Quick-Start Method of Making Money on Amazon That's FAST and DIRT CHEAP!

I’m always bumping into someone that comes up with a new Internet marketing angle I never thought of before.  Funny thing about it is that it is usually some young new maverick that has somehow leaped over us older dudes and are on their first million or so.

Ahh… To be young again!

Anyway, if you have a unique way of marketing or making money online, send it to me here and I’ll post it for you and even let you put your URL and other credits with it: elmo033057(at)gmail.com

Using Amazon to Make $500 a Day

I’m about to start selling a few books and reports myself on Amazon, so when I found this piece of marketing advice I thought it was great.  Great timing too. 

The beauty of using this method is that it doesn’t take great skill, you can outsource a lot of it, and it is DIRT CHEAP!  That’s right, you heard my favorite words…DIRT CHEAP.

OK, so this method of making money online involves information marketing by selling books on Amazon.

What you’ll need to do this:

1) A word processor to write your eBook

2) An Amazon account to sell with

3) Time

Extra stuff that would be great to have:
4) Dragon Naturally Speaking Voice Recognition Software. 

Step 1 – Find a Niche that’s selling but small enough that you won’t have tons of competition

I've already written a rather extensive article on how to find a niche, but here’s the fast and quick explanation.  You can use other sites like For Dummies or eBay, but Amazon is my site of choice for niche research.

Go on Amazon and in their search window, click on the drop down menu and then scroll down and click on “Books”.

Click on the drop down menu until you get to "Books"

Once you click on “books” click on the little search icon and it will take you to another Amazon page.  This page should be dedicated to Amazon books.  Scroll about halfway down the page until you get to a section that has all of the Amazon book categories. 

Next, click on the "Search" icon

You’re going to start clicking on these different categories and drilling down into them looking for hot niches and sub-niches. 

For example you could look through the business and marketing books.  Whenever you click on a book category, more categories open up.  So in the “Business” category, you could click on the marketing link and you’d find pages and pages of books on marketing.  Within those pages are niches and sub-niches.  How do you find out which topics are the hottest? Look at the 
comments!

What The Comments Will Tell You…

There are loads of
categories to drill into!

If people take the time to read a book, go back online, log in with their account, and then write an essay or comments, then chances are it is a good book with good subject matter.  Amazon will also allow you to peruse several pages of the book to include the Table of Contents.

That is where you can really get some great ideas for a short eBook or paper.

At this point, you can do one or two things:

One, you can take an idea from the Table of Contents and then surf the net looking for free information on that subject area. 

Two, you can also just go ahead and buy the book from Amazon. 9 times out of 10 you can get the book dirt cheap used on there, and you know how I feel about getting things done DIRT CHEAP!

P.S. In case you want to watch a video on how to use Amazon to find a niche, look at this:

Step 2 – Write a short eBook based on the hot niche or sub-niche.
 

You want to write a short eBook that gets right to the point if you can.  The title should describe exactly what the eBook is about and the eBook should be SHORT and to the point, explaining exactly what you stated in the title.  Around 30 or so pages should be more than enough.

The reason why you’ll want to write a short eBook is because most people are going to want to read exactly what they’re looking for.  A lot of marketers make massive courses because to the purchaser it looks impressive. 

 However, many times it can have the reverse effect.   People see a vast ocean of information and get overwhelmed, so you want to create short eBooks but make sure that the information in them is well written and dynamite.  You don’t want to produce a bunch of useless crap, either!  

How to Get You eBook Into Amazon

Step 3 – Post and Sell you eBook/Kindle Book in Amazon Books.

Actually, Amazon makes it pretty straightforward about the process, and all you really need to do at this point is follow their step by step set up directions.

TIP: However, it should be noted that when you have to write a description of your product, some knowledge of copywriting techniques will go a long way.  This is where many people fail in their attempts at selling products of any kind on Amazon.  Also, make sure that it’s clear in your description that this is a SHORT eBook and let your potential customer know the number of pages in it.

TIP: For starters you may want to write your short eBooks under an alternate name.  This way, you won’t damage your good name or reputation if for some reason people don’t like what you’ve written.

TIP:   Price your short eBook at about $5.00 a shot.  That way you can easily justify a shorter eBook.

