Seed Money

Most of the techniques discussed in this eBook require little or no cash to start up but it’s always best to NOT go into a new venture without a little walking around money. You need to give yourself room for error and you don’t want one small mistake to completely wipe you out or set you back financially.

That’s why I want to start this manual with a list of ways you can use to come up with some money very quickly to give you a little breathing room so you can read this material and quickly find ideas that will put some dollars in your bank account immediately.

Heck, even if you’re not in imminent financial trouble go ahead and read through these techniques – you’re bound to find something that you can put into action to earn some additional money within the next few hours.

Seed Money (noun): A modest amount of money used to

convert an idea into a viable business.

We are fortunate to be living in the time we do because with the internet at our disposal we can take a little seed money and quickly multiply and pyramid it into a fortune.

In this section I'm going to show you how you can easily raise all the seed money you need to start building your empire.

I’m going to assume you are starting with absolutely zero money but you have a computer and internet access.

Ok, let’s go…

The first thing you need to do is take inventory of your assets. These are things you have that you can quickly turn into cold hard cash.

Your assets could include skills you could offer, physical products you have that you can sell and even software that you can use to provide a service to other marketers.

Here are some obvious and some not so obvious examples of assets:

 Used CD/DVD Collection

 Unused Electronic Kitchen Gadgets

 Can Read and Write English

 Have Keyword Finder Software

 Large Twitter Following

 Ability to Build Facebook Fanpages

 Reseller hosting account with Hostgator

 Website that earns you $5.00 per month in Adsense Income

 A bunch of domain names you’ve never developed into websites

 Marketing Courses from various Internet Marketing Gurus

Write down as many items as you can think of in 15 minutes or so. You can always come back and add more later.

Now, let’s talk about different ways you can turn these assets into Seed Money:

Selling Your Unwanted Stuff F-A-S-T

Go get yourself a big box or a big tote and go around your house and start looking for stuff that you haven't used in at least six months.

Go to your entertainment center and pull out all those DVDs that you haven't watched in six months. Throw them in the box or tote. Same with CDs, video games and even books you’ll never read or have already read.

Grab any electronic equipment that you haven’t used in 6 months. And all those kitchen gadgets you got as gifts and threw in the closet without even opening them… put them in the mix too.

While you’re in your closet go through it and see what you have that you haven’t used in 6 months (OR that you’ve never used) and is in decent condition.

See that box sitting there with all those motivational and self-help courses? Well, get motivated and add them to your growing collection of stuff you aren’t ever going to use.

Go through every room in your house. Look in the garage, attic, in the cabinets, even your pantry.

Keep looking until your box or tote is overflowing with money seeds.

For CDs, Books, DVDs and Video Games see the next section. For everything else, Craigslist is the quickest and fastest way to get your money.

Now, I’m going to tell you three big mistakes people make selling stuff on Craigslist:

1) Not including photos. You have room for four in the image up loader. The more you use in your ads the better.

2) Listing everything in one ad. List the big items separately. It gives you more chances for people to see what you have. Then in each ad list some of the smaller items like this… I also have the following for sale… And list the items one per line.

3) Expecting too much for your items.

Listen: Just because your favorite aunt gave you that George Foreman grill doesn’t mean someone’s going to pay you retail for it! Mark it down. Way down. You’re not using it. You don’t need it. Wouldn’t you rather have a little bit of money rather than a whole lot of unused George Foreman Grill? I thought so.

Here’s the real secret to selling on Craigslist

Get a whole bunch of people coming to your house to pick up stuff!

Because while they’re there you can show them all the other stuff you have that they just might want too. Then that brand new George Foreman

Grill that you sold for $4.00 turns into $40.00 with all the other stuff they bought from you while they were there.

Get enough people coming to your house to pick up stuff they got a deal on and you’ve got a buying frenzy. This is much better than having a yard sale because yard sale people are lookers and lurkers. The people you have using this method are buyers!

Do you know what sells better than just about anything on Craigslist? Furniture and Appliances! Especially cheap furniture and cheap appliances that college kids need for their dorm or apartment.

The things that tend to sell best are:

 Dorm Room Sized Mini Refrigerators

 Dinette Table and Chairs

 Couches

 Recliners

 Dressers

 Futons

 Armoires

 Patio Furniture

 Small Desks

 Pretty much any furniture if it’s priced right*

Let me tell you a story about the first time I used Craigslist…

I was moving from my condo to my house and all my furniture was old and cheap so I had just planned to donate most of it to Goodwill and take a tax write off.

A friend of mine suggested I list the better pieces on Craigslist. So I placed several ads and noted in the ads that I was moving and had other stuff not listed that was priced to sell fast.

I placed the ad on a Sunday morning at about 7:30. The phone rang 15 minutes later.

A guy wanted to come and look at the couch. I had already moved out of the condo so I drove out to meet him and before I got to the condo someone else called asking about the dining room table and chairs.

The first guy was already there when I got there. I had the couch priced at $25 and he decided it looked too old.

Now, I started to have my doubts right there that anyone would pay money for 7 year old “Rooms-To-Go” furniture.

But then the lady showed up to look at the table and chairs. $200 and she didn’t blink an eye! Only problem was she needed to come back with her husband because he had the pick-up truck.

While I was waiting for them someone came by to look at the bedroom furniture. Then, another call about the couch. Then someone else called about the recliner…

I ended up staying at the condo all day selling every piece of furniture I had with the exception of one lamp. I even sold my dog’s travel crate and my old stereo equipment. (probably should have listed that on eBay – oh well, I’ll know next time)

All in all I made $1125.00 from stuff I was just going to throw away anyway.

Oh, and that old couch? A college kid said it would be perfect in his frat house because they didn’t want anything they’d have to worry about keeping clean. Twenty dollars and he also bought the stereo equipment.

If you haven’t sold on Craigslist before it’s easy and I’m not going to waste 5 pages showing you how to do something that you can figure out yourself.

In a nutshell just go to http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites and choose the site closest to you. Then click on the “Post to Classified” link on the top left. Ads for the types of things you will be selling are free. Select the type of posting (probably “for sale”) and the appropriate category.

Then just follow the instructions.

* Another brief story about Craigslist that I think is a valuable lesson: I had a compact refrigerator for sale. Great condition. About a year old. Listed it on Craigslist for $60 (it was about $100 new) Not a single call. A week later I reduced the price to $50. Two calls but the people never showed to look at it. Third week: I reduced it to $45. Got a call within an hour of listing it and sold it to that person. Before I could remove the ad I got three more calls.

Lesson: Things have a perceived price in people’s minds. Try to stay slightly under that perceived price and you will do well.