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  • Advertising as a Monetization Idea

    I was chatting with a few folks who made the pitch last Friday and it seems a lot of people think selling ads is the only way to make money.

    While Google probably made close to $100m in Singapore selling advertising alone, I still think citing pure advertising as a form of  monetization is an extremely bad idea.

    Advertising is an extremely crowded space. Search engines are doing it, news portals are doing it, forums are doing it, social networks are doing it, so where do you stand in this crowd, especially if you’re a new startup?

    Instead of looking to sell advertisements for money, think of how you can monetize your strengths such as selling a service or  selling data and statistics for market intelligence, or even being acquired by another company.

    Think about it…

  • Damn Busy

    Sorry folks if I haven’t been responding to your e-mails/wave/chat promptly and haven’t been doing my homework. I’m super tied down this week with work, plus my mum’s sick and I have to be at the Istana tomorrow. The weather isn’t really very helpful since I’ll be under the damn hot sun.

    If any of you need to buzz me, the surest and fastest way is via SMS.

    And for those who’ve mailed me on project groupings and/or discussions please hang on a bit and I will get back to you ASAP.

  • The Business of Search and Advertising

    Phew. I’m finally back from graveyard work, showered and waiting for my hair to dry. I’ll blog while my memory’s fresh. If I go to sleep now, I’ll wake up with only half of what I was thinking the night before.

    Chewy gave a very interesting talk at NUS today. It gave me new perspectives of the CPC/CPA advertising scene but I have my thoughts decided to blog them so everybody can discuss. I’ll be sending Chewy an e-mail so he can comment as well.

    I totally agree that search is a place where money can be made. When Google went offline for two hours in the middle of last year, the Internet literally died together with them. Imagine the world without search today. (Food for thought.)

    The local consumer industry’s probably not as competitive as in the US, but they certainly have found ways to suck your money without the need to spend more money on advertising. I mean, as a business, isn’t that fantastic? 😛

    I think Singapore’s a weird economy. Here’s why I think so:

    We don’t really have much choices. When Chewy said that Singapore’s the richest country in Southeast Asia, well, maybe we are in terms of raw GDP per capita, but I’m not entirely sure if we’re equally rich when taking real costs of living into account. The way PPP is calculated just isn’t fair. I mean WTF is a Big Mac Index? It’s almost like a currency conversion against US$! PPP needs to take into account other living standards and not just a “basket of goods” plus a Big Mac — stuff like a house or a car for example. It’s not like in the US where I could choose to live far out and buy a house cheap, I don’t really have a choice! Punggol is as far as you can get! Half a million for a HDB flat? Forget it!

    We’re materialistic. So when Chewy brought up the point about Taxi queues, I’m not surprised. It’s a matter of how people perceive the value of money. I’m sure there are times you think to yourself, “OK, I can afford to wait. I don’t need to spend $3. I’ll stand in line.” Singaporeans are a materialistic bunch of people who’d rather spend money on goods for showing off than for services that convenience them.

    We’re suaku. I tune in to News Radio 93.8 when I drive and there’s this programme called Talk Back or something like that where people call in and debate some topic, like “do you think Taxis are expensive in Singapore?”. Sometimes it just drives me nuts listening to what people complain about here. I can only conclude that we’re very suaku.

    That much about what I think is the state of Singapore’s consumers, I’ll move on to the part on advertising.

    The current CPC/CPA advertising does indeed encourage competition, but this type of advertising (price war) is unhealthy for businesses. It turns consumers away from the real value of a product (or brand) and focuses on price instead. If the industry worked this way, there wouldn’t be Bread Talk or Apple and business would fight themselves to death and create more disparities of wealth.

    If you looked at PC hardware in Sim Lim, the stores there basically compete on nothing but price. Same probably goes for shoes at Queenway. If they wanted to win the sales, they simply cut the price. Plain and simple? Not so. At the end of the day they basically do more work for less and customers don’t even remember the stores’ name. So now goes back to the question on my TV purchase. If Chewy asked me why I didn’t go to Sim Lim to buy my TV, my answer would be that I trusted Harvey Norman (or Best Denki/Challenger) more than the dodgy stores at Sim Lim. That’ was why I decided to take a walk at Harvey Norman (instead of Best Denki/Challenger) which was nearer to my home.

    Any business who’s looking for long term growth needs to build its’ brand. And by branding it doesn’t mean a colorful logo or a fancy yodel. A brand is something people have an affiliation to and builds royalty over time. Unfortunately though, brand building has to start when a consumer is unaware, and that’s where the CPM advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guys come in to screw around with generic algorithmic search results.

