iGreen. Jomar's Internet marketing, my Waterloo
Frank A. Hilario
December 09, 2009
Jomar is a practiced and practical person himself. He is also UP, having graduated from the University of the Philippines Los Baņos with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, and I can tell you ComSci at UP Los Baņos is one of the best in the country. I myself graduated from one of the best universities: UE, University of Experience.
I googled for "Internet Marketing" today and I got 30,300,000 English pages with Safesearch. Searching again and adding the word "practical" (minus the double quotes) to "Internet Marketing" gave me 2,080,000 pages. Googling for "basics of" "Internet Marketing" gave me 367,000 pages. You have to always get down to the basics. Now we're getting somewhere!
The way I see it, learning from an Internet marketing workshop all comes down to the expert's location and experience relative to you. And affordability, which is a relative thing: "I can't afford to" can be "I can't afford not to" if you look at the prospects.
So this is a story of Internet marketing which is not for everybody. Jomar's kind of Internet marketing is my Waterloo - it's for people who follow more rules than I am willing to. I have always been a rule-breaker. I'm writer, editor, publisher all rolled into one, a one-man-band minding knowledge & folklore armed with a laptop PC - an HP Presario C700 with a dual-core Intel processor both running at 1.6 GHz with 1 GB memory, Internet-enabled. I can't function without my laptop and the Internet. I'm an original. If you want to classify me, don't.
I don't call mine "Internet marketing." Or, I do Internet marketing myself, my brand. Internet greening is the name I prefer for my kind of Internet marketing, as I shall explain shortly. Jomar's Internet marketing is the more familiar kind, the one you probably want to explore if you're after your own "passive income" - you want to earn in-between your busyness with your blog. I know it works for many people, and you could be one of them. At any rate, my advice is: Have fun and you will have funds. Actually, that's another way of saying that you have to love what you're doing so that what you're doing will love you in return. If not love, like. At the very least, you have to find a way to relate it to your everyday life, otherwise, you will bore yourself to death.
The UltraLife of Jomar Hilario +
Internet Marketing + Philippines
That's the long title of his website, jomarhilario.com. You have to ask him what he means by "UltraLife" - I know he has been a great many times more financially successful than his father can ever be in his lifetime. He's happy. I'm happy for him. I'm now happy with my own life, too. To each his own.
I clicked his website for "What you need to know about Links and Online Popularity: A 100-page graphical guide into Links, Facebook, Blog Commenting and Gmail" and I found that I could download it if I wanted to. And I did. Summarizing, this is what I learned free of charge, in my own words:
You need traffic, heavy traffic to your website. To get traffic, you have to have links to your blog from other and presumably more popular websites or blogs. You can't force those links. Here are two ways to get those links:
(1) On one hand, you read the stuff in other websites, write on some of their materials in your blog, and create links to those websites you read. Eventually, those other websites will notice and link to yours because you're one of their great admirers, as you should be. Everybody loves a lover.
(2) On the other hand, you entice others to link to yours by visiting their blogs and leaving comments, preferably truthful and relevant and at the same time nice, so you encourage them enough to visit your own blog. Your blog should then be ready to satisfy the curiosity of those who come by and visit, and they will link to yours. The good that you do comes back to you.
That's only one lesson, of course, if a double-sided one. Now, Jomar recommends that you attend a formal course as much as possible, his. There is going to be one in historical, courageous Cebu this weekend; click here to find out more. There's a course fee. What Jomar is trying to say is that if you are interested enough, you will find ways and means. If you want to become your own employer and work on your own sweet time, there is always a cost. Think of it as investment. Can you afford not to? Think of the reward; a visit to Cebu should be half the reward.
I say the only way to find out if it's worth it is to take the risk. No pain, no gain.
While we wait for the Cebu encounter, in the meantime, let us explore the universe of Internet marketing in our own sweet time.
Oscar Derrida says there are only 3 core components of Internet marketing, and I believe him: traffic is 1st, product (or service) is 2nd, and actual offer is 3rd (ezinearticles.com). I like the way Derrida reduces so much complexity into 3 elements, but I look at their relationships to each other a little differently. No 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for me. They are all equally important to me; all for one, one for all. You can't have a triangle without 3 sides. You can't have good traffic without a good product; you need good traffic to make a good offer; you can't make a good offer without a good product. You need to consider all 3 simultaneously. And that's where you may need professional help.
