Online Directory, Calendar, and Mall for Filipino Organizations, Businesses and Churches

Community Leaders: We Need a Community Bulletin
Our story goes back ten years ago, to April 1999, to a summit of Filipino community leaders in North Texas. It was decided to hold the first Pista Sa Nayon event to celebrate the Philippine Independence Day in June 1999. The plan was to invite all Filipinos in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

The biggest problem was how to communicate to the people - details of the plan were still in the making, and there was very little time and money. It was agreed that my wife and I will provide an electronic bulletin service, to be called PinoyTexas.com. Leaders will do the planning while we publish the details for all volunteers.

The plan worked! The first Pista sa Nayon was attended by more than 500 Filipinos. A breakthrough for the community. PinoyTexas.com became a community bulletin, a calendar of events, and the first online directory of community leaders and organizations in the U.S.

On the 5th year of Pista Sa Nayon in North Texas, the last year I was chairman, attendance was 2,500 for the day. Some came from as far as Houston, San Antonio, Odessa, and Oklahoma. More than 25 organizations and churches were involved and there were about two dozen booths. All food vendors were sold out.

It was not only Pista Sa Nayon that benefited from PinoyTexas.com. In the same five year period, from 1999 to 2004, the number of community events increased from one every two months, to two events every week. The increase in events did not diminish the attendance. Average attendance increased from 150 to 250. Some events had attendance of over 1,000 even with short notice.

Businesses: We Need a Directory and Support for Year-Round Marketing
Many Filipino businesses were gaining from Pista Sa Nayon. That was good! But the event was only once a year. Because PinoyTexas.com was getting over 50,000 hits each month, some community leaders suggested it was time to have a Web site to serve the Filipino businesses all year round and to help expand their market. So we created an online business directory and called it AsianTexas.com.

The idea was well received in Texas. About 32 organization and business sites were created as part of the directory. The directory became like an electronic mall. But Filipinos in California did not like the name AsianTexas.com. Why, they asked, should they be in a Web site named for Texas?

California: We Need an Inclusive Name!
So we built PinoyDirectory.com and moved the National Calendar of Events to it. The idea began to sell and was proving to be beneficial because everyone was gaining from combined traffic. With the help of the Web site, several Filipinos were able to increase their business volume. As one member put it, The cost of advertising in PinoyDirectory.com is so low, I'm actually making money from the Filipino community.

By 2006, the number of business sites within PinoyDirectory.com had grown to 70. It was growing. But then the unexpected happened. MySpace.com became very popular. Nearly everyone was either in MySpace.com or have made their own Web site. The need for PinoyDirectory.com was in doubt and traffic waned in 2007 and 2008.

Still Needed: Online Community to Bring People Together
And then, toward the end of 2008, there was an increase in inquiries and requests for services of PinoyDirectory.com. MySpace.com had become so big that those in it are essentially 'lost' among millions. And individual business sites do not produce the kind of traffic made possible by PinoyDirectory.com.

So in 2009 we decided on a new goal: we will revive the spirit of PinoyDirectory.com - a Filipino directory which is also a national calendar, a source of educational articles, and an electronic mall where Filipino businesses are located together. We want it to be a top favorite of the Filipino community again.

We Need to Grow
Achieving this goal will be a long, gradual, and difficult process, especially with abundance of excellent Web sites, Filipino-oriented or otherwise. Cleaning up and updating the new PinoyDirectory.com, and adding features that will make people visit regularly, is a huge project. This is not 1999 when we were teaching people how to connect to the Internet and use a browser on their computer. Today, people's minimum standard is quite high.

But the goal is not impossible. First of all, our purpose is beneficial. Second, we understand the Filipino community very well. We know what they really value in the long run. While we cannot meet them all, we know some things that count. We're Number One!

Besides, we already have one big advantage over other Filipino Web sites. Today, I tested how we are ranked by Google search engine by searching for "pinoy directory". Out of 4,520,000 hits, PinoyDirectory.com is number one. Then I searched for "filipino directory" and found that out of 1,830,000 hits, PinoyDirectory.com is number one, too.

Just to be sure it wasn't a fluke, I checked Yahoo! search engine by typing "pinoy directory". I saw that out of 5,840,000 hits, PinoyDirectory.com was number one. However, when I searched for "filipino directory", I found we were only number 89. While that is 89 out of 12 million hits, that's not good enough. We need to be in top ten there, too.

Obviously, our work in the past has not been in vain. But we have a lot of work to do ahead of us.

Ray Colorado
Editor

July 6, 2009

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