Raymond and Tammy's Wedding Video

We had a lovely time at Raymond and Tammy's wedding January 6th. Tammy is a girlfriend from high school.

We used to write each other letters when she went to Virginia as an exchange student on our senior year. Which reminds me, as far as I am concerned, old-fashioned snail mail will never get old to me.

Here is a video recap of their beautiful wedding. Watch and enjoy!

Job Opening: Affiliate Program Management Associate/Manager

Both positions will be in-charge of managing BusinessSummaries.com's affiliate management program. These are full-time work-at-office positions. Successful candidates will enjoy a fixed salary and an uncapped commission scheme.

The Affiliate Program Manager is responsible for growing the affiliate marketing channel for all company properties. This position manages the strategic direction of the affiliate program and has P&L responsibility for this channel.

Compensation Package:
1. competitive salary
2. uncapped commission scheme for direct sales (estimated monthly commissions normally more than monthly salary)
3. overrides for managing teams and revenue shares for indirect sales
4. minimum 1 month bonus for meeting specific team and individual objectives

The primary objectives for these two positions are:
1. Achieve an affiliate revenue objective for the year.
2. Recruit a total of 5,000 affiliates for this year.
3. Activate inactive affiliates, and deepen relationship with existing affiliates.
4. Manage external relationships with Linkshare, Clixgalore, and all other affiliate networks.
5. Set the strategic direction for all affiliate programs.
6. Develop strategic partnerships to create partnerships that exceed traditional affiliate relationships.
7. Review incoming proposals and make recommendations for partnerships and engagements; prepare revenue and cost analysis; estimate value of media/partnerships.
8. Develop marketing programs (consumer and affiliate offers, affiliate communications, and newsletters) and oversee the execution.
9. Coordinate internally with marketing, creative, and technical to execute against all deliverables.
10. Monitor, recommend and implement strategies to improve key performance metrics, including click-through rates, average order size and ROI.
11. Conduct weekly review and ROI analysis of the affiliate programs and tract to forecast.
12. Work with technology team to implement new or enhanced partner data feeds related to the affiliate program.
13. The work is approximately 20% night shift and 80% day shift.

Required Experience

Affiliate Program Management Associate
1. any sales or account management position
2. experience as an Internet affiliate is an advantage
3. any writing experience
4. this is also an ideal job for call center agents looking to upgrade their career

Affiliate Program Manager
1. any affiliate program management is preferred

Definite requirements for both positions
1. Fast learner who has the ability to cope in an industry that changes every few months.
2. Possess strong quantitative and qualitative analytic skills. The core function of this role is to analyze affiliate-program-driven traffic and sales data to derive conclusions and actionable insights.
3. Be a highly-motivated self-starter. To be successful in this role, the candidate must be comfortable working independently to achieve a successful result with minimal guidance.
4. Be tech-savvy and have the ability to learn new concepts and software applications quickly.
5. Previous experience in direct response marketing is an advantage.
6. Strong attention to detail.
7. Strong verbal and written communication skills and be comfortable with the following: presenting in front of a group, communicating with affiliates and communicating with program managers of affiliate networks.
8. Possess proven Excel skills.
9. Confidently handle multiple projects simultaneously and under deadlines.
10. Possess proven ability to work with cross-functional teams.
11. Online retail experience a plus.
12. Basic HTML programming a plus.

If you are interested in this available position, please send your resume to businesssummaries@gmail.com. If you know someone who would be interested, kindly let him/her know about it, send this link and have him/her get in touch with us.

Thank you!

My Highlights of 2007 (First of Two Parts)

In the year 2007, so many good things have crossed my life because of the wonderful, generous God that we all have! Here is a two-part recap of my personal highlights in 2007. In random order. I have a little warning for you though. Several of them will be wedding-related because in February 2007, I married the man of my dreams. So bear with me :)

1) The one when I walked down the aisle. I vowed to look straight into my groom's eyes and only his, never take them off him until I my parents officially give me away.

2) The one when the minister says "You may now kiss the bride!" Robert and I had a "no kissing" covenant with our Father when we got engaged. It was not the easiest thing to do but I am glad we waited. And yes, it was so worth it!

3) The one when one of my best friends made my wedding dress. Jo used to doodle dress designs in my notebook back in high school. The designs get more creative during math class when we couldn't be bothered by x and y integers. It is so crazy to think that 15 years later, he made a dress so beautiful beyond my imagination. More on this story in a future blog.

