…that was back in 1973. She got started after attending a seminar about traditional healthcare and the use of “jamu.”

Of course she was, and obviously still is, passionate about these 2 things.

She started the business in her garage, producing and distributing products with a capital of USD25 and 2 workers.

Many of her family members were not supportive, but her husband (a civil servant) was.

A few years later, she already had 50 workers and needed to move out of the garage.

But she couldn’t get a bank loan. So she soldiered on, saving up money. With the money saved after many years, she set up her own manufacturing plant.

She said:
- you need to knowledgeable and keep up with demands of modern consumers in a rapidly changing local as well as global market.
- all problems can be overcome through hard work, perseverance and continuous improvement.

Mustika Ratu is now a public listed company with 3,000 employees. It gets its raw materials from its own plantation.

Later she expanded to other areas of traditional healthcare, including beauty & spa business, franchising her spa, both locally & overseas.

She obtained her PhD in Economics at the age of 79. Truly, age is never a barrier.

Dr Bra Mooryati was born in January 1928. She is also a senator.

Source
Daily Express, 14th November 2007, Page 5 (local section)

Forbes compiled a list of the world’s 20 richest superstars under 25 years of age, checking earnings from June 2006 to June 2007. The earnings are total but before taxes or management fees, including salaries, winnings, endorsement deals and royalties.

The top 4 are all athletes:

1 LeBron James, 22, NBA forward, USD27 million. He’s now constructing his 35,000 sq ft house which has a bowling alley, casino and barber shop.

2 Reggie Bush, 22, NFL running back, USD24 million.

3 Maria Sharapova, 20, tennis, USD23 million, of which only USD3.8 million is from winnings, the rest from endorsements with Pepsi, Nike, Canon, Colgate-Palmolive and Motorola.

4 Michelle Wie, 18, golf, USD19 million. USD16 million of that is from endorsements.

5 Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, 20, child twin stars-turned-fashion icons, USD17 million EACH.

6 Daniel Radcliffe, 18, “Harry Potter” actor, USD15 million. 6 years ago, in the first Potter film, he was reportedly offered USD145K. Then, in the latest Potter film, he was reported to have been paid USD14 million. Amazingly, he made more than A-list Hollywood actresses Jennifer Aniston (USD14 million) & Sandra Bullock (USD10 million).

7 Hillary Duff, 20, pop star-actress-’tween merchandise mogul, USD12 million.

8 Avril Lavigne, 23, singer, USD12 million

9 Carmelo Anthony, 23, NBA, USD10 million

10. Keira Knightley, 22, actress, USD9 million

The top 20 also include:

Dakota Fanning, 13, actress, USD4 million. She commands as much as USD3 million for major films.

Miley Cyrus, 15, “Hannah Montana” ctress, USD3.5 million.

Emma Watson, “Harry Potter” actress, USD4 million.

Rupert Grint, “Harry Potter” actor, USD4 million.

Carrie Underwood, singer, USD7 million

Lindsay Lohan, actress, USD3.5 million

Source

It seems everybody’s throwing money at Facebook nowadays.

In October they got a USD240 million investment from Microsoft, which resulted in a USD15 billion valuation.

Not bad for a 3-year old company founded and headed by a 23-year old, another Harvard dropout who has been dubbed “the new Bill Gates.”

They are now perhaps the world’s social networking site with the highest valuation.

Now even 79-year old Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Asia and the 9th richest in the world, has thrown his support. He invested USD60 million recently, and has the right to invest another UDS60 million if he wants to.

Li was introduced to Facebook by an existing investor who contacted Solina Chau, director of the Li Ka-shing Foundation.

Facebook is now apparently the world’s 2nd most popular social networking site, with more than 73 million members. MySpace is still the runaway leader with 289 million members. In contrast, Friendster, arguably the most popular site among Malaysians, is at 13th place with 26 million.

According to John Chow, he first started monetizing his blog on 17th September 2006 via Google Adsense alone. By the end of that month i.e. 13 days later, he already made more than USD350, i.e. about USD27 per day. He relied mostly on digg.com and google search traffic in the early days.

2 months later (for the month of November 2006), he’s already pulling in more than RM7,000, mostly from Adsense and Vibrant IntelliTXT. That is off 217,876 unique visitors. In fact, for the month before (October 2006) he got even more unique visitors: 229,144.

A year later (November 2007), he’s on almost RM90,000. I think that’s more than what 99.999% of what Malaysians are earning!

And he’s not using Adsense at all.

Most of his income comes from Private Ad Sales (almost USD13,000), affiliate commissions (about USD6,500) and ReviewMe (paid posting) at USD4,400.

What’s most surprising perhaps is the fact that he had LESS unique visitors in November 2007 than in November 2006. In November 2007, he *only* had 185,386 unique visitors.

That means traffic went down, even when his blog is now more established / well known, yet income went up more than 12 times. In other words, he has a very high eCPM: USD84.19: his blog makes over USD80 every time 1,000 pages are viewed.

How did he do this? In his own words:

The high eCPM rate was achieved by maximizing as many revenue opportunities as possible while still preserving the user experience.This blog started with only Google AdSense. Since then, I have experimented with dozens of monetization methods. Some have worked really well while others were a complete flop. The key is to always be tweaking and not stand still. If you haven’t touch up your revenue mix in the past six months, it’s time to get your hands dirty.

His expenses for the month were very little: USD566.52 for Google Adwords advertising, and USD25 for a private ad. His hosting is sponsored.

Source

4maxdesign.com are four 12-year olds of Sekolah Kebangsaan Bandar Baru Darulaman (Bandar Baru Darulaman Primary School) in Jitra, Kedah, Malaysia.

