Click here to watch my video on How to double your income in under 6 months.

We all know a person who is extremely talented at doing something and they treat it almost like a hobby. Perhaps it is a hobby for them. But when you need help fixing your car or with a computer they are there and lend a hand for next to nothing. Perhaps they are a good friend or acquaintance but at the time you would have been willing to give your left arm to have whatever working again. Why do you think so many people pay tons of money to the Geek Squad?

What is your true value?

Your true value is what you think you are worth. You might lie to yourself and say, “I don’t know as much about SEO as So-and-So”. That doesn’t matter. If you think you are worth $10/hr, you are going to make $10/hr. We all know people who make a lot of money doing something they have no right doing because they are a complete, incompetent a-hole. But that doesn’t stop them now, does it?

Value is a frame of mind and the sooner you establish what your true value is, the quicker you can start making some real money. This will likely prompt you to make some drastic changes, but that is ok. In six months, I went from a 40 hour per week, 23k per year help desk technician to working 15-20 hours per week and making over 86k per year! I did that all by making a choice and so can you.

How do I find my true value?

You probably think the idea of simply asking for more money is crazy, but in essence that is what I did. The most important thing you can do for your emotional, financial or spiritual life is to simply ask for what you want. It’s not enough to ask for more money. You have to ask for specifically what you want. I want $50,000 per year and the flexibility to work from home.

There is one caveat to this asking for more business. You have to believe it is possible to reach what you are asking. Asking for a million dollars is nice but if you don’t truly believe that having a million dollars is possible you’ll have a very hard time reaching that goal. Aim for a goal that is substantially higher than what you are making now but within reach. Start with doubling your income first.

If you currently make $25k a year, make your goal $50k a year. Then take that $50k and figure out how much per day it takes to reach that goal. Figure the average workweek of 40 hours and 50 weeks per year minus vacation and you get ($50,000/50 weeks = $1,000 per week)($1,000/40 hours = $25 per hour or $200 per day). This could be as easy as setting up one Wordpress blog/business website per week, per client, granted you know how.

Nobody should have a problem trying to figure out how it is possible to make $1,000 per week. If you are having a problem figuring out how to make additional passive income, it is probably due to not having a specific enough goal. Try it once for one week and once you prove you can reach the $1,000 goal for one week I am sure you can find a way to repeat that.

What are people willing to pay?

The short answer is a lot.

People are willing to pay any amount granted the value is there. It is not their job to prove your value assessment right but your job to show their investment is worth the value you offer. This starts with you. Going back to how much you value yourself, your time and your skill set is key. If you don’t truly believe you are worth $25/hr then you wont make $25/hr. You will continually find yourself in low paying jobs constantly grinding away to make ends meet.

I had my wake up call when a family friend put me in my place. I learned from that experience (the one I describe in the video above) that making more money isn’t about the opportunities but about your mindset and your goals.

If you are in the business of solving people’s problems, you’ll find they’ll be willing to pay just about anything in order to make the pain of whatever go away. If you are in the business of providing additional value to their already successful business, you’ll need to show how and why they need to pay you to ensure they don’t end up in pain. The Internet is changing at an exponential rate. It used to be ok to just have a website, an online brochure, but now millions of people (customers) are hanging out in places like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and consume content by the bucket loads.

Tons of businesses are finding themselves behind the 8-ball when it comes to things outside their business. If you believe you are worth more and your value justifies, you’ll have no problem finding clients who are willing to pay that exact amount. You’ll find that you will begin to make deals that fall right in line with what you are asking for. Then you simply ask for more again.

Ideas on how do you increase your value to your clients?

Pain is the number one motivator for 99.99% of the human population. I am not saying to start threatening people with physical pain in order to gain their business but to show them how you can stop a certain type of pain for them. If their company is online and their sales have remained the same or tapered off, show them how you can gain them a larger audience.

You can begin by showing your client the number one business website in their field in comparison to theirs. Now show them how quickly their competition is adapting to the changing circumstances and how you can help them to avoid becoming irrelevant in the future. Relevancy and eyeballs equal more sales and profit. Then lay out a plan for them to regain what has been lost and then where it will go from there. You’ll have to rely on past experiences to make sure you aren’t promising a bill of goods you can’t deliver.

