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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I’ve read today Yugatech’s blog and there is a thing that he mentioned about Segway which tickles my curiosity. I made a little research to find out what it is. Then I found out that it was a vehicle similar to lawn mower (see video below). But actually it is a kind of a motorized unicycle (with two wheels on each side) which can stand upright and moves just using your body movements and steering handles. It was powered by high torque electric motors and powerful lithium polymer batteries and the controls are stabilized by computers and a gyroscope which can detect any imbalance which enables it to correct itself and stand upright. Quite impressive if you look the actual video on how it works.

Anyway it is not new, it was already revealed in December 2001 and invented by Dean Kamen an American entrepreneur and an inventor. It is produced by Segway Inc. of New Hampshire. The name “Segway” is a homophone of “segue” (a smooth transition, literally Italian for “follows”). PT is an initialism for personal transporter while the old acronym HT was an initialism for human transporter. ( From Wikipedia ). Since this technology is owned by Segway, it doesn’t come cheap. In the US, a new Segway currently (MSRP, August 2007) costs between $5,145 and $6,175. ( Can’t afford that much, maybe I’ll wait for the made in China )

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Many of our fellow Filipinos has already entered the world of e-commerce and we see such successful ventures as Pinoy Delikasi, Divisoria.com, Kabayan Central, K9 Couture and others I seem to forgot already. Those online businesses have passed through the seemingly impossible business on the web selling goods via the internet. Why impossible? First, when you observe online businesses in the U.S., most of them target their customers within the country because that is convenient to them. The standard of living compared to the Philippines is miles apart. So many people there have a better purchasing power and with that, you can assume that many people are credit card holders. Why credit cards are important? In online business, that’s the easiest mode of payment to hasten the transactions. Also, Paypal have contributed much in the development of eCommerce. By using only your email address, you can send or receive money online.

But still, the availability is primarily in the U.S. and if you don’t have a credit card, you still need a U.S. bank account to fund your account for your purchase or shop online. So in the U.S. or maybe in other industrialized countries like Europe, it’s not impossible to establish an online business. In fact, most brick and mortar (Physical business) businesses there are curling up due to the booming of e-commerce. It is cheaper than renting a space, hiring a salesman and paying for utilities which will balloon your overhead expenses and you can also sell your products cheaper. The buyer is also the one who pays for the shipping cost. And not to mention, some shrewd customers just go to the physical store to see the actual item and use the salesman’s time for inquiries then go home and buy on the internet.

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There is one important ingredient of a successful blogger and that is a trait of being “Yourself”. In my observation, famous bloggers like Darren Rowse (Problogger), Shoemoney, John Chow and Steve Pavlina all have this trait in common which makes them very successful. Their writing styles have a personal touch on the audience and it’s like they are casually conversing with an individual that is why visitors are quickly attracted to them. So what does it really mean? Those two words look very simple but for me it’s hard to comprehend and to do.

Like for example, when I was still employed, I remember the day when I was having a conversation with my co-worker/friend in our department, he is telling me out loud to “Be Yourself!” No, he is not angry with me or anyone. He was just joking and teasing our jerk boss. I know the message is not for me but to our idiot boss because he is a great pretender, so to speak. He always acts that he is the smartest person in this office and always showing off to the management that he can do everything even though all of us know how incompetent he is. But little that I know that I’m also not being myself and pointing the finger to the other person. Why? Because the mere fact that I’m employed and working for somebody else means I’m not myself anymore. I’m doing a job that someone is telling me to do and acting on a position that was given to me.

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I’ve just upgraded my Wordpress software just to be safe. Just recently one of the famous blogs, Shoemaker posted a blog about upgrading Wordpress and he also mentioned that he have been hacked 1 time (I don’t know when). He have learned his lesson and I don’t want to experience that too. I’m lazy in upgrading my Wordpress too but come to think of it, it’s worth the downtime. It’s better than not knowing you’re blog isn’t working anymore without your knowledge and sometime you cannot login in the admin control panel.

I’m still lucky because I’m not famous as those bloggers and very few hackers will have interest on my blog. So to those who haven’t upgraded to Wordpress 2.3.2, you better do it soon. It will only take 30 minutes or less than an hour depending on your internet connection speed.

I think the Pinoy Delikasi is not new to us because as far as I remember it was already featured by Korina Sanchez in her program. Maybe I’m mistaken, maybe it was featured in another program. But last night it was featured again in Mel&Joey and the name of the owner is Jovelito M. Cipriano. Jovelito not only built a successful business, but also created a multi-award winning e-commerce model. I really admired that guy and envy a little bit because that was the kind of business I wanted to start. An online business selling Philippine native delicacies. In fact, before I discovered his website I’ve been making sites that sells pili nuts, dried fish like danggit, dried fruit preserves but it didn’t work out because I was really newbie in website making and it requires a big capital to start that online business to successfully run it. You have to have a merchant account so that customers can purchase online. Payment by credit card will make the transaction faster because customers have what we call “impulse buying” which will help to prevent that second thoughts. And during that time there were no local merchant account in the Philippines for online business. So the only solution then is thru western union, direct deposit to your bank account or some other means to pay you. Paypal was not useful that time and it’s only last year that Paypal announced that you can transfer your funds thru your credit card.

Another thing is you need to have at least an inventory to sell online so again it requires a capital. Maybe contacting manufacturers of those products and offer consignments will work but I think at least you must have a capital to pay them when it is already due. And since the payment is by credit card, the mechant account provider will transfer the money paid by your customers to you after a month via check. I was employed that time so I really can’t handle that. It’s easier to just make a website and have affiliate programs to earn which requires very little investment.

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