9 Ways to make a Million - Entrepreneur January 4, 2014

It's a safe bet that more ink and paper have been expended in the name of how to make money than just about any topic. In case you're wondering why, here's a hint: Do you know how the dollar sign originated? Try overlapping the letters U and S, as in United States.

Capitalism and the American Dream are both alive and well, and with good reason. Who would have thought basic staples like food, shelter, transportation and healthcare would cost so damn much? We used to think of a millionaire as rich. Pretty soon that's going to be the poverty level.

So how do you get ahead — and stay ahead — of the ever-increasing cost of living? Surprisingly enough, there's no secret to making big bucks. The problem is people want it to be easy, like a winning lottery ticket, a magic formula for timing the stock market or a get-rich-quick pill.

Sorry to break this to you, but you live in the real world, not a fantasy novel. And while there is no silver bullet for making it big, it isn't rocket science, either — unless you happen to be Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. For the rest of us, this is how real people make gobs of money in the real world.

Start with nothing and grow up in a tough neighborhood. Lots of wildly successful people started with nothing and fought hard every day of their lives to make it. Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein grew up not far from where I did in Brooklyn. Competition and adversity breed great leaders.

Do what you love ... and pray there's a market for it. Steve Jobs said, "The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle." He was absolutely right. If you follow your passion — and so do customers — the money will follow.

Follow the yellow brick road ... to Silicon Valley. The high-tech industry has created enormous wealth for millions of people, and not just top executives, either. Microsoft alone accounts for an estimated 12,000 millionaires among former or current employees. The reason? Technology startups are the land of equity and opportunity.

Own your own business and live like a monk. Two-thirds of America's millionaires are self-employed. The vast majority are small business owners who live on budgets well below their means, invest their money, and never received any kind of inheritance, according to the book "The Millionaire Next Door." Do you really need that new car or iPad? Nope.

Take risks, make mistakes and trust your gut. Most people are either ridiculously risk averse or take dumb risks they know they shouldn't take. Take smart risks, the ones that make sense to you. Trust your gut. You'll be wrong more often than not but that's okay. Nobody ever got ahead by playing it safe.

Work your living tail off and make lots of sacrifices. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is a serious workaholic who works 90 hours a week. So does Elon Musk, who runs two companies and is not much of a delegator. The same was true of Steve Jobs when he ran Apple and Pixar. You get out of life what you put in.

Manufacture your own luck. It's said that luck is when opportunity meets preparedness. While it's true that I've been very, very lucky, it's also true that I never stopped searching for opportunities and never hesitated to go for it when I found even a glimmer of a possibility. My advice: quit tweeting and linking and get out and network with real people in the real world.

Stay married. I've seen it over and over again: one of the most common killers of wealth is the good old "divide by two." Think about it. Each time you get divorced, that's another divide by two. Divorce is a geometric progression — to the poor house. That's why only the poor and very rich can afford it. If you're in the middle, forget it.

Diversify, diversify, diversify. That age-old axiom is so true it isn't funny. I have an old friend — a former senior executive like me — whose investment strategy has always been to put his money in as many different places as possible. It takes time and effort but the payoff is huge. Save your money, invest it wisely and diversify.

Of course, you can always call yourself a social media entrepreneur or a self-branded CEO of one and generate all sorts of free online content while the folks at Google and Facebook get rich. The truth is, nobody ever got anywhere by doing what everyone else is doing. You may as well just buy lottery tickets and pray for a miracle.

Or start your own Digital Media Firm at 4 Local Media

We tend to hear a lot about the early-adoption habits of affluent Americans in terms of digital media, but radio as an effective vehicle for reaching this audience has been largely overlooked. Studies show that the majority of those in the car still listen to AM-FM radio, where they can find traffic and weather, local news and events. 

It may come as a surprise to some, but affluent consumers are the sweet spot of radio advertising. Each week, radio reaches some 94% of adults in the $75K+ household bracket, which, let’s not forget, is over twice the average national income. We call these people “mass affluents.” They are typically people commuting to white-collar jobs, shopping, or driving their children to practices or school events. 

Radio gets these users’ attention like no other medium. Daily tune-in times for radio average 2 hours and 27 minutes. And the likelihood that this audience is listening intensely is high, particularly among commuters. People driving to work are typically driving alone, many of them are in traffic, and most look to radio to engage and accompany them along the way. Unlike people watching a second screen during a TV show or checking social media on mobile, commuters are paying close attention to what they are hearing. 

Recent evidence shows that radio is a medium that dominates mindshare just before purchases are made, even in this digital era. According to an annual study carried out by Arbitron and Edison Research, in 2013, 49% of those polled who went into a store to shop had been listening to AM/FM radio in the half hour just ahead of that visit. Compare that to only 6% who had been using a cell phone to research information or 6% who had been researching on the Internet via desktop. Only 3% had been viewing a magazine. 

Even with the media landscape changing daily, radio continues to offer advertisers a captive audience of mass affluents ready to hear their message.

