I just read in an online news today that Smart Communications, one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the Philippines, launches wireless meters and payment application. They’re gearing the traditional market of voice and text messaging to an “enterprise” services. This idea is not new actually. It’s is being used widely already by some restaurants and fast food chains (Yellow Cab delivery), and even a battery store (Motolite Express Delivery).

Unfortunately, this technology of being able to process an order and accept credit card payment virtually anywhere is not being utilized by small business enterprises. They still have vague idea that this is too costly for them where in fact, there are already available solutions in the market that are relatively profitable for their businesses.

In reality, they don’t really need to open a new bank account for this kind of transaction. All they have to do is go to a merchant gateway provider. These establishments are directly connected to all major credit card companies, banks and various financial institutions. One company that is providing these services is Merchant Account Provider – a company established in 1997 that provides credit card processing solutions to companies for various industries.

How would you know if the credit card processing company is not a fraud?

Easy, just remember these tips:
Check whether they are providing a 24/7 service, credit cards support, fraud protections, secure line, virtual terminal, and fast speed transaction.

As I’ve mentioned, one good example is Yellow Cab.The company is utilizing a restaurant merchant account wherein they can deliver anytime of the day (on branches that are open 24/7) and can process a credit card payment right on the doorsteps of their clients. This is what you call “wireless credit card payment”, – a type of credit card reader that handles authorization process and sends the billing to a credit card processing company.

The wireless credit card payment is secured and a matured technology already. I just hope that a lot of business owners will take advantage of it, not only for the convenience of their clients but this also ensures stability of money flow on their business and allows less clout on their accounting books as well.

Nearly half of online shoppers say they have stopped or cancelled their online orders due to security fears, according to Harris Interactive.

With so many online scammers in the virtual world, you’ve got to make your site more secured for your customer to trust you. You’ve got to gain the trust of the online shoppers before you can make a sale.

Here are the 5 easy steps which can help your online business establish a trust among your customer.

1. Make your site appealing, easy to navigate and has the same quality as other established online business. Look how simple Google and Facebook are. No elaborated design, no misleading banners.

2. Brag about your Awards and Recognitions, and put a testimony page. Showing your awards and recognitions, including a third party testimonials is a big boost for your online business. Potential clients will feel more comfortable in making a transaction from you since you have positive feedback already.

3. State your shipping and return policies upfront. Put the big mark “Money Back Guarantee” if possible. This will give your potential customers a feel of security once they make their purchase. It means your business means business.

4. Grab a “SSL Secured” badge. Go and check that most big online traders have this either on their sidebar, footers and displayed on their Cart page too. Don’t just put the words there but you really need to purchase an SSL certificate. The certificate will ensure your customer’s  information that you ask from them is secured, encrypted and safe during the transmission to a third party such as banks, credit card companies and other payment gateways.

5. Stand up and be recognized by known entities. Get all necessary third-party recognition such being a Microsoft partner or any known businesses. Show a Visa, Master Card or even PayPal logo if you are processing payment for these popular merchants.

With all the fraudulent hackers who are always on the lookout to victimize online shoppers, it is more important than ever to safeguard your website for consumer use.

Implement these starter tips from day one you opened you online store and I assure you that your customers will feel more comfortable purchasing products from your site.

Online trust will come if you invest and put on the necessary security, and assurance in your shop for even greater peace of mind of your buyers. With online trust gained, you’ll be well on your way to receiving increased sales as well and repeat orders too!

A lot of bloggers doesn’t know that there are different types of web hosting. I don’t blame them because the web host providers doesn’t even explain it to them.

Not if you are an internet marketer or a enterprise level company, you don’t have any excuses not to know these.

Web Server Hosting Rack

If you will diligently  review the different web hosting options of most  providers, you will actually can see the types of web hosting that they are offering.  Unfortunately, you might be facing an array of somewhat confusing information on what are those categories.

In general, there are 3 Types of Web Hosting that can be  can be summarized as follows:

1. Virtual (shared) Web Hosting – This is the most common web hosting arrangement in which more than one domain shares space on the same web server. This is the least expensive way for a company to create a web presence.  This type of web hosting is enough to  provide sufficient reliability and security assurances for basic web sites such as blogs.  This is not recommended for  companies that are  running mission-critical information over the internet or highly trafficked sites such as those being run by some internet marketers.

