Toral: E-commerce Boot Camp lessons

LAST Nov. 29, I launched the E-Commerce Boot Camp online with the intent of providing free e-commerce lessons. It was meant to help me validate the contents of my 3rd e-commerce book and help aspiring entrepreneurs (I targeted 100) put up their e-commerce businesses.

Janette Toral

Digital Filipino

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It is also supported by face-to-face sessions. The first happened at UP Diliman in Quezon City last Jan. 11. This coming Saturday, the Cebu face-to-face session will take place in Location63.

Doing the online and face-to-face e-commerce boot camp made me realize several things:

E-commerce entrepreneurship is growing. Thanks to sites like Istorya.net, Multiply.com, Sulit.com.ph, AyosDito.ph, Shopinas.com, among others, more Filipinos have tried doing business online. More than just retailing, a growing number are also looking into business models that they can explore to pursue growth opportunities.

A strong blogging community gives positive signal of e-commerce market readiness. I observe that areas with high blogger activities are the ones who are showing signs of e-commerce growth. I guess that this is because bloggers are very active consumers of various products and services, online and offline. Their influence extends to their readers. As more Filipinos embrace blogging, it is also a sign that more individuals are embracing e-commerce.

Filipinos are ready for webinars. Since we started using webinars in 2009, the number of Filipinos who have used the platform to promote e-learning is on the rise. More people are joining both free and paid e-learning courses.

Self-proclaimed claims to be number one. There is a growing number of individuals who are using free webinars to attract people to their paid offerings and at the same time position themselves as the country’s number one specialist or expert on a subject without any disinterested and credible third party resource to support the claim.

If you encounter these people, I wrote about the steps you can take in verifying their claims and reporting them to authorities at http://bit.ly/numberoneclaim. It is important to take action on these activities before they end up misleading more consumers. Worst, they may also affect others who are fair in doing their business and yet be type-casted along with them.

I look forward to catching up with participants this Saturday. Visit http://bit.ly/ecombootcampcebu if you want to learn more.