South Africa

[Joxx]

Hello everyone, I've been reading Tims book and the idea just fills me with enthusiasm. The only concern I have is that I'm a South African and most of the resources and ideas are based on making it work in America.

How can I make 4 hour work week work for me in South Africa?
Is there any fellow South Africans who have any experience?
If anything how do I go about finding other drop and ship suppliers in my country?

All your help is appreciated:)

[FrozenCanuck]

I don't see any relevance to your location. I'm in Canada, BTW. Here is why I say your location doesn't matter.

1) If you create an electronic product you can sell it globally from any location using PayPal and the Internet, or other means.

2) If you want to sell a physical product you can arrange dropshipping from a US supplier to a US address. You collect payment electronically and arrange shipping electronically.

3) If you want to market affiliate products you only market via internet, and you are not even connected to the final delivery aspect.

Any way you slice it, if you speak english and are selling english products, you want to focus on USA, UK, Canada, Australia ... that's about it. You can throw in South Africa, Jamaica, Ireland ... but they are much smaller from an overall or english-speaking population.

What exactly causes you to percieve your location as an issue?

[Joxx]

FrozenCanuck thanks for taking the time to reply. I percieved it as an issue because I was thinking purely based on my location I'd have to focus on South Africa. In fact reading you post is a bit of an eye opener. I'm new to internet based companies and am learning whats actually possible with them.

[shoe]

I think that anything is possible; you just need to open you mind!
Find a demand for something, then fill it and you will have a profitable business.

Start brainstorming your areas of interest and then find a niche to see if there is some demand there and then test, test, test away!!!

This is something I really didn't do when I first started my site 2 years ago. I have a travel web site that only makes a few dollars a day and I'm currently working on increasing my income by incorporating some kind of product/ebook to sell.

Like Frozen said, it really doesn't matter where you are because everything is done globally thru the internet.

Good luck!

[Peter Bowen]

Hi Joxx,

Im an ex south african and there are some significant challenges to running an internet business from south africa. I moved from SA to northern ireland about 9 months ago to retire and try something new.

Last I looked paypal won't pay money to SA
Telkom etc charge huge fees for unreliable snail slow internet access
Many of the payment gateways won't accept SA credit cards
You've got all sorts of exchange control regulations to deal with.
The online SA market is tiny
Delivery of physical products is unreliable, expensive and slow

There are several advantages though. You can live like a rock star in SA when earning international money. Just to give you an idea - minimum wage here translates to about R8000/month - for a cleaner etc.

Whatever way you go look at hosting anything mission critical outside the country - it's cheaper and more reliable. Best is to get a credit card and bank account in a foreign country and run your business through that.

Ask me any specifics you like and I'll try and answer then.

Cheers

Pete

PS - the upside is that nowhere else in the world is scary after having driven in joburg traffic or survived a few hijackings or armed robberies.

[Joxx]

Shoe, thank you very much for the words of encouragement and for replying I think I was feeling a little low on energy and possibly leaning towards being the fat guy with the red BMW. Your enthusiasm has snapped me out of it so I thank you.

Peter your definately right it makes me chuckle everytime I think everywhere I go I'm automatically safer than being at home :p Your reply is actually why I started this thread in the first place and an am encouraged by how helpful the responses have been. You've actually hit my major concerns as to why trying to direct my muse towards South Africa would be a problem thats why I've decided to take FrozenCanuck's advice and rather concentrate on the UK, US and Australia.

The thing is I have an idea for a muse which I think will work but that I'll see from testing it. All the drop ship companies I've checked have requested an address in the US and other information I wouldn't have obviously because I don't live there. The second is the PayPal account my last attempt at opening one was unsuccessful because of being in SA. I do have an account with Lloyds in the UK from when I was there for about a year till last February but it expires in March with my two year working holiday Visa.

On the bright side the currency conversion rate is definately on my side and companies like Vodafone are supplying a fast enough internet service to keep me from falling asleep while waiting 30 minutes for a page to load. :)

Any help or guidance with these issues would be much appreciated.

[shoe]

Hey Joxx,

I hear what you're saying about the dropshippers needing a US address, but why not set up some kind of PO box (virtual). I'm not affiliated with these people in any way but check into it.

http://www.earthclassmail.com/

As far as paypal goes i'm not sure about that one, can you somehow get your Visa from UK renewed? Think about it??

[Joxx]

Wow shoe the sight is awesome, you rock shows where there's a will and people to help anything is possible. Thanks

[shoe]

Glad you took a look! Good luck!

[myadmin]

joxx location matters and all the industries are very competitive today, so start doing something online and try not to deal with shipping because it very hard and challenging business.

[liam75005]

DEfinitely go global. If you can sell a product in USD or EUR or GBP and if you want to live and stay in SA, then you won't need much business to get to your dream lifestyle, due to currency difference !

[ipod8g]

Glad you took a look! Good luck!