Why Turn Your Kids Drawings Into T-Shirts?

ryder1

My son drawing.

I believe one of the best gifts you can give to your children is the knowledge and skills to become an entrepreneur. It’s not for everyone, and you can’t force it, but at least you can show them a few things at an early age.

Artists are especially resistant to learning to sell and market their products. This is probably because many of them believe art is to be seen and not necessarily paid for, or they are totally focused on producing the artwork and hope that it alone with sell itself. Most artists are not comfortable in the ‘salesman’ role, which is what makes them artists and not ‘sellers’.

My son is a budding artist. He’s 9. And he likes to draw (although lately he has been spending the majority of his time with Legos and Mega Blocks). Over the years I saved most of his work, and set aside a few of his best drawings and put them in a drawer. I had no intentions other than to make sure we didn’t lose the best ones.

As Christmas approached I started thinking about gifts or experiences that were not what Santa usually brings at Christmas. I wanted to give him something totally unique and then it came to me. Why not put his drawings on a T-shirt?

He loved the idea (I broke it to him early because I was so excited) and I found a relatively easy way to get his artwork from paper and then onto a t-shirt. But then another idea came to me. Why not take it a step further and teach him a little bit about marketing and selling and using his t-shirts as a starting point? Continue reading

Make Money From Thrift Stores!

Here’s how I make money from thrift stores and you can too! What I do is not rocket science, but I think it might inspire you. You may want to read my first article called Operation Thrifting For Gold because it was my first ‘case study’ and my readers really enjoyed it.

There is quite literally treasure in most thrift stores waiting to be found…

Today, I went to two thrift stores and spent a total of 2 hours, including getting in my car and driving there and back, and I picked up at least three hundred dollars worth of goods. At least!

Let me show you about 60% of my booty:

thrift store finds

As you can see in this picture of my thrift store finds (from one small store), I got some interesting things. Most of them are worth good money, and my return on investment will be significant. This is not everything! I got 7 more books in addition to all this… Continue reading

Need UPC Codes For Amazon?

Here’s how to get UPC codes for your products so you can list them on Amazon, or other websites that require a UPC code…

Legal Stuff: This article if for informational purposes only. Do your own research before taking my recommendations or advice.

Here’s what a UPC code broker has to say and he is also the person I trust on this:

“You have two choices when purchasing UPC Codes. You can buy directly from GS1 or you can buy from a reseller such as us. The benefits of buying from a reseller is obviously the price. When you purchase UPC codes from a reseller you are buying a “lot” of codes within a shared prefix, when you purchase from GS1 you are buying an entire prefix.”

I have million dollar bills! Yes, I do. They are fake, so don’t get all jealous of me. Anyway, for the longest time I couldn’t figure out how to get them listed for sale on Amazon and some other sites that require UPC codes.

But finally I was able to get a UPC barcode and then list them on Amazon! Here’s my UPC code in barcode format (which I’ll never use):

million dollar upc barcode

Here’s my Amazon Barcode Label:

amazon barcode label

So How Did I Accomplish This?

I did a little research a year ago and I discovered that, it’s freak’n confusing! So I stopped looking, and a year later I started in again because my million dollar bills are awesome and I want to list them for sale. I mean, they are better than all the other ones so why should they get all the sales?

Click here to get UPC codes for as little as $1.29 each! It’s where I bought mine, and they work just fine on Amazon

So here’s what I discovered in regards to getting UPC codes for your hard good products for sale… Continue reading

Increase Amazon Affiliate Sales

If you want to increase your amazon affiliate sales and earnings this little ‘hack’ I learned might boost your sales. It sure did increase my commissions with Amazon!

Imagine being able to say something like this:
‘82% Off Pet Supplies At Amazon.com’
Or have a banner like this:

dog banner ad

Since we are using a Pet niche blog, or site, as an example use your imagination and substitute ‘Pet Supplies’ with any main category in Amazon.

Do you think someone would click on it? Do you think someone would buy?

The problem is that there is no area on Amazon to search by percentage off unless they are having a special deal that day. But now there is!

Increase Sales With This Amazon Hack:

Every category on Amazon has what’s called a ‘node’ that identifies it. A node is a number that is used to identify a list of products that are for sale on their site.

But the cool hack that nobody really knows about is that you can find all the products that are for sale at any specified discount you want. So if I want to see if there are any items 82% off the retail price in the pet supplies category (Node 12923371), I would use a link that looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?node=12923371&pct-off=82

The red numbers starting from the left are the node number for the category, and the 82 is the 82% off.

Check this out:

amazon discount example

You can’t find or search Amazon any other way that I know of.

The cool part is yet to come!

So how can you use this to improve your Amazon Affiliate sales?

Once you have the link you want to use with the right node and percentage off, copy the entire link, and then go to your Amazon Associates center.

Click on Links and Banners:

ama1

Then click on ‘Link To Any Page’: ama2

Scroll to the bottom and copy and paste your link into the link builder in the Link to Any Page section, and type in the text you want where it says Name Your Link, and click Get HTML in the lower right corner:

ama3

Here’s what you get: ama4

All you have to do now is click Highlight HTML, and the right click and save it to notepad or your HTML editor.

Your new text link will look just as it is shown in the above image where it says Preview.

Some affiliates take the actual raw affiliate link out of the HTML, and then create a banner add…

ATTENTION: An Internet marketer that I respect once told me that you have to use Amazon’s tools to create links and banners. So I do not know if you can create your own banner and use the raw affiliate link. I do not know if this is part of their terms of service agreement. I’ve checked and can’t seem to get a definitive answer, so check for yourself.

