This is too much of a news to just pass on, for me at least. I was busy planning for my next affiliate project early this morning when my friend, “Lady“, as she prefers to be called sent me a quick nudge to let me know about this one.

“Kirbs, filipino bloggers are ripping off the SERPS for beijing olympic keywords!” she exclaimed. Well, I wasnt interested about it because maybe they were one of the well established names like Macuha or Abe (a common accomplishment, perhaps). Much to my amazement, they were not! Lady even told me she used to give these guys tips about making the most out of blogging.

Well, let me cut the excitement here. They are the following (I arranged them according to result order for the VERY general search term “beijing 2008 olympics medal tally“.

• http://Mapiles.com
  
• http://lessonko.com
• http://boysessence.blogspot.com
• http://textparadise.net
• http://www.monacome.com
• http://julerboy.wordpress.com
  

(that’s another link pointing towards you guys!)

Heck, they even rank higher than Yahoo Sports! I did a further research on different global position of google namely US, Canada, Australia and Ireland and much to my envy, they still remained comfortably on the first page! Now that’s something to be alarmed about! lol Now do i have to mention their alexa stats? Ok, im going to give you guys a teaser, lets just say, Alexa is having a hard time keeping up with their stats. And im not just bluffing, I checked in 4 hour intervals and it keeps getting better and better.

My Position on this achievement?

Now im not going to support “crab mentality” in here. Never have, Never will! Especially when it comes to Filipino Achievements. I have to give it up for this guys, im pretty sure they have invested alot of time and effort to reach where they are right now.

Im planning to interview them in the coming days after the Olympics is all over. That is of course they dont have trouble monitoring their adsense income for the month.

Although I found quite a number pointers that I think might have maximized their earning potential, it would be better to rest it up for now. I need to look into it more deeply and will let you guys know more about it.

Congratulations! A job well done guys! Mabuhay!

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    Manny Pacquiao VS Oscar Dela-Hoya breaks down to be the next fight. This is the decision that stirred alot of mixed emotion this past few weeks. Dan Arritt from Los Angeles Times said “Negotiations about a possible fight between Oscar De La Hoya VS Manny Pacquiao (next fight supposedly) stalled after the fighters failed to reach an agreement on the split of the purse”.

    The fight was supposed to be scheduled on December 6 at MGM Grand, Las Vegas. The golden boy’s offer was 30% of whatever the fight makes but apparently, the “destroyer” didnt see this as a fair deal even it would bring him around $9M-$10M - his biggest paycheck so far no matter the outcome of the fight. However, for manny, the Manny “PacMan” Pacquiao VS Oscar Dela-Hoya sensation would be a mere unsatisfied wish.

Dan furthere added “Richard Schaefer, chief executive of De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, said Tuesday that De La Hoya had agreed to fight Pacquiao at the welterweight limit of 147 pounds and with eight-ounce gloves, terms that Pacquiao had sought, but that De La Hoya would not alter his split of the purse.” This sealed Manny to say no even when this could have made one heck of a great series of Next Manny Pacquiao Fights.

After knocking Diaz on the canvass on the 9th round of their last fight, as of now, Manny Pacquiao’s Next Fight would probably be between the Englishman Ricky Hatton at 140 pounds, Edwin Valero or Humberto Soto at 130 pounds. Personally, I would like to see a Manny Pacquiao VS Ricky Hatton Fight because of two things: Each is backed by a whole nation and the two fighters are pure entertainers.

Who do you think Manny would be going up next?

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    Its all been crazy stuff that has been happening lately. I know, i know. . . I haven’t posted in such a long time that I could be arrested by blogging police if there is any.

Im really busy with two things right now: Shaping up my affiliate marketing strategy and of course, the never-dying schoolwork!

In affiliate marketing, I enrolled myself in the Affiliate Classroom by Anik Singal and boy, i never regret having done so. Everything is laid up on you and all you have to do is open your eyes the the potential money you could be making. Im sorry, im just having this “greed jitters”. lol Will update you on how it goes though. Its not a surefire way of making money online, but im confident I can make money on this project. Will sure to let you guys know more about it.

In school-work, I know its not as exciting for you so im not going to elaborate more on this one except that im in my 4th year in Nursing and I’ll be graduating this march and take the board exam the next year. Hey, you can then call me the “blogging nurse”.

