China VOIP works well enough and the speed, at least where I live is fast. More than adequate for teaching online. Finding a valid job in China that follows China law is next to impossible. You can find bad jobs anywhere in China and deal with some scum recruiters that are also frauds and they in turn sell your credentials to black market document mills for illegal reproduction, and/or sell your ID to overseas Chinese needing to maintain or create a paper trail in some other land since they now live in XYZ nation illegally. I deliberately screw with recruiters and bogus schools all of the time just to see which way the wind blows and how far someone will go and I keep tight tabs on all of the latest scams as well. I would not advise anyone to work as a teacher in China and I am in fact a licensed teacher myself but I gave up teaching in China.

The markets for teaching in China are bad, low paying, usually poor environments, and the only exception to that might be some colleges, certainly not most or all of them. China is an extremely expensive country to live in if you play by the rules and pay taxes. My current annual salary is a strong 7 figures in China and I get screwed on China taxes. Fortunately I am no longer an American, otherwise I would be paying their damn taxes on top of it all.

Networking in China is largely a total waste of time that will usually get you no where. In order to network with people that know anything in most cases, you need to join high-end VIP clubs where most valid ex-pats with so-called real jobs, go to drink and escape from all of the BS. By the time they get there, the last thing that they want to do is network anyway and in between trying to dodge all of the Chinese trying to ride in on the coat tails of successful foreigners, or the third rate losers from some below middle management job that managed to get past security with a trial VIP pass for a few days courtesy of some BS back handed pass off from the AMCham, (also a total joke BTW), networking is a failed game.

I belong to the Beijing Capital Club and I also golf. What I see there are pain in the ass so-called elite being snobby, and people kissing their asses trying to be just like them. When I joined many years ago things were much different. These days my family and I go out to the country and get away from the C.R.A.P. and we have met some nice people that way which is kind of a reverse or un-networking of sorts which is good.

By the way I used to live in Thailand where you are now and I enjoyed it. If I were you I would stay put and forget about China completely.

Internet marketing is in fact the answer, but the problem with what you are doing or trying to do, is that you are still a service provider and therefore you are tied to your machine at the hip and that is not productive. Why not make a Web site, upload lessons online via a secure PIN, and let students click and learn and then your up sell to that would be one on one lessons or one on one follow ups after each section of lessons instead of babysitting Skype all damn day.

Visas in China? Scam. Its all about who you know in 9 times out of 10. You can leave and reenter China 101 times on a multiple entry tourist visa or L visa, but why waste the time and the money? Whatever you do, never trust a Chinese with your visa and your passport in China. That is rule number one.

Trash your "boots on the ground" idea for China as well. Its been done by 100,000 other people and they are no further ahead for it. My best advice in your situation is to get on YouTube.com since it is free and let you do your ads online for free. Zero air time costs, zero production costs, and global reach. One good video with good meta tags and key words and a few subscriptions along with a Twitter account will get the job done for you for FREE.

Don't spend money on the Internet other than for a dedicated server (depending on your Web site traffic), a good URL, and maybe some design although with places like GoDaddy.com you can do it all yourself with some 28,000 photos and hundreds of templates and click and point build outs it is easy as hell. GoDaddy is a bitch on pricing though and I don't like their CS at all, but their system is good and functional.

If I were you I would stay in Thailand and look at marketing into Lao and even Cambodia or Vietnam. There is some nice money to be made there and since you are not a Filipino, you could get some better action then they do in similar venues.

Thailand totally sucks for doing business however, but as you are largely online, keep in online and no one cares. Make sure you rotate your money on incoming pays away from PayPal because if you get too busy they like to close down your accounts even if the incoming cash is totally legit. If you are an American keep the cash off of the US soil. Remember, it matters where you "take receipt of" your money. IF you are using US-based banking systems....that's just stupid.

Singapore is good, in fact very good for banking privacy these days, better than Switzerland and a few other so-called safe havens.

If you are really ambitious, why not write your own stuff, copyright it all, file a patent on it, and sell some small franchisees if it is good? Build an online ESL in the box for dummies type of thing. Click and point etc.

Look at DynEd software as an example. Its some of the worst C.R.A.P I have ever seen and they make millions.

F China.
Stay put in the land of smiles and enjoy the life.