If you haven’t known yet, I am Rex Villaflor from the Philippines. I’ve been in so many places in this lovely country and if you want me to tour you around —

I can’t. I’m busy.

It all started with my ADDICTION a few years back. Yes, I was an addict that’s why I am writing here. How come you’re interested in reading a profile of an addict? Feel free to leave. Now.

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So you’re still here. Congratulations! I guess my life is interesting anyway. As you read along…

I am not into drugs or what not. PC gaming is what I was addicted into. I spent several hours in front of the computer just to play my favorite game. Who could resist when your monitor says that you accomplished a level and you can venture onto the next? Even Tetris and Mario Bros. did that trick!

And so LAN games came. I then shifted my attention to interacting with my fellow “addicts” when we played Command and Conquer and Starcraft wherein we have to build, manage and defend our base at the same time reducing enemy’s into ashes. Really fun and enjoyable when you see your friends devastated! No?

I got bored. I then explored to a wider community of gamers and eventually ended up playing MMORPG’s. “WTH is that?!”, you might say.  It means “Massively Multi…” pshhh… just GOOGLE it! And because internet doesn’t sleep, I have to cope up with the pace so that my “character” won’t get left behind. I failed, I still need to take a nap to regain my energy to play again.

I was wondering how other players achieved their levels when in fact we both started our characters at almost the same time. I have adjusted my body clock to take 5 hours of rest to achieve the goals the game has set and still couldn’t beat the other players. I just realized that I was competing with two or more geeks that are using the same character in a game. I felt cheated and I actually took this as a challenge. “Hah! Call your minions and I will take you all down!”.

This notion kept me playing full time. I lost my social life and I didn’t even realize that I have housemates to consider. I wake up, eat breakfast, play, lunch, play, dinner, play, sleep. The cycle goes on for a couple of years. It’s a total waste.

One night, around 2am, when everybody was out of town for a vacation (I was so busy playing, of course, I didn’t join), reality-check triggered. I realized that I am not getting any younger and I’m supposed to have a real job. I was 25, then.

“Okay, fine, i’ll look for a job…” and where’s the best place to look for a job..?

I know the realities of working for a company in our country. Low wage, unfair labor practice, job security, to name a few. For god’s sakes I am not born to be a slave! Instead of bureaucratic hiring, I can’t stand to accomplish all their requirements. You have to finish a college degree and all you’ve got is a lowly day job that eats up all the respect you have for your self (just ranting here!). No wonder our great doctors, engineers, professionals prefer to leave the country.

In short, I crossed out physical job hunting right away. Period.

I have to think out of the box. Its not the job that I need to look for but OPPORTUNITY. I have a computer, with a decent internet connection and an urge to succeed. So I grab my ol’friend Google and asked him if he have any idea about “work from home“. It recommended me this and that; I checked every site that it flashed on my screen.

The one that stuck was a blog from a fellow Filipino that provided information on options for home-based internet jobs. But I am concerned because she was posting craiglist offers for typing jobs, surveys, click-ads-to-get-paid schemes. Some were asking to pay them before I can look at their database of typing/survey opportunities. I have to give it a NO because I DIDN’T HAVE THE MONEY to pay them (luckily I realized that all of those are rip-offs).

After 3 days of lurking, she posted a screenshot of a supposed-to-be-scam that is offered in a freelancing site. I got curious, I guess she forgot to edit the screenshot as I saw the URL. It says http://www.odesk…. so I ventured to the site and read every bit of information about Odesk, I even read their policies and terms pages (who would read this kind of page??) and what captured my attention was that I CAN JOIN FOR FREE!

So that was it, I said to my self that I will focus building up my career with oDesk. But first things first… how would I get my first project?

So I pimp my profile, get some tests, and looked for job openings. The responses that I get were “Feedback score too low” (of course I didn’t have any feedbacks, I just started applying!), Rate/Bid too high (ooopss, sorry, I didn’t know…), Experience/Industry not relevant (I once included “Mechanical Engineer” in my profile, lame.)

Wow! After 5 days, I got my first interview invitation! That was the very first job interview of my entire life. And you know what, I screwed up. I asked him how would I address him, he said it’s alright if I call him by first name. He asked me how he might address me, I said “Sorry, sir, my microphone is broken so I cannot speak with you”, and he said “alright, call me when you have your mic fixed, bye”. It’s just that I don’t have the confidence to speak the English language, up to now. But I can communicate through chatting, at least I can convey English thoughts through writing.

Next interview, I made it a point that I will communicate with the client via text, we used skype’s chat service. All went well so far and he hired me for the job! I did web research and filling up the spreadsheet with data that he required. After the end of the week, an invoice was ready from my first job. I still didn’t buy the idea that I can make money out of this, the amount was still pending anyways.

The time the invoice reflected to my account, I am totally frantic! Many firsts were happening to me, and this time, my very first paycheck. And so I worked hard to accomplish the task, and at the same time applied for more job openings. Odesk became my bread and butter.

But my curiosity never stopped there. Every time I looked for jobs in Odesk or get accepted for a job, I always asked my self “why does this client want me to do these things?”. I only accept data entry jobs, then. I am very thankful with the projects that I received from Odesk because it helped me learn more.

There came a pattern of the jobs that I receive. Some asked me to collect contact information of various sites and blogs, some asked me to submit information to different web directories and article sites, etc., that led me to study SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. And so I grabbed all available information about SEO and how to make a website visible to the top pages of a search result, whether it’s google, yahoo or MSN.

And so I started my SEO career. I took the odesk tests for SEO and the first time I took the test, I failed. My game plan was to review the questionnaire and look for answers. And then I learned about keyword research, on-page and off-page SEO and how will it help in reaching the top results in searches. I LOOKED FOR ANSWERS. I did pretty well with this career and made it as my primary service.

And so I learned about affiliate marketing. There was a time that I neglected the idea. “I am not a salesman” why would I sell your products? After I read several articles and blog posts about affiliate marketing and PPC/SEM, well, I gave it a try. I lost a fortune after trying blindly!

I never gave up and finally found a mentor who made it in this field. Oh please don’t get excited here for I will be detailing all of these in my next posts. Is this long “novel” not enough for you?! take a deep breath, have a break and SUBSCRIBE so you can be updated of my story, fair enough?

So to sum it all up, I am now having a balanced life, in a place I called home, enjoying life with my family and my fiancee (we’ll be getting married soon, as of this writing) with no worries and regrets.

did I mention about my online gaming addiction?