The poster, for those that aren’t yet amazing at Spanish, reads, “Stop The Crisis, Start A Company”!

Just the ticket I’d say… the country is in economic ruin, you’ve just lost your job, things are looking pretty bleak… I know, why not start a company! After all, that’s easy in Spain – hardly any paperwork involved, and you only need €3,000 in cash or usable assets lying around to get going!

This should solve the country’s economic gloom in no time

“We believe that Spain is a disaster waiting to happen [and] is set for a long, painful deflation that will manifest itself via a very high unemployment level for an industrialized economy, a real estate collapse and general banking insolvencies… Spain had the mother of all housing bubbles. To put things in perspective, Spain now has as many unsold homes as the US, even though the US is about six times bigger. Spain is roughly 10% of the EU GDP, yet it accounted for 30% of all new homes built since 2000 in the EU. Most of the new homes were financed with capital from abroad, so Spain’s housing crisis is closely tied in with a financing crisis… Spanish banks, in our view, are now facing a very bleak outlook. Spain’s unemployment rate reached over 17%; there are now four million unemployed Spaniards and over one million families with not a single person employed in the family. “

Read the full article here, and let me know what you think…

How do you make money from blogging? That is something that most fledgling bloggers ask themselves sooner rather than later. For plenty of ideas, just head over to problogger.net. Darren Rose, the guy who runs that site, bought his house on the back of Adsense payments, so he knows what he’s talking about.

The Google Ads story here at Notesfromspain.com is a little different. Up until yesterday I had a vertical strip of Google ads down the left-hand column of all the blog and forum pages. Want to know how much they earned me this March, a fairly typical month?

More than 50 but less than 100 US dollars (Google’s Terms of Service forbid me from being precise). That’s for a grand total of 183,000 page views, and 25,801 Absolute Unique Visitors for the same month. Seems a pretty poor return for quite a lot of traffic.

Of course I could have been far more aggressive about the placement of the ads, putting them right under, around, and in the middle of blog posts etc, but I find that kind of practice insulting to readers, and in any case, I doubt it would have done more than double that figure.

So, I’ve decided to take the Google Ads off all of my sites. I’ll be throwing away just over 1,000 dollars a year, but the real issue here is not the small amount that Google can offer me as direct income from this blog, but the indirect benefits that this blog can bring me.

For example, the Notes from Spain blog and podcasts (the latter will be back soon by the way) led to work with Lonely Planet and Fodors. Notes from Spain originally led to, and still leads a lot of people to, Notes in Spanish, where we make 99% of our living. A few clicks from here to our new (and extremely good, if I say so myself) Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide, will be worth a lot more than a few clicks on other people’s ads.

So this particular blog and the accompanying podcasts can bring huge benefits, but they are side benefits (side benefits that have completely changed my life). They are, I think, a result of the fact that I love producing this content, that I love writing and podcasting about Spain. I don’t want to make money directly from these pages, I just want to write and broadcast, and afterwards to see what happens to come along as a result, to see if it makes people curious about our Spanish content, or want to read my book. Google Ads have no place in that equation.

Marketing Guru Seth Godin sums up the whole blogging-for-money thing very well in a recent post on his blog:

The best bloggers make money, but mostly as a side effect, not as a direct result of setting out to use a blog to make a profit. It’s just too long a ramp up time, too frustrating and too uncertain to be the best path to make a living.

Conclusion? Don’t rely on Adsense to make your fortunes online, but do keep blogging. You never know where it might lead!

Top Seth Godin Tip: Want to know more about the future of online marketing and communities, and how they might help you make money online? Read Seth’s Meatball Sundae. He’s a clever bloke!

Nowadays a lot of people including, I suppose, myself, are touting the dream of a live-anywhere, internet-based income. You know, the idea that you can chill out by the beach, check your email once a week, and watch the cash role in.

The reality is obviously a little bit tougher than that. Not only do you have to find an online business idea that works, you then have to lovingly pay attention to it, full time, for a very long time. Still, it beats having to commute to work every day, and yes, you can live by a nice Spanish beach if you want to!

A problem for many people that might be considering this online lifestyle here in Spain, however, is that they just don’t know where to start. Either that or, like us, you wake up one day and realise that your website is making you some money, but you really don’t know how to build on what you’ve got. You have no idea how to take your fledgling business idea up to another level, to a point where you really can rely on it to pay the mortgage.