Meantime, I find Jomar's Internet Marketing Workshop too long a name for me; I would prefer something like The Green Internet - it's a double entendre, a play of words that enriches the meaning of the phrase; it's also memorable. It's also learner-friendly. Green reminds you of the greenhorn (you); it reminds you of a green thumb; it reminds you of green bucks; it also reminds you of green pastures.
So, here I'll call it Internet greening instead of "Internet marketing," and Internet greener instead of "Internet marketer." I'll now use American idioms to explain myself.
(1) Greenhorn - "Greenhorn" means you, the Internet greener, an amateur, a beginner, a neophyte. Everybody starts by being a greenhorn first. The best were greenhorn once; they didn't know a thing. That's why you have to attend an Internet greening workshop like that of Jomar. The tagline at his website says, "Practical Internet marketing done using personal experience, endorsed by Bo Sanchez and Larry Gamboa." I know Bo Sanchez is none other than your "Preacher in Blue Jeans" - he, the Kerygma founder and a most charismatic, creative preacher in the Roman Catholic mold, and has written bestselling books published by Shepherd's Voice Publications, two of the latest being How to Conquer Your Goliaths and How to Turn Thoughts Into Things (shepherdsvoice.com.ph). Many people know Larry Gamboa as the author of the bestselling Think Rich, Pinoy! (2004), as well as Grow Rich, Pinoy! (2006), Think Rich - Quick! (by Trace Trajano & Larry Gamboa, 2007), and who conducts the Think Rich, Pinoy! Seminar-Workshop on creating real assets from real estate based on Robert Kiyosaki's concept of Rich Dad, Poor Dad (if interested, visit Larry's thinkrichpinoy.com). An asset, says Kiyosaki, is one that earns you net income. Neither a house nor a car is an asset if it doesn't give you net. Gamboa's thinking is an asset if you're interested in passive income from real estate. Your website is your asset if it gives you net. My website is my asset as it gives me my clients.
(2) Green thumb - "You have a green thumb" means you have a way with plants that you know but maybe not understand; growing anything green is what you're good at; you can make two leaves grow where none grew before. Before you can have a green thumb in Internet marketing, before you even define your market, you have to define yourself in this manner, answering the question: "What am I good at?" Or "What do I love to do?" or "What is my passion?" If you love what you're doing, you'll do anything to be able to, just do it! And that's good for your Internet greening.
(3) Green bucks - From your Internet greening, you can earn enough to make others turn green with envy. For instance, without any kind of financial help or advice from his father, who doesn't even own a house of his own, I know that along with Clarisse, their son Sean and daughter Lucia, Jomar has just moved in to the new Jade Tower of Rosewood Pointe, 14th floor, a 3-room affair with an almost 180-degree view of East Metro Manila. I've visited there. Nice view if you can get it!
(4) Green pastures - I give you my favorite psalm, "Psalm 23" (NRSV):
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.
Roman Catholic or not, don't forget faith, hope and above all love when you go after the Internet green.
And now let me tell you about my own kind of Internet marketing, my Internet greening, which means my Internet blog is a personal form of selling my ideas and, with or without Google AdSense, earning my own dollars. Most bloggers / marketers try to upscale themselves so that they come out on top or near the top when searchers google for a subject matter or a phrase. Their websites make content second to traffic. I'm the opposite. I make content first and then worry about traffic next. If I worried about Google popularity all the time, I'll never get myself to think unconventional ideas because they don't appear in Google keyword searches. Because they depend on usage, the already familiar Google AdWords are good for my popularity but bad for my creativity, my coming out with new ideas. I can't have both popularity and creativity. Not yet anyway. I'm trying to produce a body of original literature in science, and I have enough problems such as it is.
Mostly I sell ideas; to do that, sometimes I sell myself: my writing, my editing, my photography, my book publishing, my reviewing, my blogging, my mastery of Microsoft Windows and Word 2003 / 2007, not to mention my serendipitous mind (frankahilario.blogspot.com). "Serendipity," says Horace Walpole, "is the phenomenon of happy things happening when one is intent on doing something else." A flash of genius, insight unbidden. Fancy that!
