Ecommerce Philippines - An E-commerce Primer for the Global Pinoy

This is only a demo copy - Purchase a full copy on this ebook at http://www.ecom102.com/globalpinoy/

An E-commerce Primer
for the
Global Pinoy
Live Wealthier Series

This book is published by www.LiveWealthier.net
Visit us at www.facebook.com/LiveWealthier
©An E-commerce Primer for the Global Pinoy
All rights reserved.
2013


Table of Contents

Foreword: Get a life! 4

Chapter 1: I know why you’re reading this book 7

Chapter 2: Go global – and get someone to show you how 12

Chapter 3: Investment possibilities in the Philippines 16

The Internet and economic freedom

Wrong assumptions in e-commerce

Blogging

Success rates in e-commerce in the Philippines

Three types of online sellers

Chapter 4: Structure of trading physical products 26

Drop shipment

Buy and Sell

Produce Your Own Product

Chapter 5: Structure of selling digital products 37

Software creation/digital information

Membership sites

Resell rights
2


Chapter 6: Structure of providing outsourced services 43

Commissioned/ Professional services

Consultancy services

Offline skills

Chapter 7: Affiliate Marketing 47

What is affiliate marketing

Drop shipment vs affiliate marketing

How to make money in affiliate marketing

Chapter 8: The 8th Sense: Your Intuition Online 50

Chapter 9: Create a Paypal account for your business 60

Chapter 10: Protect your Paypal acccount from social engineering 64

Chapter 11: The Last Word 69

Appendix

Recommended 102 Ecommerce Consultants 70

Testimonials 74

About Ecommerce 102 75

About the Author 77

Live Wealthier 78

3


Get a life!
Foreword

I used to be one of the “overworkers” and “underpaids.”

Working late night shifts at a BPO while being a mom was not fun. Like many Pinoys, I
wanted to go abroad to earn more and find a new life. In the Philippines, I was working hard
between 12-15 hours a day with overtime. The money I was earning wasn’t commensurate to
the kind of effort I was making.

I was making between 30,000 to 50,000 pesos inclusive of bonuses for each month, and
my health was going down the drain, I looked haggard, I had a zero social life and I did not have
the time to spend with my infant daughter who was quickly growing up without me by her side.

At work, I couldn’t go to the toilet when I wanted to because of timed calls; my skin was
always dull and pale; my blood sugar levels were fluctuating at dangerous rates and I was
constantly feeding on high fat and high sodium fast food because those were the only ones I
had access to; I was constantly anxious because of misunderstandings from superiors and
rapidly changing quality assurance standards that didn’t make sense.

What kind of a life was that?

I knew it had to stop. Again, I thought about joining the bandwagon of OFWs just as my
parents had done 20 years ago.

But I knew that wasn’t the best option.

I was an OFW baby. From the age of 10, I had the freedom to do anything I wanted, had
loads of cash and had no one tell me what to do. My guardians had their own problems and
didn’t care as much about me. I learned vices early. This is what happens to many OFW children
when their parents are far away.

I also know the heartaches, loneliness and discrimination my parents suffered as aliens
in a foreign country. I knew this wasn’t the life I wanted for myself nor the legacy that I wanted
to pass on to my kid.

Then I met Eireen Diokno Bernardo and Edison Victorino who invited me to join the
Ecommerce 102 Fast Track program.

4


Eireen has been running online stores on eBay for Philippine collectibles with her
husband, Angelo in the last 12 years and has been so successful that she became a power seller
and one of just two Certified eBay Specialists. Today she is a well-known e-commerce education
specialist who has been teaching people of all ages and from all walks of life in the Philippines
and from other countries on how to set up profitable merchant spaces online.

Edison was a software engineer and developer by profession before he found his
passion as a successful social media entrepreneur and Internet network marketer.In 2009, he
started running a printing business that made him realize how difficult traditional
entrepreneurship was. After that he learned to use technology to leverage his efforts and hasn't
looked back since.

These guys lead a personalized mentoring program that showed me how to use income
generating ideas with technology. Now I am using the principles to build income sources from
home.