They offer services like logo (RM10) and web design (RM30 per page), as well as animation (RM8) and posters (RM15).

They wrote that they want to be Malaysia’s youngest internet entrepreneurs, and even though they’re still at primary school, they will still stive for the highest levels of professionalism.

Going through their website and portfolio, not bad, but I think they have work cut out for them. The logos are not of the highest standards yet and there are many broken links in their website.

Source

That’s RM24,000 every 3 months as harvesting is done.

He started 2 years ago.

He learnt the necessary skills in the Peninsula.

He said he does not use pesticides.

Source: Daily Express, 15th November 2007, Page 6

Rajawang.com made more than RM3,100 in October 2007, just 4 months after starting to “milk the internet.”

That is via 5 blogs, including rajawang.com.

Majority of income is from Adsense (USD658+) and Widgetbucks (USD195+), although he didnt put Adsense on rajawang.com.

He does not reveal the other 4 blog URLs.

Progression of income:

July 2007: about RM1,200 (mostly from Adsense @ USD267+)
August 2007: about RM1,300 (mostly from Adsense @ USD348+)
September 2007: about RM2,200 (mostly from Adsense @ USD612+)

How did he do it? In his own words: “through hard work and discipline.”

He started blogging in 2005.

He’s targeting USD1,000 per month by the end of the year. Obviously he’s right on track.

Currently he’s working full time as a VB programmer at a private company in Sabah, with an objective of going fulltime living off the internet by the end of 2008.

All the best!

USD5,628 which includes:

- Nuffnang: RM2,000+
- TextLinkAds: USD694 + USD125.
- ReviewMe - USD456
- Kontera - USD103

Daily average: USD187

And she did it even after not doing anything for 1 week - she went on holiday and changed servers in that month.

Majority of income are from paid posts.

What’s even more amazing is that she makes a lot of passive income from Kontera, Adsense (amount not revealed), TextLinkAds and LinkAds (of Linkworth), meaning income generated every month without having to do anything.

Even if she’s not writing any paid posts, which is her main source of income, she can easily make about RM6,000 per month: without working on anything!

Source

By any standards, an amazing rags to riches life story - so much so that I’ve ordered his autobiography.

Consider these:
- has only a limited education background.
- he did not speak English, converses only in Hokkien and some Malay.
- he had no knowledge in engineering
- came to Malaysia (then Malaya) at 19, in February 1937 from China carrying a suitcase and some money in his pocket.
- he started out working as a trainee carpenter under his uncle
- later he become a building sub-contractor; helping to build a 2-storey school soon after.
- during Japanese occupation he planted vegetables, did petty trading, dealed in scrap metal and hardware.
- after the Japanese left, he got involved in second-hand machinery trading: made good profits.
- after that he was into iron mining and tin mining.
- 1950: set up Kien Huat Private Limited, a construction company: still stands today. This company became his platform to bigger jobs.
- 27 years after his arrival in Malaya, in 1964, he was working on a hydro project and as he gazed towards what is now Genting Highlands, he dreamed of building a resort up on the hills of Genting Sempah and Gunung Ulu Kali to rival Cameron Highlands. These areas were then relatively unheard of.
- he was already well off financially at that time, but still pursued his big dream. He put everything he had into that dream, selling off his assets even as his friends warned him to drop the idea
- at the worksite, he was the labourer, project manager and engineer all in one. He was also the trouble-shooter, doing all kinds of work and tackling all kinds of problems.
- he had close brushes with death 6 times during the construction, due to falling trees, driving mishaps and a landslide.
- he spent 7 years developing Genting. Failing to get others to invest in the project, he invested all his money in the project without getting any returns in the 7 years it took to build.
- he managed to build the access road towards the summit in three years when it was estimated to take fifteen years.
- while working on Genting, he had to work on another big project in Kelantan. He had to shuttle between Kuala Lumpur and Kelantan and he worked 7 days a week.
- he was almost bankrupt at one stage.
- the Genting project was completed in January 1971, but prior to officially commencing business, Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding areas were hit by the worst rainstorms in a century, the road to Genting was closed by landslides at 180 locations, the damaged sections took four months to repair. Genting finally opened its door for business on 8 May 1971.
- against all odds, he managed to get a license to operate a casino, still the only licensed casino in the country
- Genting Highlands is one of the most successful casino resorts in the world and is one of the primary tourist attractions in Malaysia.
- by the end of his life about 70 years after first arriving in Malaya, he was among the top 200 richest people in the world, with a net worth of USD4.2 billion in 2006. His company is Malaysia’s eighth-largest listed company, with interests in gaming, hotels and cruise lines from the U.K. to Hong Kong.

Source
various internet sources

I first wrote about Timothy Tiah about a year ago.

In The Star yesterday, Tim, 24 was featured in an article entitled “Tiah turns blogging into business venture”

Summary:
- Nuffnang has set up a branch in Singapore early this year
- Tim comes from a family of businessmen active in investment banking
- his family was very supportive of his decision to set up Nuffnang. In fact, his parents are his shareholders!
- Tim said: “there are about 100,000 bloggers in Malaysia. About 3,500 bloggers have registered with Nuffnang. In the next 12 months, we hope to have at least 20,000 members.”
- The article just said “hard work and setting goals have paid off handsomely for Tim,” but did not reveal how much he has made so far.
- Tim said “I have to force my colleagues to leave the office as they refused to, even after office hours.”
- Nuffnang has regular “criticism sessions”, where they do nothing but criticise. Also, they have regular movie and ice-cream sessions.

Source
The Star