PhilFAQS

Well for those of you who hate posts about making a living in the Philippines, especially making a living in the Philippines on line, or supplemented by the online world, this will likely be another post you don’t enjoy.  Sorry about that, I write when I’m “in the mood” and this is what I’m “Moody”  about today.

If you think I’m somewhat unidimensional from the impression you have of me, you ought to see the view from inside my head … it’s absolutely flat as a billiard table from inside here at times.

It’s really hard for me to believe how many people make a living without the power of the ‘Net in today’s world, and it’s even more of a surprise to see those who succeed do so in spite of their on-line efforts rather than becuase of them.

If you feel you’ll never be doing anything to make money online in your life, that’s ok, read along, becuase for sure you’ll run into a friend or relative here in the Philippines who does want to and I’m going to reveal a couple of elemental truths that everyone can use.

I’ve been having a discussion with several online associates about the importance of responding to people on the web, and I recently had a prime example when someone whose site I had featured in a write up here on PhilFAQS months ago left me a comment.

Now the fact it took that person months to respond is neither here nor there.  I’m not writing because my nose is out of joint about not getting instant gratification.  I wrote about a lot of people and sites who never respond … that’s almost the norm … and the fact it is almost the norm is what today’s message is about.

Here’s the bottom line suggestion I have for anyone interested in people, money or both: (more…)

There’s more to Subic than just blue water and white sands.  To many readers the term “Freeport” probably means little, just some sort of marketing-speak, but in the Philippines, it means a lot.

The Philippines has a very bad environment for starting a business.  It’s one of the worst countries in the world for registering a business and getting all the permits and permissions in place.

But the Special Economic Zones, like Clark and Subic change all that.  It seems almost every day I see something new getting started at Subic and here’s one idea that seems to hold water.

SUBIC BAY FREE PORT— It looks and moves like an aircraft, but it can also dive underwater.

Prototype Sports Sub at Subic

The Amuza “leisure submarine,” a two-seater vessel the size of a compact car, may soon be built by a Japanese firm in this free port with the help of a Filipino-British car body-parts maker.

Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) administrator Armand Arreza said a prototype of the submersible was successfully tested last week in the waters of Subic Bay.

Submarine builder Amuza Co. Ltd., which first gained popularity for its limousines, wants to start building about 10 production models by the end of the year. The company has been developing the prototype for the last 10 years and has spent about $1.7 million for the project, said Amuza chief executive officer Kiyotaka Miyagawa.

These macines will be battery and electric motor-powered, good for about 5 knots underwater and will have a range of 40 kilometers or so.  No word on price.

Sample of one of Amuza

The company in charge of the prohect, Amuza has a long histoty of building some very well operating on-ground vehicles, like this one … they are the premier luxury limosine company in Asai with factories in japan, Australia and other countries.

There will be a full factory ‘pilot’ training and certification school at Subic that new ownrs will be required to attend … don’t think I can afford one, but I want one.  More jobs and more business in the Philippines … they say you can’t make money here.

OK, show of hands here. How many of you have ever bought a Lotto ticket or purchased a ‘Scratch and Win”   ticket at your local convenience store?  Aha, a lot of hands went up, didn’t they?

Many of us, even those pretty much opposed to gambling and casinos and such participate in the government sponsored lottery programs in the US because in addition to the (infinitesimally small) chance of winning the games serve as an important revenue source to a lot of valuable programs.

A pundit once quipped that Lotto games are a tax for people with bad math skills, but who cares?   They can be fun and it’s only a dollar or two, so why not?

In the Philippines government has wasted no time getting in on these programs.

Philippine Sweeostakes Hq, Manila

Here’s a business idea for making money in the Philippines that doesn’t involve the Internet for a change.  If you have ever been around one of the mall kiosks or terminals in stores where they sell the whole line of Sweepstakes Lottery products when the prizes are big you have seen lines and line sof people, cash in hand, just waiting to get a chance to buy a ticket.

A franchise outlet for this product starts at PhP 50,000 or so .. about $1,000 USD give or take, and the clients do all the work except make change and carry the money to the bank. More information at the headquarters site.

I have no idea what the overall profit potential can be but I know it’s a simple, self-contained government approved, easy to understand business that is certaily worth loking into … especially for people inclined toward operating a store, Intent cafe, etc., anything where you are going to have foor traffic and a roof over your head anyway.

Once again, you can make money in the Philippines, if you actually want to.

First of all, let me state this is not a picture of our "dirty kitchen" here in the Philippines.  But it might be someday, though.  Probably not, but one of the things my lovely wife and I have discussed at some length is smarter ways to make ourselves more energy independent.  The idea of making our own fuel from what is otherwise going to waste is attractive.  Diesel fuel from waste cooking oil is a very "trendy" item in these days of $4 gas.

In addition to using waste oil diesel for automotive use, we’ve talked already a few times here about people who want to live off grid and of course one possible solution for that kind of lifestyle would be to simply have your own diesel powered home generator … be your own power company.

