One of my favorite stories is about a fellow who was a Program Director for one of the radio stations I worked at in the ’90′s who made money in his teens simply being a broker.

I guess a broker’s job is easier than digging ditches, but many brokers would probably tell you that it depends on the market that you’re in.  For examply, having to broker automobiles in todays’ market might be harder than digging ditches.

But what David did was put a small ad (not like Don Dupree, ha) in the local paper advertising sod.  That’s right – grass, for your yard.  And people would call asking for prices, and David would convince them that his grass was good and would be delivered to their home.

When David got the order, he simply made another phone call from his bedroom to the local sod farm and had those pallets delivered.  Pretty easy money, I’d say.

And what about me?  What was the easiest way I made money?  Well, it had to do with arbitrage and contextual ads on websites.  There was a day when you could buy ads on Google’s network for 5 cents a click.  Then what you did was point these ads to websites with information AND ads about similar things – but these ads paid you when people clicked – to the tune of $2 a click.

You do the math.  Sending 5 cent clicks to $2 clicks, if your conversion was half-way decent, you could be making a lot of money with a little bit of traffic.

And I did.  Pretty nice.

Another way is simply helping other people with what they’re trying to do.  A consultant.  They pay good for knowledge you have.

One site you might want to check out where you can get paid for offering your services is Guru.com.  There, you can write articles, design, proofread, among other things.  And get paid for it.  Some people make a good living just for doing things they are normally good at.

Let me know how you do or if you’ve found another great way to make money and want to share.

Just in case you’re not familiar with me, let me tell you a little about myself.

For more years than I care to count, I’ve been figuring out marketing strategies for an incredibly diverse set of businesses.  There are dozens of examples and I’ve had a lot more victories than I’ve had defeats.

From this vast experience, I’ve learned and developed both fundamental concepts and specific techniques that you can transfer from one business to another to market just about any product or service.  And what I’d love to do is have some of that experience rub off on you, through these posts.

So first of all, whenever you talk about effective marketing, you have to, in the same breath, bring up goal setting.  Almost everyone I know in marketing or small business foolishly shoot in the dark.  Shooting and hitting a target is hard enough with enough light.  Why make it more difficult?  Write it down – the first step in marketing is to clarify what your outcome is.  I’ve seen a ton of businesses fail because their marketing plans were just too shallow.  For example, if your goal is to attain a certain sales volume and income, you’re building your business on sand instead of stone.

I mean, think about it.  Hitting high sales numbers isn’t that hard if that’s all you want to do.  It gets challenging when you take that objective and try to marry it with other objectives, like a profit margin, a standard of quality for your products, and long-term customer service.

There’s a story of a fellow who built a 500 million dollar company from the ground up in thirty-six months.  He once told someone that “Making the million was the easiest thing I ever did.  Believing it could happen to me was the hard part that took thirty-seven years!”

OK, so we know that making a lot of money is more dependent on your belief than anything else, but something you don’t know about this fellow is that even though he built a half a billion dollar empire, he lost it all even quicker and now, some 16 years later, he’s working his way through legal problems.

And by now you’re probably getting the concept of the the lesson.  Too few interlocking objectives brought the empire down.

Construct an interlocking structure of goals, objectives, and values that will guide your marketing efforts.

We were in one of my very favorite places here in Naples, Florida – the local Costco and after having made a run of the dozens of samples around the store, we got in line to check out with the things we were going to purchase.  Normal line, smiling faces.  That is… until the gal making purchases ahead stopped to find some coupons.

This went on for a minute or so and we simply break into chat when in line, or text, or something productive.  I mean, ya can’t go anywhere – but the fellow ahead of us couldn’t take it anymore.  He turned around and professed, “This happens to me every time I get in line!”

And I couldn’t hold it either – well, almost.  I just wrapped up a brand new study on the Law of Attraction and this was so much fuel for my fire.  I smiled and started to say – “Yes!  That’s because you say that!”

My words trailed off and Adriana poked me, but I wanted him to hear what he was saying.

OK, don’t most of us hear what we are saying?

NO!  Well, we “hear” it, but we don’t understand it.  If we really did, we’d stop saying it.  You know that words, the words we think and say are SO powerful.  I didn’t know how powerful they were – I mean, I’ve written to you many times before on how critical it is to choose your words.  But there are some scientific studies that I researched and have found dramatic information.

What I want you to do today after reading this is to try your hardest to just listen to what you are saying – to others.  And what you are thinking for yourself.  If you have kids, this is a real eye-opener.  But even if you don’t – you’ll catch yourself being negative without even knowing it.

Have you ever done an exercise like this?

Instead of saying, “Don’t put that glass there or it will fall off the counter!”  Say, “Put the glass in the middle of the counter so it will be safe.”

See the difference?

OK.  Try it.  It is HARD!

(Oops!  Shouldn’t have said that!)

I have discovered some GREAT ways for you to change your talk and attract the things in your life that you need and want.   And I’ll share that with you, soon.

Talk later,
Dave

This has become such a growing thing on the Internet and we’ve been using it with our groups here in Naples, that I’m surprised there aren’t more people and groups using this for distributing information or simply rallying the troups.  And what I’m talking about is a nifty technology called live streaming video.

Did you know that almost all of the companies providing this service are doing it for free?

It’s true!  And we’ve been using it for over a year with good success.  The two most popular services are Ustream and Justin TV.  Ustream is geared more toward a serious crowd, although if you scan through their channels, you’re sure to find goofy people on there.  In fact, last week I hopped on and on the main page was that fellow that sings “Chocolate Rain” on YouTube.

A handful of churches are using this technology to broadcast their services live, too.  It’s very cool and there are endless applications for it.

So what I challenge you to do is create an account at Ustream and using a webcam and your Internet connection, tell your group and broadcast your conference and updates.  There’s even a feature to record your broadcast, and as I said, it’s all totally free.

Justin TV is more for life casters – people who have a camera on all the time and need that significance.  You can stream there as well, but Ustream is my first choice.

Ustream is at http://www.ustream.tv/ and Justin TV is at http://www.justin.tv/

What do you think of this cool way to do your meetings?