Our greatest need for extra cash seems to come at the worst possible times, often through events we can’t control.
In hindsight we all recognize clearly what we should have done:
- We should have bought that health insurance plan so we wouldn’t be drowning in medical bills
- We should have saved more money when things were good
- We should have sold that stock when it was at its peak
- If only we’d taken that other job we wouldn’t be unemployed
- If only we’d started this business last year when the market was hot
When you are diagnosed with some horrible ailment from cancer to diabetes it becomes nearly impossible to get health insurance or life insurance.
When you really need money it is often hard to get because “we only give loans to those who are credit worthy” or “you’ve got some late payments on your credit report” or “we could give you a loan if you can just give us some collateral.”
So how do you get extra cash?
There are lots of opportunities in network marketing but they really do take months or even years to generate the kind of cash you need if you job is in jeopardy or you oldest is going to college. Not to mention the huge amount of time and that horrible response you get from relatives when you call saying you have this amazing opportunity for them.
You can find a host of scams on the net from “no work, no capital, no sales, no talent, no-fill-in-the-blank required.”
When you are desperate for cash, you want so hard to believe in those promises you fall prey to their well written words. I remember years ago, when I wanted some extra cash, I was reading all of the ads about quick ways of making money by mail. I paid $20 for this special report that must have cost 5 cents to duplicate. It said to send out 200 letters with the prescribed words in it and tell each person to send $5 to each person on the list, then to put their name on the top of the list and send it out to 200 people. The promise was you would make $50,000 in the next 30 days.
I was desperate enough and did just that. I bought 500 names because I wanted even more money, I printed off the letters, then bought a mailing list, bought the stamps, put them all together and took all of these letters to the post office dreaming of all of the cash I would have in just a few weeks…my heart was racing with excitement.
Every day I would race to the mailbox hoping to see it packed full of envelops containing five dollar bills.
Each day I was disappointed.
Finally, two weeks later I got my first response. I was feeling encouraged again, thinking the post office must have misplaced my mail until just recently and finally got it out.
After $450 in expenses of buying the list, duplication, stamps, etc. I made a grand total of five dollars.
I gave up on marketing, direct mail, mail order, or anything sounding like marketing…for over 20 years.
Fortunately I started reading books on marketing, direct mail, sales to get a better handle on how I could grow my consulting business. I realized I’d equated this pyramid scheme with marketing and accidentally written the whole subject off.
What really is needed to get extra cash is to find a working, successful system and use that as a model.
This is a great idea but where do you find a successful business model and how do you identify all of the steps to make that model successful?
Well you could do what I did on several occasions. Read dozens of books, talk to business owners, find investors and throw in a heavy dose of trial and error. If you choose this approach it certainly is not anything resembling quick cash and can take years to generate positive cash flow.
You could buy a franchise and rent their success system. I know a number of friends that have taken this approach but this requires capital, good credit and takes time to put together.
You could rent the system of one the network marketing companies but you would have the same challenge described earlier, it takes time, something you may not have a lot of.
Of course there are many other approaches like real estate, stocks, precious metals, oil and gas, or even currencies. But we’ve all seen recently that these are very susceptible to things beyond our control.
According to an Amex/Harrison survey, half of the millionaires in the US got their wealth from owning their own business.
The great thing about the Internet is you can start a new business in a few hours without capital, employees, long term commitments, or good credit. Since most online businesses don’t make any money, the ease of starting one is not the only criteria needed.
There is an overwhelming amount of information products promising rapid wealth if you just follow their system and I have purchased thousands of dollars of those. But they only told part of the story.
I once attended a $25,000 per person marketing seminar where fifty people were riveted by marketing stories from 8:00am till 2:00am every day. I took hundreds of pages of notes as did most everyone else. Three months later I called over a dozen of the attendees to see how they were doing. Not a single person, who had paid $25,000 for this seminar, had put one thing into practice. The problem, it was information, not a system.
You need a system, a step by step plan to go from start to finish…then just follow it.
If you would like to find out more about such a system by starting with learning the top reasons why online businesses fail, click here.
I wish you the very best in your quest for extra cash, to meet the needs of you and your family.
About the Author
Dan Swanson is president of Nitro Marketing, a company that specializes in helping clients succeed online. He has been an entrepreneur for 30 years, started 14 of his own companies and helped another 25 startups generate over $2 billion in sales. He helped create over 275 products and services for over 120 clients including Texas Instruments, Apple Computer and Cable and Wireless.
No Tags