The Dirt Cheap Beauty of this Bid-Ness Model

The thing I like the most about this idea is that you can move very quickly with

it.  You don’t need to spend 4 months writing a pant-load of material for a massive eBook.  The $5.00 price point means that people will probably not mind parting with that much money as they would $30 or so dollars.

(Personally I love Bob Bly’s books, but they almost all start at about $30 dollars or so.  I bought 4 of them a month until I realized how much a month I was spending.  Not Dirt Cheap enough...Ha-ha !)

If you do decide to use your real name in this, make sure you've branded your eBook with your name and contact information.

  However, many times it can have the reverse effect.   People see a vast ocean of information and get overwhelmed, so you want to create short eBooks but make sure that the information in them is well written and dynamite.  You don’t want to produce a bunch of useless crap, either!  

Step 3 – Post and Sell you eBook/Kindle Book in Amazon Books.

Actually, Amazon makes it pretty straightforward about the process, and all you really need to do at this point is follow their step by step set up directions.

TIP: However, it should be noted that when you have to write a description of your product, some knowledge of copywriting techniques will go a long way.  This is where many people fail in their attempts at selling products of any kind on Amazon.  Also, make sure that it’s clear in your description that this is a SHORT eBook and let your potential customer know the number of pages in it.

TIP: For starters you may want to write your short eBooks under an alternate name.  This way, you won’t damage your good name or reputation if for some reason people don’t like what you’ve written.

TIP:   Price your short eBook at about $5.00 a shot.  That way you can easily justify a shorter eBook.

The Dirt Cheap Beauty of the Bid-Ness Model

The thing I like the most about this idea is that you can move very quickly with it.  You don’t need to spend 4 months writing a pant-load of material for a massive eBook.  The $5.00 price point means that people will probably not mind parting with that much money as they would $30 or so dollars.

(Personally I love Bob Bly’s books, but they almost all start at about $30 dollars or so.  I bought 4 of them a month until I realized how much a month I was spending.  Not Dirt Cheap enough...Ha-ha !)

If you do decide to use your real name in this, make sure you’ve branded your eBook with your name and contact information.

Danger Will Robinson...Danger!  Danger!

Danger!  Danger!

One other thing that I almost forgot to mention about selling eBooks on Amazon using this method. You can create quite a few of them quickly using this technique.  However there is a big danger here.  

Don’t make the mistake of creating a piece of JUNK.  Because if you create a piece of junk, no matter what pseudonym or moniker you hide under you’ll eventually get a very bad reputation. 

Besides that, you’ll get used to making junk and not quality products for your prospects and clients.

Please leave comments ...God knows I need them!!!

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Anyone Can Use This Simple Technique to Get Started Making Money on the Internet Immediately!

Getting started.  This seems to be a big hang up for a lot of people.

Many of us get so constipated with information overload, we fail to take any action.  We buy the books and courses and watch a ton of YouTube videos, but when it comes to execution, we fall short.

Failure to Launch

I remember buying a huge Internet marketing course for about $400 and diving into it with excitement and passion, only to let it sit there for about 2 years before taking any real action.  I had a problem getting my ideas off the ground.

And even though a course like that was very well done, if you don’t take any kind of action, your results will be null, and if your results are null,  you’ll get depressed, and if you get depressed you probably won’t take any action… 

And the process repeats itself. 

The only way to beat this vicious cycle of inactivity is to GET OFF YOUR HINEY AND DO SOMETHING!!!

An Easy Way to Get Started From Two of My Readers

Yesterday I ran an article asking readers to share their stories and ideas about how they made their first dollar in Internet Marketing.

I’m encouraged by the fact that at least a few of you have contacted me with their ideas and I really appreciate it.  This information will definitely help out your fellow entrepreneurs and it is a clear and shining example of how kind some people can be in helping others.

If you would like to contribute to this blog, please send me your ideas on this subject and I will gladly post it.  Either post your idea in the comment section or write it up and send it to:

elmo033057@gmail.com

In the subject field put: “Mark, How I Made My First Dollar” - That way I’ll be able to see it amidst all of the email I constantly get.  Ha-ha!

