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!

In internet marketing or in any business… Ever heard of analysis paralysis? It’s the over analysis of things that results in getting no job done. You’re so eager to make it perfect, you forgot the most important thing… Doing it.

I use to have this problem and I still do every once in a while. You might have experienced it but you’re not aware of it. Reading a lot of materials thinking that it might help you. But it only paralyzes you. The most important thing is to just do it.

I read the book “Rework” its about how to manage a small online business. Its not a book how to make adsense sites nor do affiliate marketing nor “How to be a blogger”, its a general book on how you become consistent at successfully managing your small online business. What strikes me with this book is to keep it simple. Being a small online business is great. You don’t have to act so big, so the good or bad things you do, nobody will know or even care.

My point is, if you spend more time doing the things in your mind instead of just pondering on it all day, you can go places and move forward. There is something we call, iteration. Where we continue to add improvements to something. Be it a blog, an ecommerce site or affiliate campaigns, it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares if you mess up. Nobody will laugh at you. You can still change things. Remember, its your business and you have all the time in the world.

Ok. You might have some questions in your mind such as:

- I don’t have money to start my own business
- I don’t have experience in running a business
- I don’t have time
- I don’t know how to run a business

And my answer is:

- I don’t have money to start my own business

Having no money for business is the most common excuse. You can borrow money. Sell some crap things you don’t use. Get a loan. Rob a bank. Seriously, we are not in the great depression. Money is everywhere. Furthermore, online businesses are not that expensive to start. You just have to need a website for around 2,000 Pesos. Just a website and you’re open for business. Remove the idea that you need a lot of money to get started. You don’t. At least not in an online business.

- I don’t have experience in running a business

Neither do I when I started. I’m a computer engineering graduate. Pure technical stuff. The kind of guys that would never ever think of running a business but only to fantasize about working in a large and popular company. But I did. I manage to pull through. You just have to have the determination to go and act on your ideas. Remember that thoughts and ideas are spiritual in nature and perishable, act upon them and you give it respect. Ignore it and you’re stuck with the idiots who blame the government for their misfortune…

- I don’t have time

Sure. And I’m the mad hatter.

- I don’t know how to run a business

Read books? Go to seminars? Go to conventions? Surf the internet? Ask a family relative who has a business? Ask a friend who has a business? The list can go on.

The moral lesson of the story is, Just Do It. And when you do it, you will be victorious.
Nike is the god of victory in Greek mythology.

I got a chance to meet a businessman that owns a driving school here in Bulacan, 40 years old, 3 years in business. And one thing that strikes me during our 2 hour conversation is that when he said “You just have to take risk. Just do it. Sooner or later you’ll get pissed about your work. How plain and routinely you go to work everyday to receive a measly pay check. You will want change. But that change is with a cost. It’s up to you if you want to take the chances. Any successful person will tell you, “I’m glad I took that chance” and I’m happy I can say that as well.”

I watched the vice presidential debate last night to know what’s up with our vice presidential candidates. And I would like to point out that me being in business already smell something that’s complete bullshit and what are genuinely good idea for a solution with our candidate’s answers.

I won’t be naming names as I will keep the decision to vote in your hands. We all have different opinions and me, having owning this blog, have a point of view on the matter. For one, I hate these politicians bashing each other. It’s like shit talking to fart that he stinks. When there are questions and problems prompted by the people, what I hear are the words “fight corruption & poverty” each and everytime. For my understanding, fighting corruption & poverty is indeed a great thing but giving a simpler solution to a problem is what counts most and you don’t have to bash the present administration to tell the people you are better. Let your ideas do the talking and the people the voting.

Like for example, the question about “How will you help the farmers that are affected by the El Nino”. All of the candidates answered fight corruption and only 1 out of them gave a really striking answer. In short all of them are whining about the present administration and 1 of them only gave a solution to the problem. “Build more and better irrigation”. If you watched it last night, you know what I’m talking about.

Another question prompted by a teacher “What can you do to help those teachers in remote areas? And the children lacking books and school supplies?” You know what the majority of them answered? Fight corruption because the funds are being halted there. How blur can you get? People know that the government is corrupt. The world know that the Philippine government is one of the corrupt goverment in the world. What we want to know if “HOW”. All of them are just bashing each other. Only one answer I’m completely impressed. “Raise the teacher’s salary and give every student a kindle.”. I said “WOW! A kindle! That’s effin’ brilliant!” Even when joking around, I would never thought of that. To all who doesn’t know, a kindle is an electronic device where you can get books in electronic format and read it. You can have 4,000+ books in this kindle and each student can use it until college. It’s a lot cheaper than a laptop and lighter to carry than a real book.

The sad thing is, I think we Filipinos are not yet over in voting for the person that is most dear in our hearts rather than a person that has the solution to a problem. Making the cycle repeat itself because we put the person uncapable yet makes us happy. We put people that are famous rather than people who can’t talk politics and just do action. We tend to put faith that a nice person can do all the job a competent person can. The sad thing is, a competent person, be it bad or good will always be better than just a nice person. We want to be “better” than other countries. Saying better is already challenging other nations. We don’t need nice guys to compete, we need competent people. Not whiners. People that when we think of, we remember them by the things they’ve done. Not by the things they’ve said and said they will do.

