This article is a reprint from http://onewebplaza.com . The reason why I’m posting this here, because I wanted to emphasize to my fellow OFW’s how important is owning a web site now and in the future. If millions of other computer users and Internet hobbyists from around the world are earning now, while they are at their own homes, then why not other Filipinos? Why would Filipinos sell their properties to pay unscrupulous job recruiters, to work abroad for their families, when they could stay with their families and earn money by using the powers of the world wide web? Below, follows the reprint:

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Top 7 Reasons Why You Need a Personal Website

Having a website of your own equals entering into an invaluable communication environment. There are at least 7 reasons why it is highly advisable for you to be present online:

1. Represents your personal profile
A website can be your virtual portrait, showing off your personal self to the world on a 24/7 basis. Among the most popular ways of presenting your personality online is keeping a webblog (otherwise known as online diary) or a photo gallery, where your friends can stay up-to-date with your daily living.

2. Spreads your voice across the world
A website can be your global “tribune” where you are able to share your knowledge, experience and enthusiasm with people who have common interests, but with whom you might not otherwise have crossed paths. A very popular idea-voicing tool is the discussion board, better known as “forum”. You can also have a guestbook on your site, where people can discuss your postings.

3. Lets you be in touch with people at a distance
A website can be a meeting place for making new acquaintances with people of different religion, nationality and age, as well as for keeping in touch with friends who may be on the other side of the world. Thanks to the almost unlimited online communication possibilities you can conduct one-to-one conversations with many different people directly from your website.

4. Broadens disabled people’s interaction with the world
A website empowers people with limited access, due to handicap or illness, to broaden their communication with others. A website can be a physically disabled person’s door to the dynamic world, allowing him/her to bridge over the difficulties of having a “different” everyday life. It can even be their office, where they can present and deliver certain home-made products/services directly from their living room.

5. Creates a web skill development environment
A website can introduce you to the secrets of www. The contemporary web design technologies have brought the art of creating a website just a few clicks away from the inexperienced user. Thanks to the popular WYSWYG (what you see is what you get) web design tools, absolutely everyone (irrespective of age or education degree) can build their own web page without any previous experience.

6. Makes extra profit for you with minimum investment on your part
A website can make residual profit for you, while you are sleeping or enjoying your free time. Thanks to the up-to-date techniques for bringing traffic to your website, you can earn easy money by simply having visitors click on certain product/service promos or links that are relevant to your site content pages (e.g. Google Adsense/Adwords ad solutions) without any initial investment.

7. Makes you a member of the biggest community of the world
A website is a must-have personal attribute nowadays, just like mobile phones and computers are. The fast developing technologies have converted having a website from a whim into a modern necessity. As of today, almost everyone has a web site, whereas twice as many people are expected to be having their own personal space in the global World Wide Web cosmos in the near future. Be forward-thinking, join this trend.

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As I’ve told you in one of my previous articles (Moneymaking You Could Start in 2010) here, you could start owning a free blog site by opening accounts in either Google.com or WordPress.com and start your own free personal blog as a starter. Once you’re already comfortable playing around, doing your blogging from free sites in Google and WordPress.com, I advise you to get the service of this powweb advertised above and below this article. It’s very easy to build your own commercial web site at this web provider. This WordPress blog you are reading now is just one of the blog programs powweb have for you. And since we have the same web provider, you could personally email me to seek advise and solutions if you encounter a problem. Imagine at $3.88 per month this powweb service is cheaper than a Burger King Whopper meal.

How do you use other people’s money to start a business, or even expand your business? Contrary to what majority have thought, that you can’t start a business without enough money to start with, I started my tricycle business at my hometown from P500.00 only in 1989. I used that money to buy an old, dilapidated tricycle sidecar which I attached to my five-year old motorcycle. The brand new sidecar that year was at P7000.00 to P15,000.00. While a brand new motorcycle then was from P40,000.00 to P50,000.00 for 100cc models. By November 1991, before I left, to migrate to US the value of my 14 tricycles was worth P1.1 millions.

