The island of Corregidor, also known as “The Rock”, is one of the important historical places in the Philippines. This small island stood its ground and protected Manila and the islands of the Philippines from the attacking Japanese soldiers. An old saying goes that “Great things come in small packages” and Corregidor proved just that.

The old canons, mortars and ruins that the second world war left in Corregidor not only tell stories about Filipino’s courage but are also perfect for a prenuptial pictorial. This is what my wife and I agreed about as we chose the island of Corregidor as the location for our prenup last November 2009. Here’s a slide show of our photos:

All I can say is that the place is perfect! Here’s just a few tips for you when you are planning to visit Corregidor:

• Lunch usually comes with the cruise package.
• Staying overnight is always the better option because day tours are just too quick.
• Bring your own food for merienda because buying food from stores in Corregidor is expensive. The price is around three times the normal price of the goods.
• If you are going on a pictorial, renting your own van is better than riding the tour bus because they can only stay in one location for a few minutes.

The internet is probably one of the most dynamic industries in the world of business. Trends can change without warning and before you know it, there’s suddenly a lot of catching up to do. Search engines, competitors and people’s preferences are just some of the many factors that affect these trends. This fact made me confused and got me thinking on what is the real reason behind the continuous drop in internet earnings. Has there been a recent change in trend in the online industry or is this just still the effect of the economic recession?

New clients that require services are rare and existing clients demand lower prices. There is also a significant decrease in the orders and jobs from clients.  The quality of my work hasn’t change so I’m pretty sure that it has nothing to do with the drop in my earnings. Other freelancers that I personally know, including my sister Judy, is also experiencing the same situation.

Whether it’s the change in trend or the economic crisis that is causing this, I sure hope that my earnings soon pick up. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that I will again be applying for a job soon.

Today is the 9th day of September in the year of 2009. That’s 09/09/09! This number have many meanings but most people believe that this number brings good luck and fortune. Well, let’s see if this number brings good luck and fortune to my blog with this post on this 999.

So much about the date, I would like to update my blog with what I’ve been busy doing lately. As usual, my time for work is being limited because we’ve been working on some wedding stuffs and Facebook of course. This past weeks, Dulce and I have already accomplished some of the most important things like the church reservation, reception and photo and video coverage of our wedding. Here are some photos from our contract signing with Larry Asio of La Majarica/Coconut Grill:

We went fo Kquentors for our photo and video coverage because we believe that their style and technique are perfect for us. They gave us a good package deal and we are happy with what we are getting. We are still thinking about (and convincing Dulce’s mom) having our Prenup pictorial in Macau but just thinking about it already excites us. So I guess there’s a good chance that we are going there.

It is expected that we are going to get busier with wedding preparations in the coming weeks but I hope I can also manage to find time to work. As we all know, work never ends in the online industry and the amount of work and effort that you exert is directly proportional to your income. So yeah… income has been down lately for me.

Blogs are one of the simplest yet most powerful tools in the internet today because it allows anyone to publish his own thoughts, ideas and experiences in the world wide web. Since Blogging has started in the late 90′s, it is now widely used as an online journal by millions of people worldwide. With the development and availability of free and easy to use blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type and Live Journal, anyone can easily start his own blog.

Aside from being a public online journal, blogs can also be a good source of income. Full time moms, employees with regular jobs and internet entrepreneurs can earn money from their blogs whether they do it part-time or full time. This can be in the form of sponsored blogpost entries, text links, banner advertisements or Pay Per Click (PPC) ads like adsense. On the other hand, businesses use blogs for marketing purposes because they offer cheaper advertising opportunities.

Though the true value of the internet and blogging is yet to be explored in the Philippines, a good number of Filipinos have already established and maintain their own blogs. Blogging is a good step for Filipinos to start familiarizing themselves with the internet world whether they are looking to socialize, share their thoughts, earn money or just write about anything. For whatever reasons Filipinos blog, I strongly believe that it is the good start in exploring how to make money online whether through blogging or any other ways. This is because through a simple tool like a blog, Filipinos can exchange ideas with other bloggers around the world. I’ve proven this many times already by learning new ideas from blogs of other internet entrepreneurs and increasing my income through these ideas.

The Philippine Blog Awards is a big event for the Philippine blogging community because this is where exceptional Filipino owned blogs are recognized. Since the first PBA in 2007, the number of Filipino bloggers participating in this event has increased to a few hundreds. With the rapid increase of blogging’s popularity in the Philippines, it is expected that more Pinoys will participate in the PBA of the coming years.

