butt and go get a job!”

But the day after writing my letter to P.D., I woke up feeling a little bad. Not that he didn't deserve the tough love, but it's my job to give club members the specific advice they need. It doesn't matter whether they have the ambition and/or work ethic to act upon it. So I wanted to give P.D. something more tangible. I just didn't know what.

E-lancing is Big Business

I got my answer when I received a message recently asking if I'd like to write about e-lancing. (“E-lancing” simply means working as a freelancer through the Web.)

Curious, I did a bit of research into the subject. What I found amazed me.

It turns out e-lancing is already big business. And it's growing. As of the time of this writing, the website Elance.com reports more than 1 lac plus posted jobs in only the last 30 days.

Even more impressive, Elance reports that the total value of work done to date through its site alone is well over $ 1 billion. That's staggering! And Elance isn't even the biggest of this type of website.

It gets better.

According to a study released on Bitrebels.com, the average hourly rate of e-lancers with fewer than five years of experience is between $44.87 (approx. Rs 2,500) and $49.96 (approx. Rs 2,700)! For freelancers with five or more years, that number skyrockets to between $59.15 (approx. Rs 3,200) and $84.55 (approx. Rs 4,600)!

Now, I'm not saying everyone will be able to charge these rates right away. But even if you're making 50-70% of those rates, it's still great money.

This is big business, people!

I haven't been entirely ignorant of this. As a consultant to the publishing industry, I've seen how many of my clients have turned to the Internet to find the researchers, writers, and analysts they need.

And I have friends in the insurance, brokerage, and accounting industries who rely heavily on e-lancers for all sorts of jobs. There's demand for data entry, computer model development, customer service, and more.

I know prestigious architectural firms that use e-lancers to do design work for their hotel and restaurant clients. I also know doctors who use e-lancers to review and write précis on medical journals to help them keep up with developments in their fields.

I know dozens of direct marketers who routinely turn to the Internet to find the copywriters and graphic artists they need.

Yes, it is a big and growing industry.

Actually, I take that back. It's not really an industry at all. It's more like an enormous marketplace, bustling with eager employers searching out people with the skills, availability, and desire to do almost every conceivable kind of job.

Mala's Story

In my research, I came across a story about a Mumbai homemaker named Mala who was able to turn her many hobbies into cash flow. Mala is one of those people with boundless energy. Besides taking care of her family, she helps friends plan weddings and parties and creates handmade greeting cards. She even assists her husband in writing business reports.

One of her friends asked Mala why she did all of these things. Her answer? “Because I like to.” The friend suggested that Mala advertise her services on the Internet. Why not make money doing all of these things she likes to do, anyway?

Mala was skeptical. Especially when she failed to get the first several jobs she applied for. But on either the sixth or seventh try, she landed her first job.

The second came quicker. The third even faster than the second. Since she did great work, her clients kept returning. Before Mala knew it, she had more paid work than she had time.

With all of this demand for her services, Mala gradually increased her fees. Eventually, she was making more money per hour than her husband. And since she loved what she was doing, it wasn't truly “work”!

I thought of P.D. after hearing Mala's story. Here was something that even he could do. And despite being unemployed and feeling lost, he could do it immediately!

What Our Researchers Discovered

I'm really excited to be writing about e-lancing for the next Extra Income opportunity. This is not one opportunity but a thousand opportunities rolled into one.

After my initial research, I saw this was a great idea. And I got the WBC research team on the job.

They read everything they could on the subject. They tracked down leads, interviewed experts, and located several help programs for would-be e-lancers.

Here are some facts they discovered:

Data entry and customer service jobs used to dominate e-lancing. Most people have experience calling what they presume to be a local number only to find themselves talking to someone with an Indian accent. And this is where the opportunity continues to grow for Indians.

First, many of the large companies that were outsourcing to India through large companies because of the low costs, can now do so directly by employing e-lancers from India. Why? The large companies realized that the e-lancers produced better-quality and more cost-efficient work.

Second, the kinds of jobs advertised on an e-lance basis today are rapidly expanding. Data entry and customer service are still very much in demand, but employers are now seeking e-lancers for hundreds of other skills. These include:

Photography Graphic arts Translation Dictation services Marketing analysis Stock analysis Copywriting Property management services

There are far too many types to list them all here. Just visit any number of the e-lance websites and browse for yourself! You're going to be amazed at the volume of opportunities in the most obscure fields or niches.

Consider this: According to Elance.com, the fastest-growing jobs are now in legal services (176%), bookkeeping (75%), and accounting (88%).

Why the growth? In part, books or philosophies like Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Work Week have woken up working people to the possibility of making a good income working part-time on the Internet.

Why E-lancing Will Last

So what's going on with this growth? Will it last?

Absolutely. And here's why. The growth of the e-lance marketplace is largely because small businesses have begun to recognize the economics of hiring e-lancers. Many small companies can't afford to hire full-time researchers, writers, marketers, bookkeepers, accountants, programmers, and salespeople.

But they can afford to hire someone part-time to work from home… or possibly a beach. Why? What's the difference? Well, a part-time e-lancer doesn't require the company to pay full-time benefits, such as medical insurance and retirement plans.

Hiring an e-lancer also means the company avoids paying the cost of providing an employee with an office, as well as other on-location, overhead costs. As one expert put it, “Freelance workers give employers the skills they need on a fractional and affordable basis.” Don't miss what this means. E-lancing thrives when economies are bad. It's basically recession-proof, because hiring online is how companies save money when times are tough. This is great news for people like P.D.!

But companies aren't just turning to e-lancers because of cost savings, either. Increasingly, managers are looking online to find top talent.

Gary Swart, CEO of the online marketplace oDesk.com, writes, “Thanks to the growing adoption of online work, businesses can increasingly access talent on an on-demand basis, hiring online contractors from around the world so they can stay nimble and reduce overhead. Businesses are using online workers to extend their existing staff (often with talent they can't find locally) to launch resource- strapped microbusinesses, and even to create companies that are entirely virtual.”

Consider this statistic provided by Swart: “According to 82% of the millennials surveyed, within 10 years, many businesses will be built completely with virtual teams of online workers.” Wow. So where do you find these jobs?

There are countless websites that match employers with e-lancers. Two of the biggest and best we've found are Freelancer.in and Elance.com.

Toward the beginning of this essay, I detailed a few statistics from Elance. Let me revisit those and add to them. It will help show you just how big of an opportunity this is. In the past 30 days, Elance posted more than 1 lac plus new jobs There are 1,947,523 contractors on Elance The value of work done through Elance, to date, is $1,158,002,946 Some companies have paid rates on Elance as high as $150 (Rs. 9000) per hour…

You string together 20 of those hours in a week, and you have an income of $150,000 working half-time! And remember: Elance is just one of these online marketplaces. Hundreds more jobs are added every week on competing sites such as oDesk.com. How to Get Started With E-lancing

So if you're interested in e-lancing, let's talk about the action steps to take to get started. P.D., if you're reading this, here we go: Ask yourself: What skill or talent do I have that I can offer online employers?

A list of Indian sites

WorknHire.com, Freelanceindia.com, Freelancer.in, Instastudio.com, Dreamstarts.in, VentureHire.in, WorkMonk.com, Oncontract.com, Youth4Work.com, GharKamai.com

Get online and visit the following websites: a. Elance.com b. oDesk.com c. Guru.com d. Freelancer.com e. Project4hire.com. Post your services. If you're unclear what service you think you're good at, browse job postings to see if anything sounds like something for you.

Now, I know some of our older readers may not feel as comfortable as our younger ones with all of this. If that describes you, I've taken one more step. I've researched several online programs that help walk you through how to set up your e-lance business.

I don't have time to list them all here, but I've found one I'm really impressed with. It's called “21 Days to Your Global Freelancing Success.” It's a program that caters to those who are retired or near retirement. The program gives you a blueprint on how to take advantage of this opportunity. It takes you by the hand and walks you through the e-lance process, step-by-step. You can check it out here.

I know some of you may not want to dive right into a program. If this is you, I recommend you read the book Make Money Online as a FREELANCER: How to Build an Entire Career as an Online Freelancer. It will help answer questions you may have.

P.D., I hope you're reading this. Because this is my response to “I need to start making MONEY NOW!” E-lancing is an amazing opportunity to turn your skills into cash. Even better, you decide how much time to invest.

Remember, everyone-as I've written before-“You alone are solely and completely responsible for your current financial situation. Before you react defensively, read that sentence again. I didn't say you are the cause of your situation. I said you are responsible for it.”

So be responsible for taking action now! Ask yourself what you could do to make extra money now. Go to the websites. Post your services. Don't wait for the job fairy to drop money in your lap. Make it happen! And let us know how it works for you.

Best, Mark

Steenie Harvey describes her way of earning money as “the stuff of dreams… stress-free, romantic, fun.”

After dropping out of high school, Steenie took odd jobs inspecting bolts in a factory, waiting tables in a Chinese restaurant, even tending bar in a strip joint.

But today, she gets paid to visit blue-water beaches, wildlife sanctuaries in Borneo… open-air markets in Paris… Shanghai, Tuscany, the French Riviera, and more.

In a typical year, Steenie will make three or four trips to five or six destinations. Recently, she traveled to China, France, Spain, Portugal, Latvia, and the Bohemia region of the Czech Republic.

She makes her income by writing about the things she sees and does for guidebooks, magazines, newspapers, and websites. They pay her for her stories. Essentially, they pay her to travel.

And since most hotels, resorts, restaurants, and tourism bureaus want her to write favorably about them, they often roll out the red carpet for her stay, providing free meals, concert tickets, tour guides, accommodations, spa treatments, and more (though she admits that she doesn't write favorable reviews about not-so-favorable experiences).

“It's the best job in the world,” she says. “I get paid to sunbathe on white-sand Caribbean beaches, hike through mountain ranges in New Zealand, meditate in Indian ashrams, and tour Rome, Paris, London.”

A Partial Retire Next Year Opportunity

In this Retire Next Year essay, I'm going to introduce you to the wonderful world of travel writing. It's going to be a little different than our other Retire Next Year opportunities. How so? In most Retire Next Year opportunities, we alert you to jobs, careers, or businesses that provide you with enough income to pack up your bags and retire to some exotic location within a year.

The idea is not to make a boatload of cash… that's what our Extra Income series is for. Retire Next Year opportunities are, rather, about things you can do to supplement your income from a pension. And they're opportunities that can free you from where you've lived and worked your whole life.

Travel writing is the perfect hybrid opportunity. It can give you the taste of freedom a few months out of the year to travel when and where you wish, without making a major upheaval by moving to another continent.

It can be full or part-time. It requires no special qualifications or education (remember, Steenie never graduated high school). And it provides the income seeker with an expanding market of possibilities - all without the anchor of an office, a boss, or employees.

Your desk is a table and chair in a nearby coffee shop. The view outside your window a beach, city, or mountain range. Your choice.

The only requirement is that you write about the things you see and do while you're there. It's a skill you need to learn. But it can be taught. And if you learn to do it well, you'll find yourself in high demand. More on this in a minute.

