Bought Ascott REIT

Bought another 3 lots of Ascott REITs (@$1.065) after I realised that I have not been investing in the stock market a lot.  Thought that it will be good to add to my current portfolio considering the amount of spare cash sitting in the bank that is not earning much interest anyway.  That brings my total exposure to Ascott REITs to 15 lots.  Have been enjoying the dividends over the past few years and hopefully, the dividends that come in will not fail to disappoint me.

August was good in terms of dividends received but September has been pretty quiet.  Other than a Adsense cheque that I received, have not received much passive income.  Can definitely do better for the future.

Hitting 10,000 Unique Visitors and Some Blogs are Meant to be Savored

Hitting 10,000 Visitors Per Day

Blogging. I have probably written lots about it before and the targets that I have set for myself previously. Loyal readers of my blog will most probably know the targets that I have set for myself in terms of blog traffic and stuff. I realised that I have not been pursuing those targets that I have set for myself previously and that has somehow resulted in me being haphazard in my approach towards this blog.

It all starts with the mindset that goes: "Forget about those targets, let's just do what I want and blog about what I want to." Come to think of it, targets are actually not that bad. At least they help me to stay on track and be focused.

My target for this blog is to get 10,000 unique visitors per day. Will I be able to achieve such astounding numbers? I do not know. Currently, the only "medals" I have to show for from this past time and secret hobby of mine is as follows:

1. Blog link on Mr Tan Kin Lian's Blog. Most Singaporeans will know that Mr Tan Kin Lian is one of the current 3 Presidential Candidates for Singapore). Yes, my blog link is actually on his blog! Wow, I am surprised that he actually placed my blog link when I asked for a link exchange! =) Coincidentally, all the presidential candidates have surnames "Tan". Dr Tan Cheng Bock, Dr Tony Tan and Mr Tan Kin Lian. Ha..just realised it when I was writing this post.

2. CPF IMSavvy Blogger. I actually made it as one of the guest bloggers on CPF's IMSavvy site.

Well, I must say that I must be one of the lazier bloggers there cos I haven't really found time to write lately. But I promise that I will do more to make personal finance as interesting a topic as I can to many Singaporeans. I don't profess to be an expert but rather think that there is a lot we can learn from each other's experience. Theory helps but I think practical advice and real life experience is what most Singaporeans can probably relate to better. And that is why I have been rather open about taboo topics like my income and expenditure. Hopefully, that paves the way for better conversation surrounding the topic of personal finance. Some of my guest posts there can be found in this link here: Guest Posts on CPF IMSavvy

3. People are willing to put up guest posts on my blog. I have been getting emails from various sources requesting for me to feature guest articles on my site. Browse through my blog and you are sure to find some of these guest posts which I thought my bring a certain amount of "freshness" to this blog. Do let me know if you would also like to contribute a guest post. Just drop an email to sgfinancialfreedom@gmail.com.

Some Blogs Are Meant To Be Savored....

Yes, hitting 10,000 unique visitors might be a target that I set. But I still hope that this blog will be as personal as possible. And that readers will find something that they can relate to here. My achievements in life might not be many but I do hope that there are articles and posts here that people will be able to draw inspiration or strength from. The last thing I want readers to go away with is this crazy hunger or greed for money. While this blog is titled "Financial Freedom", I certainly do believe that there are probably many many more things in life that are more important than being rich/achieving financial freedom, etc.

As always, I welcome feedback. Any feedback that you might have. Please let me know how I can improve this blog by commenting below or just dropping me an email. Thank you and have a great weekend ahead!!

Diversifying Streams of Income - Passivity the Key

I have been trying to diversify the various streams of income that I currently get.

I have my earned income from my 9 to 5 job. This is the most hard earned income as I literally have to work hard to earn it. Any day I stop going to work means that I stop earning money literally. In this time and age with the retirement age set at 62, I need to find some kind of work that will allow me to work beyond the official retirement age.

I have dividends from my stocks and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Sold off my Canadian Royalty Trusts (Canroys) some time back so I no longer am able to get those monthly cheques which were wonderful to get.

