If you want to stay in Phnom Penh long-term and generate your own source(s) of income, there are some ways to make money, either through a full-time job or by doing things on the side. Phnom Penh is by no means a ‘working city’ for foreigners, so the number of jobs available to foreigners are rather limited. Most decent jobs are obviously offered in Phnom Penh. This is true for both foreigners and Cambodians. So, if you want to make some money here, you’ve got to be creative and persistent, there aren’t many companies dying to employ you. Here are 10 ways foreigners or expats can make money in Cambodia.

How can a foreigner make money in Cambodia

The most successful ways to make money in Cambodia is to take advantage of the difference in costs of living and products between Cambodia and the developed world, to spot a niche opportunity in the market, or to exploit on a certain skillset or piece of knowledge. The less successful ways are to work as a local.

Looking at what most other people do can help you to get inspired. Here’s an overview of the most common ways for foreigners to make money in Chiang Mai:

1. Teaching English (or something else)

By far the most popular job amongst foreigners in Phnom Penh, probably in the rest of Cambodia, is teaching English. An estimated 1 out of 20 or so young, active foreigners in Phnom Penh teach English part-time or full-time, through an official school or less official, with a TEFL degree or without, at Cambodian university level or in high school.
This is not the best-paid job in the world, it can offer you a modest good living in Phnom Penh, but it gives you a lot of freedom to move all around Southeast Asia or anywhere in the world where the local population is in need of schooling. Clearly, your chances are best when you have a degree in teaching, a TEFL and as your native speaker.

You can also enroll in several programs to get a TEFL degree and work and live in Phnom Penh (for example: CM Language Institute, UNITEFL, SEETEFL, Paradise TEFL and TEFL 360).

Besides English, the most popular languages Cambodians are interested in are French, Japanese and Korean. Also, there are a lot of yoga instructors and yoga schools in Phnom Penh where you can learn or teach yoga. Other foreigners give study help to Cambodians or to students abroad (through Zoom).

2. Working online: being a Digital Nomad

Much less visible than English teachers are foreigners who generate money behind their computer screens within the confines of their own room: digital nomads. There’s probably no (consensus on an) official definition of this new societal phenomenon, but practically let’s say a ‘digital or virtual nomad‘ is someone who can travel anywhere (in the developing world) while generating money online on the go.

Working online is a preferred option for those who love the freedom of working in your own time without a boss and who don’t want to bother about the hassle of Cambodian work permits. Digital nomads take advantage of the fact that most of their work can be done remote from an office, boss, or customer, using mostly the internet or other modern technology to communicate and perform their work.

Nowadays, you can do almost anything on the net and if you’re smart, diligent, and persistent enough, you can make money with it. Here’s a range of endless possibilities:
• running a website – Internet speeds in Phnom Penh aren’t great but sufficient and definitely better than in many other parts of the developing world.

• website design– A more creative job that involves some technical and creative skills.
  • programming / software development– technical job that you can also outsource to some local programmers. There are several foreign-run companies in Phnom Penhthat program for companies in the west and benefit from the cheaper engineers here.
  • copy writing / freelance writing / editing – You get assignments in the mail and are paid by the number of words. Do it in your own time and pace.
  • graphic design / online printing – Can be done entirely online, some guys even pretend to still have an office in Europe.
• online / affiliate marketing – Big international companies often outsource jobs like this to anyone who wants to do it behind a screen.
• web annotator – Another job you can do completely online. Evaluate websites based on several criteria and report to companies in Ireland / Scotland.
• playing poker– Some wouldn’t call this work; others claim that it takes many hours of patience and learning so in that sense there’s a work element. Most people who talk about it claim to be making money and to be able to live off it, true or not.

The range of possibilities is really endless, but what all these activities have in common is that you can simply do it at home and nobody knows (especially not Immigration) that money is flowing into your Paypal account, and you can pay off your bills in Cambodia.
Some may argue that a forex trader or a poker player isn’t as much a digital nomad as a website designer, but that doesn’t really matter, the thing is you can travel anywhere and still generate your own money on the go using the internet.

Phnom Penh being such a cool place where nobody bothers you and where it’s cheap to live, a lot of international digital nomads have chosen Phnom Penh as one of their bases, alongside with other cheaper places in the world to live. Do you want to travel and work wherever you want, then this is the thing for you? Here’s an example of how your virtual nomadic life could be.

Officially, working online is probably in a gray zone in Cambodia (and many other countries) when it comes to work permits and taxes. When the money is generated within Cambodia, officially you probably need to have a work permit and to pay taxes, but most people don’t bother to report because luckily nobody knows.

