It's the 10th year that the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China, often referred to as "The Handover", occurred on June 30, 1997. The event signified the end of British ruling, and the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule.
For these 10 years, I experienced the up and down in this small city. e.g. financial crisis, SARS, political unstable..etc. No matter what, Hong Kong people are very tough and face any difficulties.
As a web publisher, I know it's difficult to sell physcial product on the internet. It doesn't mean it's difficult to make money by selling tangible product. Indeed, you can make a lot of money from that.
My friend in Thailand runs a silver wholesale website since 2005. Up to now he can generate around US$100K sales every month with 40-50% profit margin.
Web publishers don't consider this model, because they think they cannot handle the merchandising, sales and logistics issues.
I understand what they are concern. Indeed, if you ask me to ship hundreds product to oversea, I prefer not to involve in this business.
Here's an alternative.
If you are really good at web publishing, traffic generation and management..etc, I suggest you to find a partner who is selling physical products at "ebay". Try to approach him/her to see whether it is possible to "make money" together.
You contribute traffic, he handles the sales.....Win-win situation.
Is it too ideal?
I have formed a partnership with one of the biggest silver jewelry wholesalers, and we are going to develop a new-kind of e-commerce model to sell jewelry together.
We combine our existing resources and strength together...Let's see what chemical effects come.
Nothing is impossible. You "take action", you can.
Until someone reminded me there is a SEO contest called "Coolest Guy On The Planet" organized by a great SEO expert Brad Fallon.
A SEO contest is a great way to train your SEO skills under a competitive environment.
Brad is not only great in SEO strategies, but also is doing great in selling physical products. Since I have business connections in mainland China, I know he is also teaching the locals about the internet business building skills. As a local Chinese, I hope you will contribute a lot of good experience and knowledge to my home country. Well Done Brad!
I highly recommend you to check his blog frequently.
Last few years, we see how Adsense becomes a hot topic in the market. Since late 2006, the trend was down due to the increasing number of the web publishers to share the same size of biscuit. The publishers think the value and earning of this business is no longer worth to pay attention.
Anyway, I would like to tell you, Adsense is not everything for web publishing business.
Web publishing is talking about developing a website to "faciliate the communication between the users". Via the user's activity, you expect to earn money from a right revenue model.
The revenue model of web publishing is more than "Adsense" or similar pay per click advertising channels.
Let me show you several examples:
1. Selling products to a community - targeted made for the style of the community, seasonal products fitting the needs of the community members.
2. Selling membership - offer high value contents to the VIP members (VIP = who can pay)
3. Advanced pay per click strategies - diversify your contents to mulitple markets (Chinese, Japanese, French, German..etc.). It helps to balance your advertising portfolio, and especially they are high growth market.
4. Selling marketing services - offer a specilized campaign for corporate client. Like I help a local Chinese company to do a series of the marketing campaigns to gain more publicity before initial public offer in Shanghai A. The campaign can draw the attention from the general public to the institution investors.
If your web publishing business is doing good at foreign market, you can help the company to get exposure in oversea without spending too much during seeding phrase.
For the examples above, I do have experience in 1, 3 and 4. It tells me, if you are good at web publishing, basically you can promote anything from offline to online. Remember that, website is a kind of advertising platform. It's value cannot be underestimated.
It's always the best way to learn a new subject by looking at the successful case studies. Traffic Manuscript features the case studies about generating from zero to 2.5 million unique visitors to a single website within a month. This book is ideal for newbie. It's because it provides a shortcut for the beginner to understand the "game rules" of traffic generation. Indeed, it is essential for all game players. Click here to download this book.
It's difficult to duplicate the success of another person.
Indeed, you can succeed by employing your own way.
This means, based on your characters, you develop your own profitable business.
Like SEO, different people will produce different performance even using the same strategies. It's because, the users give a different "chemcial reaction" with the same components.
E.g. You are an oxygen molecule, you would become a water molecule if you combine with "hydrogen". However, if you run with "nitrogen", then you will become Nitrogen Oxide or Dioxide..
The basic strategies of SEO are: 1. On-site optimization - right keyword and right position 2. Off-site optimization (internal & external) - the other website votes to you 3. Diversification - Minimize your risk by using different keywords
Anyway, Traffic is essential for a sustainability of a website. SEO is used for traffic generation. SEO is just one of the ways to generate traffic. There are many websites doing great without using SEO.
If you believe SEO is everything, I suggest you to go to Alexa.com. Check the 500 top websites and you will find many of them, less than 10 pages are indexed in any search engines.