2. Dedicated Web Hosting – This is almost the same like the shared web hosting except that the whole server or more server are dedicated to one company. This is the right kind of arrangement for internet marketers. This setup  provide additional security and reliability often needed to accommodate the high traffic and the high bandwidth needs. The company using this services can have their own public IP address. This is also the recommended setup for those who want to setup their online store.

3. Co-location – This is a hosting arrangement in which a company provides the servers, but leases data center space, and of course the internet connection. A data center leases their space in terms of Rack. A Rack is simply an enclosure wherein you can install multiple servers.  This type of web hosting forces the company to have full control of their servers  while benefiting from the much better security, high-speed internet access, temperature controlled environment  provided by the data centers and it’s network infrastructure. This is a great option for a company capable of handling their own network management.

For a simple WordPress blog, the Virtual (shared) web hosting is enough to cover all your needs as long as you don’t run any scripts that can jeopardize your neighbor blog.

A badminton buddy of mine who owns a franchise of e-Games cafe of Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) asked for my help to install  both hidden and non-hidden cameras . For those who are not from the Philippines, PAGCOR e-Games cafe is an internet cafe dedicated to casino games only.

The non-hidden cameras are for the customers playing in the cafe. We actually placed the cameras where the customers can see that they are being watched. This is to at least give them some warning not to cheat or don’t do any unlawful  act while playing.

You may ask what is the hidden camera for?

The hidden camera is for my friend to monitor his two employees managing the e-Games cafe.  My friend had an experienced before when one of his employee (actually a family relative – his own cousin)  stole some cash from the cash registers. His cousin denied the wrong doing but my friend was certain that he was the culprit. He couldn’t fire his employee-cousin because he doesn’t have any evidence at that time. Later on, his cousin resigned from his work just a week after the  incidence.

This is the reason why my friend installed a hidden camera in his e-Games cafe – to avoid any further incident  like what happened between him and his cousin.

The camera or should I say surveillance camera is designed to look and function like just a regular wall clock. Below is  almost exactly the same kind of surveillance camera we installed.

Wall Clock Hidden Camera

Can you see where the hidden camera is?

I was actually fascinated with this gadget because you could never really tell that this standard wall clock is actually recording the motion within the room. Of course, nobody knows about it except me and my friend (and yes – his wife too). My friend even let me view the recorded videos two days after we installed it. Luckily we didn’t find any irregularities or scandalous acts on his cafe.

Next week, I’ll gonna visit my badminton friend again so we can configure the hidden camera to stream the video over the internet so he can view his e-Games cafe from home.

Today is National’ Heroes Day in the Philippines. It commemorates the celebration of the national heroes. This day falls every last Monday of August. The president of the land usually declares this day as a non-working – meaning it’s a vacation day!

Unfortunately, I was not able to take advantage on this so-called vacation day. I was asked to report in our office. To make it fair to everybody, we were all called to report including our bosses.

We are actually fast tracking the re-launching of our new system. Sorry, I can’t divulge it yet for now but it has to something to do with short messaging system and email services.

Being the most senior software consultant of the company, our president gave me the tasked to look for a solution on how are we going to upgrade the servers of our systems.

Currently, our servers are located on two separate providers. Our main server is colocated here in the Philippines and the other server is in Europe since most of our clients are there. We have a 1/2 half rack colocation space which we are renting out in Manila while our server in Netherlands is being managed by other people.

During our informal discussion, I recommended that we need to look for another web hosting provider so we can have additional backup for our projects.

By the way, our system is currently processing 600,000 emails per month. We are projecting that this will past the 1 million mark in two months time. Ever since we started our company (yes, I’m one pioneers), we already decided that all our servers must be managed by an enterprise level service providers. Having a managed hosting setup like this, we can concentrate in developing our projects instead of worrying about the network infrastructure.

