How Much My Blog Earned In 2007

2007 is almost over and I felt it is the perfect time to write about how much I earned and how this gig opened my eyes for better and easier ways to make money. I don't even to commute to work! With no taxes and dollar renumeration, it's just hard to think about anything else better. Well, actually in the past few days, it just did! That's why I'm psyched about 2008! I'll let you in a little later.

Here's a short run down of everything my blogs earned so far since October 2007.

Accumulated Review Payments - $708.84

Pending Payments for January 2008:
Linkworth.com $35
Loudlaunch.com $40
Blogsvertise.com $30
Bloggerwave.com $20
Payperpost.com $66
Bloggingads.com $16
Sponsoredreviews.com $105.03

Advertisement earnings:
Product ads - $109.08

Grand Total Earnings - $1129.95
Grand Total of Costs - $0
Net Earnings - $1129.95

All that in about 3 months! And I just started exactly the same time. Who knows what I can do in 2008! Let's say I earn the same amount every three months next year, the total earnings for next year should run up to $4520.00 which is about 185,312 pesos. That should be an average of over 15,400 pesos every month.

For an average employed person, that should be a satisfactory salary. But that amount is only what I earn online. A sideline for me. And here's the part where it gets better. I was invited to write call center articles for a website which will pay me in the ballpark of $30 per article! With that gig, if I can write an article every other day for that website it could potentially net me $7200 for the whole year of 2008! That's 295,200 pesos for next year! I'm not in the habit of counting my chickens before they hatch but it definitely could happen. With a little more effort I could probably do more.

The earning potentials of blogging is almost endless. Limited only by one's effort and diligence in writing articles. Because bottom line just like any other job, it takes some diligence, creative thinking and a little luck to get what you want. And earning money online while sharing my call center experience through blogging was exactly that goal I set out when I started blogging.

Not to be over indulgent about this cool gig that I have but I could potentially be a millionaire through blogging in just a little over 2 years if things continue to run smoothly as I want it to be. Just add the figures above! I hope readers will see this as something inspirational. I'd love to see other Filipino call center employees make as much. Feel free to comment please.

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New Year!!! New Call Center???

Question: How many of you are seriously thinking of resigning after getting that year-end bonus from your companies? Ha! You may have even tender your resignation letter before you even started reading this!

December is the month were call centers see the bigger increase in attrition ( based on experience)! That's almost an accepted fact. Sales accounts are the hardest hit. After getting that big fat check, it is time to go for a lot of sales agents. That's why call centers are at their peak of hiring during December and January. This is to counter the impact of losing so many in a very short span of time.

We can't blame anybody. With new call centers and new site springing up like mushrooms all over the metro area, there are many options. It's just sad that the call center hiring business has become a sort of mercenary game. Call Centers have to pay the best to get the best. It's a part of the labor industry that is not regulated. Where else could one see companies competing for a person to do a entry-level job? It's also what makes this industry very attractive for Filipinos.

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How You Can Encash Your Blog Earning Through Paypal? Use The Unionbank EON card

For us bloggers who have been in the business of professional blogging, we can sign-up for a Unionbank EON Cyberaccount and transfer our hard-earned dollars from our Paypal account to this debit card!

More information about the EON Cyberaccount is available here. This is the only debit card guaranteed by the bank provider to work with Paypal. Check out the Unionbank intructions on how to use Paypal with an Eon Cyberaccount. Getting an EON Cyberaccount is so easy that anybody can do it online without visiting a Unionbank branch. You will still have to pick-up the debit card though 5 days after enrolling. Pay 350 pesos for the card itself and add as little as 100 pesos as initial funds which you will need to verify your Cyberaccount with Paypal.

The whole thing takes a few days to get done but at least it eliminates the guesswork of which cards work with Paypal in the Philippines. I've applied already and I'll be reaping the fruits of my hard work online soon!

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Merry Christmas From CallCenterVet!

Merry Christmas to all of you my call center mates! Ideally, we'd love to spend our Christmas eve with our families and friends but reality is some of us need to work because of the 24/7 operations. For those of you who chose to work ( or were forced to work... hehehe ) tonight, may you have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year! Don't worry... you get the new year's eve off naman e. WooHoo!

Hope the buffet in your call centers are great tonight! And Call Center managers.... please wag naman packed lunch ang ibigay sa agents! It's freakin' Christmas!

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Alabang Call Center Pirates?

How true are the rumors that Genpact is virtually pirating employees from from similar call centers like HSBC and JP Morgan? From what I understand Genpact is and will be in great need of experienced employees from financial accounts due to their recent success in landing the Wachovia account. Genpact will likely be very successful in 2008 because of the Wachovia business. They've invested a great deal to meet the demands of Wachovia and growth for next year that they have established 2 buildings in the NorthCyberZone area right smack in the middle of Convergys and HSBC.

Will they be filling those two buildings with HSBC, JP Morgan and Convergys employees then? There have been numerous reports to me that some of the HSBC employees based in Alabang are secretly "testing the waters" at Genpact to see if they can land a better position and/or better pay! Tsimis! Tsimis....

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HSBC Will Take Outsourcing?

This is probably old news but I thought it'd be nice to post anyways. I have heard from my friends in HSBC that their company will soon accept third party clients. For those who are not familiar, HSBC Alabang has been housing the company's Processing centers for years since it established in the country. It's operation has been an absolute success for the past few years that almost all back office process has been sent to their center in Alabang.

