Malaysian bloggers are collectively earning an average monthly income of RM70,000, according to Malaysian daily Berita Harian.

Such a significant amount of revenue comes mainly from business transaction and blog advertising.

As of April 2008, Malaysia registered some 500,000 active bloggers, thereby ranking the country among the highest in the world.

I couldn’t find any latest statistics on Malaysian bloggers but believe that it has increased exponentially.

The daily reported that famous Malaysian blogger Redmummy is earning RM2,000 per month on average. In 2008, Redmummy’s highest blog advertising revenue is RM12,000, which is also confirmed by herself.

For those who are not aware (like me!), earnings made from blogs must be declared to the Inland Revenue Board (IRB).  Whether one will be taxed or not, it is another matter altogether.

Previously I posted an entry about 1Malaysia.com — the Malaysian social network that Mingguan mStar reported to be readily replacing Facebook.

Most commentators don’t seem to buy the pre-emptive claim.

I was later informed by a reader that a social networking sites like 1Malaysia.com “can be created in less than an hour”. Why?

SocialEngine.net is selling an unbranded social networking application that gives 100% control and ownership to owners with no “powered by” credit line and “SocialEngine” branding.

According to the developer, SocialEngine’s PHP source code is also fully encrypted for security reasons.

1Malaysia.com:

SocialEngine template:

The SocialEngine application is priced at $250 (around RM775) and onwards.

The application also comes with SE plugins priced individually. Therefore the more interactive you want your social network to be, the more you need to pay.

For a moderately successful social network like 1Malaysia.com, you probably need to host it on a semi-dedicated server priced around $50 (RM150) per month.

Setting up a social network will cost at least $322 (RM1000) the first month, and about RM150 the subsequent months. This also means that you will need to have enough users (no traffic, no conversion) for sponsorships to take place.