I would like to know if anyone has tried setting a internet-based business in Taiwan such as the followings:
it is hard to succeed in this field in Taiwan?
Is there a lot of people doing it?
I’m providing web design, development and translation services. I’ve only got 2 customers so far, I would like to hear any experiences you had.
Hey there janoo,
I’d be interested in hearing about your experiences as well as others, as I’m moving to Taiwan this year and will be running my own business in Taichung.
My business is currently in the UK, I should be over in Taichung around May time, so maybe we could meet up for coffee and a chat if you’re in Taichung then?
(By the way, I tried visiting your site to have a look at your work, but I got this message from Mcafee so didn’t click through:)
[i]Mcafee SiteAdvisor:
zxq.net may try to steal your information.
Why were you redirected to this page?
When we visited this site, we found it may be designed to trick you into submitting your financial or personal information to online scammers. This is a serious security threat which could lead to identity theft, financial losses or unauthorized use of your personal information. [/i]
Maybe your site’s been hacked?
All the best for now,
Darren
I would advise you to first look for a job in Trend Micro or another software firm in Taiwan if you have experience and you are a web developer. You can try some projects on the side and learn as you go.
Hi Darren. My website/portfolio has 119 visits so I think there’s something wrong with your antivirus.
Anyways here’s a picture of my website:
http://img534.imageshack.us/i/alexpage.png/
And here are 2 of my clients:
BEST Language School:
(I did web design and Chinese translation)
Royal Steel Plastic Recycling Machines:
(I did web design and Spanish translation)
I would like to hear more about your project!
Here’s my MSN: weedcl@hotmail.com
Hi janoo,
Thanks for coming back to me - just had a look at those 2 links. Nice clean designs.
I think the problem was on my laptop last night - I think there must be a ‘Mcafee Site Advisor’ plugin or something on my Firefox - seems to be fine on my PC.
I think you stand a great chance with English, Spanish and Chinese - that is one big chunk of the world covered with those 3 languages 
Speak soon,
Darren.
[quote=“janooChen”]My website/portfolio has 119 visits so I think there’s something wrong with your antivirus.
[/quote]
You might want to work on the former to get more of the latter. Just sayin.
I’m glad you liked them Darren. Hope to hear more about you and your projects!
[quote=“darren13”]I’d be interested in hearing about your experiences as well as others, as I’m moving to Taiwan this year and will be running my own business in Taichung.
My business is currently in the UK, I should be over in Taichung around May time, so maybe we could meet up for coffee and a chat if you’re in Taichung then?
[/quote]
If you guys are meeting in Taichung, can I join?
I am running an ecommerce site myself, not web design though.
Tim
I ran a small webdesign agency in Taipei for about 3 years from 2002 to 2005, and ended up leaving the webdesign industry as it was really tough as a small agency. Things may have matured a bit since then, but I expect there would still be a lot of what I call red-flag clients in Taiwan. You need to aim for big clients to avoid the red-flag clients, but to get the big fish you usually need to have a big agency because of the credentials that gives.
My feeling after those 3 years was that 90% of clients did not know the purpose of a website is, and if you kept doing what the client asked you to do, you’ll end up with a portfolio of ‘angry fruitsalad websites’ and ‘cute’ flashy cartoon characters that takes 20 minutes to load. Not a single client was able to provide a brief or even give a detailed briefing of what exactly they want in their website. So we ended up having to make in-depth interviews that often ended up questioning the whole purpose of having a website, and sometimes even their own company business model.
The few that actually bothered to listen to us ended up with a massive ROI since we were really cheap, and they keep trying to refer new clients to me (which I reject since I want nothing to do with this business anymore).
What kept the business going for 3 years was just a steady stream of leads and regular customers. If you’re a capable designer but aren’t getting the business, you gotta work on the sales bit. E.g. how many leads are you getting per month, and how many leads are you able to convert to sales?
I’d also recommend you setup a reseller webhosting account as many newbie companies have no idea they need to rent space on a webserver and also pay for a domain. By reselling hosting you can generate steady annual income from hosting fees over several years.
I think there were more in the early days when doing webdesign was something your nephew’s schoolmate was considered qualified to do. It has matured a bit, and although the latest WYSIWYG editors are pretty capable, I believe the medium to large businesses are now realizing that it’s not something they should leave their kids to do.
A new threat though is sites like eLance.com, where I can hire a bunch of Indians to make a website for fraction of the cost needed in Taiwan. As a matter of fact, I’m having one made right now by a bunch of buys in Bangalore.
I’d be down for a coffee or beer with y’all too.
Brandon and Netuser. Yes we can meet, to have a beer or coffee. Give me your emails and when you guys will be in Taichung.
I used Indians for stuff before. Issues that came up was support and fees for maintenance, plus turnaround time. In addition no chance of them doing stuff in Chinese for you.
My MAJOR issue was their terrible design aesthetic, the fonts, the artwork, the way sites are put together. I can now instantly tell websites that are made by Indian developers, they have a generic quality.
I also dropped out of this business after a short-stab at it…people don’t know what they want, you end up educating them and then they change their ideas half way though. I always compared it to a builder building a house and then the customer deciding he wanted a different house after the first floor was already built!
However for some reason customers didn’t think they had to pay more money for this…
Building and operating a successful website is a complex and time consuming task, they are more functional computer programs than static pages.
I agree with you headonchoII about the pain of dealing with some customers.
I think the magic of web design is that. You can perfectly build a new house using the first floor (personal customized mini framework).
