I just came across this idea in my files. Earning money in the Philippines seems to be a bit like the weather. Everyone seems to want to talk about it, but nobody wants to do anything about it. This is right up the alley of a great many readers here, US, Filipino or any other nationality. Looking at the dateline I see I took a snippet from my good friend Yuga’s blog back in 2008, nearly two years ago … and I’ve heard very little myself, either personally on in comments to Yuga’s original post.
Yet virtually everyone out there reading this in the Philippines has a computer, a video cam (or access to one) and a way to get high-speed internet connectivity over most of the Philippines, either through a 3G cell phone or via a WiFi USB ‘dongle’ for a laptop or netbook.
Instead of searching the want ads for a job that will match up with your skills … at a salary that will make it hardly worth your while, why not tap into a profit stream that will never go away and one that is “in demand” each and every day here in the Philippines.
The “gurus” of sales and marketing will tell you the secret to making money is simple … find a need that is very important to someone … even one that causes pain (no one argues much with their dentist when a tooth goes bad, you may bitch about the money later, but when that sucker is infected and swollen you get it treated and are more than glad when the pain stops).
They also recommend selling things that are consumable … something that people continue to need and need again and again …and things that, like toothache, people have little control over.
Can you think of anything like a sudden toothache, off-hand, right now? Hint, one clue is in the title … “the End”. The death of a loved one is every bit as painful as a toothache and a heck of a lot harder to get over.
Yup, the final end, death. It causes pain to whole families, not just the ‘recipient’. It’s not controllable … in case anyone out there isn’t sure, let me deliver the news to you … we are all dead …we just don’t know when. There is a never ending supply of death, and even the Bill Gates among us can’t avoid it.
And it’s something that doesn’t lend itself much to cost control … when a loved one dies, there are certain rights and rituals we all go through, and some of those rituals demand spending … sometimes a lot.
Read Yuga’s original post and then I’ll add some updated ideas … and don’t worry I’ll throw in something upbeat about new beginnings too, near the end.
Last week, when a sibling of a friend died of colon cancer, I went to the wake at the Paco church to pay my respects. My friend told me one of their sister from the States can’t make it and wished there’s a way they can do to ease the disappointment.
I said I can bring my laptop and use the built-in webcam to do a YM video conference. I hooked up my phone to Smart 3G and connect it to my laptop via bluetooth and started.
So there we were, moving the laptop around to broadcast the video taken from the webcam while other relatives huddle around to talk to the other party in the US.
I thought this was cool and wondered why chapels haven’t thought of this yet. … {hat tip: tech soulja Read more about online burial services from Yuga here.
People die every day. In the Philippines wakes and funerals tend to be ‘big deals’. Even poorer people who can’t afford a formal funeral home service normally have a viewing in the deceased’s own home.
photo credit: stuff_and_nonsense
Due to the economic facts of life, a great many of the deceased’s family and friends are liable to be in far off parts of the Philippines or overseas. It’s expensive and sometimes impossibly disruptive for many to visit the viewing or services … yet wanting to pay their respects and to chat with others in the family in their grief and sorrow is a very heartfelt need. Thus: “>How to Use e-Burol (Click here to download the manual) … there’s opportunity here to anyone who wants to set up a service like this on their own.
You could attack the opportunity in any of several ways: Go into partnership with local funeral homes where they would pay you to provide service “just like” the name brand undertakers. or advertise and run the service independently for a fee, or put up a directory service and ‘how to do it’ site and make money from advertising and affiliation with flower vendors and other services in the trade … possibilities abound.
Let me also add a word about competition. Many folks glance at an idea like this and say, “Oh it’s being done already, I’m too late.”
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact that there are viable businesses already offering these services is proof that there is a demand and public interest …it’s actually a great business potential indication.
Aside from death, there are a lot of other “high demand” opportunities. How many overseas relatives who have paid for a student’s education here would want to “virtually participate” in a graduation or even a wedding? My guess is, plenty.
And don’t forget new babies. From personal observation, these little bundles of joy just seem to keep on coming … the Philippines has an endless supply. I’ve personally observed when a new baby comes along it is a much bigger event than it sometimes seems in the US … especially if it is the first grandchild of a couple, as just one example. Whole families will scape the last peso out of the piggy bank and set off for distant locations to see the newborn. It’s one of those things that people do, it’s something that’s iportant to them, and it’s something that’s going to keep on happening, recession or no recession.
