Successful online campaigns can only come about with good and effective search engine marketing or SEM. In the Philippines, there are a few individuals who have shown capability to do the job, and one of the names that crop up is Gary Viray.

His online bio describes him as a "full-blown Online Marketer, SEM Consultant, Entrepreneur, and an SEO Trainer responsible in developing and marketing online presence of some known companies."
He recently rose to prominence with an outstanding sixth place finish in the SEO Busby World Cup 2 and the grand prize in the Search Engine Marketing Category of the Digital Filipino Social Networking Awards 2009.

Of late, he's teamed up with internet educator Janette Toral to launch Blog4Reviews, a marketplace where bloggers and advertisers can benefit from each other through the power of sponsored posts. If you want to get tips on how to make money online, read more in the following interview:

Q. How would you rather be called: a blogger or a search engine marketer?
A. I would say I am more of a search engine marketer than a blogger as I spent more time in optimizing websites’ clients and testing search engine algorithms although I do maintain my own blog at garyviray.com which ranks No. 13 in ratified.org as of this writing.

Q. How is SEM different from SEO?
A. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just a subset of Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
SEM involves both paid search and organic search while SEO is simply all about organic search.

Q. What do you think is the next wave in blogging?
A. Blogging is a Web 2.0 technology. As of now, we are looking into the tremendous growth of the blogging communities worldwide. A lot of innovations are in the burner such as the Google Wave and the Wolfram Alpha after the Twitter phenomenon.
As of blogging per se, I would say that the integration of all these mentioned innovations will take its full form for bloggers to maximize in pushing forward their thoughts online.
There might be a possibility that the” Obama Micro-blogging” strategy will be equally effective during the upcoming 2010 elections in the Philippines. Who knows?

Q. Most people would like to blog for money, but how exactly does one go about it?
A. This is my favorite part! Yes, one can earn by just blogging. Trust me; I am a living proof!
In order to earn money from blogging, one has to really be aware on what the would-be advertisers want on your blog site. One should have a pretty solid niche or topic that he/she is passionate of.
But then, before one can really earn money from blogging, one needs to promote his/her website. One has to be aware of the “better blog statistics”. Pay attention on how you can increase your Google PageRank, Alexa Ranking, RSS Feed subscribers, Technorati Authority, readership and traffic.
Once you have done all what I have just mentioned, then start signing up for some blog network sites. Truly, the said blog network sites will not deny you of getting approved once you have your blog stats topping the charts. Moreover, the better statistics you have. the higher money you get.

Q. What do you think is most effective for making money from your blogs: Google Ads, text links, affiliate marketing, or some other method?
A. It depends on how you would want to craft your blog site.
Some blogs can be tweaked to earn on Google AdSense by simply creating good contents relevant on what people are searching over the net.