State of Ecommerce in PH - 2009

I have a lot to tell but I was too lazy to write anything. The whole November and first half of December is probably my busiest days in 2009. Only 2 more weeks left and it’s already 2010 so I’m pushing myself a little harder this week.

I went to the Ecommerce Summit last Nov. 12 & 13 to understand the state of ecommerce in our country. According to the CEO of Yehey, the state of the ecommerce is not totally 100% transactional ecommerce but more on social commerce. Social commerce, the way I understand it is adding some social networking features in the whole ecommerce process rather than just buying and selling directly. As a proof, Multiple has dominated the “online store” over ebay because of some social behaviors Filipinos have. Some of the limiting reasons why we can’t have full transactional ecommerce:

• lack of trust
• limited credit card ownership
• limited internet and PC penetration

In my point of view — technology and government support must advance first.

Trust - it is only not our issue, it has been always the biggest issue. But the sad thing is, we have no particular law that provides standards and protocols. We have ecommerce law, but not everybody are aware of it. There are probably less than 1% of the Filipino internet population that has heard of it. That is one of my reasons why I also do not trust doing everything online.

Credit cards - it is hard getting credit card here unless you have 10k and above salary and that’s not even a guarantee. It is also too expensive for a small shop owner to even accept credit cards. Gcash might be a good option but there is still no simple and direct way to use it and connect it to outside applications. I haven’t verified how much but my latest info I have is that one has to pay 100k just to get access. I’d rather use Paypal for all my online transactions.

Limited internet and PC? One can avail a PC for only 10k nowadays. Internet access is the bigger issue here. I visited Hongkong and the difference is too great that I think we need 10 years or more. Their rates is .0 something per call and surf. I went on top of a mountain and the signal was still so strong. I guess our geography also comes into play but the point is, my homeplace is only a few kilometers away from the city and only SmartBro is available with very slow connection. When you go to cafe(s), their per hour rate is already at 100 PHP! That’s way TOO MUCH! The good news is, SM malls have free wifis already and that’s quite a relief. I hope Globe, Smart and Sun expands more and upgrade their facilities even more.

My knowledge is probably still too little to understand everything that is happening but the situation is clear enough for me to understand that we are too far from reaching a certain level of transactional ecommerce (I describe it to some as automated ecommerce) in the country.

Business Models and the Social Media Revolution

I am not into music but this presentation is very clever in presenting how businesses should think at their business models. It’s not too hard to grasp. I thought to bookmark it but it will be like throwing a great idea in my closet so I’d like to share it here.

Another that catched my eye today is about social media and how it changed history. I am not into the social media thing but seeing most of my friends engaged in them is something.

Tax for Freelancers in Philippines

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uhm., there is really nothing to say except that Freelancers in Philippines are exempted! Heard that correctly — we really don’t need to pay anything. This is according to a personnel in the BIR office in San Fernando City, Pampanga(I visited their office just this August 2009). That person pointed out that if we are not an employee of a legitimate company nor do we have business permit approved by DTI then we don’t have to pay anything. So I guess I should not be guilty of not paying at all. Works for me!

Some people asks me why the hell do I want to pay my tax?? I guess for dumb reason that I want to contribute to the government so some government officials can buy new clothes, houses and cars for their own profit AND to get a proof that I am a good paying citizen. I know, crazy reason but atleast it was already confirmed that I am not oblige of anything and nor any freelancers out there. Ain’t that cool??

Understand the language (of business)

A business partner came to me yesterday excited to share his solutions in our current problem. It’s a rare scenario because he talked about leveraging! Before, I can hardly open up the idea of using others money or effort so we could grow the business. Not that he is closed to the idea but I could not explain it the way it was explained in the book. I also lack the credibility and the sufficient knowledge to explain it. When I joined the ca2020 community and attended the wealth course, I found it to be a great resource and I dragged him along afterwards. I’m bearing the fruit of that course little by little now.

Education on business and investments should really be part of the system of aspiring entrepreneurs. And I mean not only yourself but also your partners. You can generate more ideas and decide wisely if you and your partners speak the same language.

Doing something different this year

I was meaning to write a post about some entrepreneurial plans I have for this year until I read Cal Evans post on entreprenureship which gave me a little boost of confidence. I also have a lot of ideas throwing out to people around me. Few were approved, most weren’t. Some ideas that I think are good but just thinking of what to do next scares me. Most ideas were denied because someone already have done it. But I believe in what others have said in Cal Evan’s post, the power is in the execution. The amount of things that I will learn in this experience might be more valuable than the lost I could get. I might fail now but I can use that for the next set of ideas.

The project

I really wanted to go ecommerce for the longest time. I have already 1 failed project on this last year because my partners and I were not ready yet for the challenge. So this year, a related idea came up. If I can’t have my shop, then I’ll help others who has the system but lacks the information needed to go online. It is targeted to small and medium enterprises who are interested or probably will get interested in putting up their businesses online. I’ve been involved in web development for almost 4 years now and I know how profitable the internet can be to anyone who would passionately learn it.

I took the first step and wrote some ideas, refined, refined and refined. I tried to create a business plan but I just failed in the sense that it is not that formal for a business plan - it’s too boring, But I did create a plan and that’s good enough for me. I ended up with my first task which is quite not what I wanted to. I did more research but that paid of with the information I was able to gather.

