Chinese New Year – Introducing My New China Blog

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.

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!

Tags: Adsense, Blogging, China, Monetization