Before I enlisted, I set a goal for myself to be financially independent before I ORD. My ideal source of income would be from a web application that generates money through advertising or subscriptions (Passive income =D).  Back than, I had a pretty popular local web app – nextshow.sg. I launched it a week before I enlisted. The website grew extremely fast, I had close to 1.5k visitors a day within the first week. My plan was to allow the visitor count to grow to 10k /day and than start throwing in ads to generate some advertising dollars.

But the app failed, I found lots of bugs and I didnt have enough time to fix it. Number of visitors dropped to less than 1k. I was in OCS at that time and found it extremely hard to squeeze time out to work on the site. Finding the motivation to fix the site during my weekends was hard. My bookout hours were short and all I wanted to do was to get lots of rest and spend my remaining hours having fun. A few months later, I shut-down the site completely. =(

Right now, having spent 1 year and 6 months serving NS, I have 6 more months before I ORD. After I ORD, I would not have any allowance at all unless I get a job or continue freelancing. Signing on is not an option. Those who know me well will know that I do not like working for others (not an ego thing), let alone work in such a regimental environment.

A few ideas popped up in my head a few months ago. Pretty good project ideas I would say. One of the ideas turned into a project and I’ve been working on it for past 2 months. I’m launching it in a few days time. Haven’t thought of a name for it yet. I’m expecting this site to do alot better than nextshow.  I’m pinning all hopes on this project to generate enough income to feed me after I ORD. I’m aiming for $7k a month for this project (nothing wrong to aim high right).

If this fails, Plan B would be to go back to freelancing =) wish me luck.