I work as an MCN in the Middle East and earn $100,000 a month

In the Middle East, a promising emerging market, Chinese MCN companies are conducting e-commerce live streaming at an unprecedented speed and scale. This article will give you an in-depth understanding of how these companies find breakthroughs in cultural differences, product selection strategies and logistics challenges to achieve a business miracle of $100,000 per month. Through field visits and case analysis, it reveals the infinite possibilities of the Middle East e-commerce market and the innovative ways of MCN agencies.

Xu Jin has been "squatting" on the main street next to the Dubai Mall and the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, for three hours. Whenever he meets young men and women dressed in fashionable clothes, he will go up and ask if they are willing to become TikTok influencers and sell goods through live streaming.

▲Image source: Real shot from the Internet

Most people looked at us askance, but some still stopped and simply registered their basic information and contact details.

According to Xu Jin, his job is to discover talents with potential in the entire Saudi Arabia region. There are five people in his company, two of whom are responsible for building local connections, and the other three are responsible for discovering talents from China to go overseas to the Middle East. The monthly revenue in April and May can reach 100,000 US dollars.

According to Xu Jin's statistics, there are about 3,000 online inquiries and offline expert leads every month, but only 20%-30% of them can finally open a TT account and start selling products.

"The Middle East is now an emerging market. It has traffic and money, but it lacks talent. There is no one to lead them, and they can't understand English. Talents must speak Arabic during live broadcasts," said Xu Jin.

According to "Zi Quadrant", after Southeast Asian countries, the Middle East has become a new blue ocean for Chinese e-commerce to go global. It has a small population, a lot of money, a high proportion of young women, and a spending power that is no worse than that of the US region, which is an important label.

Data shows that Saudi Arabia has a total population of about 37 million, with women accounting for about 42.6% of the total population. The Internet penetration rate is high and is expected to reach 96.44% by the end of the year, with an average of nearly 7 hours of Internet access per person per day. At the same time, the Saudi government is planning to invest more than $100 billion in logistics infrastructure and online payments to promote e-commerce growth.

Xu Ke has an e-commerce MCN team of more than a dozen people in the Middle East. Each person operates 2-3 mobile phones. In more than three months, they have accumulated more than 4,000 influencers who sell goods through short videos and live broadcasts.

▲Image source: screenshot from Xiaohongshu

However, Xu Ke said that being an MCN in the Middle East is completely different from being in China: "The influencers here have no experience at all. They are all taught by MCNs. The industrial chain is also incomplete. We have to do product selection, sourcing, and logistics, like an all-round nanny."

In 2024, the wind of going overseas blew to the Middle East, giving hope to MCN companies in China that had already reached the ceiling.

1. Ideals are beautiful, but every step leads to a pitfall

In Mina’s first e-commerce trailer live broadcast, Xu Ke made many mistakes.

"That day we had more than a dozen people serving an Arabic-speaking female anchor. The cultural differences there are very large compared to China. The anchor did not allow anyone to be in her room during the live broadcast, but she did not know how to do anything, so we could only keep calling her from outside."

Xu Ke recalled that in the first show, there were more than a dozen people serving an Arabic anchor, bringing technical skills, goods and backstage support, helping her adjust the equipment and teaching her how to broadcast. However, the anchor didn’t even know how to do the simplest thing of posting comments or pinning them to the top of the page, and she wasn’t allowed to have an assistant, so the broadcast was particularly difficult.

Not only was things not going smoothly inside the live broadcast room, things outside the room were also completely different from what one had imagined.

"That day we spent a lot of money to push the anchor to the top of the hourly chart, so the online viewing was very high." Xu Ke said. In the early days when there was no environment for bringing goods in the entire Middle East, Xu Ke's strategy was to copy the route of Douyin's big anchor Crazy Xiao Yangge: first do entertainment live broadcasts to hit the charts, and then change the live broadcast content to sell goods after it gets on the charts, killing two birds with one stone.

But later, it was discovered that this route was difficult to expand in the Middle East, as entertainment charts were generally a competition among the wealthy in the Middle East. "The people who watch entertainment live broadcasts are all wealthy people, and they all buy Rolex watches. No one buys a bar of soap in the live broadcast room."

In the Middle East, there is a wall between live streaming for entertainment and live streaming for selling goods.

The plan to replicate "Little Brother Yang of the Middle East" failed.

Another domestic MCN company owner, Zhang Qian, heard about the huge opportunities in the Middle East. He went to the Middle East for field research in October last year and after five months, he decided to give up.

Zhang Qian told Zi Quadrant: "TT has very few cargo trays now. MCN companies need to bring not only people but also sources of goods. However, we are only dealing with influencers in China. We need to do a good job of localizing product selection here, which is a high-investment expansion."

Zhang Qian said that if one does not have sufficient human and financial resources, blindly trying to make money may result in heavy losses.

Xu Jin's company also suffered losses due to poor product selection.

Xu Jin found that there were almost no factories in Saudi Arabia, and everything from machinery and equipment to pots and pans had to be imported from foreign countries. So they started selecting products based on the daily necessities that sold well in China. The average customer price was low, but the gross profit was also low. After taking into account the logistics costs and commissions, they almost lost money on every order.

