5 Tips for Entrepreneurs to be Successful in the Cannabis Market

Wazzup Pilipinas!?




Many governments worldwide are gradually realizing the benefits inherent in cannabis. As a result, quite a few have relaxed the laws, making it legal to sell and distribute marijuana for medical and recreational use. These regions often have authorized dealers licensed to sell cannabis products in stores called dispensaries.

Canada and some US states have several stores where one can purchase cannabis products without getting into trouble with the law. Series of entrepreneurs have realized the potential in the cannabis business. However, due to the heavy regulation that this niche has seen, it is not recommended to dabble into the business without the necessary knowledge and tips for success.

As a result, this article sheds light on everything a cannabis entrepreneur needs for success in the field.

 
1. Optimum Delivery Service

Your cannabis dispensary needs a top-notch delivery system. This is extremely important following the recent COVID-19 restrictions in many countries. However, not all American States permit the delivery of weed. Many people use cannabis for medicinal purposes. As a result, a trip to the dispensary might expose them to unnecessary risk, making a delivery system essential.

You should strive to have a 24 hours delivery service that makes it easy for customers to order pot without restrictions. It is possible to have people employed for delivery which will work full time. Make sure this person has a valid driver's licence without any prior conviction case. Likewise, it will be nice if your customers can order marijuana online or via the telephone. You might have to deal with customers who need instant or same-day delivery, so having a full-time delivery person will be awesome.

 
2. Online Presence

In this day and age, almost 70% of the population has a device that gives them instant access to the internet. As a result, if you want to keep being relevant, a good online presence is inevitable.

A simple eCommerce website where you display your entire product like a disposable vape product is a good idea. Besides, you get to promote various cannabis strains and other marijuana products. Typically, someone will likely want to know and research different marijuana products before buying. If your store has this information, it will be easy to convert these visitors to paying customers.

Besides having a dedicated website, a good presence on social media can also go a long way to promote your dispensary. It can provide a quick link for customers to contact you and get more information about what you have to offer.

 
3. Keep Regulation and Laws in Mind

Over the years, some unlucky cannabis businesses have been shut down, while some were severely warned by the regulatory bodies. Most of the time, non-compliance with the law, which arises from illegal business dealings and questionable products, leads to this. As a result, to keep your business from getting entangled with the law, make sure to know what the law expects of you.

Cannabis has succeeded medically, which explains its popularity. Some businesses are guilty of making medical claims, suggesting the use of cannabis in place of prescription risks getting on the wrong side of the law. The FDA ensures that these businesses do not thrive into the future.

The operation of such illegal companies affects the entire cannabis industry. For instance, a business that claims that all cannabis strains can relieve indigestion is not trustworthy as there are high quality black diamond og that can deal with indigestion. Such a hyped claim will eventually hurt the business. With this, make sure you understand what is required of you legally.


4. Be Smart with Marketing

You might have created a fantastic marketing brand with top-quality ingredients that will help your customers tremendously. However, your customers are ignorant of what makes your product stand out or the supposed benefits.

Part of your duties is to ensure that your customers know what makes your product unique alongside the creation procedures. Provided your target knows that your product has the value they want, it will not be an issue for them to make recurrent purchases. They might even go out of their way to refer you.

 
5. Find Ways to Stand out

One thing that makes the cannabis business stand out is the wide range of products available under it. This presents the perfect space for various entrepreneurs to focus on. As a result, cannabis is not a growing field but a massive market with countless users with multiple preferences.

This makes it essential to be smart enough to decipher how you can share in this market. You can make this possible by looking for ways to make customers loyal to your brand. It is possible to stand out via a unique packaging system or include a barcode that users can scan and get information on ingredients, third-party lab processing, and much vital information.

Getting that unique selling point can help you stand out among your competitors


Conclusion

There is a lot that goes into growing and having success in the cannabis business. You need to educate your customers on proven medical studies alongside research on what cannabis can do. It is essential to be creative with marketing and getting funds. Staying on the right side of the law will help ensure that you do not get entangled with the government. These five tips will go a long way to set you on the path to success in your cannabis business.

Increase Your SEO Ranking With Encryption Techniqu

Wazzup Pilipinas!?



The secret ingredient to a successful business is - reach to your audience. How well your company will perform is dependent on its visibility among your target audience.

If you already have a business website, you need to look for ways to improve its ranking. A good rank is a must to grab the eye of your audience.

Hypothetically if a user makes a google search to buy a shoe and you have a shoe store, then ideally, your website needs to be visible in the search result. And then he may land upon your website and probably end up buying from you. Although, achieving a good rank on search is not that simple. You have to have a lot of patience and persistence to improve the ranking of your website. There are various ways to improve your ranking such as white label link building technique, broken link building and many more but it’s up to you what you choose.


How to Optimize Your Website?

There are a multitude of ways to optimize your website and enhance its ranking. Adding security to your website can be one of the most beneficial ways of optimizing and improving the SEO rank.