I agree that its complex and time consuming but the line between computer programs and web pages are getting narrow. Web sites are becoming both applications and static pages.
[quote=“SOLSIS”]hi all,
if you dont mind, I would like to introduce to you all a new wellness company. The products are about wellness and well being of a person. The products arent revealed yet, but it will this May 15. I hope everyone can just go and register first,as this company is in it’s pre-launch. Also, this is also going to be an internet business.
Do tell your friends about it.[/quote]
Of course no forumosan would be dumb enough to believe the crap being sold in the above post. But, in case you’re interested, here’s a little on the man behind the scam, according to their website.
[quote]I just started seeing ads for this the other day. Ads touting “Mike Potillo Billionair Marketer” and I’ve never heard of this guy. Been around the industry a while. Never heard a peep about this billionaire.
Some research turned up several questionable deals the last few years that he’s been pitching - Guru Cruise, Vitamark, Crave Energy Drink – wondering where he made the ‘billions’.
I signed up under the link for the free ‘prelaunch’ : - at lockyourspot.com/jtheron but can not find a single thing about what the company is launching. I also could not find a way to log back in, since it never asked me for a password, so I can not log back in. And it never sent a confirmation email -
The lockyourspot.com login fills in the password for you, but you can’t see it. Once in, all you see are blacked out vague bios with no names - except for Mike Potillo - who as far as I can tell is just some shill for whatever deal is going on at the moment.
Could this be an elaborate scam to harvest valid email addresses? Who knows, just seems really really lame to me.[/quote]
[quote]Ardyss International, a Las Vegas, Nevada-based direct sales company that makes a fortune off undergarments.
Body Magic, the company’s flagship girdle-and-corset combo, which retails for $140 plus tax and shipping, can “bring your butt back to high school fine,” the man on stage announced.
You can wear it and get thin, the claims go, or you can sell it and get rich.
The company’s other products include the Angel Bra, Panty Reshaper, undergarments for men, nutritional supplements and skin-care items.
Think Mary Kay cosmetics. That’s the kind of multilevel or network marketing model on which Ardyss is based. Distributors can make money through sales. But they can make even more from profit cuts and bonuses that float to the top if they recruit other distributors, who in turn recruit other distributors, and so on and so on. . .
the Better Business Bureau, with which Ardyss is not accredited, has given the company an F rating, saying 16 complaints over the past 36 months have gone unanswered. An Ardyss executive and spokesman, Mike Potillo, told CNN the company wasn’t aware of these complaints and would be in touch with the BBB to clear this up.[/quote]
Hey guys,
I know this question might not really be relate to your topic, but since all you guys do webdesign maybe you can help me:)
I’ll be coming to Taipei next week & seeking for 2D Animator/Illustrator to design my front webpage. Do you know anyone or company that good at that?
It will be a 10-20secs animation.
Thanks heaps
I run a few websites and am doing the whole Internet Marketing thing in my spare time. Have a few friends who have made some decent money off of it. I’m studying copy writing and SEO. Managed to get to the top of the SERP for a few non competitive keywords. Currently learning how to use Link Farm Evolution and SeNuke. My main focus is on List Building.
I’d like to get a group of us together in Taipei so we can help each other out and just talk. Already meet regularly with 1 guy from Taiwan who does SEO. So feel free to PM me or reply to this thread if you wanna meet up. Let’s make something happen.
Do you meet regularly? When do you meet next time?
I have a big need for SEO expertise. Unfortunately, good quality SEO services from US are pretty expensive for Taiwan standard:-(
Do you know any Taiwanese SEO service that is competent to do SEO for US market?
[quote=“Bolo”]I run a few websites and am doing the whole Internet Marketing thing in my spare time. Have a few friends who have made some decent money off of it. I’m studying copy writing and SEO. Managed to get to the top of the SERP for a few non competitive keywords. Currently learning how to use Link Farm Evolution and SeNuke. My main focus is on List Building.
I’d like to get a group of us together in Taipei so we can help each other out and just talk. Already meet regularly with 1 guy from Taiwan who does SEO. So feel free to PM me or reply to this thread if you wanna meet up. Let’s make something happen.[/quote]
Plenty of companies in Taiwan that will be glad to do your SEO. They outsource it to China and you’ll get an xrummer blast or some other quick and nasty links pointed to your site. I am sure there is a market for SEO etc in Taiwan but as someone posted above I believe the difficulty would be in actually getting/finding the right customers. SEO/Website optimization etc is about building the right site and getting good links. If you want to see how many companies view the importance of websites, just pickup one of those electronic monthly magazines and have a look at the websites of all the Taiwan based companies listed inside. The majority of the websites have been around for years (meaning they should rank well and be respected by Google) but they have no content, are not organized properly and the amount of traffic they receive is minimal. This obviously isn’t the case for all companies but for the majority I believe it is.
What do you need SEO for? A lot of people overlook the underlying content and focus too much on the SEO. On my site, I’ve pretty much just covered the very basics of SEO and instead put my time and energy into content, and get plenty on traffic - so far in 2010 I’m averaging about 15K visitors a month, and on page 1 of Google search for my name and a couple of other terms (or was last time I checked). It’s not hard to do.
On April, I got 40K+ visitors, but that is not enough. As one of the SEO service provider (referred by someone here) told me, what I need is SEM instead of SEO. I need to rank high for 2 to 3 very competitive terms. Just content alone is not enough…