If you are a Filipino blogger, what is it in for you if you join the Philippine Blog Awards? Aside from the exciting prices that you can win from this event, you will also have the chance to get your blog known in the Filipino blogging community. Let other bloggers know that your blog exist and that you can offer interesting reads. You can also encourage other Filipinos to set up their own blogs and start blogging. If you attend the awarding ceremony, you might also bump into new blogger friends.

I have been working in the internet industry for more than two years now and blogging for a year and a half but haven’t participated in an event such as the Philippine Blog Awards. This year, I decided to see what it’s like and join the event by nominating my own blog. I’m not actually looking to win any award in this event but I am joining to support it. If you are a Filipino and have a blog, go ahead and join the Philippine Blog Awards. Let’s support a great event that is organized for us, Filipino bloggers, and help it grow.

For the past weeks, I’ve been really busy preparing for a special event – the marriage proposal to my girlfriend, Dulce. We have been together for more than six years now and I can say that there’s no doubt in me that she is the girl that I want to spend the rest of my life with.

The Plan

One of the hardest tasks that I’ve faced in preparing for my proposal is coming up with a good plan. All I knew was that I wanted the proposal to be special, romantic and memorable. With the help of Mitch and Trish, we were able to come up with a great plan.

Marvin and I have the same birthday and we are used to celebrating it together with our friends. So what we did was organize a formal dinner that was supposed to be the birthday celebration for the two of us. I wanted it to be intimate and cozy and we found just the perfect place for the proposal. Cafe Alfonso located at Leviste Street in Makati agreed to host the event. The cafe is usually closed during Saturdays but thanks to Ms. Joan, the owner of the place, because she agreed to open that day and accommodate us. Flower arrangements and decorations were provided by Trish and they were really stunning.

Of course, the night wouldn’t be romantic without music. We got the services of “The Tales of Music Ensemble” and all I can say it that they’re great.

The Proposal

All was set and everything was good to go. August 8, 2009 is going to be one of the most memorable days of my life. The place was ready, the food is good, the music is romantic and friends came in to support me. Of course, Dulce had no idea that this night is going to be extra special. All she knew was it was going to be a birthday celebration of me and my friend.

After the dinner, Marvin and I were supposed to give a speech. And when it was my turn, this was what happened:

So that’s it. That night was definitely one of the most important parts of my life and my relationship with Dulce. Thanks to those who took a part of it and helped me make it happen. To Dulce, I love you baby! Thanks for accepting my proposal and agreeing to spend the rest of our lives together.

Over the past years, Yahoo! has been a consistent contender in being the top search engine used world wide. Though Google takes the most share of internet users and searchers, Yahoo! continues to strive and offer more and better search experience. Recently, an all new Yahoo! homepage with improved layout, design, features and overall usability has been launched.

Yahoo! still has everything that we love about it plus more! The Yahoo! engineers that worked on the new design tells their story in this video:

Video About New Homepage of Yahoo!

The new Yahoo! is designed to serve as the only website that you’ll ever need. First of all, Yahoo! takes a step in being a social website by allowing its users to set a status and share it to their friends. Your details are not only visible to other people but you are also searchable through them. You can now also add other websites that you love to your favorites whether it’s from Yahoo! or not.

Yahoo! claims that their new homepage is specifically designed for the people with a great improvement in usability and functions that allow them to personalize it. Above all improvements, the main focus of their redesign has been on the speed of their website. Now you can have access to everything that you need on one page in a blazing speed! If you want access to your favorite websites, breaking news, videos or photos, Yahoo is now your ideal homepage.

Getting a link from authority websites is powerful in SEO because links from such websites are given more weight by search engines. This will give a boost to the website that they are linking to and help in improving SERPs and increasing its pagerank. Nowadays, backlinks from link directories are already discounted and given less weight. However, authority link directories still provide the link juice that is needed for search engine optimization. Some of the most reputed link directories on the web are DMOZ Open Project, Google Directory and Yahoo! Directory.

Because of the impact that the said authority link directories can bring in optimizing websites, many webmasters and SEO specialists try to get listed on them. Submitting your websites to be listed in these directories is free (except for Yahoo! Directory) but not all websites are accepted. Directory editors follow strict website submission and quality standards and guidelines to maintain their reliability and good reputation.

Today I just found out that this make money online blog was accepted to both DMOZ and Google directories. The listings are under deep categories but nevertheless, getting listed on both of these directories is a great achievement for me. Though I am not actually looking to optimize this blog for search engines, being listed on authority directories proves that the content of blog is recognized for its good quality. Ever since I had this blog set up, my focus was never to earn lots of money from it but instead, share useful information to my readers and friends.

So far, I can say that my goal of sharing knowledge to the internet community is slowly paying off. This also inspired me to continue blogging about SEO, internet news and ways how to make money through the internet. So stay tuned and check out this blog regularly because more useful articles and interesting internet news are coming soon.

