About me – resume – portfolio – fields of activity

Notes & frequently asked questions

I get often dumb questions like this:
What do you do for a living?
Why did you made these projects?
What is your profession / primary job?
How do you earn money? I do not see any ads! (really dumb question)
Why did you created this website? (question often from Singaporeans surprised by amount of housing information offered without being a real estate agent)

I never had a full-time job. I made a living by working for customers paying me to do various projects (freelancing), but today most of money come from selling completed projects (online store).

I started website in 2009 to show off my works, a portfolio primarily for AutoCAD buildings designed by me after a deep research of Housing in Singapore and other countries. I linked it from freelancing websites hoping to get people hiring me, but I never won any project. Because very few people are interested in someone’s imaginary building designs, I published the housing research too few months later, to share my knowledge and help Singaporeans with free information.

Teoalida is one of the dozens names invented by me at 6 years old, and the name I am known by my real life friends since 12, this is the reason I bought domain name teoalida.com. Nowadays most people come here for specific information that I offer on my website, and less for knowing the author / person behind website or his other projects.

Number of people emailing me was low, but in January 2012 I found live chat software that allowed visitors to talk with me anonymously, give feedback or request projects. The website and my whole life started evolving based on suggestions and project request from people like YOU! By this way I abandoned most of non-paid hobbies to focus on projects paid by customers (projects done before 2012 were voluntarily / personal interest to “show off” to friends, rather than being hired by someone to make them). Website became a MESS of articles and projects that have nothing in common except author.

Making projects on request basis (freelancing) was stressful, especially in architecture where only 10% of people contacting me have paid me and ONLY after seeing (part of) work done, in 90% cases we just wasted hours chatting without success in convincing customer make a deposit before starting actual work (example). Paying customers made me stuck on their projects longer than expected, causing a domino effect of delays for other customers until they hired someone else.

I noticed customers preference to buy completed projects, and data selling turned more successful than architecture (when someone ask something I don’t have, I offer to create database via web scraping, some refused saying “no thanks, I am looking for a database ready available“). Website traffic rose from 200 visitors/day in 2012 to 800 visitors/day in 2014 and I reached my target of $1000/month in 2015 from sales of databases, so I no longer need to create on projects on request basis (unless I can sell to multiple people). I started again doing voluntary projects to increase website audience which indirectly turn in more sales.

Per month the website have ~60,000 visitors, ~600 contact me via live chat (90% of chats I answer in less than 1 minute), few more contact me via email, Hangouts and Skype, ~60 buying something or paying a service, while the rest are thankful for free information offered on website (as 2019, in 2020-2023 figures declined a little). See full statistics.

I don’t put ads on website because estimated earnings from Google AdSense would be $300 for 60,000 visitors, customers may see ads of competitor services, and I will lose sales worth more $ than what I earn from ads.

Can I hire you for a project?

See above traffic figures and imagine how many people battle for my services, I would need to sit at least 48 hours/day at computer if I were to do myself all projects that people request me to do. I can earn more $ doing SEO and marketing to increase sales of existing projects, rather than increasing number of projects.

I am a little man with BIG responsibilities: to provide regular updates for few hundreds companies who purchased databases from me. Consequently I am NOT a freelancer that you can hire to “do a project just for you”. Instead, you can suggest ideas of new projects if you want something that I don’t have already. I do new projects depending by available time and (unless your project can be done in few minutes – example) only if multiple people are interested, and post them on website so anyone interested can make payment and download it in seconds.

You are also welcome if you need 10-minute consultation, having pre-purchase questions about my projects, etc. But if you request an architectural design or anything else that takes hours/days and have NO USE for anyone else than yourself, I won’t spend my personal time helping you, instead I connect you with my partners offering services starting at $10/hour (useful if you need long-term workforce).

Can I work for you?

If you are architect, interior designer, programmer (experienced in data mining), or real estate agent, you are welcome to be my part-time partner and I can pass you leads occasionally.

Some customers suggested me opening a company and have a team ready to do projects without delays. Other customers refused to work with my team and insisted to have project done by myself. Lacking constant flow of customers + difficulties described above) in convincing customers to pay in advance for a project that will be completed in X days (opposite than buying completed projects), is NOT viable to hire full-time staff for each type of service people may ask for.

What is all this mix of stuff on same website?
Are you CAD designer, researcher, database provider, gamer, or…?

I am ALL OF THEM! This is PERSONAL website and my life is very diverse!

Several people suggested making separate websites, one for Singapore housing, one for CAD services, one for database services, etc. But having all them on same website turned helpful, Singapore pages got lots of traffic plus Facebook likes and tweets helped whole website to appear higher in Google, if the services were on a separate website, it would have not getting much traffic and customers.

Some drawings and databases are related to Singapore housing. I also got several collaboration offers from foreign companies who did not visited /design or /database sections directly, they found my website while looking for info about Housing in Singapore or Housing around the World then clicked About me page, saw that I am also in architectural design and data research and contacted me for paid work.

Do you get paid to chat with people? Do you help people for free?

I am NOT employed, affiliated with any government or company, or get paid “to help people”. I am independent, this is my personal website and only YOU can pay, for example if my chat with you helped you to decide to buy a $500,000 property, I appreciate if you can donate to paypal @ teoalida.com whatever sum you like. Example: someone paying $20 for architectural consultation.

Or spread the word on Facebook (especially if you have 2000+ friends or are in a group with 10000+ members, may be more useful for me than donating $20). Try to promote website content and NOT me as person. For example you can post “I found a great website full of information about housing: www.teoalida.com“. DO NOT post “I found a great guy who helped me at homework, go to www.teoalida.com and contact use site owner via his chatbox, he answer any DUMB question in seconds” (in May 2018 during one week I received few dozens strange questions that I could not answer, the fact that most were from United States visiting homepage www.teoalida.com rather than specific subpages, raised suspicion that they were TOLD by someone to “ask Teoalida any questions you have”).

While a short chat consultation is FREE, the research, drawings and database services are NOT FREE. This is how I make a living. If you are NOT PAYING for any service you are advised to not chat too much.