The Filipino Entrepreneur

Good news to all Paypal and eBay members in the Philippines. Today I when opened my mailbox I got an email from Paypal that I can now add my local bank account to my Paypal account. Yes it’s true! and only Philippines and Indonesian Paypal members were granted permission to include a local peso or rupiah bank account. Maybe other countries in South East Asia not yet given this privilege will follow later. Another thing, withdrawing your funds to your local bank account is cheaper compared to credit cards. Remember last year Paypal announced that credit cards holders outside the USA can withdraw funds using their credit cards? But it cost US$5 per withdrawal. In transferring your funds from Paypal to your local bank account it only cost 50 pesos if the amount you will withdraw is below 7,000 pesos. Above or equal that amount, it cost nothing! as in FREE!

I think will help many internet entrepreneurs in the Philippines like online store owners, eBay sellers, affiliate marketers or those OFW which can transfer their remittances with very little cost and might revolutionize e-commerce in the Philippines.

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Most people like perfume because they love to smell good specially ladies and women. That is why a perfume business can be lucrative if you know how to properly market them. There is also a perfume refilling business you can see in malls with different kinds of well know brands like Drakar, Lacoste, Eternity and so fort that you can purchase in 5 ml bottles. Anyway they are still expensive compared to a home made perfume which you can experiment if you are well experienced on making perfume even though you are not a chemist. So without much ado here are the things you will need to start one:

For the laboratory equipment, you will need: Read the rest of this entry »

The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates (the whole world knows Microsoft is equivalent to Bill Gates) donates 19.9 Million US dollars to IRRI. This is the headline of a well known newspaper here. I guess not everybody knows where the IRRI is. It’s based in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines and it’s “a non-profit research and training center established to reduce poverty and hunger, improve the health of the farmers and consumers , and ensure environmental sustainability through collaborative research, partnerships and strengthening of national agricultural research and extension systems.” ( quoting from their website)

Gates announce the donation in Davos, Switzerland in the World Economic Forum. It will come from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a package of agricultural development grants. It’s nice to know billionaires like Bill Gates share part of their riches to the poor specially to farmers where we get out food. Farming in a tropical country like Philippines and most of the time not fully equipped with modern machinery is really hard. I can still see rice farmers use water buffalo (or carabao) and plowshare to till the soil and plant the seedlings by hand in hectares and hectares of land. I don’t want to point a finger on who should be responsible for supporting those poor farmers and I guess you already know.

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Luck in business seems a debatable topic since not everyone believes in luck specially in business. And in my opinion most of the non believers are those who have not started their business yet and believe that destiny is in the palm of your hand. But most entrepreneurs believe that somehow luck have a big part on their success. Maybe they define it differently from most people that luck is something like a gold bar will just drop in front of you or a sack of money. Even in winning a lottery you have to place a bet before you will have a chance to win. That is because you did something before luck came to you. Likewise in business, luck will come if you started doing something for it to come to you.

Yes it’s true that some who started or venture into something are more lucky and some are not. Like for example in blogging. Now there are many successful bloggers who earn 5 to 6 figure income which in the past there isn’t any blogger you know that makes a living full time on blogging (How I wish I’m that kind of a blogger). Blogging is just for fun or a hobby since it is only some kind of a diary or journal. In the past no one would ever think that it will become an influential tool and a business. So those lucky bloggers made a right choice although they are not aware that it will become “Something Big” someday. Then why some are successful and some are not not? I think it’s the combination of timing, skill, passion and determination. It’s similar to cooking a dish with the right recipe. There are many ways to cook fried calamares but only few ways to do it right. If your recipe is not good enough, you won’t make a good or perfect dish. So proper timing, skill or knowledge, passion and determination should be combined. If you have the first three but lack determination, do think you will succeed? you know the saying “Winners don’t Quit and Quitters Don’t Win“. What if you quit along the way when success is just within reach because you are discouraged when things didn’t go as you expected? If you persevere, then chances are your luck (or in other words, break) will come in an appointed time.

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It’s obvious that the weakening US economy have an impact worldwide. The rest of the world is not isolated to the plunging of US stock market. Take for example here in the Philippines, just recently the news 7-day slide wipes out P528B in stock value

The news said “The Philippine equities market Tuesday officially entered a “bear market” phase after the stock exchange index fell through the floor amid fears of a US recession-induced global economic slowdown.”

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