When my tricycle driving started to give me additional income, I started saving my extra money at our Gubat St. Anthony Credit Cooperative. From my saved share capital of P1500.00, I was able to borrow twice that amount and used it to open a small sari-sari store. The place that I rented to start a sari-sari store business was a big grocery story that was left by the owners when they moved to Mindanao. Our neighbors would laugh at my store, because it was really so huge, but I didn’t have enough display or products to sell from the meager capital of P3000.00. I could still remember, that to have varieties of display, I would only buy (for example) three pieces of instant noodles, instead of one dozen for a particular flavor. In order to make it grow, I had to roll my tricycle driving income to buy more items for sale, until that huge grocery story looked like a real grocery store when sales trucks from popular products started coming to our store and leave their products to be paid on a certain period like after 30 days, 60 days, or even longer. Two years later, my small sari-sari store that started from a small capital of P3000.00, grew and expanded into three grocery stores, and a restaurant.

So, from these businesses how did I use the strategy of using other people’s money to start and grow a business? As I have already mentioned in my sari-sari store business, my initial investment in our credit union was only P1500.00, but I was able to borrow P3,000.00 – the other P1500.00 of which was from the money of the other members of the credit cooperative.

As I expanded my sari-sari store into the level of grocery store, I started accepting offers of sales agents coming to our store with their truckloads of products to leave their products, and I’ll pay them after 30 days, 60 days, or beyond. I never let the sales from these products sitting on my drawers. I see to it that whatever sales I would get from these products left to me, I will roll them for buying fast-selling products.

When Beer na Beer was introduced in the market, the sales agent of this beverage would leave me several cases of beer. But since it was a new product in the market, drinkers shy away from buying it and preferred the popular San Miguel Beer. From this situation, however, I’ve thought of selling Beer na Beer at manufacturer’s price in our store – with no profit. But after selling all those beers, I would actually use the sales of Beer na Beer in buying rice, sugar, charcoal, and other fast-selling products. By the time the Beer na Beer sales agent gets back to my store, I’ve made hundreds of profits already from rolling their money to other fast-selling products.

How did I build a tricycle business from one old tricycle unit to a fleet of 14 units? – the biggest number of tricycles owned by one person in our town. Instead of getting one brand new motorcycle, and pay it full, I would go to the dealer’s manager instead and tell him that I wanted to get three motorcycles payable in one year, with down payments from that amount for one single motorcycle. Now, which one is better, having one brand new motorcycle, or three brand new motorcycles?

Once the three motorcycles were converted into tricycles, I started paying back the motorcycles twice or double their regular monthly amortizations, from the income that I get from these three units. So, in less than six months, I have three fully paid motorcycles already for my tricycle business. By the seventh month, I would do the same strategy, adding three more fully-owned units before the year ends. To shorten the story, using this kind of strategy, I was able to build a tricycle business with 14 units in less than two years. Portions of the money I used to build this business were from the motorcycle manufacturers and dealers, when they loaned me their motorcycles to be paid in one year.

They’re not hard strategies, if you’re going to analyse them, right? You’ll never find them in the book, only in this blog. So, if you’re interested in starting and growing a business the “street-smart” way, please regularly read my articles here. My next article would be “How to use other people to make money for you?”

How do you get RICH, or become a MILLIONAIRE? How do you get rich even if you are just a farmer, factory worker or a member of the middle class? This was a question posted by another Filipino in one of the more than 40 Yahoo Groups where I was a member. My reply in the Internet posting was, anybody starting from a farmer, a factory worker, or a member of the middle class has all the chances of becoming rich if he wants to. I am a living proof of this claim. I started my tricycle business from P500.00 old sidecar I attached to my five year old motorcycle. From one old tricycle my transportation business surged into 14 units of tricycles. From one small sari-sari store, it multiplied into three grocery stores and one restaurant. From being buried under the ravine of unpaid loans, my businesses and properties surged to a P5 million worth in two years, before I migrated to US to start a new kind of struggle in life – raise my small children, together with my Nurse wife, in America.

