My Philippine Business success was a highlight of my Philippine life
I miss this part of life in the Philippines
For most of my life I have been self-employed, and that was particularly true during the time I lived in the Philippines. If you are a foreigner living in the Philippines, the odds you can (legally) get a job are as close to ZERO as you can get. For most foreigners when they move to the Philippines they are already retired, getting a pension, social security, or some other type of retirement income. Few foreigners, in most instances they cannot even legally get a job in the Philippine economy.
When I moved to the Philippines in 2000, I was 38 years old. I was too young to just retire. I still needed to earn a living so that my family could afford to live in the Philippines and thrive there. Luckily, I did have a fair amount of savings that I could use to create financial success for myself and my family.
My first attempt at earning a living
My first attempt at earning a living in the Philippines was to open an Internet Cafe in General Santos City. This was in 2000. Internet cafes, at that time, were the way that most people in the Philippines gained access to the Internet. In those days it was not common to have an internet connection at home. There were no cellphones that could access the Internet in those days. Most Internet cafes in the Philippines had very slow Internet connections. I wanted my Cafe to be different.
I did some research and found out about another method, much faster, to access the Internet in the Philippines, over satellite. The solution was “DirecPC”, internet access over the satellite dish.
I rented space in a small shopping center (commonly known as a “strip center”), got a DirecPC satellite dish installed, purchased a lot of computers and set up the whole system. Within days we had a beautiful Cafe with a ton of computers and a working satellite connection to the Internet. We were charging triple the price of other Internet Cafes in town, but with about 20 times the connection speed compared to all of the competition. Within days our Internet Cafe (called FBNet for Feyma and Bob Internet) was a huge success. Our biggest downside was that our computers were all in use all of the time. We had to invest in opening a second location to satisfy the demand.
Another business on the way
The Internet cafes were very successful for us, but I wanted to get into other types of businesses. When we still lived in the States I had a very successful presence on eBay, selling all kinds of items at a good profit. I decided to take a shot at running an eBay business from the Philippines.
I had noticed, living in the Philippines, that the products I could find for reselling were completely different compared to what I had been selling in the States. I started trying these different and new products, selling them to people in the USA, and was experiencing great success. It was not long after I started getting some great traction on eBay that we moved from General Santos City to Davao City. Being in a much larger city gave me even more opportunity to find an even wider variety of sellable items, and also get items at a better price, as well as the availability to buy large quantities of items that were good sellers for me. I continued selling on eBay for about 10 years or so, and it continued to be successful for me.
A BIG Opportunity came my way
Even before we moved to the Philippines I owned a great domain name (mindanao.com) and a website about the Island of Mindanao, and another website about the city where we lived. My websites got a lot of visitors, they were popular. In 2001 or 2002, I got an email through my website, it was from a guy in the States. Valentines Day was approaching and this fellow emailed me asking if I could buy some flowers and deliver them to his girlfriend who lived in General Santos City. I did buy the flowers and marked them up for a good profit, then delivered them for this fellow. A day or two later I got a similar request, so I filled that order as well. I realized that there were a lot of people around the world who had girlfriends, wives, etc. in the Philippines. I thought that a flower delivery service would be a great business, so I started one. I had it on my Mindanao.com website, but also realized that the success was limited to the island of Mindanao due to the domain name, so I wanted to get a new domain for the business that would offer more widespread business.
After a week or so, I came up with a domain name that I thought would be perfect. The Philippine Department of Tourism had a website at “WowPhilippines.com.ph”, I saw them advertising that domain on TV and wondered about the domain. I checked if “WowPhilippines.com” was available and it WAS, so I bought it and put up a flower sales/delivery site there (as well as selling other gift items, not just flowers). It became a HUGE success, I was the only flower/gift delivery business in the Philippines at that time.
Closing Down the Internet Cafe business
In 2002 we elected to close down our Internet Cafe business in the Philippines. The Internet Cafes were still successful, but they were earning more on the level of a “Philippine Income” and I had already started other businesses that were earning a much better income, so the amount of earnings were just not that important to us, and focusing more time and effort on other businesses was more logical.
WowPhilippines continued growing
Our flower/gift business just kept getting bigger and bigger. We had more and more employees and more and more sales too. We had employees and agents all over the Philippines and it became a very big company. We kept expanding our product line too, selling things like cell phones, load for cellphones and other higher ticket items too. We were able to work things out to where we delivery almost anything ordered to almost any destination in the Philippines in 24 hours or less.
Competition started popping up as well, but still we were able to hold our own and remain profitable. Times were good.
Next was my largest business in the Philippines
In 2005 I decided to start a new website/blog on the topic of foreigners living in the Philippines. The site was called “Live In The Philippines” or “LiP” for short. I started out posting an article every few days, but didn’t have many visitors to the site. I felt it had huge potential, so I kept posting articles and increased my frequency. I got to where I posted an article every day, seven days per week. After a month or so, I invite maybe5 other foreigner friends to start writing articles on the site, also including my wife, Feyma, to be a writer on the site. When I invited a diversity of viewpoints on the site it really took off! I started getting thousands of visitors on the site daily.
Within a couple of years I had enough writers for the site that we had an article every day by a different writer. Each writer was the featured writer for a certain day of the week, and we had articles seven days per week. The readership had built up to tens of thousands of readers each day. Sometimes the articles would get up to a few thousand comments, and the site was a huge success.
This site made me realize the potential for money making from the site (not only making me money, but also providing help to people who needed assistance in making the move, finding accommodations, etc.). I wrote more than 100 books on the topic, selling them through the website, and on other platforms like Amazon and other sites. Anytime there was a glitch and the daily article was even 5 minutes late in publishing I would start getting inquiries and complaints from the readers.
