How to eat for a month on $10
February 8, 2007 | Filed Under Practical tips | Leave a Comment
This guy was really down and out, but he managed to stay positive and had an extraordinary imagination Read over 20 tips here.
Golden Rules for Making Money
August 11, 2006 | Filed Under essence of e-books, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips, Money making as young | 4 Comments
When a book is more than 100 years old the copyright expires. That is why P.T Barnum’s masterpiece from 1880 is freely available for reading online. The book is known under two names: “Art of Money Getting” and “Golden Rules for Making Money.”
I’ve browsed through some of the chapters and this is really good stuff. 126 years old and it is basically the same advice as Donald Trump gave me in his “How to get rich.”
A few good chapters are:
WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT
LEARN SOMETHING USEFUL
READ THE NEWSPAPERS
BE POLITE AND KIND TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
DON’T BLAB
PRESERVE YOUR INTEGRITY
Have a look at it and enjoy the basic, common sense advice that clearly stood the test of time and inspired countless of later “how to get rich” books.
Help a felon find employment
July 27, 2006 | Filed Under learning from failure, Practical tips, hard labour, Money making as young | 2 Comments
Interesting question from a woman who wants her brother in law to find work. He is a felon and is having a hard time getting a job:
”This person is 24 years old and is under medical treatment for bipolar disorder and ADD. He is a high school graduate, but has not pursued any vocational training beyond that (this is not a possibility now, either, due to financial constraints and a need to gain employment ASAP to support himself). Previous jobs have included kitchen work in a restaurant, food prep and counter work in a deli/bagel shop, roofing, and warehouse jobs. He has left these jobs due to either conflict with management/coworkers, or a lack of steady hours.
Now, understandably, he’s having tremendous difficulty lining up any kind of work.”
The ask.metafilter community have lots of interesting answers.
Ranging from the unethical, but extremely practical: “The other option is to put “no” to the felony question on employment applications. IANAL but I am almost certain that this is NOT illegal but is simply a civil matter, providing he’s not applying for something like daycare or some sort of licensed trade. The worst that can happen is they do a background check and tell him to get lost. This won’t work for getting a job at IBM of course, but a lot of businesses don’t run checks, particularly small businesses and quite a few entry-level positions. If he starts small, it may not come up later — and even if it does, he has still scored a nice period of employment.”
To more conventional suggestions about going to college or back to kitchen work. It sure is no easy way to solve this, but the man is 24 years old and is ready to make changes to his life. Read the full post here.
Good to Great: 5 reasons why some beggars earn more money than you
July 26, 2006 | Filed Under money, short term profits, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips, Business Opportunities, Money making as young | 16 Comments
Get something for doing nothing. After walking around in big cities in Europe I have discovered the 5 habits of successful beggars.
1. Keep your voice down
Ask for some change, but do not be loud! Be soft spoken, almost silent. By keeping your voice down you force the unlucky by-passer to stop to hear what you have to say. Once they stop, your chance for success increases!
2. Be “honest”
They know you are not going to use their change to buy a bus-ticket. Try to give them a likable reason to give you money.
This works: ”Yo, I’ve been doing drugs for 2 days and really need to eat something, can you spare some change so I can buy me some bread?”
This fails: “Yo, can you spare some change, I need to take the bus”
In the first example you are undressing your soul in front of them, who can resist giving you money? In the latter example you are just lying and they walk away.
3. Be clean and nicely dressed
All great salesmen try to imitate the prospective buyer. By dressing similar to the ones you beg from you are bridging the gap between you and them. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it is easier to give to your own type! If they meet someone very different from themselves it is easier to just walk away.
4. Remember a sucker
If someone gives you money you better remember their face. Then you need to acknowledge them every day you see them by greeting them with “Good Morning Sir!”, “Lovely day, eh?” This will remind them about the day they gave you money, and they know you hope that they will give you more. It is painful to walk away from you after you have been nice to them by remembering their face. Two things happen, either they walk another way to work, or they will give you money to ease the tension they feel inside!
5. Learn to love rejection
95% will not give you money. Love it! You get the opportunity to show how good and clever you are. Shout after them “Have a nice day!”, “Thank you, bye”, “No problem, thank you very much Miss”, “Enjoy the rest of your day Sir!”