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Hardest Beginning of my Life

On June 20, 1986, at Sorsogon, Sorsogon, the most devastating and unforgettable event in my life happened when my wife was a victim of a vehicular accident just four days after we got married. The tricycle where she was riding was hit by an overspeeding passenger jeep, which killed the driver of the tricycle only few minutes of his arrival in the hospital. My wife was in serious condition with a broken left arm, and seriously injured head. I was so afraid, she was next to die, when I saw her head bloodied and her scalp peeled-off from her skull. That horrible scene, seeing her covered by blood from broken left arm and injured head was unforgetable to me, that even now, I’m always afraid of seeing blood.

The only cash money on my pocket that night was less than P20.00. We just got married four days before this accident happened. So, our supposed honeymoon period was spent in the hospital. The driver of the jeep that hit the tricycle immediately went into hiding in Manila. The policemen could not find him anywhere.

Because my wife and I were both government employees, she was operated in a government provincial hospital, and was paid through our MEDICARE policies. To pay off other medical bills that were not covered by MEDICARE, I applied for three months accrued leave from my office and took a three-month advanced salary.

By the time she was released from the hospital, I had no more money to support even our daily subsistence for food. So, I took another laborer job at Philippine National Oil Corporation (NAPOCOR) while I was on leave at Fiber Development Authority (FIDA). Even with this additional job, our life was miserably a hand-to-mouth existence, because of our expenses for my wife’s medicines and rehabilitation.

There were times when my wife and I would just split a small pack of Skyflakes biscuit for our lunch everytime we visit the clinic for her regular therapy in Legaspi City. The travel from our town to the rehab clinic was a one-hour bus ride, and the fare had to be raised by us little by little before the schedule comes.

When her therapy period was completed, we could not even buy a gift for our very kind and caring doctor. So, we gave him only a big ripe jackfruit to show him our gratitude for saving the life of my wife.

We Were Buried to Debt

My wife was able to go back to her job as a Nurse in a government hospital only after a year of recovery. I kept my job in FIDA as a Fiber Development Officer. We slowly recovered from this horrible incident, but we were buried to debt. Our GSIS house and lot loan had been unpaid for several months. Our house was bare, with only an old bed I scavenged from my parent’s house and a junk office table from my father’s office as our dining table.

To have extra earnings, I thought of driving a tricycle after my nine to five job. So, from our barely P500.00, my wife and I searched for old sidecar in the town, which I could attach to my old motorcycle. The two-wheeled vehicle was a five year old Yamaha 100 cc motorcycle which I loaned from the National Food and Agriculture Council (NFAC), in line with my work as a fieldworker. It was my means of transportation in going to remote barrios and mountainous places, which could not be reached by public vehicles, because they’re either mountainous or had no public roads. It was loaned to us, and paid on monthly basis through salary deduction.

I only knew how to drive a two-wheeled motorcycle. So, when I got my tricycle from the shop, I started practice-driving it in places where there were less pedestrians and traffic. There were times that I would crash on rice paddies, or fall on shallow street canals. But I had to bear all the dangers, because I needed more money to start a family.

Tricycle driving was a dangerous and dirty job, but a very decent way of earning a living. There was a time when a male passenger threatened to kill me instead, after driving him and his three girl companions when I insisted on asking for their fares during a dark late night. There were times when my tricycle would breakdown in the middle of the highway, because of overloading. But these threats did not force me from stopping a decent way of earning a living.

Unlike the 8-hour job in the government or private establishments with limited income, making money in tricycle driving depends on how long you would be driving your tricycle in a day. The longer you drive it, the better chance to earn more.

My patience and perseverance slowly bear good fruits. I was earning more from tricycle driving, than from my meager monthly earnings in my government job. That was because I was driving my tricycle up to midnight, had a little sleep for three to four hours, and drive again at four in the morning. I would only stop driving when it was time to go back to my day job. I drove my tricycle for 16 to 20 hours per day on Saturdays and Sundays (a total of 32 to 40 hours on weekends), making my income almost the same as the combined income of my driving on weekdays (30 to 35 hours at 5 to 7 hours per day).

After few months of working double job days and nights, I was starting to become a role model in our town. More and more government employees were buying their own tricycles, too, and started driving for a living at night times and weekends.

