Alles Normales

In short: a story on how I was helping ONLINE people OUTSIDE of Russia who speak NO Russian to DELIVER information to OFFLINE people in Russia who speak NO English - of course, for a modest monetary compensation

Some time ago I posted a story which began with “I speak Russian, I’m fluent in English, I’m blessed to be online - and I’m happy to help my compatriots to locate some bits of priceless knowledge they’re after, just for a modest monetary compensation. So I can post in OFFLINE local Russian newspaper an ad offering my service to find any information in any language, and voila! - orders start coming in.”

Fancy that, but I just have recalled an exactly opposite endevour I was involved in. While that post described how I was helping OFFLINE people in Russia who speak NO English to FIND information in foreign language, this time I’m going to reveal a story on how I was helping ONLINE people OUTSIDE of Russia who speak NO Russian to DELIVER information to OFFLINE people in Russia who speak NO English - of course, for a modest monetary compensation

Back in 2002 I used to be subscribed to EEUROPE-BUSINESS-DIGEST - a daily electronic business digest packed with trade offers of all kinds from around the world, here is a brief headers summary from a single issue:

—-
Subject: [EEBD:22529] OFFER: [TW] disposable respiratroy threapy products for hospital

Subject: [EEBD:22372] OFFER: [TR] Manufacturer of essentail oils. Oregano, cumin, sage , fennel and anise oils.

Subject: [EEBD:22371] OFFER: [MA] looking for serious distributors/importers for a very good quality food products from morocco.

Subject: [EEBD:22406] OFFER: [TW] D/S foam tape

Subject: [EEBD:22405] OFFER: [MY] Malaysia exporter/manufacturer of high quality food

Subject: [EEBD:22402] We are looking for yours Products.

Subject: [EEBD:22397] OFFER: [IN] Supply of carry bags

Subject: [EEBD:22423] DEMAND: [CZ] Various Items for one pound shops

Subject: [EEBD:22492] OFFER: [BD] 100% Cotton Fabric and Ready made Garments
—–

and so on. Two-letter code in the Subject denotes message origine - Taiwan, Turkey, Marocco, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh etc. As you can see, there were not only OFFERs, but DEMAND inquires as well. I also noticed that there were messages posted not only directly by companies but also by agencies.

Having always being into Info Mining and have been looking out for opportunities emerging on a border between ONLINE and OFFLINE worlds, especially in “underdeveloped” countries, I figured out I could offer an interesting service to all those people posting on the list - namely, to reach huge OFFLINE prospective customerbase in Russia by publishing their ad in OFFLINE Russian newspaper with huge circulation, in Russian language . I’d be acting as an advertising agent for that newspaper, but to get foreign companies interested in my offer I could offer them some extra stuff, something that Germans call zusatznutzen (that roughly translates as “an auxilary nice service that differs yours offer from zillion others”).

I came up with a sample letter:

–
Dear Parvinder Singh,

I received your offer on regard of Find Indian agent / buyer for your products & services through EEUROPE-BUSINESS mailing list.

I reside in Russia and I believe your offer should be of considerable interest to Russian consumers and vendors. Russian economy is on the rise and there is a HUGE demand for all kinds of imported goods. “Made in India” is assotiated mostly with textile of very high quality, tea and movies, and of course we are aware of Indian programmers offshore software development success, but I’ve
no doubt there is infinite lot more quality goods\services to offer.

I do doubt though that your Internet advertising will be read by many in Russia.

According to Nielsen/NetRatings Russian Internet Poll 2002, only 8% (eight per cent) of Russian Federation population has access to Internet. Of this 8% almost the half - 48% - of Internet users reside in only TWO major cities - Moscow and St.Petersburg, so almost entire territory of Russia remains out of reach.

So, Internet advertising on nationwide scope in Russia is hardly reasonable -
while traditional advertising media remains to be highly efficient.

Maybe we could partner with you in this area?

We offer to place your advertising in Russian nationwide newspaper Iz Ruk V Ruki (”Hands to Hands”) - circulation 765 000 copies, publishedе twice a week, printed simultaneously in 60 Russian major cities.