The incidence of credit card theft, identity theft, and all types of data security breaches is something we often hear about everywhere. It increases the concern among business owners and users about the privacy of their sensitive data. Having a robust security setup can potentially save your business and your audience from such unfortunate incidents. Encryption is one such solid security setup in the online world. Encryption is essential for the security of your website. It will protect and prevent your data from being compromised.Key management is a viable option to consider for effective encryption and data security

Not only will it prevent security breaches, but it will also enhance your ranking in the search results. Search engines consider ranking factors while deciding whether the page should appear in the search result for a given query and in which order. The chief ranking factors are content, keyword research, website architecture, backlinks, etc., with the recent addition of security.

Encryption can aid in the security of your website. Learning about encryption and implementing it on your website can be incredibly useful. You can take help by hiring an agency that works on improving the encryption of websites.



Website Security & Its Impact On SEO Ranking

Website Security is essential, and it not only impacts you but the users as well. Users need assurance that their data is safe while they are on your website. You also need to protect your website from cyberattacks.

Cybercriminals can take advantage of your hard work. It may sound unreal to you, but SEO can be the main reason for website hacking. Not everyone invests honest efforts to boost the ranking of their website. Cybercriminals earn from malicious activities by attacking unprotected websites for their benefit.

Your website may be doing so well, and it can fall prey to such an attack because you didn't pay heed to improve the security of your website. The chances are that these attacks may result in search engines blocking your site. Let us dive in to learn more about encryption-


What You Need To Know About Encryption

Today, many organizations depend heavily on PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) to manage security through encryption. There are many pki assessment courses available online to gain knowledge. Encryption is the conversion of information (plain text) into an unintelligible form of data(ciphertext). Only those who have some authorization can read this data by converting it into its original state(decryption) using a secret key. The technology of encryption and decryption is called Cryptography. A cipher or algorithm is needed to implement encryption and algorithm.

The unauthorized entity needs to figure out the algorithm and the key to understand the encrypted data. Breaking encryption is not an easy thing to do. It is not easy to figure out keys and cipher that easily. Therefore, encryption is an essential tool when it comes to the security of your websites.

Google, which dominates the market of search queries by 91.86%, has announced that it will consider website encryption as a ranking factor. Thus, having website encryption in place is rather beneficial for your SEO ranking.

Here are the two encryption methods through which you can secure your website and improve your SEO ranking:-

End to End Encryption

End to End Encryption allows complete security of data-it means that no one can intercept this data except the sender and receiver. E2EE can ensure that no one can read the messages of a communication between two users. Hackers, the government, or even the company facilitating your communication will not be able to read or see the content.

End to End encryption is known for its absolute data privacy. Messaging applications like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger also have End to End encryption.

If your audience knows that they are safe from unethical monitoring and data theft, they will prefer using your website. It will ultimately help with your website ranking.


Quantum Cryptography

Quantum Cryptography originates from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which suggests that two properties location and momentum can be used to identify a particle. But, the particle cannot be measured without altering the values of those properties.

In simpler terms, if you quantum-encode the data, the data cannot be copied, and if an unauthorized person tries to access the encoded data, the data will change. You will get an alert when any such activities occur, and the attacker will fail from concealing this act. You will get saved from SEO spam infected sites that direct visitors to spam web pages with encryption in place.

Spam comments and links can damage the reputation of your website. These spammy links and comments are majorly visible to search engines and users of your website. You may end up losing traffic on your website and ranking as well.


Conclusion

The security of your website is essential for keeping your data safe. Privacy and Data Security is a growing concern among internet users. Placing encryption will help you in gaining the trust of visitors. In the future, secure websites will have greater chances of ranking well in search results.

Thus far, the year 2020 has been turbulent. Between protests and pandemics, it seems unlikely the world will ever return to the way it was. This includes the way we do business.

As social distancing protocols are forcing us to close our physical doors, it’s opening doors of opportunity. Digital marketing has long been a part of our world, but now it’s becoming a staple of the way we do business.

CSOs collaborate to support urban poor in Caloocan

Wazzup Pilipinas!?


Caloocan City is one of the biggest and most densely populated cities in the Philippines. According to the 2018 official poverty statistics of the Philippine Statistics Agency (PSA), it has a total population of 1.6 million and a poverty incidence of 4.7%, the highest in the National Capital Region.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country in March 2020, the enhanced community quarantines aggravated the situation of poor households especially those living in urban centers. As observed by the United Nations, people who are most vulnerable to food and nutrition crises during the pandemic are those who were already exposed to critical food and dietary deprivations pre-pandemic. It was in this setting that an informal coalition of civil society and private sector organizations, already providing relief operations on their own, came together to strategize and collaborate to address the need for food among poor families in Metro Manila.



Ensuring food security

As an informal alliance of different CSOs and NGOs, the CSO coalition was organized to coordinate and manage relief efforts in affected communities in NCR. To address the hunger situation and revive small businesses, the group embarked on “Project Karinderya”, which brought safe and nutritious food to urban poor households while helping the karinderyas (food stalls) recover from the slack in business.

