Four Ways SEO Can Help You Grow Your Business

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Services like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are search engines. Billions of people use them every day and search for solutions to their every little problem. These services take benefit of their massive user base and use it for marketing purposes.

These search engines don’t have answers to all queries, so they allow you to answer the queries of its users. Almost all businesses provide a solution to a problem and make money from it. So they create websites and target those searched queries.

SEO

The problem is that there are a lot of businesses offering the same service, so search engines like Google look for the best results and rank them accordingly on the result pages. In order to make their website ranks in the top results, businesses hire the help of SEO experts. Here I have shared why you also need to take the help of an SEO agency Singapore to grow your business.

Cheaper Marketing

Marketing usually takes the biggest chunk of profits. However, SEO doesn’t require you to invest all your profits away. It’s one of the cheapest digital marketing tactics that brings you measurable results. You will have to invest some extra at the beginning to build your place in the online world.

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Transforming the Concept of “Business as Usual”: How Augmented Reality (AR) is Impacting the Asian Marketplace

It is no secret that Asia is quickly becoming a global economic powerhouse. In fact, some analysts believe that American dominance within this portion of the world is coming to an abrupt end (1). There are many reasons behind this paradigm shift and one of the most relevant involves the ways in which technology is being deployed across the online retail sector. Augmented reality is a perfect example of how smart businesses are leveraging the power of the digital revolution. Let’s take a closer look at how these innovative systems function before highlighting some of their primary benefits.

AR 101: Taking the Online Shopping Experience to an Entirely New Level 

We should first appreciate that the concept of AR has been in existence for some time. It was first seen within the real estate sector, as potential customers could access 360-degree perspectives of a home or an apartment. However, these systems were rather crude and their capabilities were decidedly limited. Technology has come a long way and AR can now be used by even smaller online enterprises in order to actively promote their top-selling products.

AR

AR essentially employs a series of images so that a specific item can be viewed from multiple angles.

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KFC founder got rejected 1009 times at age 65

This will be a short post that I hope to inspire readers. Recently when I tried to order Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) online, I wondered how come the logo consists of a picture of an old man. Why not a picture of the founder in his prime? It was then I found out that the KFC founder, Colonel Sanders, got rejected 1009 times at age 65 before he found success.

Colonel Sanders was forced to start life all over again in his twilight years. But more amazing was that he got rejected 1009 times before his chicken recipe was accepted! That was a crazy number of failures and to be frank I don’t know how many folks in Singapore can manage to handle so many rejections.

Nonetheless, it was fortunate that Colonel Sanders persevered and went on to build a “finger licking good” global empire. His true life story is very inspiring and made me rethink about failures. On looking back, I feel that I should have remained sanguine in the face of some setbacks and managed certain situations with the spirit of Colonel Sanders.

financial destiny

Like many people, I find it hard to remain positive when dealing with rejections or setbacks.

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My favorite personal finance blogger

It was a pleasant surprise to see my favorite personal finance blogger, HYOM back in action after more than a year. For the uninitiated, HYOM stands for Help Your Own Money. HYOM started his investment blog at the same time as me (in 2010) and I have always respected his work. In fact, I am one of his biggest fans and enjoy reading his articles. However, after he suffered from retrenchment in 2011, he begun to blog less often. Since then, the local investment blogging fraternity had taken a different dimension altogether. Sadly, the scene is now crowded with many bloggers who cannot match HYOM’s writing standard. Nonetheless, in his maiden article for 2015, HYOM touched on a very interesting subject that resonates deeply in my heart and that is, entrepreneurship in Singapore.

HYOM’s post was triggered by an article from a former high flying civil servant, Mr Devadas Krishnada who commented that Singaporeans are too risk averse and lamented that this is bad for Singapore’s future growth. Devadas’ frustration stemmed from a recent recruiting experience in which an applicant demanded more money in exchange for the risk in joining a SME like his. While I can relate to Devadas’ pain point of recruiting a local talent to support his company’s business expansion, I agree with HYOM’s that Devadas’ arguments are not well balanced.

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Young and Entrepreneurial: Singaporeans seek more opportunities to learn, grow and network

SG Wealth Builder is pleased to share the results of a recent survey conducted by Peatix, an event ticketing platform in Singapore that is passionate about building strong communities through events.

Singaporeans are increasingly keen on entrepreneurial and startup events. Specifically, 23% of participants would choose to attend startup and entrepreneurial events, and 25% want to see more of such events here. Notably, interest in these events was equally high for those aged between 25-30 and those above 40.

“This display of interest in seminars, talks, workshops and networking events to increase one’s knowledge and professional growth even amongst youths today is a wonderful testament to Singapore’s growing entrepreneurial spirit,” says Emi Takemura, Co-founder and Head of Asia at Peatix.

