Accept Paypal Payment in SGD
This may not seem to be related to SEO or SEM but read on and you may agree with me that this new option introduced by Paypal may affect the way you optimize your web pages.
You can now accept Paypal payment in Singapore dollars.
And with the SGD expected to appreciate against USD over the next 12 months or so, accepting Singapore dollars may not be a bad thing at all.
What Paypal has done will help you to expand your market to those Singaporeans who do not want to risk exchange loss and pay the higher exchange rates charged by Singapore banks which issued the credit cards e.g. VISA, Mastercard and Amex. And I know there are a lot of such people in Singapore!
Now, let me explain why the move by Paypal is important to search marketing… go search where the money is.
First, it shows that Singaporeans are buying online using Paypal. And they must be buying a lot for Paypal to accept the SGD.
Second, Singapore is not as small as that little red dot in terms of e-commerce for Paypal to accept SGD.
Hey! why not accept Malaysia Ringgits or Thai Baht or the Korean Won? These are big countries with far larger populations than Singapore.
Third, shopping is one of Singaporeans’ favorite past-time. Online shopping will be the past-time for many men and women in Singapore. So don’t pray-pray!
‘Cos, they are too busy at work spending more than 12 hours from Monday to Friday and some even on Sat and Sun. So they need to de-stress when they are not working, right? By going online and SHOP. Sometime, I wonder if the other reason why they are so busy at work is because they are surfing and shopping during working hours!
Can You See The Money?
So, you have to target Singaporeans and make sure they can find your web pages when they are on a shopping spree. That’s what search marketing is about. Know what your target audience are searching and give it to them. You’ll need SEO ranking skills to make sure your web page is on the first, second or at least the third page in order for them to see your listing and come to your website.
Now, even though there are only 4 million of us in Singapore, if only 50% of the population spent just $500 SGD a year online, we are talking about $1,000,000,000 moving through the Internet.
Ok, you don’t agree that 50% or more of the population will spend an average of $500 a year. So, let’s say just 25% will go online to spend just $500 and we still have $500,000,000 flow through the Singapore servers.
You Can See The Money Now?
Still not convinced that you have to optimize for Singapore related traffic or Singapore derived traffic will bring you more business and money?
Never mind. I’ve already started 2 years ago - I kiasu mah!
(Words in italic are Singlish and targeted at Singaporeans only… not for ang moh!)
