How To Make $8,000 In 2 Weeks

This is a simple way for ANYONE living in a college town to create some extra cash. I mainly did this because I wanted to get real world experience actually selling something. This method won’t make you rich, but it certainly is a great experience to have under your belt. I hope people find this useful. 

Important Points of method:
· Requires NO UPFRONT COST or INVESTMENT to do

· Requires very small amount of time to accomplish (~16-24 hours TOTAL over time)

· DOES require confidence in your ability to talk to small business owners face to face

Okay I will give you a basic overview of the method and the small tricks that can be used to persuade small business owner to give you their money in exchange for your services.

At all major university campuses there is a Football season that starts during the end of fall (August-September) and goes through to the end of the year ( December). (Side Note: This method also works for other sports but I always did it for Football because it was the easiest to pull off.) The idea here is that you start 1-2 months before the football season starts, and you compile a list of all of the local business that college students use around the area of the campus. For me this was up to 20 miles away.

For Example: Pizza shops, smoke shops, tattoo shops, supplement stores, LIQUOR STORES, sporting goods stores, Pawn shops, etc. You get the idea.

Now use google maps to find large list of all these businesses in the surrounding area and save them to an excel sheet. Now there are driving route creators (mapquest, etc.) online that will compile chunks of your excel business list into the shortest and most efficient driving route to go out and visit these businesses when the time is right. Based on how large your list is, Chunk the businesses into 10-20 a day and these routes will be your guides so that you can be fast and efficient. That is the name of this game.

Okay now that you have this done put that to the side and move on with the actual offer.

What you are going to offer these businesses is “advertising space” on the medium of your choice for a large discount, then when football season comes around you will distribute these advertising mediums to the tens of thousands of people who, “tailgate” at these college football games. For example, my College had 7 home football games each season. So I would distribute the total adverting medium inventory evenly over 7 games. 

Now what are they going to be advertised on? There are many different options but I will tell you which one I did and then give you some more ideas about what else you could do. For me I did Beer Koozies. These are the foam can holders that keep your hand warm and the drink cold. (Other examples include Frisbees, key chains, plastic water bottles, car magnets, etc. Stuff that is pretty cheap to produce.)

You can order all of this stuff from Alibaba or similar manufacturer market places, for pennies a unit. The key here is to order weeks in advance so that you insure that you get your order on time. Or else you’re dead in the water.

Now I can’t stress this enough but you need to do your research on the manufacturer you choose because you CANNOT get screwed over. Look up guides on google for “how not to get screwed over on Alibaba.” Once you find reputable sellers for the item you choose message all of them about your order specifications (I will tell you how to find this later in the post).

You need to have an open dialogue so that there is plenty of time to complete your order. 

Now for the specifics of the Advertising Medium, like I said I did Koozies. On each of my Koozies I could place 4 separate Advertisers. Look at the inserted photo. 

SIDE NOTE: Never use the School logo or saying/creed, you could get in trouble. Be generic. [HASHTAG]#kickoff[/HASHTAG]

The top strip and the bottom strip of the koozies was where I would place a small businesses logo. So 2 on the front, 2 on the other front (back). Lol, you can tell all businesses they are all on the “front” because it’s a damn koozie, there is no differentiating the sides.

So for me I would charge $600 for each of the small businesses to get a strip on all the koozies (3,500). Looking back I should have charged MORE however I wanted an easy sell. Some people may be saying “how the hell did you get $600 from small business owners?” and I will explain this later in the post. But trust me, when you take the right approach I had people signing me checks in under 5 minutes. So 4 (businesses) x $600 (each) = $2,400 per order total revenue.

Now to figure out your cost you need to figure out how many advertising units you should purchase to figure out your profit. For me, I would tell them I would pass out 500 koozies per tailgate. So 7 (tailgates) x 500 (koozies) = 3,500 koozies total for the entire football season. The key here is that you can get massive Order quantities like this for $0.10-$0.15 a unit. Koozies are cheap as shit for example and they don’t cost much to produce or ship. This is good for you. So 3,500 Koozies at $0.10 a piece would cost you approx. $350. 


