When you read about the stories of successful entrepreneurs you always come across similar advice: “Surround yourself with successful people”

How do you actually go about doing that? Here are 7 strategies to help you get started.

1) Join A Peer / Mastermind Group

Join a group of people who are committed to running their businesses and taking it to the next level. It can be lonely being an entrepreneur and most business owners don’t have a support network to turn to for help for their companies. Sure your friends and family listen but can they really help? Amazing things happen when you can connect with other people who are really doing things with their businesses. You will get inspired and you will also inspire them to work harder as well.

I run a series of Mastermind Groups in Toronto and we always look for people who are beyond the startup stage. Make sure that whatever group you join that you a) can go for a trial first, b) are with other members who have different skill sets, and c) are in a structured atmosphere where people take the group seriously. Also make sure that you are not the most knowledgeable person in the room. You learn more when you are with people who have accomplished more than you.

Most of the large cities have various Mastermind groups that you can join. If you don’t have one locally, you can also seek out ones that meet online instead of in person.

2) Go To Related Business Events

Depending on how big a city you live in, you’ll have a bigger selection of different business events to check out. Look for ones that inspire you and you will learn from. Quite often they are free. For example, one of my favorite events was when Ted Rogers, founder of Rogers Communications, one of the largest companies in Canada, came to speak at a local bookstore as a part of an entrepreneur promotional series the store was doing. The popular business author Tom Peters also did a great event there that was very inspiring.  Total cost to me: $0.

By going to these events you’ll not only get motivated from the speaker but you’ll also meet other people who are interested in the speaker. Chances are those people are also going to be motivated to succeed as well and you can make some great connections to help your business if you keep an open mind. Usually authors with business books do a series of appearances at stores to promote their new books and it can be a great (and free) opportunity to get a few new ideas.

3) Surround Yourself With Famous Entrepreneurs

I love reading the stories of famous entrepreneurs and how they got started. That’s why I write a regular series in this blog. Every time I read a success story it motivates me to do better and reach farther. Even though you may not know Richard Branson personally, you can get a lot of benefits from his teachings by reading his books (”Losing My Virginity” is fantastic!) and listening to his interviews. You can even look up your favorite entrepreneurs on YouTube to get an added boost of motivation.

When you’re faced with an important business decision, or if you’re just procrastinating and putting off doing work, ask yourself “What would Richard Branson (or your favorite entrepreneur) do?” Would Richard Branson be down on himself and browing the web wasting time or would he be out selling and making things happen??

4) Check Out Industry Conferences, Connect With The Experts

Whatever industry you’re in there will always be industry related conferences. Go check them out, do your research as to who the keynote speakers will be and have a few questions in mind for them. Make sure to connect with them before they come on and begin their presentation because they will be bombarded with questions afterward.

When I went to my last Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, I connected with the two presenters at the Site Clinic before they started talking. They were just sitting up on the stage alone and nobody was talking with them (they actually looked pretty bored waiting to get started!). After they finished, however, they were suddenly bombarded with people trying to get their questions in before they closed the room to set up for the next event. I was able to make a personal connection with them and get 20 minutes of one on one time all on my own because I went in before the rush. Do your research beforehand, have your questions ready, and connect with the experts before their presentations!

5) Get Online!

Forums like Young Entrepreneur are great places to meet people and have people hold you accountable for doing what you say you are going to do. The downside is that anybody can respond and you don’t really know how successful people are so you have to do some weeding through to figure out who you want to listen to.

Join Young Entrepreneur and post your business idea. You’ll definitely get some comments and advice from the members. Then you can go on to discuss some of your goals and what your timeline for succsess is. Come back regularly and update the community as to how you’re doing. Did you accomplish your goals? Did you fall short? Why? What happened? Doing this on an ongoing basis will keep you accountanble for doing what you say you’re going to do as well as introduce you to a wide network of entrepreneurs who will support you and your ideas.

