I noticed you've been having money troubles in your videos.
After you research stuff like medi-kits, motion scanners, and such, always have a few technicians on the side producing each of them simultaneously (like 8-16 techies per-item, 4 is even acceptable, at least enough to produce approx. 1 unit/day (or week, even) or 2, each item), after you produce enough to supply your troops, so you at least have a sorta-constant income somewhat daily (until you can spare more to produce more more quickly). Better than nothing, or depending solely on looting and funding.
At least, doing that helped me expand my global coverage. It's a bit of a slow start, but after awhile, and maybe a dedicated production base or two, it starts to accelerate, and being funded by nations should only cover maintainence costs by that point, and production becomes your new source of income. XCOM doesn't need to be military-exclusive. It can also become an economic power.
EDIT:
As for X-Piratez, you can always have a brewery-base (or few, or a brewery per-base) to mass-produce grog worldwide.
EDIT EDIT:
The only items I know of that can actually turn a decent profit in a fair amount of time, even with a minimal crew of techies would be the particle disturbance sensor, medi-kit, and gauss pistol (only the pistol, the ammo would waste resources, and isn't worth it, as would also be the heavier weapons, until the gauss cannnon, and even so, the smaller things overshadow the bigger things profit/time-wise. So, pistols produce more quickly than rifles and such, and overall, sell for more in the same amount of time/dedicated techs). In due time, you should be pulling 1M income/month soon enough (and then some later on), just by mass-production alone. Plus, this is one of my more favorite "set it, and forget it" strategies.
Recommended (Optimal) production rate should be 3-4 hours/unit (per-item (up to 3 items at the same time)) at top speed, when you can afford to. You'll start swimming in money in no time. To have a satisfying income ticker, offset them accordingly (like start production at 12AM, and the next one at 1:30AM, and optionally, have the 4-hour one oscillate between a set, or start a 3h and a 4h set at the same time; make watching the income rise a little more fun to watch.).