The result is that they will think: “Oh.. he was pretty nice.. maybe next time..”
Got more tricks used by beggars? Please feel free to share them.
Money making idea for a waiter with a $170 monthly webhosting bill
July 22, 2006 | Filed Under Entrepreneurship, Practical tips, Business Opportunities | 1 Comment
WaiterRant is probably the best place for inside stories from the restaurant business. He writes exciting and (at least it seems so!) true stories about his life as a waiter in a bistro. If you don’t believe me, just read this piece about “Daddy’s Little Girl.”
Strenghts of the blog:
Really good stories from a real waiter.
We all have a good idea of the restaurant business. We all think we know it. It is a topic that it’s easy for people to relate to.
Weaknesses and threats
The stories he writes are really looooong… it is well written, but it’s a bit tiring to read in front of the screen. People generally like quick stuff.
The blog is really popular and the dedicated server costs $170 a month. He now had to ask for donations to avoid losing money on his blog.
The opportunity
I thought of this when I was thinking of what books to bring for my beach holiday this year. Last year I read “Hotel Babylon” about the life on a luxury hotel in London. This year I wished I had a book of some of the Waiter’s best stories.
Why not look into self-publishing your own book? It seems like an ideal candidate. Successful blog, thousand of readers. Publish a “best of collection”, the initial spark of interest generated from your blog makes the title fly up the chart at Amazon and then the wheels start turning.. By searching in Google for “how to publish your own book” and “publish my own book” I found several companies specializing in it. You can print a paperback version from a few $ if you buy in bulk.
With such a talent for writing it would be very nice to see him cash in on it. What do you think about this idea? Does it have potential? Or is it better to focus on the PayPal tip jar?
Hmm.. this publishing thing? Here are some blogosphere links about publishing books:
An literary agent in stilettos throw in some advice for “Publish On Demand” people.
Bookseller chick explains how a book ends up in her book store
Big important person complains about peole who can not accept their novel being rejected
The traffic volatility of a start-up blog
July 20, 2006 | Filed Under rich on eBay, learning from failure, Start ups, How to create a successful blog, Practical tips | 1 Comment
This is the stats over unique visitors to this blog the last month. The big spikes are due to the post about the “from mailroom clerk to CEO game from 1982.” This post was submitted by myself to fark, reddit, digg, shoutwire, joystiq and other PR & buzz sites and received some attention. If you think you have a post that will be of interest to such sites I see no problem in submitting them.
Not all hot tips from you to other sites are successfull though. My idea about selling 100 signed copies of a celebrity author’s book on eBay did not catch on. I sent some e-mails around promoting it, but no success. It was criticized for it’s unethical flavour and blatant use of child labour. It was so bad that it did not even generate a single spark of controversy.
Get rich mumbo jumbo?
July 19, 2006 | Filed Under money, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips, hard labour, Money making as young | Leave a Comment
Get rich quick schemes is one thing, to think yourself rich is another. There are countless variations out there. The owner of the blog Towards Better Life has recently jumped on a new idea:
“Recently I have come a cross four very important words: Easy, Relax, Healthy, Positive. I encounter these words in Steve Pavlina is Million Dollar Experiment. I have participate in this experiment and I’m currently holding the following intention:
In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into my life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention.”
I wish him all the success, but to be frank, to me, this sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo. But that is just me. I would rather read Golden Rules for Making Money (P. T. Barnum 1880) one more time. It contains genuine no bullshit advice for any aspiring entrepreneur.
Opportunity for bloggers with a long term horizon, short term profits suicides can sign up at PayPerPost
July 18, 2006 | Filed Under short term profits, money, Start ups, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips | 3 Comments
Yaro Starak is recruiting two bloggers for his Small Business Branding blog. The recruits will not get paid anything to start with, but if they prove their value he is willing to share the profits of the blog with them. The blog has a page rank of 6 and good authority within its niche. By taking the job Yaro tempts:
“Your public profile will be enhanced as will your personal brand, being exposed to the nearly 1000 daily readers who come to SmallBusinessBranding.com through the web and RSS readers. If our relationship proves successful SmallBusinessBranding.com will be re-branded to include your photographs, biographical and contact details.”