6) Find Ways To Help People You Admire

Want to make a connection with someone you look up to and potentially get their advice? Find a way to help them first! Do your research on them and subscribe to Google News Alerts about them as well as the industries they are in. Think about a service you might be able to provide to help them out or introduce them to a new opportunity. If you can find a way to genuinely help them, they will remember you and will usually be more than happy to return the favor - if not out of gratitude, out of curiosity (who is this person who came out of nowhere to help me out??).

As an example, there was a successful businessman that I looked up to in Toronto who was not very technology savvy. I met himm briefly at an event and later went home and subscribed to Google News Alerts to stay on top of news in his industry and would fax him (he didn’t use email) regularly on new trends that were occuring. I did this for a couple weeks then called in to ask him if he found them useful. He didn’t remember meeting me at the event but he sure did appreciate the faxes! He was curious as to who was sending him this information and invited me over for dinner. I got a lot of free advice from him (and a free meal!) as well as made a new contact that I can use in the future for my different business ventures. Find a way to help them first and they will help you later.

7) Look Around You, Keep An Open Mind!

Chances are there are already people in your life who can be a great help to you if you just open your mind and ask for help. Do you ever notice that when you buy a new car or a new pair of shoes you suddenly see everyone else with the same car of same shoes? Did everyone else go out and buy what you just bought? No. Because you’re focusing on it, you start to see it in your environment more often.

Your brain can only process a certain number of inputs at once - most of the information it receives gets tossed out but if you set your mind to thinking about something, you’ll begin to find ways to get your goal accomplished. This is why The Secret and The Law of Attraction have been so popular in recent years. Look for successful people and keep an open mind - you will find them. As the famous saying goes, “The teacher will appear when the student is ready.”

How have you surrounded yourself with successful people?

Jerry Yang and David Filo (among the Top 25 Visionaries) started off as two graduate students at Stanford University. Today, they have a combined personal net worth of billions. That is all thanks to Jerry Yang’s and David Filo’s attempts to find anything they could do to avoid working on their doctoral theses.

Bored one day, the two decided to play around with the newly emerging Internet and create a list of their favorite sites. That list has since grown into Yahoo!, one of the world’s most popular online search portals, with hundreds of millions of visitors each month and billions of dollars in revenues.

With little more than their own creativity and hard work, the pair managed to secure funding, launch their business, and become the poster boys of a burgeoning industry.

How did they do it?

“For those of you who’ve done any kinds of thesis work, it’s pretty laborious and tedious, to say the least, so at the beginning of 1994, we started to procrastinate and spend a lot of time on the newly emerged ‘web.’

Really, we’d do anything to keep from working on our theses. And then, a funny thing happened. We called it ‘Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web.’ Before we knew it, people from all over the world were using this database that we created. We settled on Yahoo! It is a pretty recognizable brand name.

It was a really gradual thing, but we’d find ourselves spending more and more time on it. It was getting to be a burden. Stanford told us we were crashing their system and that we’d have to move the thing off campus. You have to realize when David and I were doing this it was just for fun. We never thought it would even become a business.

I believe that Yahoo! is too often defined by the competitive landscape, rather than by what we can accomplish with our assets. I’m determined for us to define our own path. Our purpose/goal is the same, to keep the internet free to the users and make the business part work by finding sponsors and advertisers who want to reach our audience. I think it is one of the keys to keep improving the usefulness of the web and make sure that as many people as possible can use it and derive value from it.

The more I look back, the more I realize how fortunate we were to find the right partners, the right management. It seemed natural and intuitive then. Now I realize what key parts of our business they are.

Stanford had a huge part in shaping us. We saw Jim Clark (co-founder and chairman of Netscape) coming to school. Bill Gates came and built his building next to our trailer. The venture capital is there. If you are interested in starting a business, you’ll find other people talking about launching companies.

I think that it’s always possible to have a great company if you have great ideas. I will say that since the web has become more commercialized, it also takes some good financial resources to build a great business, but as I always say, you have to have the idea first.“

In this week’s Entrepreneur University we turn again to a familiar face here at the Young Entrepreneur Blog: Leanne Hoagland-Smith. Leanne has already been profiled twice before (7 Ways To Get Rejected - Entrepreneur University and Avoiding The 7 Mistakes Most Entrepreneurs Make - Entrepreneur University).

