Passive Income for Life

I am not going to claim that I am there already but logically speaking, running an internet business and deriving a sustainable income is actually possible. Like any other business, it is all about the numbers.

I have run a few programs and actually sold a few products via affiliate marketing. The only thing is that I lack effort, resulting in trickles of traffic, and subsequently low income.

Let me run through some numbers here.

Affiliate Marketing

A typical affiliate product can sell for $29.

Say you can derive a 50% commission from every sale you refer – $14.50

Depends on your sales pitch (i.e. skill in making a good splash page), let’s assume a 1% conversion rate.

It means it takes 100 visitors to your site to earn $14.50.

Say you would like to make $2900 a month, this translates to driving 20,000 people to your page in a month, or simply about 650 unique visits a day.

The only 2 things you should do is
1) build a good splash page to ensure at least 1% conversion
2) Build traffic (via articles, referrals, SEO etc) to ensure 650 visitors come daily.

Number 1 is a 1-time effort; Number 2 can slowly be built up.

This is not impossible and can actually be very encouraging. Because when you first start out, it may not be hard to cliche the first sale. The thing is to get more sales.

So ya, I better stop talking and start doing too.

A good product and splash page.

650 visitors a day.

 

It took me several months to get this far..

my 2nd google adsense check! Sufficient to cover my hosting annually.

There have been a lot of talk on using gold as an investment vehicle. To most, it is the face of the commodity bull run. Given if that one invested in gold rather than stocks in 2008, one would yield helluva decent returns in the former than a loss in the latter.

A recent few months ago, someone introduced to me gold trading as an investment strategy. Particularly in companies like Genneva.

In the face of many gold scams like HYIPs, I have doubts on my own with regards to the sustainability of the business model in the likes of Genneva and Gold Label.

Yet at the same time, it is indeed fascinating to see people really profiting from such schemes that runs for a significant length of time.

Perhaps I will list down the “For”s and “Against”s at first glance of investing in such a scheme, using Genneva as an illustration:

FOR

1. Physical gold is retained by the investor
2. Gold issued by a registered government bank
3. A contract is issued by a legal entity
4. Legal entity is ISO certified
5. Legal entity is confirmed as a Associate Member of the Singapore Retailers Association
6. Real life examples exist and currently profiting
7. Not sold via MLM or pyramid
8. Gold is on the bull run currently, supporting fundamentals of the “business”

AGAINST

1. Whilst it is does not seem like a pyramid or MLM, do note that there are agents who take a cut in getting investors in. (This point is moot as FAs also get a cut for selling unit trusts).
2. The physical gold that exchanges hands maybe a pure distraction to the “investor” since the “investor” is paying a premium over the actual worth of the gold. The premium alone seems to me like it is used to feed a ponzi. However, the explanation given is that the company uses these extra cash as working capital for the “vertical integration of their businesses”.
3. The website does not seem very well maintained and they use very distracting words like “proprietary trading platform”, claiming that their method appeals to “sophisticated” investors etc.
4. Nil disclosure on financial statements

There are 2 camps for such an investment scheme as seen in Lioninvestor’s website. His blog post had attracted many many readers and commenters . You may need sometime to read about them though.

I hope to delve more about the fundamentals and see whether the business model (though claimed to be legitimate) is sustainable or not.

A remiser sent an article to me which i’d thought it was quite insightful into the Chinese economy. It talks about top consumer spending trends in China last year.

See this blog post.

I was served a lawyer’s letter today asking me to take down a certain bank’s research reports uploaded on my site.

My ignorance that I did not know we could not share such stuff. Well, I’d thought that’s why such reports are written right? (To be read). And maybe some reports can be shared but some cannot – cos i asked once and I was told to distribute if possible.

But receiving such a letter is quite intriguing and somewhat flattering. For one, it means this blog has a certain reputation and hit rate to warrant some attention. Secondly, it must have taken a darn long time for the lawyer to draft the letter out cos they list down all the links of the reports. And of course the many letters they have to send out! They would sure earn quite a sum from doing such stuff for the bank. Thirdly, even so that the rest of the letter seemed like a copy-and-paste (indeed so because they addressed it wrongly initially). And lastly, the firm’s name representing the bank is quite “unique” – my wife directly translated for me to chinese “niao2 niao3″.

I think the internet proliferation of such “sharing” is amazing and i would say rampant.

There are even websites that teaches you to tell others to take down copied content too. i.e. IPWatchDog’s article on Sample  DMCA Take Down letter.

For me, I would be content if someone copies my content but just credit me for it and linkback. Believe it’s more in line with the world today.