 So, I got two emails sent to me (no signature or web address, which I would have gladly posted) that said just about the same thing.  The emails were basically one or two lines, so I’ve embellished on their ideas to help get the message across.

So, thanks so much to Ryan and Blake for sending these.  In the future if you want me to put a link to your sites on this post, just let me know.

Start Hocking Your Skills and Talents

Sit down and dash out on a piece of paper all of the skills you possess.  Here’s a list of ideas to get you thinking:

Writing – Articles, blog posts, advertising copy, etc.

Graphic Arts – Logos, banners, buttons, scanned art, etc.

Speaking – Making how to videos, pod casts, interviews, (even public speaking)

Web Design – Any skill you may have that contributes to building websites

Programming Skills – Java code, HTML, Flash, etc.

If you don’t have any skills ACQUIRE THEM!

You can learn everything you need to know from a laptop these days, so no more excuses.  Get busy and start learning!

What you can do immediately is start marketing your skills through a variety of channels like Craig’s List, Elance, oDesk, and if you just absolutely want to get started and make your first few dollars, market yourself through Fiverr. 

In my opinion, making a living on a site like Fiverr would be very tough, however some people have actually done that.  But I look at sites like Fiverr and opportunities for making money with Adsense ads as a springboard to get you started.  That certainly shouldn’t be the only way to make money to survive on. 

True Story about Acquiring Skills

A couple of years ago, I was rehabbing a house with my family.  We had purchased a home that we had bought from a foreclosure.  We got a super deal on it, however, it had severe leak problems with the roof. 

We decided we really wanted to have the roof work done by contractors, and we had a neighbor tell us that we needed to install a metal roof.  Our rehab was on top of a tall hill and it as susceptible to high winds from time to time.

So we ordered a metal roof from a local contractor.  However, the company we got the contractor through ordered the metal for the roof AND the porch and the contractor was never told about the attached roof.  So we had a big extra pile of metal roofing and no roof for the leaky porch.

I told my son we would try to do the porch roof ourselves because if we got that wrong and it leaked, it would only be the porch area affected.  So, we pulled up YouTube and watched every video we could on how to install a metal roof and we installed the porch section perfectly. 

It was also great that he had a cell phone with video capabilities on it because many times we would access those videos while we were on the roof working. 

Aren’t we living in an incredible age?

By the way, here's a video from the porch of that house right after we bought it.

The Sooner You Do This, The Better Off You’ll Be

The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll learn how to market your opportunities online and gain skills others don’t have.  When I got started I knew nothing about Internet marketing, creating blogs, HTML, advertising copy, how to make graphics for websites, how to use Photoshop, how to use Social media, etc. 

I pretty much knew nothing.  But I learned by doing.  If I didn’t know how to do something I bought

books. (For Dummies books are great for learning certain subjects!)

And yeah, I failed a bunch, but I also learned a lot from those mistakes.  And quite frankly, it was a far better education that what I got in an expensive college.

Once again I want to take this opportunity to thank the two gentlemen that sent me the email with their story on it  - Ryan and Blake!

And if have a story or a comment about how you made your first dollar on the Internet, please take a few moments and share it with us.   

Please send it to:

elmo033057@gmail.com

(In the subject field put: “Mark, How I Made My First Dollar”)

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Web Savvy Facebook Scheduling Tactics to Help Jump Start Your Campaign

On my last post, I told you a few things about how you should be using social media to promote your business online.  I also told you that if you weren’t using social media to influence your clients, customers and prospects your competitors probably were.

You can read it here: Your Competitors Know How to Use Facebook...Should You?

Plan It Out

A planner with lots of room will let
you plan your posts to Facebook

I carry two planners around with me wherever I go.  That’s not an accident, I find that I am far more productive with one than without one.  I hate getting to the end of a day when I’m tired, realizing that I should have completed an important task and I still have to get it done.  

Not only that, but I find that the work I need to do will be done at a much higher level of quality than if I wait until I’m spent.

So, if you are planning on using a social media channel, you may want to plan what you are going to do as far as posting and doing follow ups with people on Facebook.

As I see it, there are 5 phases to gaining popularity on Facebook or any other social media site:

Phase 1 -- Set up your pages.

Phase 2 -- Locate influencers in your market.