Online ad revenue has also been kind to me as I have managed to sell certain spaces on my blogs for cool sums of money. It is sometimes quite amazing how I have managed to diversify the various streams of income. From relying solely on Adsense to other alternative sources.

I have been toying the idea of starting a business but still do not have a concrete idea what to sell. It needs to be something really easy to set up and which requires minimum effort on my part. It doesn't have to bring in much, maybe just few dollars a month.

What I realised is this: Once I open up another stream of income, I become surer of myself and somehow will be able to slowly turn on the taps and increase that stream till it turns out to be a sizeable stream.

I will keep all updated once I have managed to seek out that additional source of passive income.

Stay tune!

4th Cheque from Google's Adsense

I received my 4th cheque from participating in Google's Adsense program.

It is not a lot really but still works out to be some"kopi lui" to keep me motivated to keep on blogging. Since people have been saying that I have been too transparent with my finances, I guess I won't reveal how much I got this time. All I will say is that it is the biggest cheque I have received thus far.

What I like about the cheque is that it seems to be mailed from all the way from the United States. The cheque is green in color and is very different from other personal cheques that I have received. On the cheque, everything is printed out. The best thing of course is the currency exchange rate. With the exchange rate now at 1US$ to 1.4S$, it works out to be quite a neat sum. Enough to eat a good meal =)

And in case you are thinking that this blog is making lots of money, it is not. It is some other site of mine that is actually raking in most of the money. Though I spend lots of time on this site, it still hasn't been that "productive" in that sense of the word.

$402.75 in Dividends and Passive Income for Mar 2010

This is the total dividends and passive income that I received for the month of March 2010.

I wrote sometime earlier in the month that I have gotten my 3rd cheque from Google's Adsense program. Kindly refer to that posting there about my earnings from adsense. I will get my next payout in April or May.

Dividends
1. Pac Andes = $222.00

"Passive" Income
1. Adsense = $180.75

Total in Dividends and Passive Income = $402.75

On the job front, I will most probably secure a job by next month. (Fingers are all crossed!)

I have also started giving tuition which should roughly add another $1000 to my earnings each month.

3rd Cheque from Google's Adsense

Over two years ago (in 2008), I started out on a journey to see whether it was plausible for one to earn money using adsense. I still remember the delight I had when I was able to earn $4.44 for a certain month in earnings. You can check out my posting about it here.

I remember lamenting the fact that my online earnings were low and I was not able to achieve the $1 per day target that I had set for myself. In a posting talking about Online Income from Adsense, I shared the joys and pains that I had about monetizing my blogs.

My Revelation - Earning Money Online is a Full-Time Job

I guess I moved on and realised that my blogging was not really about making money online. It was more about recording down my experiences and the thoughts that go through my head with regards to financial matters, investments or insurance. Slowly, I also added in more personal stuff which I would never share openly with strangers. The purpose was more to record it down for my own viewing pleasure in the future. Yet at the same time, I was hoping that others could learn from my experiences and not make the same mistakes that I have already made.

To me, any money that was derived from this blog was just an added benefit. Of course, there are days that I still harbor the thoughts of leaving the rat race for good and just becoming a full-time blogger. I am certain that my family and friends will desert me for good then =)

So I treated the income source from this blog as just a sort of added benefit. Of course, I still had earning goals that I hoped to achieve in due time just for the fun of it.

It is Possible to Make Money From Adsense

The only thing that I have proven thus far in my journey is this: It is possible to make money from adsense.

The problem is that the amount of effort one has to put in is totally not related to the amount that you will be earning. In fact, it is much easier to take on part-time work like tuition to earn money than to rely on adsense.

I have spent literally hours upon hours on this blog and if I translate the amount of time I have spent on it to let's say getting a part-time job that pays $30 per hour, I am much better off getting a part-time job. It is possible to make money from adsense but it is NOT EASY.

I repeat: It is NOT EASY <-- just in case some student sees this post and starts thinking that they can be the next Mr Brown or Xiaxue.

Get a job at MacDonalds, it will pay you much more than what you can earn from blogging!

My Earnings thus far.....

