The major advantage of earning a living online is being able to do business from anywhere. Another thing that doesn’t seem to get spoken about quite as much is the ability to do business with virtually anyone.
One of my best performing affiliate partners has sales coming in from all over the world. Most sales tend to come from the UK, Australia, USA, New Zealand and Canada with a spattering from Europe and the occasional sale from Asia. Seeing all of the sales laid out in front of my by country has opened my eyes to something I hadn’t given much thought to before – who I do business with can have an effect on the bottom line.
The product is travel insurance and so far for November I have 18 sales from the UK and 20 from Australia. My Australian sales have earned me just under $300 but UK sales have brought in over $450 so far with two fewer sales. This has proven to be the case month after month – sales from the UK are bigger and therefore pay out more than any other country I deal with. Conversely, I have 13 sales from the US but my commission thus far is a pitiful $65.
I attribute this mainly to the strength of the mighty UK pound and to the fact that, based on my experience of living in several countries, it’s much easier for a UK resident to drop £200 on an insurance policy than for an Aussie/Kiwi/Canadian/Yank to spend $400 on the same thing. Maybe the reason I think that is because I’ve only ever earned $7/hour in Canada so saving up $400 would take an eternity and in the UK saving £200 for me is just a matter of staying in a few nights. I also think the low payout on American insurance policies is because they tend to travel for shorter periods of time.
My point is this… I can choose who my target market is. Based on exchange rates, earning power, length of trips and population I think that for travel insurance, I’m going to focus on UK residents and try to get me a piece of the mighty pound. Being American doesn’t mean you have to target Americans and same goes for any country. If you speak Japanese, experiment with some sites targeting Japan. If you speak Swahili, by all means target… uh… whatever country speaks Swahili. Be creative and don’t limit yourself to operating within borders.
Now the point of this post isn’t for all of you to start travel insurance sites aimed at UK residents… no, don’t do that. I guess this whole targeting specific markets based on offline factors is something I only just thought of and I want to make sure the rest of you are keeping this in mind when you choose your target markets.
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