Phase 3 -- Contribute to the influencers.

Phase 4 -- Invite them to your Facebook page.

Phase 5 -- Get them into your funnel.

Each of these phases will be expanded upon, but for now, I want to focus on the third phase, “contribute to the influencers”.

Giving Them Something for Nothing

The reason I’m talking about Phase 3, “Contribute to the Influencers” first, is because it’s the one that will take the most time in terms of planning, writing, connecting, and posting your high-value material.

Buy a Planning Book.  Get a planning book that you’ll have plenty of room to write in, and for starters try to write out a schedule of things you want to post about over the next week.  Many social media experts will tell you to try to plan for three to six months, but I feel that most people that are starting out in the social media or the Facebook arena will get overwhelmed. 

Here's how Internet Marketing Expert Michael Hyatt Plans his Posts:

It’s a far better idea to just schedule a week or two at first, so you won’t burn yourself out at the onset.  My way of thinking, is that if you get worn out trying to merely do the scheduling, you’ll never get started.  And if you never get started in social media, you’re leaving heaping piles of cash on the table for your competitors to scoop up.

So…

Step 1 Write out a one to two week schedule on what you’re going to post about. 

TIP: If you get hung up about what to write about in your chosen market, head on over to Amazon and look at books dedicated to your niche.  You need to look at the best sellers in your niche.  There is a wealth of information in the Table of Contents of those books.   You can easily get all sorts of ideas about what to write about by looking at those chapter titles.

Step 2 Research your topics.  Once you have a subject, do some extensive research on what you are going to write about. 

Step 3 Write your post.  For God’s sake, write a well-structured, thought out post.  Your audience is inundated with people that write crap.  I’m not saying that I write incredible masterpieces, but at least their coherent most of the time and I try to disseminate valuable tips and content that will benefit my audience. 

(Personally, if someone writes like a text book or a bestseller, the common man or woman out there might not relate to the message as well.)

Step 4 Post to Facebook and your other social networks.

In my next post, I’m going to show you the best way to set up your Facebook page so that you’ll be asking your herd to go to a page that adds value and enriches their lives.

Until then…

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

P.S.  Here's a two links on posts I've made on the subject of researching topics and niches and scheduling posts.

How to Get Loads of Traffic to Your Website by Giving Away A FREE Product

I know for a fact that this technique works, because it worked on me.  Years ago, I had an online embroidery service that I ran almost day and night like

a mad man.  I sometimes look back at the 5 or so years I put into that business and ask myself, “What were you thinking?” 

Not that I didn’t do well in the business, I was doing fine. It’s just that I did everything.  I digitized the designs, sewed them out, created and maintained the ecommerce Web site, packaged up the products and sent them to the customers, handled the messed up orders and communicated with the customers. 

Yeah, you guessed it…I got burned out!

I also did the marketing, which is where I started to learn many new things I never knew before, like the power of viral content.

What happened was this:  I was bouncing around the Internet, looking for ideas on how to sell my products and I got a free E-book from a guy by the name of Dan Kennedy.  It was all about how I could market my products and services easily by following his advice. At the time, the only marketing book that I had read in its entirety was “Guerilla Marketing” byJay Conrad Levinson.  An excellent book, and I would HIGHLY recommend it.   

I found the Kennedy EBook to be MOST enlightening.  So much so, that I remember reading the entire contents in one setting.  Of course, this led me to look for more about the man, which gave me a very fast education; he was all over the Internet and he had quite a following.

I am always impressed by people that can actually do what they say they can do.  Monsieur Kennedy had loads of published books to his credit, a massive website loaded with mouth-watering marketing products, and a world class newsletter which I quickly subscribed to.  All in all, I would say that I spent somewhere in the vicinity of $5000 with the man over a period of 5 years.

And to think that sale all started with a free EBook. 

So, please don’t tell me that this tactic doesn’t work, because I’m living proof (At least from a prospect perspective) that it does. 

What I Have Since Learned About Creating and Using Viral EBooks

There are a few lessons that I have since taken away from this experience that I think would be worth noting:

·         You can spread your marketing message around to whoever you want FOR FREE.  Always keep this in mind, because it is important.  You may think that it is a waste of time because you have to take the time to write the material, but when you compare the time you spent versus the amount of money AND time you would have to spend on an advertising campaign, the price is minimal.

