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.
2. Get Your Directions – Simply set up your chair and sign in a spot where people often are lost. People that get lost are often wealthy business travelers who’d be willing to shell out a buck or two to someone who can pretend to give directions well.
3. Restaurant Reviews – Set up your new business in front of a restaurant. People who are planning on spending money on a meal most likely trust the opinion of a professional holding a cardboard sign.
4. Description of Movies – Movies are expensive. Setting up your new business outside of a movie theater give you access to a nice demographic of movie goers. People will gladly shell out some good money to get a decent description of a movie. For a little extra cash you could even act out a few of your favorite scenes from movies.
5. Random Yes or No – People hate making decisions and like it when others decide for them. People will gladly pay you good money to randomly tell them either yes or no.
6. I’ll watch your shit-  Offer to watch peoples crap as they go into shop. People with expensive bikes will appreciate a professional set of eyes on their wheels, you can also watch peoples dogs and cats as they go shopping, often times pets are not allowed in stores. In crowded shopping situations people with kids and strollers will be glad that you offer such a service that will allow them to quickly get shopping done without the bulk of carrying a stroller or youngster with them.
7. Tell Jokes – For a small fee tell funny jokes, I doubt you will get much repeat business so simply tell the same 2-3 jokes over and over again throughout the day. Before heading out with your cardboard sign look up funny jokes on the internet so you are repeating the most current and funny jokes around.
8. Current News – Offer to give a brief summary of current events.
9. Weather reports-Give people the current weather report.
10. Take My Photo – People paying for a photo with you will most likely think you’re famous or something cause who in their right mind would charge for having their photo taken, other than someone who is famous enough to charge for it.
11. Wireless Password – Find an area where there is a secure wireless network then charge people to get a secret wireless password.
12. Let me name that for you- Set up your new business outside of a pet store or hospital, people will be relieved that they won’t have to spend the mental energy involved coming up with a decent name for their new pet or child.
13. Travel Safety Tips – Set your business up late at night in a sketchy area of town or in a fairly deserted train station. People who might be slightly frightened by their surroundings will be far less frightened once they shell out some money for some safety tips.
14. Start your Business today - with access to some cardboard and a pen,  you could sell your new business pretty easily, by having a stack of business signs you can sell your business to someone looking to buy an already established business. When you find yourself tired of running your business, don’t just toss your business in the garbage, sell it for big money.

This is just a small list of business ideas you can easily start with a piece of cardboard and a sharpie marker. With a little creativity, I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with a concept that is right for you. In just a few minutes you can be your own boss and be well on  your way to making literally hundreds of dollars.

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. The best of the marketers are able to create marketing campaigns that don’t even reach out to you directly but they somehow manage to reach others in your social networks and convince them that they should directly market to you. It’s one thing to create a product that is so good you will gladly endorse it and tell all your friends about it. Personally I probably endorse this little tripod I have more than any other physical product I own. I do this because I love the product. The best marketing is done when you have a fantastic product and people honestly recommend it to others.

Marketing is not about creating a good product however. Marketing really comes down to the selling of what ever crap you can by what ever means you can do it. Since social networks are relatively cheap and easy ways to reach out to a lot of people it’s no wonder that businesses and individuals put so much emphasis on social marketing. Obama 08′ is probably the best social marketing campaign produced to date, Oprah has that book club that does pretty well, imagine being an author that all of a sudden Oprah puts on her book club, that would be amazing. Marketers for corporations often are still struggling with ways to jump on this social networking wagon. It’s way more difficult to be a business or corporation in the social marketing game, for the most part social marketing works when it touches on a personal level although there are some corporations that manage to succeed in their efforts, most fail as they don’t really get it. The best of the social marketers are genuinely honest and create a human connection before trying to push their wares on you. Sure I follow Guy Kawasaki on twitter, have I ever personally given him money or bought any of his products, the answer is no. Same goes for MC Hammer or that cat that I follow on twitter while I think they are interesting to follow, and often have post some great links I don’t really see giving them money anytime soon, for the most part unless a product or service really screams at me, I will generally not be spending my money on anything these social marketers in my social network are promoting. Marketing is a tricky thing if you are a corporation trying to sell a product. If you are a wicked evil corporation like Monsanto, McDonald’s social marketing actually works against you as it’s way more difficult in today’s internet World to hide the truth from the masses. Honesty, truth and direct human connections are core concepts to social networking.