Jun 09 - USD$105 (forgot to record down the conversion to SGD)
Nov 09 - S$160.72
Mar 10 - S$180.75

1,500 People Visit this Site Every Month

This is actually the thing that keeps me blogging. Sometimes, I feel that my energies are being wasted in a futile activity. But at the very same time, writing has a calming effect on me. It helps me to organise my thoughts and I love to write. I am still not really a good writer as you can tell..

But just knowing that there are 1,500 readers per month makes me strive to keep this blog updated and interesting for all. I guess I have been able to make a greater impact through this blog than through my own personal life. I don't even talk to 15 different people in a month sometimes!

Yet this blog speaks to 1,500 people in a month!

Of course, I have yet to compute my readers that follow me annually. But it can sometimes be quite frightening....SO MANY PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY READING THE STUFF THAT I PUT UP.... The last thing I want to happen is to become accidentally famous. I hate the limelight.

Should I Give Up Blogging?

I have been really weary lately. I really feel that my energies could perhaps be better focused elsewhere. I am still seeking God for a lot of questions that I do not have answers to with regards to my purpose in life and stuff.

There have been times that I have thought that I should stop blogging. Perhaps blog less frequently..or perhaps even just give up blogging forever. In this way, no one will ever find out who FF is. (FF is my online persona - it was a terrible mistake to call this blog sgfinancialfreedom cos the moniker FF just stuck with me. In fact, it was other bloggers and readers who started calling me FF. If I could change things, I would have gone by a cooler name that did not have so much focus on things like being financially free and stuff.)

Yet, here I am again..hitting the PUBLISH POST button. Perhaps I am addicted to blogging.

Earn $10 A Day Using Adsense

I looked back at this posting that I made in Aug 2008. You can view it here.

I am very pleased to announce to all that I have managed to accomplish this goal of earning $1 a day from online income sources.

It did take me a much longer time than I had originally expected. I thought I could easily hit my $1 a day target within a few months.

Little did I expect to take over a year to hit my target.

Anyway, I am happy that I have managed to achieve a goal that I had set out earlier. It shows that I am travelling in the correct direction. Each little step that I take is just part of a journey that I have mapped out for myself.

Yes...sometimes I do not attain success as quickly as I would have liked. What is important is that I achieve it at the end of the day.

My next Adsense earning target will be to hit $10 a day. How long will I take to achieve this?

I really do not know. I am hoping that I can do it within a few months...but I will not be surprised if it takes another year.

To hit $10 a day in earnings, I will need roughly 3000 page views per day or 1500 unique visitors a day (with each visitor having an average of 2 page views).

I estimate that I currently have around 200 loyal readers who visit this site around once in 2 days.

This means that I need to grow my readership by 7 times.

How Much A Blog Post is Worth

Ever wondered how much one blog post is worth?

I calculated the amount that I have earned from online income and based on my computations, each single blog post is worth an average of $0.20. That means that each blog post is roughly earning me 20 cents everytime I publish it.

As I did not set up dedicated channels to track my earnings, I can never know for sure which are the blog posts that are giving me better returns.

There are service providers out there that actually write articles for your blogs for a fee. This can be as low as $5 for a 300 word article or as high as $7 for a 500 word article.

But if you are thinking of employing their services, think again! You might not be able to break even unless you have a really good strategy in mind.

And that is perhaps the reason why these service providers are not writing articles for their own blogs or websites. It is much more profitable to sell articles than to earn money from articles that are published on a website or blog.

So how exactly can you make money from your blog?

I believe I am "qualified" in a certain sense to answer the above question.

Ever since I started out blogging last year, I have seen my online income grow from a paltry $0.01 per month to roughly $30 per month. I am not talking about a six figure income from blogging but if you are interested in how to break the zero barrier...read on.

Firstly, if property is about location, location, location then blogging is about content, content, content.

Yes, a good domain name might be important but even with google's blogger that I am using, choosing a good name for your blog might be enough instead of investing in a proper domain name (This is especially so if you are not even sure whether you will be blogging in the long term). It is best that the name of your blog has something related to what you will be blogging about. This will aid in the search engine portion.

But I will not touch on that as I believe that it is possible to write good content and the traffic will come naturally.

If I can put it down to 2 essentials to breaking the zero barrier in earnings, it will be simply this:

Blogging frequency and content.