Publishing this site was a highlight during my time living in the Philippines. We had such a great community of readers, it was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of pleasure! It is hard to beat something that offers a combination of personal fulfillment and financial success. Great memories for me.
My business-life in the Philippines was a real highlight of my life. A lot of people told me that it would be impossible to earn a good living in the Philippines. I found the opposite to be true. Don’t believe everything that people tell you.
Hi Bob,
Your LIP site was one of the best. Like many other readers I read the new articles posted daily and wrote some myself about my adventures in Iligan City on my many vacation visits. Could a foreign visitor like me find a way to make money in The Philippines ? When I discovered I could buy shares of stock in Jollibee it was selling at 83 cents ( US ) per share so I bought a whole bunch of it. Today those shares are going for around $4.50 USD per share. My investment advisor said he can see it eventually go to $10 ( USD ) per share.
Hi bob, how are you doing? I’m glad to hear that you are stock continues to appreciate. That’s good news. Yes, back in the day, lip was really the site, I always enjoyed operating the site, and interacting with all of the readers it would come on and read it daily. Thank you for being one of those readers.
Bob, You were so helpful to me when I wanted to visit Gingoog City. And ur articles opened my eyes. I had been thinking about retirement and where to live. I wanted someplace warm, near the ocean that had flowers and palm trees. With ur advice I visited met my wife for the first time along with her family. It has been so wonderful and a great adventure. Thank you Bob for helping me. You added so much information that helped along with the knowledge that I learned while stationed on Luzon in the early 1970’s. And meeting you over coffee on my visit to Davao was a highlight of our trip…
Thank you for your kind words, my friend. I’m glad to hear that I could have been of assistance to you in making your decision, and I’m very happy to see over the years that you are enjoying a good life there. You are so very well welcome.
Hi Bob. Am a friend on FB. And a follower.
I only learned now that you have many businesses then.
This is off topic I also remember you had or owned a farm land. And also learned that you got sick. But fully recovered now. Btw, did you got your Philippine citizenship/passport since you got married and stayed in the PH for quite a time? Or have applied for it? I wondered.
Best regards to Feyma and your kids too! They must be grown up now. God bless!
Thank you so much for your comment, my friend. Good to hear from you.
I did not become a Philippine citizen when I lived there. Under Philippine law, to become a citizen there, I would be required to renounce my American citizenship, and I didn’t want to do that. I also did want to become a Philippine citizen, but it just didn’t work that way. I really enjoyed my life there so much, and in a lot of ways I really want to go back and live there again. But I also have commitments here in the United States, and I don’t think that I will be going back to live in the Philippines again. It is so very tempting though.
Hi Bob,
I’m retired in the Philippines – I’m in Negros Occidental, not too far away from our currently active volcano – Kanlaon.
Unfortunately I missed being on your Philippine site too often when it was active and you were still here. I did get to read some of the articles which helped me get things together so I could finally retire here.
I enjoyed reading your article, I’m very interested in how you managed to make a living here.
I once saw my friend using your site to order some gifts for his gf in the Philippines. Is that business still running?
I’m also curious where you ordered your gifts from. When I mentioned your business to my Filipina wife she was interested in trying something similar. Considering the current situation with SS, I’m also thinking an additional income couldn’t hurt in case of any problems.
In the US there are lots of companies that can supply a drop shipping business. However, I don’t even know where to start looking for similar companies here – other than, perhaps Shopee.
If you have any information on that, as well anything else that you think she might find interesting, please feel free to email me.
Thanks.
Hi Enoch,
Thanks for your comment. I prefer to communicate via that comments here, not email, because that way other people can learn too.
I lived in the Philippines for 20 years, and I actually made a lot more money in the Philippines than I ever made in the USA. I had so many different businesses there in the Philippines.
Having my “Live in the Philippines website brought a lot of people to read my articles and from that they also became customers of my various businesses.
Some of my businesses:
1. My websites, particularly Live in the Philippines. Through the website I could offer advice particularly for new expats living in the Philippines. My advice was all based on my years of experience living there. And, beyond my advice I offered services through my businesses. One of the biggest business in terms of providing an income for me and my family was “WowPhilippines”, by site were we offered delivery services of gifts to Filipina girlfriends. Gifts like flowers, chocolates, stuffed animal type gifts, jewelry, etc. I sourced many of these gifts through local businesses in Davao City (where I lived), and some items directly from China through Lazada and other vendors. I also had a team of Private Investigators in different parts of the Philippines who could “check out” girlfriends and such, seeing if they were sincere with their relationship to the foreigner customer of mine. I also wrote more than 200 books about challenges of living in the Philippines, and how to develop a successful life there. All of these different ideas and services provided me and my family with a great living, and helped others too.
If you have other questions please feel free to ask and I will answer if I can.
Bob,
You hit it at the right time as there was a big demand for what you offered. I still miss LIP to this day. It really was a good site and you never saw the hatred and negativity you see on sites today. The writers and the readers comments were always fun to read, especially Paul Thompson every Monday morning. Unfortunately not easy today to make money as there are so many vloggers and other competition and the quality mostly not nearly as good as yours.
Thanks for your nice comment my friend. I agree with everything you said. There are certainly a ton of outlets for that type of information these days, I’m not sure that the quality is as good as back in the day though. Paul was certainly a very popular part of the site, no doubt about that. I miss Paul, I also miss all of the readers it would visit daily. Hope you’re doing well, my friend.
Hi Bob, same story kinda as Luke’s. I found your information and pamphlets quite helpful when I was preparing for my move to Gingoog city in 2015. Tried a few different things to make money here but no luck. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
You are most welcome, my friend. I’m glad that I could be of help in moving and living in the Philippines. Good luck on all of your future plans.