In either case you need to find the right expert resources to carry you forward. Over the last 6 months I’ve spent a lot of time investigating such resources, and wanted to share the very best of what I’ve discovered with you here. A lot of what I’ve found out stemmed from a very useful lunchtime conversation with Dean Hunt (interview here), who taught us an incredible amount about honing our websites, and online marketing principles.

His advice put me on track in my continuing investigations, so if you can’t find a local Dean to tell you what’s what, I recommend you have a good look at this lot (presented in no logical order!):

Internet Business Mastery

In this excellent podcast Sterling and Jay do a great job of taking you through the whole process of conceiving, building, and marketing an online business. As I was already several steps down the line when I started listening to these guys, I was able to pick and choose which episodes I knew would be most useful – mostly, in my case, related to marketing and information products.

But if you are starting from scratch, want to know how to find a profitable niche, what free software to use to build an online presence, and how to get people’s continued attention, then you can learn an enormous amount from the podcast: www.internet-based-business-mastery.com

Note: A lot of what they cover is related to the sale of information products. If that is something that interests you, then there is a pretty excellent summary of how the whole information product business works online here.

Teaching Sells

Without doubt one of the fastest growing areas of online business is Education. One day we will all be learning almost exclusively online. If you know more about something than most other people (be it knitting, photography, being an expat, teaching English abroad, depression, ebay, hair-care for dogs… you name it!), the chances are you could already be making money from teaching others all about it.

A fairly new – and potentially hugely profitable – angle is the development of membership sites, where people pay you recurring monthly fees to learn all the stuff you already know, and carefully present to them. The Teaching Sells program provides a complete blueprint to setting up such a membership site, covering everything from easy multimedia content development, to affordable software solutions, and marketing your new site.

Personally, I don’t want to set up a membership website at the moment, but I have still managed to learn an incredible amount from being a member of the Teaching Sells program. As well as the great advice on content development and marketing, the information I’ve picked up in the members-only forums are worth the price of admission alone. You can currently check out the whole program with their one-week one-dollar trial offer. Check out Teaching Sells here.

The E-Myth Revisited

They say that to become an expert in anything, you only need to read the right three books. Some people go as far as to say just two well-chosen books on a given subject can give you all you need. I’m going to go one step further and say that in this case, just one book will do.

The E-myth Revisited is like an instant MBA. Honestly, if you are already running any kind of business, online or off, and you are not entirely sure how you got where you are or exactly where you are going, reading this book sets fireworks off in your head. If you are overwhelmed by your work, or by the work you envisage ahead, this book will put you right.

Even if you are already doing well and think you know exactly where you are going with your business, you have to read this book. It will pretty much up your chances of future success by about 3000%.

You might initially be put off by the writing style, and the occasional conversations with case-study Sarah, the lost, over-worked pie shop owner, but believe me, about halfway through the book those mental explosions will be happening, and you will feel infinitely more confident about where you are going with your present or potential business life.

Highly highly recommended (and I still have 20 pages to go!) Check it out on Amazon: E-myth Revisited

The Four Hour Workweek

I’ve mentioned this book before, and not everyone is convinced. But the point of this book is that it is very inspiring if you are thinking about leaving a boring life behind, finding an online income, and living life to the full right now. Actually, it’s inspiring even if you are already living the good life abroad!

There is a lot here which is frankly worth ignoring, including, to be honest, some of the advice on making money online, but everyone takes something away from this book. The productivity tips alone are excellent, and likely to give lost hours back to your life (it’s all about the 80/20 and controlling the email!!).

As I said, it’s inspiring stuff, and despite the bits you’ll instinctively know aren’t for you, it’s well worth reading. More reviews here: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Conclusion:

That’s plenty for now. Delve into that lot and you’ll have enough to keep you going for a year, because not only will you be taking action on everything you can learn from these resources, but I can promise that all the above will be sending you off to other useful information sources as well.

Now you can help me with two important questions. 1. Was this post useful? 2. Have you got any favourite websites, or books, that have made a huge difference to how you do, or are hoping to do, business online?

After listening to the Notes in Spanish Advanced podcast about life in a Spanish office recently, I thought I’d write a little about my experience of some of the most striking differences from my viewpoint as a long term UK office worker now working in various Spanish offices over the past 18 months.

