I write this to you in the Starbucks of Great Eastern mall, waiting for a dinner meeting which is 2 hours away, being here early because I didn’t want to get stuck in rush hour traffic.

What I’ve come to realize as I listen to the cheesy music being blasted out across the mall’s intercom is that if I started my online business career again, I may have done it slightly differently.

That’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight, but nonetheless, it’s true.

I wouldn’t change many things, just do some of them slightly differently, here are just a few of them:

I Would Have Started With A Non-Personal .com Website

My very first blog that I ever created was a .blogspot.com blog and also it was a blog written in a personal nature, it wasn’t targeting any niche.

Although I’m not saying that personal and lifestyle bloggers can’t make money online, far from it in fact, as I know some pretty famous bloggers who are making quite a lot from their blogs, but for myself, I never should have started a personal blog.

Firstly, I’m not really all that interesting, so thinking that I could monetize a personal blog was definitely an oversight on my part.

For those who don’t know, my first blog was called at xanydude.blogspot.com (it’ll redirect you back here, so don’t bother visiting it) and it was called ‘A Banana vs. The World’.

Secondly, without a niche to target, getting organic traffic was always going to be hard.

If I could have done it again, I would have started a blog about blogging (like this one) and share my entire experience as I learned about blogging, Internet Marketing and web design.

Basically, I would have chosen a specific subject matter and stuck to it, no rambling, just useful content.

I would have also chosen a suitable .com domain name, on my own hosting, with Wordpress installed as the CMS.

I Would Have Targeted The Whole World

Choosing onlinebusinessmalaysia.com to target the Malaysian audience has definitely worked out well in terms of Search Engine Optimization, but in terms of generating a large, interactive audience, targeting the world would have been better, albeit much harder.

Having such a specific domain name worked in my favour sometimes and also against me sometimes.

In my favour, it has now become Malaysia’s number 1 online business blog

Working against me, I may have alienated a more worldwide audience, especially from America, UK and Australia, since it seems my website is more targeted to a single country.

Furthermore, this set of audience would have potentially been more open to buying affiliate products or even my own products, had I created any.

I’m not saying that the Malaysian audience place aren’t potential clients, in fact a very large chunk of my income comes from Web Design services to Malaysian businesses, many of which have been to my blog to read about what I do.

If I could start again, maybe I would have bought a .com like WilliamLee.com and targeted a more general audience.

Like I said above, I would have written about blogging from my point of view and would have tried to build a readership base from there onwards. Due to the fact that there are so many people in the Western countries I mentioned above, the size of your newsletter base can grow much faster than if you target only one country.

Also, since they are more comfortable with purchasing products online, there would have been more potential for selling an affiliate product (such as from Clickbank) or develop my own to sell to them.

I Would Have Asked Around For Guest Posting Opportunities

I have yet to do this in Malaysia, but I would definitely have tried to guest post for other people in my niche.

I have read many examples of blogs, that with a combination of guest posting and a constant supply of good quality content, have made bloggers 5 figure salaries in as short as 1 year!

To a lot of my readers, 1 year may sound like an extremely long time, as the general perception is that Internet Marketing is some sort of magic bullet, that overnight will make you a millionaire.

Unfortunately that’s not the case – it’s constant effort, study, work and perseverance that makes you a millionaire, from online or offline businesses alike.

Guest posting is a great way to build a very targeted subscriber base in a very very short amount of time, as you leverage off the traffic of other more established websites.

Of course you would have to give them great content, useful to their audience. After all, why would they feature your writing if it weren’t top notch?

If I could do it again I would have prepared a few 750 – 1000 word articles, broken down into 3 to 5 sub headings and would have written the best possible articles I could think of.

Articles on becoming a better blogger, on pitfalls that I fell into when I blog and other articles that I think bloggers wouldn’t mind featuring on their blogs.

I would have then submit these guest posts to bloggers in my niche who had a medium following, hoping that one of them would feature my post on their blog.

I would have some sort of newsletter on my own blog so that when visitors come to my blog via my guest post, there would be something to entice them to join my newsletter (such as tips or a free e-book).

I would repeat this process at least twice a month, while adding really good content on my own blog, to keep these first time visitors coming back for more.

Now What?

Hindsight is great for spotting some of your mistakes and learning from them so that you don’t fall into the same traps as before, coming out better with each experience learned.

But something you can’t do is change the past, so there’s no point in dwelling on it.

So what am I going to be focusing on for this blog in the coming months? Well here are just a few of the things I’m going to try and cover/ do:

• More tips and information for first time bloggers and online business people in Malaysia to help them get off their feet
• Cover some of the Internet Marketing trends that are still being underutilized in Malaysia and how we should take advantage of them
• Lastly, I will be launching a series of Internet Marketing/ Online Business seminars with some associates of mine in the Internet Marketing industry. I’m going to cover (in depth) information on making money with blogging, making money with web design, online advertising and making money with e-commerce platforms.

