My younger brother who has just ORD'ed from his National Service recently asked me if he should just sign on with the military. I was surprised by his willingness to dedicate his life to a regimental organisation considering the fact that he is so 'bo chup' in nature.

He told me that he is very worried about the living standards in Singapore and concerned that he could not get a high-paying job with only a diploma from Nanyang Polytechnic. Most of his peers were already considering to get an overseas degree to further amplify their chances of getting a good job with big corporations.

Being the good old big brother, I brought him to my place and told him that I was going to introduce him to a goldmine. Upon arriving, he was anxious and kept asking me where and what was this goldmine.

I pointed to my desktop PC and said, "There's the goldmine, bro!"

Like most Singaporeans who are sceptical and cynical about the internet goldmine, he shrugged and said, "Yeah right, this is all you wanted to show me?"

And like most sceptics and cynics who believed that the internet is only good for adult-natured sites and scam artists, I showed him my bank statement and a few cheques that I got from Clickbank.

He made a rough mental calculation and somehow got so ecstatic. You can literally see the light on his face when he shouted, "Whoaaa! This more than $25,000 last month! You No-Good-Big-Brother! How can you keep this all these secrets from me! And I thought all these while you are a book salesman!"

And, that is when my brother started to sit down and listen to every single piece of information I had to say. Of course, it is not easy to completely purify the mind after years of thinking that the Internet is always a dirty place.

Nevertheless, I lend him 200 dollars to start off as his capital. I told him that if he followed exactly my instructions he will generate his returns of investment triple-fold.

Fast forward two weeks later, he came back to my place and told me that he has already made his first sale! He was so excited, logged on to the pc and showed me his account. And the rest, as they say, is simply our family history in the making.

It has already been 3 months now since I introduced my brother to the internet as a goldmine. In fact, I didn't really show him where actually the gold was. I was merely giving him the shovel for him to dig.

Most Singaporeans would rather resort to making ends meet with a decent job, regular and safe income. Putting up with nasty crowds in the morning and evening, with monthly bills accruing from HDB loans to car loans, simply because we are ignorant of how to make money online. From the internet. From the comfort of your desktop PC.

We do not want to be scammed on the Internet but we would rather spend few hundreds every month buying 4D and Toto tickets knowing that the chance of hitting a million is almost as good as one in a million.

Well, if one day some relative or a friend came up to you to introduce the internet goldmine, would you take the chance or simply put them off as a scam?

My younger brother took that chance. He does not need to think about signing-on anymore.