Almost every blogger focuses on creating content for readers in the United States. They don’t even consider trying to reach people are non-English-speaking countries. There are a surprising number of opportunities to reach consumers in Asia, so you may want to consider blogging for them if you want to reach a large pool of consumers with little competition.
Why Asia is an Untapped Goldmine for Bloggers
There are over 1.9 billion Internet users in the Asia-Pacific region. This is nearly 6 times the size of the population of the United States.
How much is the online market worth for bloggers targeting people in Asia? Leadbit, an industry leading direct advertiser and affiliate network, was kind enough to share a report showing that Asian consumers spent over $1 trillion online in 2016 alone. This market is growing by leaps and bounds.
There is plenty of room for bloggers to get in on the action. Advertisers are expected to spend over $19 billion on search PPC ads in Asia this year. A lot of this money is presumably spent on display network ads, which is very encouraging news for AdSense Partners with a lot of readers from Asia. You could tap an even larger source of revenue by partnering with other ad networks or running affiliate offers in Asia. One affiliate generated a lot of revenue from several Asian countries by promoting the Booking.com affiliate program on a very small volume PPC network. His revenue could’ve been significantly higher if he built his own travel blogs for Asian consumers.
Guide for Creating a Lucrative Blog in Asia
There are two amazing benefits of creating a blog for readers in Asia. The number of Asian Internet users exceeds that of the European Union and the United States combined. The market is also far less competitive, so you can rent more easily and capture a lot of customers with less effort and not needing to spend thousands of dollars on SEO, site design and content marketing.
That doesn’t mean it will be a cakewalk though. You are going to need to deal with a number of cultural, regulatory and language barriers to dominate this market. It is important to do your due diligence before creating any blog. This is even more important if you are trying to blog for the Asian market.
Here are some tips to create an Asian blog that dominates its niche, while also exploring different monetization options in the process!
Choose Your Market Carefully
Every niche has its own opportunities and challenges. The same can be said about any country in Asia.
Choosing the right country to target can make the difference between building a steady stream of revenue in a couple of weeks or ripping your hair out for the next year. It will also make a huge impact on the amount of revenue that your blog generates.
So, what is the best niche and Asian country to focus on? There isn’t a clear answer for everybody, but there are some important things to keep in mind.
Creating a blog for the Chinese market can be a huge opportunity. With a population of 1.38 billion people, it is by far the largest country in the region. Per capita income is also slightly above average (ranking 24 out of 50 on the IMF’s list of countries by PPP), so you can generate a massive amount of income relative to most other Asian countries.
The problem is that you will need to deal with one of the most draconian forms of government censorship in the world. You also need to navigate a lot of different laws that you wouldn’t encounter in other parts of Asia.
You will also need to completely change your social networking strategy to reach people in China. Virtually every major social networking site is banned there. There are a few native social networking sites that you can try, including WeChat, RenRen and DianPing. However, it is important to understand the customs before trying to market on them.
India is another huge country that you can target. There are over 1 billion people. Indian consumers don’t have a tremendous amount of money, but their wealth is growing steadily, making it an even more promising market for bloggers in the future. English is also a major language in India, so you can write a blog for them.
There are other countries that you can target in Asia that are less heavily regulated and have more wealth. Some of them are even wealthier than the United States and many countries in Europe. Qatar is the wealthiest country in the world, with a mean income of over $120,000. Singapore is another wealthy country, with an average household income that is over 50% higher than the United States.
There’s a trade-off with population though. There are only 5.6 million people in Singapore. That is still a decent market, considering that many European countries have fewer people, less wealth and more competition. However, your blog won’t reach nearly as many people as you would in India or China and you still need to test different offers to see what works.
Understand the customs and expectations of your native audience
You can’t just create content that would appeal to readers in the United States and translate it into another tongue. You need to make sure your content resonates with readers in that region. Take some time to understand influencing factors such as their political and philosophical views, the types of challenges they encounter on a daily basis and where is that their personality types differ from people in your own country.
Reading news articles from the region that you are writing for is a good place to start. You will have a much better grasp on the types of content that people are looking for.
This is something that Leadbit actually goes into detail in on their blog. Since they already did all of the statistical and visual work to create the country images above, they also covered what some of the most popular affiliate offers would be to promote in these areas as well. Such recommendations are based on not just the country, but also the expectations and daily life of individuals within the region. If you are looking for new ways to monetize content, traffic and audiences outside of the US, be sure to check out their resource guide.
Don’t depend on Google translate
You may be tempted to write your content in English and plug it into Google Translate. This is a very cheap and easy way to create a blog. Unfortunately, your blog won’t look natural to native readers and your SERPs will probably suffer as well.
There are a couple other options that will work better:
- You could try creating a blog in English. Over 53% of people in Asia speak English proficiently and many used it to browse the Internet. If you choose keywords strategically, you should be able to reach a decent number of people in this area.
- You can reach a much larger pool of consumers by translating your content into the native language. Instead of using Google translate, you should hire a native speaker to do this for you. You don’t need to spend a lot of money for a translator. Fiver, One Hour Translation and Upwork are all great sites to find Asian translators on a small budget. You could even hire people on some of these sites to write the content for you, so it matches the mindset and voice of native readers.
It will take some effort to create content for people in Asia. It will be easier to stay motivated if you remind yourself how much more you will have to pay to write content and optimize your site for SEO if you were writing a blog for people in the United States.
Understand Native Search Engines
When you are creating a blog for readers in the United States, you will obviously focus on optimizing your site for Google. Google’s share of the search engine market isn’t as high in Asia. There are a lot of other search engines that you will want to optimize your sites for, such as Goo (a search engine for the Japanese market), Baidu (the largest search engine in China) and Naver (a Korean search engine).
Asia is a HUGE Market. Don’t miss out on it!
As you can imagine, there is a multi-trillion dollar economy sitting right in the heart of Asia. No matter where you might be blogging or running your online business from, targeting this demographic and lucrative audience is just a few clicks away.
Be sure to consider all of the key points featured in this Asia content creation and marketing guide, while also exploring your options with Leadbit as well. These markets and opportunities for generating additional revenue are only going to increase in size. Get started today, and reap the benefits tomorrow!