If you buy your diesel fuel for a setup like that in today’s environment here in the Philippines you’ll find the numbers don’t work out at all … in other words if I replaced my 500 or 600 Kwh per month of commercial power with power from my own diesel gen set (a diesel engine and an alternator that puts out 220V 60 hz power) I would spend about five time my current bill to Meralco.  If I used a cheaper, lighter gasoline gen set it would be closer to six or seven times as expensive,so I think that idea is pretty much a non-starter.

But if my fuel costs were zero … wow, it suddenly becomes a very practical sounding proposition, doesn’t it?  Truth be told, it can certainly be done, and for some people it might be something worth pursuing.  However, first I’d suggest you read this Wired.com article on the state of the current cooking oil diesel fuel community.  This article covers the nuts and bolts of how the technology works and does a much more through job than I can.  After you’ve read it I’ll summarize what I feel are some important points about this home brewed biodiesel here in the Philippines.

Pros:

• In spite of the messiness factors involved, this will work.
• It’s simpler than it may appear once you get things set up
• It’s likely to be simpler and work better here because many of the tricky problems in making a good quality fuel are related to the climate … here it’s always hot so glycerine, waxiness problems and such are minimized
• There is a lot less regulation in semi-urban and rural areas.  If you want to, just do it (YMMV)
• Labor is cheap
• "junk" is big business here.  There are "bote boys" passing multiple times per day, asking for glass bottles, plastic trash, metal cans, scrap, newspapers, etc.  They earn their living selling their daily finds to "junk shops".  It would be very simple to have a number of these guys collecting waste cooking oil and delivering it to your processing plant. 

Cons:

• Of course, comma, what people say is "free" now has the price they paid to the origin plus their markup that you paid for their work, plus containers, and so on added in … still cheap, but virtually nothing is "free".  And prices go up and down rapidly depending on supply and demand.  Right now, in my area, no one collects.  A soon as there is any demand, expect a price to develop.  Remember, a hundred years ago, refineries could not give gasoline away.
• The physical plant is simple, but again not free.  And the process takes time.  It has to be worked, day in and day out.
• This is stinky, slimy, and poses a significant fire hazard in a country where most neighborhoods have virtually zero fire protection.  Is saving money worth burning up your house and maybe your children?  Look at the flammable slime on the floor and walls in the picture.
• You need a lot of caustic soda (lye) … Drano for example.  Where does the excess of that get disposed of?  Where I live, almost all houses are on septic tanks.  Do you know how much lye you can let into your tank before the digestion process stops and you become very good friends with the "Poso Negro" man (Septic tank sucker-outer)?
• If you have make more than you need, what will you do with it.  Can you sell fuel legally without a license, regulations, taxes, etc.?
• Motor fuel is highly taxed and regulated.  Make your own and you are legally stealing from the government.  (don’t bother me with your"live free or die" type arguments, I am talking here about life’s realities, not philosophy).  Do they care?  Will they come after you?  Something to consider.
• There just is no where near enough cooking oil used to support and significant amount of production.  Onesy-twosey operations like you always see in magazines are great stories … but can a town sustain 5 such operations, or 10, or 20?  This a big fallacy to me, I have seen biodiesel experiments for more than 20 years now, but all the McDonalds, Jollibee’s and KFC’s in the country don’t use that much oil.

Interesting, isn’t it.  especially how US media is suddenly "rediscovering" a lot of technology us "hippy types" of the ’60’s were trying to ’sell’ 50 years ago.  Let me know what else you want to know about in the energy department.

As many readers already know I keep very close tabs on what people search for here at PhilFAQS, the site for people who want to know the FAQS (Frequently Asked Questions) abut moving to and living in the Philippines.  If you found this site by a search from Google or one of the other search engines you likely found the first thing you were presented was a list of related posts, along with the entry here that most closely matched your search query.

One "perennial favorite is ‘How to make money with an Internet Cafe", or its close cousin, ‘Can an Internet cafe make money’.  Here are just a few samples of the work already published on that subject:

More Internet Cafe Thoughts

Can an Internet Cafe Make Money in the Philippines?

Real World Business — Running An Internet Cafe — Part 1

FWIW you could make money with an Internet cafe in many places in the Philippines, but it feel it is something that should be way down on most people’s list, especially for foreigners.  It’s more competitive every day, operators accept profits margins that are razor thin a sit is, and the people with disposable income who sued to make up the crowd of customers today are much more interested in the iPhone and similar hand held devices where they get their Internet along with their text messages, MP3 music and even live television in metro areas.  A person from the US, for example, knows virtually nothing about the wireless world here, the US is so far behind in what people used to call cellular phones that they think they’re ahead ;-).

One thing people people from the US do know smelting about, though, is hamburgers.  I published an article a while back about the little-known business of burgers here that seemed to be popular with a lot of readers.  One franchise operation that is very popular here in Luzon, at least, is "Burger Machine".  these little free-standing kiosks are seen frequently (the most usual location is along main roads where there are bars and night clubs, I think a large part of their trade is the pulutan (drinking food) crowd.

