This is probably the most disappointing thing I saw, since I learned about that Santa Clause isn’t real. The hostage taking that took place in Quirino Grandstand yesterday August 23, 2010 is a wake up call to how incompetent the Philippine police force is. I don’t want to be a critic. But just want to point out what I observed on that sad day. And hopefully some of my thoughts on the matter.

The Media

Freedom of speech is a great right. But sometimes is a big obstacle when it comes to crucial situations. Broadcasting the strategy of the assaulting team live on TV only gives advantage to the hostage taker. Risking the life of the hostages. Broadcasting “surprise attack” live on TV doesn’t seem too convincing, even calling it a “surprise” attack.

Making the hostage taker feel agitated by having the media broadcast the arrest of his relatives is what triggers the barrage. I don’t think the media should be covering it in the first place. Or be so close to the scene in a way that its possible to know what’s happening around the bus.

Police

How many times have you ruined your reputation. From corrupt officers, torturing prisoners to failed hostage rescues. We don’t want to point out what is obvious. Be it lack of equipment, training or strategy, which basically encompasses all of the necessary skills for a successful hostage rescue. But you’re certainly lacking on the “courage” that’s suppose to be embeded on your badge. And even the aim to throw the tear gas in the window.

You tried to make your reputation good. You tried so hard and we can see that. Having exercise programs to cut of that beer belly. Bashing rallyists head with an arnis stick all sounds good to me. But the only way you can 1 up your reputation is in times like this. And you blew it every single time.

If you can’t do it, please have another department do it. On other countries, its their top 5% of the armed forces (military) who do the hostage rescue. Not the police. People who knows how to handle gun fights and not be afraid to get hit.

Men Behind the Scenes

In a hostage crisis, the men giving the command is important. It is crucial not to include politicians in the scene. Politicians only wants to make the public happy and will not be able to “make the call” if the going gets tough. I have never heard a politician make a tough decision to “kill” a grave threat such as a trigger happy maniac. It will be bad for their reputation as being a makaDiyos or makatao. The men behind the scenes should be an experienced military officer or experienced police officer that have a lot of experience in this situation. What the fuck are those politicians doing there?

Contrary to many’s opinion. I think its a good idea that the government didn’t intervene with the situation. And only handed support to the best they can. But! for me, Mr. President’s decision to wait that long after the first death was confirmed is not a good choice. The first sign of death should be enough to put the man down. The driver who escaped already confirmed it. He probably shit his pants trying to escape, do you think he’ll lie? Even if the numbers were wrong, just 1 death is enough to consider this man as a threat.

The Hostage Taker: Rolando Mendoza

He must be depressed to hostage a group of tourists just to get his job back. This only proved your point that you don’t deserve to be in the service. Your ideals or reason for fighting is not even comprehensible. Nor rational. I would understand if you demand that James Yap and Kris Aquino should get together but come on! Trying to kill 25 people and end up killing 8 people to get your job back?

But seriously, whatever your reason is, it doesn’t change the fact that you killed 8 people. I don’t think that there is any reason that could justify the killing of innocent civilians. Your life’s legacy of being one of the Philippines’ finest policemen is just a joke now. You really fucked up big time. You don’t deserve any respect nor pity nor condolences. Think of the kids that will have lifelong nightmares of you. Even your death is unfair for the family of the victims.

To the Hostages

The whole world knows we fucked up. I don’t think there is any word that we can say or should say. Our condolences. We understand prayers and sorry won’t bring the dead back. We’re just hoping that we can be forgiven.

To my Fellow Filipinos

Let us just shut our mouth and stop pointing fingers. We don’t need to state the obvious who and why we failed. The whole world knows. The world was watching. Can we just ask apology to our Chinese brothers and sisters in a humble way? In the most humble way we can? It’s still our fault. Its a nation’s fault. Let us be humble like the Christian God that this country worship and accept our shortcomings.

A lot of times, I tried to write the ebook about affiliate marketing I promised a while back but never really satisfied of what to put in there. So I never got the chance to finish it. The reason being is I don’t know what to put in there. I am not sure what questions are there for a newbie affiliate marketer.

When I started, I just did what I think I should. I failed, crash, burn and wasted money (a lot) but it got me educated. I do not recommend it. I was a complete mess. So if I want to try to help out the new ones or the interested ones I might be able to help them if I know what questions are in their minds.

Sooooooooo… What are the questions or sticking points you have right now that hinder you to become successful in affiliate marketing. I’ll try to answer it in the comments and if the question is good enough, I’ll explain it in my next posts. Just leave your questions below (yes, on the comment area).

This is my way of giving back.

Have a question about affiliate marketing? Leave your questions below!

