How To Start A Blog In Malaysia [The ULTIMATE Guide]

Blogging, Make Money Blogging

How To Start A Blog In Malaysia [The ULTIMATE Guide]

Malaysians, how to start a blog in Malaysia and MAKE MONEY ONLINE? This guide explains clearly how you can become a blogger in Malaysia and make money blogging.

How To Start A Blog In Malaysia?

How to start a blog in Malaysia? In this article, I’m going to show you exactly how you can start a blog under RM250 per year and generate over USD$25,000 with a blog.

If this sounds too good to be true, it is not.

I will share with you my exact earnings I had generated in 2019 and how you can replicate the exact same success like I do.

Let us start with a quick introduction on myself and a table of content.

Who Is Reginald Chan?

Born and raised in Malaysia, Reginald started blogging back in 2004. It all started as a leisure hobby and turned out to be a full-fledged business that made me not only financially independent,

I was given the opportunity to become a TEDx speaker and other speaking and coaching gigs around the world.

And now, I want to focus my time with my fellow Malaysians. This guide, How To Start A Blog In Malaysia [The ULTIMATE Guide] is just one part of it!

How Much Can You Earn As A Blogger In Malaysia?

I love Malaysia (KeranaMu Malaysia) and I love the conversion rates even more. As a blogger, I work with overseas brands, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. This allows me to enjoy a higher payout, one which deem to be ‘cheap’ for foreigners.

As a blogger in Malaysia, it is rather hard to get money transferred to our local bank accounts (Strip is STILL not available in Malaysia). So my only options are PayPal and Payoneer.

Here’s my earning from PayPal for the year 2019.

I made $17,299 and after conversion from USD to MYR, I made approximately RM69,368.99 (with the conversion rate 4.01). On average, I make around RM5,780.75 per month from blogging alone.

Let’s see how much I made through blogging in 2020 (report taken was from 1^st January to 13^th March 2020).

I made $4,366 and after conversion, I made approximately RM17,900.60 (with the conversion rate of 4.1). Not bad, huh?

How Do I Make Money From Blogging?

One of my primary blogs generates over 150,000 views and with over 100,000 unique per month. With this stats, I started reaching out to companies to either collaborate in writing reviews or publishing promotions for them. This is where your make money blogging kicks in!

But wait!

You might be a blogger (already) and your thoughts that “it is really tough”.

Yes, you are right. It is not easy to make money but it is not impossible.

Carry on reading to find out how I do that (and all you need is to copy and paste).

Setting Up Your Blog For Success

The first step of making money with a blog in Malaysia is to set up your blog for success. This means that you start by choosing the right platform to blog with.

I know many bloggers in Malaysia who go with Blogspot, but the trick here is NOT to use Blogspot.

If you want to make money with blogging in Malaysia, you need to build a strong brand name for yourself (and your blog).

Let’s face this.

Most of us (not only Malaysians) are visually convinced. This means that if website visitors will have more trust in you if they land in a well-designed blog.

Website development can be fairly expensive (costs around RM1,000 to RM5,000 per project). But, here’s the cheaper option to start a blog in Malaysia.

Follow this steps.

Step 1: Get a domain name AND a web hosting service

Choose a blog name and next, subscribe for a web hosting service. At this point of writing, Exabytes is offering an awesome 15% discount on .com domains (RM53.46 per year) and premium WordPress hosting at only RM 16 per month.

Let’s do some math.

Domain = RM53.46 per year
Web hosting = RM16 per year
Total investment = RM245.46 per year

To be honest with you, investing RM245.46 per year is really low compared to what you can potentially earn in return. For example, one of my website is hosted on Exabytes SSD VPS (Plesk SSD VPS) that costs around RM6,000 a year. I am willing to spend such value because the amount I am generating from the blog surpasses what I had invested in.

If Exabytes is not your cup of tea, you can consider using BlueHost hosting that comes with domain and web hosting at $3 per month (really, really affordable for beginners). Click here to try BlueHost.

Step 2: Setting Up Your WordPress Blog

The next step is important. Every successful blog has:

Professional layout/design works
Landing pages
Contact us page
Categories
Newsletter sign up form

Here’s how to setup your WordPress blog in Malaysia without spending more money.

Free WordPress Theme. There are many free WordPress themes that you can download directly from the WordPress repository. I recommend you to install WordPress themes created by WordPress themselves. For example, the Twenty Twenty theme.

Premium WordPress Theme. If you are affordable, using a premium WordPress theme helps you to create beautiful WordPress themes that are unique to your brand. Plus, it also removes the hassle of trying to modify or customize the theme as most premium WordPress themes come with drag and drop builder. Two popular options are Thrive Themes and Divi Theme.

Plugins. WordPress plugins are used to ensure that you can enjoy several advanced features without using a single line of code. There are several essential plugins that you should be using. Here is the list:

SEO plugin: Rank Math
Contact form plugin: Ninja Forms
Security plugin: iThemes Security
Cache plugin: WP Super Cache
Link cloaking plugin: Pretty Links (free version)

Step 3: Decide The Type Of Content To Publish

This is a crucial step. You need to determine the type of content you are going to publish on your blog. Of course, you would have a strong idea on the overall/general niche.