I was going over my blog hopping and I came across Ganesh’s Blog and I saw he’s having a contest that’s too tempting to miss.  One of the “up-for-grabs” is a free revolution theme that ive been dying to have for a few months. I do hope i’ll win this one. Other things that are very tempting are blog reviews, consultation with The University Kid and entrecard credits (lots of ‘em!). These are two people that im looking to correspond with in the near future and maybe work on projects together. As of now, I need to focus on my current one.

I definitely recommend joining Ganesh’s Contest. Aside from the prizes, youll also get the chance to network your blog. Join his contest here.

Well, thats pretty much it for now. Remember, its never too early to be greedy! lol

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I was told by my aunt (happens to be one the admirers of this blog) that an Australian national was scammed by her filipino boyfriend. So, being the ‘investigator wannabe’ that I am, I tried to google everything up to really get a glimpse of the issue. I arrived to Brian Gorrell’s blog and hey, the blog got had my hour and a half without me noticing. The issue is that Hot.

Well, this is not directly related to Filipinos Money Making Online but it sure does merit enough importance to blog about.

It turns out, Brian Gorrell had an affair with his Filipino boyfriend named “DJ Montano”, the relationship lasted a year and some months. Yes, it was a gay relationship just to clear things up. Allegedly, DJ Montano scammed him off by promising to open up several businesses in the Philippines including a portuguese restaurant and a travel booking agency. As he said, DJ Montano got more than $70,000 from him. Now that’s a large sum of money.

Before this blog will turn into a “Celeb Chuva Blog”, im going to let out some insights about this issue focusing more on blogging.

I realized a couple of things about Brian Gorrell’s Blog including:

• Blogging is an effective campaign method - Tell you what, his blog has an alexa rating of 82,730 at the time of this writing. That’s 5 times better rating than I had on my Teens Make Money blog which ran for 7 months. And the most amazing thing is, his blog is merely a month old! Hows that for an effective campaign?
• If you want people to sympathize, Blog! - Clearly, brian is not an expert blogger but he sure does have my support. After months of precious time dedicated to blogging, you will have this ‘blog-sense’ sort of a spiderman sense in a blog kind of way. (lol!) Anyways, I noticed one of his posts even had over 200 comments and counting! Ive ran through them and they are not converstational comments, they are people passing by saying they empathize, they hate, they love, some even dont care. No matter what people are saying, comments under posts would mean you are creating buzz and thats what Brian Gorrell’s Blog is all about.
• Cautious Blogging -I watched the evening news today and justices are looking into the possibility of charging Brian Gorrell of Libel. Now, this is not to scare you off blogging but my point is, if its not worth saying, you better not. I dont want to sound biased about this as I dont have business with Brian or DJ but you should be cautious enough as what you say can be read by millions.
• Brian Sure Knows How to Keep Visitors - Consciously or unconsciously, brian is keeping visitors by telling them that he is about to release ‘101 things public dont know about gucci group’ (the group of DJ along with Tim Yap, etc). This is creating much anticipation as his visitors would love to know more about the group. Im even anticipating for it my self. Just a tip though, he would have used feedburner to simplify everything up. Should I email him? hmm. . .

That’s it guys. I hope this one shed light to this issue. Did I miss anything? Feel free to let me know about it. Im keeping a close watch on this issue as well and ill be sure to let you know more about it.

Update: He has a petition running to keep Tim Yap, Celine Lopez and DJ Montano out of The Philippine Star. If you want to know more about it, please refer to this link.

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Yes, thats right. Pinoy Money Talk Forum or popularly known as PMT forum has just been hacked. Moderators and Administrators are given 24 hours to pay the hacker eGold before the posts are given to spammers or even worse, everything is going to be deleted.

This is the shocking email that I received today upon waking up and checking my emails. I thought its going to be update or contest the least but it sure is a shocking email. This is what was exactly written.

PMT Forum is hacked by isxk0r3iTx!!!!

aDmIN iS BANNED & aLL m0D3RaT0RZZ iS D3M0T3D!