These days I spend quality time with my family. I eat healthy food because I now have
the time and the luxury to make home-cooked healthy meals. I slimmed down rapidly when I
got the fast food out of my system, and I can rest when I need to. I have a social life. I am
always available for my daughter, and I work with people that I like.

I don’t have to sell my health (at a very cheap rate) to the devil.

My friends told me I was “blooming.” I wanted to say: I’m not blooming! I just got rid of
the SSDD (same shit, different day) lifestyle I had been living all these years!

I realized that you CAN change things in your life. It doesn’t matter if majority of the
people you know live a certain way. You don’t have to be overworked and underpaid like them.
You don’t have to waste half of your life in traffic. You don’t have to exile yourself into a foreign
country just to make a living.

You can have the power to make money wherever you are, working on the things you
are passionate about, having the ability to choose the people that you work with, and having
the freedom to have your family with you through it all.

This is an informative book that will share with you the how-to’s of e-commerce. E-
commerce is a vast practice with plenty of possibilities. I’ll give you options and where you can
go, from the first step. I’ll be talking about foundational theories and practical applications of a
fantastic phenomenon that allows people to make money from anywhere in the world.

I just wish I heard about the Fast Track program a lot earlier.

5


To the Pinoy OFW, the night-shift working mom, the stressed-out dad, the sick and tired
employee, and the unemployed who can’t find a decent job: there is a way! Making money
doesn’t have to take you away from your family or sell out in life. In this book I’ll be talking
about the steps that will take you there.

6


CHAPTER 1

I know why
you’re reading this book
… and that’s because you are one of four types of people:

A. Unemployed (student, new graduate, housewife, retiree, or you got fired or
laid off)

B. An employee

C. An aspiring or start-up businessman

D. An established businessman looking to expand

wants to make money or
In other words, you’re either someone who

wants to make even more money.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting money. Money is a means to do great things, like
provide for your family, educate your kids, travel the world, build things and work on
projects that benefit people, share, be generous, and make your and other people’s dreams
come true.

And you’re reading this because you want to make money to do more things.
Worthwhile things that make a difference.

Okay that’s great.

The problem is ... how are you going to do that?

7


To answer that, a friend of mine asked another question: What business is low on
capital but high on hopes? This made me think. The answer to that could answer the first
question above.

But the word hope caught my attention, so I told him: play the LOTTO.
Buy a lotto ticket and have high hopes of winning.

Because we aren’t talking about getting high returns on business, but having high hopes
of winning something out of the twenty peso ticket that you bought at the Lotto.

Sounds silly right? Fortunately I'm not here to talk about strategies on throwing money
away, but strategies on how to make more money.

I gave that anecdote to show you that when you look at an opportunity, measure its
potential on giving you high returns, not just high hopes.

Now the good thing about being An Employee is that you get a regular paycheck every
month. If you have social security benefits, health insurance, non-monetary freebies (maybe a
car or rice allowance) and 6 figures in your salary, leaving your job would be the last thing on
your mind because of the perks and financial security you’re getting.

The problem is, not all employees have it that good.

By law, a typical, full-time, average wage-earning employee would need to spend 9
hours a day at work, including the one-hour break, for a 5 figure (or worse, a 4 figure) salary.
But in reality, if you are an employee, you actually spend more time: about 12-16 hours a day
just to work.

How’s that?

When you get up from bed, you will have to shower, get dressed, eat, put on make-up,
commute, get trapped in the rush-hour traffic, and do it all over again backwards when you
leave work and go home, with more work tucked under your arm. Plus, thanks to our world-
famous city traffic, you’ll manage to be late 2 minutes and will have to be penalized by the HR
department for that.

There’s also a chance that you hate your boss. If you’re buddies with the boss, that’s
great, but most of the time you’ll find that most workers hate their boss, or some co-worker or
other that they can’t avoid, and you’re one of them. What’s worse is some people even have to
deal with harassment issues with colleagues or a superior. Studies show that one of the biggest
causes of stress is a poor relationship with a boss.