These businesses are usually on a trailer.  They don’t often move, but because they aren’t on a foundation they fall under "hawker" and street vendor regulations in most cites, making licensing and  permits much easier to obtain and keep up to date.  The common prices are from  30 pesos and up, and as you can see from the sign, Buy One take One deals are the norm.  Could you make money at approximately 15 pesos per hamburger then?  Well you must be able to, I just did some looking and found there are more than 89 of these trailers in Quezon City alone and the article I found that data in was about the city government engaged in a legal wrangle with the parent company alleging there were many more than the 89 permitted locations which were operating outside the law.  That’s a lot of burgers. (photo courtesy of the Unofficial Cook, used with permission).

On a higher end scale, I visit the Subic bay Freeport frequently, (the former Subic Bay US    Navy base).  It’s a place that is always looking for new businesses, in addition to many other ’start a business’ assistance tools they have a pretty neat inducement … all business on Subic pay only a flat 5% tax on gross revenues, no ups, no extras, no roving ‘city inspectors’ with their hands out.  Burger-related business there range from purpose-built to one of may favorite ‘real’ burger joints, Meats Plus, where the dare is relatively pricey imported Angus beef burgers, charcoal grilled. The customers are mainly Filipino and you had best not show up for  a burger at noon time, you’ll park a long way from the building and wait in a heck of a long line.

I’ll close with a place I walk or drive buy almost every day.  I must stop in and try them out.  It’s just a small storefront operation and you can see that the prices are well within Filipino tastes … it’s been there for years and sells a lot of burgers.  My wife is aquatinted with a lady a few blocks in the opposite direction who retired from a Philippine government job some years back and opened a similar little cafe/burger joint.  She only opens a few hours a day in the evening for the dinner trade and even though her prices start 21 pesos she has been doing ok for years now.

So a couple things you can take away from this is, yes, Filipinos do eat burgers and yes you can make money with a cafe in the Philippines … but I’d forget about the "Internet" part of the cafe equation myself.

Interesting news item that flowed across my desk today:

LATE-NIGHT calls to one of the State’s main directory inquiry services are being answered from the Philippines after the company that operates the service, Conduit, outsourced the night shift to a call centre in Manila.

The move involves the loss of 10 jobs in Conduit’s Dublin headquarters and has prompted fears among the 120 staff working on the day shift of the 11850 directory inquiry service that their jobs could also be transferred to southeast Asia. The night-shift workers, some of whom have up to 10 years’ service, are being laid off later this month. Staff say that they have been offered a redundancy package of two weeks per year of service plus the statutory minimum.

Conduit switched the answering of directory inquiry calls between 10pm and 7am to Manila last June on a trial basis, and recently decided to make the new arrangement permanent.

KGB, a large US call centre operation that owns Conduit, runs a call centre in the Philippine capital employing 3,000 people. Wages in such call centres are typically about $2-$3 an hour, much less than the rates paid to Irish call centre employees… More of the article on Irish call center workers here.

Couple of interesting points, not all of which are readily apparent on first reading.

• This same article, with different details was written in some US paper or another a few years back when the company which is now KGB (no, not the same as the former USSR Secret Service ;-)) "stole" the jobs from the US and shipped them to Ireland, because the Irish workers would do the work for a lot less than the US workers.  Did someone just whisper the word "karma" under their breath?
• Those who are blindly investing billions in one call center after another here in the Philippines might want to consider who is going to undercut Philippine Call Center prices.  It will certainly happen.  Actually, few if any call center employees in Manila are working for $3 an hour as the Irish article suggests, wages have been climbing steadily in pace with demand.
• The blind spending of my own countrymen, still buying Hummers and other gas guzzler’s comes home to roost in mysterious ways.  the jobs mentioned, and many, many others are no longer American jobs or Irish jobs but they have become the ‘property’ of KGB.  The own of property can essentially do anything that he wishes with it, and KGB is a Bahraini company.  It’s not the Irish or the Indians or Malaysians or the Filipinos who are "stealing" American jobs, it’s the oil princes who have them pressed into their hands as tribute every time Americans prostrate themselves toward Mecca and offer tribute at the pump.
• Last item I found worth a chuckle.  In spite off all the paragraphs in the article bemoaning the poor folks who lost their jobs … actually none did.  ten were asked two change their shift because of cut backs.  Two did and eight others said, "I’d prefer my severance package" and departed.  Somehow I think a person who actually had no job might consider being asked to move to a different shift a little less life-changing than these folks did … but then again, it wasn’t me.

Still think only of the Philippines as a poor country?  As I have said before there is a lot of money in the Philippines and some very rich people who amass it, spend it and apparently enjoy it.  The big difference with say the US is, in the US there are very few (proportionally) truly poor people …even the average unemployed welfare mother or lad-off senior citizen is rich compared with a poor person in the Philippines … it’s the distribution of wealth that is such a culture shock, not the lack of wealth itself.

