iBlog: The 6th Philippine Blogging Summit

It is only in rare occasions that you get to see and hear some of top Pinoy bloggers together in one place. One of those rare occasions is iBlog. This annual event will again be held for the 6th time on April 16-17 at the Malcolm Theater, College of Law, UP Diliman. And yes, registration is free.

In case you are interested, here is the schedule as posted on http://iblogph.org:

Day 1 (April 16, 2010)

9:00 – 9:20 Opening Ceremonies (National Anthem, Welcome)
9:20 – 9:40 Blogging for Business (Janette Toral)
9:45 – 10:05 Tapping Bloggers to Generate Buzz (Jayvee Fernandez)

10:20 to 10:35 BREAK

10:35 – 10:55 Advertising in Blogs (Abe Olandres)
11:10 – 11:40 SPONSOR talk

12:00 – 1:15 LUNCH / NETWORKING

1:15 – 1:35 SEO & Blogging to Promote Your Business (Francis Gary Viray)
1:50 – 2:10 Measuring Blog Buzz (Carlo Ople)
2:25 – 2:45 Legal Concerns in Blogging for Business (JJ Disini)

3:00 – 3:20 BREAK

3:20 – 3:40 Blogger and Advertiser: What is the Win-Win Relationship? (Diana Paterno)
3:55 – 4:15 Online Attraction Marketing (Manuel Viloria)

4:30 RAFFLE and GROUP PICTURE

Day 2 (April 17, 2010)

8:45 Opening Ceremonies (National Anthem & Welcome)
9:00 – 9:20 Blogging 101 (Hannah Villasis)
9:30 – 10:00 Video Blogging 101 (Vince Golangco)
10:15 – 10:35 Photo Blogging 101 (Juned Sonido)

10:50 – 11:05 BREAK

11:05 – 11:40 Political, Online Commentary, Social Media, & Election Blogging 2010 (Marck Ronald Rimorin and Noemi Dado)

12:00 – 1:15 LUNCH & NETWORKING

1:15 – 1:35 (SPONSOR TALK)
1:50 – 2:10 Launching Successful Blog Contests (Jinoe Gavan)
2:25 – 2:45 Blog Policies (UP-ISP)

3:00 – 3:15 BREAK

3:15 – 3:35 Impact of Blogging to the Community (Joseph Gonzales)
3:50 – 4:10 SEO: A Must for Making Money Online (Marhgil Macuha)

4:30 RAFFLE, iBlog Video Contest Winner Announcement, & Group Photo

A very interesting Saturday with Joel Christopher

Thanks to my friend Jeff and some blogs I follow, including www.manuelviloria.com and www.pinoymoneytalk.com, I was able to attend the free seminar conducted yesterday, Saturday, at the Thomas Aquinas Research Center by a successful Filipino netpreneur, Joel Christopher.

I learned a lot yesterday. I learned the story of Joel, a physical therapist who hails from Tabango, Leyte and graduated from the University of Santo Tomas (UST), left the Philippines and went on to practice his profession in the United States (US). By his own account, he was earning big bucks as physical therapist but foresaw problems in health care in the US.

The problems he saw led him to drop his practice and to learn how to do business with the internet which at that time was still very young. He acknowledges that he learned a lot from others and says he has met almost every internet guru you can mention.

Joel has become one of the most successful individuals on the internet and now acknowledged to have created a whole new industry and to be the best in list building. (You can learn more about Joel at www.masterlistbuilder.com) Jay Conrad Levinson of the Guerilla Marketing-fame, and many other respected authors, have nothing but good words about him.

I also learned about Joel's passion, his commitment to help the people in his hometown of Tabango, Leyte, Philippines and his plan to use technology to help us, his fellow Pinoys. Joel also shared quite a bit as to how he has been able to amass wealth through the internet and intends to mentor a few individuals to success in the near future. (Lucky them!)

On the first pic above is Jodjie Azurin of the Business Summaries sucess, the master list buider Joel Christopher, and myself. On the second pic is Manuel Viloria whose blog I follow and who was very friendly and sharing about his knowledge about the internet and blogging. (I even saw there Carl Ocab of the 13-year-old-make-money-online fame but I was too shy to get my picture taken with him too.)

If only Rober Kiyosaki's theory about "your income being the average of the income of the people around you" is true even if I had them people around me only for a few seconds. Check out also my pics of UST, a place I have always loved since my CPA review days.

My thanks to Joel for teaching me and the others who attended great things, Jodjie and Manny (I guess that's his nickname) for being very friendly despite their success, and Jeff for mentioning the free seminar to me. And thank God for Saturdays.

Making money thru online Forex with as little as $300

The Businessmaker Academy is inviting us to join their Fortune Forex Seminar on August 15, 2 t0 6pm, where their chief Forex trainer, Mark So, will be teaching "how to make a fortune in online Forex trading with as little as $300".

The seminar promises to show us how we can make "huge" amount of money in online Forex trading with reduced risk. It will teach us the different ways in entering the Forex market, navigating through the Forex platform, place entry and market orders, demystify the jargon, plan your investment strategy, among others.

