Type of business that is lacking in the area

We tried to get local auto and motor dealers to advertise the vehicles they had for sale once on our free classifieds website, and only 2 out of about 20 were interested-and that's with us willing to take the pics..

Good luck

 

God knows why there are no TAXI here in Duma. I feel like it'd be on a great demand.

 

It amazes me; the total lack of marketing savvy that most Filipinos have as a tool for business. It almost seems to be that they think they can sell their products just by being more arrogant than the next guy. OR, they believe that since they are the only game in town (the only store selling exactly that product) that advertising is not needed.

Short story. Does anyone know of the place that used to be called the Brown Cow in Malate/Ermita area of Manila? They were a bar for many years. They paid a reasonable rent and through the years the rent increased to 35,000 a month. At the end of their lease, the building owner saw how much money they were making and raised the rent to 90,000 a month. The Brown Cow wandered down the street and the building has now been empty for almost 3 years. The owner will not lower the rent and the building just sits, slowing falling apart and the value of it going down everyday, but yet it sits, still available for 90,000 a month. Here's your sign!

 

Because you can't at get a car down the road because of all the tricycles in the way. You would pay more for the ride, but not get there any faster.

 

yes, my brother had a very profitable sandblasting business in AU, some copy cat idiot moved right next door, lowering their price to try capture the market, so the first business that was the only one that was legal as far as pollution law goes dropped below them for a month or two, now there is only one lol. He was setup there for many years before the copy cat and still there now.

 

I don't know that a website is the best medium. It seems that nobody in this town uses websites. About the only website I find useful is the movie list at Robinson's. Instead, you need to use Facebook. Instead of email lists, you need to use texting. I know that Globe has an API which you can use to send texts, I'm sure Smart has the same. You could still funnel people to your site, but it probably shouldn't be the initial entry point.

It could be they simply didn't want to waste any of their time dealing with something that they feel wouldn't go anywhere. If you believe in the idea, you can't let the blockers stop you. You have to beg, borrow and steal to get what you need. It's a bit of a chicken or egg scenario. Getting the initial listings could be a headache, but if you can then generate compelling results (a highly active Facebook page, metrics, numbers of leads generated) then they would be more willing to listen to you.

Ultimately you have to be willing to be tenacious. Otherwise you might as well not even bother. But that's why few people actually ever act. I have heard many foreigners talking about doing something in real estate for example. Is there anything at all that anyone is aware of which is attempting to create a solution? None that I know of. Maybe the idea goes nowhere. Maybe there is good reason why nobody has been able to gain any ground. But you don't know until you try.

I'm not trying to pound the real estate idea to death here. It could be anything.

 

Also, if you do anything heavy on web, you wouldn't have much competition. There is no talent here for that. You would be lucky to be able to find someone to hire to do the technical bits for you.

 

I know! I know!! I got the perfect business! Teaching Filipinos basic marketing skills. It's easy (doesn't matter what I say, they don't pay attention); low overhead (sitting in a classroom they won't do, but sitting on a rock on the side of the road, they do all day), short work hours (being ignored takes almost no time at all each day)...done deal! Yeehaw!

 

Here is another idea...

I believe options for remittances and even getting to your own money from one country to another is more difficult than it should be. Moving money is a rabbit hole of a subject for research and I still haven't come up with anything which is satisfactory. I would like to investigate the possibility of using "crypto-currencies" such as Bitcoin to loosen up money movement. I think Ripple might actually hold the most promise here because it has a number of features which make it a bit more ideal than Bitcoin and the other "altcoins" for creating a transfer network. The goal would be to get this down to being by far the cheapest and easiest option for moving money. One big potential blocker is that dealing with governments and banks isn't easy. You only have so much control over those variables. The government can easily shut you down and banks can make your life difficult if they don't like what you are doing.

Another component to this would be to build a better remittance service. For the Philippines, I'm thinking a tight (only family and friends who might actually send you remittances) social network type model could work well. Let's say that you are completely out of money. You don't have food. You don't have money for an internet cafe. You don't even have money for load. Certainly you don't have money to call your family overseas. How do you get in contact with people to let them know you need money?

So, you have your network which you and your closest friends and family have joined. The service has a toll free number which you can send texts to. Let's say you would be okay for the day with just 200 peso's. You text the service asking for 200 peso's. The service then turns that text into a notification which goes out to each person in your network (again, this has to be a tight network.) Let's say one person decides that 200 peso's is very doable and hits the send button (obviously there is a lot of details which would need to be worked out behind the scenes of this "send" button.) Everyone is notified that someone has fulfilled the request and the 200 pesos is available for pickup. The person who originally made the request could then go pick up the money. Alternatively, the service could have another option for sending out a courier to deliver the money.

Again, there are a lot of details and potential pitfalls. The idea here would be to make remittances cheap, easy and to accommodate small transfers. I'm thinking Amazon model here. Drive the cost of remittances always lower while growing fast to grab as much of the remittance flows as possible.

This is another problem which needs to be solved. It's possible there are too many potential blockers though. Dealing with governments and banks is hard.