Many people in the USA have never even texted or sent out a text.  It’s treated as something optional for teenagers as far as the average person thinks.  It’s different in the Philippines.

Wer na u? Yo, RP texters send 600M messages a day!

If texting were an Olympic event, we would have brought home the gold.

The average mobile phone user in the Philippines sends around 15 text messages a day, according to telecommunications companies.

The Philippine Long Distance Telephone group estimates that the 33 million subscribers of Smart and Talk N’ Text collectively send 500 million to 600 million text messages a day. This means the average subscriber of the PLDT group taps out 15 to 18 text messages on the cellular phone per day. … full Philippine texting article here.

  600 million?  How much is that?  here’s a scale drawing that illustrates a million pennies.  So think of this blog post having 600 of these drawings (wow, that would take some server space and load time, wouldn’t it?)

Yep, 600 copies of the picture … that’s how many texts flow per day here … and then consider this.  On average each text costs 1 peso … about 2 US cents at today’s rate.  If you do the math, that is about $4.7 Billion US dollars per year.  Maybe not as much as Google makes, but a long, long way from "chump change". 

Oh, and regarding the cost to the phone companies to provide all this service?  texting is essentially a zero cost operation.  The cellular network itself has to be built with several "text only" control channels which are unused much of the time … Text messages are sent over these idle channels on a "best effort" basis … that’s why sometimes texts are delivered slow, or not at all when the network gets busy.  The network itself is built and maintained by the charges for regular vice calls, texts essentially "go along for the ride" so the companies are basically paying nothing for that extra 4.7 billion  a year … not a bad return on investment, eh?

Still think there’s no money in the Philippines?  (by the way, PLDT is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (PHI), it’s close to $70 today, take a look at its past five year’s performance, if you are the kind of person who follows stocks).

Many of my readers here also know my friend Bob Martin in Davao City, Minanao, Philippines. Bob is running a seminar How To Make Money in the Philippines!.

For those who are there or who might feel like traveling, I am pretty sure it will be worth it. Bob speaks with authority, conviction and his knowledge is based on many years of earning a living for himself and his family, in the Philippines. Recommended. By the way, for those who are clicking on past this, because of the “I can’t do that” feeling … I’ve met Bob. He’s a smart man and he works hard … but he’s no superman, doesn’t have a degree in nuclear physics and wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. There is nothing Bob has done that any person who believes in him/herself can’t equal … it’s a matter of thinking yes I can more than anything else. This applies equally to my Filipino readers.

Came across this little snippet the other day and thought didn’t know of.  there are a couple more I know of that are not on this list also.  Off the top of my head I could mention would be General Motors, Yahoo!, DHL and FedEx.

Now if you are dealing with a Fortune 50 or even a Fortune 500 concern, as most of these are, perhaps you aren’t going to be able to get anything going with outsourcing short of one of those multi-story, multi-million dollar "conventional" call centers … so this might not seem like a useful article to the majority of my readers.

But consider this.  The actual majority of businesses in the US are NOT in the Fortune 500 … American business, more so every day, is small business.  In fact many Fortune 500 business entities outsource even within the US, converting company division after company division into outside contractors.

In the spirit of my friend Bob’s recent book (">’>well worth a read, by the way) and in answer to the so often heard complaint, "Oh if only I could make a living in the Philippines, I’d move tomorrow", let me just throw out a couple ideas:

• Specialized Call Centers: Back in my former hometown, Colorado Springs, there is a fellow who owned several profitable McDonald’s restaurant franchises.  Now a McDonald’s "store" is a pretty healthy investment and most of them are pretty darn profitable … so why doesn’t this fellow still own his?  because he found that taking orders at the drive-thru window was one of the hardest jobs to fill with motivated employees, and one of the most profitable parts of each store’s business.  Of course he could have paid more to the order-taker, but in addition to coming directly off his bottom line, that would have created an employee slot that was sometimes overworked and at other times "twiddling their thumbs" waiting for an customer to drive up to the window.  Even when a drive thru line is busy, the actual time the order taker spends with each customer is only about 15% of the hours on duty … the rest of the time they are idle, waiting for the line of cars to move.  The solution?  Tie multiple drive thru ordering stations to a standard call center switch … a computer device that hands each call to the next available agent.  Agents sit in a call center, take the orders, and type them on a keyboard that puts the orders on the screen in the appropriate sales outlet … exactly what order takers do on a one-on-one basis today.  Result?  Big increase in driveway sales, big decrease in labor hours for the individual stores.  I haven’t heard of this catching on anywhere else.  What places do you work, or do you do business who could use competent, always available order-taking help?  Remember, over the Internet almost all your communication costs are nil … and it doesn’t take graduate-level language skills to ask "And would you like fries with that burger, sir"?
• Computer Aided Drafting: CAD software was one of the first business tools that made small computers practical for business.  Nothing can get built, manufactured or placed in service without drawings.  Also, in the US, hundreds of thousands of sates, counties, municipalities and businesses have literally millions of drawings that need to be placed in electronic form, or already in electronic form and updated.  You could build a business of nearly any size with this strategy, even simpler than a call center.  There are a lot of graduates of computer drafting schools and even degreed engineers with CAD training here in the Philippines who are lucky to find a job driving a cab, let alone in their area of expertise.  You solicit business in the US, ship the drawings in electronic format (paper ones can be scanned automatically) to your team of CAD operators and when the modifications are done, the finished product is again shipped electronically to the client.  In many cases clients who demand a paper copy will even provide the plotting machines in their own engineering centers because they would prefer to have control over the process and the finished drawing product.  There’s a tremendous markup available here and I personally know of government agencies with years of updates and corrections to drawings left undone because of staffing costs.

