The Official Blog of Polvoron King ®

What is FB-Commerce?

2012-01-14T09:49:00.083+08:00

Selling online through Facebook now has a name: FB-commerce. Yep! Facebook Commerce or Social Commerce.

Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services. -Wikipedia

If you have a small business that you want to be visible online, the first thing you should do is to have a Facebook account because most of your potential clients are already using Facebook. Then create a Facebook Page for your business.

A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users. If you don't want your business to be just another Facebook Page, it's important to make your FB page look very attractive to get more customers. Here are some...

FREE Applications for your Facebook Page

Pabenta

Pabenta is an E-Commerce Social network based in the Philippines. You can build your online shop in less than 5 minutes with this new platform.

Facebook is having a huge impact on e-commerce that's why Pabenta built in all the FB-commerce goodness in one platform. Pabenta is a Facebook-enabled website and therefore, you can integrate your online shop with your Facebook Page so that your fans can also view your products or services inside Facebook.

Create your online shop now with PABENTA!

Involver

Involver provides different applications for your Facebook Page such as Welcome Tab, RSS feed (if you have a blog), Twitter, and many more!

Facebook is where the eyeballs of 800+ million users are, that's why the time for FB-commerce is NOW! =)

2011 Is Almost Over

2011-12-31T15:19:00.000+08:00

. . . and I can't wait for another year. There may have been some bumps along the road but we managed to go where we needed to go.

Our sales were good, most especially these past few months. Our business is doing well because of YOU, our dear readers, customers, and friends.

I hope the world doesn't end next year because we still want to do great stuff. With the end of the world aside, I would like to share some inspiring quotes with you . . .

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
-Oprah Winfrey

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
-Helen Keller

And also, here's a little video slideshow I made a few minutes ago. I hope you enjoy it.

Have a Safe and Happy New Year Everyone!

Blogger VS Wordpress

2011-12-30T13:03:00.000+08:00

If you're planning to have an online presence and extend your business network, one way is to blog about your business.

What is a Blog?

A blog is a commentary that's usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Some are like personal journals, featuring the blogger's daily life. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites and resources, like this blog.

But before you start a blog, you should pick an efficient blogging platform, which would depend on your current resources.

There are a lot of blogging platforms right now such as Tumblr, TypePad, LiveJournal etc. But there are 2 major blogging platforms that most bloggers use, and these are Blogger and Wordpress.

Which blogging platform is better, Blogger or Wordpress?

My answer is Wordpress. You might be thinking, "Are you nuts? Then why are you using Blogger right now?" Actually, I'm talking about the self-hosted Wordpress blog, which requires you to have your own domain, not the one that looks like "yourblog.wordpress.com"

You see, there's a big difference between the free and the self-hosted Wordpress. On the free Wordpress blog, the plugins, widgets and themes are limited. While on the self-hosted Wordpress, you can install as much plugins, widgets and themes as you like as long as it doesn't exceed your bandwidth limit.

But what if you don't have your own domain because you can't afford it yet (like me at the moment, hehe), not to mention the hosting? Well, you can create a blog using the free versions of Blogger or Wordpress.

Which FREE blogging platform is better, Blogger or Wordpress?

Let me repeat the word FREE. As you can see, I'm using Blogger right now that's why my URL looks like "polvoronking.blogspot.com" so I'd say Blogger is better. Let me clarify that I'm not saying that Blogger is better than Wordpress because Google owns and runs Blogger. So here are my . . .

Top 2 reasons why I chose Blogger over Wordpress

#1 Free theme customization

If you're using a Wordpress.com blog, you may notice that you CAN'T edit it's pre-installed themes because it's only available for the self-hosted Wordpress. The free hosted version of Wordpress doesn’t allow full access to editing HTML, custom domains, and CSS like Blogger does. With Blogger, you can install or modify your theme as much as you like. Who wants a blog that looks like everyone else’s? I sure don’t.

#2 Safe

Okay, so I guess knowing that Blogger is owned by Google still has something to do with why I chose Blogger. But here's why. Google is almost 99.99% hack proof according to this article, "You cannot hack into Google until you leak your login information. Hosting your blog in any other web hosting company is not safe as on Google."

If you Google "Which is better Blogger or Wordpress?" Wordpress wins almost all the time. But take note that it's the self-hosted Wordpress they're talking about. So if you're a cheapo like me and you want to start a free blog that has a lot of features, I suggest that you pick Blogger. =)

Why Blog About Our Business?

