Recently, I was invited by a friend to an entrepreneur workshop.

In the workshop, the speaker share with us many reasons for wanting to start own business.

In fact, one reason is a good enough for us to start own business.

I don’t know about others, but I’m start getting tired of the nine to six rat race and are thinking about starting own business.

I keep thinking about this, because I understand that I will never be freedom when living monthly salary. But what business would I want to start?

Before quit your day job to start business, take the time to evaluate yourself and think the process through step by step.

Get some papers and pen, and start writing down questions like: “What, Why, When, Where and How?”
Refer to this basic guide for beginners to do planning.

Write down all your possible answers to the questions. Note down everything, no matter how silly or unimportant. Put all your ideas and desires on paper that answers any of the questions.

By the time you have completes all that, you should consider attending ACE entrepreneurship training and workshops to learn about entrepreneurship and create networking opportunities that can help you to execute you plan.

Currently, ACE is running a nationwide contest for the public to send in ideas on how to increase Singapore’s attractiveness to do businesses and encourage more entrepreneurs to step out comfort zone to venture overseas.

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Some people collect stamps, some collect coin & currency notes.

I used to collect magnetic Transit Link card and public phone card. I have hundred of Transit Link and public phone cards in my collections. If you’re interested to own them, welcome to visit my eBay store.

One special group of collectors is looking forward the Ang Pow (red packet) in this Chinese New Year festival. Not the money inside, but the Ang Pow of special and unique designs that they are looking for.

Read the news in CNA: Avid Ang Pow collectors source for special ones from abroad.

Usually, days or weeks before Chinese New Year, we can easily ask for free Ang Pow from restaurants, hotels, banks, restaurants, supermarkets and shops that you patronized. Many merchat also giving out Ang Pow as token of appreciation or a gift for your shopping.

Most of the time, we can get the free Ang Pow from restaurants, hotels, banks, restaurants, supermarkets, telecoms, manufacturers, shops and etc.

Few days ago, I started a small test on eBay by selling unused Ang Pow. Just wanted to see how well it sell on eBay.

There are few eBay sellers are focusing on that festival niche already and more than 200 items listed when I searched the term Ang Pow on eBay Singapore.

But very surprising that within a day, 10 of 23 of my Ang Pow listing has been sold.

The strategy is simple, using low price to attract customers to buy something which I got it for FREE.

My objective is clear unwanted stuff from my store room and earn a few good feedbacks along the way.

Don’t be afraid to try things out. Sometimes the only way to make progress is JUST DO IT.

This is post of OPAD Day 10.

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As I frequently mentioned in my Chinese language blog on doing online business. There are many different online businesses that you can start easily, for example selling on eBay, doing affiliate marketing by selling Amazon products or open your own shopping store using shopping cart software.

The first thing you can do in creating online business is to make sure that your website is properly designed. I suggest getting a good tool that can help you to manage your online business.

Using good software to can help you to create efficiencies in your business that will truly benefits you when running the online business. Good online business system not only easy to install, must be also user friendly.

As a new online business startup, spend money to get good software can help to free up more time, so that you can focus in doing critical and important tasks, for example sourcing popular products to sell, running marketing campaign or promotion to push the sales, manage your inventory, provides good customer services and ensure quality assurance.

As the Chinese proverb saying goes: 工欲善其事，必先利其器, roughly translate as Good tools facilitate good works.

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eBay was created in September 1995, by Pierre Omidyar, who was living in San Jose. He wanted his site, the then called as AuctionWeb to be an online marketplace and wrote the first code for it in one weekend. It was one of the first websites of its kind in the world. The name eBay comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. His company’s name was Echo Bay, and the eBay AuctionWeb was originally just one part of Echo Bay’s website at ebay.com. The first thing ever sold on the site was Omidyar’s broken laser pointer, which he got $14 for.

The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well, and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Omidyar used to pay for AuctionWeb’s expansion. The fees quickly added up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his day job and work on the site full-time. It was at this point, in 1996, that he added the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate each other and make buying and selling safer.

In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb’s and his company’s name to eBay, which is what people had been calling the site for a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising and had the eBay logo designed. It was in this year that the one-millionth item was sold.

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I have accumulated some funds in Paypal account, from selling stuff in eBay and Yahoo Auction sites.

For us in Singapore, it is quite easy to transfer funds through one of the local bank, namely DBS, POSB, UOB or OCBC.

I have not tried foreign banks in Singapore, I think should be OK.

Before you initiating the transfer, do take note of the following:

1. Minimum withdrawal amount for Singapore Dollars is SG$15.

2. There is no withdrawals fee for SGD$200.00 but withdrawals fee for $199.99 or less is charge $1.00

3. The funds will be available in your local bank account between 5 to 7 business days, if there is not problem.

OK, I will show you the step by step to withdraw funds from Paypal account

First Step, you need to add a bank account information. Your local bank account must be a Singapore Dollars account. Enter your name exactly as it appears on your bank account statement.

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