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.

Merry Christmas everybody! Another year have passed and another +1 on your age. Time goes by really fast doesn’t it? I’m writing right now, midnight of christmas 26th of december, because I can not sleep. I just thought that I might write something of things I learned this pass year. Maybe its not something that you’ll be interested in reading and its not about making money or affiliate marketing. So bear with me for this time around.

I wanted to point out things I learned this year. First thing first is about business.

Business

Have you watched the video about making money online? It’s one of the best video you can find about making money online. A lot better and true than John Chow’s blog and what he ate for dinner. The moral lesson here is to just do it. Solve a simple problem and you can make money out of it. It doesn’t have to be a big bang at your first launch. What you want to do is to focus on making it better and better in each iteration.

A nice read about iteration and online business was created by the people at 37signals, you might want to check them out here.

If you’re starting to have a business on your own. Be prepared of the consequences. Once you enter entrepreneurship its a whole new world. To summarize all of it, let me explain both sides. A worker and an entrepreneur.

Worker

• Have night outs and party
• Have vacation at least 1 week a year (paid)
• Have coworkers to hangout with
• Monthly income stable
• All in all — YOU HAVE A LIFE

Entrepreneur

• No night outs. No Party
• No vacation.
• No one to hang out with (if ever there’s free time. Friends are at work)
• Risky. Income NOT Stable
• Emotional rollercoaster and stress
• All in all — YOU HAVE NO LIFE

Its the freedom why some people choose to become entreprenuer.

Personal Life

I’m an entrepreneur, single and have no life. =) This year, I fell in love with guitars… Very much in love.

Questions I Would Like To Know The Answer

There are lots of questions I want to know the answer that came into my mind this 2009 but yet to know the answers. These are:

• What’s up with guys taking nursing degree? Nobody (especially men) wants to wake up in a hospital bed greeted by a guy.
• Why do Filipino TV shows suck?
• What makes life meaningful?
• Why nobody told me that guitars are awesome?

If you know the answers to some, please do share your wisdom with us.

Plans for Next Year

I plan to travel next year. Explore other places other than the four corners of my office. Meet new people, women and food. To where, not sure. I’ll post it here when time comes. I’m also learning forex trading and hope to benefit from it. Forex trading matches the style of work at home/online business. Giving me more free time to do things while my money doing the work for me.

Another plan is to double my company’s revenue next year.

Live and enjoy life to the fullest. Experience things that I’ve never experience before.

How about you? What did you learned this year and what are your plans for the next year?

Email Autoresponders are one of the most widely used promotional tools on the Internet. They’re also known as mailbots, automatic email and email on demand. They were derived from the very popular fax on demand and designed to automatically respond to any email message received with an automatic response

One of the most popular way to make money online is email marketing and lots of lots of internet marketers will tell you to “BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF THE LIST”. “The List” is your email list and they will testify, again and again that building your email list will give you the power to “print money” at will anytime you like.

I also have friends that keep telling me that to make a successful product launches, they sometimes make deals with marketers that have huge list. They will go over the extra effort just to get that list or their product be included in the mailing list as promotion.

Autoresponder programs vary from autoresponse messages set- up within an email program to a script that runs on a server. This script may run a web-based autoresponder system that utilizes a web page form or it may run with a pop email account on a server.

In this post, we will list the top email autoresponders today and also give some comments about their service. These are the email autoresponders that I have used personally and anything that is not included in the list, please comment below.

Best Email Autoresponders

Lets enumerate my favorite auto responders of all time.

Aweber Email Autoresponders

Probably the most popular email autoresponders to date and personally my favorite. They have an easy to use interface that makes automated broadcast a breeze. Also, you can start email marketing for just $1. How cool is that?

Aweber has been in the industry since 1998! So your worries of your list disappearing is not gonna happen. Because of good service and excellent script I think aweber is here to stay.

How To Create Aweber Account for Only $1

Click here to sign up for aweber account. You can get it for just $1 then follow the instruction below.

Step 1: Visit aweber site through the link to get the  $1 promo and click on the Sign Up for $1 button.

Step 2: Get the confirmation about the $1 aweber price and some more options if you like. Just pick the first option which is 1 Month Recurring for the cheapest option.

Step 3: Fill up your information.

After your successful account creation, there are also some videos on how to use aweber account as well as how to do effective email marketing and some tips and guides on how to build your list.

GetResponse Email Autoresponders

The name is as catchy as it looks.

How To Create GetResponse Account

Getresponse’s account creation is pretty straightforward and easy. But the downside is that, they don’t offer any promotion or discount like that of Aweber. You pay full price $18 right off the bat.

That’s it for now for email autoresponders and email marketing. I’ll probably create a tutorial about email marketing on the following post. Have fun and good luck!

When it comes to making money online, there are lots of people that can tell you how and why. But most of the time, people who says that “this is the real way” is most of the time just bragging, wanted to be noticed or just a link bait or selling you something. How you perceive a genuine knowledge of a person is up to you. I am not a psychiatrist.

If you are a beginner, I’m sure you have read a lot of blogs that tells you this niche is good or this way of making money is good and its a no brainer. Maybe, having a brain is just what you need to succeed. You don’t need someone to tell you that its a no brainer because, you have a brain.

There is nothing out there that can help you make your first buck online. You only need yourself and common sense.

