Filipino blogs suit up for business

By Anna Valmero INQUIRER.net PARAÃAQUE City, Philippines -- Blogs are also business tools, according to some Filipino bloggers. Apart from being personal diaries, blogs are increasingly becoming sources of i ncome for some bloggers. Janette Toral, blogg er and author of DigitalFilipino.com E-Commerce Workshop E-Book, says some Filipino bloggers have turned their blogs to effective tools for advertis ing. Combining e-commerce and blogging, for instance, allows people to earn some inc ome while doing what they are passionate about: blogging. But before turning a blog into something income-generating, she says it is impo rtant to maintain a consistent following. Content remains king in blogs. âThere was a time I did not update my blog for a month but still tra ffic is consistent, I think it really boils down to good content and good keywo rds for each entry,â blogger Jehzeel Laurente of Jehzlau Concepts adds. The 22-year old blogger from Davao says he earns enough income from blogging to support his stay in Manila. Laurente said he is able to maintain traffic growth in his blog through good co ntent and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, a means to increase a bl ogs or a websites so-called page ranking in search engines like Google or Yahoo ! SEO involves combining good blog design and content using keywords to increase the chances of blogs of landing on top of, say, a Google search. âBased on the top 100 list, bloggers need to create good content, use of SEO to ols like keywords to help define the blog,â Toral concurs. During a blogger awarding cum eyeball at the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Co rp. in Parañaque City, Filipino bloggers who were attracting a large traffic o f viewers were a colorful mix of personalities, age, niche topics, location and gender. One of them is Filipino overseas worker and blogger Rheynz who is behind ReynaElena.com. This blogger thi nks her blog appeals to a niche market of OFWs. Based in Philadelphia, she says 80 percent of the blogâs readers are Filipinos based abroad and in the country . Also based on the traffic Filipino travel, food, parenting, photography and gen der blogs, such as baklaako.com, are getting, Filipino readers have varying tas tes. Which only means that during this period of economic crunch, bloggers need not look far to find ways to earn some income and feed people's thirst for informat ion and good content.