TO aDMiN:pAY m3 Eg0LD oR i wIL D3L3T3D tHIZZ F0rUM aFT3R 24 h0urZZZ!!!! i wIL aLS0 s0Ld aLL iNF0rMAti0n oF memB3rZZ 2 spAMM3rZZZ!!!!

y0U HAV 24 h0urZZZ!!!!

An april fools joke by james of Pinoy Money Talk? Maybe but unlikely. This would be very off the line. I am a member of the forum and as you might have realized, member information will be given to spammers and this will not be a good thing.

Internet security has come a long way from its earliest beginnings but we certainly cannot be sure about everything. No one will ever be 100% protected. This serves as a warning to each and everyone of us. Pinoy Money Talk’s Hacking incident is one that would surely boil up blogosphere and online philippine communities for sure.

You can check it out for yourself here.

Update: Yeah Yeah. Laugh All you want. This email got me good. really good. This was a PMT APRIL FOOLs DAY Gimmick!  Nice One Admins and Mods. Good one! You got me good! hahaha!

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Many people are discovering how to make money online even while they still hold a steady 9 to 5 job. What many people have not given much thought to is how to use financial planning to make the best use of these additional monies. It is pretty common knowledge that our lifestyles tend to expand to fit our income, so if we don’t plan to use the extra income for specific ways to increase our future wealth it can easily be spent before we know it. Here are a number of things that you can do to help solidify your financial future while having fun making some extra money online:

Create an emergency fund – It is now recommended to have at least eight months or more of an emergency fund. With a recession appearing on the horizon, you may want to set that money aside in case times get tough.

Invest it – Obviously the stock market is a bit bouncy lately, but there are other ways to invest your money to get some interest on top of it. You can find online deals that give you money to start an account, like prosper.com or lendingclub.com where you might get a rate of return of up to 18% or more.

Open new accounts with perks - Even some banks will put an extra $25 to $50 in your account for opening specific types of accounts for savings or investments.

Open a health savings account (HSA) – You do need to have a high deductible health insurance plan to open one. You can assign a beneficiary and decide how to invest the money in the Health Savings Account so you get a return on your investment while you secure your health benefits.

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This is a post that I thought of some few weeks back but I wasnt able to find enough time to accommodate it as I anticipated that this is going to be a lengthy but a fruitful one. This is also in response to the people who emailed me, the people who commented asking for tips how to start a new blog and most of all, my friends offline who are dying to start a blog and join me earn real money online.

I also figured, if I am to start teaching people how to make money from blogging, I should start at the very basics and that is how to start a blog. So, we begin.

What is a blog?
- A blog ( its a short term for “weblog”) is generally a website that is frequently updated. It is made up of basically, three elements; the header, the side bar and the post bar. Posts are arranged in a reverse chronological order wherein the latest post would appear on the top. For a good example for this one, take a look at my Teens Make Money Blog and try comparing it with other blogs.
Refer to the attached Pic

Click the image to enlarge

Choosing A Blog Host

We already defined what a blog is, the next part is to choose where to “put our blog in” or choosing a Hosting. Now basically, there are two kinds of hosting; free and paid. Examples of the former are Blogger and Wordpress while the some examples of the latter is TypePad. For a beginning blogger, I strongly recommend that you start with a free blog host like Blogger because its easy and perhaps, its the easiest there is so, this tutorial will focus more on starting a new blog with blogger.

Selecting a Topic

Now that we are done with choosing our blog host which is, i presume, Blogger, its time to choose a topic or it is known as a “niche” in the blogosphere (blogging world).

Your topic must be something you are interested in, something you can comfortably talk about and something that is not just a one-time deal, it must be a long term topic. Generally, people look at blogs as a “personal diary” or a “what-did-I-eat-for-lunch” notes which is a partly correct but more like a big misconception. You can actually make a blog about something you are passionate about and earn money from it, sure it will not make you quit studying or working but everybody needs some extra cash. So, this How To Start a Blog tutorial will focus on making a targeted blog to earn money.

There are alot of ways to select a topic and different bloggers have varied techniques about this one and quite frankly, I dont agree with most of them since I think my own technique will be more helpful. Let’s try it out!

Take a pen and paper, and yes, im serious about this one. Look around you and randomly write down everything that interests you for 2 full minutes. Anything at all! It maybe from a childhood experience, from a vacation trip, your everyday gadgets, celebrity gossip, world peace, green peas, black eyed peas (im having fun here lol). The point is, try to come up with as many things as you can.