OK, enough for one crop of ideas.  there are plenty more available.  And for my readers who get annoyed and angered at the idea of taking jobs away from Americans and ‘killing US business’ I’d like to point out that both these services are ones that exist because American companies can not find workers willing and able to do the work for a rate that allows the business to stay operational … so frankly a service like this actually helps American business by allowing them to be more profitable and provide more highly paid jobs for Americans on American soil.

So how many people took a look at the sample chapters I pointed to yesterday?  How many guessed or determined from those samples what I was going to propose?

My special purpose idea here is this:

• One of Frank’s proven ‘anti-cold calling methods is to furnish the prospect with something … a flyer, an informational letter, a note with your business card, etc.
• Then, using a third-party contact the target individual and request an appointment to follow up.  Again, frank offers a lot of alternatives to this technique as one of his methods … he has many others, I’m certainly not giving the book away here.

The opportunity I had in mind is … you (or an employee of yours … be that third party.  Appointment setting to follow-up on request for information is a tried and true legitimate business technique.  You must structure it properly and you must follow appropriate laws, but that is technique and detail … I’m presenting the concept.

When the prospect is contacted, reminded of the information and asked to grant an appointment the success rate versus actual ‘cold calling’ is fantastically better.  The salesperson him or herself, of course, could do this, but there are some real business advantage in using a third party:

• A good appointment setter is rarely a good salesman… and vice versa.
• Talking to an office staffer is far less intimidating to the prospect than talking directly to the sales staff.
• A good salesman should be making much more during the time it takes setting up appointments than paying a third-party to set those appointments.
• No matter how a sale is approached, some appreciable percentage are still going to say ‘no’.  The beauty of this idea is that the sales staff is only working with those who have already expressed an interest … the ‘no’s are being dealt with and eliminated while real sales get made.

So, why am I talking abut this with respect to making a living in the Philippines?  here’s just one way you can profit from what the rest of the world doesn’t even want to know about

• Buy Frank’s book or some other reference that uses this sort of idea.  (hint:  Purchasers of books like this are excellent prospects for this kind of service)
• Find a sales organization who needs appointments set.  decide with them how they will furnish you the lad information, how to coordinate the appointments and, most importantly, how you will be remunerated. 
• Set up an outbound VOIP line … Skype for example … about $30 to $50 for a whole year of essentially unlimited calling.
• Follow the outline of successful sales/appointment setters.
• Start making appointments and collect for each one made.

You are now in business "in the Philippines" but not "of the Philippines". Like the instructions on the shampoo bottle say, lather well, rinse, repeat

Downsides:

• It will start slow … unless you find a starving market (when I was selling ‘brick and mortar’ style a few years ago in the US I spent many an hour with the sales manager of the company I was selling for scheming as to how much business we both could do if we could find someone to do exactly what we had outlined.  I would have paid 415 or $20 cash for a set appointment any time … and just one segment of the overall market I was aiming for had more than 3,000 entities in the US (country governments) … a much larger segment who really needed the product was independent school districts, there’s over 20,000 of them and the addresses, phone numbers and such of all these guys are required to be matters of public record… many of the prospects I did finally get in front of would look at our product and say, "Wow, wish I had known about this before".
• Small investment in money (very small, you already have a computer and ‘Net access or you wouldn’t be reading this) is required.  A more significant investment in time is required … but I never said this was a get rich quick scheme, merely that it was a viable business model.
• The big one for some .. hours.  The US business day starts, on the east coast, at 9 PM here in the Philippines and ends 11 hours later at 8 AM the next morning, but many people like shift work. 

At any rate, enough.  I’ve waxed over-long as usual.  This is just one of a thousand viable methods where you can leverage the Internet, the telephone and a business skill that others don’t want to do in order to make a living here in the Philippines … or anywhere else you chose to.

Yesterday I did a review and a plug for Bob martin’s ">’>49 Ways to Make a Living in the Philippines.  In the spirit of over-delivering I thought I’d do more than just a sales pitch sort of entry today.  I wanted to show you how you can take some of those nebulous ideas you hear about out there about people making money online and translate them into something concrete that you can actually make into a system that would be ideal for earning here in the Philippines and could be implemented by anyone with average skills for virtually nothing in the way of an investment.

