Blog updates Archives - SG Wealth Builder

The Cathedral of God

June 21, 2024 sgwealthbuilder 2180 Views 2 Comments

Lifetime Membership For more than a decade, I have been asking myself the reason for building this blog. Is it really due to personal interest? Frankly, I doubt so as interest alone would not lead me to churn out investment articles weeks after weeks, months after months, years after years. Is it really about making money out of membership subscriptions? Honestly speaking, the amount of money I made from this blog is barely enough to pay for the blog hosting fees. In this article, I will share the story of The Cathedral of God to illustrate the vision, mission and value of SG Wealth Builder.

The Cathedral of God is loosely based on a real-life story with many different versions and interpretations.

Back in 1666, a devastating fire broke out to destroy London city. Legendary architect, Christopher Wren, was tasked to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral.

One fine day in 1671, Christopher Wren saw three bricklayers working at the site and asked the first bricklayer, “What are you doing?” He responded “I am working hard to lay bricks.” The second said “I am a builder building a church.” When Christopher Wren asked the third bricklayer the same question, he responded with a fire in his eyes, “I am building the house of God, the mighty Cathedral of God!”

SG Wealth Builder Lifetime Membership

February 11, 2024 sgwealthbuilder 3644 Views 0 Comments

Lifetime Membership Since 2010, I have been blogging about money and stocks in SG Wealth Builder. My spouse often asked why am I doing this through the years. After all, I am not compensated for the sharing and my blogging had led to a lot of sacrifice of my family time. Indeed, if I am doing this merely for fame or money, this blog would not have sustained till now. I am talking about 14 years of blogging, not 14 months.

Many bloggers would tell you that building a blog from scratches requires a tremendous amount of effort and time. Sometimes, after years of blogging, there is no guarantee that a blogger can find success. Along the way, I have seen so many promising bloggers giving up and turning to commenting in other investment forums instead.

The sole reason for the sustainability of SG Wealth Builder is passion. I love doing stock research and sharing my ideas with others. And I love writing because I always thought that to be able to inspire or create a change in others is a form of calling.

At certain stages in my life, I did consider giving up blogging because of my family and career commitments.

SG Wealth Builder Lifetime Membership Special Offer

May 29, 2022 sgwealthbuilder 1233 Views 4 Comments

Lifetime Membership Since 2010, I have been blogging about money and stocks in SG Wealth Builder. My spouse often asked why am I doing this through the years. After all, I am not compensated for the sharing and my blogging had led to a lot of sacrifice of my family time. Indeed, if I am doing this merely for fame or money, this blog would not have sustained till now. I am talking about 12 years of blogging, not 12 months.

Many bloggers would tell you that building a blog from scratches requires a tremendous amount of effort and time. Sometimes, after years of blogging, there is no guarantee that a blogger can find success. Along the way, I have seen so many promising bloggers giving up and turning to commenting in other investment forums instead.

The sole reason for the sustainability of SG Wealth Builder is passion. I love doing stock research and sharing my ideas with others. And I love writing because I always thought that to be able to inspire or create a change in others is a form of calling.

At certain stages in my life, I did consider giving up blogging because of my family and career commitments.

SG Wealth Builder Promotional Offer

January 16, 2018 sgwealthbuilder 679 Views 0 Comments

Since 2010, I have been blogging about money and investment stuff. My spouse often asked why am I doing this through the years? After all, I am not compensated for the sharing and my blogging had led to a lot of sacrifice of my family time. Indeed, if I am doing this merely for fame or money, this blog would not have sustained till now. I am talking about 8 years of blogging, not 8 months.

Many bloggers would tell you that building a blog from scratches requires a tremendous amount of effort and time. Sometimes, after years of blogging, there is no guarantee that a blogger can find success in the readership. Along the way, I have seen so many promising bloggers giving up and turned to commenting in other investment forums instead.

The sole reason for the sustainability of this blog is passion. I love doing stock research and sharing my ideas with others. And I love writing because I always thought that to be able to inspire or create a change in others is a form of calling.

At certain stages in my life, I did consider giving up blogging because of my family and career commitments. Sometimes after a long day at work, the energy just wasn’t there to blog.

