Wolfgang Geiger Small Rich Strategy.pdf

The "Small & Rich" Strategy
A Case Study on Capturing High-Value SaaS
Users In Low-Competition Markets

Speaker: Wolfgang Geiger

About Me

Wolfgang “Wolf” GEIGER – 小狼

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Born in Austria

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Studied in UK and Beijing

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Now living in Hong Kong

Pinhok Languages – Overview
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HSK & Cantonese vocabulary lists for myself (~2012)

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Started self-publishing books (~2014)

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Launched Pinhok.com in 13 languages (~2014)

Today:
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Over 1000 books published for 50 languages

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Earns money via royalties from book sales

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Website: www.pinhok.com

Pinhok.com – Vocabulary Books

Pinhok.com –Online Book Stores

Pinhok.com – Free SEO Content
Part of the vocabulary lists have been
made available for free to learn online
on www.pinhok.com

Pinhok.com – 13 Languages

What I did:
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Took the vocabulary lists

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Translated them into 50 languages

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Translated website content + book introduction for some
of them

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Published the books and link to them on the website

Pinhok.com – Books in Dutch

Pinhok.com – Dutch Book Stores (≠ ENG)

Pinhok.com – Dutch SEO Content
Same as for English content, just in
Dutch

GSC & Bing

Let’s Get Into The GSC Data
Overview over traffic for 2025:

And for Bing …
Overview over traffic for 2025:

GSC Data by Country for 2025

Bing

Only provides “Rest of the World” unfortunately

The “Small & Rich” Countries
Country

Language

Population

GDP/Capita

Norway 挪威

Norwegian

5 million

90,000

Iceland 冰岛

Icelandic

0.4 million

82,000

Denmark 丹麦

Danish

6 million

75,000

Netherlands 荷兰

Dutch

18 million

72,000

Sweden 瑞典

Swedish

10 million

70,000

Finland 芬兰

Finnish, Swedish

6 million

63,000

Not 100% fit: Luxembourg, Belgium, Ireland, Malta

Characteristics of “Small & Rich”
Countries
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Small population size (< 20 million ~ 1 Shenzhen)

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Have their own language

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High GDP/capita

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Good education

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Good command of English

Back to GSC/Bing Data
How can it be, that a country of 6 million people
outperforms even countries like India?
Possible reasons:
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Target keywords rank higher

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Broad keywords rank higher (~product categories)

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Brand better known

2025 GSC Data For
“Cantonese Numbers” Page

Less than expected for “Small & Rich” countries

Bing

Bing doesn’t have data beyond English, Japanese and
German

2025 GSC Data for
“Cantonese Numbers” Keyword

Too few searches, so no data due to privacy reasons (Google)

Let’s Look at What the Pages Rank for…

English
https://www.pinhok.com/kb/cantonese/11/numbers-in-cantonese/

Data Isn’t Great Either …

French
https://www.pinhok.com/fr/kb/le-cantonais/11/chiffres-cantonais/

Again, No Clicks …

Dutch
https://www.pinhok.com/nl/kb/kantonees/11/kantoneese-getallen/

But GSC Does Provide Hints …

English

French

Broad keywords showing up in the top 5 …

Dutch

Keyword “Cantonese”

Same problem with clicks, but proportionally more impressions
for the language term when compared to bigger languages

So, What Are Top Keywords e.g. in US?

Germany

Netherlands

Sweden

Woorden & Glosor???
They stand for “vocabulary” or “words” in English. This
means, the website ranks for broader keywords in “Small &
Rich” countries (like “French vocabulary”, which is an
abstraction above e.g. “French numbers”):
US & Germany:
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e.g. french numbers, months in arabic

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NOT french vocabulary, arabic vocabulary

“Small & Rich” countries:
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e.g. french numbers, months in arabic

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AND french vocabulary, arabic vocabulary

Finally, Brand Searches for “Pinhok”

Takeaways from GSC/Bing Data
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“Small & Rich” countries strategy is working.
Countries with 10 million population produce more clicks
than e.g. US, UK or even India

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Broad keywords rank in “Small & Rich” countries while
they don’t in e.g. the US

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Long-tale keywords probably working as well, but not
enough data

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Brand searches important driver, proportionally more in
“Small & Rich” countries and ranking higher

More Countries

More Countries?
Before we get into what this means for SaaS, let me
introduce you to some more countries.
These are countries that I will concentrate more on over the
next months and years.