Web site: http://www.izrukvruki.ru/russian/ - all the cities listed.

Since you’re acting as an agency, we’d be willing to give you usual 15% off our rates.

This is the most popular classifieds newspaper which publishes paid business advertising and free private ads, and is considered to be one of the main source of business opportunity offers.

We offer a complex approach comprising 4 steps:

1) Your advertising will be translated into Russian (this ensures that everybody understands it)

2) Your ad (in Russian) will be published in the region of your choice:
a) Russia nationwide
b) Central Region of Russia
c) Siberia & Russian Far East

A copy of the newspaper your ad was printed in will be delivered to you airmail, free of charge (Express Mail option is available for a fee)

Bonus 1:
3) 1 page long Web business card (in Russian and English) of yours will be put up a Russian site. The site is being indexed by Russian search engines, so it will provide added value to your advertising - more potential customers will be coming across it looking via Russian search engines for goods matching your offer.

Example: http://infobr.fromru.com/example.html

Bonus 2:
4) Your ad (both in Russian and English) will be published at 3 most popular Russian WWW Trade boards. You’ll be provided with the URLs to your ad.

You will find advertising rates, ad modules grid and screenshot of the newspaper page with business advertising at our Web site - http://infobr.fromru.com
–

So, there is the profit?

1) Add some extra to newspaper going adversting rate. You’ll have to do that anyway, cause you’ll be facing extra expenses - e.g. there will be certain banking costs to cash the “pure” sum you need to collect from your customer to bring to the newspaper, so it’s up to you to determine how much to mark up.

2) Pose yourself as advertising agency (which in fact you are, just a 1 man agency) - newspapers (at least Russian) offer considerable discounts for agencies placing third party ads, so you can count on getting 20-25% off newspaper going advertising rate.

3) Newspapers would often offer bulk puchases like “Pay for 4 runs, get 5th for free” - so if you find a customer willing to pay for 5 runs of the same ad you’re perfectly free to keep the 1/5th of the sum to yourself.

4) Charge your customer for English to Russian translations of the advertising materials. While first time you try to get your prospective customer interested in engaging in this kind of advertsing you might offer free translation as part of a package, once the customer is “yours” there is no point in doing translations for free.

5) Offer your customers to handle their correspondence with Russian buyers, as well as offer those Russian buyers (who, in general, do not speak English) to handle their correspondence with those foreign partners of yours - you can add an extra line in advertising stating that inquiries in Russian could be sent to certain email address.

6) Once inquries for translations start rolling in to your address, get a deal with local (or remote - whoever offer cheapest rates and better quality) _Russian_ translation agency (or, better, qualified FREELANCERS who work for such agencies - it’ll be cheaper cause you eliminate an extra chain element) and hand them all the translation work - but do not hand them customers’ details. This way you’ll be earning extra cash by doing “project management” as I call it, and everybody will be happy:
- a Russian buyer will be getting a satisfactory translation service for affordable money
- a freelancing translator will be getting steady flow of job,
- you’ll be getting steady extra income.
Reference:
There are zillions of similar to EEUROPE-BUSINESS lists out there, you’ll no doubt would easily google it down, e.g. adnet1@asianation.com, info@YUtrade.net etc.

I would also browse resources similar to http://www.ecpages.com, http://www.nc-global.com/ etc. and collect contacts for future perusal. Collecting contacts is easy - say, ECpages makes buyers looking for manufacturers/suppliers of products to contact listed companies directly, so listed companies provide all necessary contact details and thorough description of products they have to offer. Also, once you collect enough data, you could utilize one more profit generating method:

7) Start publishing either an OFFLINE or ONLINE “buy and sell” digest for Russian readers - you’ll be able to list lots of unique business offers not seen before. Small investment into translation of those offers into Russian would bring serious profit in selling ad space - trust me.

So, how do you like the idea? Feel free to email me or leave a comment.

Filed under: Success stories - Offline meets Online