Receiving payments through personal Paypal accounts are no longer free! Yup! It’s true and it has been a few days since Paypal implemented these new fees structure for personal Paypal accounts.

Last Friday on the fifth of June, my sister Judy was surprised that a payment that she received in her personal Paypal account had charges. Of course, her initial reaction was this is clearly a mistake. She immediately contacted Paypal support through email, stated her case and demanded to get a refund for fees that were mistakenly deducted. Well, what did we expect? The response was to visit the fees page of Paypal. Not contented with the response that she got, I advised my sister to call support and so we can hear answers to our questions directly from a customer service representative. Curious about my sister’s case, I stayed beside her throughout the conversation.

We were both surprised to learn that there was no mistake at all. Paypal has really started to charge fees to personal account. According to the support person, the fees page of Paypal isn’t updated yet but they have definitely started charging fees. I checked my recent Paypal transactions and found out that fees were deducted from all the payments that I received starting June 5, 2009.

You can try and visit the send money page in your Paypal account and you will see the new “Purchase” and “Personal” tabs. The receiver of the Paypal money will incur fees if you send money and selected “Purchase”. However, if transactions are made under “Personal”, no fees will be charged.

Damn! Where did that come from? No email notifications, no updates in Paypal’s Policy Updates page and just nothing to let us know about this. Oh well, I guess there’s no longer anything that we can do about this.

This is not good at all especially for internet entrepreneurs like me. I’m sure there are many people out there who used to provide two Paypal email addresses, one personal and one premier, to their clients to avoid fees. I’m guilty of doing this too. Imposing fees to personal accounts just means that our revenues will be reduced by a few hundred dollars.

The internet opens a big opportunity for both online and offline businesses. Through it, you can reach more people and increase your businesses’ popularity and sales. This is why many businesses are allotting some of their marketing and advertising budgets in building corporate websites and online shops. These websites are cost effective marketing tools that has already been proven effective by many business organizations in the past years.

Being a graduate of a business course, I know how much your marketing strategy can affect the growth of your business. For some businesses, particularly those which are in the sales industry, their growth are determined through the increase in their sales. Using third party sellers or referrer which are better known as affiliates is a better way to increase your sales. The main reason for this is that you don’t have to spend a penny if you don’t make a sale. You will only have to pay commissions to your affiliates if their referrals result to actual sales.

Though using affiliates to market your business and generate sales is a great strategy, implementing and tracking such campaign is not easy without the right resources. Such task will require you a powerful software to manage and organize your affiliates, sales and reports. However, hiring an experienced programmer to create such program will be expensive. If you want this kind of software that is already proven to help you manage your affiliate program, try out the OSI affiliate software.

This PHP software will help you manage your affiliate program with ease. Here are the key feautures of the OSI affiliate software:

• Create Unlimited Affiliate Programs and Users
• Works with ALL Gateway Companies
• Multi-tier Affiliate System
• Duplicate Sale Protection
• Advertiser Tracker System
• Advanced Reporting
• Create Custom Email Campaigns
• Password Protected Backend
• Mange Thousands of Affiliates

What’s best about the OSI affiliate is that you can have this affiliate tracking software for less than a hundred dollars. That’s as cheap as it can get for a software that is this powerful. Whether you are just starting an affiliate program to increase your sales or you want to better manage your existing affiliate program, the OSI Affiliate is your ideal software.

When the term “internet marketing” is read or heard, the first thing that comes to mind is high search engine rankings. Though search engine optimization is an important part of internet marketing, SEO should not be your only focus. More than just building your backlinks, targeting the right keywords and stuffing your website with good content, marketing your products, services and websites in the internet requires a deeper and more comprehensive approach.

So your website has finally reached the first page of SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page) and you started to drive a good volume of organic and targeted traffic to your website. What’s next? Does this mean that we’ve crossed the finished line and achieved a successful internet marketing campaign? Well, I’m afraid not. Driving visitors to your website does not mean that your are actually capturing the interest and satisfying the needs of people but merely having them look at your site. Just think about this – How many of your visitors actually stay on your website for more than one minute and how many of them are going to visit your site again in the future?

Knowing, Understanding, Communicating and Predicting are the basic steps in a good internet marketing strategy. Tools like online surveys, analytics and other reports on trends can help you gather more data and analyze them to come up with good marketing approach.

If you are serious about optimizing your business potential by promoting it through the internet, don’t just do SEO! Give it everything you have – know the needs of your target audiences, understand these needs, provide them and reach out to say that “hey, I got just what you need”. But don’t forget that everything in the business world is dynamic so learn to predict trends based on reliable data.