From Bolt Inspector to Traveling Celebrity

Before she was a travel writer, Steenie's life wasn't so exciting. Fifteen years ago, she was working 50 hours per week typing invoices and taking calls from disgruntled customers in the English Midlands. She also answered to a boss she describes as “very grumpy”.

Then her husband lost his job. And they thought, “Why not move away? Try a completely different lifestyle?” So they sold what possessions they had and bought a bargain-priced country cottage in the west of Ireland.

Soon after moving into their new cottage, Steenie found an ancient manual typewriter in the garden shed. The same day, she came across an ad in the Sunday newspaper that said something like “You Too Can Have a Career As a Writer.” It got her thinking.

A Little Affirmation

She decided to bash out a humorous article about her search for a home in Ireland. She wrote about her travails looking for a home for $10,000. She included anecdotes about real estate agents taking her and her husband to see horrible huts with tin roofs and no bathroom facilities.

She wrote about shacks with no front doors, a farmhouse where cows were using the kitchen as a barnyard. Then she finished the story with a description of the cottage that they eventually bought.

It was the first thing she'd ever written since leaving high school. She didn't have a clue about how to present an article. Her effort featured single-spaced typing, thickly whited-out passages covering all of the errors she made, and a dog-eared left corner to hold the pages together.

Despite her lack of knowledge, the property editor of an English daily newspaper called The Independent published it. The paper paid Steenie $180 (about 10,000 rupees)-not a ton of money, but it was very gratifying nonetheless.

Better still, the editor asked Steenie to write a follow-up essay on the kind of homes that were on sale in western Ireland. She told me it was an easy piece to write. “I simply visited local real estate agents and asked what they had for sale.”

She thought, “Surely this is the end of it. How many people could be interested in reading articles about buying Irish cottages?” In fact, she got offers from three more English newspapers: The Guardian, The Daily Express, and London's Evening Standard.

Her Big Break

Then she came across a monthly publication called International Living in the United States. She sent a note to the editor, who wrote back saying that she had been looking for a freelance writer in Ireland. Steenie had just gotten lucky!

Fifteen years later, Steenie is a highly paid, well-respected and well-known travel writer. She's written hundreds of stories for International Living and others- about not only Ireland but also destinations as far-flung as Malaysia and Mexico.

These days, editors of travel magazines actually pay her expenses as she travels the globe reporting on their behalf… The Size of the Market

It may seem hard to believe that you can generate regular extra income writing about your travels. But if you understand how the industry works, it won't seem so odd.

Food for Thought

When you learn the tricks of travel writing, you will have the basic skills you need to write about wine and food. You may not have the knowledge, but that is relatively easy to acquire. The point is that travel writers often find additional work writing restaurant reviews. It's possible to get a gig writing about your eating and drinking experiences in your own locality. First, consider the size of the industry. Around the world, according to the World Tourism Organization, tourism generates $1.2 billion in spending per day. That's per day!

With an industry of that size, the market for travel writers is enormous. Tens of thousands of magazines, newspapers, and newsletters-print and Internet-all over the world are in constant need of new copy.

And that's just the press. Resorts, hotels, travel agencies, tour organizers, and golf resorts worldwide need travel and “destination” writing.

Cities and towns worldwide spend billions on travel and destination copy. (The Bahamas, for example, spends about $70 million on tourism every year.) And then there are the airlines, railroads, and cruise lines and all of the smaller companies related those industries.

The Indian tourism sector is likewise enormous. In 2013 it generated revenue of 107671 crore rupees , growing at an annual rate of 14%.

6.97 million tourists visited India, and over 16 million Indians traveled internationally. If you count domestic tourists (and you should, the number is huge - 1145 million) you will see that there are a lot of people for you to write for.

As you can see, the travel market is huge, the demand is giant, and the need is constant.

Income Potential

Top travel writers make big money. But you shouldn't expect big money if you decide to take up this path. The market, as I've explained, is enormous. But there are a lot of out-of-work writers to compete with.

Still, the growing need for new articles outweighs the competition you're up against, and there's plenty of room for beginners to earn between Rs 2,000 to 20,000 per article, more if you provide good pictures.

Add to that the free experiences you gain by traveling as a travel writer, and you'll quickly see how one trip can turn into a small profit and several thousand rupees worth of free travel.

Here are a few examples from real people, not professional writers, who are doing this now part and full-time…

Rishad M has traveled the world over. He started off doing it purely for the love of travel and saw it as an investment, now he sees it as a profession because he writes and sells pictures from his travels. He has written for Hindustan Times, Jetwings, National Geographic Traveller India edition, Travel & Leisure South Asia edition, to name just a few. He has become such a big name in travel writing that his recently published book is making waves as well.

Another travel writer, Shivya N quit her corporate job and decided to travel the world in 2011. She began writing anywhere and everywhere until she made it big and now she her travel stories have appeared in BBC Travel, National Geographic Traveller, The Times of India and Lonely Planet, among others. She was recently featured on Femina's “35 Under 35” power List of Indian women.

All you need to do is get out and start writing. You already know you can start a blog, to get your writing out there. You can start a website which is another extra income idea I will send out soon. And you can start with photography as well.

Like Taking Pictures?

Open up any magazine, and what do you find yourself looking at first?

That's right. Pictures. Photographs!

There's a simple reason. No matter how compelling and interesting the writing might be… photos help grab a reader's attention.

Now, as a travel writer, you usually won't have to worry about providing photographs for the major publications.

But some publications will pay you handsomely for the right pictures. And when you offer an editor a full package-article with photos-it's often a much more persuasive pitch. Travel writers report feeling that some of their articles wouldn't have been published if they had not had the pictures to illustrate them.

Plus, photos can really up your income. A freelancer I know, David Morgan, traveled all across Asia for six months. He dined with the privy council to the king of Thailand… met the late Mother Teresa… shook hands with the Dalai Lama. He took a weeklong, four-wheel-drive journey across Tibet. He went trout fishing in a pristine mountain stream in Bumburet, a hidden valley in the Hindu Kush. He also got to see secret religious ceremonies that outsiders rarely witness.

The icing on the cake was that he got a profitable book deal on the photos from his trip. Not only did his connections SAVE him money, but he also actually MADE money… over $6,000!

We have explored turning your photos into cash in a previous Extra Income opportunity. Using your writing and photos together can be a great boost.

Fringe Benefits

Travel writing can become a full-time career, as it is for Steenie and Shivya, or something you do on the side-a way to justify a vacation and defray some of the costs.

However you approach it, you are likely to find that nothing beats traveling as a travel writer.

You'll never travel like a typical tourist again. As a travel writer, you get a VIP card that can make all of your future travel adventures amazing, first-class experiences.

In researching this piece, I learned about a tiny hotel on the Caribbean island of Antigua, a barge company in Europe that organizes luxury trips on European canals, and a travel brokerage in the United States with nights spent at fine country inns and hotels-all eager for new writers.

And when you tell people you're a travel writer, you'll discover that they will bend over backward to ensure you enjoy your experience. Nothing's too much trouble.

You'll get access to the VIP entrance… served the best meals… escorted to the most expensive seats… offered a private tour…

I know many travel writers, and they tell me this happens all the time.

And let's not forget how much more interesting this makes you at cocktail parties. “What have you been up to, M?” “Oh, you know, the usual… I was in Keraa last week covering the annual boat race festival. Next month, my wife and I are taking a sailboat cruise around Turkey… You?”

And you don't have to jump in with both feet. Lots of travel writers I know simply do this on their once-a-year vacation. Instead of going to Disney World, they pay a whole lot less and go a whole lot farther-the Greek Isles, Morocco, Singapore, Bali, or Hawaii.

Did I Forget to Say that Travel Writing Can be Romantic?

A very successful travel writer, recently told me this story.

Manisha D was in Spain and landed the best seat in the house for a world- class flamenco show-even though people in line behind her were turned away.

[“Flamenco” is a style of dancing, characteristic of the Andalusian gypsies (in Southern Spain). It is strongly rhythmic and involves vigorous actions, such as clapping the hands and stamping the feet.]

She found herself at the door of a small, very well-respected venue for flamenco.

It's in the basement of a renovated 19th-century mansion. It's not one of the tourist traps where travel agents book busloads of foreigners for a “traditional dinner and a show.”

This is a place where the locals go. Everyone was dressed to the nines. And if you know Spain at all, you know we're talking very elegant and classy.

The evening Manisha was there, it was packed. There was a line out the door. She stood in it. But she figured she'd be lucky if she got a seat, given how small the space was-and how many people were ahead of her. (And how glamorous they all looked!)

Once she got inside and down the stairs, she could see that except for one table upfront near the stage, the only other available seats were at a handful of tables in a back corner. She figured that she could still “soak up the atmosphere” from there-but that she really wouldn't see much. Still… she wanted to stay…

Just one gentleman stood in line in front of Manisha. He was pressing cash into the maitre d's hand. Or trying to, anyway. The maitre d' was having none of it. He just kept saying, “No, I'm sorry sir, but I cannot seat you up there… ”

When it was Manisha's turn to ask for a seat, she quickly explained who she was… and the maitre d' smiled broadly, motioning for her to follow him…

He escorted her right to that table in the front. Right next to the stage. The people behind her in line were clearly wondering who she was.

She's not some well-known celebrity. She's not one of the super-wealthy elite, either.

So how did she break all barriers? She's a school teacher who happens to do travel writing. She was simply on a couple weeks' holiday in Spain with her best friend. (Her friends got to sit up front too.) And she and her friend spent the next couple of hours enjoying drinks and the best seats in the house.

You see, the maitre d' was thrilled at the prospect of her possibly writing about his establishment in an upcoming article. And he treated her accordingly.

This is the kind of thing that can happen if you choose this path.

How to Get Started

I began this essay with the story of Steenie Harvey, who got into the business entirely through her own efforts. She started her travel-writing career from scratch, with no contacts, connections, or blueprint on how to succeed.

It's still possible for you to tackle it on your own, but there is no reason to take on that kind of challenge.

There are several books on Amazon that can teach you about travel writing. Here are a few highly rated books for you to consider:

Lonely Planet Travel Writing Travel Writing: See the World. Sell the Story. Travel Writing 2.0: Earning Money From your Travels in the New Media Landscape.

However, if you're really serious about getting into travel writing, there is one great program to teach you the ropes that's now available and that I can recommend.

This solid program, brought to you by American Writers & Artists Inc. (AWAI), will teach you what you need to know-from the basics of writing travel copy to how to get your first job. I can attest to the quality of the program because I've read it. You guys already know I trust AWAI for their quality writing courses, and this is one of them. I've also seen the hundreds of unsolicited testimonials AWAI has received from happy customers.

Here are a couple:

“In the end, I made about $1,000 from my magazine and website articles (not including reprints). And I saved about $1,800 in travel expenses and got guided tours. Not at all a bad deal for a lengthy vacation in the warm Arizona sunshine, out of the wet Seattle winter- a vacation I would have gladly paid for.” - Roy S.