Disclaimer:  I have not set up a business that follows this model.  Therefore, if it doesn’t work for you as you envisioned, it isn’t my fault.  That being said, I may very well set up a similar business in the future … the potential is there for thousands of ventures like I am going to outline for you here as a gift.

Question One: What drives all business?  Answer: Sales.  Many of us hate sales, or have no experience at it and don’t really want to get into it.  certainly sales is the most troublesome aspect of any business to me … but again, remember, it is the economic engine that drives the world.

Question Two: What is any business person most likely to shell out his/her hard earned money for? Answer:  Avoiding something s/he hates doing.

Question Three: What is the most likely thing any business person back there in your home country hates doing?  Answer:  You shou8ld be able to give me the answer without hesitation, I already mentioned it in Question One … sales.  In particular they hate that aspect of sales known as "Cold Calling" … digging up people’s phone numbers and ringing them up to try to get their "foot in the door".

Not only do salespeople hate cold calling, the people who get "cold called" hate it even more.  Who here among us hasn’t been angered by someone bugging us on the phone at home or office with unsolicited calls.  In fact under US Federal laws and some State laws many such calls are even illegal any more. 

I was in this predicament myself.  I was running a sales-oriented business in the US.  I needed prospects.  I hated cold calling, even the limited types you can do legally.  So, what did I do?

Well, I used the Internet to search and find a solution.  (you might want to remember this point, we will be returning to it again and again).  I found a fellow name of Frank Rumbauskas who sold a book and some audio CD called "Never Cold Call" and since the sales page looked promising and the package had an unconditional money back guarantee, I clicked on the order button and literally my life changed.  Not only did I turn my flagging sales around in my brick and mortar ‘conventional’ business, I found out about much easier, legitimate ways to make more money on line than I would ever earn selling little black boxes into a price-conscious, sales-resistant business market.

Already, I’m running long on this post.  (I know, I know, what else is new ;-))  I’ll continue this tomorrow. Hers’ what you can do today.  Download the sample chapters from Frank’s book … no sign-up, no money, no ’squeeze page’ or sales page hoopla, I promise, the file is there for the taking … and see if you can see what my 51st idea for making money in the Philippines will be. 

(Hint, it involves what we talked about earlier, helping businesses avoid what they don’t want to do and the easy access to communication and willing, educated folks eager to learn that you have access to here in the Philippines)

In the more than 8 years now that I have been intimately familiar with what people are looking for in the Philippines it would be no secret that houses are at the top of the list.  Home to buy and homes to rent.  I bet I have looked, conservatively, at several hundred web sites myself.

Typically I recommend people not even bother with looking at any online real estate sites.  The vast majority are ‘dead’ … listing put up months ago and never updated.  Almost all the sites I have seen have virtually no inventory as well … you’re lucky if you can find 10 separate listings (5 of which are ‘pipe dream’ developments which someone intends to build if he sells enough lots) and the other 5 or so will be vastly overpriced in order to ‘hook’ the foreigner who comes along looking to get some ideas about prices and availability.

I personally found a nice looking listing a Filipino buy and sell site when I first moved here, seemed worth a trip to look at.  When my wife contacted the folks who were selling, privately, they jacked the price up 1,000,000 PhP from what they had listed on the site itself.  Hello!  I was born at night but it wasn’t last night. (and this shenanigan is what they were trying to pull on my wife, they had no idea there was foreigner involved.  Advertise at an attractive price and then just bald-faced raise the price whenever someone shows a remote interest.  Nonsense).

Here’s an excellent real estate site I came across via my friend Bob down in Davao City.  It’s run by a really professional real estate agent who knows her business and doesn’t seem to be engaging in any of that bait and switch nonsense.  She has pages and pages of for sale listings and an ample selection of rentals as well .. rare indeed.  The prices I see listed are well within reason, in fact many of the smaller existing homes have lots twice the size as are common here on the outskirts of Metro Manila and the prices are often lower.

Anyway, this won’t be of a lot of use unless you are planning to live in Davao, but it is really nice ‘eye candy’ and you can learn a lot about the market anywhere by seeing how the homes are listed and what factors are common and what makes different properties unique.

Thanks, Lea, for providing such a useful and attractive site … I wish I know someone in the business here in Luzon who would be interested in doing one half as well.

I’m on my way out the door as I write this, it’s been a busy day, and it’s not over yet.  But a friend of mine made a product launch today that I felt it was worth letting you know about.  I recommend very few products directly here, but when something is of real value, I want to get the word out.

Some of you are also readers of one or more of Bob Martin’s blogs.  Others may have heard me mention him in the past.  he’s a fellow who has lived here in the Philippines for 8 years or so now and makes a good living … he doesn’t live off a pension or previous real estate investments or other sources as  many of us do.

It’s been said often that you can’t make money here in the Philippines … it might even have been said by me a time to two.  Well, that’s just not true.  Bob does.  And I have visited him and seen some of his businesses in operation, first hand.  I have a relatively high grade BS detector ( for some years I administered contracts for the DoD, I’ve been lied to by the best, believe me) and my detector stays pretty darn quiet when I am around Bob.  He’s the real deal.

