The Filipino Entrepreneur

Raising and selling tilapia is a lucrative business for most fish pond and fish pen owners here in our country. The main reasons are because they are hardy, grow quickly and require inexpensive feeds. The two types I know are raising tilapia in fish pens and in fish ponds. If you live near a bay like for example Laguna bay, it’s much easier than a fish pond because the water is already there and feeding them is not as much as when you will raise tilapia in a fish pond because there is natural food already in the lake like planktons or other small organisms. Building pens on the bay with the use of bamboo and of course labor, fingerlings, feeds and permits are the essential things to worry about.

But if you will consider digging a farm land for raising tilapia, you will need a bigger capital. Let’s say at least 500,000 pesos. You have to lease a land, rent a bulldozer to dig a pond, invest a water pump if you are far from a water source, buy fingerlings, a professional service of an aquaculture engineer and register to a local government. There are also factors to consider like fish density for a given square meter of pond which are applicable to both fish pen and fish pond. Just to give you an idea for example you should only raise 3 to 8 tilapia per square meter of the fish pond. Quality and quantity of feeds to be given should also be considered. If you have business plan of tilapia farming it is best to attend a seminar in TLRC which they are conducting every month. Just search this site for TLRC Courses Available for their schedule or go to the TLRC website.

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I was thinking that discussing about SEO is not necessary in this blog because this topic is all over the internet. There are many gurus that teach SEO and technically experienced but there is no harm to make my own version of this topic. So what is SEO? This is an abbreviation of ‘Search Engine Optimization’. So again what is it? It’s how to make your websites loved by search engines like Yahoo! and Google search. Search engine optimization is one of the most important things to do to gather visitors to your websites. Without visitors your website has no use because the only purpose for a website is for someone to visit it. This is how you will make business. It’s like setting up a retail store. You want to build it in a commercial place where people flock. With out people, there will be no business. The same thing as in a website no visitors, no business.

It is a fact that there are many ways to gather traffic like promoting it by visiting forums, advertise it in a magazine or news papers or media. But visitors coming from search engines are more targeted (potential customers) compared to any other type of visitors. Again, comparing it to an offline business it separates the spectators from buyers. Those visitors form search engine are more aggressive because they are looking for something that they want. Unlike those who are just surfing around from other websites and then will click and follow your link or to those repeat or loyal visitors. The same thing in online advertising. Visitors coming from search engines have more value in ‘Click Thru Rate’ than those coming form other sources.

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I was a bit startled when I saw all my sites not showing adsense ads. I thought there were something wrong with my account so what I did is checked all the websites that have adsense ads in it. I found out that the glitch is worldwide because all the sites I’ve visited have no adsense ads also.

It happened yesterday about 11:30 A.M. (Philippine time) and lasted for almost ten minutes. Jozzua also noticed it and posted a blog about it. My appologies if I’m using the wrong term ‘glitch’. Maybe there was an update or maintenance being performed that time. I was used to the term when I was still an active radio controlled airplane enthusiast.

[tag]adsense[/tag]

While I was surfing the net I came across in yugatech the news of huge price drop in some computer parts like the CPU and RAM. I was thinking that this might have a domino effect on all the semiconductor industries specially the semiconductor bonding tools manufacturer like for example the company I’m work with before I left who always have retrenchments. This year the company have retrenched employees because of very low sales and losing from competition.

But in the brighter side, computer parts will be more affordable and I hope not only CPU’s and RAMs but also LCD monitors and laptops as well.

There have been a few other blog focussed social networking sites introduced within the last year but none have impressed me like BlogCatalog. So how did BlogCatalog impress me?

• User Friendly -BlogCatalog is easy to use. Not all people have the time or desire to try and figure out how to sign up and use an interactive site.
• Site Design - I like the ‘blog style’ Blog Detail and Profile pages. As a blog reader and blogger author I feel very comfortable with the design. I was instantly familiar with the layout of this site.
• Directory -I like the directory style blog browsing. Separating blogs into categories and being able to browse through the categories is simple but effective.