Number 1 RULE: Do What You Like Best

In choosing a niche to make money on, always consider what you want, like or interest. Don’t be influenced by other people because you think its hot right now. I say these things because, I know myself for being lazy… And if I create a site or a niche that I don’t like, I’m sure that the site will die in just a week and I’ll be lazy to post more articles or promote this site to keep it making money.

I’m sure you’ve felt that feeling that if you don’t like something, it feels like hell. Something like going to work early in the morning that you don’t really like. Not a good feeling right?

Even if your site topic is about “snails having sex” and not much buzz around it, keep it going… As long as you like the topic, do not stop… There will be time that your efforts will pay off.

Fine Line Between Doing What You Like & Learning To Improve

There is a fine line between doing just the thing you want and nothing else. Allot a time to “LEARN” things that will supplement what you are doing.

Do Not Listen To Anyone

Do not listen to anyone who says to do this things or that thing to make more money. In fact, don’t listen to what is written in this site. Test your ideas first before going for others’ opinion. Opinions are worth crap. Opinions doesn’t run businesses.

Find Time To Improve Your Skill Set

Many people I know becomes successful, they work and work and improve their quality of work in terms of time finishing the job. But the free time they have, they allot to less important things like playing. I mean, if you have a free time from work, wouldn’t it be beneficial to learn something new that can help you finish your work in lesser time? I’m sure you’ll be playing after work anyway… Or learn something related that will help you earn more.

Money and time is sometimes proportional. If you’re a web designer, wouldn’t it be great if you could learn more things relating to web design like coding html 5, jquery or ajax? You can leave php behind because its for developers but it wouldn’t hurt to learn that as well. The next thing you know, you know everything. That even if you lose all your possessions right now, you’ll still be able to earn money with just what you know.

Strong Mind & Emotion

Being an affiliate marketer is a business in itself. You mess up, its yours to blame. You lost money, no one will sympathize with you or give you a fucking hug. You made a mistake, get up and move on. That’s what I like in having a business, it separates a man from boy. At work, you might get the help of your colleagues to work things out, if you fail, its your employers time and money that is at risk. You’ll still gonna get paid at the end of the month.

In having a business, I was surprised by the emotional rollercoaster. One day you’re earning very good and you wanted the whole world to know. It’s like Megan Fox just stripped naked in front of you. And some days, you feel like shit because you’re losing too much money like Manny Pacquiao just punched you in the groin. Either way, its a fun journey. Just be prepared for the ups and downs. Especially the downs.

Many people grew up with the idea that having a full time job will make you stable. I did. The truth behind this is that, its a lot more risky to have a job than to have a business. Take the economic crisis for example, many people was surprised (and terrified) when they got laid off from their jobs and in financial trouble, you won’t know when it will hit you. Having a business gives you a lot of options to enjoy life. Even though businesses were affected by the economic crisis, you can bet that these businessmen already have other businesses that can keep them afloat. Its all about risk management. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. If you have a job, you only have 1 egg.

Of course not all people are gifted with entrepreneurial spirit and will still choose a job than having a business of their own. Not all people are knowledgeable to start and run their own businesses. And it is easier to just get job and get money monthly though your salary.

I always remember the talk of David Heinemeier Hansson about having a business online. You don’t need to kill yourself working to have a billion dollar business online or offline. You just need to get that first 1 Million annual income. After that, you will realize that you have a lot of free time and will be able to do whatever you want in your life.

When I was in college, I tried to work 24hrs a day just to pay the rent, bills and college tuition. It was tough and I always remember the things that I want to do but can’t because of that. I always wanted to learn how to play the guitar. Just this month the feeling came back and bought my 2nd electric guitar and start learning. I can now play some music. It wasn’t possible before. But right now its different because of freedom I have.

This is what we call a lifestyle business. A lifestyle business in my own opinion is establishing a business for the sole purpose of supporting a lifestyle. Need a car? Create a business that will pay the car loan. Need a house? Create a business that will pay the mortgage. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to beat Bill Gates to get your dream house or dream car or travel the world.

When a person is young, has financial freedom, has a lot of free time, he is not motivated by money anymore. This is the time where he tries to look for the meaning of life and tries to reach and do things that will make him leave a mark in this world. I guess its a man’s instinct to always on the hunt and if he reached his long term goal early, he tries to go for the big shot.

What I’m trying to say is that, if you’re still struggling financially after working for years and years and still haven’t accomplish anything you might want to take a break and reflect on things. You don’t have to rush finishing your work… If you’re done you wont have anything left to do. Take a time to appreciate nature, get a vacation perhaps… If you’re still searching for the perfect job from a far away nation because of its generous salary, and still no hope… Maybe its time for you to start making the perfect job instead of searching. Because there’s no such thing as a perfect job.

Your skill is directly proportional to the money you’ll earn plus your ability to communicate with people multiplied by the amount of confidence, trust and perseverance you have.

I don’t know if its just a fad or just a politically correct way to answer why you want to work abroad… “To help my family” is a little bit cliche now. You can not help others if you can not help yourself. Just like a drowning person. If you don’t know how to swim, saving a drowning person may risk your life and be dragged to death even if you know how.

You can only achieve happiness if you’re being selfish. Happiness can only be real if you share it.

Bring it on Super Typhoon Pepeng!