The P1500.00 Buy-and-Sell Business

One day, my brother-in-law who was working in Yamaha, informed us that there was a repossessed RS 100 in their branch. The company was selling it for only P1500.00. So, I immediately bought the motorcycle, out of my savings from driving a tricycle. I repaired the motorcycle myself. I learned repairing motorcycle by simply watching the mechanics at first. Then, I would try doing the job repair myself until I developed the skills from trial and error. This was the same thing that I did when I learned building and repairing computers and servers in New York City, which I will tell you later in this book.

After few days of testing the RS 100 motorcycle, I started displaying it at the place where the tricycle drivers were parking to pick-up passengers, and informed everybody that I was selling it for P7000.00. In just few days I got a buyer for the motorcycle, and immediately earned P5500.00 from my investment of P1500.00!

Out of the motorcycle sale, I joined the Gubat St. Anthony Credit Cooperative (GSACC) with P500.00 initial share capital. The GSACC is one of the millionaire credit cooperatives now in the Philippines. I was only a kid when this cooperative was founded on April 8, 1964 by 30 Gubatnons with the help of a parish priest. It started with P222.00 share capital from each of the founding members, or a starting capital of P6660.00. As of 2005 the coop has grown with 3,703 members and an asset of P85,162,531.18.

Another portion of the sales of that motorcycle was deposited in a local Philippine National Bank for our emergency needs. The accident that happened to my wife, with me having less than P20.00 only in my pocket was a big lesson to me. So, I always make it a point that I had savings for any kind of emergencies.

Next Project,  A Sari-Sari Store

After I invested a share capital of P1500.00 to the GSACC, I applied for a loan of P3000.00, or double the amount of my share capital from the Gubat St. Anthony Credit Cooperative. I used this money to open a sari-sari store which was a couple of blocks away from my home. The store place was once a big grocery store abandoned by the owner, when they moved to Mindanao. With my meager capital of P3000.00, the commodities that I was selling did not even fill-up one-third of the store’s space. So, people passing-by, see mostly empty glass display cabinets and shelves instead of products to buy. Some of my neighbors would even make fun of my store. But the mockeries did not bother me.

I started filling up the store with more commodity products by buying more stuff for sale from my extra earnings from tricycle driving. Since my wife and I were working from our government jobs at daytime, the management of the store was delegated to our maid at daytime. My wife manages only the store at night, while I also drove my tricycle. In just a few months, our sari-sari store was starting to look like a real grocery store, with more commodities on display filling up the once empty glass displays and shelves.

With our income doubling every month we started to buy some little luxuries in life, like a second-hand TV set and a second-hand VHS player. We were cooking now in a single-burner fueled by Shellane gas, instead of firewood. We had two maids now – one working exclusively in our store, and the other working at our home.

A Never-Ending Challenge

When my wife left for USA to work as a Professional Nurse in New York City, I was left with two young boys to take care and the businesses to manage. So, I resigned from my 10-year job in the government.

My freedom to work as full-time businessman gave me more ideas to grow my business. I was learning a lot of tricks to make more money by using other people’s money. When Beer na Beer was introduced in the market, the distributor would leave piles of cases in my store to be introduced to customers. But since the customers were accustomed to drinking San Miguel Beer, the Beer na Beer stayed in our storeroom untouched. I then thought of selling them at manufacturer’s price, with no profit for me. The new beer brand started selling, but its proceeds were used by me in buying and selling rice, charcoal, and sugar. Even if I didn’t make profit from Beer na Beer, I was making 5 to 10 times of profit from rice, charcoal, and sugar that were faster to sell when they were repacked.

I used the same strategy with the chocolates left to me by Serg’s, but payable in three-months with post-dated check. I would sell the chocolates at no profit, then roll the proceeds on other fast-selling items. For three months, I was using the money from Serg’s company to make more money for my store.

More Strategies to Build Business

I’ve thought of adding a new unit to my tricycle, which I was driving at night. But then, I’ve realized it was better to apply for a one-year loan on three brand new motorcycles, instead of fully paying one brand new motorcycle. I knew that agents had commissions on the sales of motorcycles. So, I never transact business with them. Instead, I directly dealt with managers and owners of the dealer stores to get lower prices for the motorcycles.