Leanne Hoagland-Smith works with individuals just like you who want improved results personally or organizationally. She works to improve human capital for sustainable transformational change by developing results driven leadership in people, teams and organizations.

Today Leanne is sharing her advice on time management advice: Make An Appointment With Yourself!:

“To be successful today, means that you must manage tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow. The 21st century has a plethora of tools to make self-management much easier.

However what ever tool that you use, you need to take the following action:

Make an appointment with yourself.

When you take the action to schedule time with yourself, you may also need to adopt these 8 additional tactics.

1. Do not take any phone calls
2. Do not open your emails
3. Do not make an appointment with a real person
4. Make sure that you use your strategic plan
5. Work off a list that is aligned to your plan and current marketing goals, sales goals and revenue goals
6. Complete at least one task
7. Transfer the completed task or goal to your goal summary sheet
8. Do not leave the appointment early

Just think how you would feel if someone took a phone call during your appointment or was reading email. How effective would that meeting be?

Are you any less important than your clients or prospects? So why would you take any actions that you diminish your own value?

Once you begin to make a habit of scheduling appointments you will begin to see that dreaded To Do pile reduce. And you will have additional time within that appointment to make those necessary follow-up calls to increase your sales.

Several of my clients now make scheduling an appointment with themselves a weekly habit. Their results include these 5:

1. Billing records that go out within 5 days of job completion
2. Strategic goals that are reviewed and updated weekly
3. Calls to old customers to reconnect that have lead to additional sales
4. Calls to old leads that have generated increase sales including for one client $15,000
5. Better business weekly activity due to having more quality planning time

Take action right now and begin to schedule an appointment with yourself unless of course you enjoy chaos.”

Have you made a habit of making appointments with yourself?

The results are in from our latest Entrepreneur Poll: What Is The Best Way For A Startup To Earn Revenue? The number one answer that came in was:

Focus On The Sale

- The number one thing to focus on is your first sale. A lot of businesses fail because they spend their time on letter head, furniture, office space, etc. What really matters is getting in front of your customer, finding out what they need, and providing that service/product. It really is that simple but is by no means easy. Sales is hard work and is a required skill for every entrepreneur. If you have no sales or marketing experience I recommend you get a sales job before going out on your own.

- Hi there, The best way to earn revenue for a start-up is at some point stop setting things up and just start SELLING. Sales is a life blood of any business and the sooner you start the sales the sooner the money comes in.

- This is the only logical answer… The only way to generate revenue is to sell your product or service. There is no need for a poll or a survey… just sell.. thats all you need to know!

- Easy…Start selling a good product as soon as possible. Receiving revenues right away begin to offset the cost of a startup. There are those who want to read, research, plan, etc. all day, but it’s those who take action that succeed in this society.

- Earn revenue by having great sales tactics–selling while not getting caught up in the backoffice work and creating sales methods. Finding a smart way to have sale prices often, showcasing your products or services through sales, or adding some extra incentive or package pricing for the client. Also teaming up with a business that targets your audience. The key is also making sure keep expenses level while selling–so gross margins and profitability ratios don’t get messed up.

The second most popular answer was: Create A Marketing Plan

- No one will know that the business exists if it doesn’t launch a marketing effort soon after the ink is dry on the business plan. Create a clear and concise message and repeat it at every exposure avenue visited by your targeted audience.

- To create a marketing system that can attract customers easily. First, you need a way to make sure customers will come back again for your products. Subscription based works well. 2nd, you need to come up with a reason for them to buy. Maybe a one month free etc.

