1. Don’t spend it just keep it.

Twice a week when you would normally take an opportunity to spend money, don’t. Find something else to do that doesn’t require travel which also costs you. Better yet, find someone else who is willing to spend money for products or services you offer in that time frame. Makes those times spending turn into times earning.

2. Buy quality goods and Items.

I tried living in America, and not owning a car. At all. That worked particularly well when I lived in major urban areas like Boston, and in Orange County. At the time I saved significant amounts of money every month, and didn’t contribute in any meaningful way to either global warming, or global pollution. Win. win. win!  When I finally had to buy an automobile, I bought used cars. About a decade ago, I bit the bullet and shopped for a brand new car. The new car with warranties ended up over the long run costing less than half of what the used cars did!

Same experience with this for personal computers.  

3. Set a Goal, Stick to it.

Never been able to save money? Open a new savings account, and whenever you get paid, pay yourself first before you pay any other bills, by putting some of your money (any amount really) into your new savings account you are fulfilling a goal! It doesn’t have to be the same amount every time. When you make more, save more, when you make less, keep saving! The more you do it, the easier it gets.

4. Earn More. Earning more makes it easier to save more…

Do it the easy way.

You just need one promotion at work, or one more opportunity each month to earn a few extra dollars…

Viola, a new opportunity to save has just been created.

5. Join a savings club.

Still not able to save money? Make it a game. A friendly competition. Challenge someone else, or a small group of like-minded people to join a savings club, or start one yourself. Keep track of who’s saving the most, and give out awards and prizes for different savings categories…. i.e. All-time top saver. Who saved the most during the current month… Top saver as a percentage of income… Number #1 repeat contributor to the savings, and so on.

If you are looking to build your own cabin/wilderness retreat in the Great Lakes area, you have just one week, until August 2, 2010, to submit a bid for one of the many wilderness land tracts currently being auctioned by the The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment. Tracts are available forested and unforested, with, and without water access, and some properties include phone, road, and electrical access.

DNRE Land Auctions Webpage

Bidding starts on some properties at $400 per acre…

Use Multimedia…

graphs, charts, audio, illustrations. I’ll be doing more of this in the future! 

Visual

Always include visual elements, photographs, video, whenever possible 

Always post or release your articles on Weekends!

The best readership is available then! The folks that actually get work done are sitting around having coffee and surfing the web!

Originally Published: January, 2010

There are times when you may need to raise some short term capital for your business. Maybe for a new CD or video release, maybe to complete a product launch or to acquire some new tech. Maybe you need to expand your office and add a decorative alcove or a couple new workstations, or maybe you want to publish a book. If you happen to need one to twenty-five thousand dollars (and possibly a bit more) It would be well worth your while to look into:

http://www.kickstarter.com/

Kickstarter is a funding platform designed to help you fund and complete a single well-conceived project. The way it works is this: Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by offering smart, fun, and tangible rewards (like products, benefits, and experiences).  This is ALL-OR-NOTHING FUNDING! Every Kickstarter project must be fully funded before its time expires or no money changes hands. Kickstarter projects are efforts by real people to do something they love, something fun, or at least something of note. These stories unfold through blog posts, pics, and videos as people bring their ideas to life. Take a peek around the site to see what they’re talking about. If you want to start a project here, note you must be willing to Blog about it, for the benefit of other creative people there.

Note also, that this is not about investing, Project Creators keep 100% ownership of their project.

Note also, that this is an invite only process. It’s a great idea, and even if you don’t get an invite, there’s no reason not to implement your own version of this, on your own website. I’m going to add this to my 2010 Resolutions to-do list!

Twitter

I actually joined Twitter about fifteen months or so ago. The first run was a total crash and burn as I quickly gathered a hundred or so followers, followed about two hundred Twitterers (is this actually a word?), that is to say Twitter followers  (Tweeters maybe?) and was then also quickly overwhelmed by spam, pretty much of the worst sort. I ended up unfollowing everyone and withdrawing from the Twitterverse for about six months or so, and spent some time thinking about other more important things as I couldn’t figure out how it could actually be used for business … you know…to improve my income… The bottom line.  Twitter came back to me though.

And I finally figured out how it would fit for my business, how it could improve my business, and other people’s business as well.

In the traditional business world as you are rising up the corporate ladder you cultivate mentors and gatekeepers. People with connections. People who were willing to refer you to other business people, and who would refer other business people to you. Twitter is great for this, and so takes a place in my business portfolio as a valuable resource, for me, for my clients, and customers, and for my Twitter followers.