Therefore, I’m not going down with the route that you should do go for the best paying niche because if it is a niche that you don’t have interest in, you are not going to perform well.

The best way to find a topic that you are interested in and build content topics around it.

This steps involves doing some keyword research for SEO.

How To Do Keyword Research Properly For Your Blog?

Use SEO tools to search for keywords with low competition keywords
Focus on general keywords with has large number of searches
Using the same keyword, add other forms of 'multipliers' such as best, top, cheap and location

For example, the term "paintball boots" garners thousands of searches each month.

By focusing on a specific keyword such as "best paintball boots for beginners" or "cheap paintball boots under $50" will help your blog post ranks fast and higher on search engines.

What is the best SEO tool for bloggers in Malaysia?

Most SEO tools are charged in USD (thus, it is like 4x more expensive). But SEO tools are important if you want to rank well in blogging.

Here are the best SEO tools I had used and I highly recommend you to check them out:

Not sure how to use them? Here are two resources for you.

Bonus: Before hitting the publish button, make sure you use free grammar checker to check on your blog post content. For this, I use Grammarly and by far, it is the best (for value) in the market.

Step 4: Get Google Adsense

When you first start your blog, you won't get much traffic and Google Adsense won't be much help.

BUT ...

You still need to install Google Adsense to ensure that you are keeping every opportunity to monetize your blog available.

A blogger makes a lot of money from Google Adsense when the blog is generating over 100,000 visits a month. Plus, you stand higher chance to earn better earnings if majority of the blog traffic comes from United States, United Kingdom or Europe.

Google Adsense is great because for a Malaysian, the exchange rate from USD to MYR is very good.

How much you earn is based on the industry you are in. For example, if you are blogging about financials and banking, you stand a higher chance to earn more money (few dollars per click) compared to the blogging niche (under one dollar per click).

Step 5: Affiliate Marketing

If you are a blogger in Malaysia and want to make some money online, affiliate marketing is definitely the way to go.

Affiliate marketing is a term used by bloggers who promote certain products on their blogs. It can range from reviews, advertising banners and many others.

You only get paid for every sale you make.

Affiliate marketing is my top method of generating thousands of dollars each month with minimum effort.

How to find the best affiliate marketing for your niche?

Head over to Google and type this into the search column: "your general keyword" + affiliate program.

The approval process could be a pain the ass for some companies, but trust me, it is worth the time!

I recommend you to work with overseas companies because of the conversion rates.

Same amount of work = Higher earnings

Step 6: Create Newsletter

Last but not least, keeping your website visitors is an important step for bloggers.

With Google algorithm keep changing, it is challenging to constantly be on the top of the search ranking.

So, how to start a newsletter campaign as a Malaysian blogger?

Let's be honest.

The best email marketing solution is charged in USD and it is really expensive for Malaysians (especially when you are just starting to become a bloggers).

Your answer is to use MailChimp. MailChimp offers free email marketing up to 2,000 email subscribers and and 10,000 email deliveries per month.

While I use MailChimp for some of my smaller blogs, it is important to understand that affiliate marketing is not allowed in MailChimp. This means that you cannot promote products using MailChimp if you have no affiliation to them.

I use AWeber for all my blogs and I totally love it. It may not be the cheapest in town, but it is by far the most reliable one that I have tested so far! Click here for free 30-days trial (no credit card required).

Step 7: Finding Opportunities

The last step involves finding opportunities to make money for your blog.

Starting a blog in Malaysia and making money from blogging requires you to be constantly aware of the opportunities that arise.

For example, if you have a blog with high number of visitors (more than 50,000 visits per month), you need to focus more on ways to monetize your blog.

This means that you need to find for other options that will help you make more money with the same effort.

For blogs with decent amount of traffic, you will start getting requests for sponsored posts. SEO agencies will reach out to you and ask if you are able to publish a blog post for them and linking back to their client's site.

How Much Can I Earn From Sponsored Posts?

The charges for sponsored posts depends heavily in your blog domain rating. On average, you can earn a decent $20 to $200 per sponsored blog post.

Tips For Sponsored Posts

Google and other search engines are NOT fond of sponsored posts. Therefore, you need to make sure that you are careful with the link backs and you only hand pick the links.

Plus, it is important to use sponsored posts as a supplement to your daily, weekly or monthly blog publishing, and not just to start a blog in Malaysia to earn money through sponsored post.

Summary How To Start A Blog In Malaysia And Make Money Online?

Starting a blog in Malaysia is by far the best decision I had made in the online marketing career.

Not only that this had helped me to be financially independent, it had opened many doors for me, including speaking opportunities and networking with the best entrepreneurs in the world.

I hope that you find this article useful and ask me anything in the comments below.

Reginald Chan

A meticulous entrepreneur by nature, Reginald is a sought-after success coach, digital marketing consultant and TEDx speaker from Asia. Currently, he teaches others how to make money online for free.

About Reginald

Young at heart and a deep passion for entrepreneurial success, Reginald is devoted to share everything he had learned about online marketing with the public. Follow him for more awesome postings.