The Peatix Survey has also found that 88% of Singaporeans consider themselves happy, and that attending events regularly contributes to this.

These results run contrary to previous reports of Singaporeans being unhappy – in fact, less than 1% of the 600 survey participants considered themselves to be very unhappy.

Peatix_Infographic

New survey reveals a 25% increase in demand for startup and entrepreneurial events in
Singapore.
SINGAPORE, Tuesday June 30th – An independent survey by global online ticketing platform Peatix has discovered that Singaporeans are increasingly keen on entrepreneurial and startup events.

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Capital Match: Singapore’s Peer-to-Peer Lending Fintech

Capital MatchKevin LimCapital Match

Capital MatchSince SG Wealth Builder was founded in 2010, I had the opportunities to meet CEOs and entrepreneurs who unselfishly shared with me their visions and investment insights. Today, I am excited to be granted an email interview with Pawel Kuznicki, co-founder of Capital Match. The company is a peer-to-peer lending fintech start-up in Singapore.

1) Can you share with the readers your background and business model?
I started my career as a consultant with McKinsey & Company in Europe and Africa. Then I moved to Rocket Internet, global venture builder, to build their portfolio companies in Southeast Asia (Zalora and Lazada). Last year I started my current business, Capital Match.

Capital Match is a peer-to-peer lending online marketplace to SMEs. Peer-to-peer lending is essentially banking without a bank as an intermediary – investors lend money directly to companies with Capital Match facilitating the transactions by providing credit risk assessment, legal documentation and debt collection services.

We mainly serve SMEs who cannot get a bank loan (a majority of SMEs in Singapore). We provide them loans of SGD 50,000-200,000 for a term of 3-12 months. Loans are syndicated with multiple investors providing funds to one borrower. The interest rates vary from 1.5% to 2.5% per month (on top of it there is additional processing fee of 0.2-0.5% per month).

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Successful entrepreneurs

In my journey as a personal finance blogger, I have the privileges to meet up with great aspiring entrepreneurs. I learned a lot from these successful entrepreneurs because they have been unselfish in sharing with me their views and their thoughts on successful entrepreneurship. In fact, yesterday, I met up with the founder of icompareloan, one of the best websites for comparing mortgage loans in Singapore. Below are some of the traits I think commonly found in great entrepreneurs.

entrepreneur

1. They note down their ideas (just like my Investment Notebook). If there is an ah-ha moment, they would quickly note it down and revisit the idea again.

2.They think through their ideas over and over again to see if they can be successful. Sometimes their ideas might have been implemented by others. But if they are able to develop a better and more cost-effective way of doing it, then they stand a higher chance of winning.

3. They do their homework and spend tonnes of effort on researching. After all, no generals would like to fight a losing battle.

4. They can sell their ideas effectively. In business, if you cannot sell, you are finished. To make money, you must know sales tactics.

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Opportunity

Opportunity is like a ball. Sometimes when the ball is passed to you, you may not have ample time to think and execute the ideal actions. A professional player will grasp the opportunity and went on to score crucial points. Mediocre ones will let opportunity slip.

Recently, I chanced upon www.data.gov.sg, a useful website for entrepreneurs and Singaporeans to search and access publicly available data published by the Singapore Government. This website contains many wonderful data and apps, such as Activtify, EduChoices, etc. Besides government data and metadata, data.gov.sg also offers a listing of applications developed using government data, as well as a resource page for developers.

Stock investing

In today’s context, whether you are an entrepreneur, an employee or full-time investor, data is important to help you forms important decisions. Those who are able to analyze the situation will seize the opportunity to grow wealth, build wealth and create wealth.

Take for example if you are choosing the university courses to enroll, the website is able to provide valuable data for you to crunch. If you are an investor, you would be interested in the health of the economy and business sentiments. If you are an employee, you may be interested in the data on job vacancies in the market.

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Earn your first million as an appreneur

Given the prevalent use of mobile phone, is it possible to earn your first million as an appreneur?
Nowadays, most people carry smart phones and download apps. This represent a good opportunity to make good money from making apps. In fact, with the advent of online technology, the entry barrier to develop an app has been lowered. Nowadays, you don’t need much programming skill to develop a simple app. All you need is a good solid idea that has not been developed as an app and is useful in our daily lives.
SG Wealth Builder
Every now and then, you would come across articles on wonder kids who became rich from developing apps. Some of these kids were not even 10 years old when they made their first million! So now everybody, whether you are old or young, has a chance to become rich through developing apps.
You stand a much higher chance earning your first million from developing an app than striking the toto or lotteries. And you don’t need to quit your job to become a full time appreneur either. You can develop apps after work and at your own sweet pace.