Here’s how I’m using it, along with a few words on twitter etiquette.

I’m gathering my mentoring group.  It’s a wide diverse range of Tweeters that include writers, bloggers, comedians, artists, actors, musicians, bands, business leaders, entrepreneurs, attorneys, real estate investors, home buyers, home sellers, politicians, information technology specialists, multimedia specialists, a few resellers, some wholesalers, motivational speakers, advertisers, open source software advocates, socialites, media personalities (just a few), advertisers, travel agents, web designers, graphic artists, small business owners, physical, mental, and spiritual health advisors, photographers, game designers, motivational speakers, social media advisors, news reporters (especially business news reporters from around the globe), wholesale discounters, and of course, a few fine purveyors and bloggers of fine coffee and food.

Right now, I have about four hundred and fifty followers and follow just about five hundred other tweeters. I’ll stop actively recruiting followers when I get to a thousand or so. While this is happening, I’ll be doing features on my website and in my community about my Twitter followers and their businesses, and I’ll be answering requests for help or otherwise meeting with other tweeters  as they request, to help them with their business. I’ll be selecting a few to work with as partners, and I’ll be purchasing goods and services from a few as well.

They say that many hands make light work. Let’s see how this works out over the long run.

On Twitter Etiquette

Generally I’ll follow you back, if you follow me. There are a few exceptions though.

Spammers

Number one on my unfollow list is spammers.  If it takes more than one tweet to get your message out, I’m ok with that. If you tweet ten or fifteen tweets in the span of a just a couple minutes a day I’m ok on that as well, as I understand your time is valuable and you may only allocate a few minutes a day for the twitter part of your business.  If you are tweeting something every twelve minutes, you are not going to find a place here.

At over a hundred tweets a day, you are just spamming. Not only that, you are wasting my time sorting through all that spam to connect with the real twitters that care about their businesses and their customers who tweet exceptionally valuable information, but only once or twice a day. You are not allowed to drowned them out with your noisy self!

Sorry… just not going to do a follow on this, no matter how much you want me to. There are a few exceptions of course, a couple of news sites, stock trading, foreign exchange trading and such. There’s no hard and fast rule, however if you are tweeting anything more than once an hour, I’m looking at, and leaning towards, the unfollow button.

Sex Tweets

Another way to get unfollowed real fast, and even blocked,  is to tweet about sexual favors and/or services. I’m married and unavailable as a partner, toy, plaything, casual fling, or paying client. It’s unfortunate the twitter API doesn’t have any easily accessible IP address detection features to determine the IP address of tweets, because it’s the same few sex businesses, probably run by drug dealers and or organized crime organizations that setup new twitter accounts and then follow my Twitter account in order to spam me with unwanted and unneeded sexually oriented offers.

Retweets

Retweets are the most powerful tool in the twitter tool collection for rapidly releasing news, new information, and recommending messages from other Tweeters. A dedicated group of Tweeters can really make an Impact with a news, timely information update, or new product release, and I’m all for that!

It’s also unfortunately the most abused twitter tool with folks repeatedly retweeting simply stupid messages or recommendations, or retweeting headline news. If I want a flock of Parrots, I’ll buy them. Twitter recently added a button that allows you to choose which followers you will receive retweets from. Thanks for that!  I’d prefer keeping that button, however with the default set so that retweets are automatically not broadcast in my timeline unless I specifically choose to add the retweets of a specific tweeter. 

2010 Resolutions

Welcome to 2010, and thanks for visiting! Here’s what I’m looking forward to for this year: An improved business environment courtesy of the recovering economy, a few new opportunities to travel, and a chance to make a difference in some smaller growing businesses. Here’s what is on tap for 2010.

1. To feature one client, one local, and one international business each month on the Marketing World Online website.

2. In 2009 Marketing World Online paid for itself and much more, out of business revenues generated from articles and features on the website. I would like to see it turn into my primary source of steady income.

3. I want to add at least two more web based business clients to my portfolio this year. At the moment I have four. Six by years’ end is the goal with this!

4. Travel once a month for a day or two for business. last year, I didn’t travel at all. That’s a first in almost two decades. Airlines aren’t my favorite way of traveling anymore, However its still important to go out and see how business is faring in other parts of the country.   

5. I want to attend SXSW and at least one Joomla! Conference (Chicago anyone? ) for business learning opportunities! Someone send me an invite!