·         The information that you put into your EBook must be as high quality as you can deliver.  If you hand out crap to your potential clients and customers, what will that say to the folks that would consider hiring or purchasing something from you?  So, always put out world class information in your EBook.

·         Make sure you know how to format your material in the EBook, and take a little time to plan out what you are going to say.  A good way to do that would be to create a table of contents before you actually write the material.  Once you have the skeleton (Table of Contents) you’ll be able to write the EBook much quicker and in a logical progression.

·         Make the darn thing interesting.   I can’t remember much about Dan Kennedy’s book specifically, but I do know that his writing was interesting.  If you can write stories that people can remember and add that personal touch to what you are writing, then your document will sing!   People will pass it on to others that will find it interesting and then pass it on to others that will find it interesting and then ….Voila! VIRAL CONTENT!

·         If you can, try to find or create pictures that you can include in your Ebook that will emphasize or make your points and information more interesting. 

·         If you refer people to other resources, try to make the resources as high quality as you can.  You want people to not only read your material, but also you want them to look up to you as a valuable resource.  If you refer someone to a dynamite resource like a book or a course and they loved it, then they’ll look to you as a source of information.  That means that they’ll refer you, come back to you and even use your products and services.  See?

HOT TIP:  If you are wondering where you are going to find the time to write all of this material, there are several things you can do to lighten the load. 

Idea 1: For one thing, if you write your own blog posts and can create a theme out of them, you can take the material from the blog, embellish it, organize it, put relevant images and resources in it and use that as the material for your EBook.   You don’t have to worry about duplicate content issues in a .pdf file online.

Idea 2: The other idea is you could always hire a ghost writer.  Hey, Internet marketers use them all of the time to create online articles and posts, so if you can do it within your budget, why not?

Check Out These Excellent Free EBooks and Use Them as a Model for Your Own

I could go into more detail, but what you need to do now, is take a look at a few Free Ebooks so you can get an idea of what type of books to write and pass out.

Here are a few that I know of that are well done and FREE!

How to Make Millions by T.J Rohleder

63 "Killer Marketer Strategies" by Dan Kennedy

Magnetic Marketing

The Secret 7 EBook by Mark "Elmo" Ellis

Once again I hope you gained a lot of knowledge that you can actually use on your own viral content EBook!

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

How to Load Up Your Calendar With Ideas for Your Blog Posts

In my last post, I went over one of the many ways you could use Google’s calendar to help schedule your blog posts, email messages or online articles.  

In this post, I’ll show you how to use various websites to find topics that you can easily write. Moreover, I’m going to show you how you can also check to see whether or not these sources are worthy of even writing in the first place.

Note: I am absolutely NOT advocating copying other people’s work.  You can always write about the subjects and ideas in your own way and with your own words. But, you should never violate copyright laws under any circumstances. 

 I’m sure you won’t go to jail over this, but you’ll probably get sued. Not only that, it is dishonest. So, do not copy and paste for any reason!

Using the Calendar to Schedule Your Articles or Posts

Once you get a calendar that you want to use (standard, online, piece of paper, planner, whatever) you can now start to log in about 3 months of topics that you can write about.  You will be going to various sites to look up topics and then you will be looking at specifics within those topics. 

This is the same way Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, The View and a host of other talk shows come up with their subjects and content.  Ever notice how 99% of the people on those shows have written books???  They use this content method themselves to get loads of ideas.

Let’s get started with…Amazon.

Using Amazon to Generate Ideas for Your Articles and Blog Posts

Rather than waste a lot of your time writing up a huge description of how this is supposed to work, I’m going to take you by the hand, step-by-step and teach you exactly what you need to know.  The reason I do things in this manner is so that I won’t leave holes in my procedure. 

I want you to have the full, unadulterated method to do this, so that it is “turn-key”.  In other words, you could pass these instructions on to other people and they should be able to do it with very little help.

Scenario:  You want to write about and share information on how to use social media on your blog.  However, you have no idea what to write about or what people are interested in. 

Drilling Down to Find Your Topics

Here’s how you do it. (By the way, you can use the same method of research for creating information products, or finding a niche for your business.)