“I signed on with an Internet travel magazine, where I don't get paid for the assignments… but I calculate that I've received over $12,000 worth of perks from them.” - Carolyn H.

The Ultimate Travel Writer's Program provides many benefits that you won't find in the books listed above.

To find out more about travel writing and if this is for you, AWAI has put together a detailed special report for Wealth Builders Club members. I will send you this report soon.

If you want to experience the Retire Next Year lifestyle for a few months out of the year without physically relocating to an overseas country (or if you just want an excuse to travel more often this year and do it in a way you never could as a typical tourist), travel writing may just be for you.

Best, Mark

When Kathy Scopin turned 40, she signed up for a 13-day bicycle trip across Italy. It was a life-changing experience. Since then, she has traveled to Italy every year. Each trip has been a pleasure, expanding her knowledge of the country.

Traveling to Italy every year may sound expensive. But Kathy doesn't pay a nickel. On the contrary, people pay her!

Kathy's first trip to Italy so impressed her that she decided to create a little business. She wanted to replicate the experience for others. She called it the “My First Trip to Italy” tour.

The first tour she arranged was an 11-day “Italian Sampler.” It took guests to Rome, Florence, and Venice and taught them Italian-specific travel skills (such as cultural sensitivity). Her tour made her guests' experience of Italy far richer than had they gone alone.

“The trip started in Venice and concluded in Rome,” Kathy remembers. “We spent the middle of our journey in a luxurious four-star Tuscan villa high in the Florentine hills.

“There, we enjoyed olive oil tasting… an afternoon cooking with the resort's renowned chef… relaxing by the pool overlooking the stunning, verdant valley below… horseback riding… art, architecture, food, wine. And the pleasures of shopping.”

“It was an amazing experience,” she said. But what was more amazing was that she had all of her expenses paid and came back with several thousand dollars in her pocket.

How to Get Paid to Have Fun

Today, I'd like to talk about a fun and interesting topic: how to get paid to travel.

As you know, our “Retire Next Year” series offers outside-the-box suggestions that could allow you to pack up your bags and retire to some other place within a year.

You'll be able to create additional income from some of these opportunities. But making tons of money isn't the main focus of this series.

More importantly, I offer these ideas because I want to inspire you to consider alternative retirement lifestyles.

Today's idea gives you a unique opportunity to make money, travel, or potentially relocate to your dream destination. And it's one of my favorite ideas because it offers the chance to do something I personally love: travel the world.

I've already talked to you about travel writing as an opportunity to recoup expenses or just make some money. Today's topic allows you to travel in serious luxury without creating even a small dent in your pocket.

Think about the destinations you'd like to see: Paris, London, Rome… Thailand, South Africa, Brazil…

Or think about your passions: golf, cooking, hiking, spirituality, gardening, bird watching, writing, art, yoga, wines, etc.

Now combine the two fantasies into one amazing dream:

Hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro? Practicing yoga in Thailand? Taking cooking classes in Tuscany? Hiking to Machu Picchu? Golfing in Scotland and Ireland? Cruising through the Greek Isles on a sailboat?

Whatever it is that lights you up, you can design it, enjoy it, and even get paid for it.

Welcome to the world of being a freelance tour guide. Here, you can create any experience you want and then have other people pay you to enjoy it.

You can easily design and lead one to four tours per year… maybe more. And you can make anywhere from 2-7 lac rupees per vacation. It's not huge money, but it's a nice little bonus after getting all of your expenses paid.

If you like the idea of other people funding your travels, doing what interests you, and earning money, too… you should consider starting your own tour business.

Do You Have What It Takes?

What does it take to be a successful tour operator? I asked Cynthia Morris, the author of Leading Tours for Fun and Profit. She identified the following traits:

You must love to travel

You must enjoy sharing your knowledge with others

You don't mind being in charge sometimes

You enjoy being around like-minded people

You are an organized worker

You might not know this, but I have been in the travel business for more than 30 years. It was never a full-time job, yet I've owned several travel, tour, and seminar businesses. These include Opportunity Travel, which operates out of Delray Beach, Fla., my hometown.

What I've learned about the travel business isn't a great deal. But I have learned a few key facts.

You won't earn much if your only services are booking airfare and hotels. The real money comes from arranging specialized tours.

The reason is simple: If you are booking conventional travel packages, your customers are going to be cost conscious. They will be comparing your prices with dozens of other similar packages.

Thank you for all of the material and wonderful advice. Club member DC But when you design a unique trip, an adventure-one that has few or no competitors-you can charge more or less as much as you want. But to do this, you must give your customers a great value.

At Opportunity Travel, for example, we pay the bills with conventional travel bookings. But we make our profits by designing specialized tours for people who are interested in living, investing, and buying property overseas.

Because we are providing our customers with unique experiences, it would be nearly impossible for them to do this on their own. As a result, we enjoy gross profits of $1,000 or more per person. Specialized tours are where the profits lie.

Starting Small

Like everything else we recommend at the Wealth Builders Club, we wouldn't want you to jump into this business without a parachute. We base the suggestions that follow on taking a slow and careful start. We want you to avoid costly mistakes.

For example, your vacation plans today are likely based on what you can afford. And that may be limited. You could begin by planning one tour per year. Instead of paying, say, 2 lac rupees for a mediocre one-week vacation at Disney World, you could have an amazing vacation in Europe, China, or Africa. Even better, you come back with an extra 2-7 lac rupees in your pocket.

That's not a bad way to start a second stream of income.

A friend of mine, Hamida, a professor of cultural studies at the New School in New York goes home to India every summer to visit her family. After India and before she returns to New York she takes an all-expense paid trip. Last year was a cultural tour of Scotland. This year it was a cultural tour of Turkey. She'll enjoy two long vacations, earn a few lac rupees, and get to talk about the cultures she loves so much already.

Here's how it works: Say your passion is photography and you've always wanted to see the great pyramids of Egypt. You do some research and design a travel itinerary.

It will take you to the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, with stops to see the Sphinx and the other amazing desert destinations. You research hotels and land transportation and decide on an itinerary-the one that is perfect for you.

Then you lock down the prices-everything included. Assume it comes to 1.5 lac rupees. You add Rs 15,000 (10%) for overages and a profit margin of, say, Rs 85,000 for yourself. So the total sum you charge each person comes to 2.5 lac rupees.

You contact a group of like-minded friends and family members. And then you run a few ads on the Internet. Five signups will give you an extra 4.25 lac rupees. That would cover your costs. Another five will put 4.25 lac rupees of pure profit in your pocket. If you get 15 people -which is about all you'd want-you'd have a free trip, plus 8.5 lac rupees in cash.

BP is a friend who got into this business several years ago. She wanted to do something related to travel in Europe. She had a passion for gourmet food, great wine, and shopping. First class all the way.

So that's the type of tours she designed: first-class visits to small, European cities for affluent women. Her first trip was a success-and it consisted entirely of her friends! (I would have gone, but I didn't fit the gender.)

Of course, it's not quite as easy as I've just made this sound. To be successful, you have to have that spirit of adventure to put together a tour. You would have to research well, double-check your facts, get all agreements in writing, stay organized, and then have a working checklist to make sure everything on the tour goes smoothly.

In addition, to make the most profit, you need to know where to advertise without spending all of your money. How to negotiate reduced-priced hotel rooms for you and your guests, and the best ways to add value to your tours so you can price them competitively and still make a profit.

A few years ago, Cynthia put all of this advice into an inexpensive guide that's been helping people plan trips from Paris to the Philippines and turn them into a profit

A Small Critique

Note: My one complaint, if there is one, is in the bookkeeping section. Clearly, Cynthia is an artist and travel lover… not a businesswoman

If you're already experienced in business building and familiar with budgets, you should just skip this chapter. If you're not, Cynthia does a great job of laying everything out for the complete novice. Today, the American Writers & Artists Inc. Travel Group publishes her program. And it's got everything you need.

I reviewed it for this essay. It is comprehensive, thorough, and easy to follow. Cynthia covers topics such as what it takes to turn a profit, what sort of skills and attitudes you need, what contacts and information sources you need to get started, and how to choose destinations and plan trips.

She also covers pricing, marketing, and bookkeeping.

Here are some highlights I noticed going through her program:

Flavor: Location and pricing are important, but the most important thing is deciding on the “flavour” of your trip. Is it fancy? Gourmet? Adventurous? Surprising?

Lodging: Comfort is key. It should have the right flavour, but the comfort of your guests is critical. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable when they retire after a day of adventure. What kind of flavour will your trip have? What sort of lodging might be appropriate?

Pricing: This is an essential aspect of a successful tour. To determine this, look to the flavour of the tour. This will help guide the buying decisions you have to make. Plan a rough itinerary. Get a general idea of costs. Remember that costs are always relative to the time of year. Estimate conservatively because of currency fluctuations and unexpected expenses

Marketing: At first, focus close to home-relatives, neighbours, friends, family, and people you know from church, school, etc. These people are your best leads. Invite them and tell them to invite their friends, family, and neighbours.

Creating Delight: Ask how you can exceed your customers' expectations. Cynthia creates a travel kit, including a book that customers can use to write notes and draw pictures, hold on to metro tickets, mints, soaps, etc.

Another story before I tell you more about Cynthia's program:

Himanshu S is an exceptional photographer and father of two kids. He conducts photo safaris every year in India and abroad. These trips are planned well in advance and he markets them through Facebook and e-mailers. He does enough research on the place and chooses exotic still feasible destinations for beginners in photography.

Through his trips, he imparts photography training as well as takes the participants on a tour to a completely new place. They click away in South African forests, discover a new civilisation, eat new foods and make great friends. All this while he makes money and enjoys his passions of photography and travel.

Sample Itinerary: Women Writers of Paris Tour with Cynthia Morris

This version of the itinerary is a draft to give you an idea of the layout of our days. The itinerary may change; you can expect a final version when you arrive. We may need to change our plans at the last minute, so please keep that in mind.

Monday, September 4th Acclimating By 3:00 Arrival and check in at the hotel 4:00 Luxembourg Garden Stroll-introductions and week overview (meet in hotel lobby) 6:00 Cocktails at Les Deux Magots 7:30 Dinner at Bouillon Racine

Tuesday September 5th The Left Bank 8:00 Breakfast at the hotel 9:00 Women of the Left Bank (meet in hotel lobby). Buy picnic supplies at the rue de Buci market 1:30 Picnic lunch together in Luxembourg Gardens Afternoon-free time Dinner on your own

Wednesday September 6th The Marais 8:00 Breakfast at the hotel 9:00 Marais/Bookstores of Paris (meet in hotel lobby) 12:30 Lunch at Falafel d'As-optional 2:00 Cafe writing and reading-optional 4:00 Free time 7:00 Clydette's Cocktail Party

Thursday September 7th The Latin Quarter 8:00 Breakfast at the hotel 9:30 Latin Quarter (meet in hotel lobby) 1:00 Lunch at the Mosquee tearoom 3:00 Afternoon free-you may wish to take the baths-the hammam at the Mosquee 6:30 Pont des Arts picnic-optional

Friday September 8th Artists and Writer's Museums 8:00 Breakfast at the hotel 9:00 Museum visits in Nouvelle Athènes neighborhood with Heather Stimmler-Hall (meet in hotel lobby) Gustave Moreau, Musee de la Vie Romantique 2:00 Lunch at Musee Jacquemart Andree 4:00 Free time 6:00 Vernissage-optional openings at galleries in the neighborhood Dinner on your own

Saturday September 9th Make Your Own Paris 8:00 Breakfast at the hotel 9:00 Morning free 2:00 Free or optional time/consultation time with Cynthia 4:30 Wine tasting (meet in hotel lobby) 8:00 Dinner together

Sunday September 10th Carpe Diem! 9:00 Pastry Indulgence at Laduree 10:30 Père Lachaise 12:30 Cafe together to write and read-optional 1:30 Lunch on your own optional time/consultation time with Cynthia 7:00 Dinner together 10:00 Bateaux Mouche boat ride on Seine

Monday September 11th 8:00 Breakfast at the hotel, closing the week Au Revoir!