The biggest (and the most obvious) thing that I still struggle with at times is how to get my head around the well publicised relaxed attitude to timekeeping.

In my old UK company, we would routinely receive emails reminding us that 9 am was the start of the "working" day, and not the time you should be stubbing your fag out against the wall outside and thinking about dragging your lazy, no-good, workshy carcass into the building only to then go for an unfeasibly long pee, get a coffee and chat to your colleagues about last night’s television (OK, I’m paraphrasing). Something along the lines of "You should be at your workstation, ready to work at 9 am" was the usual message.

Lunch time was a fixed 45 minutes and the same rules applied then. In fact, this was so well drummed into us that, if you strolled back in 5 minutes late, your own dear colleagues (from outside your department) would look at you with scorn and pass comment either behind your back, or to your face in the form of a lame joke. The management had clearly done their job on us, as the staff were effectively policing each other in the form of an internalized company Gestapo!!! (Although, we’d of course swapped finger screws for finger pointing). A sad situation indeed.

Here in Spain, it’s very different. Last week, when I asked what the hours were in my new job, my boss kind of shrugged, expelled a lot of air, umm’d and arr’d , then finally said, "Well, come in about 9am ish, lunch is roughly 13.30 until whenever, and most people start leaving about 18.30, or earlier if it’s a Friday." (She then immediately asked if I wanted to go for a coffee with her). Ah well, that’s clear then, thanks!

So, not a bad situation, but totally useless for an anally retentive, logically minded Virgo like me who can only cope with life if there’s a "rule" of some kind to help avoid unnecessary confusion! I still find myself rushing back to work after lunch, only to find an empty office, and then chastising myself for being such a pillock. For someone who prides himself on having done a reasonably good job of fitting into Spanish life, this work timetable thing is an irritatingly persistent problem that I still need to shake off before my hair falls out or I start cultivating a stomach ulcer.

One important note regarding working hours though is that this relaxed attitude all goes in the bin when there is extra work to be done. Anyone who says that the typical Spanish office worker or manager doesn’t work long hours on the whole, is point blank lying. In the UK, I would be out of the office at 5pm and home soon after. Here, many people will stay until gone 8pm or later, routinely. My latest finish in Spain so far has been 01.30 am (I was the last one in the office that time), although my worst experience was when I did a 4 am start to fly to Paris, worked until the office shut at 9pm, then continued in the hotel until 04.30 the next morning with my colleagues.

That was an exception, but what surprised me most was that my colleagues shrugged it off with a casual – "what do you expect, we’ve got a lot of work on". I was like the living dead the next day, and couldn’t string two words together in English let alone in Spanish, whereas they seemed to spring back to life with nothing more than a strong coffee.

Then there are those little daily "excursions" that all office workers like to make whenever possible. In my old UK company, if you need to go out during work time, then basically, it better be important. Dentist and doctors appointments are the most well used excuse, but nowadays often need backing up with a proof of appointment card. In Spain, you can nip out for pretty much anything – Coffee, dry cleaning, bikini wax, pay a cheque in the bank, catch up with your friend who’s working down the road.

In a nutshell anything goes and no one raises an eyebrow. Fabulous situation. However, when a colleague in my old UK office would pop out for something not strictly kosher, "Operation Cloak and Dagger" would kick-in and we would routinely cover for them if the phone rang, telling the caller in a virtual whisper (so as not to draw unwanted attention from the Gestapo-type colleagues from other departments as mentioned earlier) that the person was "unavoidably detained in a meeting".

In Spain, none of this amateur dramatics rubbish is necessary and a quick "Yeah, she’s just popped out for a coffee, ring back in about 20 mins" is perfectly acceptable. After hearing this done a million times, it struck me how the caller would never ask, or be asked, to leave a message. It’s always left to the poor caller to somehow psychically know when the errant employee has thought it fitting to return to their desk, and then call again, often only to be told exactly the same thing (with the clock reset to the start of the "20 minutes" of course!)

Another shocker for me has been the strength of unionism in some offices here. I was recently working in a very large and well known IT consultancy, and my email inbox would be filled with the daily gripes of the worker’s union (some serious, some truly pathetic). Everyone thought it was completely normal, except for me. I know some companies in the UK are heavily unionised, and maybe I’m extremely naíve after growing up with a Thatcher government as I only associate unions with shipyards and transport workers etc, but I just didn’t expect it in a privately owned IT Consultancy.