With that said, they are pretty forgiving in my experience. Much more so than the evil Google Empire 😉

Here is what they had to say when I asked them if they had custom banner creation services or if I can make a banner myself and code it with my raw affiliate link. See if you can sort it out:

Hi Brian,

I am sorry, we do not offer banners for individual products. You are welcome to create your own, or you can create a product link in Associates Central.

You can find these tools by logging into Associates Central at http://associates.amazon.com and visiting the “Links and Banners” and “Widgets” section.

We ask that you use these tools to create the links you need. The tools will automatically insert your correct Associates ID into the HTML code, which allows us to track sales from your links and will present you with images where applicable. You’ll need to paste the HTML code into your website using your HTML editor or the authoring tool provided by your web host.

There are a number of links that we offer so please take the time to consider all of the linking options available.

I hope this helps.

Here Is A List Of Amazon.com Node Numbers:

  • Node 16310091 – Industrial &; Scientific
  • Node 172526 – GPS and Navigation
  • Node 165796011 – Baby
  • Node 404272 – VHS
  • Node 1036592 – Apparel & Accessories
  • Node 1040668 – Shoes
  • Node 3367581 – Jewelry & Watches
  • Node 599858 – Magazines & Newspapers
  • Node 283155 – Books
  • Node 5174 – Music
  • Node 130 – DVD
  • Node 16261631 – Unbox Video Downloads
  • Node 468642 – Computer & Video Games
  • Node 229534 – Software
  • Node 13993911 – Amazon Shorts
  • Node 172282 – Electronics
  • Node 1065836 – Audio & Video
  • Node 502394 – Camera & Photo
  • Node 301185 – Cell Phones & Service
  • Node 541966 – Computers & PC Hardware
  • Node 1064954 – Office Products
  • Node 11091801 – Musical Instruments
  • Node 1055398 – Home & Garden
  • Node 1057792 – Bed & Bath
  • Node 1057794 – Furniture & Decor
  • Node 3370831 – Gourmet Food
  • Node 284507 – Kitchen & Housewares
  • Node 286168 – Outdoor Living
  • Node 12923371 – Pet Supplies
  • Node 15684181 – Automotive
  • Node 228013 – Tools & Hardware
  • Node 16310101 – Grocery
  • Node 3760911 – Beauty
  • Node 3760901 – Health & Personal Care
  • Node 3375251 – Sports & Outdoors
  • Node 165793011 – Toys & Games

Extra Hack:

You can customize the link to find products that are only sold by Amazon.com and not by other vendors on Amazon. You do this by placing this code at the end of If you want to limit results to just items sold by Amazon, add this to the end of the search:

&emi=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Example: The search below will show items at least 82% off in the pet supplies category but the items are only sold by Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?node=12923371&pct-off=82-&emi=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Now that you know how to do this, consider putting a text link in a highly visible area on your site that says something like:

Get 75% Off Computers and Electronics At Amazon.com!

Or choose a different percentage off. Be sure to search for to see if there are items available at the discount price you are searching for.

Good News!

I have a free tool that you can use to make this idea that will increase your Amazon earnings easier. Go to my webmaster tools site with the Amazon Secret Link Finder…

It’s really simple. Just select the percentage off you want to search, choose Node number (by category), choose whether or not you want all listings to be sold and fulfilled by Amazon (check the box):

ama7

Click Generate Link:

ama8

And then your link shows up in a gorgeous yellow box. All you have to do is select it all, right click, and then save it.

After that you need to follow the directions above to get your affiliate link.

Be sure to test your links to be sure they work properly before you get your affiliate link, and after. Even the ones with my free tool. If you have a problem let us know.

Tip:
Try using total notify plugin, which is basically the same as the Hello Bar, but free (at least it was when I first created my tool).

Credit Due:

The best product developer and Internet marketer you never heard of is Bill Myers. He is the one who showed this little hack to me years ago. If you want to get quality product development and information marketing ideas flowing like a fire hydrant during a summer heat wave, you have to visit his site. It’s been my little secret for many years. Now it will be yours. If you use that link you’ll see how killer his site and content is. I will get a tiny little commission if you sign up (it will pay for a soy latte), and you really should.

Operation Thrifting For Gold!

thrifting for profitsIn this post I am going to show you how I am making money buying from thrift shops and selling the goods for a huge profit!

I’m going to show you some of the goodies I’ve found at a couple of local and out of town thrift stores. But before I do this I want to give you a little back story…

About 1 year ago I got slammed by Google for no apparent reason. Most of my sites dropped in ranking, and a couple of sites lost a little bit of traffic. But then, Google Adwords shut my account down and would not tell me why.

I Felt Like A Loser!

I told this to my brother and he said, ‘Well, you must be doing something wrong.’ I explained my situation and he couldn’t believe what they did either! I can tell you more about it some other time… Continue reading

Making Money With Amazon.com!

As you may know by now, I sell eBooks and one printed book on Amazon.com, and the monthly checks are consistent from this effort. However, they are not huge. I don’t recommend this as a full time business model unless writing and selling books or eBooks is your passion.

However, I do believe in multiple channels of income. Selling ebooks on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and Apple is one of them. Here is a short introductory video on this:

Another channel I opened up several years ago is selling tangible products on Amazon. We list them, and then when someone orders we ship them! It’s simple (after you understand and navigate your way through their selling platform). Continue reading