Step 1:  Go to Amazon.com website.

Click on “Books” in Amazon’s search field drop-down menu.

  This will mean that you are only searching in the Amazon book category.  This is the ideal place to find topics related to what we want to write about. 

Make sure you click “GO” on the search field.

Step 2:  Next, you will need to scroll down the page until you see “Books” on the left hand side of the screen.  These are the categories of books there are.

 Now we can start drilling down and get very specific about what we want to write about.  

In our case, we'll want to look in either the “Business and Investing” category, or the “Computers and Technology” category.

Click on the “Computers and Technology” category. 

Step 3: Keep doing the drilling down process until we get to the social media books.  Here is the drill:

Computers & Technology ---> Internet & Web Culture ---> Social Media for Businesses

You should now see books listed in the middle of the page 

(Yes, I could have told you to simply go into Amazon's search engine, and type in "social media" and you would have found these.  However, we are trying to generate ideas here!  By drilling down, you'll have access to all sorts of ideas and topics you may not have otherwise thought about!)

Using the Sort Menu to Find Reviews

Step 4:  I want you to move over to the right side of Amazon's page at this point.  You will see a drop down menu called "Sort By".  Open the menu and select "Most Reviews".

The reason we're using the sort menu to find the most reviews is because we are looking for the most popular books on this subject.  

If there are a lot of comments, that's good thing because it means quite a few people actually read the book.  Also, they cared enough about it to comment, rate, and post it into Amazon.  

Negative Reviews Are Important Too!

The other reason why highly commented on books are important is because you can look at the negative reviews and see what people WISH were in those books.  

I recently did research on a piece of software a company was hiring me to write about.  I checked out the software they were selling on Amazon and in the process I looked at all of the negative comments people posted on Amazon.  By the time I was finished doing my research, I actually had enough ammunition to write an information product telling users how to overcome these problems.

So, negative reviews are also important.  

On the right hand side of the books listed, you'll see a row of stars.  Some of them a colored in and others are not.  There is also a number next to the stars that indicates the number of comments made.  

Step 5:  Click on the title of the book.  Next, you can actually click on the cover of the book to see the table of contents.  

These are the subjects that people will be interested in.  If you were creating a niche, you could get real specific about it and write about a very specific top or angle of this subject.

Inside of Mr. Kerpen's excellent book, is a table of contents.  As a matter of fact, Amazon almost always has a "Look Inside" feature which shows you the Table of Contents of the book.

One of the chapters is called "Think and Act Like Your Customer".  You could almost make an entire niche out of a title like that.

Step 6:  Write down the idea on your calendar.  You should try to post a new blog post just about every 3 days or so.  Monday, Wednesday and Friday would be a good idea for spacing of your posts.

Step 7:  Scroll down the page and check out the reviews.  If you see anything negative or something people felt that was left out of a book like this, then you may have fertile ground for a hot topic.  So, look for opportunities in these types of comments.

Step 8:  Rinse and repeat.  Do the same procedure for as many books in your topic area as you can.  Just looking at the Table of Contents sections will give you a load of ideas, and you can take that title or idea, Google it and find a boat load of articles all over the Internet on that particular subject.

BONUS:  Another Way to Find Hot Topics in Your Niche To Write About

I recently watched an excellent video on how to use social media by a guy named Michael Hyatt.  Apparently Mr. Hyatt is pretty big in the Internet Marketing arena, but I had not actually heard of him until today.  

Anyway, on this video he highlights 10 different ways you can use social media to boost your business or popularity on the Web.  You could use each one of these ideas to expand on in a series of blog posts very easily.

Here is the video:

On My Next Post:

I'm going to show you how to gain a huge following pretty quickly by using social media sites and a host of other ideas, so that people will actually come to your site and read your posts, opt-in to your email posts and eventually hand you wads of cash!

Until next time, God Bless!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

Mark Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

How to Avoid Getting Beat Up At 1:00 in the Morning

When I was young I was what you would call a wandering generality.  I had no focus, no dream and most importantly, no passion for anything.  

Thank God I was single at the time.  

