You've heard of the phenomenal business success of entrepreneurs in the internet world. The most successful, of course, are Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google.com. When you use "google" as a verb in lieu of "search", you know that the site has done something right. If you add the billions of dollars earned by Google (it reported $5.19 billion of revenues for the March 31, 2008 quarter), then you know they have done some really, really right. There are a number of Filipinos who are successful online and one of them is Jovel Cipriano, an ex-IBM executive who decided to sell Filipino delicacies through a website: pinoydelikasi.com.

 

Doing what you love. The article of Janette Toral discusses the origins of this online business: "The concept for Pinoydelikasi.com was born in March 1999; it went online last January. Cipriano used to travel a lot and always brought home pasalubong such as danggit, pusit, dried mangoes, and the like. "One day, I actually found out that I could make money out of this. My first customers were my family and relatives," said Cipriano. "Until one night, I could not really sleep. I thought of the opportunities if I put up a website."

Huge, untapped market. The power to reach a huge market with a minimal cost is one of the advantages of e-commerce. Consider these facts mentioned by Cipriano during the 2008 World Marketing Conference: "More than a billion people are on the Internet, a few million of whom are online at any given time. Half-a-million make a living on eBay. People said they would never buy a car over the net but in 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles. In 2007, Google bought YouTube.com for $1.65 Billion even if YouTube was not making money." That's a gold mine.

The tireless employee. In addition to the reach of the internet, an online store also works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Barring any system glitches, the online store is up an running even while you're asleep. People could go online anytime and they could get in touch with you through the "contact us" section of the website or through email.

It's cheap. It's not expensive to have an online store. You could have a domain registered, with a one-year basic webhosting package, at little over than a thousand pesos. Of course, the webhosting package increases as traffic to your site increases, but more traffic also means more business opportunities coming your way.

Jovel Cipriano started with a start-up capital of P10,000, a computer and a 24-hour Internet access. Success doesn't happen overnight, as Cipriano started back in 2000. Look where he is now. It's always inspiring to hear about Pinoy Entrepreneurs, offline or online, reaping success after all the hard work (see the list of successful Filipino Entrepreneurs or successful OFW Entrepreneurs). Maybe you're the next Pinoy Entrepreneur who would inspire others to swim in the entrepreneurial ocean.