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Collapsible wooden basket has been in the market for a many years now and exported also to many countries. I’ve seen one myself in robinson mall and it was quite well crafted. I only saw the simple apple shaped one but there are many more designs I’ve seen in the magazines. Anyway it was Ritchie Wagas ideas of crafting those baskets and he was inspired by the collapsible traveling cups used in WWI. I’ve seen that one too when I was a kid.

I think this was a blessing in disguise for him because he has an ambition of being a lawyer but didn’t have a chance to pursue it because he have to sustain his family’s needs. And his business prior to this venture was a subcontractor of supplying wood but was discontinued because of competition and not very profitable. So he finally was given a break creating wooden craft with the help and encouragement of friends. Sometime we cannot pursue our ambition and we always think of disappointments. But in reality it was a blessing. If Ritchie became a lawyer he might not have a company now, the Wagas Crafts.

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Blogging has become a big influence in the internet nowadays and many website owners are now learning how to blog. Count me in on those people who wants harness the power of blogging. It became an influential tool now because of the importance given by the biggest search giant we know now as Google. But do you know that blogging has been around since 1983? it is not new, in fact this technology is pretty old.

According to Wikipedia:

“A blog (short for web log) is a user generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.”

Now we know something about it, the next question is where to blog? There are many sites that provide creating your own blog and they are free to use and you can post as many as you want. Some even provide affiliate programs like blogger.com that allows you to participate in adsense. This is the easiest way to make your blog and to earn at the same time provided that you are a “go-getter” type. Creating enough traffic and promoting it will take a lot of time and patience. This option is alright if you don’t like to have total control of your blog. This is because like all free website offering you cannot own the domain name and you cannot make your own unique design or ads position on your blog. You will just be given a subdomain like www.yourname.blogsite.com not the www.yournameblog.com.

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With all the hype of engaging in a franchise business, it is well accepted that franchising is a “sure ball” for success. A free enterprise has to undergo years of operation and advertising before it will be accepted to the market and become successful. Majority of them never succeeded because of many factors are uncontrolled. But the question is will all kinds of franchise business succeed? We might have a presumption that it may or it may not but there are also many obvious factors that make them fail. The main obvious reason why businesses fail is ‘lack of business experience’ of the owner. It is not enough that we are well funded or have enough capital but the experience really counts. This is especially true to a high earning executive who wants to start a business thinking that the work experience is enough.

Remember the previous topic I’ve discussed about intrapreneurs? For example how many people know about book keeping? If you are an accountant you sure know it but what about entrepreneurship? Do you have it? And also even having business experience or entrepreneurship is also not enough because you have to follow a set of rules and guidelines from your franchisor which will might cause failure if you do it your own way. Unlike a free enterprise that you have the entire decision making in your hands. With regards to the location, commercial spot or high foot traffic will really help make it successful but some fail because of the wrong type of business for a given location. Some franchise business became successful because of the kinds of people who live in the area.

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Selling items on eBay has become a business for many people. Before, it was just an auction site for selling items not needed anymore like a garage sale for example. But there is a unique way to raise funds using eBay. It’s called the eBay Giving Works. This is a program is for non-profit organization to sell items for fund raising and there are two different ways to sell items using that program: Direct selling and Community Selling.

In direct selling, you can sell anything donated to your group while in community selling a seller donates to a non profit organization. This is only available in main eBay site, perhaps this approach will work in eBay Philippines too. It’s like hitting two birds in one stone, you can raise funds while spreading your message to others in the net. Being an entrepreneur shouldn’t only involve making money for ourselves but knowing how to give back to society what we got from them.

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There are many definitions of an entrepreneur and the simplest and the most appropriate in my opinion is:

• Innovator
• One who recognizes opportunities and organizes resources to take advantage of the opportunity.

Entrepreneurs are builders of a society and creates great influence. Many developing countries owe their success to those entrepreneurs who despite their comfort working in a company jumped out to build an enterprise to give jobs to other people and to help the nation. In our country the Philippines, despite the fate of our economy there are still individuals who, not only pursues their own entrepreneurial interest but helps budding entrepreneurs like the Gokongwaei School of Management and John Gokongwei himself that encourages the youth to become entrepreneurs.

On the contrary, there is a term few people know. And that is “Intrapreneur”. What is an intraprenuer”?

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