Earnings in Small Countries Compared to U.S. Based Sites

I wish I was an American!

[I Will Make It]

Just wanted to know what you guys think of the possibilites to earn big $$ when you live outside the US, and releases your sites on your own language in your own country.
My country has a population of appr. 5 million.
That's 1/54 of the population in the US right?
Will this numbers reflect my earnings? As if I start the same site in the same niche as someone in America does, my yearly revenue will be 1/54 of his?

&#"%& it! I hate this country.. anybody have a room for rent?

[Jay27]

Why not publishing an English version of your current site (if it's possible) or making a website in that subject in English? You can have so much visitors for a good English website independent to where you live.

[Nikke]

But think how hard it would be to get every US citizen to your site. Where you are at now, you only have to convince 5 million people to pass by!

Actually, since I'm in a country of 9 million, I have been thinking in your terms as well.

But still, there are ways around it. Everybody know that it's easier to become famous in a small town than in a large one. the same should apply to contries.

However, forget niches if you have a smaller audience, or go for more niches. Cover every single one of them!

[Sobriquet]

Pastures on the other side of the fence always look greener - Old Saying.

[jetteroheller]

My country Austria has 8 million inhabitants, but the language German is spoken by about 90 millions.

A languae spoken by less people has also the advantage, that there is less competition for top positions in the search engines.

[david_uk]

I'm in the UK, but most of my site visitors are from the US, as is most of my adsense income.

If your site is specific to your region, then it doesn't matter what langiage the site is in. The limiting factor is that it appeals only to a small group. I'd imagine that a lot of US sites are limited in their audience in some way.

If the site is of interest to people outside where you live, or could be made to be interesting to them, then an English version of the site would be the way forward.

[anand84]

I dont understand..Internet is probably one medium where you can make money from anywhere..If you feel your country is the reason for you making low cash, change the niche or broaden it to include outside visitors as well.

[Sobriquet]

Infact its better if u are out of US, and earning in dollars. For most of countries ( with a few exceptions like UK etc ), the currency conversion actually makes u richer in yoru country that any american earning the same dollar amount in USA.

a thousand dollars which may be ok in USA may run a full family lavishly in many smaller countries.

[incrediBILL]

Don't limit your thinking to where you're located unless you want to be a specialist for your geographical/national area. What's more how important is your content and it's relevance to the size of the audience you want to attract. If you want a vast audience it's as simple as building a site to address their needs.

If you have the right niche your audience can easily be worldwide.

My main site is all English and is visited by these top 20+ countries in the following order:

United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
Netherlands
France
Poland
Germany
Italy
Belgium
Turkey
Brazil
Mexico
Switzerland
Japan
Finland
Czech Republic
India
Spain
Sweden
Norway
New Zealand
Greece

and on and on...

Note how high up the Netherlands, France and Poland ranks?

The site is all English so that has always surprised me as I figured New Zealand and India would be much higher up the list!

[humblebeginnings]

Indeed, Bill, Sobri, Anand, and others,

The entire point of the Internet is communication (and commerce!) with folks around the world!
I am from some small European country myself where e-commerce is only in a very early stage. But who cares! I make pages for a worldwide audience for over 8 years now.
While my friends in the 90's told me nobody needs the Internet, I was making advertisement deals with customers in the US and Canada from my laptop at home.
Why wait until the rest of my country is going to wake up!
Thou Shalt Seize The Day! (And make some cash too)

[david_uk]

Wow - you had a laptop back in the last century! That must have been big and expensive :)

[PalX]

Well it depends, my country has 4 million population, but 1000$ in here can do much more things then what it could do in the States, + I don’t have any tax issues.

[humblebeginnings]

;-);-);-)

- Nope, it wasn't big, about the same size as the current laptops, only about an inch higher and much more heavy!
- Yes, it must have been very expensive (I recall about $ 10.000) but
- Nope, I didn't pay for it. My employer (at that time some large government institute) wanted me to research the possibilities of a laptop computer with an internet connection. One of them possibilities appeared to be designing websites for a worldwide audience and making online commercial advertising deals without your employer having any idea about it;-) Those were the days...