Other factors are: Search Engine Optimisation, Keyword selection, Traffic sources

So focus on your content and blogging frequency first before touching upon the rest.

Remember that the people reading your postings are humans. Look at your own blog and own posts. Imagine that you are a stranger reading it. How would you react? Would you want to visit again for more information?

I understand that are a whole lot of other things that come into play when it comes to earning money from blogging but I think this article should suffice for the time being

Read Related Articles:
1. Online Income From Adsense

Formula 1 Singapore

So its the Formula 1 Race for Singapore again. The whole town is jam packed and everybody (well almost) are suddenly Formula 1 fans. People who don't usually watch the race are now catching it on TV. Now that's what I call good marketing by F1. People here can't really tell the difference between any of the race drivers. I am still abit surprised that the F1 fever is actually quite hot in Singapore.

I sold away Suntec REITs @ 1.08 on Friday as I felt that the price should hopefully drop further. Been monitoring a few stocks lately and have been thinking of trading the stock market a bit more actively since now I have time on my hands.

Have been reading some ebooks on trading lately. Hope to brush up my skills on trading especially in terms of the Mind, Method and Money. What struck me perhaps was the focus on money management and how much of each stock one should buy when trading. It never cross my mind that money management was such an important aspect of trading.

Adsense earnings have been pretty decent this past few days and if this keeps up, I think my broadband expenses can be covered by my monthly expenses pretty soon. I still think it is possible that there are people who earn more than 3 digit per day from online income. If one really puts in the effort, everything is possible.

Signing off,
Sleepless in Singapore on Sunday 1.31AM


Read Related Articles:
1. Online Income From Adsense
2. Earn $1000 a Month Working From Home

Another Day at Starbucks

It is another day at Starbucks for me.

People are studying all around me. Some people are sipping coffee. Some are surfing the internet. The guy sitting next to me is busily monitoring the stock market. The Starbucks staff are busily chatting away as they serve customers the coffee. The aroma of the coffee and the jazz music that is playing at the background helps to soothe my nerves and gives me comfort.

I see people getting off the bus stop and from where I am sitting, I can also see people waiting for the train.

The weather is really hot and I am enjoying the aircon. The caffe latte (whatever remains of it) sits on the table in front of me.

I have been reading this blog by a Malaysian full time blogger and have found some useful tips for my own blogging. You can read his blog here.

Record Earnings from Adsense ($4.85 in A Single Day)

On a happy note, I earned like a record $4.85 from Google's Adsense while I was sleeping last night. Apparently, my articles on Canroys ranked pretty high up Google's search pages. Not too sure how I did it but when I checked again just now, the rankings have gone all the way down.

Imagine the power of the residual income I will be able to earn if Adsense gives me $485 per day instead of $4.85 per day. I will be laughing my way to the bank! Hahahahah

Sold off Hongguo for a profit of over $3000

On the investment front, I sold off one of my small cap stocks (Hongguo) last week before the long weekend. Managed to earn over $3000 from an initial investment of $5000. Quite pleased with my results and am looking to enter into it again should the price drop once more.

I have also been looking closely at the performance of my REITs and wondering whether I should cash out of Suntec REIT which I have entered into at $1.02. The current price is now at $1.12 so it is a profit of $1000.

Financial Standing

How do I compare to the rest of Singapore? I think I should be at least above average in my savings and investment =)

I have $13K in my CPF OA, $14K in my CPF SA and $20K in my CPF MA.
Me and my wife have $100K+ in liquid cash sitting in the bank
I have $80K+ in stocks.
I have $50K in cash value in my insurance policies (Whole Life and Invesment linked plans)
Me and my wife have a flat that is valued at $550,000 when I last checked the HDB website resale price.

I believe that I have an abundance which some people do not have.

Yet, I am pretty sure that there are people out there who are like a hundred times richer than me.

Time to work harder!!!!

Online Income From Adsense

The Beginning

My journey into the world of Adsense began when I started this blog. I wanted to explore ways of earning income online. That was about a year ago and I would not say that I am earning as much as some professional bloggers are. The amount that I am earning in Adsense income however has slowly and steadily increased over the year.

For a start, look at my first update on my adsense earnings here
I was earning less than $1 per month then but it was slowly increasing!