$2,400 (revenue) – $350 cost – $50-100 Shipping = ~$2,000 profit per order. 


Now here is the secret, you do not have to tell the businesses that you are doing more than one order. I’m not saying lie to them, but they do not need to know what other ventures you are participating in, because at the end of the day they are getting exactly what they paid for.

So at my height one year, I did 4 separate orders and profited over $8,000 in about 2 weeks! The key to do numbers like this and keep the number of work hours down is to be effective with your selling and to have a system down for communicating with 16 different business owners.

As I said in the beginning, that list of local businesses in the area, which are sorted into organized “routes,” will be your key to time effective selling. Just follow your list and it will save you SO MUCH time. 

Now how do you go about convincing these business owners to fork over $600+ to you? Read a book son.

But for real, Brian Tracy’s Psychology of Selling, The Sales Bible, and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. These books can be your groundwork for basic selling techniques. They will help you in life in general too.

Some more specific selling techniques for this specific situational selling would be:

  1. Wear a collared shirt that is from the College/University you are at. They will subconsciously think you are connected with the school, even if you tell them outright that you are not.
  2. Get a PARTNER, it is so much easier to sell in pairs. Find someone who compliments your weaknesses and split the profits with them. Also apply this to life.
  3. Be groomed. Simple things.
  4. Go visit the businesses when they are not too busy either early, mid-day, or really late. Never during rush times.
  5. Wear dress shoes.
  6. Think of all the questions that they may ask you ahead of time and prepare for them, it makes the sale that much easier.
  7. Tell them you are a business student (everyone is a business student of life)
  8. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL- frame the $600 as DIRT CHEAP for what they are getting. Tell them that if they tried to do this alone it would cost them $2,000+. Tell them you have connections that they wouldn’t be able to access. You get the idea. But be professional about it. Apply principles from the above books. “Consistency,” and “Social Proof” especially.

You will get “No’s” when you first start out. But every approach brings you closer to a yes. So you must get past the fear of failure. You went into their business with nothing and WORST case you are leaving with nothing. So you literally have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Here is a list of things that you will need to bring into the businesses to close more sales more consistently: 

  • CONTRACTS: find free templates online and adjust them to your Advertising setup. They don’t have to be perfect but they need to be done as perfect as you possibly can. You are just a one or two man operation so they do not expect perfect contracts. (ALSO* print them on cardstock paper. It’s cheap but it adds a lot of value.)
  • Business Cards: Same as above find Templates and Print on Cardstock.
  • Binder: a plain black binder that you hold your contracts in.
  • Example Picture: Bring an example of where their ad will be placed. Basically bring the picture that I had inserted into this post or an example picture of your selected Advertising medium.
  • A Pen: Black Ink x2
  • Water: Fiji

When I had it dialed in I was able to sell 2 businesses a day, Thursday-Sunday. And in 2 weeks I had sold 16 businesses and had Check or PayPal Payment completed. I would then spend $1,600 to complete the Orders and Split the Profit with my partner. 

When your Order comes this is how you will pass them out: Go to where the people Tailgate for your football games (high traffic) and Set up a poster board Sign. Write in big letters, “FREE KOOZIES” and place all the koozies for that game (500-2,000) under the Sign. My entire stash was gone in under 1 hour every time. I would drink some beer and then put the sign back in my car and wait until the next game. 

Total hours spent:

16 hours selling to businesses.
7 hours total at the tailgates distributing.
1 hour creating contracts, business cards, Example Picture, actually ordering from Alibaba.


24 Hours total = $8,000 Profit 

This is an extremely basic method and is just a personal experience to how you can work for yourself even if you are dead broke. I usually had no money when I did this method and it put much needed rent money and food money in my pocket. If it can do the same for one member out there then I believe it has been helpful to the community. 

If you have any Questions please do not hesitate to ask.

P.S. If you are smart you will begin to reinvest the money you earn into more profitable ventures.

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