So you are looking to make a little extra money. Here’s a list of businesses you can start quickly and easily with just a cardboard sign.

1. Description of Museum Experience – Museums can be expensive and often require a lot of time to go through, by simply setting up a spot outside of a popular museum, you can charge far less than the regular admission and just give a brief description of the museum going experience. A lot of people will pay for this service as they will save both money and time by not actually going to the museum themselves. (more…)

One of the  biggest problems with social networks is social marketing. If you happen to be a part of a social network online, there is a good chance that you are being marketed to by someone that either has privy to your information or worse yet, someone close to you trying to push their goods on you. Marketers have this idea that if they can get close to you through your social network it will be a lot easier to sell you on what ever crap they want to sell you. (more…)

Sunday, Portland was fortunate to have some decent weather although some would say it might be a little hot others would say it was much needed and a great day to join about 75,000 other people to listen to Barack Obama speak on the waterfront.
My plan initially was to go down there wait in line and see him speak. After a bit of reality kicked in I decided that it would be best to stay home mainly for 2 reasons. First, I hate waiting in line and second I don’t particularly like large crowds either. Rebecca changed my mind with a phone call at about 2:00 telling me about some massive lines and about the people selling all sorts of stuff from Obama shirts to frozen goods.
I didn’t really want to miss out on this opportunity and I wanted a good excuse to leave the house. The first step was to borrow a cooler. My roommate who was out of town over the weekend just so happened to leave one out for me, I took the liberty of using it. The next step was a trip to my favorite store Fred Meyer. The 2 for $3 sale on popsicles was pretty good and I was fortunate this day there were still about 5 bags of those left and a handful of other cheap frozen treats. I spent about $13 on frozen goods to sell and $1.29 on a bag of ice for the cooler. I had 114 popsicles in my cooler and my plan was to try to get a buck a piece for them.
I suppose part of the cost was the $1.75 for the bus there and the $1.75 for the bus back so all together I spent $17.79 on this venture.

So packed with a backpack cooler, I hit the waterfront. After a scope of the crowds and area, I found a nice bench in the shade where I sat and said the word “popsicles” to passers by. I didn’t want to be too exposed as I’m not totally sure what the laws are on selling stuff out of a cooler backpack. I was asking $1 each for them although if people didn’t have the money or if it was someone that was less fortunate or seemed nice or was some cute kid or just looked like they needed a frozen goody, I would just give them one. I came home and had a grand total of $28.50 from sales. $28.50 – $17.79 = $10.71. That’s not too bad for 3 hours worth of work. I probably gave away about as many popsicles as I sold and I probably ate about 7 or 8 myself.

It was great to be that close to the Obama energy, I even caught a brief glimpse of him as he left the stage.

I learned a lot from this little experiment. I think next time I might just give out popsicles to promote this site.

It’s late and I could write a bunch more about this stuff although. I think I should go to bed for now.

My fellow Oregon voters, don’t forget to drop off your ballot today before 8:00PM!

Vote.

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.

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.

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.

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.