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Is it an advantage or disadvantage to be an American in AM? (41)

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I have been surprised at how many people on STM are from countries outside the USA, or now live outside the USA.

This made me wonder, is it an advantage or a disadvantage to be an American in AM?

What are your thoughts and experience?

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IMO, there are some advantages early on in terms of payments from networks and currency conversion fees. Some networks may also more readily accept someone from the US.

However, I imagine most US guys try to get out of the US as soon as they can in the context of taxation.

I don't know of any advantages to being in the US versus, say, the UK, France or Australia, as an Internet marketer

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Unless you renounce your citizenship in the US you're still forced to pay US taxes no matter where you live. So if you move to a country with an effective tax rate of 10% and in the US you're used to paying 40% you'll get a credit for the 10% paid abroad and pay the difference in US taxes.

So this is actually probably one of the biggest disadvantages of being an American. You can't just take off and move to a low tax country for a year and save loads of money. Pretty much no other countries have this policy.

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Yeah for sure, though I meant more in terms of off-shoring businesses rather than having them run in the US. As far as I understand it, most US citizens in this situation offshore their business income and keep personal salaries/stipends low.

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Being a US citizen, you have the advantage to get so many so many accounts on ___ and ___ which allow you to make a lot a lot of money.

Sometimes I wish I am a US citizen.

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As a US citizen, you can also:

1. Move to Puerto Rico & get residency for 6 months out of the year
2. Create a dedicated company for exporting services (direct response marketing) with at least 3 employees that make ~40-60k USD a year (one of which can be you)
3. Get taxed only 4% on all income
4. Claim exemption from being taxed by the US for ANY amount of money you make (not just 100k/year)

This arrangement is pretty hot off the press that just came about in the last 2 months or so

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Disregarding tax situations...

Back when I started AM, you had a HUGE advantage if you were based in the US. US was the epicenter of the industry.

Now it is a lot more global. There has been a big shift to Europe and Asia.

You still have advantages being an American, but not like you once did.

Someone who is based in China and fluent in English has a huge edge at this current time.

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Can you explain your thoughts and opinion on this? Thanks.

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Oh yup heard about this, if you don't mind living in Puerto Rico for a bit that is a pretty sweet deal.

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Thank you everyone for your wise perspectives.

- Mr. Kokofai: How difficult is the problem of getting accounts if you are not an American? Also, is this something you could find a partner to do, even if you are not in USA?

- Mr. Green: Thank you for your response. Yes, I have been really surprised at how international STM really is. I think that is a good thing. I believe you are the top thanked commentator on STM. Would you know what % of the top 5 thanked commentators on STM are American or living in USA? Top 10? Top 15?

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I studied e-commerce at university. A few of my lectures were always saying that China was a sleeping giant soon to wake. They had been saying that for years and years.

Well now the giant is awake. In purely affiliate marketing terms China has SMASHED down the door in the mobile arena.

12 months ago most people would of never of heard of yeahmobi, avazu, kingmobi, appflood. Or mobogenie, cleanmaster, baidu, etc etc. China dominates the mobile space these days.

Any forward thinking mobile affiliate network are either forming offices in Asia, or hiring Chinese staff.

As an English speaker you can't just walk into the door and do business easily in China. They play a different game then we are used to.

There is so much opportunity there. So much scale.

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Mr Green - New Zealand now Netherlands
stackman - Canada
caurmen - UK
maynzie - Australia
tijn - UK
bbrock32 - Italy
polarbacon US now Malaysia
zeno - New Zealand
Finch - UK
The Angry Russian - US (hence why he's so angry).

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In 1816, in one of his rare moments of poetic fancy, Napolean Bonaparte wrote,

"Quand la Chine s'éveillera, le monde tremblera"

Translated literally, this means, When China awakens, the world will tremble

Well, it has taken almost 200 years, but yes, China has definitely awoken.

I am probably spending 75% of my time in China these days. The scale is indeed unimaginable for people who have never been or worked there before.

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I wish I was born in china

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I don't see any obvious advantages being a US citizen ( especially lately ).

You have access to pretty much the same resources a European affiliate has but you can't move to a low taxation country.

While that seems small, think if you do $2 million in profit a year. You would have to pay 800k in taxes while an EU affiliate could just move to a 0 or low taxation country and invest that 800k next year in technology or whatever gives him an edge.

That slowly becomes hard to compete.