If you’re interested in the seminars, sign up for my newsletter and I’ll update you as soon as I have more details on pricing, location and the subjects we are going to cover in our various seminars.

In the last 2 months the amount of requests for web design quotes and quite a few of those becoming paid projects has really increased (hence the lack of posts).

Now, this could be due to luck, great timing, networking and other factors, but I have a feeling that the uptrend in businesses wanting to have an online presence in Malaysia is slowly on the rise.

With Unifi, ‘claimed’ greater broadband penetration throughout the country, more and more baby boomer business owners are themselves getting connected to the triple W.

Hey, even my mum uses Facebook, skype, MSN and all now!

People Google More Than Ever

I got a comment on this website a while ago commenting, ‘how many people actually use Google to search for dentists’? The reason this reader had asked this question is because I had used dentists website as an example of the importance of having a website.

As it turns out, there are more than 1 million searches for people searching for the term ‘dentists’, ‘orthodontists’ and various versions of those words, PER MONTH.

In Malaysia alone.

People are getting into the habit of going online, doing a quick search for information, absorbing said information and getting on with their day.

Long gone are the days of people searching through the Yellow page (available online anyway) or even using a street directory (GPS/ Google Maps anyone?) and this trend is only going to continue.

Without A Website, You Don’t Exist

This is what a friend of mine from Korea told me the last time I talked to him. Over in the land of Kimchi, he said that if you don’t have a website, in the eyes of a lot of businesses, you aren’t really a real business.

This is a good lesson we can learn from the world’s most connected Internet country.

Already more companies are asking for a website from a potential vendor/ supplier just so that they can a) contact them at a later date or b) to find out more information on their services.

It still confuses me how people are willing to spend on many other forms of advertising/ marketing materials instead of getting a simple website made.

While driving the other day I saw a bridal shop, all decked up in lights, a huge sign on their shop, expensive interior decorating and just as expensive rent as it was in a very popular neighbourhood for bridal shops.

They had a .blogspot website.

The sign on which their free website was printed on probably cost more than a simple website would have cost – what does it say to potential clients if you can’t even afford a website to represent your brand?

Having said all the above, the future looks good for businesses taking up websites and finally getting their brands online. It’s more a matter of when and not if.

And I’ll be right here waiting for them

[Update: The email I put in the original post was wrong, you can contact me at william@feedmelah.com]

There comes a time in any business where you really just can’t do all the work yourself – even if you think you can.

With running this blog, Feedmelah.com and finding more projects for my main revenue stream, Web Design, I have decided it is time to take the next step in any business, which is to start building a great team.

So let’s get hiring

Web Designers

The first place I need to fill is that of web designers.

My web design company, as well as all the Internet properties we run are all based on the massively popular Wordpress platform, which any web designer who applies for work must know how to a) design themes with and b) integrate these themes with Wordpress plugins.

For this, you will need to know:

1. PHP based programming
2. How to use, create and setup SQL tables
3. CSS, HTML
4. Graphic Design
5. Cpanel and Linux Web Servers
6. The Wordpress platform
7. Wordpress plugins

If you’re a capable web designer (fresh graduates are encouraged to apply) and have the above capabilities, please get in touch with me at:

william@feedmelah.com

Remember to send your resume along with a list of some of the work you have done.

Why Work For Me?

Everyday I get asked about starting an online business, from traffic tips, registering a business to other very specific things like e-commerce portals and shipping of products overseas.

This blog tries to answer as many of those questions as I can, but it takes time to present all the information in the form of a blog post and have it published.

However, if you work for me, you get to access to all the resources that I have and all the knowledge that I can teach is just a question away.

So while practicing your trade with new and exiting Web Design projects, you’ll also get the chance to learn how about starting online businesses, about Internet Marketing.

Interested?

Email me at: william@feedmelah.com and we’ll talk.

After more than 2 years of blogging and learning about all things blogging + Internet Marketing, I’ve learned, it’s all about copywriting – or in other words, the words you use on your site.

When you look at the Internet in general, even when you look at King Google, it all boils down to text based searching, browsing and displaying of content to their users.

People think that something as complex as Search Engine Optimization is something only a programmer can do, meta tags, meta descriptions, title tags – these are the terms you usually use with SEO.

But in truth, if you did none of the above, but wrote wonderful posts, in context, that people link back to, that people retweet and shared across all social media, you’d be doing yourself a world of good, much more than the technicality behind SEO.

And so it is that I’ve started to learn more about copywriting, the art of flow, being personal, connecting with your audience through your writing and slowly but surely building your community.

Without words, you could not make a sale, without words, there would be no adverts, no making money online, no websites.