The seminar fee is P5250 at the regular rate, and P4500 at the early bird rate. For interested parties, you may visit the Businessmaker Academy website, or call 6844445 or 6843416, or text 09178643416.

Got a P4 3.0 with my first pay as a blogger

Ten months ago I decided to try to earn money from blogging. I experimented with several monetization schemes but only Google Adsense seemed to work. I quickly realized that earning from your blog wasn't easy. There were months when I thought there was no way I was going to get my first check.

As it turned out, I got my first pay a few days ago and I didn't get it by check. I claimed my first pay from Google Adsense at Western Union-Farmers Plaza in Cubao. There were no hassles and I only had to present a government-issued ID as well as the details of the money transfer.

What's cool about it was that I got my first pay without any deduction. The money transfer was totally free. On top of that, I passed by a booth giving out Western Union Gold discount cards for free. You just need to present a receipt to qualify. Lucky me. More, I also won a free wallet by choosing a number from their "magic" bowl.

After, I went straight to Pasig to check out a Pentium IV 3.0 advertised at Buy and Sell. Ronnie, a home-based technician was selling it at a very reasonable price. It wasn't brand new but the thing was working quite fine when I checked it. It was far faster than the PCs and laptops I've used before.

In short, I bought the Pentium IV 3.0 with my first blog pay and some additional amount donated by my sister working abroad. Now I am ready for some power computing. :)

How much did you earn last month?

I did a search for "blog net earnings survey" and ended up with this post by Darren Rowse at www.problogger.net announcing the result of a poll they conducted asking their readers how much did they earn from Adsense in November 2005. Now, consider this: I started a new blog on net earnings recently and found Rowse's post on December 3, 2007. Can you blame me for doing a new poll? :) I would like to invite everyone to answer it at Net Earnings. Thanks.

Learn how to blog for money

Come November 24, Money Talks! will hold a seminar/workshop on how to make extra cash with your blogs. The workshop entitled "Blogging for Money" is meant for intermediate and advanced-level bloggers. It will feature Abe Olandres of Yugatech, one of the Philippines leading blogging gurus.

The workshop will be held from 12pm to 8pm at the Power Tips, Inc. Business Center, 5th level of the Podium, San Miguel Avenue, Pasig City. Registration fee is P1,500. The fee will entitle you to the use of a pc or laptop with unlimited wifi access for the day. For reservations, call or text 09189372147 or 09164353882, or email intermedia.workshops@gmail.com.

Read about this at Money Talks! and at Yugatech.

Increase Adsense clicks thru ads in between posts

Guess what, I am now close to getting my first Adsense paycheck. A few months ago I thought I will never be able to get this far. But things started to change. I think it was because I moved my Google ads from the sidebar to the spaces in between my blog posts.

It wasn't easy transferring the ads. In fact, it was complicated placing them in between posts in (Blogger) blogs like this one. After successfully doing it, I couldn't help but write about it. Google probably noticed our plight and added some tweaks in Blogger to enable us to do the job with a few clicks.

Here's how. (1) From your dashboard, click on layout. Then, (2) click on edit blog posts. In the dialog box, (3) check the box opposite "Show ads in between posts". The dialog box will then show the configuration options of your Adsense units. After configuring, (4) click on save. Voila! You now have Google ads in between posts.

A quick note. This shortcut is not seamless. I tried doing this with my Bol-anon blog but the resulting ads turned out to be misaligned. I ended up keeping the ads on my sidebar. On the other hand, the trick worked quite well on my Quick & Random blog.

How about you guys?

Adsense inside posts in Blogger

For those using the new Blogger, am sure you know already that in the template, you can only add a Google Adsense unit either to the sidebar or to the footer of your blog. This clearly limits your flexibility in positioning the Google ads. For one, you cannot place them in between posts. That's just too bad because placing ads between your posts is really placing them right straight in front of the eyes of your readers, not a little to the side, or below.

But then you see a lot of Blogger blogs with URLs like www.blogname.blogspot.com showing Google Adsense ads inside their post. I figured there must be a way to do it and set out to learn how. It took me some time but now I know. It is fairly simple. Just follow the instructions below.

1. You have to have an Adsense account. If not, sign up for Adsense first.
2. Open your Google Adsense account and get your desired code.
3. Sign into Blogger and click on "template".
4. When inside, click on "edit html".
5. Save a backup file first.
6. Somewhere on the right top corner, put a check on "expand widgets".
7. Find the "data:post.body" line in the html code (see image above).
   
8. After this text, paste your Google Adsense code.
9. In the Google Adsense code, change "<" with "& l t ;" minus the spaces in between (see image above).
10. Still in the Google Adsense code, change ">" with "& g t ;" minus the spaces in between (see image above).
    
11. Save your corrected html code.
12. View your blog to see if your Adsense unit looks nice between your posts.

There is of course discussion as to the legality of this "change" in the Google Adsense code. The blog were I got this technique, IMessengr, assures us that this is not in violation of the Google Adsense's terms. They point to this email from Google posted in this blog, Blogging Secret.

Still another chapter in my quest for making money online. Hope this will help others out there too.