In an article published in the Christian Science Monitor, my name popped up somewhere in the 10th paragraph. Yes, that’s me, Andrew de la Serna, of Davao City.
Just to clarify a few things. I did buy a Nokia 6600 with my earnings and I had since sold that to buy another one, a Sony Ericsson W800i. My friends were giving me a hard time while we were reading the article because, of all things, the cellphone had to be mentioned first before the part that said that I was develop(ing) new websites. I guess a cellphone is thought to be such a novelty that only a privileged few in a third world country like ours are perceived to own it? Probably.
For me, Adsense is just the icing on the cake. For the majority, it is the cake. But don’t get me wrong … either way Adsense is a good thing. Because suddenly struggling webmasters are finding themselves in a very profitable position — a position that makes it possible for them to think of new ideas and pursue them without much monetary barriers. It may be pure conjecture, but just looking at the sheer number of blogs that spring up every minute (about 12), it could not be further from the truth. In a matter of hours, these sites are already carrying ads served by Google. Voila… a new cash calf is born.
I can’t really give an official stance on how the Philippines is gaining ground in the blogosphere. But looking at Pinoy Top Blogs, there are just over 1,100 blogs registered. That represents only .0013% of the 8 million Internet users in the country. I suppose that these bloggers are actively updating their content regularly, so that figure could be much higher. That means that there are more who have blogs but don’t update them at all — case in point: Friendster and Myspace members. By the numbers, Filipinos have yet to get out of their comfort zones and do something out of the ordinary: blog.
And while they’re at it, join the hidden payroll 🙂