Why Are You Only Selling To Malaysians?

One thing I noticed about a lot of people selling information products in Malaysia; they design and create a product for the Malaysian market. This is ok if the topic applies only to the Malaysian market (for example what I did with Chapter-M or like Steven Wong’s Credit Card Solution), but if the topic is universal you should really consider designing it for the international market.

The reason is pretty obvious:

  • A much bigger market - Sometimes there just isn’t a big enough market online for the topic of your e-book, if it’s just focused on Malaysians. However when you make it global, the size of the market and hence your potential customers increase dramatically.
  • Higher income per sale - If you sell an ebook for RM20, just change it to the dollar sign (USD) and I’m pretty sure the global market would be stepping on each other to buy it. Sometimes just by making small changes to your existing e-book, you can easily earn 3 times more per sale and triple your yearly income.
  • Longer product life - You have to understand that for every product, only 1-4 people out of every hundred people who visit your site ends up buying your product. So if your product is targeted at a Malaysian market only for which there is less than 1,000 potential buyers online, after a few weeks your product is as good as dead.

Here’s what I recommend you do.

  • If your product is about making money online, make it relevant to the international market. My product WordPress Adsense System has been producing about 18-30 sales a month, every month, since August 2006. If I wrote this in BM it would have already reached every potential buyer in a few months, after which it would have been considered old. Sure, there are new people coming online every day who may be interested, but in Malaysia alone the market is too small.
  • If your product is Islamic in nature, why not target other Islamic countries as well. Our neighbor Indonesia has about 10 times the population of Malaysia and it wouldn’t be too hard to get someone to create a version for them, would it?
  • If your product is only for Malaysians, at least have 2 versions,one in English and another in BM. Don’t just create a BM version and lose the opportunity to sell to those who would not want to read it in BM.

Make no mistake about it.

Selling to an all-Malaysian crowd will make you money. It’s not wrong to do it, just don’t do it at the expense of earning a better income is USD from a bigger market,especially when the possibility is just a few clicks away!

At the Internet Millionaires Bootcamp, I teach you how to do both. I have experience creating information products both for the local market, and for an international audience. I know based on my success (and failures) exactly how to design for each market, and address each differently.

At the bootcamp, we’ll go through some examples from my own products, and a step-by-step guideline on creating popular, profitable information products. Make sure you attend it.

Malaysians Are Rude, ‘Ruder’ and ‘Rudest’

This made it into my Malaysia Boleh category, a showcase of uniquely Malaysian traits and unspoken realities.

Malaysia is ranked third least courteous country in the world, according to Reader’s Digest. Yes… I know I’m not the first to report this (thanks for the info Sheila) but I’m a “reporter” type of blogger anyways. I’m more towards voicing my opinions on issues I feel strongly about :)

Reader's Digest Courtesy Scores

Malaysians are rude. I wonder why it took people so long to realize that but the truth is now out. Of course we can’t beat Mumbai, the rudest country in the world. I know – I worked for a year with people from that region when I was an exec in Telekom Malaysia. Those guys deserve the undisputed number one spot. [Read more...]