But What About Competing Tours?

You may wonder how you can compete with local guides and pre-packaged tours that offer deep discounts, but you really don't need to worry about these things.

We live in a wonderful day and age in which global travel is more accessible than ever. People want to see the world. They're travelling.

Did you know Egypt gets about 14 million tourists every year? Venice gets about 20 million, and Paris 42 million.

“But those are popular destinations,” you might say. “I want to go somewhere off the beaten path.” Here's a little secret: If you want to see it, other people want to see it too.

You see, there's a market for every destination. If you find it interesting, someone else will. It's just human nature. Now, this doesn't answer why someone would choose you over a local tour guide (I'll get to that), but I just want you first to understand that people want to go to your destination- regardless of where it is.

Now, the first-and main-reason someone will pick you over the local tour guide is because you're not just selling a location. You're selling an experience.

Most people won't fly to Paris, hoping they find a local tour guide who will lead them on a biking tour of the French countryside, where they'll sleep in quaint bed and breakfasts every night, visiting wineries and local cheese shops by day, learning about the French Romantic poets of the 1800s by night.

That experience is sold before the trip even begins.

I appreciate all of the education that the WBC staff sends out. You have a fantastic product. Don't ever change it. Club member DM Remember, your tour is unique. You're not just booking airfare and a hotel. You're offering an experience. A theme. Most tour guides make money based on the quantity of customers. Pack as many tourists on the camels as you can…

That won't be you. You will offer a well- thought-out, creative trip, filled with interesting destinations and activities. You will offer a completely original experience.

Second, travel often involves the unknown. Travellers have a tendency to be nervous about the unknown. Since you'll mostly be marketing to people in your hometown or country, this will give people the chance to meet you. Shake your hand. This takes away the fear. Knowing the tour guide before even stepping foot on the plane is a great comfort.

Third, many tourists are hesitant to use a local tour guide for fear of being taken advantage of or ripped off. We've all heard nightmare stories. Choosing you offers an additional layer of security. Someone they'll feel much safer with.

And at the end of the day, remember: You're looking for only about 15 people. That's all. It's not as though you need to find thousands of customers.

You can do this. If you make your trip interesting enough, you may even turn down some people.

How to Get Started

Like almost everything else these days, you can start by going to the library or searching the Internet. This is likely to be a long and sometimes discouraging task. So much of the information out there is dated, incomplete, or downright wrong.

You can, if you want a more comprehensive idea, sign up for Cynthia's tour program with a money-back guarantee. You can do that here.

As with all of the programs we recommend in the Wealth Builders Club, you will get a special discount for being a member.

In fact, because of our club's buying power, we've negotiated the lowest price on this program ever. Cynthia will never offer it for a cheaper price to any other group. And as a reminder, we aren't being compensated one dime for this recommendation.

Here's a brief list of what you will learn from Cynthia's program:

How to price the tour so the cost is reasonable yet profitable

How to keep track of all the numbers for expenses and income

How to handle money internationally: currency conversion, international banking and more… it's a lot easier than it sounds

How to spread the news about your tour fast, efficiently, and inexpensively (in fact, a lot of the best-producing publicity sources are absolutely free!)

How to fill up your tour without “selling” it. Find out how you can easily enroll both strangers and people in your personal network- folks who share your interests

How to get creative when you write and distribute promotional materials to promote your niche tour

How to stay organized and juggle all the details-without breaking a sweat

How to leave your home and business running smoothly while you're on tour… do this right, and they'll hardly know you're gone

To sum it up, how to make each tour a stellar success.

I hope you're beginning to see just how possible this is. And how rewarding it could be. You can do this. And you can make money doing it.

I want your retirement to be as rich and meaningful as possible. Let your mind run wild. What's your fantasy? Let your dream trip serve as the blueprint for your tour, then make it happen.

Best, Mark

“It's far too much fun to call work,” Tom Courtier told the reporter from International Living magazine. He was talking about the Retire Next Year strategy we will discuss today.

Shortly after I moved into my current home in Delray Beach, a crazy woman rented the cottage next to us. One of the many things she liked to do was to sit in her driveway and honk the horn every time one of my dogs barked.

Of course, when the dogs heard the horn they barked more. There were days - and I'm not making this up - when she battled my dogs, honking versus barking, for six hours at a stretch.

There were other things she did that were rather upsetting. Like painting “These people are assholes” on the side of our house. I did my best to appeal to her reason. Finding none, I did the next best thing. I called her landlord and made him a deal he couldn't refuse.

In return for giving me a 10-year lease when hers came due several months later, I agreed to be responsible for all repairs and upkeep and to put $100,000 into renovating his cottage. Now you might think spending $100,000 in renovations is just as crazy as honking your horn at barking dogs for six hours, but I had a secret plan.

My plan was to turn this rather ramshackle cottage into a B&B (bed & breakfast), and then to rent it out to people on a weekly basis. Since it had three bedrooms and two porches looking onto the ocean, I figured I could easily get $2,500 a week for it during the season.

In fact, I was able to get $2,750 a week, and I was able to do that for an average of 25 weeks a year. If you add that up, you will see that my income over 10 years was above $650,000.

If you subtract my costs (the $100,000 in renovations, $270,000 in rent, about $50,000 in maintenance and another $30,000 in general expenses), you will see that I made a profit of something like $200,000.

Plus, I achieved my main goal (getting rid of a crazy neighbour). I also had the use of the cottage for 27 weeks a year.

It was a good deal.

On top of that, I met lots of pleasant and interesting people who rented the cottage from me year after year. And when the 10 years was up, I exercised an option to buy the cottage and eventually made it the south wing of my current house.

This left me with a skeptically positive feeling about B&Bs. And so when someone at Wealth Builders Club suggested this as a topic, I looked into it. My research reduced my skepticism. So it is with relatively un-skeptical positivity that I present this Retire Next Year strategy: running your very own “retirement” B&B overseas.

And if you don't want to go that far, start a homestay right where you are. These are becoming extremely popular in India. With tourists and travellers getting a complete immersion in the culture of the state and its people.

Is This an Option for You?

Opening a B&B is not for everyone. But it does meet the requirements of a Retire Next Year occupation. For one thing, it is something you can do in a year. It also works best if your B&B is somewhere you'd like to retire - a tropical seaside, for example, or a mountain retreat.

Another advantage is that it doesn't require any specialized skill or experience. There are basically three aspects to this business: selling rooms, managing the property, and hosting the guests.

Selling the rooms, as I'll explain in a bit, is much easier than you might expect. Managing the property in most overseas destinations is cheap and easy thanks to the availability of inexpensive labour. And hosting the guests is something you can do - if you enjoy it - or something you can delegate to someone else.

Take retired art dealer Frank Stegmeier, who was recently featured in International Living's Incomes Abroad. In 1998, Frank bought 100 acres of Panamanian land for $17,000. He built a few cottages for friends to stay in when they visited. But as time passed, he decided to rent them out for extra cash.

It didn't take long for a small business to blossom. El Rio Encantado is now an in-demand art lovers' retreat.

Frank's “office” is a tropical oasis, with lush gardens, hot springs, a river, and a waterfall. His customers are appreciative guests escaping the hustle and bustle of their busy lives.

Sound a little better than your daily grind? And a B&B is simple and easy to run. It's not a Marriott, and people don't expect it to be. As Frank explains:

“Around here, the Wi­Fi may go out… or there may be a brief power outage from a storm, and there might be an ant or two in the kitchen. People go to B&Bs to get away, and most understand that they are there to relax, not check emails every 40 minutes.”

Frank's fee: $70 a night in the rainy season and $110 during holidays. This allows him to entice guests with low prices while making enough to live comfortably.

My friends were recently travelling in India and stayed in a lovely homestay in the Wayanad district of Kerala. The couple who ran it had bought a small plot of land and some coffee plantations, and left their hectic lives in Chennai to live in the rustic peace of their birthplace in Kerala.

They built a series of cottages and treehouses scattered around their main house, and now host people from around the world. They also have art retreats where they support artists from around the country to come paint from their treehouse studio. They're here also for the experience, they say. They love meeting people from around the world, their lives are full of interesting conversations, and they can do what they hearts' desire.

The best part of running their B&B? They still have time to enjoy life off the property. They are minutes away from a national park, and a few miles from the city. And even with all the things that they can do away from their little hotel, they never miss a sunset happy hour with guests.

All of this with a modest marketing platform. Advertising can be done through websites like TripAdvisor and VRBO. Get a few guests to write good reviews and the B&B sells itself. Zoe Courtier of Geckoes Lodge in Costa Rica comments:

“It gives us great pleasure to read reviews on TripAdvisor. We hope to exceed our guests' expectations-and that we have to date keeps us motivated to keep improving the barefoot­ luxury experience here at Geckoes.” In India, you can register your homestay properties on websites like: Homestays, CheersBye, MyIndianStay, HeritageStay, TripAdvisor, Booking.com and the recently launched world-renowned AirBnb. Frank Stegmeier has a simple website where customers can see rates, photos, and room availability. Starting a website is easier than ever. Sites like WordPress and Squarespace make it fun, cheap, and simple.

So what do you need to know to get started?

How to Fund Your B&B

As you can see, opening a B&B is not rocket science. But the idea does present an obstacle: a significant one-time investment. In some parts of the world, you can buy a place with half a dozen cottages for 30 lac rupees. In other parts of the world, you might have to spend 10 times that amount.

This may seem like a lot, but you can make a good deal more than that in rental fees. And if you live on location, as he did, your profits are paying for the cost and maintenance of your home.

In the case of a homestay all you need to do is spruce up the rooms you plan to let out and equip them with a few amenities that the guests may need. You can add a TV and DVD player, a small fridge, hot water kettle and internet. You will incur a maximum expense of Rs. 50,000/-. But recovering this cost will be easy. Because if you charge between Rs 3000-5000 per night, you've covered up your expenses in ten nights of bookings.

Choosing the Right Location

The biggest mistake that B&B entrepreneurs make is choosing the wrong location. If you've never been in this business, you might assume that you can convert just about anything into a B&B. And many people have lost money by making this assumption.

