One of my favorite sites is The University Kid (http://www.theuniversitykid.com) – this “kid” has some great idea, but most of all he IS NOT scared to try something new.

Some of us ‘older folks’ are more cautious and only try something that is tried and true – but you know what, you can not make money that way.  Just doesn’t work – you really have to think outside of the box.

My wife and I are trying VERY hard with our son to put the entreprenurial spirit in him – and it is slowly working.  When he is done playing some of his WII games or DS games, rather than leave them in a drawer he asks if we can try and sell them to buy other games…

I actually had commented on one of his posts, and as I was writing the comment I thought it would make a good post – so here is the comment, modified to fit as a post.

If you want to read the post – simply visit the site and read the post http://theuniversitykid.com/whats-up-with-me/

I recently sold some saris on Craigslist for 3x what I paid for them.  One of my family members doubted it could be done, and why would anyone pay so much if they could get it for less.  It comes down to convenience.  I bought something well designed, good material AND I did all the leg work.  The people that bought them didn’t have to do anything.

I purchased them for around $500 and sold them for $1500.  They will be used to decorate walls in their loft.

Over the last few months, I’ve made a lot of spare change doing just this.  Here is an idea for all of you out there – toys.  I recently bought about 50 sets of some toys from Wal-Mart for CHEAP (around $10.00 each) – however what I did not know is that another LARGE toy company discontinued this and cleared them out around $60.00.  I ended up selling all these sets for about $40.00 a set and people were screaming for more!

I frequently check out WM and other retailers for discounts and if it “feels right” will buy them and sell the stuff off.

I am not getting rich doing this, but the more I do it – the more trends I see, and my eye becomes sharper for the right thing to buy.

I bought some Star Wars figures – actually they were keychains.  They were selling retail around $20 and they were being discounted and discontinued for $10.  I picked up about 10 sets and sold them for $50.  I went back to the store about 3 weeks later, and they had cleared them out for $5 – I got 50% of my money back.  People were willing to pay MORE than they were worth retail!  One mans garbage is another mans treasure or something like that…

I’ve also got their store policies on my side; I have 90-days (in most cases) to sell the stuff.  If I can’t – I return it only to find that sometimes the price is halved again and I can now afford to keep it and try one more time.

Also if you can get a dept. store card, go for it!  Many dept. stores will extend to 90-days (if not longer) your return period if you use their card.  There is no risk to you – pay it off in 30-days.  If you can’t sell the stuff – return it, although there is a credit on your account; they will promptly send you a refund cheque if you ask for it.

Thinking out of the box is what helps you get ahead – stay cooped up inside the box and you stagnate and end up a zombie.

Technorati Tags: how to make money on the internet, make money on the internet, selling on craigslist

Here is another interesting way that YOU can make money on the internet.  In a word – interviews.

People love to read about other people, and even more they love to hear HOW they made it RICH!  From the simplest and mundane details, like not eating out every day to more sophisticated strategies on how they made their millions.  So why not oblige?  Best of all – PEOPLE LOVE TO TALK!  Who doesn’t want FREE PROMOTIONS?  Who wouldn’t love to talk about themselves, and drive hundreds of more visitors to their website?

Now the interview can be about anything – but look for experts in your field.  For example, suppose you run a travel blog but have not travelled much – no worries; but you know someone who has travelled extensively.  Why not interview them?  I know people in IT (for some reason, people in IT seem to travel to more exotic locations that people in other industries — mind you, this is just anecdotal as most of my friends are in IT) that have gone to some off-the-cuff locations, and other mainstream locations.

They can give you tons of advice on places to stay, things to do and a general feel for the location you want to travel.

If your blog is about fitness and exercise equipment – why not interview someone at an exercise equipment store and ask them for details on specific pieces of fitness equipment?  Perhaps you can turn it into a series of posts and along each post ensure that you mention specific keywords that are then linked to fitness equipment related affiliate programs.

When I ran (actually, I still do) a fitness equipment comparison site I’d make most of my sales through this manner — and if you can sell 3-5 treadmills (for example) per month you can find yourself making between $100 and $250 PER TREADMILL SOLD!

You see, the possibilities of making money on the internet are endless – all you need is your imagination and a little “UMPH” to put things into action!

Here is an article from James Brausch aka Diego Norte from his website http://www.diegonorte.com:

Creating a new product is easiest when you interview an expert to get their thoughts and insights on what steps to take when doing this venture. After finding an expert to interview, how do you know what questions to ask?

If you don’t feel comfortable asking questions as the interviewer, you can always choose to be the person interviewed. Most people have a certain area of expertise and because of that they find it difficult to explain and/or ask questions that a beginner to a certain craft would understand and be interested in hearing.

The interview process is the most important and the most powerful of all the strategies involved to start a new venture. It’s also one of the most basic ways to get new information. One person supplies the questions. The other person supplies the answers. This question and answer period is much more successful than if the person interviewed simply hit the record button and started lecturing on their selected topic. Asking questions about a topic ensures that you’ll understand the topic more.