With three units of tricycles, I was earning three times what I would earn from just one tricycle. In less than two years I was operating 14 units of tricycles simply by using the same strategy – getting three motorcycle loans with down payments from the money to be used to fully pay one new motorcycle. Since the income was pyramiding from the growing fleet of tricycles, it was very easy for me to pay-off one motorcycle loan every month.

The business that I started from P500.00 was now more than a million peso business. It grew from one tricycle to 14 units of tricycles, and one small sari-sari store to three grocery stores and a restaurant.

With the combination of my business earnings and my wife’s dollar remittances, we started tripling our monthly amortization for our GSIS housing loan until we fully paid it off. My wife’s income was more focused in developing and beautifying our house, while my business earnings were more focused on expanding our business.

Making More Money

When you are known to have an established business, it was easy to transact business with other businessmen based on trust only. One time I borrowed P100,000.00 at our local Philippine National Bank, to be paid in one year period. While my papers for the loan application were in process, I dealt with an owner of a big department store where I was going to spend the P100,000.00 – to buy office supplies. I told him that my purchase was worth P100,000.00, but the check to pay for it was not in my hands yet. It was still in the bank for loan approval. He agreed to deliver the items to my customer on that same day, based on his trust on my words alone.

My customer on the other hand immediately paid off my delivery on the following day, just on the same date that my check for P100,000.00 loan was released in the bank. If I knew that I could do that deal easily to that big supplier by simply using words of trust, I should have not applied for that P100,000.00 loan from the bank.

I immediately paid my supplier with the P100,000.00 check released by the bank, and in less than two days I paid off my bank loan which was supposed to be paid in one year period. That fast repayment established my good name in Philippine National Bank. So, everytime I need a bigger capital for bigger transactions, the bank would always approve my loans immediately.

There was a time when I learned that the GSIS was re-acquiring a lot of unpaid houses and lots from their housing loan project in our area. I immediately grabbed the opportunity of buying the cheapest property I could buy. I found and fully paid one property that was worth P25,000.00 only, and spent P80,000.00 more on its development. I sold it later for P320,000.00, more than double the price I invested on it.

Making Money From Childhood

How did I learn to make money or to be in business? In my childhood days (from isang kahig, isang tuka family) I learned doing it by selling vegetables from our backyard every morning on weekdays. Out of the sales, I would buy pan de sal for breakfast of our family. On weekends I would do the same, and buy rice and fish from vegetable sales. Then in the afternoon, I would sell “Taliba” and other newspapers on commission basis. So, I would have baon for my weekdays in the school.

When I didn’t have papers in the school, I would initiate a raffle in the classroom, with a handmade raffle tickets as a game on our vacant periods. One would get a raffle ticket from me in exchange for one tablet paper. From a class of 20 to 30, I would earn a lot of tablet papers, because the first prize was five tablet papers, second prize was four, and third prize was three. I kept the remaining 18 or more tablets as profit everytime I held raffle during our vacant periods. Actually, nobody minded the prize so much, because everybody was having fun participating in the raffle.

In high school, I thought of making money from the abandoned pechay and radish vegetables left during the summer vacation by students in their plots for Agriculture class. I opened the proposal of selling those abandoned vegetables to my Agriculture teacher, instead of letting them rot in their plots. My Agriculture teacher approved with no hesitance. The planting area was so vast that I had something to sell everyday. From the sales, I bought Agricultural tools and gave them to the school. But most important, I was earning money from the share of the sales – from plants that were abandoned by students. When classes reopened, I was big hero, because of the new tools I bought for the school – tools that could not be purchased or supplied even by the local or provincial Department of Education.

Your Turn to Get Rich

Anyone can become rich, even become a millionaire, if he wants to. But the main reason why most Filipinos can not do so, is that our parents and our culture has taught us that the best way to earn money is finish college, then find a good job. We were taught to become servants for the rest of our lives, by telling our children to study hard, have good grades to have stable jobs in the future. This cycle of idea had been in our culture for hundreds of years.

We have soaring unemployment, because there are thousands who are merely looking for jobs, instead of learning to make money in our own businesses. More and more are going to different countries around the world with one simple objective – to serve other people in order to make money. We were never taught how to make our own money, or let other people make money for us.

