We all know that Filipinos love to eat as much as they love to save money, learning about the grocery shopping habits of Filipino is a great way to look deep in the culture and mindset of our people.

Here are some few facts about grocery shopping and behaviour in the Philippines that should interest you and perhaps create a snapshot of how we are as a nation.

Fact 1: We are addicted to soft drinks.

Filipinos are addicted to soft drinks. In supermarkets and even sari-sari stores one of the things that fly off the shelf are soft drink products. In spite people saying they are on the budget, Filipinos usually take home a bottle of even two of soft drinks whenever they go grocery shopping. In a recent survey, carbonated soft drinks are top money makers for grocery, with P79.6 billion worth of products sold each year. The demand for soft drinks is a stable deal despite multinational companies lessening their spending on advertising.

In a graphic released by the locally based price comparison website Save22 Philippines, it shows that Soft drinks lead the list of top products that Filipinos buy.

Fact 2: Landmark Trinoma’s grocery has good stock in liquor, ShopWise has good imports
If you’re looking to load up on liquor and you live in North of Manila, the grocery you should check out is Ayala’s supermarket. It is more upscale and has higher prices but the selection is more interesting than other groceries.
Another grocery with great import is ShopWise and the store is cheaper than Landmark Trinoma’s grocery store.

Fact 3: There are hundreds of goods sold in groceries but do you know that most of these products come from just 20 major suppliers?
Coca Cola Bottlers Inc., Nestle Phils. Inc., Monde Nissin, Colgate Palmolive, Unilever Philippines, Kraft Foods, P&G, Del Monte, Century Canning Corporation, Safi/UFC, Wyeth Phils., Pepsi, Alaska Milk Corporation, Zest O, J&J, URC, Emperador Distillers, CDO Foodsphere, Purefoods, Unilever RFM Ice Cream – Selecta

If you want to save money choose products from brands that are not really known. This is especially good when it comes to toiletries such a tissue paper or even laundry soap. They will be priced cheaper and you’ll be helping local entrepreneurs.

Fact 4: Puregold is the biggest grocery to date
In fact, just recently, Puregold Price Club announced that it will be buying Manila-based chains Grocer E and Eunilaine. It just acquired a total of 15 supermarkets which will be rebranded as Puregold. They chose the chains for the locations of the supermarkets which are mostly near public markets.

Puregold is Lucio Co’s chain and it had 156 stores by end of last year. This includes 131 Puregold hypermarkets, supermarkets and extras. They even own 6 S&R membership shopping stores.

SM and Puregold are reported to be aggressive in their purchase of smaller businesses. According to Philippine Association of Supermarkets, Inc. (PASI) president Carlos Cabochan the market is “volatile”. However, in general things are looking great for the industry, especially for big players, as people are spending more.

I am about to open a checking account in Banco de Oro this week and had a hard time looking for the requirements in their site. Good thing that as a search marketing person, I know well how to look for it in search engines such as Google.

After several queries, I came up with a lot of details that relates to opening an account in BDO so I thought of posting them here as reference to other people planning to open an account with them.

BDO Deposit Account Requirements:

• Two (2) valid ID’s with your name, picture and signature.
  • Valid IDs: Passport, Driver’s license, PRC ID, NBI clearance, Police clearance, Postal ID, Voter’s ID, Barangay certification, GSIS e-Card, SSS ID, Philhealth card, Senior Citizen Card, OWWA ID, OFW ID, Seaman’s Book, Alien Certification of Registration/Immigrant Certificate of Registration, and other  Government office IDs
• Two (2) photocopies of your valid IDs
• One (1) ID picture with a size of 1×1
• Billing statement for address verification

Steps in Opening a BDO Deposit Account

1. Choose a Banco De Oro branch nearest you. You can check out the branch / atm locator that can be found in their website.
2. Go to the New Account desk and tell the officer in charge that you intent to open a bank account.
3. Fill up the forms that will be given to you.
4. Submit the required documents listed above.
5. Give the initial deposit required.
6. You will be asked to return in 3-5 days to claim your BDO atm card or passbook.

