Huge Money In Asian Markets

Guest Post

This is a guest post by Dennis Yu of BlizLocal

Huge Money In Asian Markets

Greetings from Tokyo, where I am stopping for a day between trips to Singapore and San Francisco. I want to share what I’ve learned about the Southeast Asian market. In short, if you’re an affiliate, whether you can speak Chinese, Hindi, or just English—you should be considering opportunities here. Do you remember how easy it was to make money in PPC back in 2003? It’s like that here today—you’re stepping back into a time machine and get another chance in a developing market.

Search marketing is still new here: Agencies, brands and advertisers are not sophisticated yet. Ad-Tech Singapore was a few weeks ago and by most observers, a disaster—only a few dozen people attended. That tells you that affiliate marketing doesn’t really exist here. At SMX Singapore-- our second time here speaking-- most delegates didn’t know what CTR stood for. The Australian market, as Austin and I saw back at SMX Sydney in April, is perhaps 2-3 years behind the United States. Instead of one giant developed market, like we have in the US, there are a dozen smaller markets in which you can pick a niche.

I met a guy who built a Singapore dentist website and is ranking on any dental term you can think of. Granted, there are only 4 million people in Singapore—but imagine how profitable it would be if you could rank on “cosmetic dentist”, “root canal”, or even “dentist” and then sell those leads. That’s just not possible in the United States.

Labor is cheap. The average person in internet marketing makes $3,000 Singapore a month, which is about $2,000 in the US. Go to China and you can still hire people for $600 a month. The guy who builds dentist and healthcare sites, that I just mentioned, has a team of folks in China cranking out such sites. I’m even told that you can get free flights to Kuala Lumpur, as the Malaysian government wants to encourage business.

Unfortunately, things like automobiles are not cheap. A buddy who drives a M5 paid nearly $300k for his car, which would only cost $100k in the US. That’s import taxes for you, which triples the price on certain goods. Even beer from 7-11 (which doesn’t take credit cards, by the way), is $5 a can. An iced tea at Starbucks (which appears to be on every street corner, just like in the States), is a whopping $9. Yet, you can have a nice sushi dinner for $15 at a non-tourist restaurant, and an unbelievably good one hour massage for $30.

The traffic is cheap, too. There is a ton of Facebook traffic going unsold because advertisers haven’t quite understood what it’s all about yet. Incidentally, if you have traffic in China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand—I can probably pay you $5 a lead on a 12 field submit for expectant mothers. This is for a global brand you have definitely heard of—they make baby products—we’re just not allowed to say who it is publicly. Opportunities to broker deals like this are rampant.

India is an emerging behemoth, too—with over a billion people. That’s 4 times the size of the United States. With a ton of people coming online, you want to be there to make money before the market is crowded. The consumers who are online now are well to do. Thus, even with zero targeting, you’re guaranteed to hit users who have high income and are likely to buy online. You just need the offers.

That’s why we’re hired a few folks locally to be BlitzLocal Singapore—to develop advertiser relationships and use our folks back in the United States to manage the campaigns. So the next time you’re in Asia on holiday or talk to a friend who lives here—find out what you can to connect the dots and create opportunities for yourself. If you’re doing the same thing as other affiliates—grabbing the same offers from the same networks and running on the same traffic sources—you’re not likely to making excess profits. Some final tips for you:

• Build websites for businesses here that would benefit from local lead gen. Start an agency if you can. Look at Justin Dupre, who has cheap labor.
• Find advertisers who want to get traffic to their sites—you have to reach out to these folks. And you’ll find them if you just ask. Got student friends who are from Asia?
• Next time you’re on vacation, keep your mind open for business opportunities. Whenever we travel, we usually run into folks that run businesses that are unaware you can buy ads on Google. Plus, speaking at conferences is a great way to network and also get your vacation paid for.
• Be careful with cultural differences: We were served uncircumcised chicken the other night—a poor translation for skinless chicken. There is also an area nicknamed for its “four floors of whores”—women who are seemingly beautiful in every aspect, even too feminine. Turns out that they’re not women. So be careful!