Picking a leader just like in a group in the class most often than not falls to the people who are most capable. Not because he is a close friend of yours. Why don’t we have this same mentality when picking leaders for our country? Most of the time, the better you are at speaking, the more chance your are at sitting in office. I guess, its all about selling yourself. Winning in a verbal debate is a sign of higher intellect to most of the people. To me, either you proved your point or not, what’s important is what you have done before talking, that speaks most clearly. We tend to forget about that. When choosing a candidate to vote, please ask yourself, what have this person done that really made a difference. Will my apo and apo sa tuhod benefit from this? When I’m gone, will my lineage benefit from this? Though we can see a lot of ads a politician helping and ofw get back to the Philippines as good. What good does it bring to the Philippines as a whole? When he gets back here, that ends there. Helping a person in need is good. But a politician putting an effort just to get testimonials to his next tv ad is probably the reason for helping you. Put our emotions aside because emotions cloud our judgment. Leave the “Follow your heart” bullshit to the hopeless romantics. We are placing our families and future generations at risk here. We think with our minds not with our hearts. It’s the same reason it’s placed above the head. When more lives are at stake (the Filipinos), would you decide using your heart or your head?

At the end of the day. When all things are said and done. If in case we all made a mistake placing the wrong guy in office. We should not blame the government if we are poor, if the government is corrupt, if the prices is high, if we still don’t have a house, if there are still squaters in the city, if there are crimes, if there are corrupt politicians and if there are still people who can’t afford to eat. Because after all, we are the one to blame. We put him there!

Vote wisely my friends!

A public service reminder by snoob

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.

Love this song parody about the geekiness of today’s nerdy entrepreneurs. Funny but true. I just realized by watching this video, most of the entrepreneurs I admire are nerds! Jobs, Gates,DHH and the Google Gods FTW h4×0rs!

“Just do what you love.”

I’m quite excited to know that affiliate marketing is making its ground in the Philippines. A lot of people now are into affiliate marketing. Bloggers beginning to discover this income potential and there are a lot of opportunities for people who wants to work at home. But aside from all its benefits, there are still things you need to know and be wary of. Things that stole 2 years of learning from me because of this tough industry.

When I started learning affiliate marketing, you will always see the top A list bloggers telling you want to do. Giving you tips in earning money with affiliate marketing. When you read them, it makes sense and answers all your questions. Most of the time, they are complicated and you need to do a little more reading. While you think that you are learning a lot. The most important thing that you forget most of the time is to make it simple. The key in everything is to make it simple. I’m a web designer and making things simple is a lot harder to make things complicated and feature packed.

This industry is like a jungle. A business model with a lot of loop holes. With many people claiming to be experts in the field but can’t put their money where their mouth is. You should be wary. There are lots of people out there. How many blog have you read entitled “How to make money online from a newbie internet marketer/blogger” or something like that. A lot right? That is why, I created my blog after I learned affiliate marketing. I didn’t create it before I began to make money. The thing is, I don’t want people to fail if I fail. I want them to learn.

This is what makes this industry tough. Knowing who to listen to is hard. Knowing who the real person are is hard. Just because a blogger has 25,000 RSS reader doesn’t mean you should listen to him. The more you should be wary. As the real ones out there that treat this like a business is quietly making money and doesn’t need to be politically correct all the times or be a goody two shoes / nice guy to every comment they replied on. Always remember that in any business, its a dog-eat-dog world. A nice person has no place in it. He will be eaten alive. The only one he should be nice to is his customer. REMEMBER THAT!

If you think that a blogger is nice to you. Do you know what it means? You are his customer. You make money for him. I am not claiming ALL BLOGGERS do this. I only meant specifically to make money online niche bloggers. Don’t believe me? How many product reviews has this blogger posted on his site with affiliate links? How many products do you think he really tried and bought? I bet he doesn’t even try most of the products he is promoting. Which means, he doesn’t care if you fail. Again, I’m not saying this for all bloggers out there. That is why I want you to be wary and think before you believe this guy.

The more you learn affiliate marketing, the more you’ll realize who is real and who is fake. If you know someone doing affiliate marketing for full time, you’ll know that they don’t follow those a list bloggers like Rowse or Chow. You don’t need to listen to them to succeed as these people make money from other sites that is not totally related to blogging or make money online. Do you get it now? Why do you need to listen to them how to make money online through blogging when they don’t make money out of their make money online blogs?

If you want to learn affiliate marketing, search this site and follow only a few people who do this for a living.

Learn seo and google’s algorithm with Matt Cutts (google’s software engineer) himself. Learn adsense from adsense’ blog.

Affiliate marketing is an idea. It’s just an idea of making money out of your visitors. The most important thing to learn is SEO, SEM and other promotion methods such as media buying, PPC and PPV. You don’t need to read other bullshit blogs that can waste your time. Though, you may feel intelligent reading those blogs because you learned a lot. What matters is still how can you pay the bills next month.