The success of your B&B will depend on your ability to sell it. And your ability to sell it will depend primarily on its location. What you want is a popular (and preferably growing in popularity) destination where you would like to live.

We will talk more about the process of choosing a destination in my upcoming essay on opening up a beach bar that I will send you soon.. In India homestays are currently popular in places like Goa, Kerala and Rajasthan. But if you look on TripAdvisor and VRBO you will see that people around the country are beginning to host guests.

Once you've determined where you want to locate your B&B, you should spend several weeks (or months) there getting to know the area in detail. You need to feel comfortable with the personality of the local people, the weather, the available activities, and with the local government.

What you don't want to do is visit a place for few days, fall in love with it, and start investing money immediately.

High­End, Low­End, or Hostel: Matching the Right B&B With Your Target Market

Another important decision is the type of B&B you want to run. As with location, you have to let the market guide you.

Deepa at Santacruz, Mumbai, has a daughter studying abroad and hence one room free in her home. Her house being close to Mumbai's domestic airport, she decided to let it out and registered it on AirBnb. Deepa provides her guests with a clean spacious room, warm interiors, a cozy library and hot Indian breakfast options.

Being a dog owner, all she insists is that the guests reasonably love animals. Additionally, she provides them with suggestions on ordering in and even places to shop at.

Travelers who stay with her want two things - to not pay the exorbitant Mumbai hotel prices, and to make a connection with a local so as to experience the city better. Several have stayed at her home and found it an extremely convenient location with comfortable amenities. Deepa's small home is today a good option for many travellers in the city. She may have started small but she is earning an income, just by marketing her home.

Deepa is a perfect example of one of the most important rules of running a business-be flexible. Do not begin with a rigid concept of your B&B.

Making the Numbers Work: How to Profit From Your B&B

The economics of running a B&B are pretty simple. You have the fixed costs of the property, including upkeep, maintenance, insurance, a mortgage, etc. You have the variable costs of preparing and cleaning rooms. You have the cost of marketing. And you have your revenues.

Before considering a B&B, create a simple business plan (four pages should be enough) that outlines the primary tasks involved, their costs, and when you will do them. You should also create a projected cash flow statement, showing what revenues you expect in years one, two, and three. Then compare these revenues against your projected expenses.

Figuring your expenses is easy if you are familiar with the location you're interested in. Figuring your revenues is also easy. Simply look at similar options in the area and make whatever adjustments you feel are justified. Just be conservative.

Creating a Marketing Plan on the Cheap

One of the most remarkable experiences with my B&B was how easy it was to sell.

Normally, selling a product is the most challenging part of a business venture. But all I did was pay someone $250 to set up a simple website named “Beach Cottage in Palm Beach.”

Almost as soon as the website went live, we began receiving inquiries. And by the end of the first season, we had sold 15 weeks. About half of those people wanted to come back the next year. That made hitting my goal of 20 weeks easy. By the third year, we had way more bookings than we needed.

If you've selected the right location, finding guests won't be a problem. Your potential customers will be people that already want to be in your corner of paradise.

They will be online searching that location. Their searches will be specific, so your website will almost certainly appear on their first page of search results. (This is a big benefit. You don't need to be an SEO expert to attract these people.)

Of course, your website will have to look good. It will have to have great photos that show the local amenities in their best light. And it will have to signal to people that your B&B will be friendly and comfortable.

Here are a few tips:

Use a website creator like Squarespace or WordPress. They have great templates that produce very professional results. They charge a nominal monthly fee (Squarespace is approx. Rs 500 a month) to maintain the website.

The name of your website should reflect the name of your B&B.

Become familiar with review sites such as VRBO.com and TripAdvisor.

Encourage guests to write reviews. If you run a good B&B, some of your best advertising will come from good reviews.

Purchase a Turnkey Operation and Have the Heavy Lifting Done for You

Perhaps the easiest way to enter the B&B market is to buy an existing business.

A turnkey operation gives you a B&B without the startup hassles. In many cases, the B&B will have the proper permits, an existing marketing platform, and a client list.

Buying an established B&B, however, does not remove the need for due diligence. You still want to visit the area and research the B&B's competition in the market. You also want to find out why the owners are selling. It could be that they do not want to manage a B&B anymore. Or it could be that the property is falling apart.

Perform a thorough investigation and make sure the B&B is profitable and in good shape.

In India, the haveli or heritage stay properties are often up for sale as the past owners no longer want to maintain them. These are good options to look at as they are both saleable for their heritage appeal and comfortably furnished. All you need to do is invest a little time and money and you will see it convert into a flourishing business.

How to Get Started

If you are looking for additional information to capitalize on this opportunity, we have assembled some great resources.

To get you moving in the right direction, we've found several good books.

How to Open a Financially Successful Bed & Breakfast or Small Hotel

The Bread Is In The Bed: How to make (more) money as a B&B or Guest House Keeper

Running a Bed & Breakfast for Dummies

If, after reading one or two of these books, you are motivated and want to take it to the next level, you should consider making a more substantial commitment of time to educate yourself.

But of all the programs we researched, one of the best is from The Bed & Breakfast Institute. This program is expensive at its retail price of $1,099, but it is a very comprehensive course in starting, managing, and profiting from B&Bs.

We've negotiated a great deal on this program to get you the cheapest pricing available. And as with all programs we recommend, we don't make a dime doing so.

Club members can access this program for the discounted rate of $899 here.

If you have any ideas or suggestions that can help fellow Club members, please let us know at wbc@commonsenseliving.co.in. We will post member suggestions in future Anisa's Updates.

Best, Mark

*

Editor's Note:

When I started travelling as a student I discovered homestays as a way to get affordable accommodation. But I also discovered that everywhere I chose to stay in a homestay or bed and breakfast I also had the added advantage of a wonderful host family, who helped me while I was there, gave me a real flavour of the place where I was, and often became good friends.

In India I've stayed in homestays in Kerala, Goa, and my favourite was Ajmer where we stayed with a cousin of the Rajah in his home which he was renting out because his children were away at university. Websites such as VRBO have made the idea of hosting international guests easy, desirable and profitable for everyone,

India has become a hot tourist destination with a growing demand for comfortable homestays and B&Bs. It's a market that is still nascent and largely untapped. So get creative, find interesting properties in and around the country, start your own dream business and make some extra income.

It's an ideal way to retire - all you need are a few tips on hospitality, innovative breakfast menus and some ideas on home improvement (which we will send you in a Living Rich report soon). To top it all, you will always have company, and you may meet some nice people!

To your new adventure,

Anisa Virji Managing Editor, Wealth Builders Club *

After first retiring at the age of 39, I spent 18 months pursuing my “passions,” as they say. My passions at that time included writing short stories. But for all my efforts (and some modest success-12 stories published, two prizes), my total earnings from my short stories were less than $1,500.

I didn't expect this to be much of a moneymaker. But I did think I could generate a good income by pursuing another one of my passions-owning an art gallery. So I made a deal with a guy I'd been buying art from. I bought a half-interest in his business.

My dream was that I would spend a few hours a day in the gallery, writing short stories and having pleasant conversations with the art lovers who would drop in to browse. And they would buy things from me simply because I had so many good things for them to buy.

The reality of the art business is very different. Like any other business, it demands knowledge and skill and persistence and, in some cases, a good deal of capital. But for an art business to generate six-figure profits (as my partner's gallery had been doing), you also have to work hard and sell hard. This is what persuaded me to get out of that business six months after I got into it.

Now, you may be wondering why I am bothering you with this story. “If Mark got into it and out of it in six months,” you might be thinking, “why would he be talking about it here?”

The answer is that, despite my initially discouraging but illuminating experience, I opened my own art gallery in Delray Beach, Fla., 20 years later… on my own terms. And I now believe that this can be a very nice way to generate extra income during retirement.

Because I am writing this for our Retire Next Year series, I'm going to limit myself to how you might go about making an income with an art gallery in a retirement paradise overseas, where the living is good and inexpensive.

If you don't wish to relocate to a new country altogether, options closer to home can also be considered. You can look at a small town close to the city you're living in or better still a location in the same city that is affordable and accessible.

With art being sold online as well. Starting a website may not be a bad idea too.

We will be talking about a small business that can be run on a part-time basis to generate hundreds or thousands, but not tens of thousands, of rupees per month.

When I opened my own gallery, my expectations were more realistic than they were when I had bought into someone else's 20 years earlier. And this time, I knew that I did not want to actually run the business. Nor did I want to spend much time there. I would hire someone to manage it. My job would be to buy the art-because that is what I most enjoyed.

The business was launched when I met Suzanne Snider, a woman who shared my interest in Latin American art. She told me that her goal was to run her own gallery, specializing in that kind of art. So I hired her.

My idea was for her to work part-time helping me develop and document my personal collection and then to gradually build a solid, profitable business. I figured it would take us about 10 years.

We are in our fifth or sixth year now, and the business is progressing well. But what we are doing-although smarter than what I was doing my first time-is still not what I'm going to be recommending to you. Because selling museum-quality fine art in North America requires a multimillion-dollar investment. But you can do the same thing in other places for a fraction of that.

In fact, I've recently concluded a contract to open a second gallery at Rancho Santana, the luxury resort community in Nicaragua that my partners at Agora and I developed.

That gallery-in the new hotel we built there-will feature some of the more expensive pieces from my collection. We will also be selling high-quality but much less expensive work by local artists.

I enjoy your newsletters and advice immensely! Thank you for offering this service; it's greatly appreciated. Subscribers B and A. I feel pretty confident that we can get this business going relatively cheaply and have it profitable in less than a year.

So what follows is a blueprint for establishing your own art business in a retirement paradise of your own choosing. It is based on what I'm doing, and it should work for you.

Let's begin by going over the requirements for a Retire Next Year income opportunity.

First, it must be located in a place where you can live comfortably and inexpensively. What you want is a place that attracts not only retirees but also tourists. They will likely be your best customers.

Second, it must be easy to learn. The art business, as I said, is like any other business in terms of knowledge and skills. The more you have, the better. But if you follow the suggestions I'll be making, your learning curve will be short.

Third, it must be inexpensive to launch. The art business I'm starting in Nicaragua will require a significant investment because we'll be selling a lot of museum-quality art. But you don't have to do that.

In fact, I'd recommend you don't. You'll do much better buying local art super- cheap and selling it at a big markup. I'll tell you how that's done, too.

Fourth, it must be something you can do on a part-time basis. This is a big benefit of today's income opportunity. The buying side of the art business, however important, doesn't take a lot of time. Being at the gallery during shopping hours is a must. But any reasonably bright and cheerful local person can be trained to do that.

Finally, it must be something that you really enjoy-something you'd be happy to do even if the income were modest. If you are still reading, I'm assuming you are with me on this point.

Let's talk about how this would work.

Location, Location, Location

The trick is to establish your art gallery near a place where tourists go to luxuriate in the sunshine.

