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And start changing the way you go about marketing.

My girlfriend Lindsay of That Mutt: a dog blog also operates a local dog running business. The first thing we did in marketing her new business was to hang up fliers, run a newspaper ad and all the other types of traditional marketing.

What we are doing next is a little different. We had a flier designed that is short and sweet with just the minimal info on it. The plan next is to simply walk up and down the streets around the area we live and every time we hear a dog bark, leave a flier on their doorknob.

Here we are removing the mass media shotgun effect of marketing and going straight after the people we want to work with. Sounds simple enough, right? So by taking the same $100 we would spend on newspaper advertising, we are putting that to design and printing cost. The best part is it is much more direct marketing which should lead to much better conversions.

Sure enough, we could keep throwing money at marketing the traditional way including splurging on radio, TV, print, billboards, you name it. Or we can focus on the very specific results we want. We want people with dogs who work during the day to be our clients. Now we will only go after those people.

A couple days ago I posted a rant about the financial mess crisis our government is getting us into. Perhaps, there is hope yet. As some people in our government are in fact standing up to the mess being run into headlong. (click the link to view the video for rss readers)

A Nation In Peril

Ron Paul on the Global Financial Crisis

This reminds me of the Shock and Awe campaign of the second Gulf War. Did that actually succeed or fail? I am not really sure. But anyway, it does truly shock me at how quickly we could transform a whole country with a few high-powered explosives. In the marketing world, that shock and awe would be a keynote speech by Steve Jobs of Apple.

Apple seems to have the ability to keep the lid on upcoming projects so well that when projects are launched, people are blown away by what is unveiled (pardon the pun).

But is it sustainable to keep shocking the same audience over and over again? Or do they come to expect it and grow numb to the antics.

Ultimately, I think that being original and interesting is far better. Yesterday, I wrote a post about something that I discombobulated with. Discombobulated is a word I always look forward to using in a sentence. That post was probably a lot more interesting to read than the normal mumble jumble I usually publish.

Could it be that I have been going against my own advice and writing to the middle ground, the boring area? Did I start writing to the middle where the majority is, and not to the fridge that I so often recommend? Why on earth would I do THIS!? Mediocrity is to blame. It took over, and the blog became dull. Maybe it was never exciting to begin with. AHA! Insert theme music from 2001 Space Odyssey here.

So with that in mind. I will try my best not to run a shock and awe campaign but to write the way I would for myself. I hope you all can be entertained and learn something at the same time. Because marketing should be fun, where else can you tell a story and get paid this well?

*Note: do not read this unless you want to hear a lot of griping, I mean a lot.

In the last two weeks we have seen the most handouts ever given to a bunch of private investors in our country to make up for the investors’ mistakes.

(Gripe time)

This is a bunch of BS! If you and I make a bad investment mistake, no one is going to cover our losses. But the idiots in charge of our country throw out crazy statements like: “The investors are too big to fail” or “We have to protect the market.” Then they turn around and do the worst thing possible, BAIL THESE COMPANIES OUT!

I am going to go and bash my head against the wall for a minute. Be right back.

Whew, now I feel a little better. All of these bailouts are done with our (taxpayers’) money. This might be ok if there was any say in the matter, but there isn’t. I can’t go to a town hall meeting and state my position, nor can I write my representative or senator and gripe to them. In the end, there is no oversight on how the government chooses to spend OUR money.

During the last two weeks we have seen approximately $400,000,000,000 (Yes, 400 BILLION) used to bail out the banks, insurance companies and investment firms, including adding liquidity to the market (meaning: giving these same people cheap, cheap money, the same cheap money that got us into this mess to begin with). This means every man, woman and child in the United States is now $1,333 more in debt in addition to the $88,000+ that each family is in debt already. Who gave the government the right to decide what to do with my money and my future?

In reality, the government has no money to loan to these companies, so instead the government borrows money from the PRIVATE federal reserve (it is neither federal nor does it have reserves) at interest and bails out the investors with that money. This means our income tax and debt burden just increased because a small group of people made some very bad investment decisions. Am I the only one going crazy here?

Next time you are paying $4.00+ per gallon of gas or milk you can thank our own government for the mess. Regardless of what anyone says or who they blame it on, it is our own fault for electing people into office who don’t care about any of us.

Now that is over. Here are some videos people might find interesting.

Dollar Collapse - Peter Schiff - Freddie And Fannie Socialist Bailout = Hyperinflation

Listen to Peter Schiff the voice of reason.

History of the federal reserve

Money, Banking and the federal reserve

85 Billion Bail Out for AIG

AIG Bail Out: Another After-Hours Party as the Fed

A large percentage of new bloggers want to make it big, to have a blog that tons of people visit and money pouring in. The truth is this rarely happens, and if your goal is to make money online, getting tons of people to your site is the wrong way to go about it.

I will probably get booed off the blogosphere for stating the obvious and so many people are ready to defend social media successes, but rarely do any of those defending it actually make money from the traffic that sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon deliver.

I won’t lie to you and say that if you make the front page of Digg you won’t get a ton of traffic, because you will. But did you know that most of Digg’s front page stories are generated by just a handful of people? The rest of the stories are generated by everyone else who is using the site. (Grip time) The traffic from these sites rarely comment, subscribe, buy, share or hang around.

When I first started blogging I used to think that social traffic was the end all and be all of blogging and that having good stats was better than anything. But if your goal is to make money, go where the money is and where you need to go in order to get paid. Provide for or target the people who are looking for a solution to their problems. Digg users aren’t looking for something in particular, they are looking for something random or weird that they can entertain themselves with for a few minutes while they kill time at work. They aren’t going to sign up for an affiliate program or buy a book. They are simply wasting time and floating from one thing to the next.

Making money online more often than not requires you to do and talk about the things that social traffic sites shy away from. This would be the niche blog or abstract art dealer site. By catering to the people who are looking for specific things like a service or collectibles you will find there is money to be made.

Before you persecute me saying you can convert that massive social media traffic, I will admit that many people can convert that traffic and have perfected the monetization of mass traffic flow. In the end, for me, if comes down to the amount of time spent achieving that goal and if that can sustain itself. If you stop for one week pressing, shouting, friending, digging, stumbling and so on, your business will wither. But if you set up a site that generates nice and consistent traffic and money you now have a business model. Don’t forget that a lead in the hand is worth more than a thousand fly by.

*For the record I have obtained mass traffic including having a number of posts hit the Buzz page on StumbleUpon, netting upwards of 35,000 page views per article. So it is possible, but simply unsustainable in the long run.

*Inspired by Vic and Grizz