Post edited 11:35 am – January 28, 2010 by Patung

Anyone have any ideas for this? I mean type of products/services that would work well.

Business online is still in its infancy in Indonesia I guess as most people don't have credit cards/paypal but I've been noticing a lot of movement in the area, sites popping up left right and centre and they're advertising on facebook and google so they're paying real money so there must be something in it….

Ideas I've had:

• travel-hotels-tours
• (secondhand) books for expats
• jamu (!)
• webhosting/blog management

Bartele does some things like selling/delivering foreign newspapers to expats in jakarta which I wish I'd thought of.

I'm thinking domestic market not really export/international as obviously that is already well-developed.

Burung Koel said:

For expats, you could think about a household staff/pembantu service, real estate (rentals) and long term car leasing.  These are the sorts of things short and medium term visitors might be looking for.  Translation of documents is another one – emailing has made this so much easier and quicker.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head.

They're good thoughts….the dating thing is very minor sideline, but well this shouldn't be about me or anything, I mean in general terms about online business in Indonesia. There's supposed to be some big mall type site starting up soon, it's run by an American I think, damn I forget the name of it but they're putting a lot of effort into pre-pumping things and there are loads of news stories about them, wonder how much all that costs.

Thanks RD, time, you don't need it, I have it, I will do the work. I keep having ideas but it's always the practical side of where to get the product/source the service that trips me up. If someone has that I can do the work and as long as I'm not being asked to compete against some massive site/network then I think I can wipe the floor with most anything/one. It's not rocket science.