Original “Small & Rich” Countries
Country

Language

Population

GDP/Capita

Norway 挪威

Norwegian

5 million

90,000

Iceland 冰岛

Icelandic

0.4 million

82,000

Denmark 丹麦

Danish

6 million

75,000

Netherlands 荷兰

Dutch

18 million

72,000

Sweden 瑞典

Swedish

10 million

70,000

Finland 芬兰

Finnish, Swedish

6 million

63,000

Up-And-Coming Countries
Country

Language

Population

GDP/Capita

Slovenia 斯洛文尼亚

Slovene

2 million

42,000

Estonia 爱沙尼亚

Estonian

1.3 million

41,000

Czech Republic 捷克

Czech

11 million

40,000

Lithuania 立陶宛

Lithuanian

3 million

39,000

Slovakia 斯洛伐克

Slovak

5 million

35,000

Hungary 匈牙利

Hungarian

10 million

33,000

Croatia 克罗地亚

Croatian

4 million

32,000

Romania 罗马尼亚

Romanian

19 million

30,000

Latvia 拉脱维亚

Latvian

2 million

29,000

Similar characteristics, less rich

SaaS

What Does That Mean For SaaS?
Let’s look at how some Western SaaS companies deal with
those smaller countries:
Oldies

Established

New/Small

SAP

Salesforce

Snowflake

Oracle

Shopify

Monday.com

Adobe

Canva

DocuSign

Zoom

Ahrefs

Atlassian
Hubspot

Languages Available

Main Languages

Tier 1

Up-And-Coming

SaaS Target Markets
It seems that SaaS companies expand internationally as
follows:
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English market first

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Then German, French, Portuguese & Spanish

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Maybe Chinese, Japanese and Korean

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Then other big countries like Italy, Poland, Turkey or
Russia

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Then only the smaller markets

The “Small & Rich” Strategy
Go by GDP/capita:
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English still first

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Probably followed by German, French & Spanish

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But then, you might think about getting Dutch, Swedish,
Norwegian & Danish into the mix already

Applying The Strategy

Which “Small & Rich” Country First?
Localizing a website or SaaS for a language and country
involves significant investment. You can research and create
theories on which country might be best.
However, concrete data is better. The following 4 approaches
helped me when working on Pinhok Languages:
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Using existing customers

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GSC or Google Analytics data

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2-3 pages on your existing page first

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Free tools

Existing Customers (1)
This is probably the best approach for the main reason that
having existing customers in a given country shows that
demand is there and there aren’t any unforseen hurdles.
You can furthermore reach out to existing customers in that
region and ask what improvements they would like to see in
your SaaS:
► Any integration into local tools (accounting, payment, etc.)
► What parts of their SaaS they use
► Ask why they are using your SaaS

Existing Customers (2)
This approach also allows you to know which country you want to
start with: the one where you already have the most customers.
Once you have information from existing customers, you can use
them as target customer and do the following:
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As far as possible, implement what they suggest

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Then write custom copy (either in English and translate or
directly in the local language) advertising the use of those tools
and availability of those features

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This will allow you to appear truly localized and make usage of
your SaaS a lot easier

GSC or Website Analytics data
Similar to existing customers, you can learn a lot from
existing visitors and where they visit from:
Your website might already rank or be used in various
countries you might not have optimized for:
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Use the “Country” tab in Google Search Console to see
who is searching for your product

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Use website analytics data to see who is visiting

2-3 Pages on Existing Website
For this approach, you would simply translate 2-3 important
landing pages into multiple languages:
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At the time when you are launching English, German,
Spanish & French translations, also create 2-3 pages for
other languages (the more languages the better)

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Potentially collect email addresses of interested users

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Let them sit while finishing work on English, German,
Spanish & French

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Then you have first hand data and you can concentrate on
the languages that already have traction

Custom, Free Tools (1)
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Create free tools that many people
need. Ahrefs does that well (see
example on the side)

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Can be on your website or standalone

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Then, similar to the 2-3 pages
approach, translate that tool to as
many languages as possible

Custom, Free Tools (2)
If successful, these tools will provide you with the following:
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Insight into which countries are using your tools

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Access to potential users which you can interview (similar
to existing users)

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“Free” launching platforms for when you finish
localization for a given country

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“Free” leads for your main product

How To Translate

How To Translate
This might sound like a simple question - but it is not.
The problem is, that you don’t know the language you are
translating into, so you have to find someone who is doing
the translations properly
You might think AI can help with that, in reality, it probably
made it harder.