Internet greening, or iGreen. iGreen seems to describe who I am and what I do with my writing, my blogging. I enjoy my blogging, but by design, I earn mostly (99%) "from matters arising," to use legal parlance, from my blogs; 1% from ads. I like the sound of that. My dozens of blogs give me the universal exposure I want for myself; my hundreds of long essays published in the American Chronicle give me the international prestige I need for my ideas of good, better, best. I can't ask for more.
Exposure pays, prestige pays more. This year, with my unique brand of Internet marketing, iGreen, I earned mostly from books, a total of 7 volumes: (1) authored by me (The Smart Revolution published by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, based in India, January 2009, 154 pages), (2) edited by me (Think Green! about climate change and what each one of us can do about it, 1st editing, for Sam Martin, UP Los Baņos), three books commissioned by others and all authored by me: (3) now off the press (Celebrating 50 Years of UPLB Vanguards Class 58, September 2009, published by UPLB Vanguards Class 58, 169 pages); (4) in 3rd draft (The Emails of JAQ, 395 pages, for a fellow Ilocano, about what emails can do for you), (5) in interview stage (iNSPiRiNG LiVES, owned by the UP Los Baņos Alumni Association); (6) one spin-off book, authored by me: UP! ROTC2 (camera-ready 205 pages, looking for a publishing angel of a sponsor), and (7) one edited by me, on faith (Champions Live! for Dee & Arlene Eluwa). I've been pouring love into all those books. My gross income for all my efforts for all those books for the year ending is about US $10K, which may not look much to you but with which I feel very rich. My kind of rich. Rich is a feeling; very rich is a very nice feeling.
My Internet greening can be better, but I don't want to rush things. Jomar has been trying to teach me how to increase traffic to my websites using Google-popular keywords, but I really don't sell products - I sell ideas, and they are the most difficult ones to sell, or create keywords for. Why do I want the difficult? That's what I love - a challenge.
And I love the English language, especially the American idiom. So, since we're at it, let's continue discussing Internet marketing with green idioms:
Green jokes - I don't like green jokes, but I'm not your market. The lovers of green jokes are not your market either. But "light green" jokes may help. What is important is to define your market, to know your target audience. Who are you talking to in your website? What do they want / need? Do they want flowers only, or the whole grotto of Mother Mary?
Green apples - "As sure as God made little green apples" means absolutely certain. Can you be 100% sure of anything in the Internet - or for that matter, life? No, but you have to take one risk or another if you want to go from here to there. Your blog is you. If you can't decide on anything except if everything is in place, if you're afraid of making a mistake, you'll never learn, you'll never grow up.
Green stuff - "Green stuff" means US money, dollar, which is a most important green. That's what you're after, after all is said and done. But save your soul and don't make the green stuff the reason for all your moves. Take it from me: The love of money is the route of all evil.
Green light - "Give somebody the green light" means to give consent, to approve, to give the go-signal. What you put in your blog, will you give yourself the green light if you were asked for your opinion? Please be nice but not plastic. Blogging is driving; please do not blog around running roughshod over people whether they can or can't blog back.
Green thumb - "To have a green thumb" means to be good at gardening; if it is Internet gardening, then you're good at turning a profit from what you do. I pray you find what you're good at, and share it with the world and help make it better. With climate change, we need all the help we can get!
"Money grows on trees" can be transformed into "Green bucks grow on trees" - you have to cultivate your blog (your tree) to be able to do that.
To shift paradigm: Steve Pavlina, a different kind of successful Internet marketer (stevepavlina.com), mentions a step I didn't think of before: "personal growth." He is actually referring to socializing with fellow Internet greeners, would-be successful marketers. It should help that fledgling Internet marketers have a formal club or an informal group where you can throw around ideas and help each other out. You need to grow personally - and with each other.
Now, if you'll excuse me, the loner that I am, I'll stick to my Internet greening. It's not without problems but, if you know me, you can be sure iGreen and bear it.