Ricky’s Online Business Blog

When one comes to developing an online business, which is more important?  Profit first, or market share first?

I heard some say that market share, or “mind share”, is first and foremost important.  When many people have got to know a dotcom brand, they will visit the web site,  the “eyeballs” will be so increased, the “critical mass” will be so achieved, the “branding” will be so built up, and naturally the profit will come.

On the other hand, others think that profit should be the first to focus on, not market share.  A business can grow its market share so much that it is still not profitable.  It can command a large market share yet sacrifice the profits that could have been earned during the growth.

One typical example is a membership business online.  Shall we first focus on market share by giving out free member accounts in order to first attract the mass, and then try to sell some premium services later to them?  Or shall we start with a chargeable membership so that we can starting earning right from the first day?

Perhaps profit should be our first objective.  And as we do things the right way towards the objective, market share is a natural result.  What do you think?

Yes I admit I’m a blue ocean strategy fan.  My PC desktop is an ocean viewing.  I even tend to look at everything through the lense of blue ocean vs. red ocean.

The problem is, we just can’t ignore competing in the red ocean, whether now or in future.  Perhaps our industry is still red.  Perhaps a blue ocean will also turn red after some time.  Competitive strategies still have an important place in business and marketing.

I heard that a telecommunication company in Malaysia has two teams of people planning their business strategy, one called “Compete Today”, another called “Compete Tomorrow”.

As the names suggest, the “Compete Today” team plan strategies to outsmart their competitors in today’s market.  Whereas the “Compete Tomorrow” team brainstorm and explore new markets and plan strategies for the future.

So I’m learning not to just look up to anything “blue ocean” as good and look down on anything “red ocean” as bad.  A more holistic perspective is required.

According to the blue ocean strategy, one way to find your blue ocean is by targeting and turning current non-customers of your products into your customers.  It is interesting to observe how non-users of a product can be turned into users by innovative offers and technologies.

Looking at the development of Internet in the past one and half decade, we can see the role of Internet users changing, from mere consumers of information in the 90′s, to producers and publishers of information on the Internet nowadays!

Just think about it.  In the good old days, we surfed the World Wide Web to read up what the site owner wrote. Then with the development of web authoring tools, the more technical people among us learned to design and publish web pages on the Internet.  Around the turn of the millennium, any IT student (including me) could do up a web page!

With the flourishing of social networking web sites in past few years, even non-technical people got to express themselves on the Internet.  Nowadays, more than 9 out of 10 college students own a piece of virtual property on Facebook or Friendster!

When blogs were popularized in more recent years, we change from owning a member page on Friendster to owning a blog!  Now virtually any Internet user can express themselves and shout on the Internet by blogging.  Even those who used to consider Internet as a scary place started to speak up!  Think about it.  It’s easier to learn WordPress than Microsoft Word!

So the Internet population has been transformed from content consumers to content “prosumers” (producer-consumer).  The technologies have turned non-users of the Internet to voice our thoughts, to using the Internet to rave about anything!

But many people in this country are still not using the Internet yet.  But watch and see.  When mobile Internet becomes so pervasive in our mobile phones, there will be more people surfing the Internet on mobile than through PC.

If most mobile users know how to send an SMS message now, they will know how to “micro-blog” in the future.  Microblogging tools such as Twitter may not be so popular and useful now.  But it will be in the future as more non-Internet users become Internet users via mobile phones.  At that time, even more people will publish content on the cyberspace!

I’m helping a student on NextLevel Tutor Network to find a home tuition teacher for Form 5 physics and chemistry.  The location is in Subang Jaya, Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

A Chinese female tutor is preferred.  Click here for more information on the tuition job. If interested, please contact info [at] nextlevel.com.my.

If you operate a tuition agency or a tuition web site, you are welcome to contact me if you have any tutor under your belt who can take the student.  We can work out some deal for this job, or even for future jobs in the long-term.

I have many partner tuition agencies in Singapore, but almost not a single reliable one in Malaysia.  Why?  Perhaps tuition agencies in Malaysia think NextLevel is their competitor.  But this is a misnomer.  Actually NextLevel is a platform not only for tutors, parents and students.  It is also for tuition businesses to promote their tuition service online.

For example, after I met the entrepreneur behind one local tuition web site, I offered him to take over all tutiion jobs on NextLevel Malaysia site that are not taken by our tutors.  But apparently, somehow he was not interested.

By the way, what do you think of the current debate whether to continue teaching maths and science in Malaysian schools in English?  No offense to anyone, but I think it should continue for now.  Once launched, it takes years to gauge the results for an initiative.

By the way, learning something in English does not necessarily mean a threat to any other language.  Let’s not have such “red ocean” kind of mentality.