If you have the dream of living here but can’t make the move because of finances, this is 50 or more solutions to the problem … at less than a buck per idea (satisfaction guaranteed, by the way), it would be hard to go wrong.  I invite you to take a look.  Oh, and for the cynics among you, should there be any, no, the book is not about how to write an eBook about how to make money and sell it … it’s about ways to make money in the real world, both on and off line.

Recommended.

It’s really pretty funny in a way … only a small percentage of comments and email I get regarding this blog have to do about business in the Philippines.  But so many of them do center on the Internet cafe business that I thought I ought to offer up some more thoughts on the subject … especially because many of the questions and comments I see indicate that people are looking at the Internet Cafe business with a very, very narrow focus … perhaps leaving tons of money on the table without even realizing it.

I have often been on record for saying it’s very hard to make money in the Philippines … especially for foreigners.  Now that I have lived here full time for nearly two years, I won’t actually retract that statement … but I certainly want to modify it a bit.

Let me say this … it’s not nearly as hard as many make it out to be if you step back and explore all the ways \you have available to make money … not just what might be the stream of income most people thing of first when they look at a given business.

Let’s look directly at the Internet cafe business … or, as it is so commonly called here a "computer shop".  In simple form this is a room or two that you rent from a commercial provider or use in your own home.  In that room or rooms you have computers in workstations and perhaps a few printers,CD-ROM and DVD burners and other common computer peripherals.

The standard business plan is that people with no computer or Internet access at home will drop buy and pay you an hourly fee to use your machines and Internet access.

What else could this facility be?  Wow, the possibilities are going to be more than I can list reasonably here in one post.  Talk about a small gold mine …. here’s just a few quick ideas:

• Cafe: Sounds obvious, doesn’t it?  But very few Internet cafes actually serve food and drink.  Folks, I shop locally.  I know how much you can buy small packages of potato chips and snacks at SM Hypermarket for.  I know how cheap a local cook who wants to get started in the food business can make simple merienda for.  I know how little you can pay for soft drinks by the case.  People get tired and hungry.  Feed them.  There’s a lot of profit there.
• Classroom: let’s see … you have anywhere from a couple to a couple dozen computers, all with a chair in front of them, an Internet connection … remind you of anything?  Well, one thing it reminds me of is a classroom … the kind most schools even in the US, let alone the Philippines, only wish they had.  What can you teach?  Internet skills, computer software applications, language, skills coaching for people seeking call center jobs, sales training for businesses getting ready to start an on-line presence, people who want to learn to blog or build web sites … the list is endless.  Run the classes yourself, hire an instructor, or rent the facility out to others who need a place to teach people.  I would also consider this … especially since a large percentage of your customers are likely to be students … and schools and Internet cafe proprietors often share a love-hate relationship.  Go to  a local school and offer them the sue of the facility during school hours to upgrade the training they provide … schools, especially public schools are likely to have no budget, but providing them instructional space for free is likely the best advertising you can spend … and you do something good for the community as well.
• Call Center: I have written before about thinking small instead of big .. start your own mini-call center or customer service facility.  medical transcription is big but there are dozens of call center opportunities for businesses who aren’t large enough to get on the "big guy’s" radar screens.
• Computer Shop: Hmm, didn’t I say earlier this was one of the common names for an Internet cafe?  let’s see, you have computers, people who know how to use them, probably a source for more computers … new or refurbed at a good price … why aren’t you selling computers to go?  Once people see the way they can use the ‘net to help their business or personal lives, why not have some simple package deals that will set up in people’s own houses or offices?  Sell the packages outright or lease them out at a per hour rate as if they were in your shop?  (You do use cafe management software, don’t you?  No reason you can manage computers in a different location as if they were in the same room.)  I actually see a whole new line of business here .. putting computer systems in businesses and actually being responsible to see they keep operating, rather than just being the on-call repair man who gets around to fixing things when he can.  One price, flat rate, computers that work ‘by the hour’.

If those aren’t enough business outside the box ideas, just let me know\, I have a few more ideas I can write up.

I also want to take a moment to announce something really good that will be available any day now.  My good friend and blogging colleague Bob martin is putting the finishing touches on a book that will blow wide open the idea that you can’t make money in the Philippines.  I’ll be announcing how you can get yours real soon now, stay tuned.

A perennial favorite topic.  I see frequent searches on this topic and I have written a number of previous articles on Internet Cafes (or "computer shops",a so many people call them).  See here and here and here for a few examples.

My friend Yuga recently wrote a widely read article on his GMA TV blog and I decided to take a couple points of Abe’s and expand on them a little.

The question should not be phrased "can an Internet cafe make money in the Philippines’?  In my view it should be phrased, ‘can you or can you not make money’?  (location and even the precise business model are not important).

If you want to make money, then focus on that.  If you want excuses not to make money, then fine, there are a million excuses you can use.