7 reasons to sign up SG Wealth Builder Membership

December 6, 2017 sgwealthbuilder 2270 Views 2 Comments

It seems like yesterday when I founded SG Wealth Builder. I can still remember the explosive passion and excitement when launching this wealth blog. Seven years had passed and the energy remains amazingly strong. During this period, there had been a lot of twists and turns. Nevertheless, the brand of this blog grew from strength to strength. Over time, I have also developed a voice that connects with my readers. It is this distinctive voice that attracted readers to keep coming back to this blog and many had become long-time followers. Now, I feel that it is the right time to convert this blog into SG Wealth Builder Membership site.

Value is what attracted readers and followers to SG Wealth Builder. Many people who visited my blog had provided numerous feedback that they had learned useful things that they were able to apply in their wealth building journey. Such compliments often invoked deep sense of self-satisfaction and achievement inside me.

To be able to make a difference in others certainly create a profound feeling. Thus, the motivation to bring this relationship to another level. In this article, I am going to share 7 reasons to sign up SG Wealth Builder Membership.

How to establish a personal finance blog

July 17, 2014 sgwealthbuilder 1020 Views 1 Comment

Over the past few years, there were a number of new personal finance bloggers joining the community. I appreciate their presence as they provide new ideas, thoughts and information for the readers. Such a development is good for Singapore because it helps to cultivate and strengthen Singaporeans’ personal finance literacy.

But I think one of the many blogs that stands out from the rest is The Finance.sg, a collection of local personal finance blogs in Singapore. The owner, Derek, believes that by consolidating quality sites and articles, the content can reach out to a larger audience and encourage like-minded people to share their views, thereby creating a vibrant community.

Sure, there are many other blog aggregators in Singapore but I think the success of The Finance.sg lies in its simplified presentation format. The articles are published in an uncluttered manner, with a short teaser related to the main content. So if the reader is interested in finding out more about an article, he can click on the “read more” function and will be directed to the guest blogger’s website. A lot of my blog’s traffic has been directed from The Finance.sg and henceforth, I appreciate the work of Derek. But beside giving credit to Derek, I would also like to contribute to the personal finance blogging scene by sharing with everyone on how to establish a high traffic website, or a blog for that matter.

Creating a high traffic blog

March 21, 2014 sgwealthbuilder 665 Views 0 Comments

If you are looking at starting a personal or professional blog, having a high traffic is vital to the success of your project. This may seem like common sense to many readers but many bloggers consistently overlook the importance of online traffic because they don’t realise that unlike brick and mortar business, or traditional mainstream media (e.g. newspapers and radio), unique visitors to your blog do not happen by chance.

In today’s context, given the billions of websites in the online galaxy, you cannot expect to achieve overnight success by advertising through newspapers or radio. You must have a sustainable strategy to capture traffic and make your online project a success. This is because the more unique visits your blog gets, the more established it becomes. More unique visitors would mean that a large group of people have visited your blog and read the content. This means that your marketing technique is successful.

Once you succeed in creating a high traffic blog, you can easily devise ways to monetize your blog and create a form of passive income for yourself. It is thus important to know the technique that drives traffic to your blog because it can determine whether you can make money out of it.

Top Ten Personal Finance and Investment Blogs in Singapore

February 23, 2014 sgwealthbuilder 871 Views 1 Comment

I am so happy that my blog. SG Wealth Builder has been featured by DirectAsia.com!
In one of their latest articles, my blog was ranked fifth. Check out the article here.

The author wrote the following:
Having begun life way back in 2010, this one-man-blog is one of the ‘old guard’ of Singapore finance blogs – but it is still regularly updated with insightful posts on wealth accumulation, investments and money-making in general. In fact, this blogger furnished his readers with more posts in 2013 than any other year. Some in-depth information on investing here, and while it may not seem like a blog for beginners at first glance, many younger, less experienced investors do write in for advice and tips.

DirectAsia.com has established itself as one of Singapore’s leading online insurers in recent years. The company’s mission is to change the face of insurance in Singapore, and to bring the best value insurance policies and customer service to the region. On this aspect, the company’s core values are aligned with the philosophy of my blog, SG Wealth Builder.

I firmly believe that consumers, or rather investors, should be empowered to make investment decisions based on transparent information. To this, there are certainly areas within the insurance industry that needs to be improved – namely customer service and transparency.

Singapore Finance Bloggers

January 6, 2014 sgwealthbuilder 772 Views 0 Comments

I started this blog since 2010 and along the way witnessed many fellow finance bloggers leaving the scene one by one. Many of them started off very brightly but slowly faded off. Eventually they just gave up blogging all together, probably because of work or family commitments. Some of them were actually brilliant writers and I thought it was a loss to our local community when these bloggers stopped sharing their financial experiences online. Even though there are new finance bloggers coming on-board in blog aggregators like The Finance.sg or Singapore Investment Blogs, I hope this declining trend will not carry on, otherwise this unique group of bloggers would just disappear.

