This weekend I had the oppurtunity to interview Gene from Webmasterlabor. You may know him as $5 Submissiions on various webmaster boards around the internet. Gene runs an outsourcing company which specializes in writing, manual data entry, and promotions.

1. When did you first get the idea for Webmaster Labor?

I first had the idea behind Webmaster Labor in the summer of 2000. I was working for a Bay Area-based Venture Capital/Incubator company and we kept running into the same problem–high website content and research costs. We would hire recent US college grads for $30K each so our total content cost was, to say the least, oppressive. I was born in the Philippines and spent my grade school years there so I am quite familiar with its English proficiency and general educational attainment level. The idea arose in 2000 of matching the English text content and data input needs of American companies with low cost but high quality Filipino labor. Unfortunately, the firm I worked for folded before I was able to implement my idea. It would have saved them quite a huge amount of resources and may have forestalled/prevented their closure.

2. What is your business background before you started Webmaster Labor?

I have always been active in online communications. I was an electronic Bulletin Board Systems Operator (”sysop”) for a 2 line forum back in 1993. Before that, I was a forum/community site moderator for one of the largest BBS systems in Southern California. Early on, I saw the potential of electronic communications regarding commerce and community building.

3. I recall that Webmaster Labor used to be primarily geared toward people in the adult industry, why the change of focus to mainstream?

Mainstream is much larger than adult. Moreover, mainstream work is more in line with the culture and expectations of local Filipino culture. I feel mthat my staff has a wider creative and productive latitude than with adult. Finally, there are certain pending bills in the Philippine legislature that may dramatically impact adult outsourcing as it is currently performed in this country. We decided to get ahead of the changes instead of being forced into a reactive position.

4. Can your employees write search engine optimized content? I didn’t see any reference to this on Webmaster Labor’s site.

We focus primarily on writing text content which our clients then optimize and port into their SE optimized pages. Our clients supply the keywords we should focus on along with any editorial ’style’ or ‘approach’ we should use. We also ask for keyword densities. Our writers only cost $450 a month. That is less than $3 per hour since we devote 160 hours per week to each client.

5. What do you do to ensure that your employees can’t use other people’s copyrighted work and claim it is their own?

We compare their text to search engine sources as well as any research primary sources. This eliminates the twin problems of copyright issues as well as search engine duplicate content penalties. We employ strict guidelines and quality checks to prevent this issue.

6. Do you run other websites or businesses besides Webmaster Labor, if yes, any details?

I am a partner in an academic assistance service website. This service assists students with “low to middle” GPAs get a shot at admission into some top US colleges, law schools, medical schools, and MBA programs. I also run a funny video mainstream site similar to ebaumsworld and an ethnic-specific online book site. We also have a free dating site in the works.

7. What do you think about the purchase of Weblogs Inc. by AOL for $25 million?

I find this purchase particularly interesting since we do “micro-blogging” for both clients and inhouse initiatives. Basically, we set up tons of differing blogs each focusing on a particular topic and subtopic. We then assign our writers to write original materials for the blogs, link it to other blogs, develop cross blog relationships, and syndicate royalty-free content into our blogs. At $450 per month, we can cost effectively perform the blog ‘population’ required for a Weblogs type of system.

8. Where would you like to be in 15 years?

We are slowly evolving towards a vertically integrated media company. Eventually though, I’d like to start a free school here in the Philippines to help kids from poor families help themselves through an English-focused education which they can use to gain employment at outsourcing companies. My mother came from such a background and I’d like to return the favor by setting up an institution that helps individuals who have the drive but not the means to help themselves through education.