The Internet Scene In Asia

This is a guest blog post by Giles Dawe who lives in China and runs the popular Asian Marketing site Best Blogs Asia.

Internet Usage in Asia

I’d like to share with you some recent stats about internet usage in Asia:

- There are around 30 million+ China based bloggers (Source CNNIC).
- In terms of online spending ratios (Source Zenith Optimedia 2007) the UK is first with an 18% spend, Korea and Japan at 12%, whilst the US spends only 8%.

Affiliate Marketing in Asia

Affiliate marketing and affiliate programs in Asia are very free if non-existant. Countries like Singapore have a few well known programs like Advertlets or Nuffnang, but other countries are falling behind. For example, in China the current climate is for Chinese bloggers is to use tools such as IM (QQ, Yahoo etc.,) rather than directly create sites to make money.

If you are in based in Asia, Asian traffic or base your site towards the Asian market, I’d recommend the following:

DGM Asia
DGM Asia offers programs like Apple and British airways flights.

Asian Dating
Asian Dating is popular for Westerners and could be used to capitalise on Foreigners accessing your site.

eBay Adverts
Whilst Singapore is only supported, there is no other specific Asian eBay affiliate programme, but it could still be worthwhile monetising on your non-asian traffic.

Google Adsense
Arrr, you don’t really want to be going down the Google Adsense route as it’s not a guaranteed form of reliable income, but felt I had to include it again for non-asian traffic.

Commission Junction in Asia
Commission Junction is a place I first explored when starting out in Affiliate Marketing, it’s tried and tested but the lack of Asia based programmes is small. You could apply for offers with:

DHGate (China based Marketplace)
Learn Chinese with ChinesePod
Yahoo South East Asia
Good Orient

Who makes money in Asia

There are quite a lot of web based high income earners in Asia who make money by just blogging and promoting offers – examples:

Xie Xua (Singapore Blogger)
Sha Money Maker (Singapore Marketer)
Dollar Shower (India Marketer)
Yong Fook (Japan Social Media)

Conclusion

I hope you found this brief article useful in that it showcases an “Internet Scene” in Asia which is only going to get bigger and bigger in the near future.