September 11, 2009 we attended Gonegosyo Youth Summit 2009 and we have our eyes on the seminar schedules. I am amazed by how many of the seminars conducted are about internet marketing, ecommerce and online business.

Go Negosyo Internet Marketing & Online Business Seminars

eCommerce

The first seminar we attended is about ecommerce. There are basically millions of people using multiply to sell their products online. Being an online entrepreneur myself, I find it funny because multiply was designed to be a social network not an ecommerce platform. If I want to sell my products, I’ll go to ebay or amazon or have my own store set up with free ecommerce software, and create a paypal account for the payment and I’m done! Nevertheless, it seems like multiply is adapting and catering to these businesspeople and designing the site into more of a marketplace than a social network now.

This part of the seminar is just an interview of different people that had successes in ecommerce. Some people selling ukay ukay, pudding (yes pudding “the bread”) and apparels online.

Internet Marketing will Boom

Carlo Ople, a marketing consultant working for friendster.com talked about the industry and how the youth can start their business online. Why people are afraid to do business online and why people fail. First of all, people don’t want to do business online because they don’t know anything about it. And of course, being in the internet, we don’t know who are talking and who are the real deal. Some people choose silence even if they have geniune knowledge. We will never know. That is why doing business on your own will make you learn tons.

Second, initial capital. A web hosting costs around P100 and a domain P500 per year. The good thing about doing business online is that you don’t have to have a lot of initial capital. You can create your own store using free sites like multiply or you can promote other people’s product using affiliate marketing. And of course, there is the ever popular blogging. Which takes me to the next part.

How He Became A Blogger

Anton Diaz, the blogger. His talk was about blogging and making money thru his blog. A little bit cliche for me but its kind of interesting to say the least. How he went from a full time employee into a professional blogger traveling and promoting the Philippines. I like how you can see his love for the Philippines as he goes to beautiful places that are hard to find and can only be seen in the Philippines.

But in terms of the real “How to’s” you won’t get any technical information about the talk.

Blackhat and whitehat seo sounds like an epic battle between good and evil in a sci fi film. Where the blackhat guys are the bad guys and whitehats are the good guys. But in internet marketing and making money in this business, its not who do good tactics or bad tactics, but who earns more. I have been learning a lot of blackhat seo’s this past few weeks and it is not something that I used to imagine. Things like scamming, hacking & stealing from people on the internet is not a blackhat way. They are just plain scammers. If you search the internet, there are communities for each of these kinds of people and I believe blackhatters are one of those communities that are most often misunderstood. They work under the radar, they don’t want to be known, they don’t want people to know how much they make money, they don’t want people to know HOW they make money. Most of the time, they are just lurking in the shadows that when people say bad things to them, no one will speak up.

I learned to appreciate these people when I had the chance to make friends with a few black hatters. Up until now, they are teaching me how to do things that are thought of insane in the whitehat world. These guys are businessminded and has business ethics as well. Not with the goody two shoes talk with whitehatters that will bore you. The community seems more like a friendly environment than the whitehat community composed of too much technical jargon that will make you kill yourself to boredom.

Though, both side of the party have their own pros and cons. And I believe that learning both disciplines is not a matter of who is better. It’s just that we are here in this business to learn. Whitehat or blackhat, its an experience. Good or bad is still an experience.

I try to stay away from the blogosphere and social media as much as possible. It is not for me. One of the few people who I really look up to is a blackhat seo. He opened my eyes from the tragic cycle of people wanting to do business online. And social media for me and the blogosphere is not where the money is at. I will leave all those to the best bloggers or the top bloggers in the world/country. These things that I like and hate is common to all the people in the community. So I found myself a home.

Any experience we get is a learning tool. Even if your mentor is a blackhat, you should have an open mind to know if he’s telling shit or gold nuggets.

Learn to think for yourself. The blogosphere may be good and friendly. But its not what we are after when doing business on the internet. We are here to make money. Making friends and having fun can be done in real life. I’d rather promote offers all day than socializing, commenting, tweeting on other blogs. I can always socialize on blog events. Which I don’t go. Because I am no blogger. Maybe in the future when I’m a travel blogger traveling all over the world. But before that happens, there are a lot of work to do. So…

Watch your back boys and keep your nose clean.

You might have read on my previous post about ClassiPress. A wordpress theme that can turn your blog into a money generating classified ads wordpress site. You can either earn money by selling classified ads listings that are processed automatically using paypal or just make it free and ad adsense on it.

There is a new version of it right now which is the latest. That includes 5 color schemes to boot. More information about the new update is found below. To visit the classipress homepage just click on the link.

ClassiPress is the first and only premium WordPress theme designed to easily turn your Web site into a classified ads system. Our feature-rich theme was built for ease of use and tight integration with WordPress so you’ll be online and selling classified ads on your site within minutes.