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What affiliate is going to spend $800k on technology? Even if he needed to, it would almost certainly be deductible against income in the US. The taxation thing doesn't really give affiliates in low-tax jurisdictions a competitive advantage, it just allows them to keep more of their profit (which is a huge advantage in terms of building wealth).

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Time to start learning Chinese. Like NGO says. Adapt or die

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^^Lol like anyone says in affiliate marketing.

It will take you years to master mandarin. The opportunity cost woud be huge too. Would be smarter to partner with an English speaking Chinese person.

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That was just an example. An affiliate could use that to start a traffic source, own offer, SaS service or anything that would give him an edge.

Also in the example above that 800k is tax for one year. For someone that has been doing AM for 4-5 years money saved ( and that could be invested ) is considerable.

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That is actually pretty amazing that only 1 out of the top 10 (and none of the top 9) contributors are based in the US.

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Right but this kind of internal investment would be tax deductible if done right. So income would be reduced from $2mm to $1.2mm and he would only pay taxes on the $1.2mm. That aside, obviously it is always better to pay a lower tax rate for your own wealth accumulation.

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It's very difficult especially in Asia - because the credit fraud rates are quite high here as compared to western countries (especially Malaysia). Of course, you can always get around it by having a partner who is based in US.

Needless to say, trust is very important in this case and you have to make sure your partner will not screw you up in any case.

"If there is a will, there is a way" - This is my philosophy in affiliate marketing. Whenever I want to do something, I will always make sure it got achieved.

On a side note, being a Chinese myself, the Mandarin in China is VERY DIFFERENT and has different slang for different provinces. So few weeks ago I was browsing & stumbled upon this china affiliate forum, I joined and tried to understand deeper on the China affiliate scene.. And guess what? It took me very long to find out the meaning on every single word in their sentences.

An example would be... they call "Super Affiliate" as "Big Cow"



I didn't know at first until I read more and more... "I have a question to ask and I hope the "Big Cow" can chimp in to answer this..." (in mandarin of course).

Big Cow? Mooo....

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chinese affiliate marketing forum would be interesting..

I wonder if google translate would have much luck

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If I was a super affiliate, I would prefer Big Cow over Big Cat :P (because a cow is bigger than a cat and it probably would represent my stack of money better)

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speaking of Chinese forums found this one when i was digging around for a history jacking script the other day,http://www.advertcn.com/thread-14591-1-1.html actually quite readable when using google translate. Been meaning to dig around more on there, some good posts in the mobile section.

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Credit in America is MUCH more favorable. Everything else sucks.

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Well, there is also In-N-Out.

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I heard that it much easier to learn speaking chineses than reading.. anyway good luck with that..

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American Women...

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Disadvantage yes?

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haha beat me to it!

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And if dont want to live in Puerto Rico, you can consider residing these US states where there is no income tax at the state level.

Alaska
Florida
Nevada
South Dakota
Texas
Washington
Wyoming

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Haha, nigga please.... Anyone who's been outside the US knows full well, that is a huge disadvantage ;-)

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Partner with an English speaking Chinese person and run mobile CPA campaigns targeting China together?

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Coompletely agree. In Case if anyone is looking, i can fill the spot.

Bilingual English speaking Chinese person

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There may have been some advantages in the very first wave of internet marketing (e.g. 1995-2005), but today, I really don't see any major advantage of being an American in this game vs the citizen of another developed country.

Indeed, it probably can put you at a disadvantage in certain cases.

If you are just starting out, the difficulty of getting affordable healthcare in the US can be an issue.

If you get much more successful, the relatively limited options you have on tax planning can also put you at a disadvantage.

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Taxes wise its a horrible thing

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A few years ago I had big troubles to be accepted to promote offers as I'm from Spain and probably one of the few media buyers here those days, so i was rejected or had to go through more in deep interviews where I could prove I was not an scammer.

Now I don't think it makes a difference at all if you are from Europe for example, maybe you could face some issues being from some Asian or Eastern Europe countries.

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it is a distinct disadvantage

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It's what you make of it..

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i have moved to puerto rico and im taking advantageof these tax breaks if anyone is interested in more details let me know also you dont have to spend 6 months in puerto rico as long as you dont spend over 90 days in the US you can spend 90 daysin puerto rico and the other time anywhere elselike canada, europe, asia ect... also know several affiliates and advertisers moviing here im very excited about it

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