8


I had a very talented friend who worked at a major car manufacturing company as a sales
trainer. She was a very organized and competent individual, but her female boss, who must have felt
threatened by her, made it a habit to take credit for her ideas and embarrass her in front of the staff.
Eventually she was forced to leave her job even though she wasn’t prepared to do it at the time. Sounds
familiar? You know what I’m talking about. This happens all the time.

Probably, you might find this all worth it if you are earning a 6-figure sum. But how
much pain are you willing to take for how much money? How much is your health worth? I
know of a few “successful” people who gave into cancer or some serious disease caused by
stress on the job. My former boss, who earned a nice salary and regularly went on
business/pleasure trips to Paris got a hysterectomy after a few years. You could give a medical
explanation for her condition, but I don’t doubt that all the stress and the people badmouthing
her behind her back contributed to her health condition too.

Worse, if you’re just a regular guy, it’s more likely that you’re getting that kind of pain
for far less. But then again, at least you have the security of a paycheck, don’t you?

Wrong.

One wise man once said that if he’s learned anything in this life, it’s that you
should not lay all your eggs in one basket.
The sense of security employees feel is nothing but an illusion.

You may be a 6-figure wage-earning employee, but you don’t own the company. I knew
someone who was a vice-president of a big multinational company for more than a decade.
Some major changes happened that shook up the organization and he became redundant. All
of a sudden he was forced to leave his very comfortable, high-paying post. That he was caught
by surprise over the turn of events is an understatement.

Having a good job has nothing to do with financial security.

If you’re employed, I'm not saying that you should quit your job. I’m saying that you
should create other income sources.

So if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, you’re probably asking questions like, What
business can I get into? How much money do I need to get started?

On the other hand, if you are already a businessman, you are probably concerned about
either expanding your business or improving results because, maybe, the returns aren’t so

9


good. Traditional marketing and advertising media is pretty expensive and may run into millions
in pesos. If you are a small and medium entrepreneur, you can’t afford to spend this much on
ads that cannot ensure results . Imagine all these big brands like McDonald’s, Jollibee, and
Coca-Cola. How much do you think they’re spending on ads?

If you aren’t a big fish in the sea like them, what do you think is going to happen to you?

When it comes to business, there are three popular options:

or otherwise known as the traditional, brick
1. The pro-capital business and mortar kind of business. If you have a lot
of money, you can do this. It’s not that easy to
put all your life savings into a risky dream.
Because of office space rent, furniture,
supplies, stocks, business registration,
marketing, manpower, a monthly
maintenance, you’ll need somewhere
between PhP 30,000 to PhP 5M, depending on
the scale of your business.

The only difference between this and no. 1 is
2. The Franchise that you have someone to guide you through
the steps, and for that, you need to pay in
addition, a hefty franchise fee. You will be
already selling a known brand, because you
have the franchiser doing the marketing for
you. So do you want your own McDonald’s or
7’11? They don’t come cheap, though.

Anyone, from all walks of life, can do this. And
3. Online business the best part is that you’re earning $ from the
comfort of your own home. It doesn’t matter
if you’re in Manila, Tuguegarao or New York.
As long as you have a computer and a good
Internet connection you’re good to go.Yes,
you still have some costs, but they are minimal
and you are cutting down on huge overhead
10


costs.

So there’s the good news.

Cyberspace is a humongous universe where virtually anything and everything is
possible. Thanks to the Internet, you can enter new roads of money-making opportunity. You
can start an online business with very minimal capital. The kind of capital you can borrow from
your best friend, the pawnshop or your mom. And you can market, advertise and sell your stuff
effectively at very minimal cost.

Take a look at multi-million dollar companies like Amazon.com and Facebook. They’re
pretty big now but Facebook started in a boarding house room in a university. Amazon started
running from someone’s garage.

Maybe you can’t imagine being the next Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, but how about
looking at ordinary people like you and me?

My aunt, who lives in the U.S., came up with the idea of bringing parols to America. She
looked for suppliers. She bought all kinds of lanterns, Christmas lanterns, capiz-shell lanterns,
Boracay-style cloth lanterns, bamboo lanterns, and put them up for sale online. Her patrons
came from the U.S. market. She did pretty well.

