Product Internationalization: How would I do?
My Website is out and think it is a great product that makes link between professionals and individuals about jobs: you can look for quotation or propose quotations.
(I'm not trying to advertise it, just to explain what the website is about).
The point here is that I can internationalize it easily into another language (~ between 1 and 2 months), basically whatever the language I can do it.
Which strategy would you suggest me?
- Sell the product (giving the source code to another company for localization and marketing effort);
- Outsource translation (+ map of the country / region) and then I sell the whole product;
- Find a foreign marketing partner, do the technical stuff then share earnings on foreign sales.
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I think it's counterproductive to see "-2" without any explanation. And that could explain why I haven't got any answer yet. – Olivier Pons 13 years ago
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I'm not sure why the down-votes, but could be the difficulty in giving a straight answer. "It depends" is all I could answer with. All your options are valid depending on whether you can get an interested buyer at the right price. Your site is new, so isn't it better to concentrate on promoting and developing / debugging that before plans for international? – Matt 13 years ago
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It's already debugged (we can never say 100% but I didn't find another bug). It's multi moderators made (= made for huge traffic) and a lot of deep stability tests have been made. Actually it's the commercial part that has to be done and I really don't know how to do it. – Olivier Pons 13 years ago
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My guess on the downvotes is that your original post read like an advertisement. It has since been edited to a more palatable form. – Zuly Gonzalez 13 years ago
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Ok. Thanks for clarifying. – Olivier Pons 13 years ago
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Down-votes are mainly because of automatic down-vote when question is voted to close. – Ross 13 years ago
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Voting to close doesn't result in an automatic downvote. Only if the question is actually closed will the automatic downvote occur, and only for some close reasons (i.e. Not all close reasons result in an automatic downvote). Flagging as spam does result in an automatic downvote. – Zuly Gonzalez 13 years ago
2 Answers
Any option could be valid depending on how much "firepower" do you have.
Selling in any market is not only having the right product but involves a great effort of marketing, and since your product targets specific countries, your should pay attention to the way people will get to know your product (Ads etc...). Is important to bear in mind that after sales, comes support, patches and those things.
On the basis that your product is a SaaS and is easy to internationalize, perhaps could be interesting for you to find a franchise to localize and handle the local sales/first level support. The difficulty relies on how to choose such a person/company. If you are unknown and without proven success it is quite hard, perhaps would be advisable to gain some experience at home and the go to get new markets.
The other advantage of finding a foreign marketing partner that does the marketing and selling processes is that he/she would know best his/her local market.
Some suggested posts:
What should a technical co-founder look for in a business co-founder? Also applies at looking for a distributor.
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"The difficulty relies on how to choose such a person/company.". Precisely. How would *you* do? – Olivier Pons 13 years ago
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How much "firepower"? I'm alone! =) – Olivier Pons 13 years ago
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How to choose such a person: read the related posts. If you are alone, you will have to do all the marketing effort. Another site of advise for lone entepreneurs: http://www.micropreneur.com/ – Pdjota 13 years ago
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Thank you for your suggestion, I'll try my best to do a product that google will make famous, and if it *really* doesn't work, I'll spend more time on the "business / marketing" side. – Olivier Pons 13 years ago
It sounds to me like you need to decide what business you want to be in. From your post, it sounds like you either want to "connect professionals and individuals about jobs" (whatever that means), or you want to be a software developer.
In addition to the options you and pdjota list - consider licensing of the product to players in foreign markets - either under the same brand, or as a white label.