After two minutes, continue reading below.

So, im sure you had alot of things on your list. Now, go over them and try to think about three things:

1. Longevity - Eliminate the things that are just short term, something short-lived and something in the past or ex-post facto event.
2. Relevance - Get rid of things that you cannot confidently talk about or you have very little knowledge about. So, if youre a high school student, make sure youre not talking about forex or engineering.
3. Audience Drag - This is the most important thing that you should think about. If you want to earn money from blogging, you want people to drive into your blog, get useful information, click on your ads, comment on your blog and come back next time around to do the exact same thing. Be sure your topic is something that people are interested in. Some examples are : Car care tips - People love cars and everybody has one. Now, you want to put in ways to clean a car, tips on how to shine a car and in the process, endorse products from car wax companies (I’ll teach you more about this one as we go on, so be sure to subscribe to my blog) this in turn will in turn, make your visitors happy and of course, with your commission, you end up as a happy lad each day. Sounds simple enough?

So, i came up with my mini-list in here, im sure you have alot more:

bikes, scouting, basketball, Summer Hong Kong Vacation, anime, military stuff, books, nursing, 2006 christmas, mp3 players

With longevity factor, im getting rid of 2006 Christmas Season and Summer HK vacation. Think about who’s going to be interested in your own experience which happened only one time in your life? And after you write everything that happened there, what are you going to write about in your next post? You see, you should avoid these circumstances in selecting your topic.

With relevance factor, I thought about my experience as a junior scout but that was 5 years ago, im not up to date with the informations, events or personalities so im skipping that up. For the military stuff, I dont know anything about military stuff because im still a student and im not even planning of joining the army so a big x over it.

The last one, the audience drag, hmmm. . . I came up with alot of topics here and this is going to become one of the crucial parts in selecting a topic. So, you have alot of things you are passionate about, something you can talk about for years but you are not sure if its a potential “money earner” and if people are searching for it. There is nothing more reliable in the internet than google and were using that to our advantage here since were going to monetize our will-be-blog with them. Were using Google’s Keyword Tool for this one. So click here.

And you will come up with this page: click image to enlarge

Input a keyword on the box and sometimes, there’s a captcha image verification so fill that form too. So, with this example, I used bikes and basketball as my keyword and i came up with results like these:

Basically, what we are looking for is a keyword that has lowest possible “advertiser competition” with the highest “Average Seach Volume”. What this means is that if there are alot of advertisers for that keyword, the chance of you getting on the first page in the search engines would also be low. Furthermore, you want the highest “average search volume” to have the biggest traffic possible and this is pretty much our goal. Take as much traffic with the lowest competition possible.

So, if you go down the list, you will see this set of keywords:

Now, based from our goal, were looking for the perfect keyword and on this particular set of keywords, the best possible keyword to use is “Full Suspension Bikes”. You might ask, but there are better rated keywords like “Mikes Bikes”. Yes, youre right but youre wrong. Let me tell you why. With the number of internet marketers, bloggers and pro-money makers on the web that saturate almost every keyword possible, the chance of you getting the Perfect keyword is very slim. So, were going after the next perfect keyword and on this particular list, “Mikes bikes” is something from a biker or something that you wouldnt like to promote because in the first place, how can you get clicks from this guy’s business? So, our best bet here is full suspension bikes.

Depending on your topic, this is going to take up much preparation time for you guys. Just take note though, choosing a topic is very crucial since its the foundation of your blog and changing to another topic will not do you much good so better choose wisely.

That’s it for today’s lesson guys! In the next post, I will show you how to start a blog after you have chosen your topic. I’ll give you some time to pause and think about your final topic. Be sure to subscribe to my blog to get more tips on how to make money from blogging.

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    If you have been quite a fan of money making blogs like John Chow, Shoemoney or Courtney Tuttle, by now you might have noticed that they all say that google adsense is not just the name of the game. They all have affiliate sites of their choice which is taking a whole lot of percentage in their monthly earnings. Sad to say, in my 6 months blogging, I made the biggest affiliate mistake ever! 

What could be a graver mistake than choosing the wrong affiliate program for blog?

