Hugh Hollowell

If you think about it, all progress on your blog is a function of you taking initiative and going out seeking opportunities instead of sitting at home waiting for them. Go For Broke @ Performancing.com

This is true of everything in life, not just blogging. 

About a month ago, I decided to get serious about learning to how to make money with affiliate marketing. I mean, I had made a dollar or two off of Amazon and the like, but I was not having any success breaking through.

I have been reading a few books, scouring the interwebs for articles, trawling the forums… learned a lot, but I just could not seem to put it all together. Then yesterday, for the first time, I understood. I found a step by step action plan that made sense, that would not cost me a fortune, that I could implement within minutes, that I could start doing right now. Let me explain:

A friend recommended a book about making money on Craigslist. She said that this guy uses Craigslist to drive traffic and make money and that it was worth a read. Honestly I was about to tune her out when she mentioned that he did a lot of it with affiliate programs and that was why she was recommending it to me.

Long story short; I bought the eBook, read through it in about an hour. He goes into detail on about 8 ways to make money using Craigslist; combining it with affiliate programs, using it to build your list, how to drive large amounts of traffic to your website and others. I was skeptical, but decided to try just one of them (the simplest, naturally) and see what happened. That was at 8:00 pm last night; this morning I am $37 dollars richer as a result. And that was one technique, applied in a half-assed fashion, just as a test.

Maybe you want to know how to make money in affiliate marketing, maybe you need to build a mailing list of buyers, heck, maybe you just need some extra money. In any event, I highly recommend you check out The Craigslist Profits Guide. It only costs $17 (He claims he will raise the price later, but I do not know if that is just a marketing gimmick; I will say it would have been worth it at twice the price).

The strategies he tells you about are simple, straightforward and not “spammy”; most of them cost nothing at all to implement. This is NOT some huge text filled with fluff; rather, it is about 45 pages of pure how-to information.

I have read about 40 eBooks this year and this is the first one I have ever recommended to my readers; I feel that strongly about it. As I said, it only costs $17 (less than I spent on my last meal at a restaurant) and is a pure bargain at that price.

He has a page set up with more information, a copy of the table of contents and so on, along with gobs of testimonials. Click here to read more about it and get your copy today!

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars….Jack Kerouac

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. – Thomas Mann

As you can tell from the sidebar, my most popular post ever is 5 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me. I cranked that one out in early summer of 2007, and honestly, I did not plan for it to be some great post; I just sort of threw it out there. It is six times more popular than my next most popular post, Are you Selling What Your Customer Wants To Buy?.

That being said, it amazes me that people either love it or hate it. The emails and comments I have gotten over that post either lean toward telling me I am full of it, or telling me that they love it and wish they had heard it sooner.

The theory behind those 5 things is a guiding force in my life, however, and I thought I would expound on it and perhaps they will make a bit more sense.

For all the talk about the law of attraction and the power of positive thinking, I also believe in the power of negative thinking, or put another way, the assumption of a negative outcome. Let me explain:

Most of the things you attempt, will fail. If you are a salesperson, most of the people you call on will turn you down. If you are looking for a mate, most of the people you go out with will not work out. If you are learning a new skill, you will mess up a lot on your way to mastery.

Now, instinctively, we all know this. However, we all assume the new job will work out, that the marriage will work, that everything will work out. The moment that happens, you give up options. I believe that you are free to the extent you have options.

Behind those 5 points is the belief that most things will not work out, so you need to keep your options open. You need to strive to have as many deals, as many promotions, as many options open as possible. You need to assume on the front end the worse possible outcome, because, more than likely, that is what will happen.

To believe anything else is to ignore history, to ignore what you have experienced in your own life and what you have observed. To ignore all of that seems, to me anyway, irrational.

I owe much of this philosophy, believe it or not, to Dale Carnegie. In his book How To Stop Worrying And Start Living, he said if you imagine the worst possible outcome to a situation often you will see it really just is not that bad. It might not be desirable, but it is usually something from which you can recover. I went one step further and decided to assume that the worst case would happen and plan for it. By doing this, I removed it’s power over me and the fear of being tied to the outcome.

Now, this does NOT make me a pessimist. To the contrary, I am perhaps the most optimistic person I know. I am able to be an optimist, however, because of my assumption on the front end that things could not work out and I have taken that into consideration in my planning. I know that because most things will not work out, I need to plan for that from the very beginning.

Now, I know this is not very warm and fuzzy cheery thought stuff; if you want that, you are at the wrong blog. You should go back to the nursery and eat your cookies and milk; you will be much happier.

If, however, you are about taking control of your life, taking charge of your situation and deciding your own destiny, then you should really give the power of negative thinking a try. You might just be surprised.

My friend T has a 12 year old daughter, K, whose art class participated this weekend in GroundSpark, which is a small part of Raleigh’s SparkCon. Groundspark was a sidewalk painting contest, where about 100 teams drew sidewalk art for cash and prizes.

The weather was nice and breezy, but being out on the street for hours at a time is hot, no matter how you cut it. One of K’s team mates had to go home early due to heat complications, but the team managed to rally forward.

As you can see, K managed to deal with the heat.

K and company, around their entry.

They managed to score an honorable mention in the middle school category. After that, they were not fit to talk to.

As you can see below, there were tons of entrants, and it went from Friday afternoon till Saturday night at 7:30, when they announced the winners and we all fell into the car, exhausted.