The Top 10 Retirement Havens of the Year Every year, International Living compiles a list of the best places in the world to retire. Each of these destinations is desirable in its own way, but they all offer something increasingly hard to come by: a good quality of life for a reasonable price.

As a result, they draw retirees from all over the world. They also draw lots of tourists. And that makes every one of them a potential retirement haven for you, as well as a good place to take advantage of today's Retire Next Year income opportunity.

For 2013, International Living's list includes:

Ecuador Panama Malaysia Mexico Costa Rica Uruguay Colombia Spain Thailand Malta

In India, if you're from the metros, you could look at moving to smaller cities or towns that have a vibrant tourist economy and are also rich in culture and art. Some of them are listed below:

Jaipur Udaipur Agra Goa Pune Pondicherry Mysore Coimbatore Chandigarh Amritsar

Ideally, you want to be a stone's throw from a resort or town that gets truckloads of travellers.

The way I just put it makes it sound horrible, I know. But these places are popular for a reason. They are generally warm, beautiful, and friendly. In other words, they are generally the types of places where you would like to retire.

You won't likely be living next door to your gallery, because prices will be too high. You'll be living a mile or two away, where it will be quieter and more suitable to a tranquil life. But your business needs to be as close to the tourist traffic as possible.

The Traffic

There's an interesting thing I've noticed about popular travel destinations: They are riddled with art galleries. Why is this? I don't really know. But there is something in the vacationer's mentality that says, “It's time to buy art.” (I started my own art collecting habit on a visit to Palm Springs.)

Maybe you're thinking, “Why would I start a business someplace where there is so much competition?” The answer is that in the retail business, you always want to be surrounded by the competition. You never want to be the only art gallery in town. In another essay on business, I'll go into detail on why. For now, just trust me on this.

The more traffic that passes by your gallery, the more people will wander in. And if you follow a few of the tips I'm going to give you, you'll be able to take advantage of these window shoppers.

The Kind of Art Gallery You Want

There are all sorts of art galleries. Upscale fine-art galleries, semi-expensive commercial galleries, and junk shops. I have an upscale fine-art gallery. But that's not what you want. It requires millions in start-up money, and it takes a long time to make it work. Your objective should be a semi-expensive commercial gallery.

Upscale fine-art galleries sell museum-quality art for big bucks. They survive on a handful of very well-heeled customers. They have to specialize in a particular kind of art that art connoisseurs like to buy. They must know how to buy it right. And they must know their art inside and out.

Junk shops sell consigned crap and amateur artists. You can make money in this business but not a lot. To succeed, you have to be a real hack. I have nothing but admiration for people who make a living this way, but it's not for Retire Next Year.

Semi-expensive commercial galleries have the best of both worlds. They sell art that is appealing to new and semi-educated collectors. Some of this art is actually good. And some of it simply looks good to the untrained eye. All of it is cheap to buy if you know what you are doing.

Semi-expensive commercial gallery owners need only a modest amount of knowledge to sell their wares. They buy their art cheaply and mark it up like crazy-300-1,000%. This is the market you want to be in.

Levels and Prices

You will be buying local art. By local, I mean art created in the town/city/country where you set up shop.

This works in your favour when you are located in an inexpensive city, because most of the local artists will be working for cheap.

There are three levels of artists in every country.

At the top, you have the artists whose works hang in national and international museums. Their art will understandably be the most expensive. But if you are in small cities and countries such as Nepal or Sri Lanka, you will still be able to pick up museum-quality pieces for just a few thousand rupees. You want a handful of these to show people in the know that you deal in “fine art.”

Next are the artists who have gained some recognition but are not yet at the highest level. Some of their pieces will be in museums, but most will be in the better art galleries in the big cities. You will be able to pick up their work for as little as Rs 30,000 and as much as Rs 3 lac. Stay in the Rs 30,000 - 1 lac range.

Then there are the beginners-graduates of art schools who have yet to find good dealers to promote them. These people will sell you great pieces for just a few thousands of rupees. This art will be your stock in trade.

The idea is to sell the top-level art at 150% of what you paid for it. And to sell the next level at 200-300%. The third-level stuff you can mark up as much as you want.

One way to keep the cost of your inventory down is to buy a fair number of watercolours, gouaches (opaque watercolours), and drawings. All other things being equal, oil paintings are the most expensive, followed by watercolours and gouaches, and then drawings.

Having a variety of pieces other than oil paintings will give your gallery a diversity that your customers will appreciate.

One final note: Size matters. The bigger the piece, the more expensive. So vary the sizes that you carry. Not just because it will give you a greater range in terms of price, but because smaller pieces can fit into hallways and bathrooms. Art collectors-once they get hooked-like to fill up every available nook and cranny.

Capital Requirements

Stocking my gallery in Delray Beach was, as I said, a multimillion-dollar investment. But you can put together a very solid start-up inventory of local artists for as little as Rs 5-15 lac.

The major cost will be for the gallery space itself. Buying a building in the right location might cost a couple of crore rupees or more. But I am not buying a building for my gallery in Nicaragua, and I wouldn't advise you to buy property, either.

Renting is the way to go. For budgetary purposes, figure on renting the space for two years. That should be enough time to know whether your business is profitable.

I was able to get a good deal on space in the new hotel at Rancho Santana. I got the good rate not because I happen to be an owner of the hotel (though it didn't hurt), but because the person running it recognized that having a nice gallery in the retail section would “class up the place,” as it were.

In fact, he proposed that rather than charge us a flat fee, he'd take a cut of our profits. If you are good at negotiating and find the right landlord, you might get the same deal. The rental spaces in India differ from city to city as they do in different countries. Your best is to cap the cost of renting a retail space of, say, 1,000-1,500 square feet at a maximum of Rs 50,000 - 1 lac per month.

The other cost to consider is a salary for one or two employees. You will want someone affable who speaks English. You can estimate this person's salary at at Rs 10,000 per month.

As you can see, the capital requirements for this income opportunity are in the range of Rs 325-40 lac over a period of two years. I'll let you know what I end up spending on the gallery in Nicaragua when we get it up and running next year.

The First Impression

One of the most remarkable experiences with my B&B was how easy it was to sell.

Portrait of Mr. K “Portrait of Mr. K” by Karel Appel If you have the right location, you will have window shoppers. So the first and most important thing you must do is put a few really good pieces in your window. By really good, I don't mean the kind of pieces that would excite an art critic. I mean pieces that make people stop and stare.

If you aren't an art aficionado, you probably have no idea what I mean by that. What I mean is that the work should look both “arty” and also pretty. As someone who has been looking at and collecting art for many, many years, I find this one to be beautiful:

But if you put paintings like this in your window, you'll scare people away. This piece is pretty, but it doesn't look like serious art:

And if it doesn't look serious, buyers who have a modest exposure to art will expect to pay hundreds, rather than thousands, of dollars for it.

The right balance is a blend of arty and pretty. A good way to achieve that is to feature semi-representational pieces. By “semi-representational,” I mean that the pieces should show something pleasant that the average person can recognize.

It could be human figures. It could be a landscape or cityscape. It could be a still life. But it shouldn't be too realistic. People in a tourist frame of mind like art with feeling-a feeling that matches their exuberance that comes from not being at work.

Here are three examples of art that is both pretty and arty-at least to me:

These examples come from my own stock. They are actually pretty good, painted by Central American artists who have formal training and genuine talent. But they also have what art brokers refer to as “eye appeal.” In common parlance, they are pleasing to look at.

You will be able to buy this sort of art from local artists.

This representational piece by an Indian artist, for example, is listed for sale online at Rs 30,000.

This representational piece by an Indian artist A painting listed on IndianArtCollectors.com

Now, here's a clever trick that the most successful art galleries in the world use: Beneath the pieces by a featured artist in your window, you will be placing an art book about that very artist. Passersby will be impressed that there is a book already published about him.

“He must be somebody,” they will think. They won't know, and won't ask, who published the book. If they do, the answer will be you.

But getting people into the gallery is only the first step. When they enter, they must be overwhelmed by a variety of paintings, drawings, and sculptures-all semi-representational but in different styles. (Some, for example, may be mildly impressionistic. Some may be mildly expressionistic. And some may be mildly cubist.)

It may seem hard to believe, but you will have no trouble finding such variety in the local market. Fledgling artists always imitate the major modern trends. Spend three or four days touring the art shops, and you will see what I mean.

Buying Wholesale

You can buy a few key pieces at retail prices, just to establish the “quality” of your gallery. But to make money, you will have to buy most of your art wholesale. Buying at wholesale for midlevel art means buying at half of retail. (You can't do that with museum-quality art, but you aren't going to be selling that.)

There are four ways to do this.

You can strike up a relationship with art galleries in the area and persuade them to give you wholesale prices. Some will, and some won't. In talking to them, try to find out their sources. Some of them will be buying directly from the artists, and some of them will be buying from wholesale dealers.

You can try to get deals in which the artists give the art to you-for free-on consignment. Dealers will sometimes do this. Artists… well, artists are usually starving. They are used to making consignment deals.

You can buy art from collectors. This is a great way to get good art cheaply because many collectors suddenly find themselves in need of cash and are willing to sell a group of paintings at below auction prices to save the time, hassle, and commissions.

You can buy art directly from the artists. This is by far the most enjoyable way to procure art, and it can sometimes be very inexpensive. When you are new to the market, you will discover the local artists by browsing art galleries and talking to the owners about the artists you like.

Find out if the gallery “represents” the artist. If it does not, you are free to go to the artist and strike up a deal.

When you talk to an artist, it's important to tell him how great you think his art is and how much marketing power you intend to put behind his work. If the artist is represented by a gallery or dealer, it would be a mistake to contact him directly.

It would probably violate his deal with the gallery/dealer. Even if he agrees, you will make an enemy of the gallery/dealer. And you don't want to do that.

But don't worry too much about making your own deals in the beginning. Almost as soon as you open up shop, you'll be visited by local artists begging you to sell their stuff. But never buy art simply because you can buy it cheaply.

Always buy the best-quality art you can get your hands on. That is what will sell best, and selling is what it is all about.

The Selling Technique

When the browser comes in, you will not approach him aggressively. Nor will you leave him alone. Instead, you will politely ask him if he'd like something to drink. And by that, you mean anything-water, coffee, or booze.

If you are lucky enough to have a drinker, your chances are great. Coffee drinkers are not bad. Water drinkers… well, you can't kick them out.

If they accept nothing, you can either ignore them or hammer them. The results from my experience are about the same.

Mark, I want to thank you for the positive approach and the strategies you and your team provide for us subscribers. Honestly, my message to you is: Thanks for keeping me motivated! Subscriber TK. The people who accept your kind offer of something to drink will feel the need to reciprocate. They will do so by asking you a few questions about the art. When they do, you must be astonished at their good taste.

You must tell them they clearly have a good eye for art. And then you can answer their questions, explaining why the pieces they are asking about are so special.

After they have identified a particular artist or type of art that they like, you must invite them into the back room to show them some “special pieces” that, for whatever reason, you don't have on display. If they show an interest in any one of them, compliment them again on their taste.