It’s already midnight here and yet I’m still busy looking and searching for another provider, most probably based in Canada or USA because we have plans to expand our business in North America. I’m not the hero type person but my boss told me that I need to submit my report tomorrow at 3PM during our meeting or else we can’t get a bonus for our project,

Image from TheList Company

Let me start by telling you  that this post is about business blogging, but in general it is also applicable to any type of blogs.

Almost every business owner wants to grow their market and reach a larger audience. There is no better tool nowadays but to give your “brick and mortar” business an online presence. This is where business blogging comes in.

Gone are the days when static pages are the king of the web landscape.  The power of blogging has been fully recognized by the business community as a powerful tool in reaching more potential customers.

If you are into business blogging then congratulations! You’ve done the first step (and sometimes the most important).

Since you already have a physical product  to offer  ( it applies to digital products and services too), all you have to do is to sell, sell and sell.

I won’t talk about landing pages here nor the aesthetic design of your business blog. I want to emphasize on this post on how to promote your product or business online in the quickest way possible.

Let’s forget the technical details of a blog. We don’t need the perfect keywords at this time,  in short we don’t need SEO. Believe me, it  will take t time for a search engine to index your business blog. Let’s forget social media such as Facebook,  Myspace, Twitter, etc..  Let’s keep those in the background for a moment.

Your goal is either to make or increase sales. In order for you to achieve this, you need to inform your potential buyers about your business blog. In blogging, the right term is to drive traffic in your site.

so… How can you promote your product as fastest as possible?

By using  a LIST. Most if not all internet marketing gurus will tell you that without list there will be no traffic. Some equates LIST with Profits. In some way it’s is true.

Spread the word about your business blog  by  building a list. But wait a minute, isn’t building a list takes a loooooonnng time?

Well, definitely yes.

But what if, instead of building YOUR OWN LIST, you can LEVERAGE on other people’s list? If you can ask favor from other people (internet marketer) who are willing to share their list, or do a swap so much the better. Just give a share for every sale (like an affiliate).

If you cannot find other people to promote your product through their list, there are companies out there whose specialty is building a list and either you can rent or buy from them. What’s so good about these companies, is they already have market segregation. If you are looking for a consumer list, you can request them to segregate the data according to your criteria such as geography, age, income, purchasing behavior and more. They can even provide you a special list according to your target such as business list, auto insurance list, etc.

I hope I’ve given you some initial idea in promoting your business blog.

Having a business blog pays – but having a profit pays even better!  This can be easily done the fastest way by leveraging on other people’s list.

Wow…time flies so fast! I’ve been out of town for almost a month…travelling in all directions with my whole family.  Tiring, but a lot of memorable moments were bonded.

My last post was more than a month old already. I’m very sorry for that, but let me tell you that I did not procrastinate nor I’m a  Blogcrastinator.     A  Blogcrastination – the deferment of writing a blog post to a later time; often a mechanism for coping with anxiety.

In fact, all the blogs that I own and most of the sites that I’m maintaining ( I’m not the blog owner) were all updated even if I was on a vacation except for blogdemanila.com. This is of course due to WordPress scheduling techniques. All the articles were set to be posted on a scheduled date.

So how did I earn while traveling? Simple, by just letting my blogs run on their own. To tell you the truth,  my earnings for this past four weeks  where I was mostly offline are more than what I’ve earned  on my first year of blogging.

And here’s the other truth;  I don’t really do ALL the work. It’s all outsourced or automated.

It’s simple really when you already have set-up your “blog empire” and let the soldiers do most of the work. All you have to think about is the strategy you will use in conquering your next loots.

Just like the old English idiom, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, there’s also there’s WAY more to blogs than running a few clunky ads.

Spilling the secret box

My secret box is composed of a mix of revenue streams including:

• Services (setting-up sites and blogs)
• Affiliate products and services
• Ads (such as Adsense and Bidvertiser)

I know that some of you are earning a lot doing product reviews and/or using pay per post networks. Honestly, I’m not good on this. I’m not a good writer and so I shy away from this task as much as possible.

Since I’m not good in writing,there’s another SECRET that I’m going to reveal on my next post.  I just have to schedule the articles that are needed to be posted on all the blogs that I’m maintaining. Don’t worry it won’t take long.