- Put together a marketing plan based on your projected cash-flow needs. How much money does your business need each month to cover costs and stay afloat? How much will it need to begin making a consistent profit? Now look at what you sell. How much business do you need to do each month to bring in that required revenue? Then build a marketing plan based on bringing in that amount of business for the lowest possible investment. And create incentives for customers to act now. There are two big mistakes small business owners make when starting out. One: not paying themselves, which forces many to give up too soon. And two: taking on all the work themselves instead of running the business. A healthy business can pay you a salary, and is scalable enough for you to bring in workers when needed, while you concentrate on running (and growing) the business.

The third most popular answer was: Advertise

- You have to spend money to make money as a new business. Advertise!

- Hi Evan! Good to see you on this forum. I believe that to get a business up and running successfully, you have to do a combination of the things several of you are saying: advertising and selling. Your advertising has to be very smart at first, being sure not to waste a dime. Many things can be done for free now, even if you’re a brick and mortar business. Get involved right away in the Chamber of Commerce in your area. Be evident at fundraisers and work your elevator speech into conversations somehow. Use your kids to pass out flyer’s. Do co-op advertising with local businesses. Just be a positive role model in the community and you’ll earn respect; which goes a long way in business. I think when your business is just getting going is the time you really have to be frugal with any money that you can get your hands on.

Other answers from our member were:

Don’t borrow if you don’t have customers

- In my opinion one should not borrow if he does not have customers.. avoid it as far as is possible…

Rent ad space on your website

- The best way for a startup to start earning revenue is to rent ad space on their website (asuming that they are online). You can setup a Google Adsense account or try something more original like … Rent-A-Webpage for $30 or $50 bucks a month. I believe that online startup is much easier than offline startup. If your business turns out to be a success online, you can eventually move it offline, especially if it involves hard goods or a service. The transition will be a lot easier because then you will already have a customer base.

Networking / referrals

- I would definitely consider networking to get referrals. Your local small business association is a great place to start. And I would second hold on to some of your money before you spend it all business cards, stationery and magnets for your clients-which you may not have yet. Be resourceful about marketing.

Use a blog to promote your business

- Consider using a blog to market your business. It is a fast growing trend and a low cost way to begin marketing online.

Cut expenses

- I think the best way for a startup to earn revenue is cut expenses. It seems when most people start a business they get a loan and overspend thinking it will all be earned back, this may work in the long run, but for 3 to 6 months, do more of the work yourself, spend less on everything that you think you need.

Put profits back into your business

- By putting back any profit no matter how small back into the business. Growth is the key here.

Implement your business plan

- Hi Evan, The best way for a startup to earn revenue is by implementing a business plan that can give more values and solutions to what people need.

I hope you find these results useful as you plan out your next startup business. Stay tuned next week when I’ll launch our next Entrepreneur Poll!

A common question that I get asked by website owners is “How do I know if Google has penalized / banned my website?” There are a few telltale signs that I wanted to share with you today.

1) You’re Not In The Index

The easiest way to tell if you’ve been penalized is if you’re pages aren’t showing up in Google’s index anymore. Take a keyword that you used to rank for and pop it into Google’s search box. Are you still showing up? Rankings change all the time so don’t worry if you’ve fallen from Page 1 to Page 2 - you just need to work on your SEO for that page. However, if you fall from Page 1 to not being found at all then something is wrong. Also make sure that it’s more than your homepage coming up. Sometimes if you have a minor penalty attached to your site, your homepage will appear in the index but none of your subpages.

2) Your Page Rank Drops To 0

If you had a Page Rank on your site and it suddenly drops to 0 then this could be another indication that you have been penalized. To check your Page Rank you can use the SearchStatus Firefox toolbar or pop your site into DigPageRank. Don’t panic if your website is a 0 at the start. All webpages begin without a Page Rank score when they first get started. You just have to wait for the next Page Rank update to see how you’re doing. You should worry, however, if you had a Page Rank score and then it was taken away.

3) Do A Google Search For site:http://www.YourDomain.com

A site: search helps show you a sample list of the pages Google recognizes and has indexed. For example, site:http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog/ reveals over 650 results - so we’re safe! Tip: Make sure you use a lower-case “s” for the site. If you enter in “Site” it won’t work properly and you might cause yourself a mild heart attack!