Our product is great for any size business and easily scales because it’s built on top of the WordPress infrastructure. ClassiPress can either replace your current WordPress theme or run in parallel with your existing Web site so the choice is up to you.

Highlights Include:

• PayPal Integration - Turn your Web site into a money maker. ClassiPress is built with PayPal integrated right into the theme. This allows you to charge a fee for anyone who wants to post a classified ad on your site (optional feature).
• Instant Image Uploading - No more having to wait for customers to email you their images before posting the ad. Your customers can attached multiple images directly to the ad submission form.
• Image Manager - Easily see what images have been uploaded and moderate as needed.
• Auto Expire Ads - Automatically prune ads older than x amount of days. Makes it easier to set an ad price based on a specific time limit.
• Subcategory Support - Our classified ads system supports nested categories for those who are looking for deeper listing capability.
• Seller Contact Form - Visitors can easily contact sellers right from your Web site. The Ajax-driven contact form is neatly built into each individual ad page.
• Integrated Login Box - Sellers can quickly login to post new ads right from your Web site header (optional feature).
• Report Bad Listings - Visitors can report spam or inappropriate ads on your site. You will be notified by email when this occurs.
• Multiple Currency Support - Choose from several different currencies based on your country location.
• Email Notification System - Receive an email when a new ad has been created. You’ll also be notified once payment has been made.
• No Plugins Required - ClassiPress doesn’t require any plugins to work. We do recommend using some plugins though to get the most out of your Web site which are included for free when you purchase ClassiPress.
• Widgetized Sidebar - Easily ad or remove widgets from the sidebar without having to touch any code.
• RSS Feed - Visitors can subscribe to your rss feed from any feed reader and instantly see your latest classified ads.
• Advertising Plugin - Create additional revenue on your Web site by using the optional advertising plugin.

New v2.8 Features Include:

• Five Color Schemes - Now you can choose from five different colors on how you want your site to look. Blue, green, pink, red, and classic colors. Easily change the scheme from an options page drop-down which means no messing with any code.
• Updated Options Page - With improved features comes improved admin options. You now get five option pages to give you more control.
• Breadcrumb Navigation - See exactly how deep you are on a page with detailed navigation links.
• Email and Print - You can now easily have your visitors print and/or email the classified ads by clicking a link!
• Tags - Each classified ad supports multiple native WordPress tagging for improved organization and searching.
• Ad Visitor Counter - Shows how many daily and all-time visitors on each specific classified ad.
• Feedburner Support - The new options page includes a field so you can instantly add your Feedburner URL.
• Google Analytics - No need for a plugin. Just paste in your GA code and you’ll start tracking visitor behavior within seconds.
• AdSense Support - Make some additional advertising revenue with Google AdSense. Just paste in your ad code and it appears on each classified ad.
• PayPal Sandbox Mode - You can now test your PayPal account and process dummy payments before opening your site for business.
• Custom Fields - WordPress allows you unlimited custom fields so why not take advantage of them? ClassiPress now stores all ad meta information in custom fields.
• New Icons - We’ve spiced up ad pages by including some new icons. It’s a great way to help visitors (no matter what language they speak) quickly identify what it represents.
• Multi-Language Support - ClassiPress now uses the standard WordPress localization framework called GNU gettext. This makes it easy for you to localize the included .pot file and change ClassiPress into your native language.
• Supports 18 Different Currencies - Sell classified ads using almost any currency in the world. With PayPal as our payment processor, we make it easy to be a global business.
• Improved SEO - We understand the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). That’s why we’ve baked in enhancements to help your site rank better.

Additional Benefits:

• Ease of Use - ClassiPress was designed to virtually work right out of the box. All configuration is done through the management page without having to touch any code.
• Tight Integration - ClassiPress works as a standalone website or can easily integrate with your current WordPress instance.
• Easy Management - We designed ClassiPress with ease of use in mind. A dedicated options page is included for easy setup of all your Web site classified ad settings.
• Support Forum Access - Our support forum is always available to you. There you can read about solutions and/or post your unanswered questions.
• Free Updates Forever - Buy today with a piece of mind knowing that any future updates will be sent to you free of charge.

ClassiPress was designed to use the core WordPress features. Each classified ad essentially just uses the WordPress posts functionality and custom fields for the meta information (phone, image locations, end date, location, price, email, etc). The WordPress page functionality works just like normal. When you create a new page it adds a link to it in the footer. ClassiPress even plays nice with most WordPress certified 3rd party plugins (not all plugins have been tested against ClassiPress).

Here are some additional ClassiPress screen shots from behind the scenes within the WordPress admin area:

• What a submitted and approved classified ad post looks like
• The “Configure” options admin page
• The “Settings” options admin page
• The “Payments” options admin page
• The “Categories” options admin page
• The “Images” options admin page