Let me take a few of Yuga’s points and add-on or contrast with my views:

Capitalization. Many aspiring entrepreneurs think running a net café is not that expensive but a solid capital will dictate your operating capacity. Putting up 3 or 5 PC stations will not cut it anymore. A friend of mine who’s been running a net café for over 3 years now tells me you will need more than 10 stations in order to get good returns. You capital should also consider depreciation, repairs and maintenance.

True, so far as it goes.  But why set an arbitrary limit at 10 stations to "get good returns", (whatever that means).  You will succeed with 10 stations and fail with 9?  Why not borrow big and have 100 stations then?  Setting arbitrary limits and adding up the figures to pay for them is the biggest problem I see in building the foundation for every business.  If you are really broke, but have a real desire, then you can start with just a few … and ‘bootstrap’ expansion from your initial kernel of machines.  I only found out just a few weeks ago that there is a successful cafe just a few doors from me on our tiny residential street.  Been running for more than 3 years now.  Only a couple workstations in the owner’s front room.  Small-time.  In consequential.  Indeed.  But think this through.  If the guy is paying his bills and making a profit without even a sign or a visit to his neighbors to let them know about the business, where could he be today if he had plowed back the (tiny) profits, incrementally over the past three years?  You don’t have to approach the business like a huge dot com company suckering in venture capital and then ‘burning it’ before you even have a profit.

Technology: This is something I have been watching for a long time and actually find hard to believe.  An internet cafe is going to have about 4 major uses for customers.  Games, Online chat/social networking, school or job-related research and free phone calling (VOIP).  Every one of these applications is an ideal candidate for what is called "thin client" applications … a technology many years old but almost taken used outside some corporate IT departments.

Everyone who gives advice on how to set up a cafe starts out, or works in, their favorite formula for how many stations are needed and then comes the inevitable budget of 10 times the basic cost of a customer station … or 5 or 50 or whatever size seems best.  The prospective business operator has two main choices.  Buy ‘x’ number of used/refurbished older machines (which will certainly not be popular with the gamers … who tend to be the biggest spenders.  Just for an illustration let’s say you want to set up a 10 person facility.  Then you can figure $400 or $500 USD per station, or $4,000 to 5,000 for hardware and then a software license and other ancillaries per customer ’seat.

The better alternative, for those who have the money, is to buy new, well equipped machines.  This will cost as much as double the used machine route, but will, in particular make the gamers happy.  But as much as $10,000 US is going to be a hefty investment for the average new business person.

The ‘thin client’ model is the key, I think.  You spend a couple thousand to buy one very high-end server, in particular with tons of memory and multiple LAN cards.  Then you shop for bargain PC’s with very minimal specs .. a tiny hard drive and minimal memory is all that is needed.  The server will do the ‘work’, the client work stations are really little more than dumb terminals.

High speed and flexibility for the customers, only one expensive machine to take care of, one machine to license for ‘in demand games, etc.  All the software is readily available via open source … legal and free … and to the average user it will feel exactly as if they are on a high-end, top quality work station, especially if you set the network up to share the server via a priority scheme with different specs for game stations and ‘chat’ or schoolwork stations.  Worth looking into.

Competition. It always amazes me whenever I see rows and rows of net cafes lined in a certain area. It’s a sign that of impending failure … It’s all about the price-wars….

Sorry, Abe, I don’t really agree.  or, I don’t agree price is everything.  While it is certainly a bit risky to open a computer shop next door to an existing one, there is often a good reason that existing shops are ‘clustered’.  In many6 cases that is where the customers are.

Yes, it is true that there will be some customers who will only go to the shop with the cheapest hourly rates, but if price were the only criteria for business, everyone reading this article would only be driving a smoke-belching "owner jeep" or a bicycle with a rusty chain and would buy their clothes at a "schlock shop" in Quiapo.  There would be no movie theaters filled with people (you can always use Torrent) and you could take a nap lying in the middle of the road on the NLEX because who would waste PhP 180 from Balintawak to Dau when you can drive there on MacArthur highway for free?

When, for example, I go to a cafe I almost always go to one of the two Netopia franchises in my local SM mall.  I probably pass 8 or 10 cafe’s along the way, likely all of which are cheaper.  And I have never been in either of the two franchises that I haven’t seen a very decent customer population … sometimes I’ve had one of the very last stations available.  Of course some of my Filipino friends are going to say, "well, of course, it’s a rich Kano talking, what does he know about the real Philippines’?  True.  But I have never seen another Kano in the two Netopias I frequent … everyone else in there looks distinctly Filipino to me … they could certainly go cheaper … and some of them could, no doubt, teach me a thing or two about being tipid … although I am a Scotsman which means I am at worst a very close second to the average Filipino at being tipid and making simot

Frankly, I have a number of business ideas I think would have a higher probability of profit than a "conventional" Internet cafe … more on some of them very soon … but based on what I see every single day I don’t think the time for the Internet cafe business has gone at all … but I do think there is a lot of opportunity for doing in better and providing a better experience for the customer.