Along with the sidewalk art, there was music:

Taggers (Note to my Mom: That means graffiti artists)

as well as break dancers and other distractions (your intrepid photo taker neglected to garner any photographs of the break dancers.)

Here are some pics of some of the other entrants (just click on them to see larger images):

Other than K’s, though, this one was my favorite.

You can see the rest of the pics I took at Groundspark in this flickr album.

Fellow blogger and all around good guy Steve has a post on his blog from his wife, Christine who is an online bookseller. She sells new and remaindered books but is on track to gross $120,000 this year. The post has some great pictures of her workspace and shipping area ( I love seeing other peoples work space!). She blogged about her business before and promises to again. If you would, leave a comment or two over there so she knows we want more articles like this.

On my newest blog, Small Business Owner Insights, I talk about a free site to compare shipping options and print postage.

My favorite blogger Wendy at eMomsatHome has added a new blog to her portfolio about eBay selling for work at home Moms and Dads. It is authored by Megan Jordan of Velveteen Mind fame. I highly recommend you subscribe.

Over on The Politically Incorrect Entrepreneur, I am writing an ongoing series about how traditional businesses can use eBay… might be worth a look.

Also, a note of thanks to all of you who subscribe to book-links; as you can see from the little button on the right, we are hovering just under 100 subscribers. You can subscribe by email (just put your email address in that form and hit subscribe me and follow the directions) or by RSS. I would really like us to break 100 soon..

 A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult (Proverbs 12:16).

For my parent’s generation, Walter Cronkite represented the voice of truth; for me, it was Mr. Rogers.

I always liked him, how his steady, even paced voice calmed you and led you to believe everything would be OK; how his ritual of changing shoes and putting on a sweater indicated his shedding the strictures of the outside world and entering a world of his own creation. He created a world where things made sense to him; a world where right won, evil was punished; a world where you could feed the fish, take a tour of a candy factory, talk to a king and see a talking owl all in the same day.

Today, a friend recommended I watch this video of a very young Mr. Rogers testifying before the US Senate in 1969 on behalf of the newly formed PBS, who was trying to secure a grant of $20 million dollars.

The thing to notice here is the body language of the 2 main players; Mr. Rogers and John Pastore, a Senator from Rhode Island who had a reputation as a real tough guy. Watch how the sequance starts off confrontational, then how Mr. Rogers wins him over with the sheer power of his authenticity.

The clip is about 6 minutes, you can watch it here.

I miss Mr. Rogers.

NOTE: This is article 2 of 3.
6 Reasons Your Business Should Sell on eBay (part 1)

In a previous post, I mentioned six reasons you should have a strategy for using eBay to build your business. Today, I take the first three reasons and expand on them. After my next post, where I expand on the last three, I will post a list of resources for eBay sellers. I also highly recommend you check out Meagan’s new eBay blog put out by the folks at emomsathome.

To recap, the six reasons for having an eBay strategy are:

1. Cash Flow
2. Velocity of Inventory
3. Search Domination
4. Credibility Transfer
5. Expanded Reach
6. Virtually Free Sales Leads

Cash Flow

When you first think about using eBay in your business, one of the first thoughts is generating cash flow. I mean, really, there are few places in the world where you can put an item up for sale on Sunday and have money in your account on the following Monday. Done properly, eBay can allow you to offer your goods and services to a wide audience and generate near immediate cash.

There are several ways to use eBay to increase your immediate cash flow. For example, instead of selling your end of life models or customer returns to a liquidator, you could sell them on eBay. Sears does this, as does Olympus Camera and many other companies. In fact, many of the liquidators out there that are currently buying your overstock and returns are turning around and selling them on eBay themselves.

Another way you could use eBay to generate cash is if you are in a crunch. I think all of us have had the experience of overbuying, getting overextended or just plain having too much month at the end of the money. Many a small business has been kept afloat by the cash flow that eBay can add to your business.

Velocity of Inventory

Similar to the idea of Velocity of Money, Velocity of Inventory is the idea that the faster you move your inventory, the better off you are. All things being equal, it is often better to turn your inventory more often, even if it is at a lower profit margin. Let’s face it, cash is king and the less cash you have tied up in long term inventory, the better. Sometimes, it is better to have that fast nickel rather than a slow dime.

Search Domination

If you are in business these days, the internet plays a part in your business whether you like it or not. More and more people are ignoring the yellow pages and going straight to Google to find everything from plumbers, bakers and landscape companies. One problem these small businesses have is lack of page rank, lack of incoming links and lack of Google attention. Luckily, Google just loves eBay. I have had auctions on eBay be indexed within 48 hours and they stay up for weeks, sometimes months.

One way a small business could use this effectively would be to run a continuous auction for a gift certificate for their products, goods or services and chalk up the auction fees to marketing. When you create the auction, use strong keywords and a strong linking strategy to direct traffic to your *real* website (more about a linking strategy next time). When people search Google for those keywords, they will come across your auction and can be drawn to your site.

You can also create an “about Me” page that is in essence a one page website. These also get indexed very quickly.

****

Next time, we will cover the remaining three reasons and talk about ways to use eBay to generate more traffic (and business!).

The awesome and exuberant Chris Lowenstein “did” her first fair over the wekend and she tells you all about it with two posts on her blog; First with a colorful metaphor and then with brilliant pictures of her very impressive booth.

Go over to her blog and say hi. It is hard to believe she has been at this less than a year. I remember her tenative questions on my old blog. It does me good to see I did not scare her off!

I tell you, if she does not burn herself out, we will hear big things from this lady.