Another way would be for you to work for a small base pay and take a percentage of sales or start selling the leads you generate. In the end you can charge a lot more this route because you are taking on more of the burden or risk. This will vary with the amount of trust you have with your clients.

Ideas on how do you increase your value to your boss?

This can be a little trickier. This will depend a lot on your relationship with your boss coupled with some good negotiating skills.

Start by framing up exactly what your intentions are. Creating a solution for a common problem and/or a way to improve the way things currently are. This of course can raise lots of opposition, especially depending on where you are in the organization and whether or not your organization has people willing to change or adapt. For this very reason I decided to quit my full-time job and pursue the life of the self-employed. Others have stayed with their employers and succeeded massively.

For instance, my good friend has stuck with his corporate job and started heaping all of the value he could onto his back. This year he received twice the raise that all my old coworkers received and has positioned himself as an authority to significantly increase his income in the next two years. All of this amid a recession. He was able to position himself as a high commodity in the workspace. This can be done a number of ways.

Firstly, determine what you want and make a plan to reach it. The people who win wars don’t necessarily have better warriors but better plans for reaching their goal. Decide what your goal is and start your plan of reaching it. This will likely not happen overnight, so be patient. If you need to increase your value, then do so.

Secondly, by increasing your interaction within the workplace and with your company’s clientele you gain more leverage. If my friend above were to leave that job for another, chances are high that it would be for much more money due to the added value he could bring to the table. A more complete package. By positioning yourself within a company as an invaluable resource, you arrive to the table with much more bargaining power. This isn’t to say that anything is a sure thing but with the right goal and understood value you can drastically change your position.

Lastly, you can use your past experiences and successes as a bargaining chip for your new future boss. If your current employer doesn’t fully appreciate the value you bring to the table, another will if presented correctly. Know exactly what your goal is and if your current path is not leading to it, find another. That could possibly mean relocating your job.

Conclusion

The most important thing to know is where you want to be and by when. Answer those two questions and you’ll find a way to arrive on time.

I know I am not alone in finding ways to drastically increase my income in a short time-frame. Tell me about some different ways you have exploded your income.

I get a lot of searches for different industries looking for useful marketing ideas. One of the terms I see show up now and again is Bank Marketing Ideas. I can’t help but wonder how fierce the competition in the banking industry is. The whole banking system is set up cleverly to make a lot of money. That is, if you have customers.

Every bank needs a sign

Whoever implemented the first digital time / temperature sign at a bank was a genius. That person deserves a medal. I mean really, they do. Every day on the way to and from work you look to see the time and outdoor temperature. It just so happens you also see the name of the bank displaying the sign, reinforcing its brand recognition.

Although, displaying the time in military time (where the day starts at 00:00 and ends at 23:59) and the temperature in Celsius (most Americans don’t know what that is) would be a more unconventional marketing idea. That would cause people to stop and think for a second. That would be reason enough for someone to talk about what they just saw. The effects might be minimal, but you never know. It would be fun to watch people drive by staring at the sign (with your brand on it).

To go even further, why not put up a daily trivia question? Or a random daily fact. People might even drive by your bank every day just to read the trivia question!

Free money

People love free money, almost as much as they love air. In Seth Godin’s book, Free Prizes, he told a bank advertising manager to slip a few $100s into the ATM. People would talk then. Mission accomplished.

Imagine someone pulls up to the ATM at midnight on a Saturday on his way to the next watering hole and he requests $40 and gets $120 instead. Would he go to the bar and promptly tell everyone? How much would you want to bet the bar clears out and a mass of people start withdrawing from that machine? I am willing to bet that each $50-100 you put in the pile to replace a $20 would be redeemed in the astronomical charges implemented at the only machine in town dispensing cash at 4 a.m. on a Saturday.