4) Check Your Webmaster Tools

Google has set up its Webmaster Tools as way for website owners to connect with how Google sees their websites. If there is something wrong with your website Google will often (but not always!) tell you with a warning sign in red next to your domain name. You can also use the Webmaster Tools to see how many links you have coming to your site (that Google recognizes) as well as which pages are in its index. If you notice that some pages are missing, submit them back in so Google knows they exist!

5) Use Free Analytics Tools

There are a number of free analytics tools that can help you determine if you’ve been banned or not. One is the Check Google Ban tool created by SELF SEO. I’ve used it a couple of times on websites I thought might be banned and found it to be a useful tool.

Have you found other methods or tools valuable to determine if your site has been penalized by Google?

This morning my website was featured in a story in one of Canada’s most respected newspapers, the Financial Post.

The story focused in on how entrepreneurs don’t like to talk about their businesses online and it’s difficult for people who own entrepreneur-related portals and communities to succeed.

My site was featured as one that was bucking the trend and if the story focused in on the United States YoungEntrepreneur.com would be held up as a model of success.

It got me thinking about why my site was successful and what it takes to run a profitable community website.

1) Pick A Theme

I see so many forums, blogs, and portals that don’t have a specific niche. If you try to be everything to everyone then you’re not going to make a memorable impression and people won’t come back or get involved.

2) Choose Something You’re Passionate About

Just like my advice last week (5 Ways To Know If Your Business Idea Is Any Good), you have to love what you do. Especially in a community driven website if you don’t have an interest in the topic then there is no way you’re going to be successful. You have to live and breathe the subject matter to drive it forward and you’ll have a lot more fun as well being able to share your passions with others. It can be tempting to jump at an opportunity because it looks like a “sure thing” but if you don’t love the topic, don’t do it.

3) Get It Started Yourself

You can’t have the mindset of “if I build it, then will come.” It’s so easy to set up a new blog or forum - the technology makes it extremely simple to get going so anybody can do it. The key is getting it started, putting up interesting content, and continuing to post and add to the site. If you are not heavily involved at the start to get it to critical mass, it won’t succeed.

4) Get Help!

You’re going to have to put in a lot of work to get your website off the ground (see point #3!) but as soon as possible you need to engage people to come out and help you. Get them to comment on your blog, get them to post responses in your forums, get them to moderate different categories and contribute. You can’t do everything yourself and more people become interested in your website if they see that there is a discussion going (not just you talking to yourself). Start with your friends and people you know and then reach out to others who run related websites who might be interested in participating.

5) Post Interesting Topics

People click through, read, and participate in stories that are engaging and interesting. Be controversial, offer practical advice, be a source of inspiration. If you’re just regurgitating news from a Google Alerts feed then people aren’t going to care and come back to your website. A good trick is to look at the homepage of Digg and see what stories consistently come up on the first page. Adjust the topics to fit your niche and get writing!

6) Get Prizes

People love contests and there’s nothing like a great prize to get people talking. If the prize is related and interesting to your target audience and there is a degree of value associated with it then visitors will increase their participation and help drive more traffic for you. The prize doesn’t always have to cost you money either. How about a feature story on your website or a special report or service from a partner who is willing to donate a prize? If you’re going to be an entrepreneur you need to think outside the box - I’ve never paid for any of the prizes I’ve offered on my site - you just need to get creative!

7) Encourage Your Top Users

You will have a top percentage of your users who love your site and visit it daily. Give them encouragement and recognition in the community. Point out how useful some of their contributions are and thank them for their involvement. You can also profile them as community ambassadors. Stay in regular contact with them and get their suggestions for how to make your website even better. Keep your champions happy and they will help you go out and bring more people in!

What would you add to the list of how to build a successful community website?

I covered UFC owner Dana White’s advice back in November (Do What You Love And The Money Will Follow - Dana White) and later featured his thoughts in a post on if you should go to college or not (What Do Famous Entrepreneurs Think Of College?)

