Some of you might think that this article is about book review by Brian Sher which use the title of “How to Make Money Out of Thin Air”. I’ve read the book re-written by Azizi Ali’s printing company and to me, it’s nothing more than just a guiding wisdom and not so much on the practical & actionable guide.
I used to be one of those orthodox thinkers who believe that you need money to make money. Our typical investment would be unit trust or so called ‘Amanah Saham’ for most of our liquid assets. In that, you won’t be paid for any dividend should you lack of savings in that particular financial instrument.
Working as unit trust consultant allows me to discover the other part of the world; the world that keeps on generating handsome income months after months without any cash upfront. Lucky for you to find this article today because I’m going to share five most popular and easy ways to make money out of thin air (or out of nothing).
Crafting Profitable Business
Whenever I heard someone dreaming of starting her own shop, not enough money to start-up is the most common sigh. In fact, it was the first barrier to stop most local entrepreneur to continue venturing. The fact is, it’s not about shop that matters, it’s about what significant possession your business model really can offer.
Business is not about what you are selling. Instead, business is a complete system that can run on it’s own. Having said that, you need to craft detailed blueprint on each processes involved in your business process flow. You need to develop how your products is developed, how to know if the product is going to sell, how you plan to market the products, what your back up plan if competitors doing the same etc.
Then, you can use the same blueprint to convince whoever shareholders to lend their money to you. Believe me, there are so many people out there who wants to invest in your business. All you have to do is just convince them your ‘system’ really works. If you have success, again, you can claim equity without pouring any money!
Buying Undervalued Property
One of my online friends purchased a ran-down condominium in Mont Kiara area for RM500,000 in 2005. However, property valuer claimed that particular property should be sold for RM610,000 instead despite all repairs she needs to do. As a result, she get some bank loans of RM630,000 and get RM110,000 cash.
She then spent about RM100,000 for repair, renovation and adding some basic furniture. Soon after everything settled, her condo was rented out for RM4,500 which she used about RM3,800 to payback her housing loan. It gave her monthly profits of about RM700 or RM8,400 annually without any down-payment!
This is not an unusual case as I keep on getting the same story from other colleagues too. However, if you plan to use this strategy, I can only recommend of buying mid to high end properties. Reason being, this market can offer the highest profits margin without caring so much savings of about RM50-100 like some low cost residents do.
Trading Stock Market
In Malaysia, traditional broker are still using T+3 concept; which you only have to pay the amount you owe them after purchasing any stocks within 3 working days. Let’s say you bought Bank Islam share (BIMB) on Monday, you only have to pay them latest by Thursday before 12pm. You’ll be charged some interest for anything more than that.
The good news is, you don’t have to pay them if you managed to sell back the same share before Thursday 12pm. All you have to do is claim/pay back the price difference after the brokerage fees. For example if you bought 1000 BIMB shares for RM1.00 on Monday and manage to sell the share at RM1.20 before Thursday 12pm, you’ll be getting at least RM100 cash (after deducting buy/sell brokerage fees) out of nothing!
I find swing trading fits very well for this kind of approach because investors’ mood can change in split of seconds. All you have to do is just banking on their greed & fear emotions. Having said that, you need to have enough strong “technical indicator” under your belt.
Making Money Online
Whenever I said “make money online”, most Malaysian will be thinking I might be joining some high yield investment on the Internet. Some of them even fast enough to label it as scam, probably because they’d been victimised by any one of those. Lucky me that I’d understand the whole business prior joining the crowd myself resulting to successful venture in no time.
Nowadays, you can easily start your own website using free platform and monetize them with some advertisements. Again, you don’t have to pay anything (domain or hosting) to get started. In fact, there are some techniques out there that even can give you money without website or blog at all. Other than saving money, this can save your time too right?
Nevertheless, some difficulties I find in most Malaysian mentality is that, they thought it’s so easy to make money online that they want to make it “auto-pilot” as much as possible. I have to say it’s not impossible at all (because I do it myself too, HaHa), but without strong foundation, you can be left confused. That’s why Mommy Cash come into picture.
Be Valuable Employee
Maybe this is the path that most of us prefer (especially me). I suppose we are just used to do what we asked to. Not so much head ache on driving everything on our own especially when it involves starting from scratches.
However, if I chose this path, I have to work hard and smart to prove that I’m one of those valuable assets to the company. Otherwise, it can be little bit difficult for me to justify my existence in the organization; especially when some corporation decided to use the bottom 10% rule (get rid of 10% of non-performers no matter how best you’d performed). It’s GE way of doing business actually.
Hmm, maybe to the extend of discounting my quality of life to remain relevant?
So, out of these five ways, which describe you best and what is your preference should you be given a choice? Let’s share…
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