After that, Xu Jin's team began to study the needs of the local consumer market.

"In Saudi Arabia, many women wear headscarves, which are an important part of their appearance. Saudi women also particularly like high-end silk and knitwear products. We found a Chinese factory that specializes in making various types of headscarves, and they sold like hot cakes."

Different from daily necessities, headscarves have lower costs but higher gross margins, and the shipping costs are not that expensive. Combined with good packaging, they can be sold at a very high premium, which is more than three times higher than domestic silk scarves of the same material.

With the experience of headscarves, the product selection team began to expand into maternal and infant products. This has a lot to do with Saudi Arabia's policies. Saudi Arabia encourages childbirth and implements polygamy. The state covers the food, drink, defecation, medical insurance, and education of newborns to adulthood.

Children's toys, baby care and children's clothing, with the help of female anchors, are in line with cultural customs and are consumables with a high repurchase rate.

An influencer under Xu Jin, through remixing and secondary creation, took the time to add his own original shots to the product videos on Douyin, and sold more than 7,000 products with a single short video.

"In the future, we will try our best to shoot real product videos and let influencers add their own creativity. Videos within 20-30 seconds will be more likely to be recommended," said Xu Jin.

After the pioneering work in the first half of 2024, many MCN companies have begun to find ways to break into the Middle East market, and the snowball has started to roll.

2. Behind the MCN, TikTok manipulates the puppet line

The reason why a large number of MCN companies began to go overseas to seek growth at the beginning of the year is closely related to TikTok's vigorous development of e-commerce.

According to "Zi Quadrant", under the high pressure of the US, TT is expanding globally. DataReportal data shows that in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other regions, almost 100% of people under the age of 18 are active users of TikTok.

A leading health care product merchant in the US can generate more than 20 million GMV per product in a year. However, this year's full-year plan in the US is impossible to complete based on the progress in the first half of the year.

The Anhui boss told Zi Quadrant: "Many US merchants have already laid out their plans for the Middle East in Q3 and Q4. Local stores in the Middle East will be opened in the last two quarters. The platform controls where the money flows."

▲Image source: screenshot from Xiaohongshu

Currently, TikTok in the Middle East adopts a fully hosted model. TikTokshop is responsible for operations, logistics, fulfillment, and after-sales services. The business operation chain for merchants is relatively simple, and there is relatively large space for MCN agencies.

The launch of local stores means that brand merchants can start to move in, and brand stores will greatly enrich product categories and provide better services.

▲ Source: Foreign social media

In order to expand its market, TikTok has launched a series of support policies in the Middle East. Xu Li revealed that in order to seize Saudi users, TikTok has currently started a coupon welfare model and is providing crazy subsidies, almost regardless of cost.

A logistics practitioner in the Middle East revealed that the order volume on the TikTok platform is growing rapidly. TikTok has recently increased its efforts to issue large discounts and free shipping coupons on the platform to stimulate the shopping enthusiasm of platform users.

In addition to providing preferential treatment to the C-end, TikTok is not only cultivating local MCN agencies, but also cooperating with some mature MCNs in the country.

Xu Ke is one of the MCNs that received an invitation to join. TikTok will provide incentives and support to merchants who receive targeted invitations, and there is currently no head effect in the overseas market, so there are opportunities for companies of all sizes.

Since the beginning of this year, some of the top domestic MCN agencies have also been moving overseas. In January 2024, Xiao Yangge began to enter the overseas market, attracting 2 million fans within three months, and gradually expanded its business in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, attracting local talents.

Oriental Selection has made it clear that it is cooperating with TikTok to enter overseas markets through TikTok, and has recruited for a number of related positions, including operations manager, business manager, content operations manager, and TikTok overseas store operations.

For TikTok, the Middle East is the best choice after the United States, whether in terms of consumption capacity, average order value or strategy.

But for the Middle East market, TikTok faces competition from all sides.

First is the world leader Amazon. With its global brand influence, mature logistics system Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), and strong customer trust, Yemaxun has built a solid competitive barrier in the Middle East market. Amazon's global supply chain integration capabilities enable it to provide a wide range of product selection and fast delivery services.

Next is the local e-commerce platform Noon. Noon has a deep insight into the behaviors and preferences of Middle Eastern consumers, and by providing localized payment solutions, language support, and cultural adaptability, Noon’s localization strategy may weaken TikTok Shop’s market penetration, especially for those consumers who prefer local brands.

Finally, there is Temu, which is also from China. In terms of user volume, the latest published data shows that Temu has become the download champion of the App Store, surpassing CapCut, which has always dominated the list. At the same time, Temu can provide competitive prices through effective supply chain management and cost control, which is very attractive to price-sensitive Middle Eastern consumers.

Establishing or cooperating with an efficient local logistics system, shortening delivery time, improving fulfillment efficiency, establishing logistics advantages, and being more localized and low-priced, these to-do items are waiting for TikTok one by one.

"Under a huge cognitive gap, the Middle East is a market with a piece of cloth on its head. What TikTok can do is to tear off the cloth and shine the light down."

* The above interviewees are all pseudonyms, and the pictures are from the Internet