This is an opportunity to lay down some work now and milk the profits later. Do you have a brain? Do you want to raise your profile and know what to do with your increased reputation afterwards? Then go ahead and do it. The other way around is to make a few dollars short term and kill your own brand on the way by working for Pay Per Post.
Blogosphere links:
First impressions of Pay Per Post
Personal finance blogger considers making the suicide
My blog is now available through bloglines and all these other RSS things. Sign up via Feedburner and become the 2nd person to subscribe.
Peer 2 peer banking - Would you lend cash to a stranger?
July 9, 2006 | Filed Under peer 2 peer banking, Practical tips | 1 Comment
Interesting article about p2p banking. The two big players are currently zopa.com and prosper.com.
It removes the middle man and gives both lenders and borrowers better deals. The only drawback is the maximum amount of £25 000, but this is supposed to be extended in the near future.
I have some money I am gonna use for buying a holiday home, so I withdrew it from the stock market a few weeks ago. These services seem like an ideal place to stash it away for 3-9 months.
Other blog posts about P2P banking:
Zopa raises $5 million to match Prosper
Review of Prosper + Review of Zopa
Zopa welcomes powerlenders: For the first time at Zopa, it is possible to lend more than £25,000
Make some money on Sunday’s World Cup final
July 6, 2006 | Filed Under Start ups, rich on eBay, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips, Business Opportunities, Money making as young | Leave a Comment
I surf around the money making sites of the blogosphere and found this little piece of gold: sell shirts that you make at a CafePress store on eBay.
Sunday is world cup final. Italy - France. Using this scheme you can make some money on Sunday. After the match is over you can sell shirts with the following slogans, sold on eBay (depending on the match incidents):
Italy - France: 2-1
Thierre Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo: The jokes of the Premiership.
It was not offside!
I am sure you can come up with your own suggestions.
Money making idea: Authors sign their books, you sell them on eBay for a nasty profit
July 3, 2006 | Filed Under rich on eBay, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips, Business Opportunities | 2 Comments
We know that books that famous people have signed fetch good prices on eBay. They know that if you come to their book signing with more than 2-3 books, something fishy is going on and they will be unwilling to sign it. Or, a more common hurdle, the book shop are restricting the amount of books you can buy. For example: “Max 2 signed copies per person.”
Here are the 4 steps you need to go through to cash in on the demand for signed books.
Step 1: A celebrity is visiting
Read the local papers and ask the local book stores about upcoming “book signing events.” When a famous writer/person is coming to town to sign copies of his/her latest book or autobiography, you better be prepared.
Step 2: Buy 100 copies of the book
Buy the book in advance through various stores in your community or online.
Step 3: Recruit 100 teenagers/children
Oh, the delight of using child labour. Recruit young people through your local school or sports club. Give them one copy each and tell them to go to the local shopping mall at the time of the book signing to get it signed.
Agree to give them $10 when they return to you with the book signed.
Step 4: Cash in
Now is the time to go to eBay and start selling the product. If you indeed did this with 100 books it will be wise to not put everything up for sale at the same time, slowly milk the cow to limit supply.
This scheme should have the potential to give you several 100% ROI. I have only tested it myself on a limited scale(4 books!). Add your comments, I am happy to receive input from others on the feasibility of the idea.
How to get rich with credit card debt
July 2, 2006 | Filed Under credit cards, You've gone to the finest schools allright, Start ups, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips | 10 Comments
I attended a class of “Entrepreneurship” a few years ago. The lecturer mentioned some untraditional ways of funding your start-up. When traditional ways of acquiring capital like bank loans, angel investors or venture capital failed there are always opportunities for the creative entrepreneur. He told us that he knew a few entrepreneurs that started their companies with the help of credit card debt.
Examples of credit card money making ideas you can use straight away
Get started in the world of credit card debt start ups with these examples:
Idea #1: Selling on E-bay
Buy cheap goods from China. Pay with your credit card. Get the goods. Unload it on eBay. Pay credit card debt. Repeat.