If you don’t like the process of developing an app but nevertheless would like to own an app, you can engage a developer for help.

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Business Idea

Quite some time ago, a reader visited my blog and suggested that one niche business idea could be to provide a service to help foreigners or permanent residents to integrate into Singapore society.

I have mixed feelings when he suggested this to me. While this business idea is potentially niche and may have less competition, it is something which I find it difficult to make money. This is because to be a successful business man, one must have conviction that his product or service would be beneficial to his clients and thus create market demand.

Business idea

As a born and bred Singaporean, I am not so sure whether this is something which I would want to explore, even if it could bring in tonnes of money. There are definitely much better ways to make money in Singapore.

Sometime I wonder what kind of nation we want to build. Do we want to be a rich nation but with the majority of the population consisting of foreigners? Or do we want to slow down and strengthen the core population? I guess there are always trade-offs in life but as a young nation, we probably need to start to define our identity in the global stage.

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Business idea: Confinement nanny agency

I have not been blogging for quite some time. This is because last month I became a first-time dad and I was really busy with my day-time job. To manage time, I engaged a confinement nanny to look after both my wife and my little bundle of joy during this challenging period. The experience also gave me the business idea of setting up a confinement nanny agency.

During our research on confinement nanny agencies in Singapore, me and wife realised that there are not many established ones around, notably only a few. Eventually we settled for PEM which claimed to be the largest confinement nanny agency in Singapore.

The first nanny lasted for one week and left because she claimed her grandmother passed away and she needed to go back to Malaysia. The replacement nanny who stayed throughout the confinement period was old and slow.

Business idea
We were not satisfied with the services of PEM but held on to their services because we felt it was a hassle to keep changing nannies during this short period of one month. Somehow we also felt that the services rendered wasn’t value for money.

During the contractual discussion, we stated that the nanny was expected to perform basic household chores, cooked for me and my wife and also take care of the baby.

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Five reasons you should not quit your job to start up your own business

Starting up a business is not easy and very often, it can really take over a person’s life due to the huge efforts and financial commitments required. Therefore normally I would not advise anyone to quit their job and start a business because that could be a recipe for disaster. Do it right and your life changes drastically for the better. Do it wrong and your life goes spirally downhill. So always plot your move carefully and make sure you do your homework before making the big escape from the rat race. Below are five reasons why you must never quit your job and start up your business.

Starting up a business needs time
Starting a successful business takes time. Do not be fooled by media reports of young entrepreneurs achieving overnight success and becoming incredibly rich. Founders of Microsoft, Google and Facebook actually went through a lot of hardship, trial and errors before attaining wild success at international platform. They had made a lot of mistakes and setbacks before achieving business successes. Henceforth, learn from others mistake and avoid the potential pitfalls. It could be a long time before your business makes any profit, so make sure you hold a job while going through the phase of starting up a business.

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ACE Startups

For startups, resources is important. To this end, the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) announced on 19 Jan 2012 it will be providing funding, networks and mentorship to 500 startups in an effort to promote entrepreneurship in Singapore.

Under this new programme called Ace Startups, Singaporeans and permanent residents who are first time entrepreneurs can receive up to $50,000 in a one-off grant for their startups. One interesting aspect of Ace Startups is that applicants older than 26 years old are eligible for this funding.

The grant will be disbursed in a co-matching basis – 70% provided by ACE Startups and the remaining to be committed by the applicants. Approval process takes about 6 weeks and applications will be evaluated by a panel team of venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs.

The aim of this fund, estimated to be $25 million, is expected to help startups become sustainable businesses. While this support for startups is heartening, it is far more important to have a feasible business plan and workable idea. After all, the funding will not be sustainable if the startups consistently burn cash and have insufficient income.

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Guidelines for Writing a Business Plan

Before you take the leap into the path of entrepreneurship, it is essential that you done the homework and write a business plan. As cliché as it might sound, if you fail to plan, plan to fail.

Having a good business plan will provide you a clear business objective and an organized way of looking at all the important aspects of your business. Most importantly, it will provide you a crystallized view on whether your business idea can be successfully implemented.

Business plan

A well written business plan will also come in handy, when you are looking for funding from potential investors (venture capitalists or angel investors). Key elements of it should focus on:

Stating/defining the problem
Your plan must define the problem which your business is addressing and not just stating your business idea. Nobody will be interested in a business idea if it is not solving a problem and is impractical. The plan has to be precise and easy to understand for layman (nobody likes to read a long-winded business plan filled with technical jargon, especially bankers and venture capitalists). Focus on how and why your business can deliver and solve the problem.

Market size and industry trend
Define the estimated market size and industry trends, dynamics and customer landscape.