Because of the success of the UFC and the popularity of Dana White I thought it would be a useful exercise to dig a little deeper into his story:

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) used to be nothing more than an underground fighting league, and one which was scarcely accepted in the U.S. That was, until Dana White came along. White transformed the UFC into one of the most mainstream and popular sports on the scene today. By cleaning up its image and marketing it as a legitimate sport, White was able to create a successful organization, whose events can now be seen on television in more than 35 countries around the world.

White was born in 1971 in Manchester, Connecticut, but grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, Levant, Maine, and mostly, in Las Vegas, Nevada. He admits he was never the academic type in school, preferring to spend his time in the boxing ring. He graduated from Hermon High School in 1987, and subsequently enrolled in the University of Massachusetts. However, after two years there, he decided that it was not the right place for him to be. “Hell, forget about college,” White says. “I barely finished high school.”

White floated around between different jobs for a few years, including a bellhop position at a hotel in Boston, where he was bringing in nearly $60,000 per year. All the while, he was also training as an amateur boxer. White says he “got hooked” on the sport, but grappled with where to go from there. In 1992, White finally decided to branch off onto his own. He had given up on his dream of becoming a professional fighter when he realized that he did not have what it takes. But, his love of the sport was still as strong as ever.

Thus, in 1992, White established Dana White Enterprises in his home town of Las Vegas, Nevada. With his new company, White opened up three gyms in the surrounding area. He might not have been a good enough boxer to turn pro, but that did not mean he had to completely abandon the sport. Instead, White chose to use his expertise and own personal experiences to train boxers in his gyms. He headed up successful boxing classes and became a personal trainer to many up and coming fighters.

Business was going well for White, but it was about to get even better. One day, thanks to his sports management company, White was introduced to two young UFC fighters, Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell. After seeing their potential, White officially began representing them. In the process, White became fast friends with Bob Meyerwitz, Ortiz’s former manager, whose company, Semaphore Entertainment Group, also happened to be the owner of the UFC at the time. White says the two “developed a mutual respect for one another.” It was then that Meyerwitz confided in White that he wanted to sell the UFC.

White immediately called up a childhood friend of his who was also interested in boxing, Lorenzo Fertitta. At the time, Fertitta was an executive at Station Casinos. “He was down in Miami, and I said, ‘You know what? I just found out the UFC is for sale. What do you think?” recalled White. “And he said, ‘That’s interesting.’ A month later we owned it.”

Fertitta, along with his older brother Frank, bought the UFC and installed White as its president. With that, White set his sights on a new horizon.

“It was around 1997 or 1998 that it all turned around for us,” says White. “We were all boxing guys and I used to think UFC was a joke. I would say, ‘those guys would get their asses kicked by a boxer.” That was, until White and the Feretti brothers began taking Jujitsu lesson, which White says, “opened our eyes to a whole new world. It literally changed my life.”

From there, White began to get more involved in the UFC. And, he claims that after meeting the athletes, the deal was sealed. He wanted to be a part of the organization. “They were college educated, they were good guys,” White says. “There was so much misconception about the sport and the guys that fight.” White began to wonder what would happen if they “got out there and really promoted it in the right way and let people know what kind of athletes these are.”

After deciding to purchase the almost bankrupt UFC for $2 million, White now had on his hands the challenging task of trying to turn the organization’s fate around. He began, first, by changing the ‘no holds barred’ label to ‘mixed martial arts,” emphasizing the athletic nature of the sport and enforcing stricter rules. White and the Fertitta brothers also created Zuffa, LLC as the UFC’s parent company, which would later secure sanctioning by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. This, too, would help bring an air of legitimacy to the sport.

White revamped the UFC’s marketing campaign, more effectively targeting his desired demographics. He also increased corporate sponsorship, and began releasing UFC fights on home videos and DVDs. While many fights aired live on television, White also initiated pay-per-view events, which were held at such places as the Trump Taj Mahal. This helped to bring profits back to their previous levels.

