2007 Philippine Blog Awards: Recognizing the best Filipino blogs
February 15, 2007
Do you have the blog?
Then let it be known and have it recognized as one of the best and the finest Filipino-owned blogs.
The Philippine Blog Awards is now open for nominations, and if you think your blog or somebody else's blog deserve the award, head on to the site right now! Nominations are open until the 28th of February.
I don’t heart Xoom.com
February 14, 2007
It’s Valentine’s Day but I don’t love Xoom.com.
Last Sunday I used Xoom, the money transfer service, to send PayPal funds to a recipient in the Philippines. Yesterday I received an email notification that they are canceling my transaction and refunding my funds.
This was the first time it happened to me, but then again this was only my second transaction with them. Last week, I made exactly the same transaction without a hitch. I sent PayPal to the same recipient and the corresponding peso amount was deposited to her local bank account in just one day. Now, that’s zoom, zoom, zoom.
But this latest transaction was not. Yesterday, two days after I initiated the new transfer request, it got canceled without any explanation. They wrote that the transaction supposedly violated their Terms of Service (TOS). But what exactly this TOS violation was was never explained.
The 3 Principles of Success, according to a young millionaire
February 13, 2007
by Cameron Johnson, from the book You Call the Shots
I started my first business at age nine with $50 and a home computer, and ran it from my room at home as a one-kid operation. By the time I was 19 I had started nearly a dozen profitable businesses, and for my latest venture I had received a very attractive offer of $10 million in venture capital. I turned that offer down and walked away because I didn't feel good about the conditions that would have been imposed on me if I'd taken the money. The venture capital firm would have called the shots, told me how to run my company, and paid me a salary that would've been less than I'd made on my own since I was 12.
It was a lucrative offer, and who knows? Maybe with their backing and expertise I would have come out way ahead. But I didn't think it was the right deal for me. I made that decision without regret, and I've never looked back.
I knew this was not a now-or-never choice. There would be plenty of other opportunities to create even more successful businesses — because I'd learned the skills it takes to do so. Once you learn these skills, you never have to be tied to any one particular enterprise. I realized that while I could have taken someone else’s $10 million investment, I'd rather invest in myself.
I've been fortunate enough to make my first million before graduating from high school and buy my own house at 20. At 21, I've now put away enough in savings and other investments that I could practically retire today . . . if I wanted to. But of course, that's the last thing on earth I'd want to do. I just enjoy it all too much. Not to say the money isn't important, but frankly, it's not why I do what I do. I do it because I love it.
Check out the Google Checkout icon in Adsense ads
February 10, 2007
Other webmasters have previously reported the appearance of the Google Checkout shopping cart icon in Adsense ads, but today (as far as I know) is the first time this icon appeared in Google Adsense ads here in Pinoy Money Talk. If you see this icon, try hovering your cursor over it and you will see the text “This site accepts Google Checkout.”
Seems like Google is aggressively marketing Checkout via Adsense. Checkout, if you do not know yet, is Google’s answer to PayPal. It is an online payment processing service but, unlike PayPal, Google Checkout processes payments without storing value and cannot be used to make payments from person to person.
Check out below a screenshot of the Google Checkout icon in Adsense ads in Pinoy Money Talk.
The Checkout icon is the recent addition to Google’s experimentation in Adsense ads, that includes removing the “Ads by Google” line in the ad unit, mixing Ad Links and contextual ads in the same ad unit, and showing the “G” logo to appear as “Ads by G” rather than the text “Ads by Google”, just like the screenshot below.
Win P900 cellphone load by playing in the Forum Arcade
February 7, 2007
It's PinoyMoneyTalk.com's 2nd Year Anniversary on March 1! Hooray!
As our pre-anniversary gift to PMT members, we have put up a Forum Arcade where you can play popular (and addicting!) games and, at the same time, win cellphone load worth as much as P900!
From February 1st until the 28th, the Arcade will log your game scores (depending on the game, you might need to manually submit the score) and the top players recorded on March 1st will win the following prizes:
- Most Active Player - P300 cellphone load
- Best Player (by champions) - P300 cellphone load
- Longest Champion - P300 cellphone load
So log on to the Arcade and start playing NOW!
If you have questions, comments, or clarifications regarding this contest, visit the Forum Arcade Challenge thread or if you want to chat with other game players, drop by the Arcaders! thread in the Forum.
Get in the game!
February 2007 Member of the Month: part_timer_lang
February 6, 2007
Part-time moderator? Part-time money earner? Definitely not a part-time mom to her kids, though. Meet part_timer_lang, our February Member of the Month.
4. Are there things you learned during your stay in PMT?
Marami. What is good about it is that I got all the information without paying for it. The experiences shared by the members are too valuable to ignore. I just wish I had more time to study and put into practice all the information that is just there, waiting to be used.
Read the interview or ask your own questions in the February 2007 Member of the Month thread.
Get to know other Pinoy Money Talk Members of the Month here.
BPI warns users against phishing emails
February 4, 2007
The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) recently issued a warning to users of BPIExpressOnline, its online banking facility, against phishing emails. Phishing — pronounced “fishing” as in “fishing for information” — is a type of deception designed to steal one’s personal data such as credit card numbers, passwords, and account login information.
How to check whether an email is a phishing email or not and how to protect oneself from phishing is discussed in the What is Phishing? article.
Earn as much as $2,000 or more with Google Adsense and Adwords Referral Program
February 3, 2007
Stand to earn $2,000 and more now that Google revised the pricing structure of its Adsense and Adwords Referral Program. Effective immediately, you can earn:
For the Adsense Referral Program:
- $5 when a publisher you referred to Google Adsense earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up;
- An additional $250 when that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment;
- A $2,000 bonus if, in any 180-day period, 25 publishers you have referred each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout (bonus payout limited to 1 per year).
For the Adwords Referral Program:
- $5 when an advertiser you refer spends $5 (on top of the $5 sign-up fee) within 90 days of sign-up;
- An additional $40 when that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up;
- A $600 bonus if, in any 180-day period, 20 advertisers you have referred each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups (bonus payout limited to 1 per year).
According to Google, these updated rules also apply to your existing referrals who have not reached the earning/spend thresholds yet. That is, if an Adsense publisher has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 once the publisher has reached the $5.00 mark.
But if that publisher has already earned more than $5.00, you are not anymore eligible for the $5.00 payout but once this publisher has reached the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will still be paid $250.00.
What’s Google Adsense and Google Adwords? Read this article for a short explanation.
Are you frugal or stingy?
February 1, 2007
All of us have to make choices about how we spend our money. Wise choices allow us to build our wealth and, eventually, achieve financial independence. But how do you decide when you're being frugal, and when you've crossed the line into stinginess?
Here are some benchmarks to check if you are stingy or not.
- If you use 2-for-1 coupons at a restaurant, you might be frugal. If you base your server's tip on the discounted bill, you're probably stingy.
- If you decide in advance how much to spend each year on charitable contributions, and then try to stay within that budget, you might be frugal. If the last thing you gave to charity was an ancient can of lima beans you wouldn't eat yourself, then you're probably stingy.
- If you use a tea bag for more than one cup of tea, you might be frugal. If you offer a guest the cup made from the used bag, you're probably stingy.
Frugality can be, and often is, a virtue. It implies you're being careful, not wasteful, with your resources.
Stinginess is a vice, and it carries a whiff of meanness. The word "implies a marked lack of generosity," as Webster's tells us. Stinginess is about pulling back when the more-human impulse is to give.
