make money

SEO might be a familiar word for you but have you ever wondered what it is? How does it work? How can you make money with SEO?

The last question may be of more interest but first, let’s see what is SEO. It stands for search engine optimization. It is a marketing strategy that is used to keep your website visible on search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc.

Search engines do not know which website I to show first in search results or which website has more credible and relevant content. These are SEO tools that allow the search engine to rank a website based on how responsive and user friendly a website is with more traffic.

You can get SEO services from many companies and can check from SEO Singapore and other services.

SEO generates more backlinks for a website to enhance its credibility. They recommend the keywords that are mostly used by internet users within a search query. These are a few examples of how SEO increased traffic and make a website more visible for search engines.

Check out this blog to see why SEO are so important for a website. SEO works for websites but it also works for you. There are multiple ways in which you can earn decent money with SEO. The most interesting thing is that you can do this from your home.

Let’s have a brief look at how you can earn money from SEO in 2020.

Use Social Media

If you have SEO knowledge and experience, you can earn a reasonable amount every month by offering your services at social media. You can start by expanding your social circle and search for the relevant groups or pages on social media.

There is no doubt that a lot of businesses and individuals …

As a wealth builder, I constantly ask myself how I can improve my investing skills in order to make more money.  I view wealth as a journey, rather than a destination point. That is why I chose the name, “SG Wealth Builder” for this blog. Investing is important component of wealth building. So in this article, I will pen down my thoughts on the three tenets of successful investing.

Strategies

In investing, different people have different approaches and styles. Some people like to buy and hold blue chips while there are others who invest solely in Reits for dividend incomes. Then there are value investors who buy stocks at bargain price and sell them for capital appreciation. Growth investors look at companies with potential to grow and thus are willing to pay a premium for stocks that are trading at high price-to-earning ratio. At the end of the day, it does not matter which strategies you adopt as long as it yield positive results over time.

The worst thing in investing is not having a strategy and invest for the sake of investing. Without the clarity of thoughts and a proper framework in mind, the chance of winning the stock market is very slim. This is because having a system or strategy will help you to take the emotions out of investing and mitigate the potential of investment losses. Without a strategy in mind, you would probably be very lost and when you lose money, you feel angry. But thankfully, investment strategies can be learned and trained.

Discipline

Sometimes, the biggest investing mistake is not the lack of strategies but rather the lack of discipline. How often have you deviated from your investment principles in the heat of the moment? Have you bought into hot stocks recommended by financial bloggers …

I suppose at some point in your life, the thoughts of making more money must have crossed your mind. Otherwise, you will not be visiting my blog! When I started my financial journey, I did not know that I would follow my late father’s footstep and become a sole breadwinner one day. Being young, I could not appreciate what Dad has done for us. On hindsight, if you have been receiving all the time and not giving, you may tend to take things for granted.

To feed us, Dad had toiled and worked hard all his life, much to the detriment to his health. At the age of 38, he suffered from a crippling stroke that would make him disabled for 20 long years. As a result, his income abilities got impaired and our family suffered for many years. Now that I am approaching 40 and am taking on the same responsibility as a sole breadwinner, I am determined to work hard for money and also to make my money work hard at the same time in order to mitigate the financial damages arising from permanent disabilities.

Work hard for money

The conventional way to make more money is to moon-light or take on part-time jobs. Basically you are still trading time for money, albeit from different paymasters. There is nothing inherently sinful with this approach because it is an honest way of earning extra cash for your family. Who don’t want a better life? If you are young and energetic, you can do so for probably 5 to 6 years. But if you are in your mid-thirties or forties, your body may not take this kind of stress. After some time, you probably want some balance in your life and realize that it may not be so worthwhile to …

For many investors out there, it must have been a nightmarish experience for the past few months given the massive stock market decline. During this Chinese New Year long weekend, many Singapore investors and bloggers took this opportunity to take a break and recharge their batteries. Many choose to stay away from the stock market because they cannot bear to face the reality that a huge portion of their wealth just vanished into thin air.

Panic. Fear. Self doubts. Depression. Anger. These are the common emotions that have been displayed over and over again in many investors during the many stock market corrections. Unless you are a robot, you would have experienced some of these emotions if you have been vested in the stock market in the past few years. To be successful in investing, you must take the emotions out of investing. Not many people, including me, are able to achieve this. To achieve fearless investing, you must really be a disciplined investor and set entry and exit levels for every stocks that you purchased.

To be a fearless investor, you must have knowledge of the market and be precise in your execution. To do so, you need data for decision making. And knowledge is king in the world of investments. However, the problem in today’s Internet age is not the lack of investment data. Rather, it is the overwhelm of data that makes the average investors lost and confused. In my point of view, you need at least three important data to be fearless in your investment.