At this point, they will almost certainly ask you about the price. Don't give it to them directly. This is a mistake that amateurs often make. Instead, inform them that you sold a very similar piece last month or last year for a higher price (or that a similar piece was sold by another broker or auction house at a higher price) but, for whatever reason, you can give it to them at Rs. .

They will think about that and browse some more. Then they will return to the piece they liked and ask you if you can do any better. You will tell them that this is really the rock-bottom price, but you can take an extra 10% or 20% off only because you are going to consider them to be “in the trade.”

They will be very happy with this.

A Few More Ideas for Making a Commercial Gallery Work

If you have been networking in the arts for a while, consider an eponymous name for your gallery.

Offer fee-based services such as consulting, appraisals, and research.

Produce giclées (digital reproductions on canvas or paper) of your best paintings. They cost about Rs. 500-1000 apiece to print and can sell easily for several thousand. But make sure your customers understand that owning a giclée is like owning a travel poster, rather than taking the trip.

If you have the space, set up a corner with framing samples and offer framing. There's a nice profit in framing, and you can find someone local to do the work.

Have art supplies for sale.

Set up an easel and chairs in one area so your customers can sit and see each piece by itself. And having a big tabletop for putting together pieces the customer is interested in helps make bigger sales.

Sponsor competitions for emerging artists.

Rent out your space for events.

Have a rental program for businesses to lease art.

Keep your branding consistent and have your publicity sources convenient, along with good photos and information about your artists.

This Is Just the Beginning

If you follow this process, you will gradually have dozens and dozens of customers. If you never contact them again, you can be sure you will never hear from them again.

But if you follow up each sale with a personal note-and then send them emails with good photos and information about your wares every month or so for the rest of their lives-you will turn that one sale into a half-dozen or even 100.

This is how you develop a real business. Because the real business is not retail. I don't like retail businesses. A real business is brokering art to devoted art collectors. After buying one work, they will want to buy another. If they don't buy it from you, they will buy it from someone else.

Additional Resources to Check Out

Start Your Own Art Gallery / How to Start & Manage a Successful Art Gallery, 6th ed., by Douglas Whitman: Extensive information about business plans, marketing aspects, and economic considerations. Not much creativity, just the details.

How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery, by Edward Winkleman: The most informative resource for me. It has an interesting section on the history of art dealing. The branding, physical space, and publicity ideas are excellent and comprehensive

FabJob Guide to Become an Art Gallery Owner, by Brenna Pearce and Mitchell Warren: General advice about the art business. The best part of this book is that it lists great website resources for every aspect.

The Intrepid Art Collector: The Beginner's Guide to Finding, Buying, and Appreciating Art on a Budget, by Lisa Hunter: Divided into two major sections. What to buy and how to buy it. Good, concise advice, explained simply.

Best, Mark

*

Editor's Note:

India is a haven for art and culture. Each state abounds in its own styles and schools of art. One sees several new and emerging artists dot the Indian art scene as well. And they all need patronage and exposure to diverse markets.

Now, with the Internet in India exploding it offers a whole new avenue for an online art market, and for connection between artists and buyers. IndianArtCollectors for instance is one such thriving model of an online art gallery. They have opened up a path where the opportunity is endless.

If a new gallery owner, whether physical or virtual, works smart and uses Mark's ideas, not only will he make a lot of money but earn a lot of respect in society too. Art has always held a great deal of prestige and is a mark of fine taste in all societies, and this Retire Next Year essay demystifies it making it accessible to everyone. So get ready to make some extra money and earn the reputation of being a trusted art connoisseur!

To your new adventure,

Anisa Virji Managing Editor, Wealth Builders Club *

In 2002, Rob and Joanne Miller Birce, Canadian media executives, spent a few weeks vacationing in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. They fell in love with the place - the spicy food, the colorful architecture, the temperate climate, and the warm people.

They had that feeling one often gets when vacationing in a tropical paradise: “Why can't we have this lifestyle all year round?”

When you come back from such a vacation, that thought usually disappears. But the Birces returned home in the middle of an especially cold Calgary winter. “This is crazy,” they thought. “We could be living in Mexico for a fraction of what it costs us here.” They did a few calculations and came to the conclusion that they could retire immediately. And they could finance their retirement with passive income they already had.

But they wanted a cushion… just in case. So they decided to start some sort of business when they got to Mexico.

Since they were not Wealth Builders Club members at that time, they didn't know about the many income options available to them. The ideas they had were all retail businesses. They looked into a dozen of them, including restaurants, bars, travel agencies, and dive shops.

Had they been Wealth Builders Club members (or had they read any of my books on wealth building), they would have known what I think about retail businesses: I don't like them.

But I'm glad they didn't know that. Because they ended up doing something that I've always fantasized about doing myself.

They decided to open a bookstore.

Joanne had found an ad on the Internet for a bookstore in Puerto Morelos. The idea of buying it immediately entranced them. Joanne researched the area. It sounded great. So she contacted the owners, a retired couple. They had a very encouraging conversation. Several phone calls later, they had a deal.

“We were so excited!” Joanne says.

They packed up their belongings, along with 5,500 used books, and drove all the way from Calgary to Puerto Morelos. The town was just as Joanne's research had indicated: tranquil and picturesque, located beside the Caribbean Sea.

Combining the existing inventory with the books they had brought, the store was now stocked with everything from “beach reads” to the classics, to books on local culture and art.

The Birces did some decorating to make the store feel like theirs. They wanted it to be a place where people felt comfortable sitting and reading and chatting, as well as browsing and buying books.

I have been quietly doing several of the things you are suggesting to increase my income and save more money. Thank you SO much for all you do! Subscriber TP. It worked. “Our days in the store are spent socializing - exchanging travel stories, great reads, and where to eat, sleep, and play,” Joanne says.

Puerto Morelos is a seasonal city, so the store is seasonal too. The Birces close from May to October and drive back to Calgary. The trip is long but fun, Joanne says. And though they enjoy revisiting their old lives, each year it gets harder to leave their little bookstore on the beach. One day, she says, they may stay in Puerto Morelos all year round.

As I said, I don't like retail businesses. They are laborious, ball-and-chain enterprises that make only a modest amount of income. Yes, you can get rich in retail. But the barriers are very high, and the odds are against you.

But starting a business to get rich and starting a business to make extra retirement income are two different doggies. In retirement, you want your extra income to come from something you love doing. And if passive income covers your basic needs (as was the case for the Birces), you might be very happy making just a few thousand extra rupees per month.

The Birce's bookstore is not a ball and chain. They can shut it down during the off-season, or they can hire a local person for $200 per month to run it without them. Most importantly, the bookstore enriches their lives.

The Birces are book lovers in every sense. They love reading books. They love looking at books. They love talking about books. And they love to buy and sell them. A bookstore is not a cash machine. But it is a low-stress, life-enriching way to make extra income.

I found out about the Birces through International Living, one of our trusted partners in the Retire Next Year program. I asked the folks at IL if they knew of other people who have done the same thing. They told me about Kat and Bruce Bennett from Seattle.

Their story is similar to the Birces'. They had vacationed in Mexico several times and fantasized about retiring there. One day, Kat met two women who had a bookstore in La Paz, on the Sea of Cortez. She mentioned to them that she had managed bookstores in the past, and, a year later, she began working for them.

When the owners were ready to sell in 2009, Kat and Bruce jumped at the chance and bought it. They knew the store wasn't going to make them rich. But they figured it could make enough money to pay their bills, with enough left over to buy groceries and enjoy dinners out.

“It hasn't been a get-rich-quick scheme,” says Kat. “But we make ends meet and enjoy a lifestyle in paradise. And we love our store.”

The Bennetts live in downtown La Paz, within walking distance of their bookstore and the malecon - the boardwalk on the beach. They rent their one-bedroom apartment for $300 per month. That includes propane (used for the stove and water heater), off-street parking, water, garbage collection, and Internet. Electricity is an additional $10 per month. We can have a delicious breakfast at a nice restaurant with an ocean view for about $3.50. It includes coffee, fresh-squeezed juice, two eggs, bacon, potatoes, beans, and tortillas,” beams Bruce. “It's enormous.”

Running a business in a foreign country has its challenges. The culture is different. The laws are different. But the biggest challenge the Bennetts faced was getting merchandise from their home country to their store.

“We cannot control or predict how long it will take to go through customs,” says Kat. “It could take a month or more. So if we have a run on a title, we are simply out of that title until we get another shipment.”

Kat's best advice to would-be expat entrepreneurs: “Remember the reasons why you wanted to live in a foreign country. And then appreciate that country's bureaucratic and social framework for what it is. Have patience and keep your sense of humor, and it will all work out.”

And if you don't want to change countries or cities, you can use these ideas to start something exactly where you are. For instance, you can now start a book library online, you don't even need that much space, just a small godown or an extra room in your home should suffice to stock your inventory. You can also dip into your own collection of books.

That's exactly what sites like Indiareads and Bookmeabook do.

The idea is to focus on what you have and see how you can monetize your hobbies and existing assets.

What Are Some Options for Your Retail Store?

A bookstore may not be your idea of the perfect way to earn retirement income. But if you are drawn to the idea of a retail business, there are plenty of other options.

For example, in 2008, Eric and Stephanie Slater left the chilly winters of Chicago to open a bakery - Pan de Vida - in Nicaragua. “We spent nine months travelling through Central America,” Eric says. “And during that entire time we never found any good bread.”

They chose to settle in San Juan del Sur, a seaside city they had fallen in love with on their trip. They liked it for its growth potential and for what Eric dubs its “small-town, big attitude.”

Instead of buying a store, they rented one. To save on renovation costs, they traded services and bartered baked goods.

In the early months, Eric says, they did just about everything wrong. (Stephanie recalls that time as an “adventure.”) Things started picking up when they let go of their original ideas and responded to the tastes of their customers. (Most of them turned out to be Nicaraguans.)

Two years after opening, Pan de Vida is a local favorite. Their customer base includes middle- and upper-class Nicaraguans and expats, as well as restaurants and resorts and tourists.

There is now talk of expanding to Managua, where demand for Pan de Vida's high-quality bread and pastries has spread through word of mouth.

The Slaters, by the way, are not the only foreigners running a bakery in Nicaragua. Just about a mile from my house in Rancho Santana, another couple has a shop that we like as well as Pan de Vida-and it is more convenient for us.

In India, Irani bakeries are still run by the first generation, showing that age really is not a determinant while running your own enterprise. If you've heard about Kayani Bakery in Pune city, you'll know that the owners work fixed hours, bake fixed amounts, earn exactly how much they need and still have a nice and relaxed lifestyle. And to top it all, their Shrewsbury biscuits have nation-wide recall. No visitor to Pune will leave without a packet of those to take back home.

How About Running a Laid­Back Coffee Shop?

Rob Thomas, a former commodities broker from Houston, retired to San Juan del Sur with his wife Kelly and opened a coffee shop. Again, he got the idea while on vacation. Here was a city with an expat community that was growing fast. Plenty of demand for a place that served a good cup of coffee… but he couldn't seem to find one.