Stop with the fees already

Banks charge way too many fees, for everything. In a room with 100 people in it, not one would suggest otherwise. Set yourself apart from the crowd and stop charging fees. Maybe you opt out of fees and opt into advertising services like credit help, financial counseling or long-term planning and management of money. Perhaps you break all the rules and say no one will ever be charged a fee so long as they accept advertisements about these great services you can offer them.

What kind of marketing idea generator said its OK to add random fees to a bunch of different accounts and then promptly remove them with no questions asked when a customer asks what they are for? I mean, if the person whose job it is to dispense and receive monies can simply remove the fee on a whim, that fee should not be there. But I am willing to bet that people are happy when those fees are removed and do not report the devious nature of the fee to others. On the other hand, all of those people who don’t know how to check their accounts or balance checkbooks simply get feed to death.

Please upgrade your website

If Mint.com can offer a free budgeting service and attract thousands of people by crunching numbers and displaying them in charts, so can you. Mint.com makes money by referring people to credit card and mortgage companies. I would use a budgeting service if my bank offered it. A lot of the people who use my bank would too. Other people who don’t use my bank would consider switching or opt in to the free service because of the reputable brand. The problem with Mint.com is that it is not a Wells Fargo, US Bank or JP Morgan. Imagine how many people would be willing to give you a platform to help market other products and services to others. Remember it is always good to promote your competition as long at it is on your terms.

Invest in the community

If your bank supports a nonprofit or charity people can relate to, then you will have more customers just because people want to believe they are part of a good cause. People are emotional. Stories of helping others and photos of people in need play to our emotions and we want to help. Not only that, but once something has reached our emotions, we remember it. If your bank donates a percentage to schools, homeless shelters or dog rescue, potential customers will remember you and maybe even switch to your banking services. And I mean really donate, not just donate a lump sum and then spend twice as much telling everyone about it.

For example, how about using the save your change program to match donations to a school? Some banks have the save your change program where if you spend $2.12 on something they round up to $3 and put the .88 in a savings account for you. For every individual participant, save the change adds up to about $200-300 a year in savings. If my bank offered to match that savings from my save the change participation and donate it all to a local school, animal shelter or whatever, I would probably do it, gladly. I can just picture schools rallying all the parents to switch banks and sign up for your save the change and donate program.

Give out candy and dog treats

My girlfriend always talks about it whenever she goes through a drive-thru of any kind and the person at the window gives her dog a treat. Her cat was even offered a treat once. Kids love to go to the bank with Mom and Dad if they get a piece of candy from the teller. Use this idea and expand on it because adults like free treats too. Maybe on Fridays, everyone or selected people who use the drive-thru get a $5 gas card or a coupon for a free coffee. Or maybe they are offered a special such as a savings account with no minimum balance or the interest waved from their credit card for one month. Or maybe every single person who goes through the drive-thru gets a piece of Godiva chocolate no matter what day it is. People like to be surprised for the better, not that they just incurred $300 in overdraft fees. Use your imagination.

You might have seen the Kiva banner at the bottom of the page and thought nothing of it. What is Kiva? Kiva is a nonprofit micro loan company. If you click here it will take you to a YouTube video about how everyday people are providing micro loans to people all over the world. Kiva has a 99.7% repayment on all of the micro loans issued. This allows you to take then money when repaid and reinvest it into another person/small business. I recently loan $25 to a man that was trying to set up a kerosene filling station, in order to supply fuel for lamps in Afghanistan. About every 3 weeks I receive an update on his progress and if he has repaid any of the loan. So far in just a few short months he has repaid over half the loan. I look forward to reloaning that money to another person shortly there after.

Kiva.org does not make any money off of the loan in interest. Instead they rely on donations. At the time of checkout for loaning this man $25 there is a please donate 10% to support Kiva drop down bar. For those of you who are good at math already know that is only $2.50, for which I gladly accepted.

What is the most important part of Kiva? What makes this so special to me and probably why you have seen the banners on a couple of pages, is the fact you are directly donating to an entrepreneur starting a business. Where else can you give $25 and see so much progress? I can’t even go the the mall and buy a pair of jeans on sale for $25. It is a place where you can see your money being put to good use right before you very eyes. I would encourage any of you to check it out and start funding a small business today.