My friend’s sister, when she gave birth, decided that she didn’t want to go back to work
for awhile because she wanted to take care of her baby. So she took her passion for designer
bags, set up her collection on Multiply and sold it there. In no time at all, she started earning an
impressive, steady income.

When Edison Victorino started his online business, he didn’t spend so much on his
website. He spent around 5-days worth of wages to get started on a business that sold game
cards, electronic load and other kinds of digital downloads. Eventually this became his bread
and butter, which allowed him be a stay at home dad while earning a lot of money at the same
time.

Before Eireen started earning thousands of dollars a month from their online
businesses, her husband started it all by buying and selling local antiques via their Dekada
Collectibles store on eBay. Two months later, they were flooded with the demands from
international buyers, so he asked her to help him manage the logistics and the clients. Six
months later, they became one of the Filipino power sellers on eBay.

Big or small, there’s definitely money within that wide world called the Web.
11


Wherever you are in your life right now, if you are already an entrepreneur or someone
wanting to be one, you should seriously consider an online business or creating an online
presence for whatever it is you want to sell. Not only is it cheap, but you reach out to more
people than you can ever dream of and exponentially grow your income potential that way.

12


CHAPTER 5

The structure of selling
digital products
If physical products are not your thing, you can sell digital products or virtual
downloads.

Digital products can take on different forms. I will talk about three:

1. Software creation/digital information

2. Membership sites

3. Resale rights

If you have the know-how, you can make money from these types of digital products.

Let’s talk about creating software and other forms of
digital information.
When referring to the creation of digital products, we are talking about documents, e-
books, word files, templates, edited images, design, graphics, software, video tutorials, mp3
files, podcast lectures, original music, games, applications, androids, downloadables, and so
forth. Weebly is a good example of a digital product.

These digital products are anything that can be created by the use of a computer and
which do not need a physical counterpart to exist. Facebook apps are one example of digital
products. These are created by IT and system engineers, and can be turned into products that
can be sold, despite the absence of a physical form.

The e-book you are reading right now is a form of digital product. I could always print it
out and distribute it in its physical form, but I don’t have to. You can read this book just fine on
your computer screen.

37


Start asking yourself: what kind of digital information do I have the ability to create
which can later be sold for a profit?

Let’s talk about membership sites.
If you have a website that has interesting, specialized and exclusive information, you can
market that by getting people to sign up for access to the contents of that website. You can
charge people for getting a membership, subscription, or limited access to certain parts of your
website which holds all your uploaded content.

The content of your access site depends on the kind of digital product that you want to
sell. Of course, you should choose a product that has a high level of demand.

There are loads of websites out there specializing in comprehensive content in different
fields: money matters, pre-school education and worksheets, craftwork tutorials, mp3
downloads and movie access, musical instrument lessons, templates for business documents,
software, manuals, teacher lesson plans, financial education, community access, etc. There can
be freebies or free trials for the new visitor, but access to special and comprehensive
information comes with a fee.

This is a great way to earn passive income. All you have to do is to upload your products
onto your website, update it regularly, get a marketing campaign to drive traffic to your site,
and invite people to sign up for a fee. Then they can make downloads or access videos or audio
that will impart to them the information that they want. You can automate this process and
watch your income grow. If your target audience recognizes that the content you provide is of
high quality and is in high demand, then you’ve got it made.

Suffice it is to say that this kind of set-up works for specialized content. So there’s no
point in creating a membership site access for information that can be freely accessed all over
the web.

One perfect example is the Ecommerce 102 site, which is a digital product that operates
under membership access.

It’s not a club, a community, or a social networking site. It’s a secured e-learning facility
that archives recorded webinars and online workshops that can be accessed at any time by
member students or any interested party for a fee.

Eireen and Edison runs Ecommerce 102 by taking a team of specialists with them to
discuss topics and instruct students on different e-commerce strategies and technical

38


The question is, why would clients from other countries seek your consultancy services?
Most clients who engage in professional service providers in the Philippines are people who are
interested in business activity within that country. They will need consultancies expecting an
execution of these solutions within the Philippines, and you will be viewed as a specialist in that
regard.