BDO Deposit Products

Peso Savings Account

• Peso Passbook Savings Account (with or without ATM)
• Peso ATM (without passbook)
• Optimum Peso Savings Account — Personal
• Optimum Peso Savings Account — Corporate
• Junior Savers Club
• Power Teens Club
• Club 60 Peso
• Direct Deposit Peso Savings Account

Checking Account

• PesoChecking Account
• Smart Checking Account — Personal
• Smart Checking Account — Commercial

Automatic Transfer Facility

• Automatic Transfer Facility – Saving Account
• Automatic Transfer Facility – Checking Account

US Dollar Savings Account

• Dollar Savings Account
• Club 60 Dollar
• Direct Deposit Dollar Savings Account

Third Currency Savings Account

• Direct Deposit Dollar Savings Account
• Canadian Dollar Savings Account
• Chinese Yuan Savings Account
• Euro Savings Account
• GBP Savings Acccount
• Hongkong Dollar Savings Account
• Singapore Dollar Savings Account
• Yen Savings Account

Time Deposit

• Peso Time Deposit
  • Peso Time Deposit
  • Premium Flexi Earner
• Dollar Time Deposit
  • Dollar Time Deposit
  • Dollar PRA (Philippines Retirement Authority) Time Deposit
  • Two Year Dollar Time Deposit
  • Three Year Dollar Time Deposit
  • Five Year Dollar Time Deposit

For details on initial amount of deposit and monthly balance requirements, please refer to the official website - www.bdo.com.ph

During weekends, my wife and I bring our kids at the back of Mall of Asia for a morning jog and after that, we take our breakfast at McDonalds One Ecom Center (the one near Fitness First Mall of Asia) but today we have to find another location as the place was full.

The nearest McDonalds in the vicinity is the Macapagal Boulevard branch so we drove our way into it. Upon reaching the area, I had to ask my wife to call the guard because of this:

Yes, you’re seeing it right, they reserve almost 10 of their parking slots for delivery and they are not allowing customers like me to park in it. While my wife is calling the guard, I went into the other side of the store to look for more parking but got this instead:

Even at the front of their store, there’s another parking slot reserved for delivery. When my wife came back, the guard who’s with her confirmed that they are indeed for delivery and I was asked to park at the corner where cars turn right. He didn’t even spent time to assist me. What kind of service is this. Me and my kids were really hungry so we still ate even though I am pissed off by that situation. Imagine several cars parking in an area where other cars passes by.

I think their security guard is too lazy to do his work. I noticed that while we were eating as he was chatting to someone on the phone instead of securing the safety of the area, or just opening door for their customers. Got his initials – Alvarez M. D. of Corps Security Agency. He was chatting for about 30 minutes or more to someone over his cellphone.

We stayed for more than an hour in the store and no delivery van or truck came. Several more customers having the hard time to park came instead.

I hope the management will take a look into this. Customers should be taken care of. There’s nothing wrong in saving a space for your deliveries but not 10 slots. You should provide more to your clients.

Google officially updated its Webmaster Guidelines today as posted in its official webmaster central blog.

“Both our basic quality guidelines and many of our more specific articles (like those on links schemes or hidden text) have been reorganized and expanded to provide you with more information about how to create quality websites for both users and Google,” explains Google’s Search Quality team.

“The main message of our quality guidelines hasn’t changed: Focus on the user,” the team adds. “However, we’ve added more guidance and examples of behavior that you should avoid in order to keep your site in good standing with Google’s search results.”

This video can also be seen on the top of the updated page:

I’ll be speaking in the 1st Iloilo SEO Conference this May 12, 2012 and my topic will be Leveraging Local SEO.

I’m excited to see fellow SEOs in that region so if you’re within the area, sign up for the event which can be found here – https://www.facebook.com/events/311385562261601/

Also speaking in the event are top notch SEOs from the country like Ed Pudol of Lexorsoft.net, Mark Acsay of Webbythoughts.com, Jason Acidre of KaisertheSage.com, Juanito Jacela of CellConversion.com, Sheila Dela Pena of Strategicdigitalpresence.com, Kim Tyrone Agapito of ArticleScholar.com and Ed Canape of Nupxl.com.