Book a targeted radio schedule with 4 Local Media: damon@4localmedia.com

We Should All Be Thankful For Advertising: I know that Thanksgiving is over, but I wanted to say that I was and am thankful for the advertising industry  (of course in addition to my family, health, friends and good fortune). And not just for the ad I saw in a taxi last week that informed me that I could use American Express Rewards Points to pay my fares (which I'm now doing regularly when in cabs with Verifone screens). I am thankful for advertising because it does so much for us, far more than most of us give it credit for.

Advertising takes a lot of heat from almost everybody these days -- as it always has. It has been a natural target for generations who only see it as a superficial generator of desires for things we don't really need.

Passing and expressing personal judgments is something absolutely everyone loves to do. It's easy to criticize ads you don't like. It's easy to complain about the number of ads you get. (I don't know anyone who would like to receive MORE ads). It's easy to complain about the lack of relevance of many of the ads you see. We all certainly get our fair share of ads that don't speak to our individual needs, wants and wows. It's easy to complain about the interruption or intrusion that ads may make in your media consumption, which can be pretty annoying.

It’s easy to complain about online advertising's faux relevance when you have the same e-commerce ads following you around the Web for weeks on end, from site to site. It's easy to blame advertising for almost everything from materialism to obesity, from fickleness or substance abuse to apathy or meandering values. It is easy to blame advertising for waste in the world, from product packaging to purchases of "unneeded" products, or for inviting people to drive gas-guzzling cars.

The quickness with which folks complain about advertising, and the veracity of their charges, certainly has an impact on many of us in the industry. It does me. However, criticism of advertising is one of the reasons that I am proudest to work in the industry.

Advertising is what enables free expression. The greatest platforms in the world, for the free expression and debate of opinions, are largely or significantly funded by advertising.

Advertising is a key catalyst in our economies. The vast majority of the world's most robust economies are largely or significantly catalyzed by advertising and related commercial communication. You can't have massively high distribution, low-friction consumer economies without readily available commercial information about consumer goods and services.

Advertising is a valuable part of our culture, conversations and societies. You don't need to look any further than social media to know that brands, products and their advertisements are an enormous -- and at times, integral -- part of people's conversations and identity, both individually and collectively.

Fundamentally, advertising matters, and our lives are much better for it. Of course, we can certainly make it better.  When my nine-year-old wants to understand if there is nobility in my profession, I tell her first about how we help pay the bills for free speech, a free press and lots of great stuff to buy. Then, when she challenges me on the many parts of advertising she doesn't like, I tell her I'm working hard to create a future with fewer, more relevant ads.

What do you tell your kids?

Update: Mobile ads double in first half of 2013, reaching $3B Advertisers see the power in small screens By Matt Hamblen October 10, 2013 01:15 PM ET 1 Comment inShare106 Computerworld - Revenue from mobile ads and searches more than doubled in the first half of 2013, reaching $3 billion, as advertisers began seeing value in offering ads over tablets and smartphones.

The increase was 145% over the $1.2 billion recorded for the first half of 2012, according a report released yesterday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.  Analysts and the IAB attributed the surge in mobile to several factors, including an ability to better measure the success of mobile ads.

"Mobile advertising's breakneck growth is evidence that marketers are recognizing the tremendous power of smaller screens," said Randall Rothenberg, CEO of IAB in a statement.

David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which authored the study sponsored by IAB, said a "profound shift" is underway in how consumers view media on mobile devices "wherever they go." Silverman predicted the trend will continue as smartphones and tablets grow and the user experience improves.

Companies are generally reluctant to talk about how much they spend on mobile advertisements,or how much revenue the ads generate in improved sales. But in one example, Nilla Wafers cookies were advertised on a Facebook mobile campaign over the summer, helping improve retail sales by 13% in July, according to the cookie maker's parent company, Mondelez International.

The IAB report also tracked overall Internet ad and search-related revenues, which reached $20.1 billion for the first half of 2013, an increase of 18% over the $17 billion for the first half of 2012.

While mobile revenues soared over the prior year, they still accounted for just 15% of all Internet ad-related revenues, at $3 billion. IAB separates mobile from search-related revenue on desktops, which totaled $8.7 billion in the first half of 2013, the largest category in the overall Internet ad market. IAB also includes mobile search revenues in its overall mobile ad revenue category, but doesn't provide a separate dollar figure for mobile search.

IAB defines mobile advertising as display ads, text messaging ads, search ads and audio-video spots on smartphones, feature phones and tablets. The ads generally appear within mobile websites (sites that are optimized for viewing on mobile devices), mobile apps, text messaging services or within mobile search results, including 411 listings, directories and mobile-optimized search engines, such as Google.

Google alone will capture nearly half of the U.S. mobile ad market in 2013, according to several analyst firms, while Facebook is expected to capture about 15%. Facebook reported in the second quarter that mobile ads accounted for 41% of its ad revenues, another sign of the surge in interest in mobile advertising.

Sephi Shapira, CEO of MassiveImpact, which provides a mobile advertising and analysis platform for global companies like Citibank, attributed much of the growth in mobile ads to the surge in the number of smartphones and tablets in use in the last year, with Android smartphones accounting for more than 80% of the total.

With so many Android smartphones in the hands of consumers, Google is at a significant advantage because its search engine is natively loaded on those phones, Shapira noted. Shapira estimated that ads offered during a search on a mobile device account for roughly half of all mobile ad revenues, while display ads account for roughly the other half.