Haze is back

Those of you who are probably awake for the long weekend will know that the haze is back.  Gosh. I was so overwhelmed by it while riding home from work that I'm battling blocked nose and a dry throat now. PSI is hovering in the mid unhealthy range (101-200psi) now as of 11pm Singapore time and a 3-hour psi outlook going into the very unhealthy range(201-300psi) and above according to NEA's website. You guys can check out www.haze.gov.sg for updates - a dedicated site set up by the Government.

Invest in an air purifier if your budget allow. Some of the good brands are like Novita, Sharp and Honeywell. Be sure to get those with multi layers of filtration and especially with HEPA Filter. Air purifying is definately an area you should not cut corners on. Don't waste your money on cheap ones. Quality is key here.

If you are heading out tomorrow to cast for votes for the General Election, be sure to wear, or at least bring your masks and don't stay out too long. Keep yourself hydrated as well.

Take care everyone and stay healthy.
www.haze.gov.sg

Freelance courier rider with Rocket Uncle.

I'd like to share an experience I had when I dipped my toes into some side freelance work. There is this courier company called Rocket Uncle that has tapped into the smartphone world whereby anyone with a driver's license can start working as a courier and start sending parcels and documents.

I started off with much enthusiasm and was very optimistic as it looks like it was easy money. Sure, it does look that way. Pick up a parcel within a given specific timing and delivering it. Basically, Point A to Point B. Payments for each job depends on the distance and how urgently it needs to be delivered so you can actually browse through the jobs available and pick those that you want.

The flow is pretty straight forward in theory. But, in order to really maximize your earnings, you will have to really plan out your routes and timings. Being someone with no experience, on my first day(which was also my last) on the job, I took about 5-6 jobs with 3 of them delivered to the town areas. It took me a total of about 4-5 hours (will get to this below) and a few beeps of my IU unit. So how much did I earn for the day?

Let's do a breakdown:

Average amount paid for a job - $6.50

Time taken to deliver one job - 45mins (if you are fast and familiar with the area)

Total number of job done in 4 to 5hrs - 6

ERP charges in and out of town - $4 to $5

Consumed half tank of petrol on my small 2B bike - $7.50

So: 

$6.50(per job) x 6(jobs) - ($5 ERP + $7.50 petrol) = $26.50

$26.50 / 5hrs = $5.30/hr

Therefore, all in all, I was paid $5.30/hr riding from one end of Singapore to another to another and another. 

Was it worth it? For someone that just started out, my answer is a straight No. Why? Because what they didn't tell you are the problems you will encounter while doing your job -

• Delivery timings. Customers indicating that lunch times are okay for deliveries, and when you arrived, there's no one to receive your order. So you are stucked there wasting precious time waiting while they enjoy their lunch.
• Locations of collection and delivery. These are not your typical Macdonald's or Pizzahut delivery locations that are for HDB houses whereby you reach the blk, up the lift and to the Unit. Instead, collection and delivery location can be shops in shopping centres, or warehouses that you really need to make the effort to make a 5 minutes fast walk in and another 5 minutes fast walk out. a total of 10 minutes of fast walking and a perspiring you. 10 minutes provided they didn't go for lunch or what not. Lastly, places that has a lot of departments. Once you are at the said locations, typically all these people will take out their bow and arrows from their office desk and starts shooting arrows the moment you introduce yourself.
• Above, we are talking about 1 job. what if you had 3 jobs of the same situation? that's a total of 30 lousy minutes of fast walking and being thrown around.
• Call before Arrival. There's also requests for "call before arrival" by clients. Seems reasonable enough. BUT you are not reimbursed for every call you make.
• Wear and tear to your vehicle. The $5.30/hr above is all that you have - barely enough to justify your effort and time committed. What about your vehicle needs? Mileage goes higher which means servicings are due much sooner. Wear and tear gets faster and these don't come cheap for things like tires, engine oil, oil filters, air filters, batteries, brake pads etc. Basically, that small amount you are paid is supposed to cover everything.
• Risk of road accidents multiply. Again, with $5.30/hr includes your risk of being on the road with exposures to accidents with no insurance coverage on your vehicle. Do not take the risk.

However, after all the gripe mentioned above, I do know of people whom have established a rapport with certain clients and normally takes the same routes and jobs every day and their earnings are way beyond what I got. Which can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars per month. But of course, that is the small handful of riders who are lucky enough.

This is one experience which I will consider as an experience and lesson learnt. If you have no experience in doing courier jobs, my suggestion to you is, forget it. You are far better off with working as a delivery rider with places that pays you a per hour salary or fix monthly salary and places that also provide their delivery team with their own company vehicles.

Fancy your own Online Shop?

So recently I was approached from a friend of mine who wanted to know how I built my own online store.

I'm gonna cut things short and simple on how i built mine.

Being someone with nearly zero knowledge on HTML Coding and gizmo tech yada-yada wala-wala and sort like that, I was pretty much the typical internet and computer user.

So when I started my online shop, I depended mostly on the wealth of the internet to which i found Weebly (www.weebly.com). It is an online site which helps you build your own blog, site, online business, basically what ever you want it to be. It comes with the free version or you could pay a minimal annual fee of less than $50/year. As compared to paying someone to build a site for you at the cost of hundreds and thousands of dollars.

The great thing about Weebly is that you can use your own domain name e.g. www.yourshopname.com to it instead of www.weebly.com/yourshopname of that sort which may make your online business look less professional.The interface is pretty much straight forward and user friendly. All you need to do is pick a template, colours, fonts etc and start adding in your content. There are also functions like adding pages and sub-pages (or what I like to call as categories and directories for visitors to navigate around the site). There is also online buttons for your customers to click on. All you need to do is to add the words "Buy Now" to it and link it to your shopping cart. 

Paypal function is also included inside where you are able to add in features where your customer can pay for purchases from your site via Paypal. But please note that they lack of the shopping cart function itself so you have to source out for free shopping cart widgets and link them to your Weebly webstore. It took me quite awhile but i found mine, Mal's E-commerce (https://www.mals-e.com/). Not only do they provide a shopping cart for your site, their carts comes with transaction history capability and also user defined auto reply emails after your customer have submitted their purchase orders to you.

The professional layout, image and style pretty much depends on your creativity here. Don't fret if you don't get it quite right the first time. You can keep on improving and tweak your online store as you go on. Get a good camera and brush up on your photography skills. Humans are visual beings so good visual makes your customers stay longer on your site which can covert to sales. Check out on how other huge online stores set up their layouts.

Tagging your site with relevant words will ensure that people are able to find you when they are looking for something that you offer. So tag away!

Be sure to have a proper "Contact Us" page so your potential customers can reach out to you. I did not think this was important but I was surprised at the number of enquiries I had even right at the 1st month of going online.

I got my online store up in 2 weeks single handedly with less than a hundred bucks of capital.

So go on, give it a try!

links:

www.godaddy.com - buy your own website address / domain name

www.weebly.com - website/webstore builder

www.mals-e.com - Free Shopping Cart