Put a simple web conferencing hookup and cheap web cam and mic in the new mother’s room and tie it to a “one time use” website (free on Blogger a number of other free web hosts) so that relatives all over the world can “tune in’ and chat with the new mom as she feeds and shows of the new child. (don’t forget to record the sessions and sell copies on DVD for those who missed all the joyful occasions live.)
What do you think? Ever given a thought to making a business out of the business of ife itself? I smell potential here.
And as a final thought, even though it’s essential that you make some money out of all this, if you want your business to survive, it’s also a case of providing a necessary, very rewarding service to people who otherwise would regret “not being there” the rest of their lives … much more rewarding than selling laundry soap or condominium units or some other material thing.
Done right you can make a lot of people happy this way, or at least help them assuage their grief in some small way … and as my friend Martha would say, that is a “Good Thing”.
Hi Dave,
This is great information that you have posted on yet another great business idea that one could profit from as well as feel good about doing.
I found your site a couple of days ago and am spending a lot of time on it as you have tons of great information and you do a great job in presenting it as well. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Anna Haller originally from the Philippines but moved to the States at a very young age. I decided last year to move back home and to raise my two kids here. Having lived here for the past 5 months now and being a stay at home mother I have decided to try to look for something that I could do online to make some money out of.
I have created a blog for friends back home to keep in touch with me and is strictly a social blog. I would like to make it a search oriented blog though so that I could make a profit like you. If you have any pointers or advice for me I would greatly appreciate it. I’m hoping to make my blog informative and interesting at the same time as I am an actual Filipina moving back home with challenges that I have to overcome as well. One big one being that I don’t know how to speak the language, at least not yet.
Take care and continued success to you.
Anna
Thanks for commenting, Anna. And thanks for sharing an interest in blogging and on-line entrepreneurship. I started PhilFAQS more than 7 years ago (7 years and 28 days, exactly, dang I meant to have a birthday celebration and I forgot … good thing it wasn’t my wife’s birthday I forgot
). I never had any intention of making money. There are much more profitable ways of making money than blogging … but a blog is a very worthwhile investment that can be built upon, even if the blog itself doesn’t make much.
For years I would tell anyone who asked that this blog made ‘nothing’ and in point of fact, that was pretty much true for years. However, I just looked it up and 76,654 different people (different computers, anyway) came to visit in 2009, 66,269 of them for the first time, and 10,385 came back more than once. that means very 8 minutes someone arrives here, looking for information about the Philippines. Is this a huge market? Hardly. Even compared to a number of other Philippine-oriented sites this is a tiny place. But is it significant in any way? I’d say so, since rather than saying PhilFAQS makes “no money”, I can truthfully say it clears several hundred dollars a month … (you don’t find 10 or15K pesos lying in the street every month, now do you?) … and the actual efforts I make to promote it are minuscule, to say the least. When I feel like ranting about something, I rant. When I feel like answering comments, I answer. When I feel like going back and correcting typos and updating old articles, I update. When I feel like doing nothing, then that’s exactly what I do … but the blog keeps on ticking, even when I am snoring, or watching American idol or The Wire.
The principles apply as I wrote about recently in the e-Burol article. Find something people want, and provide it. In my case I don’t have much specialized knowledge, there are thousands of other ‘kano’ who married Filipinas and moved back here. They all have a story, but we also share many experiences in common and most of us are not as “unique” as we think we are..
In your case, you’re have several areas of ‘differentiation’ … your own USP (Unique Sales Proposition). First, you’re a woman. Why more women don’t write blogs along the the lines of ;how to move here’ I will never know … they have a unique perspective, they connect much better than men to women visitors (and who do you think comes here more on search, men or women? … I mean who does the planning, researching. trip arranging, fact checking, banking, bill paying, etc. in most households? …)
Secondly you are a Filipina without the normal Filipina cultural background. There are thousands of people here in the Philippines and thinking about the Philippines who are like you or who have children like you … Filipino by birthright, but not by culture. Is the Philippines the right place for them? Why should they move back? Why should they be scared of moving back? Should they reacquire Philippine citizenship? (that alone is a huge question). The list goes on.
