Free Tips for Separating People from Their Money
Have you ever noticed that some of the most popular articles that get passed around are the ones that tell you things you already know?
Well, hopefully, this will be one of those, as I share some tips you already know.
Find a Bunch of Fools. If you can find some fools, it is not too difficult to separate them from their money. In fact, I won’t even make any suggestions as anyone with a modicum of creativity can easily develop some fool-proof methods. On the one hand, this may be the least ethical method of earning money. On the other hand, if they willingly fork over their cash without any force or deception on your part, perhaps you may be ethically okay.
The difficult bit here is finding a sufficient number of fools, or one wealthy fool, from which you can earn a decent income. Mind you, we all joke about how stupid people are and the dumbing down of society in general, and we see people all the time spending money on junk that isn’t worth it, yet it still seems hard to find a sufficient number of fools to give their money to you instead of the other guy.
For one thing, the other guy has slick marketing you can’t afford. You can’t afford to run TV ads, especially during prime time, so what shot do you have at getting the foolish masses to mail you checks?
While fools are plentiful, they do seem scarce when you need them. They’re scattered everywhere and, without the resources to reach them where they live (i.e., in front of the TV), it’s going to be an uphill battle trying to secure your income on the cash-dispensing fools among us.
Clearly, we need a better approach.
Create Something of Value. You can build a career out of selling nothing but junk, but it’s not easy. If you’re highly skilled at marketing, your odds are better. But, for the rest of us, in order to achieve some level of success, we need to create something of value.
Mind you, you may lose some of your foolish customers this way. Some fools just cannot recognize quality when they see it, and would rather spend hundreds of dollars on something that will break two years from now than spend a couple hundred dollars on something that will last a lifetime.
Although, you cannot judge them too harshly. They were probably raised in a disposable society where you simply toss things that are broken, instead of fixing them, or throw perfectly functional things away simply because they’re not the right color or style anymore. If you have the storage space, you could pick these items up from the curb and sell them for big bucks a few years from now when they become collectibles. Remember that when you begin seeing some nice looking analog TVs sitting curbside in your neighborhood. Today’s trash is tomorrow’s treasure.
But, I suppose I have digressed a bit, after all, you want to make money now, not years from now. You might want to reconsider that mentality and plan for both the short term and the long term. Oh, sure, you could believe that the world is going to come to an end any day now, but, if you’re wrong, you don’t want to be living in a van down by the river ten years from now when the world did not end and you ran out of cash.
So, what you need to do to separate people from their money is to create something of value. It can be a product or a service. You’re creative. What can you design, do or build that will make someone else’s life easier or better? Or, what existing product can you do a better job of selling and promoting than the next guy? It need not be something new; it can be something old. Heck, even in economic downswings, people still need to eat. There are plenty of opportunities and it is beyond the scope of this post to find that niche for you.
Go ahead and do some research. I’ll wait…
Okay, now that you have figured out your offering, how do you go about separating people from their money and buying it from you? Even with a solid product with a great value, it can be difficult to convince people of the value of that product, especially if they are in a foolish mind that day.
There must be an easier way, no?
And there is.
What you need to do is to offer them something that’s of greater value than the money they are parting with. Most people talk about having a fair exchange, but that’s something that’s difficult to get. Everyone wants a deal! They only talk about having a fair exchange when they’ve been shortchanged on deals in the past.
But, what everyone wants is a good deal for them. You need to offer them something that’s of greater value than what they’re giving you. Don’t tell them that, though! Don’t give them sob stories about how they’re ripping you off and all that. That’ll just make you sound like a slick salesperson, and they won’t believe you.
No, you need to convince them that what you’re offering is worth more than what they’re giving you, but in such a way that they think that you don’t know that what you’re offering is worth more than what you think it is.
That’s not to say that you’re going to try to trick them or anything. No, no, no. That would go back to the first point, and you can’t have a steady business relying exclusively on fools. No, you really have to give them something of value so that, even long after the sale, they still believe that they got the upper hand in the deal–that, if anything, they ripped you off, not the other way around.
Then, they’ll be back for more!
That’s why you’ll see add-ons for many products. Buy now, and get these free reports! Buy now, and get a year’s worth of refills! And so on.
You can add something to the deal that is inexpensive for you, but a great value for them. Imagine the refills cost you $10 and you normally sell them for $20. You can offer them as an add-on for $10 or, if the product markup is good, for free. The buyer saves $10-$20, plus shipping charges and the hassle of ordering later on.
That’s just one example. The point is to offer your customer something of greater value than the money they are parting with. It’s hard to part with your money, even when you know you’re getting a fair price. But, if you know you’re getting a great deal, it’s so much easier to hand that money over, isn’t it?
Because you’re still thinking of money. You’re thinking how much money you are saving in the long run by spending this amount of money now. Makes it easier to justify the purchase to yourself, and makes your wallet a little looser.
That’s the type of response you want from your customers! Once again, though, I should point out that you really must have a great offer. Someone who gets a good deal will tell a friend; someone who gets ripped off will tell 10 friends, their family, their co-workers and possibly the 5 o’clock news.
So, there you go. Start separating!
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