Till next time. Ciaosuuu~

P.S. in any case, if you know how to write. You can pretend to know what you’re talking about and sell products to your visitors. That’s how A list bloggers and make money online bloggers do it. You can too!

I’m no guru. I don’t have any talent at teaching. I sometimes don’t know how to explain things that are too simple. I walk around town in my tsinelas worth Php15.00 and my favorite shirt na bigay lang lahat. My cellphone is a nokia 3210 and I seldom use it. To make things short, I’m the guy that you might think that’s a bum (tambay) when you see me. But I actually run an online business. I love to say my job is an assassin for hire. That is when a person asks and I immediately know that they won’t understand the meaning of online business even if you explain it to them. So I just play around.

Yesterday, I received 3 cheques from affiliate marketing commissions and 1 check from adsense. Then earlier today, I went to the bank to have it deposited to my account. While I was talking to the teller, a guy adjacent to me peeked at the cheques while the teller was messing around with the watermark on the google check. “Astig daw ung watermark, itapat lang daw sa ilaw” lol. This guy was amazed about how google pays me. He only knew that google was only a search engine.

When I was about to go out of the bank he yelled “May online business ka?”. I humbly replied “yes”. He seems to be interested in making money online. But he only heard about people making money with google adsense but to meet one personally must be exciting for him. He knows about the A list bloggers. Here and abroad. But you know me. I don’t listen to A list bloggers to make money online. Bloggers don’t make money online. Internet marketers do. If he were a cute girl, I might have asked her out for a coffee at the nearby mall and tell her what I know about internet marketing. But no, he was a guy. So I was immediately thinking of way to escape any “ambush interview” and “teach me how tos”.

He began asking “Do you know, (this guy) or (that guy) because I went to his seminar”. I said to him immediately that I don’t believe what they are teaching. Especially if one is claiming to be a blogger and earns a living for it. To my book, and my experience, it just doesn’t work. I’m an internet marketer and I don’t know how bloggers earn money (if they earn). I stick to what I know.

I love businesses. Big or small. Passive or active. White hat or black hat. If it will make money, I’m all ears. Just when I thought that all of those questions about how I do business online was just about to suck some “trade secrets” from me. I realized, when he gave me a business card, he’s a real estate investor. That’s a rare occasion. So I immediately flip the script and I’m the one asking questions now.

For weeks now, I’ve been thinking of venturing to another field. Real estate and trading. I never imagine that thinking about it constantly will lead me to actually knowing someone who does it for a living. What’s funny about is that we are of the same age.

We’ll, I’ll leave it at that for now.

Is also the education received from experiences. Here are some of lessons I learned (and still learning) that you might find in handy.

1. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

Security is for the dead. Nothing good comes out if your in your comfort zone.

2. Never Expect Life To Be Fair

There are rich people and poor people, intelligent, dumb and different types of people in the world out to take what’s theirs. Never expect life to be fair just because your poor doesn’t mean you are being taken advantage. We are animals that are product of a long line of evolution in which we do everything to survive. It is still the same after millions of years. If you expect the world to be fair, you don’t deserve anything. If you’re poor, get up and stop whining. Every man is for himself.

3. Solve Your Own Problems

I honestly believe that if an intelligent person asked for help. Let him be, he’ll know the solution soon. You’ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you’ll develop a competitive edge.  Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: “You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others.” There’s also an old Chinese proverb saying that I remind myself of frequently.  It goes like this:

“A wise man keeps his own counsel.”

4. Never Give Up

There’s an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true.  It goes like this:

“The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.”

5. There’s Always A Reason To Smile

Find it.  After all, you’re really lucky just to be alive.  Life is short. “We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time!”. Warning: Most people will make this an excuse to just party everyday. A good entrepreneur knows when to play and when to work.

6. Always be Improving

Never stop investing.  Never stop improving.  Never stop doing something new.  The moment you stop improving  you die.  Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way.  Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen.  Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.

“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth. But the learned, find themselves beautifully equipped with the world that no longer exists.”

Why Post?

It’s been a while since I made a new post and I watched an episode on tv featuring a motivational speaker that will let you walk through fire and will say that you’ll be successful. There are lots of seminars and motivational seminars here in the Philippines now. I have been to many of them and I don’t find anything bad with them. It’s just that, they are all the same and it all comes down to the items I wrote above. If you’re really into it, you can read the classic book “Think and Grow Rich” to have more in depth detail about it.

Remember, you don’t need some random guy to tell you that you’ll be successful nor to convince you that you’ll be successful and much more, to even pay this guy to tell you that you’ll be successful. You already know what your dreams are, take a deep breath and work for it.

I’m an advocate of having the right mindset in order to get ahead in life. That is why, my post about why the Philippines is Poor kinda summarize the whole idea (thanks for all the comments btw) that not even the holiest or the most untainted official will not be able to make you rich or kill poverty if you’re not the one pulling the strings of your life. Enjoy the video.

As in any business, craft or career in life, there is no room for negativity or the weak at heart. If you want it, you have to get it. No reasons, no excuses. Only do it or regret it.