Now that I’ve been rambling on about social networking for a while I want to talk about Non-Social Marketing. My concept for Non-Social marketing is one where people are marketed to in a non social or private space. This might be when you are going to the bathroom, in the shower, shaving, getting dressed, touching yourself or even sleeping. Basically marketers have been so busy trying to do this social marketing thing that they are missing out on a huge opportunity to market to people when they are in their most private of settings. This constant push of marketing has made today’s consumer desensitized to advertising and marketing, marketers inherently will try to change tactics and methods to shock, amaze or trick you into getting whatever they want in front of you. It’s a strange psychological game that is being played. Marketing is a strange ever changing beast. The dose of marketing increases as we become more desensitized to it.  It’s easy to market a good product or to market for a good cause, when it comes to other products or services, this task becomes way more difficult as society and social networks inherently are built in watchdogs to marketing trickery.

With non-social marketing you simply invade a persons personal space with your marketing. Currently this task is rather simple… Allow me to demonstrate.

THE NEXT TIME YOU POOP, THINK OF MoHDI.com

With a simple line of copy, I’ve marketed my personal site to you and there is a good chance the next time you poop, you will be thinking of Millions of Hundred Dollar Ideas. This it perhaps the most straight forward example of non-social marketing. Basically non-social marketing is a pretty simple psychological trick involving planting a trigger response in someone. While conventional marketing works in the same way direct non-social marketing is about having the trigger not kick in until the marketed person can directly focus on your product, service or campaign. While the example above will most likely work pretty well a better approach is to make the person being marketed to generate their own thought about the product or service. Currently I’m working to raise money for a non-profit that helps children which is dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills. So for this particular case it’s better for me to plant a more specific train of thought into persons head.

THE NEXT TIME YOU POOP, THINK OF THE CHILDREN

Now this line of copy is far better marketing in the non-social marketing realm. It plants the trigger response and also invokes follow up thoughts beyond the less specific mohdi.com wording from earlier. The brain naturally will wonder why they are thinking of “MoHDI.com” or of “the children” then ideally will go into a personal question and answer response process as demonstrated in the following possible scenario…

Think of the children.. why? oh.. cause we are helping them.. how can I help?.. donate a few bucks… why should I donate.. oh.. so years from now some illiterate kids aren’t going to beat me up and take my money.. why not donate a few bucks to the cause.. yeah.. I guess it’s really an investment in my future and besides I can write this off on my taxes.

This is just a basic method of non-social marketing. I believe that there are numerous ways to plant non-social marketing triggers in consumers that can be quit simple and can also be very complex and can reach consumers even in their dreams. Next time you hop in the shower, take a poo or have a dream be aware you might be being marketed to whether you like it or not.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

A recent computer problem has been one of a few small hurdles that the MoHDI staff has had to deal with recently. After much strategic thought and planning it has come down to the core tactics of survival in order to allow seeds to grow.

With rent and bills over due, it’s time to figure out how not to lose the place I’m living in and how to manage to keep a roof over the head and food in the tummy long enough for one or more of these pursuits to pay off and for the proper financial guidance that seems so desperately needed from time to time.

Currently my first order of business is to pay rent and bills that will allow me to keep a place to live.
Since rent was due like a couple days ago and crucial utilities can not be shut off, it’s time to take some steps to maintain my non-homeless lifestyle that I have become so comfortable with.

Here is where you can help.

I’m selling my car.
If you know of anyone looking please let me know.

The Car
1986 240 Volvo Sedan, it’s a manual transmission with 161k miles on it.
There are a few dents in it but it’s a good car. It needs new tags and brake pads. The stick is a little loose but once you are used to it it’s fine. I’m asking $1110 but this is negotiable as I need to have sold it like a while ago.
Selling the car will pretty much help MoHDI and staff operate for another month and hopefully be enough time to finish some projects that will actually pay.

If you are not in the market for a car, I’ve got tons of original art for sale.
If you click on the photo you will be taken to my Flickr page and can see some of the pieces I’ve been working on. All of the cabinet cards are priced resonably at $50 each and if you are interested in any other art, I have stacks of both framed and unframed pieces at a variety of prices.

Other Projects move forward
In July of 2007 I started a sketchbook that when finished would be sold to the person who had the best offer for the finished book. Well last week I finished the first in the series for Buy My Sketchbook
While the press releases have yet to be released you can see all pages of the book at buymysketchbook.com
The current best offer is from my Mom and she is offering me $200 plus a nice dinner. I hope with a little bit of exposure on the project I’ll be able to fetch a bit more for the first book in the series. There was after all a ton of time that went into this book.

I’ve already started book two in the series. I hope to get the process down to about a month a book.
Below is a sneek peek at Sketchbook #2 for BuyMySketchbook.com.

Lots more ideas are coming, It’s just hard to get things posted while in survival mode.

I guess it might be time to look for an actual job one of these days. In case you are wondering, my submission to WK for the seeking project they had was either not what they where looking for or perhaps when they asked for my resume, I should have actually sent them it. Either way, I didnt’ get accepted into that program although I still think it would be a fun place to work. Considering my financial situation I’d be willing to work there even if my office had a poor view of the city and I only had one assistant.