4) The one where we exchanged vows. We both wrote our vows the morning of our wedding day. We have these words framed in our home to remind us of our promises to each other.

5) The one where our good friends got married. Mike and Kay. Mon and Manina. Jonas and Avie. Kris and Malou. Joel and Maureen. Jed and Irma. Beautiful weddings. Beautiful couples.

6) The one with all the bridal showers. I am so blessed to have been thrown all these lovely, fun bridal showers. My friends and family are such wonderful people!

7) The one where our parents hang out. We spent one afternoon talking, eating, and laughing. Wish we can do this a lot more :(

8) The one with our honeymoon. It was ten months late but it was wonderful, happy and refreshing! We can never get enough of Boracay.

9) The one where we went to Hong Kong. Robert's first. Did the whole tour thing and the shopping thing and loved every minute of it!

Second part coming up soon! :) Happy new year!

2007: It Was A Good Year!

I am excited to kick off a series of blogs for 2008! God has been kind and generous. Here is a nice, little photo slideshow that recaps our very, very busy but happy 2007.

Watch out for "My Highlights of 2007" sometime this week!

Thankful

I am thankful for a Father for having plans for my life. Not just when things are going great, but especially for having plans when life calls for a change or when my character needs some serious stretching.

I am thankful that I am – slowly but surely – seeing His will unfold and come to pass. I am grateful that He is always there – patiently showing me the path that He has chosen just for me.

I am thankful that His grace has made it easy for me to be available for my brothers and sisters. To be able to show them love, compassion and kindness.

I am thankful that I have a spiritual romance with my Father. My intimacy with Him has gotten so deep this year. He listens to my most personal thoughts and responds in His usual perfect time.

I am thankful everyday of my life that Jesus died for me. And because of that sacrifice, He gave me a second chance on living a REAL, authentic life. His love makes me complete.

Thanksgiving becomes really happy when you realize you have the unconditional love of the Father. Therefore, I wish all of you a happy thanksgiving!

He Fulfilled My Secret Wish!

Around this time last year, my weary spirit told God my top secret wish. I told this to Him not because I was asking Him to make it happen for me, but because I felt (and still do) intimately close to Him to let Him know what's in my heart.

Totally forgot about it... let it go... and then went on about with what I had to do... and ultimately did what He specifically asked me to do during that season of my life.

While I found pure pleasure in obeying His (very specific!) will... I must admit, I had my times where I felt discouraged, questioning my limited self if this was all worth it.

I kept on doing it anyway just because it was clear to me He wanted me to do it.

Because He is a Father who finds joy in seeing me smile, He fulfilled my secret wish this week! My husband, Robert (the only other one who knows about this wish), pointed this out to me last night.

Obviously, I really let that secret wish go that he had to remind me about it! Overwhelmed by His goodness, we could not help but give Him praises right there in our car!

This beautiful and familiar Word says it all:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Philippians 4:6

I am absolutely thrilled God gave me something I wanted in His own perfect time! But more than that, He taught me a valuable, character-building lesson.

He taught me not to be anxious. He taught me not to be too consumed by my own personal desires that blocks out His own will for me. Or worse than that, He taught me not to twist my personal wants in such a way that I make it appear like it is His will in my head. Boy, was I guilty of that several times in the past!

He taught me to fully surrender. He taught me trust Him unconditionally. And He will make the rest happen.

I am so grateful.

*Note: If you find yourself actively seeking God's will on on something specific in your life, I encourage you to follow the hand diagram. It has worked for me so many times!

What I Do: Buzzing Social News Sites

My last post about what I do is on "Press Release Optimization." One of my tasks is taking the press releases to a new level and maximixing its reach.

I call it "Buzzing."

Buzzing requires me to be heavily involved in social news sites. While I am sure that most of you have heard of social networking and bookmarking sites, I am not sure if you are familiar with social news sites.

Let me explain a bit of it to you. When social news sites are used properly, it can drive traffic to your website or blog.

How a social news site works is quite simple. You create an account in a popular social news site. When the account is created, you are automatically a "contributor."

A contributor submits a web-based story or news item that he really likes or feels that deserves some kind of attention. And then other "contributors" or members of that site will vote for the submitted story.

Popular stories might have hundreds of votes, while others fade into obscurity with hardly a vote at all. Stories voted by 40 or 50 users have a good chance of showing up on the site's main page, driving traffic to the website or blog that where the story originated.

If you break a news story or post an interesting blog entry, you can submit it to these social news sites. Once submitted, it can drive traffic to your site or blog. Get the picture?

