I wish I had a concrete answer for all the foreigners wanting to move to Thailand. A guaranteed answer how they can make enough money to live here fulltime.
The realistic answer is I do not and anyone that tells you they do, is full of it.
Some of the best entrepreneur’s ever have gone out of business in Thailand.
A combination of factors including needing a ridiculous amount of sales due to dealing in Thai baht, to copycat businesses where there are simply to many of the same businesses undercutting each other.
Qualifications have stiffened but it is still possible to get a job teaching English. Depending on your qualifications and which school you land it, this might be enough income for you?
Youtube? The chances of making enough on a saturated foreign Youtube market is probably greater than 1 in 10,000+. (Yet people are just starting with the hope they can become the next big Youtuber). This may work in the short term, however, what happens when you get old and no one wants to watch your videos?
Business? My thoughts here are if you have enough money for a large, high traffic business.
Many foreigners own go-go bars and have been in that business for over 20 years. Pattaya has many.
Pattaya also has many large foreign owned restaurants.
7/11 is another business, you do need money, but maybe not as much as you think.
Some foreigners have bought up and refurbished run down resorts?
But for the average foreigner, there does not seem to be a lot of ways to make a guaranteed income here.
It is not much different for Thai people.
It takes money to make money.
You also have to be able to absorb a financial loss if you risk going into business here.
- You need to figure out where you want to live?
- You need to figure out HOW MUCH you need to earn each month?
- Once you figure out how much you need to earn each month, you should be able to do some simple math and equate that with how many customers you need each day? The biggest issue is most foreign businesses do not get anywhere near the amount of customers they need each day.
After 1 to 3 above, you can eliminate many of the ideas you have due to not enough daily customers.
Another idea is to have more than 1 business.
Can you have 3 or 4 that make 10,000 thb a month each? That might be more work, but easier to handle financially?
I wish all the good foreigners that want to live in Thailand had a financial way to do so.
But the truth is that it is almost impossible.
That is why there are so many Thai vendors surviving day to day financially.
Having skills to work FROM Thailand online seems to be the best option, getting paid in western currency.
Short of that, there is NO easy answer to making money here.
Most foreigners that are living well here have already worked their entire lives and have a good financial pension.