Yes, I used the term “unique” because there are not many Singapore blogs on personal finances. Most bloggers prefer to develop themes on food, lifestyle and politics but not personal finances. I suppose there are a few reasons to this. Firstly, it is easier to capture readership if you write articles on food, lifestyle and politics. These are common topics that attract large unique visitors. This is because Singaporeans like to eat and constantly look for interesting places to go, so naturally they tend to visit blogs for recommendations.

Re-inventing my blog, SG Wealth Builder

October 8, 2013 sgwealthbuilder 740 Views 0 Comments

Yesterday, I made the critical decision to register my blog domain name and got rid of “blogspot.com” from the blog’s domain name. The name of this blog was also changed to SG Wealth Builder. The name change means that I have to re-establish my page ranking in various search engines. It is indeed painful to start all over again but I suppose the only constant in life is change!

As a blogger, I am always challenging myself to improve my blog’s quality and content. Over the years, my blog has evolved from sharing of investment and entrepreneurial ideas to a portal of wealth building opportunities, providing wealth building information to readers. Along the way, I felt that the former blog title does not reflect the current activities in this blog. Therefore, the re-branding of this blog.

SG Wealth Builder

There are many people who think that they can make a living from blogging full time. In reality, this is very difficult to achieve. Indeed, you probably can make a few hundreds or thousands here and there from affiliate marketing or sponsorships. But in most months, there might be little or even no income at all. Over the years, I have seen so many local bloggers fizzled out from the scene after only a few months.

Blog updates make money

How to make money from blogging

July 23, 2013 sgwealthbuilder 764 Views 0 Comments

In my previous post, I wrote about making money from blogging. As promised, in this post, I shall elaborate how you can make decent money from your blog. Bear in mind that this article is written solely based on my personal experience. It may not be the only way of making money from blogging. After all, I am not a full time professional blogger and my main source of income is not derived from blogging. So if there are better alternative ways, feel free to share.

Passion
There are many people who think that they can make a living from blogging full time. In reality, this is very difficult to achieve. Indeed, you probaby can make a few hundreds or thousands here and there from affiliate marketing or sponsorships. But in most months, there might be neligible or even no income at all. Over the years, I have seen so many local bloggers fizzled out from the scene after only a few months. I supposed most of them gave up blogging after realizing that it really cannot bring food to the table on a daily basis. So if you wanted to make a career in blogging, your first priority should not be in making money from your blog.

Making money from blogging

July 17, 2013 sgwealthbuilder 824 Views 2 Comments

July 2013 has been a fantastic month for me so far. Both my career and blog reached new milestones during this month. Firstly, I have been promoted. This is the first promotion in my job journey and I am so happy that my hard work for the previous years had paid off.

Thinking back, those extra duties and late nights at office were worth the efforts. With the promotion increments, my financial situation definitely improved a lot, given that I am the sole breadwinner. The next step for me is to continue reducing my housing and car loans.

Secondly, I am pleased to inform my readers that one of my articles was featured in Yahoo Finance! on 3rd July. It was a pleasant surprise because I was not informed prior to the article being published and I happened to chance upon it. Furthermore, this article was written quite sometime ago last year. So I didn’t really expect it to be featured by any online media companies. Nonetheless, it was a form of recognition and made me feel encouraged to keep blogging. Hopefully more of my articles would be featured by Yahoo Finance!

Lastly, I made $1000 from my blog, SG Wealth Builder, last month.

SG Wealth Builder is part of Singapore Memory Project

April 3, 2013 sgwealthbuilder 587 Views 0 Comments

I am pleased to inform readers that SG Wealth Builder has been invited by National Library Board (NLB) to be part Singapore Memory Project (SMP). This is indeed an honour and a form of recognition for SG Wealth Builder.

SMP is a national initiative to collect, preserve and provide access to Singapore’s knowledge materials. Spearheaded by NLB, the SMP aims to build a national collection of content in diverse formats, to preserve them in digital form and make them available for discovery and research.

A home for my memories
By pledging my blog to SMP, I affirmed that every memory matters. In doing so, I think I have found a home for my memories and expression of thoughts.

