123outsource.net’s growth
123outsource.net outsource directory is growing, but not the way we thought. When 123outsource was created, we thought we would cater mainly to India with a strong presence in South Africa, Philippines, Argentina, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as an outsourcing directory. The surprising fact is that Filipino call centers and other companies in the Philippines did not respond to our internet presence. Pakistan and Bengladesh responded, but in a way that was far less efficient than was necessary to continue advertising in those areas. Additionally, South Africa and Argentina did not respond well to our web presence.
Countries that responded well
We always knew that India would be the star of the show, and Indian outsourcing companies respond very well to us. We get new sign ups from Indian companies daily. But, the other countries that responded well to us was a surprize. United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Singapore are some of the lead countries that use our site. We got some good responses from Costa Rica as well. Singapore is our leading browser country with browser volume that surpassed the United States on many weeks. They did so well, that we separated Singapore from our regular advertising campaign, so that we could manage them more carefully. But, why do these particular countries do so well with us? I believe its because they have huge populations of Indian nationals who are closely tied to the motherland. America has many Indians too, but our Indians have business or jobs that are not connected to India. Our Deshis are tied to the local economy.
Turkey anyone?
We have just started marketing outsourcing services in Turkey. Turkey has many startup call centers and other BPO operations, primarily in Istanbul. We are not sure if they will respond well to our advertising, but we will see. Advertising in India averages one sign up for every 300 clicks, so it will take another month to see if Turkey gets a sign up in its first 300 clicks.
China, the next frontier.
China is huge, and will overtake India in the Software outsourcing niche by 2015 according to current trends. Unfortunately, the Chinese have never been as linguistically adept as the Indians, so communicating with them is not always easy. We will see if China responds well to our new advertising presence for software outsourcing and other specialties. We got 10 clicks from China on our first day of advertising, so we expect the click volume to be higher as time goes on, and as the next business week begins. We hope that many companies in China will sign up to be on our directory.
Costa Rica
Most people don’t even know where Costa Rica is. Its a tiny country in Central America with a thriving web design and call center industry. We will start advertising there shortly. The language difference is an issue though. The national language of Costa Rica is Spanish, and we speak English. Luckily, I have a staff member who speaks very clear Spanish as a second language, but our ads are in English, and the search terms we advertise for are in English to. We could try to use a few Spanish terms and see how it goes. We did that for Argentina, but with no lucky. Argentinians are talented in art, but not in business unfortunately.