Firstly, you must understand the business aspects of the companies you invested in. These data can be retrieved from the quarterly or annual reports released by the companies. Secondly, you need knowledge of whether there are insider trades or company …

This coming Chinese New Year, many investors will have little to cheer about given the bearish market outlook. Many investors have seen their portfolio diminished in value and are feeling the pain of losing money in the stock market. Are you one of those investors who feel depressed over the recent stock market decline? If so, then brace yourself for further drops in the stock market because this is going to be a long ride. With China’s growth engine slowing down and the unexpected oil price rout, you know it is not going to be business as usual.

My Investment Mantra

As a wealth builder, my mantra is always to diversify my wealth on different assets. I have bought a bit of gold bullion, purchased insurance endowment plans and recently bought some K1 Ventures shares. I prefer to buy stocks during bad times because it is only during this period of time that you can buy stocks at reasonable prices. During bull market conditions, a lot of amateur retail investors would have pushed up the prices to ridiculous levels. The key thing is not to be greedy and set entry and exit levels when it comes to buying stocks at bargain prices. In doing so, you would more or less take the emotions out of investing.

Lessons Learned

The worst mistake of an investor is to be emotionally attached to the stock that he invested in. Sometimes it is because investors fear the pain of losing money but most of the time, it got to do with ego. After all, nobody likes to feel like a loser and hate telling others that he lost monies in stock investments. When I started investing in shares, I made this mistake too. Even though I did a lot of …

It is often said that the rich becomes richer and the poor becomes poorer. Globally, the issue of social gap is entrenching in many cosmopolitan cities. Even Singapore, which is home to one of the largest concentration of millionaires in the world, is no exception. One of the key questions is how did the rich make their money and preserve their wealth in times of crisis? In one of the financial workshops I attended recently, the consultant briefly shed some light on how the rich made their fortune.

Every now and then, you would have heard about investment themes like renewable energy, technology, currency, property, ETF, gold/silver, investment-linked insurances and what not. These are actually hypes made by the movers and shakers to create bubbles so that small time investors like you and me will buy-in.

What happened was that years before the bubbles occurred, the ultra rich gathered their analysts and made them formulate new investment themes. After determining areas where they can reap in big monies, the rich dudes then pump in their funds.

They would hold press conferences and churned out quantitative data and charts to convince retail investors that their investment themes are the next big things. Journalists and investment researchers would then write extensive reports and provided the maximum publicity. Interviews would be held one-to-one with the key players.

Again, when these gurus were interviewed, they would reinforce and sell their investment themes to the public. When these influential people speak, people usually listen to them because in this world, track record and reputation give you credibility. These are the people who can influence the market direction. They can help you make money, but also lose money as well. At the height of the bubble, they would “show-hand” and pull out their funds, making …

Lately, my wife has been asking me what does passive income mean and how to create our own sources of passive income.

To most working adults, the concept of passive income can be quite alien or new, especially for those who are not financially educated. This is because most of us were brought up with the conventional thinking that we should study hard and then secure a good job that pays well. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this traditional thinking but following this route will probably not set you on the path to financial success. In today’s context, with so many graduates (local and foreign) flooding the market, you need something special in order to be ahead of the peck.

Coming back to the main topic, passive incomes are sources of incomes which do not require you to actively work or labor in exchange for monetary rewards. Effectively, you are making money even when you are sleeping. Of course there are trade-offs to make. When we are working for a pay check, we are exchanging our labor or time in exchange for monthly salaries. Likewise for passive incomes, we are exchanging intangible commodities in return for monetary rewards. For example, in Singapore, one of the easiest way to make passive income is to sublet empty rooms in your HDB flat. In exchange for the rental fee, you sacrifice your personal space. Another example would be dividend investing. In exchange for principle capital spent on the stocks, you collect dividend every year from the companies.

The beauty of passive income is that it allows you to focus your energy to actively work for your main income and at the same time provides you additional sources of incomes. Some of my readers have lamented that “its easier said than done”. …

The recent mini-correction in the stock market must have caused some jitters to many local investors. Most of us wonder whether the current Euro debt mess, which has been on-going for three years, will spark off a major world-wide stock market mayhem or taper off in a few years. My own personal view is that history will repeat itself all over again and that a major correction is coming, probably at the second half of the year.

During 2007-2008, my company announced pay adjustment for all existing employees and I remembered my pay was adjusted upwards by $550. The feeling back then was buoyant for everyone in Singapore. Fresh graduates got record high starting pay and people were making money in the stock market. Penny stocks were speculators favourite plays and volumes for these counters were extremely high.

Then, reports of “sub-prime mortgages” started to surface in newspapers article. Most people just shrugged off this development in the United States. The issue dragged on for several months and soon imploded with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers. Of course, the stock markets tanked and caused world-wide mayhem. There was a U.S. Presidential Election and Obama was sworn in as the new President to deal with the financial crisis.