We even had a few "sit in protests" complete with painted bed sheets tied to mop handles to make banners. It’s a strange sight in a plush and shiny office full of designer chairs and smartly dressed consultants busily working away, to look across and see a group of (comparatively) scruffy protesters "illegally occupying" a nearby area of the office in order to draw attention to their claim that the Management have not supplied the union with a dedicated office space of their own (or whatever this week’s burning issue is).

The union reps would also come around to each worker and give us things like "Know your rights" fridge magnets or "Salary review NOW" stickers, which would inevitably end up stuck to the inside of the lift doors, and leave a nasty residue and scratch marks after a passing Manager has tried to pick it off with the edge of his underpaid secretary’s staple extractor.

That’s another thing I’m told (but have zero concrete evidence of), that salaries are much lower for women even when doing the exact same job as a man in Spain. I presume it must be because of the tired old excuse that women can get pregnant at any time, leaving the company instantly on the verge of certain doom and impending bankruptcy.

I think that’s been fairly well ironed out in the UK for the most part (as I say, I think) but if this is still going on in Spain (or anywhere in fact), then it’s pretty shameful if you ask me, and I reckon it’s about time even the childless, non-family orientated workers of the nation quietly admitted that it’s no bad thing that woman should be treated absolutely equally and that pregnant women are no longer dropped like a hot potato when their boss hears their "happy" news. (Of course, I’d like to see more use of sabbaticals and career breaks for men too, but that’s going wildly off topic..!)

Finally, you can’t look at the differences between Spanish offices and UK ones (in the examples I’ve given) without mentioning the one big similarity. Office Gossip! I’m pleased to say that this is just as rife in Spain as anywhere in my experience. Extra-marital affairs, secret pregnancies, new starters with falsified CV’s, along with the usual spread of mild bitching and backstabbing is all happy camping the world over it seems!

OK, back to work for me!

Still here? OK, as mentioned recently, I want to write occasionally about running an on-line business in Spain… or beyond. But some people may wonder what on earth I know about that?! (I often do!)

I built my first website in 2004, a site called booksonspain.com, which reviewed, wait for it, books on Spain. Every book had an affiliate link to Amazon, and I thought I’d soon be a very rich man as everyone jumped from my new site to Amazon, spending loads of money there and giving me the resulting affiliate commissions. I think I made about 100 dollars in the year or two the site was running.

Next I started blogspain.com, where I tried to build a directory of, wait for it, blogs about Spain! At the same time, I started this blog, Notes from Spain, to write about the genesis of the new blogspain.com site (confusing, I know). I soon stopped updating blogspain.com as well, to concentrate on Notes from Spain, and this new-fangled podcasting malarkey.

Getting in early on the podcasting scene put notesfromspain.com on the map. Notes from Spain led to Notes in Spanish, and Notes in Spanish (to our continuing surprise) turned into a business that has allowed Marina and I to give up our old day jobs, earning more (but not vastly more) than we used to, and having a lot more flexibility and free time. And, of course, no commute or boss.

So, based on the above, what are the fundamental things I think can tell you about starting out with an on-line business?

1. It takes a long time – 3 years of tinkering in our case before we could really think about this as a viable income and lifestyle possibility.

2. It takes hours and hours and hours of work every week. Be prepared to put in 12+ hour days to start with. I did for at least a couple of those years, and often still do.

3. If you are not passionately interested in what you are doing (in your on-line experiments, or your “niche”), then you probably will not succeed – and the passion should be more important to you than the money at first. But passion, patience, and a bit of luck, should pay off eventually. The internet is a meritocracy, and if you are dedicated and good enough, you will eventually gain people’s attention.

I heard a great interview today on a podcast that has given me some very useful information recently – Internet Business Mastery. The interview is with Yanik Silver, who knows a lot about making a lot of money on-line, and has some great tips about starting out. Listen here.

Finally, one more podcast recommendation: if you are any type of creative person (and in particular a musician), and want to know about making money for (and from) yourself via the net, listen to the Jonathan Coulton interview on Episode 133 of This Week in Tech – it’s slow to get going but stick with it, there is a lot to be gleaned once Jonathan starts talking about his own experiences of making money from what he does online.

Less about me in future, and more interviews and reading/listening recommendations. Please tell me, is this content interesting/useful?