Idea #2: Early bird, buy airline tickets from low cost airlines
There are a few times every year when low cost airlines release new routes and tickets. Subscribe to their e-mail lists and you will get informed when this is happening. Then you pull out your card, buy all the cheap tickets available. You wait a few weeks or months and start selling them with a healthy profit. A ticket that costs £10/$18 6 months in advance may cost £50/$90 a few weeks before departure. Your price must be a bit below the cost of buying it directly from the airline in order to attract buyers to “unknown you” instead of big safe low cost airline. It is a matter of trust, but price can compensate.
The window of opportunity for this idea is closing fast due to increasingly hefty fees from airlines for changing the names on the tickets.
Word of warning: Only use credit cards to buy money making assets
If you are using credit cards you are likely to get an annual interest on the debt of 15-25%. It is essential to buy money making assets that have the potential to create a profit, so that you can pay back your debt as fast as possible. Keep the fancy cars or computers to a minimum.
The essence of e-books: “How to get rich on eBay”
July 2, 2006 | Filed Under rich on eBay, essence of e-books, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips | 1 Comment
After buying and reading 2 “get rich on eBay” e-books I am a bit disappointed. In order to save you money and time, I have made an executive summary.
Save $10-75 by getting the e-book insight for free. Here’s the information you will be getting from “rich on eBay e-books:”
Rich on eBay chapter 1: Mental prepareness crap + money
A few pages are dedicated to being prepared to get started and having money to invest.
Rich on eBay chapter 2: The links
You will get links to portals where Chinese manufacturers advertise their products. Two sites that are likely to be featured are http://www.alibaba.com/ and http://www.globalsources.com/ .
Rich on eBay chapter 3: How to interact with manufacturers
A few examples of how to write an e-mail asking for price of the products. Remember to finish off by “Yours Sincerely”
Rich on eBay chapter 4: How to sell your products
If you are honest you will get good feedback ratings on e-bay. Feedback ratings secures trust between seller and buyer.
What you will not get by reading a rich on eBay book:
No one will tell you which products to sell. All the information is about the little bits surrounding the sale. You got to come up with the idea of a good product by yourself.
Boring politically correct people
June 29, 2006 | Filed Under You've gone to the finest schools allright, Practical tips | Leave a Comment
The job interview. Usually no way to get filthy rich, but we all have experienced it.
I want to add something about “political correctness.” In some jobs (marketing for example) you may get questions where it is tempting to give the boring political correct answer. If you have strong opinions on a matter I would not like to keep those opinions down. Explain your position, even if you may be a minority.
Honest people stand out, there is enough of bland people out there.
Other interesting posts to look at:
Excellent blog post about non bullshit ways to impress at the interview
A service to a lady: How to market a blog
June 25, 2006 | Filed Under How to create a successful blog, Practical tips | Leave a Comment
A lady with a grumpy old husband e-mailed me, she asked me how she could get started with this blogging thing. I answered her by sending her some links.
Make money on commuting
June 23, 2006 | Filed Under Start ups, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips, Business Opportunities | 1 Comment
A guy earns $100 - $300 a day by helping people to drive in the car commuter lane. The best part of it is that he doubles the price if there has been an accident and the traffic is particular bad that day.
Capitalism at its finest.
Business idea from Dane Morgan: Songversations
June 22, 2006 | Filed Under Start ups, Entrepreneurship, Practical tips, Business Opportunities | Leave a Comment
My comment on the opportunity: Pretty nice idea, I think it could catch on and go viral. Just wondering if there is an open source script already that you can use or if you need to develop the solution from scratch?
A downside of the idea is that the site will probably generate low value adsense ads so you need other ways like eg. Allposter to monetize it.
Art of the deal: Buying a house - The negotiation process
June 20, 2006 | Filed Under Art of the Deal, Practical tips | Leave a Comment
2million has bought a house and has been kind enough to share the details of the negotiation process with us. I really enjoyed the diplomatic way this deal went down.
The dark side of cheap labour part 3 - Escrow is your friend
June 20, 2006 | Filed Under Services like Scriptlance and Getafreelancer, Outsourcing, Practical tips | 1 Comment
When getting your projects done through online marketplaces it is essential for you to make use of the Escrow function. What is escrow?
“The holding of funds, documents, securities, or other property by an impartial third party for the other two participants in a business transaction. When the transaction is completed, the escrow agent releases the entrusted property.” - American Trust definition.