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Starting up a business in Singapore

Being an entrepreneur is not easy and not everyone can be a successful founder. However, the process of starting up a business in Singapore has been made less painful with the various business-friendly policies in this city state. Each type of structure comes with different structure. It may be useful to check out ACRA website.

To help aspiring entrepreneurs up to speed on Singapore laws, regulations, taxes and government assistance schemes, Enterprise One (a government agency tasked to promote local enterprise) has prepared a simple checklist:

1) Sign up for EnterpriseOne Digest, a monthly newsletter tracking the latest updates on the laws and regulations. You can log on to Enterprise One website to sign up.

2) Ensure your business premises (office, shop, factory) can be used to carry out your business. For example, applicants who wish to use their HDB residential flats for home office are required to seek prior approval from HDB.

Singapore Finance Blogger
3) Apply for all licenses and permits needed.

4) Familiarize yourself with various tax incentives and Government assistance schemes.

5) Register your business with Central Provident Fund (CPF) before hiring your first worker.

6) Register your business with Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) and comply with post-registration requirements.

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Business Proposals for Funding

One of the major obstacles faced by entrepreneurs is the lack of available funding in Singapore to help them kick-start or sustain their business ideas. Even if there are government schemes to provide grants or funds to assist business owners, many of them are clueless on how to obtain these grants.

In many cases, investors and entrepreneurs found themselves having to navigate through layers of bureaucratic red tapes and micromanagement when seeking grants. That is probably why entrepreneurs are more attracted to venture capitalists and angel investors for business opportunities.

In the early stage of a business, funding is needed to nurture the seed into viable business model. But beyond cash, founders should ask themselves serious questions whether they are willing to cede control in exchange for the money. But assuming they are willing to do so, then he should know how to pitch to investors and position his business in a strategic manner.

funding

To obtain that all-important pot of gold, there are several fundamentals that business owners need to highlight or observe in their business proposals:

1) Financial factors: Track records speak a lot and obviously no one likes to invest in a sinking ship. In your plan, you have to be honest and state the financial health of your company.

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Online Karang Guni

In Singapore, “Karang Guni” is a Malay phrase for gunny sack, which was used in the past to hold stacks of newspaper. It is often used to refer to those who work in the rag-and-bone trade, visiting residents door-to-door to collect old newspapers and clothing to sell.

Karang Guni can be a lucrative and highly profitable business in Singapore, with reported stories of Karang Guni men becoming millionaires from their rag-and-bone businesses. Yet most Singaporeans shunned this trade because they considered it unglamorous.

Karang Guni

However, not many realized that Karang Guni is [This is a premium article. The rest of the content is blocked and can be accessible by SG Wealth Builder Members only. To read the full content, please sign up as member.]

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Funding opportunites for start-up enterprises

Innovative and small-medium enterprises (SMEs) have a key role in spurring Singapore’s economic growth. Many of them are developing capabilities to create a competitive edge but very often, they lack funding to sustain. SPRING Singapore, a government agency set up to cater to the growth of local companies, has various funding schemes to help them grow faster.

1) Angel Investors Tax Deduction Scheme is a tax incentive for business angles to invest in local start-ups

2) Business Angel Funds co-invests with business angels in local early-stage companies with innovative products/or services for up to $1.5million

3) Incubator Development Fund co-funds incubators and venture accelerators to mentor and develop local start-ups.

4) Spring Start-up Enterprise Development Scheme co-invests with third party investors in local innovative start-ups for up to $1.5million.

5) Technology Enterprise Commercialization Scheme co-funds early stage companies to develop and commercialize innovative technology ideas.

6) Young Entrepreneurs Scheme for Start-ups co-funds youths under 26 to set up their first businesses for up to $50,000.

There are several factors that enterprises should highlight in their business proposals to Spring Singapore, namely financial factors, strategic factors, economic factors, risks factors and management factors. I would further elaborate the details in my next posting.

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How to create a successful online business in eBay

My first blog post! I start this blog with the aim of sharing my insights on how to build wealth through stock investments, gold bullion, property, online business and alternative investments. In today’s topic, I will touch on how to make money from the internet world.
One of the most effective ways to build your wealth and become rich is to set up your own online business. With internet connection, you can get started right away with little money and technical expertise. This is because with established online marketplace like eBay, you don’t even need to create your own virtual store.
SG Wealth Builder
SG Wealth Builder

eBay is an electronic platform for users to buy and sell their products at fixed or auctioned price. I used to view it as a website for people to buy and sell unwanted goods only and did not realise its huge business potential from an entrepreneur’s perspective.

Why eBay?
Founded in 1995, eBay empowers people to explore business opportunities and enble e-commerce innovation to fluorish. Home-based online business owners can virtually sell any product or services through eBay without having to set up their own websites and hence, allows them to save huge costs, time and resources.

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