    Although I’d believe that that there’s potential for CPC/CPA to aid in building brands, this is still an area that’s untapped. CPC/CPA isn’t necessarily positive for brand building. Some people may perceive advertisers as scammy or desperate, for example.  I’m also sure that most people don’t plan and search online to buy everything. Some purchases are made on impulse, especially small value items like little earrings. Females 14 to 25 years of age should be familiar with such a buying pattern. 😛

  • Huat Ah!

    Here’s me wishing everybody a happy and prosperous year of the Tiger!

    I’ll be on my way to Malaysia for reunion with my grandparents early tomorrow and will only return on 初二. I might not have Internet access, or even if there is, it’s a dial-up. 😛

    See you next week!

  • Kids CMI? Maybe Parents also CMI

    This is in response to a thread I read at MummySG. (BTW, I’m reading the forum because I found posts related to noisy neighbours.)

    Hi, have to get this off my chest. ytd was with hubby and baby at BHG Bugis. after using the nursing room to nurse daughter, we proceed to the elevator to go to the first floor to go to liang seah st to meet friends for dinner.

    As the elevator just left thus there is no one so we r standing beside the door(not blocking) with dear daughter in her stroller sleeping. then came 3 teenagers(gers in most pro 14 or 16) standing behind us. when the elevator going to reach one of them kept pushing me wanting to get in first. my hubby who saw that told them” sorry we r also going in can wait for a while(cos need to push stroller in , somemore elevator have not even reach yet.”

    in the elevator one of them say to the one who was being told”hey he scolded you ?” then she replied”aiya you knw singaporean, kiasu want to go in first.” Wa, my hubby heard that hot , cos they r the one who want to rush in first. he scolded back” dont know who kiasu, keep pushing my wife wanting to rush in front to go in. yourself not singaporean is it.” 3 of them stared at my hubby and of cos we stared them back . then comethe best pt, they got off at lvl 2 n one of them actually scolded softly but i heard “Bas****” CAN you IMAGINE THAT! if not becos im standing inside ,i will go st8 out n ask them,”who you scolding BAS****, BI***. they think i got baby i good to bully or like those ‘chi xiang mother’?sorry, too bad IM NOT as im military trained, those who dont show respect will get it from me(in workplace.)nowadays the teenager REALLY CANNOT MAKE IT

    I think there’s two sides to the problem. OK, the teens described here CMI, but why so?

    I was at the basement of Century Square Tampines one afternoon with my colleagues. We were at the AXS machine paying our bills. I went first.

    For those who aren’t familiar with that area, the AXS machine is in the lift lobby of the basement.

    There was this little boy running around and he was hammering on things and creating a ruckus which was already annoying enough. Just when I was about to key in my account number, he came around and poked at my keyboard. I was furious and held his hand and shoved him away. Not exactly very harsh, but not gentle either (because I was already annoyed).

    I was done with my payment and my colleagues went next. Same thing happened and my colleagued shoved the kid aside.

    I was really angry and I said loudly, “whose kid is this har?” No response.

    All these while there’s a couple waiting for the lift, with a pram and a sleeping baby.

    Then when the lift came, the father turned around and said, “come boy, let’s go!”

    I was like, ?!!!

    So the kid was running around, poking at others using the AXS machine and behing shoved away, they just didn’t freaking care. Even when somebody exclaimed whose kid was that, they didn’t care?

    I was very angry and told the parents straight in the face as they entered the lift that they “better learn to take care of (their) kid”, in full view of all the lift passengers but they didn’t seem like they cared.

    So really, the problem we’re seeing now is contributed by the poor upbringing of these kids. It’s a social problem and unfortunately cannot be solved unless we start looking at how we handle our kids.

  • Noisy Neighbours in Singapore

    If you’re wondering, wow, I’m writing a blog at this hour, well that’s because I’ve been awoken at 6AM+ this morning by my neighbour upstairs.

    I had to resort to hammering the ceiling with my fists last night to get them to shut up. That was 1:30AM. Yes, read carefully, my fists. I stood on a stool and hammered the ceiling. This proves that HDB flats are constructed so badly these days. The ceiling vibrated just as it did with the stomping and running upstairs. My flat’s 8 year old BTW. I don’t think my parent’s flat (closing 30 years now) are like that.

    I’m thinking if calling the cops doesn’t work and (according to many online forums) even going to CMC, MP and even court doesn’t work, what works?

    The government loves to take reactive approaches and maybe I should create something to make it happen. It’s called the “I sabo your neighbours, you sabo my neighbours” portal. I am fully committed to funding this portal as long as it brings me peace. I will start putting a plan to get this done. All comments welcome.