By using escrow you do not need to send money until the project is completed to your satisfaction. I am a friendly chap, I like to trust people, but in business transactions there are so many things that can go wrong.
The script from hell
I had a web script assignment that got posted to Scriptlance. A programmer from India won the project for $350. He had received good reviews for his previous projects, so I thought he was a good match. Unfortunelately, the script he delivered me was infected with minor and major bugs. Not all bugs were discovered instantly or at the same time so the communication between me and him went back and forth a few times.
After he had made some fixes and I had requested additional bug fixes he told me this :
“I want to complete the payment before do these fixes.”
Time to get tough?
I’ve found it no use to make enemies just for the cause of it. I replied in a friendly manner explaining that: “I do not feel confident paying for a script that does not work.”
Things got sour and after a few days of communication I received this outburst from my programmer:
“On my server NOT problem!
…
I not think that i MUST change my script. Why you not change your host?
I REALLY WONT TO COMPLETE MY PAYMENT OR YOU STEAL MY SCRIPT”
I was getting angry with this but I kept my diplomatic tone: “I am a extremely worried by the language in your emails. Please stop with the accusations and try to be constructive.”
Googled the solution
After this I started to do some Google research and found some links that I sent him to check out.
Voila!
A few days after his last outburst the error was discovered and fixed. The error? The script could simply not handle files with CAPS LOCK extensions like .HTML, .JPG and .GIF. I received a new e-mail with the completed script attached and a more businesslike way of writing e-mails:
“This is fix for uppercase extensions.”
Then I released the $350 in the escrow account.
Anyone have similar experiences with Escrow accounts?
Earlier parts in this series:
The dark side of cheap labour part 1 - Introduction
The dark side of cheap labour part 2 - Dirty tricks
How to hire a worker through Craigslist.org
June 19, 2006 | Filed Under Services like Scriptlance and Getafreelancer, Outsourcing, Practical tips | 4 Comments
Craigslist, the internet heaven of classifieds ranging from prostitutes to rental apartments.
I was most interested in the jobs section.
Free to hire
Yes, I am a cheapo. I was going to hire a part time worker for 5-15 hours a week to do some html work and other basic things. Unfortunelately I discovered that ScriptLance & GetAFreelancer charged you $30-100 to search for employees throught their sites. Then I discovered Craigslist and their “jobs category.” There is no costs to publish a job ad in their system.
Where to post it?
Craigslist is a huge site divided into different cities or areas. Where should I put my job ad? On the New York part of the site? Well, since I am a cheapo and this work was something you could do from anywhere in the world I kind of looked into where my dollars could reach the furthest. I decided to try my luck by posting it in the Web design / HTML job category at the Buenos Aires part of the site.
How to write it?
I wrote an ad with detailed descriptions of the work involved. I also told applicants to attach their CV and the hourly wage they thought they were worth.
Responses?
After 14 days I had received 11 responses to the ad. By judging of what the different applicants wrote in their e-mail, all of them could do the work I offered. When it came to the requirements stated in the ad. I was a bit disappointed.
7 of 11 attached CVs.
5 of 11 mentioned a desired hourly wage in addition to attaching the CV.
It was also a bit surprising to discover that there were North Americans applying for the job even though it was listed on the Buenos Aires part of the site.
How did I choose?
In the end I had plenty of candidates to choose from, so I did it the easy way. The 5 applicants who listed a hourly wage requirement ranged from $5-15. I picked the one who wanted $5 an hour.
Things to do after you have selected your candidate
After I had found my man I replied to all the applicants telling them that the job opening was now filled. I also thanked them for their application.
I think this is the simplest thing in the world to do. Yet, when I was younger and applied for jobs I often did not hear back from the employers.
Update: How to get filthy rich this way?
Well, one thing that comes to mind is start ups. If you are launcing an online business and can use remote employees you can effectively have 10 workers working for you. If everybody is at $5 an hour and works 50 hours a week that gives you monthly wage costs of:
50 hours a week x 4 weeks a month = 200 hours
200 hours x 10 employees = 2000 hours a month.
2000 hours x $5 = $10 000 in monthly wages.
There you go. An easy and affordable way to get an armada of employees to eg, write Adsense content for you.