You bear a high risk if you start something that is totally new to you.
a business - we need an idea and an execution process. An idea is nothing if you don't have a right execution procedure. Trial and error are the essential processes for any startup.
I would like to raise an example here. Youtube.com. It's a very successful web publishing project ever in our history as far as I know. It was acquired by Google at 1.6 billion USD.
Can you repeat its success?
1. Idea - we never know whether idea is right for the market. So we need to try.
2. Execution process - we understand how we develop this platform, and market to the public.
3. Venture Capital - if you have money, definitely your project can be sustained. If not, like youtube, you need some funding to support.
4. Luck - it's the most important factor. A lot of stupid guys claim they can clone the success of youtube or similar stuff. Experienced businessmen understand it is nearly impossible. e.g. Do you have the strong personal connection like Steve Chan with Google founders? If not, please consider not to clone anything, be yourself.
Press exposure is also by luck. You never know whose newspaper reporters like to talk about your site.....For youtube, there are a lot of asian reporters talk about it because some crazy local videos are there. Can you clone this process? Maybe, but extremely difficult.
For the real hot website, they rely on both online and offline marketing program.
Startup something with odds. When you start a new subject, please consider few factors: 1. Can you use your existing resources and knowledge to support this program? 2. Can you minmize the capital and time risk? 3. When do you stop managing this project if it touches your bottom line? 4. Where is your bottom line?
Making money is a resource re-allocation process. You allocate your resources to a specificed pattern, then it brings the cash flow. It can bring more or less according to the pattern style and scale. It's totally up to you.
A chit chat with the regional director of Microsoft
When I organized my wedding ceremony, I did contact my old friends (more than 10 years)..
During that period, I found that a guy (he was not graduated in computer sciences) worked at Microsoft now.
I wonder why........but anyway, when Kelvin Hui was graduated in ecology, but worked at IT industry, then nothing is impossible.
My friend Andy is responsible of the corporate training program of the .net in Asia Pacific. Next Thursday, we will come together to have a lunch or tea at Cyber Port (the HK Silicon Valley...something like that).
I also ask him to bring his colleague who is the head of live.com in Asia with us.....Let me ask him how to "hack" Live.com search engine properly :-)
Google Japan is a more popular search engine than Yahoo Japan
Thursday, June 21, 2007
I am not going to say Google Japan is the most popular website in Japan. Indeed, Yahoo Japan is still No.1.
However, when we talk about "search engine", I guess Google Japan is the most popular one. Why?
I go to Alexa and check several statistics.
Yahoo Japan: % of Global Internet Users: 2.54% % of the traffic from Japan: 91.5% % of the visitors going to use "search engine" of Yahoo Japan: 16%
So I want to know...the % of Japan internet users who are using the search engine of Yahoo Japan:
>>> 2.54% x 91.5% x 16% = 0.37%
How about Google Japan: % of Global Internet Users: 1.08% % of the traffic from Japan: 94.3% % of the visitors going to use "search engine" of Google Japan: 89%
The % of Japan internet users who are using the search engine of Google Japan:
>>> 1.08% x 94.3% x 89% = 0.90% So we can estimate that Google Japan has around 2.4 times users more than Yahoo Japan. Definitely I cannot say this figure is 100% accurate. It's because Alexa is not an accurate meter to measure traffic. Anyway, we treat this figure as a good reference.
From Alexa, we can see Yahoo.com is the No.1 website in Singapore. Note: Alexa may not be 100% accurate. We treat it as a good reference only.
MSN is No.3 and Google ranks No. 5 and 8 respectively.
Does it mean Yahoo is the no.1 search engine in Singapore?
Definitely not. Take a look at the traffic composition of Yahoo.com below:
This means, only 1 out of 10 people will use the Yahoo search engine. However, you can imagine...if 10 people go to Google, you can find 8 out of 10 people are using the Google search engine.
So Google is a more popular search engine in Singapore?
To get a more accurate answer, we need to do a more complicated calculation. For Yahoo.com, there are around 25.58% of the global internet population reach this website. 2% of the traffic composition is from Singapore. And 11% of the visitors use the Yahoo search engine. So.... The total users of Yahoo search engine in Singapore according to the global reach level = 25.58% x 2% x 11% >>>> 0.056%
How about Google?
The total users of Google search engine in Singapore according to the Global reach level (we use Google Singapore to calculate only) = 0.25% x 0.91% >>>> 0.2275%
Therefore, we can estimate the no. of search engine user of Google.com.sg is at least 4 times more than Yahoo.com in Singapore. Remember that I don't count the traffic to Google.com. So we strongly believe that the figure is underestimated. Since we know Google is more popular in Singapore by using mathematical calculation, so it is good to focus on Google to do your Singapore search engine marketing.