Therefore, everytime my news stories about BusinessSummaries.com get posted, I submit these to all imagineable social news sites out there. Usually the traffic is short lived and you only see an increase for a day or two -- but it is better than nothing! With luck, some of those visiting your site will bookmark it so they can visit often.

Here are some popular social news sites:

http://www.digg.com/

http://www.propeller.com/

http://www.newsvine.com/

http://www.reddit.com/

http://www.plugim.com/

http://www.marktd.com/

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.onlywire.com/

Now, here is the interesting part. I joined an e-group of other like-minded people who love Internet marketing and likes getting their stories out on social news sites.

What we do is exchange our links and vote for each other! This activity gives each of our news items a massive number of votes and increases our chances of making it to the first page of most social news sites. It is a bit time consuming but the traffic pay-offs are worth it.

Hope you learned something today! Post a comment for any questions.

Waiting For An Answer

I just got done reading "Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?" by Philip Yancey. I have been taking extreme delight in keeping company with God lately, and this book was a great companion in deepening my journey with Him.

If you desire to define the partnership we have with God in prayer, I recommend that you a grab a copy of this book.

Scripture has much to say about waiting for our prayer requests to be granted. God is not in a hurry, and He likes to teach us not to be either. Through requiring us to wait, He is able to make us more patient, more trusting, more self-controlled, and more compassionate. I believe that these wonderful values will not be built up if He answered our prayers immediately.

And when He does answer our prayers, it is important that we unhurriedly enjoy every second of His rewards.

Remember when they tell us to chew our good food slowly and savor every flavor? Take pleasure in enjoying God's answered prayers the same way. No need to rush through and move on to the next problem to tackle.

"Taste and see that the LORD is good..." according to Psalm 34:8. Taste and enjoy everything about Him!

Today, may you and I start with God when we pray -- find out what His perfect will is and how to get involved in it -- instead of starting with ourselves, unloading to Him all our desires and dilemmas. The change in perspective is amazing!

Have a blessed weekend!

What I Do: Press Release Optimization

In a previous blog entry, I explained the company I worked for because many people have been asking and I never seem to explain it fully well.

Now I will attempt to explain the important tasks I have to do for BusinessSummaries.com. Why am I going to do this?

A lot of people want to drive traffic to their websites or blogs. Most of them want traffic to earn money online or just want some kind of attention.

C'mon let's be honest for a quick second, if you did not want a little bit of attention, you will not be writing in a blog... you will be writing in an old-fashioned, private journal. I am guilty of that as well! :)

From time to time, I will explain some of the tasks I have to do to drive traffic to our website. It is my job to help BusinessSummaries.com to drive as many visitors as I can in a day. The more visitors we have, the greater the chances of making money online.

If you want decent traffic to go to your website or blog, check in from time to time so that you can pick up some tips in attracting traffic, and eventually, more business.

Today, I am doing "Press Release Optimization." Let me give you the lowdown on this Internet marketing task.

The goal here is to create a newsworthy article that will be submitted to several Internet public relations websites. These websites will then distribute the news item to several Internet news websites.

There are a few, good PR sites that accept submissions free-of charge. There are excellent ones that charge in varying range of fees -- depending on the exposure that you would like for your news item.

Here are some good PR sites that you can check out:

http://www.prweb.com/

http://www.prleap.com/

http://i-newswire.com/

http://www.webwire.com/

http://www.pressbox.co.uk/

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/

http://www.clickpress.com/

http://www.przoom.com/

http://www.pr.com/

http://www.marketwire.com/

http://www.prnewswire.com/

http://www.businesswire.com/

Bottom line is, to get the news item to important Internet news sites. Why do I need to get it published? There are 2 reasons:

1) When the news item gets published to news sites, a lot of people will see the link to our website -- increasing the chances of click through it and going to our home page.

2) When Internet surfers "Google" our company name or any related keywords, our chances of getting on the first page of search results increase.

Remember this thought: Google's order of search results is dependent on the relevance of the websites. A website becomes relevant when a lot of other websites link to it.

When news sites link to our website, you get the picture. Here is a sample of one of our press releases.

Hope you learned something new today! For any questions, please feel free to leave a comment.

Oh Yeah, My Husband Can Cast Out Demons!

The very talented Joaquin Valdez directed a short film entitled "The Room". The film was showed at the Every Nation World Conference 2007 here in Manila. Keep a close watch on 3:58 when a really hot guy mightily casts a demon out of someone :)