Fast forward to today, my new company announced a 15% pay adjustment. Last month, there was a penny stock rally. Recently, news paper reported that fresh graduates getting high salaries again, with Law graduates leading the pack. Reports of Euro debt crisis surfaced again and French has a new President. The recent developments look too similar to year 2007 – 2008 that I believe a major correction is looming.

Is it the ripe time to enter the stock market now? Get ready your investment monies to shop for bargains during the crash. …

During the 2008 – 2009, stock market crashed throughout the world and triggered the collapse of several big US banks. It was a period of chaos and great uncertainties. Back then, even the Singapore government had to make the unprecedented move of guaranteeing all bank deposits till end 2010 to prevent bank runs. There were mayhem and carnage during the financial crisis.

There were also opportunities. There was one point I was very tempted to purchase Citi’s shares, which was trading at USD1.00 through my Philips Securities POEMS account. Citi’s shares was trading at rock bottom and anything below USD1.00, chances of it being nationalised by the US government would be very high. I did not proceed ahead to buy the shares as I thought the risk would be too much for me to take. Of course Citi survived the crisis and its stock subsequently recovered.

The “Great Financial Crisis” presented many good opportunities to make big bucks in the stock market but I was unable to fully utilize my Opportunity Fund back then as I was saving up for my wedding. What a shame! The 2008-2009 financial crisis was a rare window of opportunity for smart investors to make their fortunes.

Forget about making money during the bull runs, for wealth can most likely be made during financial crisis. During major market correction, stocks would trade at a bargain and this could be the best time for investors to find value stocks.

On the other hand, there are many investors who lost their pants investing in stocks with poor business fundamentals. During financial crisis, such stocks cannot withstand the brute market force and went into liquidation. To minimize such risks, always diversify your investment portfolio and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Traditionally, physical metal such as …

Have you ever paused to wonder why Singapore has one of the highest concentration of millionaires in the world? There are so many cash-rich Singaporeans out there that even during the recent downturn. Many of them were seen snapping up private properties like hot cakes, despite the sky-high prices.

The reason is simple: many of them made big money from the stock market during previous financial crisis. It may sound odd, but every crisis is an opportunity for retail investors to make big money because that is the time when stock values dropped below their intrinsic values.

Most investors, especially the novice ones, tend to panic sell during stock market crashes because of the crisis in confidence. This is a typical “herd mentality” mistake that most investors tend to make and because of this, they tend to “buy high, sell low”, instead of “buy low, sell high”. The reason why most investors committed such mistake is because many of them are not fully aware of how the market works.

The stock market consist of three groups of players, namely Institutional Investors, Rich Investors and Retail Investors. Institutional Investors are players who invest on behalf of investment/insurance companies. They are the ones who usually flow huge amount of “hot money” in/out of the financial markets.

Rich Investors are the “big boys” and Retail Investors refer to the small fries. Usually at the first sign of economic problem, the Institutional Investors would pull out funds from the financial markets, resulting in the first wave of wealth destruction in the stock market. Rich Investors would tend to offload their investment holdings to take in profits, because they had bought the stocks cheaply in the previous crisis.

Retail Investors are normally the last to react to the unfolding crisis and seeing their investment value …

To make explosive wealth, one must have opportunity fund to invest during times of crisis. In September 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers (an investment firm in the United States.) ignited the world financial crisis. Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, fear of a “big bang” recession had been lingering around for months due to the festering subprime mortgages mess in United States.

But no one would have predicted the magnitude of the economic crisis. Back then, the President of the United States announcing no bail-out for Lehman Brothers as it was considered not “too big to fail” (unlike other mega banks like Citibank, Bank of America, etc).

The next day, there were blood-letting carnage in stock markets throughout the world. Dow Jones witnessed a jaw-dropping decline of more than 770 points overnight. Singapore’s stock exchange (SGX) was not spared either. In the six months following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, from September 2008 to March 2009, stock markets worldwide fell by almost 40%, wiping off about USD16 trillion in capitalization. Singapore’s stock exchange also fell by close to 35%.

On looking back, the 2007-2009 financial crisis was indeed a “once in a generation” defining event in the financial sector. Personally for me, it had been both an eye opener and rewarding experience for me.

Back then, I had accumulated S$20,000 of “Opportunity Fund” and waiting for the right opportunity to invest in several stocks I had been researching for 6 months. So when this crisis came along and there was so much fear and panic, I knew it was the correct time to enter the market.

I pumped in my Opportunity Fund and bought 100 lots of Mercator Lines and subsequently sold off my investments several days later, making about S$3500 of profits. It wasn’t a spectacular profit …