“During the first year of the pandemic, the CSO coalition focused on food security and livelihood,” CSO coalition Project Manager Kathleen Loresca said.

In Bagong Silang Caloocan, the largest barangay in the country, the coalition supported Kabuhayan sa Ganap na Kasarinlan Credit and Savings Cooperative (K-COOP) to provide hot meals to thousands of residents and establish community kitchens that has fed families for a month.

The Project Karinderya, which provided income to food stall owners while feeding families, was also replicated in around 200 barangays in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

A similar initiative, the Super Carinderia, is being implemented by PBSP in partnership with Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific (ANSA-EAP), and Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Pamilya ng Pantawid, which was initially done in NCR and is now currently being replicated as far as Iloilo, Negros Occidental, and Marawi City.



Project CAHEL

Aside from ensuring food security, barangay health teams were also trained on preventing further spread of the virus.

Led by the Zuellig Family Foundation (ZFF), Peace and Equity Foundation (PEF), and K-COOP and the Caloocan City LGU, the Caloocan Consortium to Alleviate Health and Leadership or Project CAHEL was launched in June 2021. A six-month training included two modules of the Barangay Health Leadership and Management Program for Pandemics as well as learning sessions on contact tracing, triage and referral system, mental health awareness & psychosocial support, dengue awareness and management.



Caloocan Vaccination Partnership

To ramp up its support to the national vaccination plan in 2021, the coalition also partnered with the local government of Caloocan City to provide technical assistance, conduct information campaigns, generate demand for vaccines, and address logistical issues in the vaccination sites.

The Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF), with Task Force T3 (Test, Trace and Treat), shared their technical expertise on planning, allocation and monitoring performance of their vaccination campaign through the Miñana Matrix, a tool to determine targets in vaccination efforts. The CSO coalition also created an online map of vaccination sites in Caloocan and devised a system for contact tracing and mapping locations for granular lockdowns.

To deal with vaccine hesitancy, KCOOP initiated information, education, and community campaigns by releasing COVID-19 facts and figures to their client members in their communication channels, particularly, online chat groups composed of mothers in the community.

“Most of KCOOPs client members are “nanays” (mothers). They became “infomediaries” to enlighten their communities that vaccines are safe and effective, and there is a need to get vaccinated to protect yourself and others,” Loresca said.

The Microfinance Council of the Philippines (MCPI), meanwhile, introduced to the CSO Collab through KCoop General Manager Ms. Maria Anna Ignacio, also mobilized their members to help generate demand for vaccination among their clients through the conduct of IEC campaigns.

With the increase in demand, the LGU then provided slots in dedicated vaccination sites to the Collab partners’ members As the vaccine supply stabilized in NCR towards the last quarter of last year, KCOOP brought its client-members from the nearby province of Bulacan when Caloocan City opened its vaccination sites to residents outside the city. Transportation expenses were shouldered by members of the CSO coalition like the Philippine Business for Social Progress.

Through linkages with the Jollibee Group Foundation, service crews from the Jollibee Foods Corporation were also vaccinated along with Food Panda riders.

With these efforts, over 2,000 individuals were vaccinated in Caloocan.

 

Addressing challenges in the vaccination sites

The CSO coalition also stepped up its efforts to address the lack of equipment and manpower in the vaccination sites.

To help encoders of the local government, PEF, through K-COOP, provided 27 laptop units for the vaccination project’s database management component. The CAMANAVA chapter of the Philippine College of Physicians, at the same time, helped in the enlistment of 32 medical volunteers for the vaccination centers in Caloocan.

The SEAOIL Foundation Inc. also provided e-vouchers for fuel worth P50,000 to help transport COVID-19 vaccines to vaccination centers.



Replicating the efforts

The coming together of the development organizations to help the local government, plus the impact of the effort to improve the vaccination in Caloocan have prompted replication in other areas.

In November 2021, another vaccination partnership was initiated in Padre Burgos, Quezon, a PEF focus area. Together with MCPI and the CSO coalition, PEF coordinated with the municipal Rural Health Unit, local MFIs, and partner cooperative Yakap at Halik Multipurpose Cooperative Quezon 2 to vaccinate residents.

According to Loresca, the CSO coalition will be working with other LGUs to replicate the efforts.

“For Caloocan and Padre Burgos, we have seen the potential of microfinance institutions in increasing vaccine coverage. The Department of Health, World Health Organization, and Task Force T3 are looking forward to engaging these MFIs in areas with low vaccination rates,” she said.

The Caloocan LGU was also invited by the Association of Foundations in a forum to discuss their model and share experiences to inspire creation of similar efforts.

With the learnings from the collaboration, more cities and municipalities are expected to produce partnerships that can have multiplier effects to their own efforts

The Peace and Equity Foundation aspires to drive positive change in poor Filipino household communities by investing in social enterprises that will provide them with viable livelihood and better access to basic services. We work with partners who share this vision by developing models and best practices that will steer social enterprises to scale up. Founded in October 2001, our Foundation is the steward of an endowment fund and registered as a non-stock, non-profit organization based in Quezon City, Philippines.