Hong Kong is a very small city with 8 millions people. The living standard is the 2nd highest next to Tokyo. The average price per feet of an apartment (and house) is 6 times more expensive than Singapore.
Participating in internet marketing (local marketing) in Hong Kong, it is obviously not a wise decision. You can buy anything around your home easily. No need to order online.
At this moment, auction is the only subject that local people can accept. However, they cannot accept online transaction. They prefer to pay the vendors by using "direct transfer" via the bank, or pay you face-to-face.
Therefore, don't plan to sell anything to Hong Kong by using internet, it may not work. "Internet Marketing Hong Kong" is an interesting subject, but it may not bring a good profit to you.
Please don't misunderstand the subject. SEO is useful, but it's not a perfect traffic management strategy.
For the website traffic, we consider 3 major factors: 1. Direct 2. Referral 3. Search Engine
I suppose, all educated webmasters, they know the most stable and reliable traffic source must be from direct access. Nobody can challenge this concept.
Direct traffic is based on your "brand". Is your domain name easy to remember? Does the content attract the visitors to return to your website?
Referral traffic is good and reliable. Youtube, this site becomes hot due to referral traffic. When youtube started the business, it was not well indexed in Google nor Yahoo. However, many people shared the videos by using Youtube, posting to the website or by using instant messengers. Yep..you see how great Youtube is today.
SEO can bring new visitors to your website. If your domain name is difficult to remember, people may type some words to search engine, and try to reach you there. Anyway, human beings is lazy, it is default nature.
SEO is the least stable one. It's because, the ranking formula is not controled by you. Your site can rank No.1 today but No.10 tomorrow. You are not Google or Yahoo, you cannot guarantee the performance, right?
SEO is useful to bring new visitors to your website, your site content can help to convert the "visitors" to become "loyal readers", to become direct traffic.
On-site optimization - there is a lot of rumor for this subject.
I know a lot of people always check the keyword density of the web page. 15%...20%....etc.
When I heard about this subject many years ago, I really checked the density every time I created a web page.
I was bored...very bored. So I gave it up. I prefered not to check any keyword density. Just place the keywords to the right position as far as I knew. I thought it's good enough.
I didn't need my site to rank No.1. 1st page is good enough. I prefer to put my effort to diversify the keywords into different subject, so I can maximize the exposure to different niches, or people.
SEO is good if it just consumes you 5% of time during web page creation. I prefer to put more effort in content creation more than checking the keyword density...
You know...your readers never take care of this subject, right?
You know, making money is different from having money.
My wife's sister, she earns less than USD$1000 per month from her job. After 5-year work, she "has" USD$20,000 in her bank account. We are quite sure that, her job is a low paid one. According to the standard in Hong Kong, it is very very low level.
How many of you have USD$20,000 cash in your bank account?
Definitely, if you can make a lot of money, you can generate wealth easier than my wife's sister. However, you still have nothing when you dunno how to manage your money.
Why can so many people make money carefully, but spend the money carelessly?
Managing your wealth is as important as making money. All the best companies in the world, they can protect their money very well.
We will move to a new office within 2 weeks. At this moment, our office is located at the busiest area in Hong Kong. It's called Mongkok which is the highest population density in the world.
Crowdy, noisy and poor air quality are the characteristics of this place.
So tolerating for 1.5 year, I made a good decision - move the office from a financial area to country side.
Good air quality, quiet and relax, I do believe it is not just good for health, but also good for decision making. Especially now I focus more on asset allocation more than business building.
This blog is 2 years old, let we celebrate silently.
"2-year" is not a short time. We know, our industry, moves very fast. Imagine what happened 2 years ago, what was the SEO formula, traffic generation strategies.....etc..
You can see, everything is changed.
I did a lot of things in these 2 years. Success and failure, they came together. Friends came, and went away.
In these 2 years, I learn:
1. Focus - I tried to jump into different subjects. I failed. I should focus on what I am doing great now.
2. Considerate - You are not good at everything. Be humble. Willing to learn and adapt the working modes of the partners.
3. Trust - Trust your partners with the legal contracts. Without the contracts, don't do any JV partnership.
4. Resource exchange - Work with the parties that can exchange resources. No point to work with someone who has similar expertises.
5. Diversify - Diversify your income sources. Hire the right people to help you to manage something you are not good at. You put your energy on what you are good at.
6. Open your eyes - Don't live with the computer. The real secrets are always around you.