So in a world with so much text, how important do you think it is to you to learn how to write well?

One of my readers recently emailed in a question which I had heard about but it never really concerned me much, because it doesn’t affect me directly.

His question was:

I would like to know if a foreigner can become a Sole Proprietor of a business in Malaysia.

I get lots of conflicting answers to this. Just this morning I had an email from a Secretarial firm, informing me that it is impossible. And yesterday I had a meeting with another firm who told me that it is possible.

Can you please shed some light on this for me?

I recently called my Corporate Secretary, who are doing my business taxes for me to clarify this question.

Sole Proprietor and Partnerships

For foreigners, they can’t setup a simple Sole Proprietor or Partnership in Malaysia. I asked if having 51% or above ownership by a Malaysian or a Bumi Putera would make any difference and they told me that it would not.

The rule is that Foreigners can’t setup a simple business through ROB.

Sdn. Bhd (Private Limited)

However, if a foreigner would like to register a business in Malaysia, they can do so by setting up a Sdn. Bhd. or a private limited company. I am not sure if Malaysia has the simpler LLC (Limited Liability Coroporation) or the Limited Partnership corporation available yet, but a Sdn. Bhd. would be sufficient.

I wrote an article on the pros and cons of a Sdn. Bhd. in an earlier post and taking from that, the minimum requirements are:

• You must have 2 directors
• It doesn’t matter if the directors are from Malaysia or not
• You must declare your starting capital – RM1 per director is enough, so a RM2 company is allowed
• You will need to register through a company secretary – just Google ‘company secretary Malaysia’ and you should get some businesses to help you out

Keep in mind that the registration fee for a Sdn. Bhd. is around RM2000++ depending on your company secretary’s services.

Also, all meetings between the directors are meant to have ‘minutes of the meeting’ and at the end of every year, there are much more documents for accounting and tax purposes than an ROB.

Yes there are more barriers to starting a business in Malaysia as a foreigner, but no, it’s not impossible.

Hope that helps!

Online advertising in Malaysia is by far one of the most potent, yet under-utilized advertising methods available to us today.

In any developed country, search engine results will be crowded with advertising, covering any range of topic you can imagine. Dentists? They own websites, they advertise online too. Plumbers? Yup, in other parts of the world they’d be advertising online as well.

And I don’t mean one or two businesses, I mean tens if not hundreds of different businesses are fighting for space on the world’s biggest billboard, Google.

There’s So Much Empty Room

Let’s do a quick example, why don’t we start with a Google search for the term ‘Dentists Malaysia’. This is what we’ll get:

You see the advertising on the top and right of the screen? 2 of the results are from Bangkok, the other is from Singapore and the one that looks like it’s from Malaysia is actually a business directory of dentists in Malaysia.

None of them actually link to a dentist website within Malaysia itself.

I may not know exactly how much money dentists make here, but I’m sure it’s quite a large sum – larger still if they could tap into online advertising.

That’s the problem and a good problem at that, which we have here in Malaysia – people just aren’t’ advertising online.

There’s just so much white space surrounding our search results, white space which should be full of businesses trying to get people to come visit their site, to ask for some information, to make a sale.

But they aren’t.

It’s Cheap, Why Aren’t You Doing It?

One of my pet peeves about regular businesses here is that they are traditionally set in their ways. They’d rather spend thousands on newspaper adverts, magazine adverts and worst of all those brochures that they put under your wind screen wiper.

I’ve seen people drive away in the rain, wind screen wiper on, with the brochure attached being swept across the glass. Is that what you call marketing?

Advertising online, especially in Malaysia, will probably cost you between RM0.1 to RM0.2 per click. So for a measly RM100 you could get anywhere between 1000 to 2000 visitors. Imagine if you used the same RM1000 on online advertising as you did for your brochure – 10,000 guaranteed visitors.

You see, the difference between regular media and search engine marketing is that in regular media, you play by numbers and hope for the best. Your magazine or newspaper may have a readership of 100,000, but how many of them will actually read your advert?

For online advertising, you are guaranteed that not only will they read your advert, they’ll click the link and visit your website too. No click, no charge, it’s as simple as that.

Don’t worry, it’s not too late to start.

Not sure how to go about doing it? Contact me and I’ll see how I can help you out.

Don’t have a website yet? Don’t worry, I know a good web designer as well.

Guest posting is a great way to increase your traffic, by leveraging on somebody else’s website and attracting some of their readers over to your blog.

It’s a win-win situation for both bloggers, with free content for the blog owner who is receiving the guest post, as well as increased traffic from the writer of the guest post.

I must admit that I haven’t done a guest post myself, I’m waiting to launch a more ‘International’ site before I start leveraging on some of the contacts that I have and build from there.

However, I’m open to anyone who would like to guest post on OBM in return for a link back to their website/ blog at the bottom of the article.