3. Exporting / selling things on eBay/Amazon or Alibaba

If you are able to source a local product that is worth selling, you can ship it to Europe, the US or wherever and get a (substantial) margin on it. Most local products are, of course, fairly cheap, and you can sell them for a much higher price in more expensive countries. There are numerous interesting local products that people (tourists) like to buy here and want to have or use at home.

A few big challenges with this type of business are:
– The quality and finishing of Cambodian products is often not so good. Things wear out very quickly or you can see there is no neat finishing;
– Finding (big groups of) customers requires some effort;
– You need persistence to become successful in selling a product.

A lot of people try it out casually and give up after the first hick ups appear, then you’ll never succeed. Others pick the wrong product because they have no market sense. Every year we meet foreigners walking around with the idea of selling Cambodian coffee to Western markets, but no one ever succeeds, for many reasons.

The few people who manage to create a stable customer base and sell products from Cambodia typically choose products such as jewelry and aroma oil. Some reasons why these can sell are: Cambodian skills in design are acceptable (more so than in engineering) so minor flaws don’t matter; the products are light yet expensive compared to their weight so easy to send over even in small quantities; these products already exist in the local market and with some foreign help, you can help adapt them to western taste.

Foreigners who are more successful in exporting goods from Cambodia often operate through an eBay account or, more seriously, they set up a limited company in Hong Kong to be able to issue real invoices, while being (nearly) exempted from taxes.

4. Trading stock or foreign currencies

If you have some savings, and you’re able to leverage on it by investing or speculating on the market, you can of course earn good or big money, but you can also lose all of it. A lot of amateur traders are doing this, picking, and selling stocks and FOREX. Most of them say they’re making money and can live of it, up to you to believe it or not, some report having lost millions. Stock pickers generally seem more knowledgeable than forex traders, and those with a financial or economic background seem to do better than opportunity seekers. There are dozens of forex sites trying to lure you into trading, often with ‘guaranteed’ results.

5. Call center jobs

One of the few jobs you can get in foreign – owned offices in Phnom Penh are call center jobs. There are a few call centers here, that are always on the lookout for multilingual staff as diverse as Spanish, German, Danish and so on, besides English. You can make a modest living out of it, but few would consider this to be a lifetime career, so the turnover in these centers is probably quite high. If this is your jumping bridge to Asia, it could serve as a first start though. The call centers arrange for work permits.

6. Running a bar, restaurant, guesthouse / resort

This is one of the most common types of business, mostly for older foreigners who have fallen in love with or married a local Cambodian girl. They buy up a local bar or restaurant and run it together with their girl. Some of them underestimate the difficulties of the business, buy too expensive, get cheated by their girls, have problems managing the staff, and finally must sell at a loss. Others do okay. At least they make enough money to stay in the country while being together with their lover.

Typically, foreigners buy up a business and don’t give themselves a work permit because of the hassle of employing 4 local Cambodian, so they sit around in the bar or restaurant, not allowed to really work, while the wife does the work.

8. Renting out property

For those who have a bit of money, buying up a condo or house and renting it out again to foreigners can generate a stable source of income and a much better return than you get in the bank. Read more about buying property in Cambodia and renting out. Phnom Penh still offers quite an attractive real estate market.
Officially, this type of income is probably also in a gray zone when it comes to taxes and work permit, but thousands of foreigners do this all over the country, so for the time being, it is kind of tolerated by the Cambodian authorities.

9. Become a reporter/journalist for online newspapers

There are many opportunities for journalists to make money in Cambodia. One of the most popular is to take freelance jobs, like writing for an online newspaper. However, anyone can take up this job as there are no qualifications needed to become a reporter or journalist for an online newspaper in Cambodia.

10. Setting up your own business

A small number of foreigners manages to set up a completely new business, way different from taking over a bar or a restaurant, something new that didn’t exist before in Phnom Penh.

These businesses spotted a market opportunity, pushed through, and became successful. Of course, it takes quite a lot of entrepreneurial skills, and you won’t find enough of it in every backpacker, yoga instructor or English teacher.

A lot of entrepreneurial momentum in Phnom Penh is created by foreign ideas, what Cambodian typically do is copy it right away and go sit next door to take away your customers, so you better be prepared when you’re doing something new in town.
Some people approach us and ask what kind of jobs are available in Phnom Penh for foreigners with a decent MBA. Well, the answer is of course: nearly none, because there aren’t enough offices and businesses here that offer high quality jobs. If you have a good brain and skillet, the only way is to start something for yourself.