Janette Toral
Digital Filipino

DESPITE the global crisis, a lot of us are trying to celebrate Christmas in the best way we can. For online entrepreneurs, this means selling products and services that are not only valuable in terms of its meaning, but also affordable.

The products I noticed that clicked the most during this season is food. During the DigitalFilipino Club Christmas Party, my resources were spent buying fruit cake (mylittle- baker.com) and ham (re-galoservice.com) online to be given to club members. As I was about to send gifts to those who were not able to make it, I suddenly find myself buying products from a member who makes chocolates and sell them online in a multiply.com site.

I guess if you are shopping in a hurry, there are many product alternatives out there and you don’t have to be limited to big portals. The chocolates package I got is being sold at P250 per set while the fruitcake is at P175 per box.

As these products have been tried and tested, my friends who have been getting the ham and fruitcake in the past two years, were actually looking forward to receiving them again.

Individuals, for as long as they have a blog or active social network account (Friendster, Multiply, Face-book and the like), can sell products online and get paid through direct deposit or online via sites like Paypal or YesPinoy. All it takes is patience and a knack for salesmanship. One should not be shy about selling to friends and telling them about one’s offer.

People are too busy to shop now and these offers are often more than welcome, especially from friends.

If your readers are based overseas, you can also join Amazon.com’s affiliate program (http://associates.amazon.com) and create your own online store or link the products that you are recommending. Every sale you make, from the product recommended on your site and any other stuff bought online as a result, entitles you to a commission.

I’m spending the holiday season visiting family in Australia. Christmas here is quite simple and usually spent by holding a small get-together with friends and family or visiting places. I have been to four Christmas-related events here and enjoyed it all. You can see some of the pictures posted at http://australialiving. blogspot.com.

The nice thing about being online is that no matter where you are, you can still feel and celebrate the holidays and nothing will stop you from spreading the cheer to the people you care for. This is also why being able to order products online is important to me.

On the challenging side, it seems I’m having a working holiday season because of the search engine optimization competition I mentioned last week.

That is the Busby SEO Test and you can check out the entry that I’m collaborating in at http://www.garyviray.com.
Merry Christmas to all!

(http://digital filipino.com)

For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here.

(December 18, 2008 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.