In 1997, the UFC got its first television deal with Fox Sports Net, creating the show ‘The Best Damn Sports Show Period.’ But, it wasn’t until the Fertitta brothers were featured in a reality television series that they got the idea to create their own. The result was ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ which was finally picked up by Spike TV only after White agreed to pay for the $10 million production costs himself. The show became an immediate hit, and UFC’s pay-per-view sales continued to skyrocket. In fact, in 2006, the UFC broke the pay-per-view industry’s all-time record for earning over $222,766,000 in revenue.

Already broadcast in 36 countries worldwide, the UFC is currently planning to expand into regular shows in both Canada and the United Kingdom. In March 2007, UFC announced it would be buying out its main competitor, PRIDE Fighting Championships, aligning the two to co-promote both organizations.

Today, White continues to run his company with the same gusto he did on the very first day. “If I’m not spending time with my family, then there is nothing I would want to do. No games, no hobbies, no special interests,” says White. “This company, those fighters, this job, they’re my hobby. This is my life. It’s my everything.”

This week’s Entrepreneur University comes thanks to Chris Simpson. Chris is dedicated to helping people find honest and legitimate work at home and home based business opportunities.

Chris shares with us his tips for 7 ways to make money in a hurry:

“If you are in a situation where you need to come up with some cash in a hurry, what do you do? Here are some suggestions that can make money fast when you are in a crunch:

1. Hold a garage sale.

Most people have a number of items in their home that they don’t use anymore or that they simply don’t have room for. Go through your home and gather up all of these things. Make up a sign or place an ad in your local paper to let people know about your sale. Not only will you have a lot less clutter in your home once the sale is over, but you will have earned some money in the process.

2. Sell unwanted items on eBay.

Another place to dispose of unwanted items is by selling them on eBay. You will have a better chance of selling your things if you include an image on the site. eBay is designed to be quite easy for new users to get started; if you get stuck, check out the interactive Help available.

3. Put an ad on Craigslist.

Placing an ad on Craigslist is another way to sell your stuff for cash. Since Craigslist is divided by city, this is an easy way to target local buyers.

4. Deliver fast food.

Delivering pizzas or Chinese food may not be the most glamorous way to make money in a hurry, but you will get paid cash nightly. In addition, you have the opportunity to make money in tips.

4. Sign up at an employment agency.

If you are looking for work “right now,” consider doing some temporary work. You will get paid every week and it could be a stepping-stone for other, more lucrative work. Temporary work is not limited to clerical work only; these agencies often have openings for day laborers, warehouse workers, order pickers, inventory takers, and the like.

5. Sign up for online paid surveys.

Do a little digging to find online survey companies that pay in cash. Skip over the opportunities that only give you an entry in a sweepstakes. However, if the survey offers a prize, it might be worth taking; you can always sell the prize to raise some cash.

6. Offer childcare services from your home.

If you are at home with your children anyway, you can bring in some money by offering to care for other people’s children as well. Put up a sign at a local mall, school, or community bulletin board offering your services.

7. Offer to do odd jobs.

If you are able to shovel snow, mow lawns, clean out garages or attics, you should be able to find someone in the neighborhood who needs these types of things done. Once again, put up signs or distribute flyers in your neighborhood to attract potential customers.

There are many ways you can make money fast when you need to. You might decide to sell something you own or use the skills you already have to reach this goal. The important thing to remember when money gets tight is that you do have options, if you let yourself be creative.”

Our 27th Review our Blog entry comes thanks to Ariane from The Young Entrepreneur Blog. You can read what she had to say about us in her blog post: The Young Entrepreneur Blog.

Ariane has only been boarding (more like plowing) since 2005. Being married to a seasoned Boarder, she thought she should at least try it out! Ariane’s main functions (and skills) lie in the operations and marketing of FreshPow!

Having experience in planning special events, dreaming up contests and executing media plans, Ariane’s goal is to have FreshPow! hopping with excitement and fun!

Thanks for the review Ariane!

If you are interested in doing a review, check out our Review Our Blog initiative for instructions.incorrectly occasions this

Name of Company: Infusionsoft.com