Over the next few months I hope to write a series of posts about setting up, building, and running an online business in Spain. To kick-start the whole affair, I asked my friend Dean Hunt a few questions about his experiences as an internet entrepreneur here in Spain.

I met Dean in Madrid last year, and apart from being a lot of fun to hang out with – if you don’t mind going to bed absurdly late – his up-to-date marketing advice has also had a significant impact on the fortunes of our own little online set up.

Here’s the quick-fire interview, I’m sure questions in the comments will be more than welcome:

- So Dean, how long have you been in Spain?

Just over three years now. It doesn’t seem that long, el tiempo vuela.

- What exactly do you do here work-wise?

I am an Internet Entrepreneur. I know that sounds quite vague, but what I actually do can change from month to month, depending on where I see opportunities. I am also now considered one of the leading Marketing experts on the Internet, so that has been a touching accolade.

- How long did it take before the net paid the bills?

I was messing around on the net for a year or so before I came to Madrid. But in terms of trying to do it as a job, it took a year of intensive self education before I was in a position to be paying the bills, and even after one year, I was scraping by. Luckily I have continued to improve both my skills and my profile, so I am now able to make a handsome living: I currently make approx. 10 times what I was earning in the UK.

- Many people will think ‘I can’t do that’ – What special skills does someone need to be able to make money online?

If I had to pick one skill I would probably say writing. The Internet is essentially just a lot of content strung together by links, we have a saying in the industry: “content is king”, with good content, you will succeed, and invariably most content is written… even videos and podcasts are often scripted. Unfortunately most people with this talent use it to teach, proof-read, do freelance writing etc… and frankly, it is extremely difficult to make a 6 or 7 figure income that way.

- Do you think Spain makes it particularly easy or difficult to set up an online business?

Spain makes it very difficult to set up a business, I have built a house in Madrid and I have a limited company here, and the bureaucracy can be crazy. I have done things in the UK via the net or via the post (mail), yet in Spain you have to fill out 15 forms, queue from 6am, pay hundreds of euros etc… A Spanish person once told me that the Spanish like to make things as complicated as possible, from what I have seen, he was right.

- You have a somewhat lively blog at deanhunt.com – can a personal site like that make a big difference to someone’s online potential?

It started purely as a place to gather my thoughts, all of that exploded in late 2006 when I had almost 250,000 visitors in a one week period. Since then I have been addicted to the thrill of it, and now have a loyal following and reader base. For me it has helped a lot, despite the fact that my services are fully booked for a year in advance, I still get people contacting me on a weekly basis with job and partnership opportunities. The blog has helped a great deal in opening doors for me.

- What one piece of advice would you give the fledgling blogger?

Stand out from the crowd. There are approx 6 billion web pages on the Internet, find a way to stand out from the others.

- If you could change one thing about your working life…

I work from my home office, so over the years I have started to miss the daily face-to-face interaction with other people. So I suppose it would be interesting to work one day of the week in an office with like-minded people.

- The thing you like most about life in Spain is…

The beauty. Whether you are on a beach in Southern Spain, In Madrid Centre, or even in a quiet little town, it is beautiful. Throw in the good weather, and you have a perfect recipe.

- Any Spain moans?

Just the usual I suppose: Lack of customer service, terrible drivers/roads, David Bisbal

- The one post every should read on your blog is:

It is more of a page than a post, but http://deanhunt.com/category/life-in-madrid/ shows all the blog posts regarding my life in Madrid. There is everything from photos of my house, to the announcement of my engagement to Elena, to me eating snails in a bar in Madrid (yikes).

Many thanks Dean! Remember to check out his blog at deanhunt.com (mind the killer bunnies!), and feel free to comment/ask questions below.

I worked as an English teacher in both companies. The second was a multi-million dollar marketing company, that invoiced its clients hundreds of thousands of euros at a time. By just floating in for a few hours a day (max 24 per week), I earned more than most of the main-floor cubicle workers I was teaching, who worked 60 hour weeks, might come in at weekends without extra renumeration, and were lucky to earn 1,000 euros a month.

They are the so-called mileuristas (great article in El Pais), late-20’s to thirty-somethings with a degree, maybe even a Masters, probably an extra language or two to their name, who just can’t break the 1,000 euros a month barrier no matter who they are working for. Inflation rises, house prices go through the roof, yet salaries in Spain just don’t budge. How is that possible, even when multi-nationals are writing the wage cheques?

