Mr William 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, withWordpress 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.
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