This is another cool free application guys. If you have small and home-based businesses, Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 can come in very handy for you.

Why 2009 and not 2010? It is for the reason that Microsoft is no longer distributing this very handy and useful software after November 2009, but you can still download it from other third-party websites such as download.cnet.com.

Microsoft Accounting Express

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 is an easy-to-use accounting software that works with any of the existing Microsoft Office suite of applications, with which you can easily create invoices, track expenses and banks, and do a wide variety of accounting works which can help you easily manage your business.

Importing data from Office Excel, etc. is also pretty easy which lets you start from where you are. Just check out this Office Accounting Express 2009 – You won’t even have any difficulty working with its features and tools.

With the help of step-by-step wizard, you can even get your accounting tasks commenced immediately, and best of all, this Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 can come to you 100% free of cost!!

All it takes is just download Office Accounting Express 2009, and you can get started! This free version works with Windows XP/2003/Server/Vista.

However, of note, this free version is designed for US and UK based small business only and does not support requirement outside of these two countries.

Internet connection is very slow since yesterday morning. Our company is connected to two major broadband facilities, Globe and Eastern Telecoms which apparently have been affected by the recent double breaks in the international fiber-optics cables.

Back home, I’m also connected to two DSL providers, PLDT and Globe. Both are affected too by this major network outage.The term they are using is “international cable break between China and Taiwan.

According to some news sources, these cable breaks have been caused by the recent tropical storm Morakot in Asia. This is the same typhoon that devastated some provinces in the Philippines and left about 25 people dead and cause a lot of land slides in Baguio also.

What makes me furious about this incident is that, all of the internet providers could not provide a definite date or time on when they can fully restore the normal operations of their services. So much for their ” bleeding edge technology”!

I registered another new domain today but before I did that, I checked my emails which I got from GoDaddy. They have special promo by way of offering discounts using a promo code when registering or transferring a domain.

As you can see from the picture above the normal price of .COM domain name is $10.69 but currently they’re giving it away for $9.99. The good news is, you can still get MORE Discounts if you will use their discount code. Just like what’s you can see on the image below, but if you read further I’ll show you the hidden supercodes that domain buyers are using and keeping all the profits to themselves.

Here are the two promo codes that I received from them via email:

• fbfDom10 - get 10% OFF* our regular prices on .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, and .US domains.
• fbgdhome20 - get 20% OFF* your order of $75 or more. This special offer expires 7/13/2009, so start shopping now! Based on my experienced, this code actually never expires.

TIP: Most Go Daddy coupons are only valid on NEW domain registrations or on domain transfers. Therefore, buy multiple years upfront to save!

More SUPER Promo Codes

Since GoDaddy is sending emails to their customers regarding their promo, I decided to google around if there are other people out there posting their promo codes. Lo and behold, I’ve found some gems lying around ready to be pick-up.

For Renewals

These codes will give you $6.95 for renewal of your domains.

1. ZINE3
2. goxtgi200c
3. steve
4. gaze3

New Domain and Renewal

Here are the additional promo codes that you can use if you are want to get a better deal from GoDaddy.

1. ZINE5 - will give you 10% off any purchase.
2. ZINE7 -will give you $7.49 for each domain instead of $$9.99
3. ZINE25 - receive instant 25% off any purchase of $100 or more

GoDaddy Super Promo Code

The best promo code that I’ve used in registering a new domain is FACEBOOK5. I only paid $5.20, which translates to $5.00 off on domain registration!

TIP: To make sure you are saving the most amount of money, try all codes in your shopping cart. Use the code which one gives you the cheapest domains.

Whether you want to build a Web site for your business, create your family blog, or share photos online with friends, use GoDaddy promo codes today and get all BIG SAVINGS.

Most of the codes that I’ve posted here are working for years already. Saving money is especially important to people these days. Please feel free to share this code to all your friends, post them in your blog, tweet, write them on your facebook status and share in your other social network.

Update (August 16, 2009): This special offer expires 8/29/2009, so start shopping now! Use source code fbgdhome20 to get 20% OFF* your order of $75 or more when you order online at GoDaddy.com