Can AI Help?

Yes, a bit - but:
► Most natural way currently is still human translation
► AI made it harder to distinguish between human and
computer translation – harder to evaluate translators
► If using AI, at the very least have native speaker proofread
and edit

Pinhok Languages Translation Process
Here’s how I manage translations for vocabulary lists &
website content:
Full story here (expanded a bit – see next slide):
https://www.pinhok.com/blog/the-path-to-a-finished-book/
Translators:
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Usually from Fiverr.com (you have to be selective though)

A Lot of Work …

The Translation Process (Pre AI)
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First have at least 3 native speaker translate the
vocabulary lists

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Also use Google & Bing to translate

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Manually compare the 4-5 datasets

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Use Google Image Search, Wiktionary, etc. to find the
correct translation for words where translations differ

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1-2 native speaker proofread the translated/curated list

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Work their feedback into the list

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Publish

The Translation Process (Post AI)
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First have at least 3 native speaker translate the first 500
words vocabulary lists

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Have 3 AIs translate the 500 words as well (the human
translations should differ slightly – otherwise the
translator is also using AI)

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Ask AI about inconsistencies and which translation it likes
best

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Have the best translator translate the whole vocabulary
list

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Work with AIs to see if there are any potential problems

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Fix & Publish

Keyword Translation
Many keyword tools work great for English but not really for
smaller languages
My workflow here (today):
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Take the English keyword and translate it using AI

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Let the AI give you 3-5 options

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Then check Google which one gets the best results

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Run with that

Sales Data

Sales Data December 2025

Total 40%

Total 32%

Netherlands Outperforms
Reasons:
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I work with a company in the Netherlands, so the books
are in all local online bookstores

Also:
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Dutch people like learning languages

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Dutch people like “no nonsense” products like my books

Amazon.se Story
Swedish was similar to Norwegian & Danish, until, in 2020,
Amazon.se launched.
This one additional local sales channel made sales go up 5
times since then.
Similar thing happened with Amazon.pl in Poland and
Amazon.nl as well as Amazon.be for Netherlands/Belgium.

Localization Beyond Languages
For Pinhok.com
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Local online bookshops (e.g. Amazon.se, Bol.com, etc.)

For SaaS
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Integration with local payment providers, accounting tools, …

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Local certificates (SGS, TÜV, ...)

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Local trust websites (Trustpilot, Sitejabber, G2, etc.)

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…

Strategies For SaaS
Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent, PingDuoDuo, etc. are all
expanding to Europe
See if you can partner e.g. with:
► Alipay when they launch in a certain market
► JD.com to integrate into their fulfilment network
Alternatively, partner with local players that your potential
customers are already using

More Takeaways

Some Final Gems
Small strategies that might work for you as well:
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PDFs for search

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Free features

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Niching down

PDFs Are Great For Search (1)
When researching for this
presentation, I looked through
Bing data and found this:
Searchers seem to actively search
for PDFs (or maybe AI???)

PDFs How To (2)
At the end of every free page I have this:
Important here:
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Directly link to the PDF

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Have the PDF on your server (same URL), not CDN

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Have target keyword as PDF name

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Add your URL in PDF

Free Features
What worked for Pinhok.com
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Free learning material (on website, as PDF, YouTube, etc.)

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No strings attached (no registration, email address, etc.)

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Upsell from there

For SaaS
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Offer a small feature for free

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Create small, standalone platforms

Niching Down (1)
Smaller addressable market = less SEO competition

Niching Down (2)
After a few years I realised some of my customers like using
flashcards, so I created www.flashcardo.com.
The number of people searching for flashcards is roughly 10x
lower than people searching for vocabulary lists.
As a result, Flashcardo is ranking in US, UK, Australia, etc.
and managed to help increase the number of English books
sold.

Summary

Summary “Small & Rich” Strategy
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Target countries with small population size with their own
language and high GDP/capita

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Big SEO potential for certain types of businesses

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Potentially very little or no competition from other SaaS
companies

For Pinhok Languages 4 “Small & Rich” countries deliver 40%
of sales and 32% of profit

Questions?
也可以用中文问问题…
My website services:
► English: wolfweb.hk
► Chinese: langzhan.net
How to get in touch:
► Email: [email protected]
► 微信: xiaolangAUT



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