The start-up process for the Thomases was pretty simple. They formed a local corporation (certified by a local notary), registered their business with the public registry, the tax office, and finally the municipal government. (A local lawyer helped them do all of this.)

They opened seven years ago, and most of their employees have been with them since nearly the beginning. (They started with one employee.) And they have no qualms about leaving town for weeks at a time, leaving the shop in the hands of their manager.

You can't get a fresher cup of coffee in San Juan del Sur, the Thomases say. They have made sure of that by buying an interest in a local finca, or farm, where the coffee beans are organically grown. They have an electric coffee roaster now. But in the early days, they brought the “green” beans in and roasted them in a traditional clay pot, or comal, over an open fire.

“It was the best way to learn,” says Rob. “Just you, the coffee, and the flame. You can smell it. You can see it.”

Besides a more relaxed lifestyle, Rob says they live on much less in Nicaragua. They were spending around $5,000 per month back in the States. They were eating out a lot and paying for two cars and a house. In Nicaragua, their total monthly living expenses come to about $1,500 per month.

Needless to say, Rob and Kelly have no regrets about making the move to Nicaragua and opening their business. “I'm very happy with our decision,” he says with a smile.

Goa, Alibaug, Pondicherry and several other small cities along the coast of India have loads of small, often seasonal cafes and restaurants. Couples looking to retire move to these places from Mumbai or Bangalore to settle down and run these charming little places. The food served here is mostly cooked up by the owners themselves and they enjoy peaceful lives, chatting with travelers and living away from the hustle and bustle of cities.

Become a Specialty Chocolatier

When Paul and Jeanne Johnson agreed to house-sit for a friend on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast four years ago, they didn't know it would be the start of a new business.

The business: Caribeans Coffee and Chocolate.

The Johnsons owned a coffee shop that had become a local institution. They were inspired to expand into chocolate when they discovered cocoa plants on their friend's property. Turns out it had been an old cocoa plantation.

“I've always been a chocolate lover,” says Paul. “But I knew nothing of how it was made. It was as much about restoring the plantation as it was about making money.”

They already had the roasting equipment for their coffee beans, so there wasn't a lot of initial investment needed. It cost them just $500 (for a few small pieces of equipment and the cost of labor) to produce their first small batch. They eventually invested in two large chocolate-making machines for a total of $17,000. They are now close to breaking even on that investment.

Chocolate represents half of Caribeans' business. It provides the Johnsons with a comfortable living and pays for four employees. As a food business, the Ministerio de Salud (Health Ministry) had to certify their operation.

They also had to register with the government to pay income taxes. And they have to contribute to Costa Rica's public health system and to worker's compensation. An accountant helps with all this, but Jeanne does much of the administrative work.

They produce about 100 pounds of chocolate per week. They sell 70% of it at their shop or a local farmers' market. It's also available online at caribeanscr.com.

Their goal, say Paul and Jeanne, is to make southern Costa Rica a destination for chocolate lovers.

In India, if you visit hill stations like Munnar and Coorg in the south or Darjeeling and Simla up north, you'll notice umpteen small shops with the board 'Homemade Chocolates'. This local cottage industry can in fact be very easy to start and lucrative too.

You needn't buy plantations and take on the hassle of managing them, all you need to do is procure the ingredients from locals who are already producing them and simply focus on the making, packaging and marketing of the chocolates.

Most locals don't even invest in heavy chocolate making machinery, they run it in a small way, using home appliances and chocolate moulds that they buy from nearby cities, just like the many housewives in cities who have flourishing chocolate businesses.

In 2003 in Mumbai itself, Mayuri Samant, who was about 55 years old at the time, decided to start a business selling chocolate-covered dates with her sister. And thus was born Ambrosia.

They buy dates from a local importer and create delicious little concoctions covering them in chocolates and filling them with nuts. A business that started in a small 2000 square foot hole-in-the-wall is now run out of a large 5000 square foot workshop where the dates are prepared, packaged and branded. They started selling their wares and receiving orders at exhibitions only, and have now grown to sell through major gourmet supermarkets such as Godrej Nature's Basket.

Selling through exhibitions is a great avenue in India - as you can receive orders during Diwali and wedding seasons, and have some down-time during off-season. Additionally, you don't have large overheads as you don't have to rent or maintain a retail outlet.

Anne Simmons and Erin Andrews opened the Cotton Tree Chocolate Factory in Belize in 2008. They were closely involved in the business the first year. But since they don't live in Belize full-time, they hired an on-site manager and have left the day-to-day operations in her hands.

Within just a few months, they outgrew the tiny space they started with and moved to their current location in central Punta Gorda. They began turning a profit after only two years. And though they're reluctant to give exact figures, they say an expat couple could live very well on the profits from this business.

In addition to free factory tours (with samples), Cotton Tree has a gift shop featuring chocolate-themed products (such as chocolate soap and cocoa bean jewelry). Local artisans and small companies that have sprung up in the wake of the company's success create the products.

A Cheese Lover Who Wants to Live on a Farm

In Coonoor, Tamil Nadu, film director Mansoor Khan has started a cheesemaking farmstay called Acres Wild. He believes in an eco-friendly and self-sustaining lifestyle and that's the experience he gives his farmstay residents too.

Although the farm is now open only to residents, he used to conduct day tours of the cheesemaking factory and samplings of the various cheeses. While on his farm, he personally takes his visitors on a tour, showing them his imported Swiss cows and natural eco-friendly ponds.

Mansoor Khan hasn't looked back to city life. In addition to his film investments, his farm and new lifestyle are sufficient for him… he's close to nature and he's doing what he loves.

But if cheese is not your thing, take up another hobby that you can convert into a business. Shalan Dere featured in an article titled Working after retirement: Here are careers options for seniors citizens did a course in pottery from JJ School of Arts in Mumbai in her early 60s. She is now earning approx. Rs 15,000 - 20,000 and sells her clay masterpieces under the brand name, The Potter's Place.

Give Tours and Take Pictures in Picturesque Panama

Richard Brady runs Santa Catalina Boat Tours (santacatalinaboattours.com) on the Pacific Coast of Panama. Catering to small groups, he offers tours to Coiba National Park (a marine reserve), as well as custom multiday tours. These can include hiking, snorkeling, fishing, surfing, bird watching, or just relaxing on a deserted beach.

The Florida native moved to Santa Catalina with his wife and four daughters in 1998, after spending several vacations there. He started Santa Catalina Boat Tours as a way to “fund an early retirement.”

“This is my primary bread and butter,” he says. “Surf photography pays the beer tab.”

That's not to say Richard's lifestyle is exactly laid back. In the busy season, he puts in 50-70 hours per week. But he points out that his is not a year-round business. “From September to November,” he says, “we often work zero hours.” This gives him and his family plenty of time to relax and enjoy the sun, the sand, and the water.

Mr. Gopi N had worked in the travel and tourism industry his entire life. But towards his later years, sick of the rigidity of a corporate job with a large travel company, he decided to reduce his hours and strike out on his own.

He is now a travel consultant, tailoring packages for professionals, corporate and travel agencies. Traveling freely across the world, and working as much or as little as he pleases in his peaceful office in Bangalore.

How About Teaching Customers to Fish and Dive?

Bob Grimes and his wife Olga built the Pedasi Sports Club (pedasisportsclub.biz) on the Pacific coast of Panama over several years. They started with modest plans for a two-story building, with a hotel on the ground floor and living quarters above. As the business grew, so did the resort.

They offer a wide range of water activities, including scuba diving, snorkeling trips, fishing charters, and whale watching tours. And though many tourist - reliant businesses in the area slow down from May through December, fishing is actually better in Pedasi at that time. So their business is good year-round.

Right now, ill health is forcing Bob to sell the business. He's asking $1.4 million and is being picky about the new owner. “I want someone who will make sure the business does good, and does good for the community,” Bob says. “It becomes part of your life.”

If building a sports club is too much of work, how about starting a small yoga studio right in your home? In India, many yoga experts are making a good living from conducting yoga classes right in their homes.

Better still, start a small meditation center at home or in a rented space. Collect a bunch of people and along with yoga teach them chants or affirmations that you've used successfully to calm your own mind; throw in a few life lessons and you would have started a movement.

If not yoga or meditation, look at any other activity, you feel you can teach. Most cricket and sport coaches are well in their 50s and 60s. So there's no reason why you can't teach something and make some extra income.

Can You See Yourself Running an Art Lovers' Nature Retreat?

Retired Seattle art dealer Frank Stegmeier carved out his place in paradise in northern Panama. He started El Rio Encantado (The Enchanted River) Nature Preserve (rioencantado.com) as a place for his friends and fellow art collectors to enjoy the rich Panama biodiversity. As expenses mounted, he decided to turn it into a small business.

The property (which he purchased in 1998 for just $17,000) includes natural hot springs, a cascading waterfall, and lush tropical landscaping. He has three cabins that he rents out, charging $70-110 per night.

Frank is in the enviable position of not needing to work full-time. The cabin rentals are a way to “defray expenses.”

“Since I have other income,” he says, “I have never looked at nor needed this business as a way to survive.”

Art camps are plenty in India too. All you need to do is decide a topic for the camp, identify some artists who can teach and bring together some art aficionados. They can either learn more about the various art forms or they can even dabble with their own paint and brushes.

Maybe Teach Local Culinary Techniques

When Cora Kent retired to Boquete, Panama, with her husband David, their home was perfect for entertaining. Friends especially enjoyed sitting in the kitchen to watch Cora cook. She had always been interested in gourmet cuisine and enjoyed sharing her expertise.

“Afterward everyone would ask for recipes,” she says. “Friends would say, teach me how to make this or that… how to fry chicken or bake salmon.”

Mark, I always find your open, honest, and direct insights well informed and insightful. Thank you. Subscriber JE. Cora taught what she knew. Then she started inviting local expats, many of them experienced chefs and bakers, to teach what they knew, too.

“We kept getting requests for classes,” she says, “and people kept offering to teach.” The result: the Boquete Gourmet cooking school. Cora later branched out into doing culinary “events,” a food column for the local newspaper, and a blog (boquetegourmet.com).

For Cora, it's all about having fun and spending her time doing something she loves. The small income she makes is just the icing on the cake.

Just like the late Tarla Dalal in India – a homemaker who became a household name with her wide range of culinary delights. Tarla Dalal was a pioneer of the recipe book trend in India. Till the last years of her life too, Tarla Dalal was actively conducting cooking workshops and making food videos.

Culinary events are happening all over India, either in malls or in homes or in restaurants. Identify your best dishes, standardize the recipe and get ready to teach them to a bunch of willing learners.

You can even start a homemade tiffin service which is the need of the hour in many households and offices in the country. Most women already in the business are running this service from their homes and getting enough regular income from their culinary skills.

All you need to do is identify the demand in your neighbourhood, hire some extra help and create daily menus. Once you put the word out, you'll be surprised by the business you get.

Have We Inspired You?

If you are interested in starting a retail business in retirement, the above stories should give you both inspiration and some sense of what your challenges will be.

Stay tuned for the next in the series.

Best, Mark