What can make your affiliate marketing successful? Contrary to popular belief traffic = money, it depends. And traffic is just only about 60% of the total formula to make your affiliate marketing campaign a success. Always remember that 80 - 20 rule. In any business, there is 80% chance to fail and 20% chance to succeed. Its also true in affiliate marketing. Out of 100 campaign that you might crank up will only lead to 20% of them making profit. But what good about this is eventhough you did not profit on the remaining 80, all the profits from the 20 campaigns is enough to cover your loses and will prove profitable.

This is my mindset when I started. I created 100 sites knowing only less than 20 of them will make money. It is a lot of work and not for the faint of heart, but I like the adrenaline rush and the thrill of not knowing what lies ahead. But it proved to be a profitable venture for me. And in turn taught me a lot.

Keyword Research

First of all, to make an affiliate marketing campaign a success is “Keyword research”. Just because everybody you know targets make money online or pinay scandal, you should join the bandwagon to get some money. That’s not the case. Most of the time, following the crowd will only lead to financial losses. What you’ll do is work harder to keep up with everyone and it will only burn you out. And will stress you even more when you arrive at the end of the month is still not profitable.

Affiliate marketing is not a plug and play business. Its not as easy as you think like creating a paypal account. You need to think. Be a contrarian. Challenge every idea. Think smarter not work harder. Underwork your competition. Why would you want to target a keyword that is known by all? Why would you want to create a site about a subject that is talked by all? To get traffic? Yeah that might work. But before you go ahead and make a site? Can you consider this? Do you want to work harder than your competition or to work less but earn the same as him? You can do so by targetting a less known keyword that will give the same amount of money with less or no work. But of course, qualifying a keyword can tell you different kinds of things such as the quality of traffic which brings me to my next point.

Quality Traffic

You notice how I put “Quality” in it? Getting traffic is easy. Trust me. You can buy a traffic of 10,000 visitors per day for only $15 and there are lots of services like that floating around. But I would choose 100 visitors if it converts 50% of the time compared to 10,000 visitors which converts 0.0002% of the time any day. Traffic is easy to get. But quality traffic isn’t. Just because you can use twitter, facebook and stumbleupon doesn’t mean you’ll gonna get rich tomorrow when you wake up. People who use social networking sites are more tech savvy and in return use them only for fun and not really to open their credit cards and give you money. In other words, most of these social traffic are junk. If you want to be famous, these are great by the way. That is why a list bloggers like them. But for people who wants to make money. Stay away from social media, at least for now.

Also, in terms of SEO. Quality traffic often leads to the kind of keyword you target. Don’t get me wrong, if you have a nice keyword that gets more than a thousand hits a day from search engines, it is a great keyword. After all, if people came from the search engines, most likely they are willing to spend money. What I’m trying to tell is that, most of the time, high traffic keywords are more competitive and needs a lot of work to rank at. So learn to pick keywords that are a little long tail that expresses a need. For example: “restore bad credit score” is better than “bad credit score” as it expresses the need to fix a problem. Then you put up your affiliate site that offers solving bad credit scores.

Landing Pages

Landing page design are the face of your campaigns. If you’re gonna make money in this field, you need to have a nice, at least decent design to compete. If you’re gonna do it yourself and don’t know how to do it, do not be surprise if you’re not making money. At least learn how to design or hire someone with experience to do it. For starters, have at least 2 landing page design so you can test. Then you will try to beat the best converter with a new design until you settle with a conversion rate that is suitable to your taste.

Tracking

Track. Track. Track. The only thing that you should be addictive to is stats. Learn to track your affiliate campaigns. From PPC keywords to organic searches, use tracking software like google analytics, prosper202 and crazy egg (I use them personally). Google analytics offers great conversion tracking for its PPC campaigns while prosper202 offers great tracking for postbacks. Those 2 will give you detailed information such as, what link they clicked, where they come from, how long did they stayed on your site. Information such as these are crucial especially when you are purchasing your traffic such as ppc or ppv.

Split Test & Optimize

Split test is like a branch of tracking. This way, you want to maximize your earning potential from the site. So having 2 designs of the landing page is great to test them with each other. Sometimes you need to edit little things on your landing page to covert better. Landing pages are not the only thing you need to test, you also need to test different offers. Different merchants and different affiliate products. Do not trust cpa networks. Trust no one in fact. Sometimes, the same offer is available to different cpa networks but only one of them converts better. It is because CPA networks (sometimes) shrug money from you. One word to describe is “steal” the affiliate commission from you. Some networks do it aggressively, some conservatively. It is present in all networks you just have to settle for the lesser evil. Don’t trust anyone and test test test.