Chinese New Year – Introducing My New China Blog

| Created: February 7th, 2008
Make Money Online 24 Comments

Happy Chinese New Year! The arrival of the Chinese New Year seems like a good time to announce my new blog at jobsinchina.com. Primarily a blog, for now, JobsInChina will cover issues related to living and working in China.

JobsInChina

What JobsInChina Will Offer

I’ve been wanting to write about China and my experiences here for a long time. This gives me the outlet. I’ll write about anything related to China: daily life, culture, travel, news articles, amusing stories, pictures I’ve taken, etc.

I’ll relate these back to living and working in China, because the primary focus of the blog is to help people understand what it’s really like here.

The site will also aim to provide resources for people wanting to live or work in China. I plan to add sections covering work visas, legal issues, etc. This part of the site will build up slowly, as I’ll need to research it carefully.

It’s also quite likely that at some point in future, the site will list jobs available in China. This will probably be done in partnership with an existing job listing provider.

There are lots of possibilities with JobsInChina. I’ve taken the unusual step of leading with a blog and adding other services later. That doesn’t mean that those services won’t be provided in future.

Why Lead With A Blog?

I’ve owned the jobsinchina.com domain name for four years, but never done anything with it. My original plan was to create a job listing service, but I was too busy to put it into action. Time passed and the opportunity was lost. There is now a lot of strong competition in this area and a new job listing site would be unlikely to succeed (without a lot of money behind it).

However, my experience with More Than Scratch The Surface made me confident that I could create a successful China-related blog. I realised that the easiest way to succeed with the www.jobsinchina.com domain would be to build the blog first, then leverage that to add the other services later.

Besides, I wanted to write about my experiences here in China anyway!

Monetization Of JobsInChina

If I can build the JobsInChina to a reasonable level, it will offer some good monetization options, including:

  1. Adsense (search traffic only): While not a high paying niche, it should work reasonably well, once search engine visitors start to arrive. With lots of content, it should be able to attract reasonable search traffic.
  2. Affiliate Reviews: A blog lends itself to reviews of products related to China: books, DVDs, language software, cameras (to take with you).
  3. Direct Advertising: This may be where the real money comes from, once traffic reaches a certain level. Potential advertisers include large chains of English language schools in China, corporations hiring in China, companies selling China-related products, etc.
  4. Partnerships: I won’t talk too much about this now, but once the site is reasonably successful, it will open the way for partnerships with job listing sites and other China related sites.

I’m sure more opportunities will arise as things proceed.

Adsense Related Posts Explained

Regular readers will have noticed a lot of Adsense related posts recently, including:

  1. The Adsense Dilemma (Or How To Make Money)
  2. How To Avoid Adsense Smart Pricing On Blogs
  3. Shylock Adsense Plugin – Hack To Avoid Smart Pricing

These all came from the planning for jobsinchina.com. My first thought was to create a Made For Adsense mini-site, but I soon decided that I wanted to create a blog, so I could write about my experiences in China.

At that stage, I realised that a blog with good content, would be less successful with Adsense than an MFA site with mediocre content. This lead to the "don’t solve their problems" theory outlined in the Adsense Dilemma post. As part of researching that post, I learnt more about Adsense Smart Pricing and the high risk blogs have of being smart priced. That lead to the second post. The third post was my solution to the problem.

So that’s why I’ve been subjecting you to all these Adsense related posts!

Ultimately, I decided to go with a blog for JobsInChina with the plan to expand into other services later. This will mean a lot of extra work, but should result in better monetization options once it’s reached a certain level.

Final Thoughts

I’m excited about JobsInChina and I’m really going to enjoy writing about China. If any of you are interested in learning more about China, or what it’s like to live there, join me at Jobs In China. Happy Chinese New Year!

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24 responses on “Chinese New Year – Introducing My New China Blog”

  1. Neena (NeenMachine)

    Stephen,
    Good luck with your new niche site. It will make you look at everything differently. After launching my new site about local events, I have learned about new things that were literally in my own backyard. At the very least, I am having fun with that site.

    1. Stephen Cronin Post author

      Hi Neena,

      I’ve seen that you’re following the niche site experiement with Vic. I think a local niche site would be great fun! That’s the main reason I’ve created the new blog, but this isn’t really part of that experiment – I’m trying to go after a whole country! I’m actually moving back to Brisbane in about 3 months and I may look at the local niche blog then.

      Anyway, good luck with Westpoint Kids!

    1. Stephen Cronin Post author

      RT,

      Good question. I thought long about that – it would obviously be better if we were still here.