1st Iloilo SEO Conference

Last Thursday, I reached the website of Cashsense while searching for a local payment system solution for a new web development project I am working into. I saw that they have an associate program so I tried signing up and I was surprised that they process things fast. In less than 24 hours, a free visa atm card was delivered to me by a cashsense courier.

Cashsense is a licensed remittance company by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and offers their associates a superb recurring income of 10-20% for commissions. I have not activated my card yet but will try it out by Monday. I will also check if this can be used to verify paypal accounts as it is also backed by Uniuon Bank, the provider of EON card.

Cashsense offers automatic credit of your commissions to your account for immediate withdrawal.

Test your seo vocabulary by answering this seo crossword puzzle I have created.

Earlier, it’s been a couple of years since the last time that I have submitted a site for inclusion to Yahoo! News until today but upon going to the News Source Submission Form that I knew, it isn’t there anymore.

Upon searching the Yahoo! Help section for a couple of minutes, I found the new one here.

In the form, you will be required to enter details such as:

1. The name of the news source – this is the name of your site / blog
2. The geographical area that your site covers – if your site covers local news, then input Philippines
3. The web address of the news source – url of your website
4. Rss Feed – xml file that includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.

What is PisoBid? More than twenty thousand likes in its official facebook fan page after two weeks from its launching,  more than a hundred of products bought by many people at an extremely low price – that is what PisoBid is! If you are familiar with penny auction sites, PisoBid is one, the only thing that makes it different is that this website is dedicated to cater the Philippine market.

How Does PisoBid Works?

On their FAQ section, the explanation of how it works is this:

• The item starts at a price of 1 peso
• The price of the item goes up by 1 Centavo (0.01 peso)
• The timer resets itself to allow other users to place a bid; similar to a physical auction where the host yells: “Going Once, Going Twice… Sold!”
• You are now the highest bidder. If you’re on top when the timer runs out, and nobody else places a bid after you, you win the auction!

Who can join PisoBid?

Minors are not allowed. A penny auction type of site like PisoBid has been built for adults to experience an enjoyable bidding experience. To register is simple, you can either signup using the registration form or login instantly using your facebook account.

What are Bid Packs and How Can You Purchase Bid Packs?

For you to join a live auction, you need to have a bid pack which will allow you to bid in a certain item. Upon signing up, PisoBid will give you 5 free bids that you can use. If you feel that you need more, you can buy bid packs thru paypal, load central, gcash or by using your credit card.

Is PisoBid a Legit Business?

For sure it is. I don’t think that their load partners such as loadcentral and Gcash will allow fly-by-night businesses.

Is PisoBid A Scam?

It’s nice to view the videos of the previous winners thru their official youtube page, here’s some:

Do they make a lot of money from people joining the website?

I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion about this on the pisobid facebook page and even on the comments on individual auction pages of the PisoBidwebsite. Others even compute the total amount of bids that a product reached (see above image) and say that PisoBid makes a lot of money without thinking that PisoBid provides free bids to new users. Can you imagine how many people bidding here are using free bids? Also, there are auctions where auction doesn’t meet the retail price of an item like the auction for the Sony Bravia 32″ LCD TV (see image below, click to open the auction page).

PisoBid surely spends a lot for maintaining such a site (e.g. employee salaries, servers, marketing, etc.) and I admire them for giving us an enjoyable penny auction site that is truly Pinoy!

Do you know that you can now send free text messages to your friends and love ones by using your gmail account? Gmail now has a free sms service to its users in the Philippines in partnership with Sun Cellular and Smart Communications, Inc.

How To Send SMS Using Gmail

• Log into your Gmail account. In the Send SMS box above Chat, enter the phone number you want to send a SMS to.
• In the dialog box, enter Contact name of the SMS recipient and check that country and phone number are correct. Then, click Save.
• Type your message in the chat window and hit Enter.
• Your message will be sent to the phone number you entered.

When the recipient replies, the message will appear in your gmail chatbox. All your conversations will be stored in your chat history.

Initially, every gmail account is given a quota of fifty messages. Every sms you send, the quota will decrease by one and for every reply the recipient make, your quota goes up by five. In case that your quota goes below zero,  it will increase to one after 24 hours.

I have just tried it and it really works.