But there's a looming problem though. The HSBC call center in Alabang is running out of accounts to take in. They're NOT actually losing any accounts but I think they don't have the means ( business ) to keep the call centers growing especially now that they have a second center located right next to U.P.

From what I heard, top management has decided to accept third party clients so they can keep growth steady and of course fill up the massive site they are constructing in Quezon city. If by any chance an HSBC employee would read this, kindly enlighten us with your knowledge. I still think out of all the call centers in the Philippines, HSBC is best! It's world class and cream of the crop in management, employees, compensation and benefits.

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Call Center Motivation

Time for a quick poll from us call center employees on makes us stay in our company? For some of us it is the compensation. Some the friends we've made through the journey. A few of us loves the benefits we get.

Have your say here and kindly explain why you stay for that reason. It'll will enlighten other readers and possibly encourage them to join your company too.

Possible answers:
A. Compensation - The pay is great!
B. Benefits - The medical coverage is the best!
C. Friends - I can't seem to leave the team.
D. Proximity - My work is so near my home, there's no reason to leave.
E. Environment - I love my workplace period.

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The Day The Great Problogger Darren Rowse Wrote Me Back

Check out an email conversation I had with the great Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. I sent an email not expecting a reply but I was surprised to get one from Darren himself a few hours later. Check out our conversation!

Hi Darren,

I'm not even sure if you're even gonna pay attention to this question or if
this question has been answered already but here it goes:

Don't you think it's kinda hypocritical to actually encourage your readers to
sign up for these websites like linkworth or widgetbucks by displaying their ad
on your problogger blog without you having to actually use it on your blog? I'm
not too sure if I can call it ironic or a hypocrisy.

I'd be happy to find out what you think about this because I noticed you
display a lot of sponsor ads on your side bar but you do not actually have a
widgetbucks widget nor do I see you participate in linkworth.

His reply:

Hi good question.

Couple of things.

1. These are ads and I don't think I need to try them all to accept them. Most advertising in newspapers, tv, radio wouldn't be tested by the publishers before being accepted. I don't accept ads that I find offensive or against my beliefs - but I don't mind other things as long as they are on topic.

2. They are clearly labled as sponsors - not endorsements

3. I have tried WidgetBucks and have written about it quite a few times on ProBlogger. I don't use it on ProBlogger itself as it doesn't work on that type of blog but it's a good system for other types of blogs (product related).

4. I see on your blog you've got ads for ING Car Insurance, GIO insurance (AdSense), 10 or so cell phones and about 14 make money online affiliates. have you tried them all? I'm pressuming you have with some of them - but doesn't the same sort of thing apply when you run AdSense on your blog and have little control over the ads that appear?

hope something in that is helpful in answering your question

Darren

Here's my reply:

Thanks for the quick response Darren. Honestly I never expected an answer back. Nevertheless, you're answer was enlightening. About the Google Ads, It's something I haven't figured out how to control what ads are displayed on my blog or maybe I'm just too lazy to do something about it to make those ads relevant to my blog. The cellphone ads from widget bucks are there because my audience are mostly Filipinos like myself. I figured Filipinos are crazy about cellphones and it might give me a better click-through rate for the widget. It's just another experiment I'm trying out to see what works. I've have the widgetbucks widget for only a week so I might have it for a little longer to figure it out. For the make money affiliates, the answer is yes! You'd be surprised to find out that I've really tried them all at this point at one time. Some of them, I've figured are not working as promoted so I just decided to keep their referral program on my blog instead.

Thanks again Darren. I never really expected the great Darren Rowse to reply to my small query that fast or at all. It has been great reading your blog every now and then but I guess you hear that all the time. I love your blog!

BTW, I'd love to get one of your problogger t-shirts for myself but I wished the site had an option to pay by paypal. Don't you think it'll be a good thing to have a paypal option?

I haven't had a feedback after but I don't expect any anymore.

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First Advantage Alabang Hiring

Anybody interested in 100% no irate callers to deal with at work? Check out and trying applying at First Advantage Asia located at 10/F Paragon building Madrigal Business Park in Alabang Muntinlupa City. First Advantage is the biggest company in the world that conducts background checks for potential candidates of third party employers usually big companies in the U.S., Australia, East Asia and yes also in the Philippines. Some of the notable clients of First Advantage are HSBC and JP Morgan here.

Currently, they have open positions for screening agents. What they do is call HR personnel of different companies that an applicant formerly worked and ask a few questions about the employees conduct and performance among other. They also do a very thorough screening through available databases that may reveal discrepancies in the employment or educational history. One thing good about working as a screening agent for First Advantage is less if not zero number of difficult or irate callers to deal with because it is not a typical call center doing CS or TS or outbound sales. Screening agents mainly have a professional conversation with HR people of other companies to complete a task. First Advantage is more of a Back Office work rather than Front-line customer service. Check out their current openings at First Advantage. I would highly discourage emailing your resumes to the given email address on the previous link because it takes a very long time for somebody to respond. For the applicants in the south or for those who are willing to make the trip to Alabang, the best way to apply is to walk-in! There's a short exam and an interview and a final interview. If you're lucky it could be a one-day process. Currently, they are hiring for different shifts to fill in mostly East Asia and Australian accounts which are ofcourse morning shifts in the Philippines. I do believe their work week is only Monday to Friday because they follow normal corporate work weeks of a typical company in other parts of the world.

Please do not reply asking for an email address to send your resume. If your interested, do a walk-in application which is what I highly recommend.

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