46


but you get both the advantage of being a recommended consultant and a marketing affiliate.
In that case you stand to profit from selling all products that are available on Ecommerce 102.

As the rate of technology shifts rapidly, it’s important to be a participant in a course to
know how to effectively market it. It’s a way of earning that helps you to earn back the cost
you spent in enrolling in a course.

Another way of earning from the Ecommerce 102 affiliate program is attaching yourself
to marketing affiliation with a network of suppliers. Ecommerce 102 will soon be a provider of
various products and services which you can help market to receive commissions.

Eventually, as an e-commerce practitioner, you end up benefiting on the other side of
the Ecommerce 102 affiliate program as well. After complying with all the requirements of a
Fast Track course, you become a recommended consultant or service provider. You will be
recommended as a website designer, social media practitioner, or any other service provider to
any of Ecommerce 102’s clients. In this case, Ecommerce 102 will be sending clients to you,
through the affiliate marketing program.

If you look at it closely, you shall see that there are multiple combinations, strategies
and ways to earn, if you know how to position yourself in the e-commerce cycle.

49


about 4 hours on Facebook. Where business is concerned, it is a gold mine of contacts and
potential clients and customers, if you know how to use it.

We already know that. That’s why Mark Zuckerberg is a rich man.

But the trick is knowing how to use specific actions to take advantage of a hugely
successful platform and profit from it.

First let’s put things in perspective. People and businesses including big brands have
spent huge amounts of money in social media marketing because they dove into the arena
without carefully studying their execution plan.

For example some companies spend about PhP 175,000 on sponsor ads alone and then
pay an additional PhP50,000 to their social media handler who helps them get about 10,000
likes for their fan page.

Spend PhP 250,000 for 10,000 Likes?

That sounds too expensive for unimpressive results. But I’d like to say that there is a way
for people like you and me, for start ups and SMEs, to get much more out of social media than a
pittance of 10,000 Likes for much less cost.

Other people use technical trend analysis to anticipate human behavior, such as
studying numbers, statistics, graphs and history, which is a similar approach in forex and stock
market trends. But where Internet Marketing is concerned, those things work well when you do
marketing with Google or other search engines. But there is an unpredictability factor in social
media that doesn’t make it function in the same way.

Facebook - online marketing is a special kind of study distinctive from marketing via
SEO, which work best with corporations. But for SMEs, Facebook makes a good match in terms
of cost and returns. By comparison, search engine optimization is expensive, and failure rates
are high.

The following table represents corporate branding results of a marketing campaign. This is a
clear example of what happens when you are able to maximize your 8 th sense and use it to your
advantage.

53


Impressions are only valuable when it results into a sale. Online impressions resulting
from a social media or sn online marketing campaign can result in immediate sales because an
impression can lead to more clicks and a subsequent action involving an exchange of goods for
payment.

Per click is an action you want them to do so that the audience will turn into leads.

When someone clicks on your ad, it validates the fact that you are being liked. The
audience will engage, or make a comment. They will share a picture of your brand. And we can
convert Likes into monetary value. That’s what makes this good.

So 400 dollars for more than 14M worth of exposure is not bad. At all. In fact, it’s way
too good. This is equivalent to a 91.3% result.

Why? What is the element that made the results reach so high? That’s the power of the
th
8 sense. It’s a skill that allows you to create something to make people respond in the way you
want them to respond.

Another example of using the 8th sense is knowing when a marketing approach works
and when it stops working. As I have said before, the 8th sense is not an exact science and has
nothing to do with following a set of rules. There are many factors that come into play and that
is why the rules are never the same.

Remember the time when people selling online used to tag as many people as possible
to gain attention for their online posters? I remember when my Facebook friends would tag me
on pictures of bags, toys, jewelry or tour packages to get me to see their promotions. I admit I
used to do that myself during the time I was selling and marketing CCTV cameras on Facebook. I
was able to sell and receive inquiries that way.

But if you do this approach now, you’re likely to get banned. Sensing and knowing that
what worked then may or may not work now is part of how the 8 th sense works.

55

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