Ebooks Extraordinaire

This best-selling E-book author and publisher has her migration from Finland to Singapore to thank for her online success today. “During my year-long maternity leave in Finland I was pondering what business I could start in order to work from home. Because everything I came up with felt too risky, I decided to continue my academic career,” explains 37-year-old Virpi Tervonen. Open to seeing what life has to offer, she, her husband and then 10-month-old daughter left Finland and came to Singapore in 2004. Both Virpi and her husband came here to work. “I was keen to explore the world for opportunities and Singapore seemed exotic and different from the US or Europe,” she says.

However, coping with the new culture, language and climate took its toll. “I had just come direct from Finland where I spent one year at home looking after my daughter. Working long hours and getting used to the demands of new work in an environment that was run in a completely different way than I was used to in Scandinavia was all a little bit too much for me to handle,” Virpi reveals. That plus the fact that her daughter was spending all the time with the maid pushed her to quit her job as a senior researcher at the National University of Singapore.

She was inspired to start an Internet Marketing business after reading the book, The One Minute Millionaire by Robert Allen and Mark Victor Hansen. The book describes four ways to become wealthy – go into real estate, start a business, invest in the stock market or do Internet Marketing. Despite the fact that her Internet knowledge only extended to “using Google a few times a week to check stuff”, she decided to go with Internet Marketing as it seemed to demand the least initial capital to invest and smallest risks. “You can work from home and the ways to make money are endless,” she says. Nothing prepared her for the steep learning curve that loomed ahead, which she says is a blessing in disguise. “Had I known what I was getting myself into, I may not have done it.”

Now, sales for her digital book about acupressure for pregnant women gives her five-figures a month on autopilot! In fact, she makes so much money that her husband has quit his job and now stays at home with her. “It took me a little bit more than a year to succeed. That may seem like a long time but compared to the time I took to get my Ph.D. to earn $5,000 a month as a researcher and now, when my income has multiplied and I have my dream lifestyle, one year is nothing,” she asserts.

Find out how she did it in Sleep & Get Rich! Out end of December in all major bookstores (except Borders) and Amazon.com