LocationlessLiving.com is a travelogue meant to encourage people interested in travel to make it happen, despite any limiting circumstances.
At Locationless Living you will find:
- Personal travel stories and photos from independent travels
- Tips for planning budget trips, with a special focus on travel in South America
- Personal anecdotes on advice about how to make a living online so that you can work anywhere in the world
My name is Jason, and pursuing my interests in travel has resulted in me being self-employed with the ability to live, work, and travel anywhere in the world. But my story is different from many others.
I did not quit my career after 30 years, or 15 years, or 1 year in order to go travel. I have pursued my interest in business since I was 16 in order to travel.
His venture into entrepreneurship started on a minor scale. During his junior year at Lower Merion, he had a friend who had sold some items on e-Bay. “I did some research and started small, selling things around the house that were no longer used,” he recalled.
Then, after some more research, he decided to set up an online store, selling “products that people had trouble finding.” By senior year he had the operation, at www.buysomethingawesome.com, up and running.
The “store” offered a “unique product line,” Batansky said, from T-shirts and backpacks and decorative neon signs to cologne, watches and sunglasses. Naturally enough most items were geared to a youth market.
“I would find people who liked to design funny images and sayings and offer to put them on T-shirts and give them a portion of the proceeds,” he said describing one approach.
One shirt, with the saying, “We do things my way or the Hemingway” and featuring an image of the writer, caught the attention of the Hemingway Museum in Oak Park, Ill., and resulted in one of his biggest orders. For a reason that’s a mystery even to Batansky, it remains one of his biggest sellers.
As business grew, Batansky made connections with wholesalers and manufacturers, who would ship orders directly to buyers so that he didn’t have to keep a big inventory on hand. He added a popular clothing line, Alternative Apparel, to the store.
To build the venture, Batansky knew he had to establish a strong business identity and “brand” through a creative Web site design, company logo and advertising. He analyzed Web-site statistics to write effective ads and optimize search-engine recognition and Internet links, and bought advertising space on other Web sites and blogs.
During his sophomore year, he needed to prepare a résumé. “I went to the advising department and got a basic critique, then started doing some research on my own until I got to the point I was comfortable with it.”
Before he knew it, Batansky said, he was helping friends with their résumés, and again, he thought, “Why not create a business?”
The result was his second online venture, www.resumetointerviews.com. Customers can get basic or more extensive help through the site. Batansky said he works with clients through an online questionnaire or phone consultations, crafting effective job descriptions, creating clear and eye-catching formats, making their writing spelling- and grammatical error-free — in short, finding ways to make their résumé stand out among a stack of applications.
While his clients at first were fellow college students, Batansky said he now works with people at different career levels “in all different industries” from film producers to engineers to information-technology and software-development professionals.
The beauty of both of his online businesses, he said, is that, thanks to the Internet, “there’s no reason why you can’t run them from anywhere in the world.”
What am I doing now?
I graduated university in December, 2009 and am now living as a location independent professional. I am visiting family in Florida before I begin my next trip to South America (Quito, Ecuador) on January, 31. My rough plan is to travel from Ecuador down to Central America.
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