I hope this gave you some insight. If I were you, I wouldn’t make a ‘business plan’ any more exstensive than this … start a blogh, tell my story from the earliest days when the thought of moving back here came up, what factors you used to decide, what success you have had, what mistakes you made, who helped you, who discouraged you and so on. Then promote it as you go along, you can easily build bigger traffic figures than I have (hint, I accept guest posts, with links, happily), my friend Bob Martin is always looking for good guest writers, etc., etc. Once you have 100-200 visitors a day, you’ll see the way to begin monetizing … you won’t know a lot about your visitors until you get them, so advance planning is kind of a time waster, this business is often better served by the ‘Ready, Shoot, then Aim’ approach. Concentrate on making your first dollar, then rinse, lather, repeat.
If you can wash your hair, you can make money online.
Dave,
Thank you for those inspiring words. It’s always good to get some pointers from one who has been there and done it and is continuing to do it successfully!
Your stats for 2009 are impressive! I may not know too much about the blogging world yet but having someone show up on your site every 8 minutes is pretty good. I will definitely make that as one of my goals to shoot for on my blog.
I’ve always known that I had a unique story to tell, if you will, about my life and often wondered how I would go about telling it to the world. I thought about writing a book which could possibly be a movie one day (wishful thinking), but knew I would have to start off small first then expand. Although I only 28 and still have a lot of living to do, how I got to where I am at today is the story that I want to tell. From having a father who was 66 when he had me to being adopted by one of my sisters, to surviving a volcano, the story just gets more interesting. Blogging is the answer and I am now convinced that this is what I should start off with. If it leads to something bigger in the future than great.
I will definitely take your words of advice and apply it to the best of my ability. I am consistently researching about the blogging world and have been feeling a bit overwhelmed the past couple of days but I know that if I take my time and concentrate on a few pointers at a time I will get my blog started off in the right direction. Wanted to get your opinion on wether or not you think I should start a brand new blog or tweak and work with the one that I have currently with blogger? The one I have with blogger is not self hosted so it ends with blogspot.com. I heard WordPress is the way to go and have been thinking about switching to them.
Thanks again for the invaluable information. I definitely know how to wash my hair so I know that the money or pera will be rolling in shortly!!
Nice ideas there, Dave. There is a Funeral Home chain down here in Mindanao (they may be nationwide, I’m not sure) called “St. Peter” that does this. They offer online viewing of the casket and the service through a password protected website. Only the family members, or those authorized by the family are given the password to access the service, so privacy in insured. Like you say, just because somebody is already doing it, that doesn’t mean the market is saturated. In fact, this market is in it’s infancy, and the fact that others are getting started on it is just a sign that it is viable.
I like the “baby” idea especially. Bringing such a happy event to family members around the globe is really something that would be rewarding, in addition to being profitable. If I owned a hospital, I would really jump on that idea! Of course, you don’t have to own a hospital to do it, but it’s just a natural for them!
Thanks Bob. Indeed St peter is nationwide, that’s the link I furnished, someone who wants to try this can get a free instruction manual (re-write of course, don’t just copy). St peter has featured this service for several years now, but the people in even their larger metro Manila branches don’t even know much about it. That’s why I tell people, don’t worry about competition, most of your competitors don’t even try to sell.
And the hospital idea is a good one, I am sure. Sometimes the viewing areas at hospitals need those crowd ropes and traffic directors because there are so many relatives and friends lined up to see the new baby. You don’t need anything more complicated than a netbook with cam and mike in the new mother’s room and Yahoo Messenger, Skype or another free online teleconferencing service. Everything is controlled by the new mother or her ‘watchers’ in her room, so they are responsible for their own privacy, hours of operation, etc. The beauty of the idea today is, there’s no wiring or connecting with the hospital’s computers or any of those stumbling blocks. 3G or even WiFi is fast enough, you aren’t broadcasting a huge Hollywood production, and the smile and ohs and ahs from the Titas in the States and the Titos in Doha, etc., etc, would be nearly as much fun as any money made.