Free Advice! (tips are gladly accepted)

Posted on May 4, 2008
Filed Under Business, Marketing, Active Products, Announcements, Ideas | Leave a Comment

Free Advice!:I’ll give you free advice and if you like the advice, leave a tip. It’s a pretty simple idea. Check out the sidebar on this site.

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Advice for Tips

if you liked your advice please donate

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Everyone needs advice. I rarely meet people who don’t need some sort of advice from time to time. After a nice chat with my friend Dan who has been giving me fantastic advice for a while now, this idea had it’s start and I had not even realized it yet. He has advised me on numerous occasions to make my time and income separate things. Basically my income should not be reliant on my time. While I’m sleeping I should be able to generate some money. Believe me this is something that I’ve been working on for some time. With advertising, affiliates, virtual products, licensing and more I’m slowly building streams of income that will work for me while I’m sleeping.
Anyhow, Dan suggested to make a little extra money I sign up to be a guide on ChaCha a company that gives answers to things over sms. It’s a pretty interesting model however guides seem to make only $.20/answer. It’s not too bad however, I think my time is worth more than that. I did sign up became a guide, and I even answered some questions too. I found it rather fun to see what people wanted answers to. It got old quick and I wasn’t liking what people would search for.
It hit me then, there should be a service like this that gives advice to people. Then I thought, dang, I could give advice to people. That’s how I got the idea for Free Advice!
The idea is pretty simple, if someone is looking for free advice, they go to my site and see if I’m available (or others) and then they start the chat. If the person getting advice wants to leave a tip for the advice, they are welcome to do so if they please.
By offering this service and giving it a little bit of marketing, I’m thinking that just through donations and my downtime on the computer, I’ll be able to generate a decent stream of income just from sharing some personal experiences and advice on some topics and things.
Initially I plan to roll out this idea slowly and see if there is any market value to it. I will probably invite some friends to assist with giving advice and hopefully the network of advisers will grow and people will come to MoHDI for advice.
The beauty of this idea is that to implement it I really just need google chat, a blog and a paypal account. These are all free things to acquire online and pretty much anyone could implement this idea if they want to.

What advice can I offer?
This is a good question, I’m certainly not going to give decent advice on everything however, I can cover quite a number of subjects. Since there is no charge for the service and it’s based on donations, I’m going to feel pretty confident that if I can’t give great advice on something, I can at least try. I think I’m going to let this idea shape itself into what it will be and make no major decisions as to what topics or areas of advice I will cover. I’m imagining everything from business, relationships, money, time, creative development, the internet and life will be most of the areas of where the advice will roll towards. I kind of feel like a creative powerhouse sometimes and I would hope that this creative mind can help in numerous areas.

So to use this service it’s really simple. Either click the link above or on the side bar if I’m available and if you like the advice leave a donation if you can.
Fun and easy.

Interviewr.net

Posted on April 29, 2008
Filed Under Art, Announcements, Inspiration | 2 Comments

My friend Dan from the other side of the globe had a wonderful idea that is all about the people behind the pictures on flickr. He has launched interviewr.net to dive into details about people on flickr.
I was honored to be the first person interviewed on the site and I thought it might be fun to share this with you. It’s was fun doing the interview and I look forward to seeing more interview on the site. There are a ton of people on flickr that I would just love to learn more about.
I’ll be keeping my eye on the site and hope you will too.

Obama Ball

Posted on April 22, 2008
Filed Under Art, Announcements, Portland | 3 Comments

Tonight I’ll be at AURA.
I’ve got some work in the silent auction as well will be selling some art work off a table. A percentage of the sales goes to the Obama campaign.

So..
If you want to watch as the Pennsylvania primary numbers come in, listen to some music and special guest speakers and eat some great food. Please join me tonight.

There is a minimal donation at the door of $15 to get in but, I think it might be worth it.

MoHDI on Etsy.

Posted on April 17, 2008
Filed Under Art, Marketing | Leave a Comment

I was hesitant about Etsy for a while. But after posting a couple items on to test the waters today, I was pleased to actually get some great exposure in about a half an hour. One person even wrote about me and I got some other nice compliments as well. I think I’ll be posting more stuff on Etsy in the near future.
Perhaps this will turn out to be more than a hundred dollar idea…

Click the image above to check out the new shop…

I would love to hear about your etsy selling experiences if you have any.. I certainly could use advice on actually selling some stuff through there.

Starbucks Ideas

Posted on April 3, 2008
Filed Under Business, Marketing, Ideas | 5 Comments

Check out Starbucks new idea site.

In the past year and a half I’ve had about 5 ideas specifically related to Starbucks. I would consider my ideas for Starbucks much more than Hundred Dollar Ideas and feel that they would fall into the category of Million dollar ideas.
Now Starbucks wants people to just give them ideas. It’s a cheap way to get some of those million dollar ideas from people like me. So you are supposed to go to.. http://mystarbucksidea and give them your ideas. The idea of having a collection of ideas for a site is actually a great idea in itself and allows customers to have some say although the process of actually picking what ideas to implement might be pretty difficult.

Why Starbucks Idea Site is a good idea…

It makes people feel connected
It’s a great way to get great ideas
It creates a sense of community
It’s a good guide for company direction

Why Starbucks Idea Site is a not so good idea…

It’s easy for competitors to implement good ideas from site
Starbucks will get tons of really bad ideas to filter through
The site creates more management and work for people.
Coffee shops should have community in reality not on the web
Too many public negative comments or ideas

Over all they probably should have gone internally with this idea site, allowing employees to make suggestions. They should be rewarding people who give them ideas that will in turn make them millions of dollars. Suggestions like “Lower your Prices” are great however, I see that and I’m reminded of one of the many reasons why I avoid Starbucks when I can.

As far as a business goes, I have nothing against Starbucks, however when it comes to gettingStumptown coffee from a local coffee shop vs. Starbucks massive regime, I’ll go local all the time.

If Starbucks is looking for great ideas to improve their company, they should go to the professional idea people like me.

Camera for sale.

Posted on March 21, 2008
Filed Under Marketing, Announcements | 2 Comments

click the image for a large version.

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/pho/614321304.html

Seriously, somehow my trusty camera that I’ve had for years has broken somehow. And now I’m on the hunt for some sort of digital camera I can use. If you happen to have an extra camera laying around, I would gladly trade some art or something for it. I would totally go buy a new camera or something however, I can’t even afford to pay my phone bill, ride the bus or play pinball right now.

I might send a letter to Canon and see what they say about doing an art trade…. hmmmmm… I’ll keep you posted.

Custom Moleskine Sketchbooks!

Posted on March 21, 2008
Filed Under Business, Art, Announcements, Sketch Book | Leave a Comment

Moleskine

Custom laser engraved Moleskine sketchbooks!
I was just added to the Artist Series at
EngraveYourBook.com
The books are on display till mid April along with a great collection of my work at the Fresh Pot on Hawethorne. Or you can order the customized books right from Engrave your Book.

keep looking »