Facing giants
Submitted by CT on Wed, 05/21/2008 - 15:11.
I decided to try the niche of Mandarin language courses & learning materials. While checking competition and keywords, I realised I am facing giants. There are so much free materials on the net in learning Chinese language. There are so many sites on teaching the language, providing courses, free guides, etc. These web sites are very well-done.
It indicates a large pies. It indicates well served wide niche. But somehow I think I can deliver something slightly different, focusing on something narrower.
I taught Chinese language many years ago to school children, working as temporary/replacement teacher. I am familiar with pinyin.
Technically, probably I will need to learn how to produce podcast/ audio files, and improve my English pronunciation, if I want to produce some simple Mandarin courses.
It reminds me of the mortgage niche Jeremy's mentioned in his webinar. I shall give this niche a try...I love the language.
Is there a PPC market in China yet? I think I just read where there's more Chinese than Americans online now...
I'd bet there's a "make money" market there by now. I used to have a few Chinese on the payroll a few years ago ($10 USD a day was a LOT of money to them). But my "go to girl" (she spoke Mandarin -- plus English as well as I do) up and went to Vancouver so I was unable to keep hiring those folks.
Anyway, if i could speak Mandarin, I'd look at "Virtual Assistants" as a business niche. You can hire Chinese that can type English very well for a dime on the dollar with no problem, if my experience is still the case.
Plus, there's a lot of folks here that are being taught that hiring these Assistants from somewhere is almost indispensable when it comes to growing your PPC business, so you have a built-in market sort of :)
I am not sure whether there is a ppc market in China. The major search engines for China is not google, but baidu and sohu. Google probably ranks 4th or 5th place. (I have to say I am not familiar with China's ppc market, as I am not from China though I speak Mandarin and had Chinese education since young.)
I used Google keyword tools to check Mandarin's "earn money from internet", it does seem to have little competition for PPC.
CT
https://twitter.com/ct2008
As you mentioned, seeing competition in the Chinese language market is probably a good thing - people are making money in it. Just a thought, but you may want to start out promoting something like Rosetta Stone Mandarin learning software. They have an affiliate program I believe through CJ. It's a fairly pricely product so the commissions should be decent. You can begin your site with reviewing the product along with other language learning products for Mandarin. Also write and distribute some articles about learning to speak Mandarin and the particular challenges facing Westerners.
I spent several years trying to learn to speak Russian. It was really slow going, but eventually things started to click and I made progress. Looking back, I can list a lot of things that could make it easier for others trying to learn Russian. You can do the same if you know where English speakers get stuck learning Mandarin. I made a weak attempt many years ago to learn Mandarin (thank God for pin-yin), but could never get the hang of the "4 tones".
Rich
Hi Rich, thanks for the information. Yes, CJ has Rossetta Stone.
You are right about finding where Westerners get stuck learning Mandarin. My initial assumptions are at the 4-tones and some pronunciation like "zh", "yu", etc.
Actually, it is quite easy for English speaking people to learn to speak Chinese. Grammatically, Mandarin is the stripped down version of English. There is no singular and plural for nouns or verbs, there is no variation of verbs for different tenses (one verb for all tenses), there is only one pronoun for each person ("ta" = he/ she/ her/ him/ hers/ his) and you save the problem in differentiating genders, etc.
You can translate English almost word by word into Mandarin with perfect grammar. For instance, I (wo) love (ai) you (ni).
When you ask a question, for instance, "do you love me?". In English with Chinese grammar it is "you love me, eh?". ("ni ai wo ma?")
The pattern is
a. make a statement, i.e. You (ni) love (ai) me (wo), then
b. ended with eh (ma)?
(This is the grammar of asking a question, covering 50% of how questions being asked in Mandarin.)
I am teaching my 8 years old son Mandarin (It is fun. He started to read English at 3 years old. Mandarin is his worst subject at school).
Thanks for the info.
CT
https://twitter.com/ct2008
Wow CT, that was a lot of great info! I used to work with some Chinese people and noticed that they often would get the gender of English pronouns confused - saying "she" when referring to a man. Now I understand why. Well it's clear that you can explain a complicated subject very clearly. I think if you provided that kind of content on an affiliate site promoting Chinese Mandarin course materials along with some related items that you'd might do very well.
Good luck!
Rich
Hi Rich,
I am Russian by the way and it took me few years to learn English. Today I live in Israel and teach English few folks, it's going quite well.
Have any idea regarding languages niche?
I surprised seeing you tried to learn Russian, it is very difficult for English people to learn Russian, the same vice versa.
Why did you need to study Russian?
Vadim
Hi Vadim,
Sorry for the delay in replying - just saw your post. Yes, Russian was not easy to learn and I'm far from fluent, but I can now speak "Survival Russian". I did some traveling in Russia a few years back and that's why I needed to learn to speak the language.
While I was studying Russian, I participated in an online news group for people wanting to learn. There was a fair amount of interest from people all over the world who wanted to learn to speak Russian. I'm not sure how successful an affiliate site based around it would be, but the interest seems to be there. I know personally that I spent a bit of money on books, tapes, and courses, so maybe others would too.
Rich
I think the Chinese and Hindi lang niche will be dominant in the near future. China & India are slated to become the worlds largest economies soon. Hence there'll be a lot of people interested in these languages.
CT, why don't you survey the market? You can spend a couple hundred dollars on PPC clicks and send people to a simple questionnaire asking them what their biggest problem is related to language training.
By doing this you can gauge the size of demand online, determine the particular needs of the market, and reduce your risk.
Check out Glenn Livingston's methodology for doing this - it's solid.
Moe
Totally agree - if one has the capital resources to do this it definitely is a fast way to get good data. Consider it an educational investment in your particular niche.
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