Get a job teaching English doing the absolute minimum (14 hours or whatever it is) and then you can keep doing your affiliate marketing. It works out rather well.
Having read your post a second time it seems that you want to start a business or something in Taiwan so you don’t have to teach English? I don’t know anything about that but I think the easiest way would to be to find a teaching job that has the absolute minimum hours OR just get married and then you don’t have to work
Yes, I wasn’t too excited about having to be an English teacher full time. However, I wouldn’t mind teaching a little bit, it could be fun and rewarding.
So you’re basically advising me to get a job at a university, or school, and to negotiate the minimum work hours ? I assume they will provide me with a visa that allows folks to make income on the side ? Are you sure about this ?
What do you mean: if I get married, I won’t need to work ? Will my wife be supporting me ? I didn’t get that comment, but it sure made me laugh.
By the way, I’m not an English native speaker, and was born in France.
I happened to go to elementary school in California because of circumstance, and picked up English when I was really young. I went to graduate school in California as well, and worked there for years.
The result is that no one can tell I’m French, as I lost my accent a while back (to the great disappointment of American girls).
But anyways, I understand that I would be at a disadvantage because of this. Do you think I could still find a job as a teacher ? I feel my English is actually stronger than my French these days…lol. My mom is always bashing my grammar and spelling when I send her emails in French.
[quote=“Delonge182”]By the way, I’m not an English native speaker, and was born in France.
I happened to go to elementary school in California because of circumstance, and picked up English when I was really young. I went to graduate school in California as well, and worked there for years.[/quote]
Do you have an American passport? With that and your grad school credentials you should be able to land a teaching gig. You can also try teaching French if you prefer.
The idea is to get the minimum number of teaching hours required to get an ARC (resident visa), which allows you to stay in Taiwan for usually 1 year at a time. Technically you’re not supposed to be working elsewhere in Taiwan during that time, however in your case if you have earnings from abroad that you can withdraw from a local ATM, you should be fine.
The marriage visa lets you do the same thing (stay in Taiwan legally) except you wouldn’t have to work.
Another option would be to sign up at a local language center to learn Chinese. They issue out 3 month visas (you may be able to get longer if you pay for a longer term). That requires you to attend classes for 15 hours per week.
A third option would be to get a 60 day tourist visa. This way you wouldn’t have to work at all. However you would have to leave Taiwan every 60 days to get a new tourist visa from some nearby country (HK and Thailand are the most popular options). You may find it harder to get housing, driver’s license, cell phone, bank accounts etc. on this option since you wouldn’t have your ARC.
You can PM me for more info if you would like, since I also have online earnings that I live off of.
Doh, Adam_CLO also mentioned the other trick of “studying Chinese”. It is what I did when I was selling online also. About the getting married, I just mean if you marry a TW and go through all the paper work you don’t have to get a job to get a visa to stay etc. If you do find a job, they’ll provide you with all the paperwork you need to stay. Good luck.
You are my first official “Taiwanese” buddies. Well not really Taiwanese, but let’s pretend.
I love the option of studying Chinese to get a VISA, as studying Mandarin has been a long standing objective for me. I guess the VISA they will confer will be equivalent to the American F1.
However, after 1 year, I will need to pay taxes on my online earnings in TW, when technically I was supposed to be a student during that time. If I make over 50K $ will this be OK ?
And if I get a visa via the studying route, can I tutor English in my free time. I’d love to help out some Taiwanese people, and it could also complement my online income.
Unfortunately (or fortunately ), I have a French Passport. I went to Caltech in the USA which is the most selective university along with MIT. Not sure if this will do me any good if I went for the school gig though.
Thanks guys, and maybe I will marry a TW girl too, they seem very cute !
And maybe we can discuss affiliate sites, and SEO, I am very knowledgeable about this. If you need to rank for english teacher taiwan, I can help !
You won’t need to pay tax if they don’t know about it. Seriously, just make sure your online earnings are going into a bank account somewhere else, or are being remitted from out of the country and the Taiwan tax office won’t care. And if someone does ask, just tell them it’s money from your family to support your studies.
As cfimages said, I wouldn’t worry about declaring any money unless it was some absolute insane amount. When I was studying Chinese I think it worked out to be about 1XX NT per hour (150NT or less I think) with a minimum of 2 hours a day. It was the most cost effective way to get a visa and stay in Taiwan for me at the time as I had enough with teaching. If you are studying you can’t legally tutor or teach as you don’t have a work permit. This doesn’t mean many people don’t do it, just be aware that it is illegal.
Thanks. So I understand that you were tutoring on the side ?
About the taxes thing, don’t you still need to declare them somewhere, I don’t want to do anything illegal. Your advice is sound however, I didn’t earn any money in Taiwan, so let’s not confuse the tax office over there.
Anyways, let’s say I keep getting these 3 months visas… eventually my Chinese will be better and I will want a stronger Visa.
What did you guys end up getting eventually ?
Let me know if you have recommendations for a Language School in Taipei !
Any school will do as long as it can provide you with the proper paperwork/visa to study Chinese (which school obviously depends on what city you will be staying in). I didn’t teach on the side, I was selling products online I was importing from China at the time. Regarding what to do to stay long term, that will depend and I am not the person to answer that, sorry. If you stay and work for 7 years I believe you can apply for a permanent residency. The easier solution is to just get married, which is what I did. I am sure someone who knows more about the other options can chime in here and provide you with the info you need.
If you’re thinking long term be aware that time spent on a student visa won’t be counted towards years of residency (for applying for Permanent Residency for example (after five years)). However in the first instance it would be a great way to come over and decide if you like it, while fufilling your aim of learning Mandarin.