The next step was to start talking about it - writing a blog. A friend told me, no matter how good your product is, if you don’t market it’s useless. So I created a blogger account and called it SME Talk which tackles how a small and medium enterprise could start their online business. This is more of a help on the technical aspects since that is my forte. I have scheduled a twice a week post for this so good luck to me and to my future readers.

The future

I plan to do more on evangelizing my kababayan about internet and online opportunities. This could be an online and offline affair so I’ll probably be out more. Though I still expect a few things will probably change the plan for this year, some things are quite unstable and undecided but for as long as I am here this will be the BIG plan.

Implementing Release early, Release often in the Offline World

I don’t know what to say and how to introduce it but here it is — we opened up a Digital printing service! Yey!

With background in web development, we have been tremendously influenced by the terms and practices here. We applied the concept of release early, release often in the business. Last 2 weeks ago, we opened up with only the basic services — printing of digital pictures, creating photo ID’s, visa ID’s and the like. We decided to do so because every day that we do not open up, we are losing precious customers. After a few days of getting used to the new system, we explored on selling products based on customer’s requests. For the last 2 weeks, our expectations were exceeded!

In the very near future we will deliver your printed images to your homes with only a few clicks. You do not have to come to our office because we will come to you. Actually, you can try our alpha version and be the first to try that out! I can give you big discount for trying it first. Just send your images to me via email and some instructions if you have. Contact me at rachel (at) petixe.com. I also welcome questions or suggestions, I’m sure you have. By the way, we only ship within the Philippine territory, obviously because of the cost

New theme for a new year (2009)

Happy New Year!! It’s that time of the year again when it’s ok to always start something new. I’d like to say goodbye to my old orange skin and hello to the new Petixe! The theme is a free wordpress template from WooThemes and I just love the outline. It is clean and elegant although I still find it a bit boring in terms of color. I like bold, bright colors so I will probably tweak this a little more in the coming days.. or maybe months?.

My first plan was to create a minimalist design after getting a little hooked on it. I saw Vitor Lourenço work and I am just liking his style. I have started my design in paper but got stucked with Veerle’s tutorial on manipulating pen in AI (bummer). I got a bit frustrated so I decided to just settle on a free template for the meantime since I don’t want 2010 to come before I change my theme. I still hope this year I could atleast finish 1 design (added in my new year resolution).

What do you think about the new design? What about minimalist style just like in Lourenço’s work?

Drupal Asia Conference Cancelled

I was surprised today when I received an email from drupalapc.com about the cancellation of Drupal Asia Conference in Sydney, Australia. Below is the email:

We are sorry to announce that the Drupal Asia Pacific Conference and the Full Code Press website competition have been postponed to a later date.

It was our hope that we could organise the event to coincide with the Open CeBIT conference in May. However the challenges imposed by a tight deadline and the logistics of integrating with the CeBIT expo have been too much to overcome.

We are still committed to running a Drupal Asia Pacific event and a website building competition, but with greater lead-up time to plan speakers and arrange venues.

continue reading here…

I learned about DrupalCon a few days ago and got excited. Right then and there I started on checking on how to process my papers. Unfortunately (or shall I say fortunately?) I will not be able to make it. I really feel pity about those people who already prepared for it. Just praparing for the Visa application is already time consuming, how much more when you have already reserved for plane tickets and hotels?

Hopefully the next one will be a success and hopefully they learned something from it. I still want to feel positive about this event so I’m still looking forward to the next Drupal Con in Asia.

The New Thing in Web … Again

Web 3.0? Web 4.0? What???

After the AJAX hit, Web 2.0 buzzword and Facebook API’s, another new word popped out somewhere when I was surfing. Adobe AIR. They say it is the new thing now! Oh my! I haven’t even mastered AJAX nor the APIs yet!

Now, now, now, what’s Adobe AIR again?

The Adobe® AIR™ runtime lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems. AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime

Does that mean I can run this kind of app on and offline? Yes indeed. According to this very helpful article by BlueClock, AIR finds the best of both worlds. It can interact with online resources if connected or use local storage (via SQLite) and synchronise data when next connected. It runs well in Windows, Linux and OS X (isn’t that nice..).

I downloaded Google Analytics Reporting Suite to test what kind of application this technology has brought. Looks very cool. I quite actually liked this app compared to the web version. It’s fast and I do not have to worry about Firefox crashing again. And most of all, I do not have to worry cluttering my browser again with pages from analytics. In years, I have thought about this technology, and now look, it’s just a single download away from us. Try it!

After this, what’s next? Can you just please wait for me to study this app before coming up with another new technology????? Hehe.. how I wish *roll eyes*

Withdraw PayPal directly to your Philippine bank account

Breaking news mga kapwa business-minded Pinoy! We can now directly withdraw paypal money to our local banks. Thus making business online a lot lot lot lot lot and 1millions times lot better.

Effective yesterday, PayPal started allowing users in the Philippines to withdraw funds to local bank accounts.

Yes, it’s confirmed. Log in to your PayPal account and see that in the My Account > Withdraw page, you now have an option to directly transfer funds from your PayPal account to your bank account in the Philippines.

Withdrawal transactions are expected to be processed within 5-7 business days.

There is no charge if the transaction amount is P7,000 or more but there is a P50.00 fee if the amount to be withdrawn is P6,999.99 or less.

A P250.00 return fee is charged if you entered incorrect details about your bank account so make sure you input the correct information.

To withdraw, you must attach a bank account first to your PayPal account. Once added, you can directly submit a withdrawal request.

It’s really true!