Can’t answer that one, but here are a few more things you might not know about work in Spain:

- Many companies still enforce an hour and a half lunch break (as if everyone still worked round the corner from home and wanted to pop back for lunch – now the exception rather than the norm).

- It is still common for women to get paid less for doing the same job as their male colleagues. A female director in the above-mentioned multi-national I worked for said this is because the man is seen as the head of his family, and will need more money to support his household, including, presumably, his low-earning wife.

- Once you get off the cubicle floor and into a managerial position you will earn a more realistic wage, but you’ll be expected to give up the rest of your life to earn it. Don’t expect to be home before 10 at night.

- Working from home is uncommon, but pilot schemes in some companies do let people stay at home once or twice a week.

- A yearly salary is usually split into 14 payments: one per month, and an extra payment of the same amount, the paga extraordinaria, paid once in June or July and once at Christmas.

Conclusion

Working in a Spanish company is tough. You are expected to work long hours for low wages, no matter who you are working for. Multi-million dollar international marketing firm? They’ll pay you little and take their cash for the shareholders, thanks. A Spanish friend of ours works for a multi-million dollar tech company, just outside Madrid, as a mid-level IT consultant with 6 years experience. She has been placed there by her consultancy firm, a large French company. Should be driving a BMW, right? Wrong. She earns less than 2,000 euros a month, probably half what she would earn for the same job in the UK.

If you want an easy life in a Spanish company you have two options. Be the chauffeur driven CEO, or the lowly English teacher.

How does life in your company/country compare?

Photo: Jonathon, Rosie, Ben and Marina, by Fred Shively

This week we talk to Jonathon and Rosie, who set up Kaliyoga, a holistic yoga and detox center in the Alpujarra mountains south of Granada. We talk about the difficulties of setting up a business like this in Spain, how they marketed their new business in the beginning, and the rewards they now reap a few years down the line…

If you are going to set up a business in Spain, get a gestor to do it for you.

Don’t under any circumstances try to go through all the paperwork and different steps involved on your own. We did, for a saving of approximately 500 Euros, and we wish we hadn’t. In fact a large part of my recent burn out was undoubtedly caused by our decision to do most of the work of setting up Notes from Spain S.L. on our own.

Like any other bureaucratic nightmare here (and there are many!), setting up your own business in Spain requires an endless shuffle around different offices of inconvenience (to coin a new, appropriate phrase), interminable waits, and inevitable errors (filling out the wrong form, in the wrong order, and having to jump back two steps to get everything back on track again).

Despite receiving excellent advice and help in filling out the appropriate forms from the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, it still took us around 3 months to cover all the bases, and in the end we still needed a gestor to complete the final steps. I’d estimate we lost at least a week’s work doing things that a gestor could have done for us, removing immense stress in the process.

So what is a gestor and where do you find one?

A gestor is like a glorified acccountant. He or she will charge fixed fees to complete certain jobs, such as setting up your business, getting your driving license renewed, and doing your monthly accounts. If you run a business here then you have to get one eventually anyway, to process and register your yearly balance of accounts for example, so you might as well get them to do all the hard work for you from stage one.

Where do you find a good one? We found ours by asking Ana, the girl who runs the photocopying shop around the corner. She seems nice, trustworthy, discerning, and runs a good business. Sure enough, she put us on to a local gestoria (gestor’s office) where unbelievably efficient women of a certain age process our monthly receipts with a minimum of fuss. They tell us what we can get away with deducting tax-wise (lunches, fuel, etc), what income we should be paying ourselves every month, and what forms we may have forgotten to fill out (actually they fill them out for us, we just turn up and sign – what joy!)

OK, to recap: if you are going to set up a business here in Spain then make sure you get a gestor to do it – it might cost you around 500 euros more (bringing the total cost of setting up a business in Spain to around 1,000 euros – you have to pay the Notario for some official paperwork as well, for example), but it’s worth every centimo in time and stress savings. To find a good Gestor or Gestoria ask around in respectable local businesses, or ask other ex-pats who are already running their own show.

One final piece of advice, if you are setting up an on-line business in Spain, make sure the Gestor is prepared to learn about this side of the business world as well. Most will never have worked on this side of things before and may have absolutely no clue about what Paypal is, for example. Make sure they are interested in finding out!

There we go, hopefully someone, somewhere, some day, will benefit from this piece of advice!