I wound up working almost 20 hours a day, no kidding.  I worked at a shoe store during the day and a pizza parlor at night. I wasn't too swift in the finances department either, because I spent almost everything I made, never saving a cent for a rainy day or for things that would make my life easier, like a car. 

Survival was my only direction and I had nothing else to look forward to.

Looking back at my life from that time period, I am amazed that I am still alive.  Because I blew all of my money on frivolous things, I never bought a car and I had to walk some dangerous areas of a big city to get to and from work.  Almost every night, I had to walk home from the pizza parlor because I had to help shut it down at 1:00 ahem. 

In a big city, there are a lot of very weird people cruising the streets, looking for easy prey.  I had used syringes, from people shooting up, thrown at me from passing cars as well as booze bottles. One night that I walked past a convenience store, someone threatened to beat me up.  I knew to keep my cool and keep walking like I wasn't scared, even though, I was almost in a panic.

Of course, this is what happens to wandering generalities; they get thrown this way and that, never knowing where they will end up at, and they rarely end up on Success Avenue.

The reason I lived such a miserable life was pretty simple, I had not found a vocation that would take me out of the minimum wage trap. 

Look, if you have no viable skill for the job market, you won’t get very far, and that is just the reality of it. You need to have a skill or a set of skills that are marketable.  Now that I have been through all of this, I find myself talking to younger people about what they need to do to survive.

I almost always tell them to get a good education... 

However, that can be a bit tricky.  One of the reasons for this is because colleges and universities are now money making machines, whose sole purpose is to suck in money no matter what the standards or the cost.  Yep, there is a whole generation of folks that attended college for their four year degree, only to find out how worthless it all is. 

I’m not saying to skip college if you really want to go, but getting a degree in basket weaving will probably be a tough skill to market to potential employers, versus, say a civil or environmental engineering degree from a good university.

I usually tell young people that a good, specialized skill is paramount.  You have got to kind of drill down in the skill area to find the specialized skill that suits you.  For example, let’s say you love electronics.  Well, there are a lot of electronics jobs that just don’t pay much at all, but what happens when you drill down and actually look at specialized areas.  You could look at surveillance electronics, which is a huge industry right now.  (Just look at the news.)  Or, you could also look at repairing hospital equipment, which is a very demanding, yet well-paying gig.

Oh, and let us not forget trades that only take a few years to learn and don’t cost nearly as much as the coveted 4 year degree.  HVAC repair, watch repair, musical instrument repair, piano tuning, etc. Culinary arts are huge right now because people eat out a lot now. 

I could go on and on listing all of the trades and degrees that are usually in demand and pay well, but there is still one problem.

I wouldn't run just after the money, because no matter what vocation you decide to jump on, you will still have to LIKE what you are doing, or life will be miserable.

 I went to college late in life and got a specialized degree myself; I was almost 40 as a matter of fact.  Every semester, I saw young people showing up to shoot for a degree that they thought would make them a lot of money.  Usually, they were going for a legal degree or a degree in medicine when they had never, ever even looked at a medical book or diagram.  And, at the end of every semester you’d see those same students loading up their cars to leave, never to return.

If you are going to pursue a thing, it really helps to have a key ingredient that is very important to your chosen path:

PASSION

If you are lacking this, you will find life more dreary and empty than ever. Think about it for a minute.  Let’s take a look at very successful people and imagine they hated what they did.

Bill Gates hating programming, only using a computer to play Pac-Man on.

Arnold Schwarzenegger thinking it’s a waste of time to do a few push-ups.

Isaac Asimov with a TV bigger than his book collection.

Tiger Woods collecting comic books, rather than practicing putting.

You get the idea; you need to find out what your passion is. 

They Actually Did Poorly in  School

Funny thing about the folks mentioned above, almost all of them did poorly in school.  Why?  Even though I’m not sure about this, I would probably say it is because being forced to learn a skill set that you have absolutely no interest in is a drag, plain and simple.

So, if you don’t know what you passion is, don’t feel too bad, because sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error to find out what it is that you really love to do. And that’s where a good skill comes in handy. If you can get yourself a skill that is good enough to help you survive, you can always find the time to explore and pursue your passion, if you know how to manage your time properly.

That way, you won’t be making pizzas and walking mean streets at 1:00 in the morning.


Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

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