Of course I’ve got some requirements for my guest posts, but we’ll discuss that personally later on

If you’re interested in guest posting for Online Business Malaysia, please feel free to contact us and we’ll get back to you shortly.

Thanks and can’t wait to hear from you guys (and gals)!

-William

The very first online business I started involved me having an idea, sharing my idea with some friends and jumping head long into the project because, hey I’m sure this will work and make us tonnes of money!

But as I’ve said many times to many people, an online business is run and should be run like a real business – and a real business needs careful planning before you start, or you may very likely be doomed, doomed I tell you!

An Idea Is Not A Plan

Ideas are the birth places of all great businesses, the more the better I always say.

But an idea written down on a piece of napkin, or a simple sitemap you’ve drawn in excel does not constitute a plan.

I recently had a meeting with some prospects who wanted to do a website, quite a large one and with quite a good idea behind it too, but I noticed something which, without having experienced it myself, I may not have known if I was in their position.

They did not have a detailed enough plan/ strategy.

They had a general idea of what to do and how they wanted their website to work, but it wasn’t specific enough.

It must have been the strangest thing hearing a web designer you might want to hire pick at the weaknesses of their idea and overall strategy.

But like I said to them, I was you, I did the same thing and here’s how I would have done it better.

Identify Where Your Revenue Will Come From

With my first major project, I was convinced the money would rain from the sky, that my target audience would willingly open their cheque books, sign their name and let me fill in the rest.

But this is planet earth, money doesn’t grow on trees, in fact money was in low supply from the businesses who I thought would invest in my maiden idea.

I never really thought, hey, if I was them, would I invest in this website, is it something I would normally do?

And the simple answer was NO, it’s not something I would invest in.

It wasn’t because my website didn’t have something to offer, in fact in terms of publicity and traffic, we got much more than you would expect in our first year, it’s just that the people we were targeting were not ready to spend money on an online portal just yet.

But by this point, it’s hard to change the ‘feel’ and branding of your site to target it to other segments who might have the money to spend.

It’s not impossible, it’s just it’ll take more time, resources and even more money to move it in the direction it should have started with in the first place.

So make it easier on yourself, start by walking in the right direction and you’ll definitely get where you want to go much faster.

‘Spreading The Word’ Is Much Harder Than You Think

Another one of my first mistakes was thinking that marketing was going to be a breeze, that once people heard of my brand new site, word of mouth would do the rest.

Well with some restaurants in Malaysia, that definitely is the case, but with a website, you’ll have to do a bit more.

The highest source of traffic we received when we first started was from our friends and through Facebook.

We put the link of every new post we published onto Facebook and we asked our friends to tell other people about it.

But there’s only so much that your friends can do, unless your site is something really special, or maybe you have 5000 friends (well then you wouldn’t really need my advice on marketing would you?) there’ll come a point when the traffic will start to plateau out.

It’s at this point you’ll want to move on to plan B of your marketing strategy, maybe it’s online advertising, maybe it’s guest posting, maybe it’s article writing.

What plan B I heard you say?

Before you begin, you must think of your marketing plan, how much it will cost you, what are the best avenues to reach your target audience and many other things.

Too often, people think (myself included) that the product is good enough that it’ll market itself, which is probably what leads to many new blogs and website shutting down much faster than they should have.

Marketing, marketing, marketing. It’s so important I had to say it 3 times.

Getting There Will Take Time.

To this same group of friends I told – getting really well known is going to take time, possibly 9months to 1 year, especially if you’re not going to invest in online advertising.

For a blog which is constantly updated, maybe between 3 to 5 times a week, it will still take time to get high enough up the search engines to get noticed by bigger businesses (advertisers, people looking for consulting etc.).

This is where most bloggers give up – they’ve been grinding out post after post after post, with maybe a few dollars made in adsense revenue, maybe an affiliate sale or two, but they’re still not making the ‘big bucks’ like they thought they would.

This is when most blogger throw in the towel, where they call it a day.

This is the most important time to not give up.

If you’ve managed to blog for over a year on a specific subject matter and your posts are good, then you’ve just got to suck it up and keep doing it to you get noticed.

Maybe a big blog will pick up your article?

Maybe a business will hire you for consulting because they googled some information and your site was one of the first they saw?

Maybes only possible if you’re still at it, trying to reach your goal of maintaining a successful online business.

For the guys who this story is based on – next time we talk I know you’ll have more details (they told me they would) and hopefully I can build you the website of your dreams (and also the website that you’ve planned and carefully thought out).

For the rest of you, a) plan, b) where’s the money at? c) think about marketing and d) never give up.

It may not be as simple as I make it sound, but it definitely won’t be as hard as jumping in head-first will be 6 months from now.

I know, I’ve been there.