Homeowners learn quickly to make sure that all windows, doors and other possible gaps are plugged to avoid high utility bills caused by air-conditioning or heat leaks in extreme weather conditions. Webmasters – well, webmasters aren’t always so quick to do the same as far as their websites are concerned.
Aside from traffic leaks like improperly targeted niches, 404s – and other topics probably best saved for a Newbie Basics 101 type instructional – one of the biggest ways that today’s webmaster is losing money is by not doing anything with their International traffic.
According to the most recent statistics available by Global Internet Statistics site, GLReach.com, the global population was 649 million. As surprising as that figure might be, what’s even more amazing is that only 35.2% of those users speak English. The US, Canada, Australia and the UK have already pretty much reached their peak levels, due to the adaptation of computers and Internet services in those countries early on, but even those countries aren’t limited to English-speaking only surfers. According to the May 2002 Nielsen/NetRatings statistics, there were 165.2 million Americans online, yet 45 million Americans did not speak English at home.
As broadband becomes more available worldwide, users will continue to jump on the Internet and those users will begin to demand more sites in their language – and more sites that can process their purchases in their currency and in the methods that they are most comfortable using. So what other countries and languages should you be optimizing in order to take advantage of this huge influx in non-English speaking ‘Netizens? GLReach.com shows that the up-and-coming Top 5 of languages coming in just behind English are Spanish (with 26.7 million users), Chinese (2 million), Czech (1.45 million), French (1.4 million) and German (1.2 million). According to the most recent linguistic Census Report, of the 4.1 million Asians living in the world today, only 56% said that they “did not speaking English [very well]” and another 35% were linguistically isolated, speaking only their own language.
Language aside – many surfers outside North America are hungry for more Internet-based content, including adult-oriented content. Despite the European reputation for not having or using credit cards the way that American surfers are accustomed to doing, they do make purchases online, surf for porn and buy memberships just like we do. They just do things differently with their own cultural quirks and preferences. Knowing what “makes them tick” goes a long way to making sure you’ve got the right content and the proper cultural version of the niches that you’re offering, but there’s a lot more involved in actually making – and retaining – the sale.
Unless you speak all of these languages or know someone who lives in those countries who can help you find out how to linguistically and culturally target your audience – and can hire experienced legal counsel for each country, you’re kind of stuck. Getting your sites translated and hiring proper staff can be quite expensive – not every webmaster can afford to just jump right into global marketing without batting an eyelash.
The “traffic leak” for many webmasters comes when they filter off their traffic using a free script or program and just send all of their non-English speaking traffic off to a dialer, a circle jerk or other low-profit type program. Just as surfers around the world are beginning to demand more in the way of targeted content – webmasters should expect more when it comes to making money off of their global traffic. Settling for per-minute charges, click-thru banner rates or other non-credit card methods more common to American marketers, webmasters should look for other opportunities. Today there are several globally based companies that offer fresh solutions for webmasters who want to make real money from their foreign traffic.
The mission of SEXMoney.com, a global affiliate program, is to take the guesswork out of global marketing. The program offers sites in multiple languages (25 at the time of this writing), over 70 culturally-specific niches and offers potential customers 7 different payment methods, increasing the “comfort zone” and ultimately your International conversion ratio. Webmasters need only to cut-and-paste a simple re-direction code into their header tags to take advantage of the automatic browser language/IP-detection filtering process, or use language/country targeted banners and text links, depending upon individual preference. Because of their longtime experience in the European market, the average member retention is 5.8 months across the board and affiliates make 50-70% lifetime recurring.
For more information on how to join and use this revolutionary program, please visit www.sexmoney.com or contact our sales department directly via sales@sexmoney.com.