I’ve had a boatload of ideas and inventions to post in the past few weeks, I hope to be getting more up on the site once the current situation with money is resolved.

Feel free to comment or contact me if you would be interested in a car, art or a sketchbook.
(my contact info is on the sidebar of this site)

Hundred Dollar Ideas are just Ideas that make a little money.

While I certainly have a favorite presidential candidate right now, I don’t want to force my thoughts or views on anyone and will maintain a strict objectivity to what you are about to read.

The web is playing a huge roll in the primaries right now. As you know all of the candidates have websites and most of them if not all are part of social networks. Perhaps the most interesting of social networks is Flickr.com a website dedicated to photo sharing.

To my surprise not all the republicans had flickr pages although John McCain did have a social thing called “McCainSpace”, to give him credit, he does also have a MySpace page.

So as far as myspace goes…

Barack Obama – 238,798 friends
Hillary Clinton – 169,829 friends
John Edwards – 53,317 freinds

John McCain – 43,237 friends
Mitt Romney - 34,916 friends
Mike Huckabee-32,104 friends
Rudy Giuliani- 10,886 friends

Drew Anderson- 201 friends

If only 18-24 year olds could vote.

Almost every candidate has a MySpace and or FaceBook page. They also had all connected through at least one video sharing site, mainly YouTube.

While some republican candidates did have flickr pages, my interest was really sparked while looking at the democrats on the photo sharing site.
Below you can see the flickr pages for the candidates
Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
John Edwards

Now my main interest is in profiling the candidates based on their social network pages. Basically you can tell a lot about a person by the way they have their sites set up. Since Obama and Clinton are the most interesting to watch of the bunch, I decided to take a closer look at their flickr pages.

The Profiles

Barack Obama’s flickr profile

I look at this profile page and I would like to point out several important things. There is a great profile and picture on Obama’s profile. I notice he must have some money saved up cause he does have a pro account that costs almost $25 for a year.
You will notice he has 895 contacts, that’s pretty good but, I would expect more really. On the right hand side there are some really nice testimonials from a good number of people.

Let’s compare Barack’s profile on flickr to…

Hillary Clinton’s profile on Flickr

Well… She has a photo of herself. She too must have enough money to pay for a pro account. I’m going to assume that whoever helps her with the flickr page doesn’t realize there is a profile section or perhaps they assume that people already know who she is. Since she has zero contacts I’m guessing that who ever runs the site doesn’t want to have to deal with people leaving all sorts of negative messages about Wal-Mart or something on her site. That’s probably why she has no testimonials too. I guess it’s a lot of work to reach out to a small group of people like this.
She may not have any contacts but, you will notice she is one of mine.

Not too much to say about this profile. Compared to Obama’s profile, Hillary has a lot of work to do.

On to the Photos

The photos in Barack’s flickr account are obviously snapped by a variety of people and cameras. I really like how a lot of the photos focus on the people supporting Obama. If you browse through, you can really feel the energy of the people. I love this shot of this dog. I think dogs are not only cute but charming too. Below the photo the words “Some rights reserved” along with iconic representation of the rights indicate that this photo can be used for non-commercial purposes, cool. I like that. You will also notice that there are 5 comments, I think most of them are talking about how cute the dog is.

and…

Taking a look at Hillary’s flickr page you will notice something that is kind of a turn off right away, the photos are all marked with a copyright and “all rights reserved”, so I had to practice some of my artistic skills a little bit. I guess she might figure out a way to make money off these photos someday. Other than my skills as an artist, you will notice that there are zero comments on this photo, that’s not an odd thing. The odd thing is that none of her photos have comments as far as I can tell. Once again, I’m guessing that someone doesn’t want to filter through all the bad comments people will leave. She does have some support out there though so, I wonder why Hillary would wouldn’t want to hear what the people have to say? It sort of baffles me. Despite being able to look at some photos, Hillary Clinton’s flickr page is cold and weak.

In Conclusion….

Barack Obama has 13,936 photos in his Flickr account
Hillary Clinton has 3,081 photos in her Flickr account

Net profiling is very interesting when it comes to social sites. You can certainly tell a lot about people. I realize that Barack and Hillary probably don’t personally handle their social networking sites but, these social networking sites are a direct representation of the candidates.
One of the key parts to a social network is the social part, it’s not just “hey look at my photos”, it’s about letting people put their voice in and share it with others. Obama gets it, Clinton doesn’t.

This wonderful billboard is downtown Portland as a reminder for people to reuse.

Things like old soda cans for instance could be used to make toys.