If someone has expertise in a certain field, you might try finding someone who has no experience whatsoever in that certain field, or who is simply a professional interviewer. You can then record the interview and you have your first product.

Another strategy is to search the internet for sample interviews on the selected topic. As you read these sample interviews, you can get the idea of which questions to ask and most of the time you can often use the same questions almost verbatim. Since it is a different person you will be interviewing this is okay because you will get different viewpoints and/or answers.

If you need to, find several interviews on your topic and then just select questions that elicited the most interesting answers to you. If you have an interest in the subject matter and the way it is presented, you know other are going to be just as interested as you.

This last strategy is not for the faint of heart and you have to be willing to put yourself “out there.” You can always do what I call a “pre-interview” to gather intelligence. Go to a public place where you know your topic will be discussed and place yourself in the middle of the conversation. Record this interaction of this topic. When you get home replay the recording and listen for any questions. If you happen to hear a lot of questions pick out the more interesting ones and Write them down and use those for your interview questions. These are questions that someone else interested in our topic area asked you in conversation. They are likely questions that others would also be interested in knowing the answer to.

If you do the last, be smart about it as there are laws that apply. The recording needs to be for personal use only. Unless they give specific instruction, no one likes being recorded for public record. In some areas, this is against the law.

If you are really and truly stuck, think of the five “W’s.” Who, what, when, where, why, and how. Leading off with those questions always leads the person into more questions.

Basically, try not to worry so much about how an interview is supposed to be. If you worry to much on how it’s supposed to go you’ll actually be more nervous than if you just act calm and cool about it.

Technorati Tags: affiliate programs, affiliate programs to make money, fitness equipment comparison, interviews, make money on the internet, publish interviews to make money

Here is a short list of 18 Ways That You Can Start Making Money On The Internet.

1. How to Make Money Online with Affiliate Programs and Is Affiliate Marketing Reliable?
2. How to Make Money Online with eBooks
3. How to Make Money Online with Your Own Niche Directory
4. How to Make Money Online Selling Stock Photos
5. How to Make Money Online Interviewing Experts
6. How to Make Money Online with a Classified Advertising Site
7. How to Make Money Online with a Local Real Estate Portal
8. How to Make Money Online Creating Your Own Software
9. How to Make Money Online with Telesminars & Webinars
10. How to Make Money Online with Audio eCourses
11. How to Make Money Online with Video eCourses
12. How to Make Money Online as a Coach or Consultant
13. How to Make Money Online with a Content Site
14. How to Make Money Online as a Virtual Assistant
15. How to Make Money Online a Local Online Mall
16. How to Make Money Online with a Social Networking Site
17. How to Make Money Online Providing Helpdesk Support
18. How to Make Money Online with Your Own Membership Site

This is only a teaser for you.  We will be going into each of these items in more detail over the next few weeks.

Technorati Tags: how to make money, how to make money on the internet, make money on the internet, make money online

Hi,

The gurus do it all the time. They ask YOU to JV with them, for an unbelievable product. They send out subtle hints to a slow – but growing list of internet millionaire wannabes. Everyone figures they will get rich pretty damn quick if they only get in on the ground floor of the newest money making scheme opportunity.

It is like investing in a technology start-up.

Could you imagine what your networth would be today if you or your parents invested in Microsoft when they first went public?

How about a more recent company, like RIM? You know, the guys that develop and manufacture the BlackBerry device? I read that a $100,000 investment would be worth several MILLION dollars today.

I did some research.

RIM was worth $6.75 in December 1997 (about 11 years ago). If you had the stomach to invest, and knew about the company and only plugged $1,000.00 into the company you would have purchased about 148 shares. Had you held onto those shares, today that $1,000 investment would be worth $18,000 today.

It’s not everyday you get these types of opportunities, which leads me to this opportunity.

How many webmaster forums have you seen? How many IM forums have you seen? How many MMO forums have you seen? Most of them are crap. They get taken over by the MLM crowd, and the hard work the owner has put in to weed them out fails and they loose moderators and eventually the MLM crowd takes over because the owner just can’t keep up anymore. Rather than shut the forum down, they let it go…

Well here is a forum whose goal is to help the BLOGGER succeed.

Blog Premiere Buzz In The Blogosphere

The forum is very new:

But there are already 55 active members (yes, I am a member there) and they’ve written 1,188 posts! Do the math, that’s about 21 posts per person!

So why am I comparing an investment in a tech start-up to BlogPremiere? Simple.

Get in on a good thing early in its infancy (BlogPremiere) and the rewards will be that you are recognized as an expert. But that means to contribute to the forum and become an active participant. That doesn’t mean flogging your SIG using one line replies – that’s just plain, old spamming and not a very nice thing to do to Jason, who has put in a lot of work to get BlogPremiere going.

If you haven’t already found BlogPremier, then click on the links, register and participate!