[humblebeginnings]

PalX,

This is an interesting issue. Imagine what your Adsense income would mean in a country like India! Some folks here are from India and I guess they only need a couple of hundred bucks a month to pay for the bills. That is, if you don't live in downtown Mumbai...

[anand84]

Very true Humble..I am an Indian software engineer by profession who has started to work only six months back. And my pay is around $400 per month which is actually a very good sum for a person with no experience.

Now you can figure out why I am so hell bent on making money from Adsense :)

[Zygoot]

For me it would be better to live in the U.S. Taxes in the U.S. are a lot lower I think and most products are cheaper too. Gasoline for instance is dirt cheap in the U.S., compared to what we pay for it here in Europe.

[humblebeginnings]

Zygoot,

If you work at home doing your Adsense thing, you don't need too much petrol;-)

[greatstart]

>>> Well it depends, my country has 4 million population, but 1000$ in here can do much more things then what it could do in the States, + I don’t have any tax issues. <<<

You're lucky, here in the USA, I have to pay approx. 25% of my Adsense earnings to the taxman. Plus, the cost of living this year is very high!

[Zygoot]

If you work at home doing your Adsense thing, you don't need too much petrol;-)

Mm that's right ;-)

You're lucky, here in the USA, I have to pay approx. 25% of my Adsense earnings to the taxman. Plus, the cost of living this year is very high!

Here in Belgium it's more like 40-50% of our income that goes to the government. And when you buy stuff there's also a VAT of 21%

[frox]

Yes, your market language might be smaller in numerical terms, but you have to think about concurrence and saturation.

Search Google for the same keyword in different languages:
printers: 99M pages
imprimantes: 4M pages
stampanti: 2M pages
impresoras: 2M pages

So, would you REALLY prefer to sell printers (or printer-related ads) in english or in another language?

[jetteroheller]

You're lucky, here in the USA, I have to pay approx. 25% of my Adsense earnings to the taxman.

Seems You have no business expenses.

Remember the first tax payer rule: "The company is poor, the company has to pay for everthing"

After all the company expenses, for car, traveling, notebooks, telephone, I pay taxes only for a small part of my total turnover.

[netchicken1]

I don't see what the problem is...

I live in a country with 4 million people.

My website is hosted in San Fransisco through my local webhost.

I have a .com website and adsence. Americans are my largest browsers according to stats.

Google sends me checks by mail every month and it takes about 2 weeks.

It doesn't matter WHERE you live when you are on the internet.

[I Will Make It]

First of all, thank you for the motivation you're giving me :D
Second of all, i'm sorry this thank you was a little bit late. Had to reinstall windows, and all the other programs.
Got hit by some serios virus attack.

I've actually been thinking on writing pages in english, but my problem is the english language ;) I'm not too good at it. But anyway.. you who talked about where I wanted to sell printers.. Well, you opened my eyes a little bit there.
Thank you - I'll stop complaining ;)

[joftech]

You can always use Google Translate to translate the pages on your site by having a wrapper/frame beside the main content in your language, then place your adsense code in that wrapper/frame.

[toldan]

what country r u from?

[netchicken1]

pay someone to translate your work for you?

If you went to america you would have to learn english to get on, so you might as well start now :-)

[DonMateo]

Well it depends, my country has 4 million population, but 1000$ in here can do much more things then what it could do in the States

Imagine what your Adsense income would mean in a country like India! Some folks here are from India and I guess they only need a couple of hundred bucks a month to pay for the bills.

I envy you! I also live in a small country. It would be great to work on websites full-time but unfortunetly basic living costs here amount to about $5000/month. Of course it's possible to earn more than that with Adsense, but hard to ramp up there while still working in a full-time job...

[jetteroheller]

basic living costs here amount to about $5000/month

What country?

My basic living costs are also around $5000, but with a family with wife and 2 children.

[DonMateo]

What country?

Switzerland

[bts111]

You could live in a cave a million miles from nowhere and still make money from Adsense and affiliate programs. You will need a laptop and some sort of connection though :)

We are as lucky as they come ;)