2011-12-25T15:59:00.000+08:00

Merry Christmas folks!

I've already shared my thoughts on selling online right? Now, this post is a continuation of my previous blog post, where I said that I want to share what I know and what I've learned about online businesses from spending hours on the internet.

We've already built our brand offline, and I think it’s now time to level up and build our brand online because people are already spending most of their time on the internet these days.

So, why should I blog about our business?

Blogging is a low-cost alternative to having an online presence. My parents really don't have the time to learn web html or the money to hire a designer, so I built this blog to promote our business. Lucky for them, I'm pretty good at these things. Hah! XD

Blogs possess a power that business owners in any sizes can use to fuel their marketing campaigns. According to an article by Vic, "If offline marketing can encourage the word-of-mouth from customers, blogging can generate the word-of-links from people who have access on the Internet. Thus, if you’re a businessman or an entrepreneur who wants to optimize business success, you should consider blogging about your company or enterprise."

But blogs do have a downside. Blogging does not provide the functionality of web pages, so I've a created a Facebook Page for our business. Another downside of blogging is it has limits for e-commerce solutions, that's why I've created an online shop via Pabenta.com. It can also be time-consuming with regular posts. But with minimal costs, it may be advantageous to start blogging for our business.

Starting a blog is pretty easy. Anyone can start a blog. I built this blog using Blogger. Although having your own domain like naetherwatch.net is better than a free domain like .blogspot.com, free domains will still help you make an online presence, especially that Blogger is owned by Google. Also, Blogger.com offers easy blogging tools to get started.

If you want to learn more, here are 12 Reasons Why You Should Blog about Your Business. Is your business blog ready? =D

Selling Online

2011-12-23T08:11:00.000+08:00

. . . opens up a new entry point for customers. I really find it important to make an online presence, even if we already have a good number of clients offline. Since I'm the most experienced on the internet in our family, I asked myself, What can I do to make our business visible online?

I've been blogging and building websites since I was 16, and I've already learned a lot from basic CSS to advanced HTML. I decided that I can convert customers from searching online to coming into our store. By building a web site, our business can be open 24/7. No extra staff costs and no overtime rates to pay (Of course I also get my share for getting more customers for my parents! Mehehe! J/K!). The internet is generally cheaper than advertising on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and even by direct mail. Plus, it's more efficient because it saves time.

At the moment, I'm still trying to make our FB Page and Online Store more attractive while building traffic by writing this blog post (and apparently, it's working. YAY!). And of course, I also want to share what I've learned and what I know about online business, because I'm not selfish, and I love you, whoever you are who's reading this right now. LOL!

Okay! That's my short update for this week! Ciao for now and Happy Holidays!

Revamping our Facebook Page

2011-12-17T00:04:00.000+08:00

Right now, I'm taking advantage of the awesome free apps in Facebook that we can use to promote our business. I have already mentioned one in my previous post, and here are the rest of the apps that I used to build other tabs to make our Facebook page look more professional.

Pagemodo - I used this for our landing tab because of its eye catching design. It also has a lot of templates to choose from which you can edit and make your own. But the free version of Pagemodo has limited functionality, and more features are available in various paid versions of it. There are also small ads on the top and bottom of the template. But it's okay because I think our page looks nice. Below is how our free Pagemodo Welcome tab looks like.

Contact Me - This is just another contact form. I used this app because it's from the same company who developed Pagemodo. Hehe. So here's the link to our contact form.

Overall, I would really recommend all the apps I've already mentioned in this blog for FB page admins because these apps are very easy to install, functional, attractive and of course, FREE! =)

First Official Blog Post

2011-12-10T07:34:00.000+08:00

Hi everyone! Dada here. So I've been conceptualizing our online shop for Polvoron King for over a year now and finally, it's already up and running. Yay!

I started with Multiply, but their product feature requires a bank account number for it to show on our homepage, and I really don't like giving away personal information online, most especially bank account numbers, so I've put our products in photo albums instead.

Just last 11/11/11, a new social network for online sellers hasd been launched. PABENTA! The first E-Commerce Social Network. The best part about it is . . . IT'S FREE! So I signed up and in just a few clicks, voila! I just created my online shop!

Another cool thing about PABENTA! is their Facebook Page Integration. If you have a Facebook page for your business, this feature would really take your fans to a whole new online shopping experience. Below is a screenshot of how our FB page looks like.

Pretty cool huh? Well, that's about everything for my first official blog post. Stay tuned for more updates! =)