OK, here’s the story, 4 months ago, Ive read in some guy’s blog that he is making money from affiliate sites and he pointed out Clickbooth and Commision Junction as his best affiliate sites ever coz hes making like a hundred a month or so, and boy, I was enticed! I was so narrow minded I didnt even have the chance to get other’s opinions, do a research about its potential money or other sites that offered better. None of these! Nadda!

So, I worked out on strategies, experiments and tactics to have better exposure of these offers and earned quite a nifty sum of money from ClickBooth coz i totally scrapped Commision Junction simply because I did not like the layout of the site. See how narrow minded I was?! Anyways, I earned around $450 or so from this site while being blindfolded from better affiliate sites.

Last week, I started to evaluate my performance in comparison with the master affiliates like Zac Johnson or Uber Affiliate and I was enlightened to the truth that I made the biggest affiliate mistake ever. Why, let me tell you this one, majority of the earnings I got was driving bloggers to Clickbooth and be a publisher as well and that made me $10 per person i refer them. As it turns out, I couldve had more if I joined another site like MoreNiche.com who is offering $20 per person referral. Hows that for a bad loss? I couldve made $900 or more by now, this is not including offers ranging from a few dollars to $160 per sale. God, the moment I saw this, I had trouble sleeping.

So, here’s the catch for today’s lesson:

1. Think Big - Dont just take a blogger’s word for it. Research, ask opinions and compare yourself to the master affiliates, dont just try to earn a penny, aim to earn even more than what the master’s are.  This takes patience and persistence but hey, take my word for this one : “No hardwork is left unnoticed“. (thanks Greg Hawkins!)
2.  Be updated - Another mistake I committed was being contented. That was it, I was never aware that people around me are making twice as I was and I got blinfolded from the mere cents I was earning. God, i can get over it still.
3. Believe in yourself - Dont just wait for your masters to make your jaw drop each month when they post their monthly income reports, try to have some goals on how to make money more than them.

That’s it for today’s lesson lads! Dont follow my mistake and be spared of this feeling I am having right now, I tell you, its not pretty.

• 1 Comment

     In starting a blog, one of the few things that you need to capitalize on is to have constant links towards your blog to increase its “relevance” to search engines, this can be done in numerous ways that my fingers wouldnt be enough to enumerate them (i have 10 to make things clear. lol). I am going to tackle this one out in the coming posts but for now, im sticking with two ways to get links to your blog.

Now, you can do this either organic way, artificial way, or both. Organic link building can be obtained from personally going to blogs and asking bloggers to have link exchange with you. This is the most employed method in the blogosphere and its very easy and most of all, its free! It has a big setback though, its very time consuming and laborious. The second method, the artificial way, is getting links from paid links, contest links or sponsored links. Its an exchange wherein you give something to get that link you want like having blog contests to get links from participating blogs or paying a particular price for the link to your site for a specific time (e.g. $20 for 1 month). This is by far the easiest way to get links in the blogosphere and its setback is obvious, its expensive! And i would not recommend it to a starting blogger.

In relation of today’s lesson, I am going to employ the organic ways of getting links to this blog; getting high quality blogs to link to this one. A tip though, when requesting links from bloggers, put yourself in a position where you are the beggar and you are asking for alms but do it in a dignified way by offering something in return like free ad spots or blog reviews. Im actually in the process of asking links by offering site reviews for their bloggers and the first one who I approached readily approved and im reviewing his blog in the coming days.

That’s it for today’s lesson class! Do come back for more money making tips and blog secrets. I suggest you subscribe to my blog and ill make sure it will be well worth it.

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    Walking by the local streets, we see usual scenes like watching jeepney drivers working for a couple of coins a trip, construction workers never minding the danger of their work and fish-ball vendors who never seem to tire. Despite these realities, its very ironic to think that pinoys are actually making an impact in the internet!

I was browsing over at entrecard dashboard and I came up to a great blog named heavilytrafficked. Alex ,the author, was expressing his fascination with what he called as “Pinoy Phenomenon” because the word just refused to leave his mind. He also projected that in the coming years, it can be expected that alot of pinoy blogs would make it to the heavily trafficked category. You can read the rest of his article here.

Well alex,  we sure are looking forward to that day! And for my fellow pinoy bloggers, I think this is something to tickle our “proud bone”.

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