Now, you should be lucky, since you will be reading more ideas on how to get rich by starting like a tricycle driver, or a lowly Chinese immigrant who buys and sells scrap metals and empty bottles. Then, rise-up from the society as respected, moneyed person. As a bonus, I’ll be showing you, too, on how to earn dollars in the Internet, without going anywhere, by only staying at your home or by simply using your local Internet Café.

How do you maximize usage of your web site with huge hard disk space from your provider, when you have limited time to write more articles that will fill it up? One way to do it is by filling it up with free reprints of articles by other Internet experts and pros. Aside from filling up a web site with freely distributable ezine articles from different sources, I found another innovation which would surely be likened by busy entrepreneurs like you. The strategy is by publishing a photo gallery section in your web site. From my weekend hobby of going around New York City, and taking pictures with my digital camera since 1999, I found this collection of pictures very useful in making my web site “magnetic” and enjoyable to visitors. What’s more amazing is that in each page with a postcard size picture, I could insert banner ads and text ads from affiliate partners, which is another source of income for an internet-based business.

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My digital photo gallery is like a movie presentation, which makes my visitors enjoy the beauty of my carefully selected digital pictures. But in each picture page there is a banner ad and a text ad which advertises either my products and services or the products of my affiliate partners. So, aside from building a virtual mall in my web site, I built a virtual theme park, too, by using my collection of digital pictures. It’s like a tourist spot you could visit anytime. The only difference is that it’s free, and you experience the sceneries in front of your computer.

It’s easier to create photo galleries now for the web, because these programs come with the purchase of digital cameras. If you want to try this marketing idea, but you have limited pictures for the gallery, you could visit some photo gallery web sites who offer free downloads of their photo collections. One good name I could recommend to you is businessmate.com. However, if you have a collection of your own digital pictures now, don’t just keep them in your hard disks. Use them as HTML pages that could make your web site content-rich and favorite of the search engine robots. It’s faster to build hundreds of web pages from these pictures, than the time-consuming writing articles. But don’t forget to place the right key terms in the alt tags of these pictures. These texts for alt tags are your “baits” for the spiders and crawlers to consider your photo gallery as the one that makes your site content-rich.

Visit Jess Guim’s Big Apple City, a collection of 10,000 plus pictures of New York City.

Success is the most wonderful fruit of the struggles to achieve a purpose. Different people have different ways of attaining the laurels of victory. But no matter how unique these strategies are, victories can not be attained without using the three D’s of success. Nurture each of them from start to finish, and never leave one in favor of the other.

First, you need the DESIRE, the motivation to achieve your objective. The starting point of all achievements is desire, the dream. Some people might say your dream is impossible to achieve. But with your own desire to accomplish that dream, there’s nothing you can’t achieve without the power of desire within you. A poor man becomes a millionaire because of his desire to have more money. An NBA star believes he could fly to shoot a ball in the ring, because of his desire for fame. A writer never sleeps at night, as long as ideas come out of his mind, because of his desire to become a blockbuster novelist and movie screenwriter.

The desire (motivation or passion), on the other hand, should be strengthened by DISCIPLINE. There are people, who in the midst of their near-success meet temptations that lead them to the wrong direction. A student who’s almost graduating in college failed to finish his course, because he joined a fraternity that buried him into the ravine of drug addiction. An entrepreneur, who’s almost becoming a millionaire with his innovative marketing ideas, went bankrupt when he associated with gamblers who turned him into compulsive gambler. These are simple examples of temptations that lead people to failure when someone’s discipline is not strong enough to achieve one’s objective to succeed. So, strengthen the discipline in you by surrounding yourself with like-minded people.

DETERMINATION is the father of desire and discipline. You can never achieve and win what you desire if you have no definiteness in acquiring such victory. But simply having determination doesn’t mean you’re already on the road to success. Determination should be powered by knowledge of the skills needed to achieve an objective. You need to learn about the skills and place them into practice. Then, when you have enough training to strategize your steps, you need to develop your experiences into expertise. It is these expertise that strengthens your determination to achieve success.

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