When I started this blog three years ago, I wanted it to be passed down to my future generation for memory sake. I wanted my children to understand my investment insights and the financial lessons gained in my lifetime. Over the years, however, there were requests from guest bloggers to be featured in my blog, so gradually this blog has morphed into something different. Eventually, I hope it becomes a portal that allows readers to have better understanding of Singapore.

My blog, my hobby
My wife always ask me why do I spend so much effort on this blog.

The Finance SG is Singapore’s best personal finance blog

September 17, 2012 sgwealthbuilder 779 Views 4 Comments

My blog has recently crossed the 100,000 page views milestone. Compared to other famous blogs in Singapore, I think this achievement is nothing fantastic. In fact, one well-known blogger announced that his blog garnered more than 20 million page views a couple of weeks ago.

Whilst I envy his achievement and hope to emulate his success one day, one thing I would like to register is that investment is a very niche topic. The pool of interested readers for investment or personal finance is much smaller compared to more popular themes like food and travels. Nevertheless, my mission is to carry on and share with my readers my investment insights, my investment mistakes, money-making opportunities and lesson learned.

Singapore Number 1 investment blog
I often analyze statistics for my blog readership and noted that up to 70% of my readers were derived from The Finance (www.thefinance.sg), a local blog articles directory on investment and personal finance topics. Normally I don’t write reviews on other blogs but I think I owed it to The Finance for my blog’s success so far.

I think I am not exaggerating when I claimed that The Finance is Singapore’s best personal finance blog.

A new milestone for SG Wealth Builder

July 20, 2012 sgwealthbuilder 659 Views 0 Comments

SG Wealth Builder stormed past 51,000 page views today. This is a new milestone for my blog and to be honest, I am very pleased that my blog’s readership has been rocketing over the last six months. Although I started this blog three years ago, I stopped blogging for quite a while in 2011 because of work commitments. At the end of 2011, page views for my blog was 8500 only.

The increasing popularity of SG Wealth Builder is a compliment and serves to reinforce in me that this blog is going in the right direction. I hope that by the end of this year, my blog can reach 100,000 page views. I believe this is achievable if I continue to blog frequently and share with my readers my investment thoughts.

Maybe its a form of job hazard but I have a habit of reviewing my blog’s performance. If you noticed, I have changed my blog’s template recently. This is to give my blog a refreshed look. Even with this fresh look, my focus will still be bringing quality content for my readers. In this regard, readers can look forward to more of my stock analysis and outlook on the stock market.

Setbacks for this financial blog

July 11, 2012 sgwealthbuilder 727 Views 1 Comment

Recently, I have been doing a lot of reflections on how to deal with setbacks. Something nasty happened to me and set me thinking whether I should continue this financial blog.

When I started this financial blog three years ago, my intention was to chronicle my investment journey and captured the important setbacks and lessons learned. I hope to document down these lessons, not only to serve as reminders not to commit the same mistakes again, but also to share with my readers my investment journey. It was never my intention to offer any form of investment advice nor to induce anyone to buy financial products.

I feel that it is important to make this clear to all my readers that I am not a financial adviser offering investment advice nor am I a full-time blogger who blog for a living. I have a day-time job and I started this financial blog as a hobby.

Apparently, someone misconstrued my intention and claimed in a forum that I had been dishing out rubbish investment advice. He also claimed that I had a knack of writing load of stuff out of nothing and that my blog offers absolute zero value to readers.

Well I suppose he is entitled to his views and I leave it to my readers to judge.

Reflections

May 9, 2012 sgwealthbuilder 706 Views 0 Comments

My blog’s page views will be hitting 25,000 soon! This is indeed a very heartening and encouraging milestone. I am writing this post to capture some reflections.

Although my blog’s readership is nowhere near the millions of hits enjoyed by popular Singaporean bloggers like Xiaxue and Tan Kin Lian, I am pleased that there are quite a few people who took time to read my blog and provided me feedback. It is always a nice feeling to know that people read my articles and appreciate my work. I am also glad that most of the comments had been constructive, which is encouraging as it spurs me to keep on blogging.

I would like to give thanks to you readers for your precious time and feedback. Although I am unable to blog as often as I used to be (due to work and family commitments), I would try my best to squeeze in time to document some of my investment reflections. The reflections captured in this blog is not only for sharing of knowledge, but also serve as a form of an online journal to me, reminding me to avoid some of the pitfalls I suffered during the early days of my investment journey.