      However, our household is a Chinese household, whichever country we physically live in and we’ll visit China often, so I’m sure I can come up with plenty of content for the blog. As for tying it into working here, I have a few years experience with that and lots of friends who’ll still be working here (I may get them to guest write), so I think that’ll be fine too.

      The main problem is perceived lack of authority. People will be happier to read someone who’s still in the country. I think I have enough background that I can pull it off – I guess we’ll have to see how others feel!

  3. Putco

    i think china is a huge booming market

    it’s great that you could use chinese to tap into their job market

    1. Stephen Cronin Post author

      Hi Putco,

      China is a huge market, which is why I bought the domain name in 2004. I’m kicking myself I didn’t actually do something with it before now!

  4. online business magazine

    you’re right, China is such a booming market, not to mention they’re gonna host the Olympics. I think if you keep your focus and work hard enough on your website, you definitely cant lose. That domain also sounds cool

  7. bike

    that’s a huge market u are looking at

    at 1.3 billion people, that’s a mega workforce

    the problem is they don’t read english

  8. Michael

    i agree with what bike said – they don’t really read english i got some visiting my home and they don’t know nuts about english

  9. philippine web design

    Nice blog.. I hope that it will be successful. And yeah, Chinese don’t read English…

  11. Stephen Cronin Post author

    Hi Everyone,

    Thanks for your comments and wishes.

    I should just clarify that the site is not targeted at Chinese people, trying to find jobs in China. It is targeted at foreigners who want to live and work in China. At last count there were over 400,000 foreigners officially registered as working in China (which means the real number will be much higher). The number continues to grow. It’s small compared to 1.3 billion, but it’s a start.

    Now I get to try out my SEO knowledge! It’ll be slow progress though, because I don’t have much time…

  12. tv brackets

    Good luck with the new site! It is actually very fun to do a local based site. Sharing your knowledge of the area with the rest of the world is pretty interesting.

  13. Maurice - The CaymanHost

    Hi Stephen,

    It’s looking good, so best of luck in your new niche 🙂

    I had a friend years ago who “fled” to China after a group of us were made redundant and he ended up teaching English somewhere before disappearing into the past as people do. While we were still in touch he seemed to be having a blast.

    Doubt I’ll ever visit China, but look forward to doing so vicariously through your new site!

    1. Stephen Cronin Post author

      Hi Mo,

      There’s a lot of Westerners over here and most of them are having a great time. There are some people who don’t like it here, but most people love the lifestyle. It’s easy to find teaching jobs here – although they general don’t pay much. Anyway, I need to get posting on that blog – I’m a bit behind at the moment.

  14. Isaac

    Stephen,

    Great idea for a site and I wish you all the luck. The market will only continue to grow, espeically as more and more people start studying Chinese. Actually, you could probably do well enough just by recruiting foreign English teachers and charging schools/local education boards for placing them. TEFL salaries have reached the point where a single person can make a decent living by teaching in a bigger city.

    Good luck!

    1. Stephen Cronin Post author

      Hi Isaac,

      Thanks. Yes, there is constant demand for foreign teachers here. The school I’m at is always looking for more teachers and it’s one of the better employers out there, so the staff turnover isn’t as high as in other places.

      People can certainly make a decent living here. The salaries are lower than in the West, but if you can get one of the better salaries for China, you’ll save a lot. You normally don’t have to pay rent, don’t need a car and the cost of living is so low that you can’t spend your money…

  15. Stephen Cronin Post author

    Hi WebDiggin,

    I’m a bit slow answering! At the moment, I haven’t had time to work on JobsInChina, but it should start moving again soon.

    Eventually, I’ll give JobsInChina a complete overhaul so it looks different from this site, although as you say, the fact that they are similar makes them a little easier to maintain.

    As far as I know there’s no easy way to install or upgrade plugins across multiple blogs. It needs to be done on an individual basis…

    It may be worth checking out WordPress MU (Multiple User). I think that’s what they use for WordPress.com, so presumably you could install one plugin for multiple blogs.

    The problem with this, is that many WordPress plugins won’t work directly with WordPress MU. You’ll need to fiddle with them a bit to make them work. It’s probably not worth seriously considering unless you have hundreds of blogs…

  16. Max Miroff@Diablo 3 Information Guide

    It’s brilliant that you’re going to be writing about something you have passion for. Too often blogs and websites spring up for one person only: making money online. While that’s a fairly good motivator, lack of passion is probably the #1 cause of bloggers getting bored and stopping their sites.

  17. Andrew @ Hotel Ljubljana

    A thing I heard about China and can’t get it out of my head, it so bizarre. Is it true that European/American style Chinese food restaurants are becoming popular among the Chinese elite in big cities ? 🙂