Technorati Tags: blog premiere, blogpremiere, make money on the internet, make money online, mmo, the university kid

Hi,

Have you seen those cheesy ads to buy traffic?  Guaranteed 1,000,000 visitors to your site – cheap, only $1,000 but on sale for you today for $19.95.

Yeah, it would be great if I could get 1,000,000 visitors to my site and hope and pray that someone from that 1,000,000 will buy my product or service.  In fact, this is how spam mail operators work — they know if that they send out billions of e-mails, it will result in sales from tens of thousands of people.

This is like throwing dodo/kaka/poop/whatever on the wall and hoping some sticks (sorry if I’ve offended anyone).

This is NOT the way to grow your business, and if you think it is — then please leave because I won’t be able to offer you any “stupid traffic tricks” to trick visitors to visit your site.

There is a difference between buying traffic and buying ad space.  If you are buying ad space on respected blogs, that are targetted to your market then you have a better chance of getting qualified visitors and then converting them to purchasers of your product or service.

Remember while it’s great to have 5,000 or 10,000 or more people visit your site — if you are not able to convert them, then how else can you monetize on the traffic?  In Internet Marketing and running your own business (whether it is Internet Business or traditional bricks and mortar), your goal is to convert the person visiting into a customer.

Walk into Staples, BestBuy, FutureShop or any other retailer.  How quickly are you left wandering around the store?  You’re not.  As soon as you walk in, you’re “tagged”.  The salesperson “follows” you until you pick-up a product or start peering at something closely.  Then they come and ask “Can I help you with anything”?  Craftier sales people are ready to offer you the warranty or start off with another line that they know will get you talking.  I’ve had sales people tell me the warranty on a product, and if that was important to me.  They hooked me pretty good.

While every retailer knows the value of getting the individual into the door, they know that they now have to convert that visitor into a purchaser.  The lifetime value of some individuals can extend into the tens of thousands of dollars.  If they provide exceptional service and value, they probably have a customer for life.

When you build your business, you need to think the same way.  You need to attract visitors (but NOT by buying 1,000,000 visitors), show them that you are providing them with value and they will come back again, and again.  They will buy your products and services without even thinking about it — because they value you and consider you an authority.

Let me share another story with you.

A friend of mine knows audio/video equipment very well.  He is a “professional” in this area, meaning he knows how to pick the right equipment for the space you want to put it in.  So he offers his services to friends, for free.  As his friends used him, they told others and so on.  My friend uses only one retailer to make purchases, and within that retailer he will only buy from one salesperson because of the quality of service and product.

Do you think the store owner wants to loose that salesperson?  Nope.  Do they want to loose his friends referrals?  Not at all.  They understand the value that these people represent to their business.

Offer your visitors real value, build yourself into an authority and you will do well.  Buy 1,000,000 visitors that are not targetted and you will suffer.

Regards,

Mohamed

Technorati Tags: buying traffic, buying visitors, Internet Business, internet business blog, internet marketing, make money on the internet

Hi,

When I first started this blog, I was in a bit of a dilema.  I mean, how would I write about something new everyday?  I mean, I know full well how to do research and get ideas.  I can sit down and push out articles pretty quick, but how do you write something every day?

Then I started reading other blogs.

I read James Brausch blog regularly for about one year (and still do).  I read many of the blogs you find on my blog roll.  I also read blogs in other market areas, not just internet business.  They all had one thing in common – they wrote about the subject near and dear to them but at the same time they did interject with other relavant or related topics.

So that’s why you see what you do here.  The topics that I write about are relavent to my market focus – namely internet business and internet marketing.

I use my BlackBerry primarily for work, but it is set-up to receive messages from my personal e-mail so I know when James, Aaron, Richard or anyone else that I’ve subscribed to has posted something new to their blog.  In fact, I can click the link and view the site on the phone as well.  It’s great!  So I talked about it, because if I find it a great benefit then so will others.

You see James doing this all the time.  He’s off in Costa Rica talking about his time there, but he interjects relavent material into the post.  The fact that he’s talking about business in Costa Rica is a testament to the products and services he produces.  He’s not only posting about the topic of internet business or internet marketing – but he is telling you a story at the same time.

When you post to your blog, it needs to be natural.  As if you’re speaking to someone.  That’s the nature of the blog.  In the oooold days of static websites, you could get away with “generic” messages for your visitors.  That doesn’t work today.

Think about it like this.  When you go to a presentation, and the presenter is making a point or telling his story — does he look straight ahead?  Or is he looking at you?  Looking at you, right?  He/she knows the power of connecting with the audience.  When you go away from such a presentation, where the presenter involves you just by looking at you — you instantly feel a connection with them and will pay to see their presentations or attend conferences if they are presenting.

That is the power of writing about what you know and speaking to your audience.

Regards,

Mohamed

Technorati Tags: blogging daily, Internet Business, internet business blog, internet marketing, make money on the internet