The Journey

I started to explore other methods of increasing my online income but so far, I have narrowed it down to Google's Adsense. Though I know the existence of other affiliate programs, my decision was to concentrate on increasing my income from Google's Adsense. I read up quite a fair bit and am glad to say that I can earn an average of $10 to $20 per month now based on Google's Adsense alone.

Just for the month of August 2009, I earned $14.75 while the earnings from Sep 2009 are likely to be slightly higher. The reason why I blog is mostly to sort out my thoughts but earning a passive income on the sideline does provide some added motivation. To konw that each and every post I make has the potential to earn me money in the future keeps me going and makes me disciplined in my postings.

The Goal

I started out with a simple goal of increasing my adsense earnings to $1 per day. Until today, I have not been able to achieve it. But I will keep on trying. Of course, my dream job will be to just stay at home and blog =)

Who knows? Perhaps that could be a possibility in the future!

Earning Passive Income Online

I have debunked the myth that it is not possible to earn money online!

For those of you who have been following my postings, you should know that I started experimenting with Google's Adsense program around last year. How Google's Adsense works is simple. Advertisements are placed on your website or blogs. You get paid when people click on the advertisements. Of course, you are not allowed to click on the advertisements or to ask readers to click on your advertisements.

So you can think of your website as your very own magazine or e-magazine and Google pays you to put these advertisements on your site. The only thing is that you get paid when someone clicks on the adverts which can take a really long time.

I started off really slow earning a mere few cents from Adsense during the first few months. However, as the weeks and months went by, I began to see a slow but steady increase in my Adsense earnings. Of course it is not alot and the money i earn is really just coffee money. But nevertheless, it gives me great satisfaction that I have been able to pull off something which I thought was impossible - Making Money Online!

I am beginning to brainstorm on new ideas to increase this area of my passive income. I have found that the content I put up might not always be particularly useful at times. This is due to the lack of time to edit my work and stuff.

Just wondering out aloud whether it is worthwhile to invest in a proper domain name and some server while creating some really good content that will be useful to people.

Leaving Assets For Future Generations

I got into a talk with one of these financial planners lately. The topic we talked about was basically insurance and how one could virtually give one's child/children a good inheritance.

The idea might sound warp but it is worth thinking about. Basically, it involves you just buying a whole life insurance and not drawing that money out/surrendering the policy/or letting it lapse.

As death is certain, you can be assured that your beneficiaries will receive whatever amount is the sum assured on your life as well as any accumulated bonuses. So perhaps for a total price of $100,000 over say a period of 25 years ($4000 per year), you are able to pass over quite a sizeable fortune (maybe $0.5 million) to your child/children when you die. That is of course if you do not surrender the policy or anything before your appointed time with the Maker.

Just food for thought =)

By the way, I added another 200k insurance which brings my total insurance to $560k life coverage.

Have updated my adsense earnings for the month of March here.

Earning Money Online Through Adsense

In a previous post dated 16 August, I mentioned that I wanted to increase my passive income from Adsense to $1 per day. I have been exploring ways to earn more money online.

This is a breakdown of my report for the amount that I have earned from Adsense since May 2008:

Jun 08= $0.41
Jul 08 = $0.38
Aug 08 = $4.44

I have manged to increased my passive income from Adsense by nearly 10 times within 1 month! This is part of the overall strategy to increasing my passive income through various avenues. In the coming month (Sep 08), I will be significantly busier at work. As such, I do not expect to be able to achieve the same success as I managed in Aug 08. However, I will attempt a target of $5.00 for the month of Sep 08. I will also be exploring dividend yielding stocks, high interest rate bank deposits or REITs to increase my passive income.

I have dedicated another blog that will explore my financial freedom journey on making money online. Do visit it here.

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Earning $1 a Day Through Adsense

This will be one of my additional goals for the year.

I will aim to earn $1 a day through Adsense. This would give me a passive income of $30 per month. This would require me to learn how to direct alot more traffic to my site. In order to do that, I guess I would have to write interesting posts that would attract people to read the blog.

(Update on 31 Oct 2009: This goal has been achieved. For Sep 09 and Oct 09, I have managed to earn more than $30 per month)