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Well there have been over 40 people who have viewed my post and no one has suggested an idea or even made a comment, so I figured I would just go ahead and share here a picture mock-up of what I did with the 5 dollar store items:

I think its funny that you are macgyvering dollar store items into marketing tools I just want to know if a pizza place will pay $100 to have their ad in 5 barber shops when if they just go to a supermarket they can get permission to put it in a much more populated area for free. I'd say pick better locations than barber shops personally. You would have to get those mirrors right in front of the customers faces, and something tells me barber shop owners would not want to do that.

I could be wrong, I honestly don't know. I could just be looking for ways to justify my own laziness, but I'd rather find a location that is percieved to have more value to the pizza shops.

I honestly think, you could just go to pizza shops, tell them you'll putting their business cards in 5 local high traffic areas, like supermarkets, hospital, hotels, etc then charge them $300 a month to maintain them, take pictures and send them to the owners.

I'd do this for like 10 pizza shops, and just go crazy putting their business cards everywhere. Churches, senior homes, anywhere I could find in the local area. Write up a specific plan, make it irressistable, then negotiate a fair deal. Could probably make a killing doing something like this.

I think I might try - Red

@RedShifted: Personally I think ads in a public toilet are going beyond a joke - but it happens!

Honestly, whilst this is maybe something that wouldn't float my boat - it probably would have when I was younger and in a different situation in life.
I'll make a couple comments (directed at RedShifted's post).....

(a) For sure, come up with other / better ideas than a barber shop. What do you suggest?

(b) I tell you what. Those ads would get more eye traffic in a month than many a wanna-be directory type site.

(c) Many a newbie offliner looking to make their first 'extra' hundred a week (there's a lot of posts like that) could probably hit it faster doing something like this than many other schemes I've seen mentioned. 1 barber / 4 ads and you're virtually there.

The only thing I'd encourage someone to do: offer a better quality of mirror. I'd be offering something from a barber supplier or nothing at all. Might cost you your first months revenue. So what?

Go find 5 popular barbers in different areas and sell 4 ads per piece. @900 for a year advert (equivalent 75 per month) and $100 per month to the barbers....you've now hit $1,000 a month. 5 barbers should not be a hard sell. The effort (a week or 2 of holidays?) to get those 20 adverts happening could be well worth it to a student in need of cashflow!

Other than a barber shop?

Hospitals: lobbies
waiting rooms
cafeterias
lounges
Grocery Stores
Laundromats
Dentist offices
Doctor offices
Convenience Stores
Gas Stations
Libraries
Hotel Lobbies
Bank Lobbies
Churches
Malls
College bulletins

There are probably a lot more. I may build a quick wordpress site and just write up an order list. You could estimate the traffic in a day at each location by just counting how many people walk by in 10 mins. Then get a calculator and do the math.

You could probably go crazy with something like this, if you set everything up locally, and had a strategy where you hit places all within a 2 mile radius, it probably wouldnt be hard. You could even charge extra to design the ads for them.

This would virtually be the same as running your own offline marketing biz. And honestly, what college student wouldn't love this if you outsourced it? Pay them $12 and hour and have them do nothing but drive around and ask permission to drop cards/flyers off at various locations. They could probably get a whole hell of a lot out in an 8 hour day.

Just keep outsourcing ad design, outsourcing delivery boys, and profiting.

-Red

Cool RedShifted.
I think the point of the barbers though was the captive audience. Yours becomes a more broad format of general promotional areas. Nothing wrong with that, just pointing it out.

There's been heaps of these over the years, even in the small places I've lived. pinboards, electronic stands...all sorts.

Keep us posted on how this works Martin!

The reason I love Martin's posts is time and time again he helps me think outside the box.

For those of us with kids this is what we should be teaching them. How to make money from ideas.

Once again a post of yours got me thinking. It inspired a few ideas for me to try later.

Hi nice twist , give it a try . it's worth it if you can find ppl to rent it try a few then scale it up .

Martin, I like the way you think, thanks for sharing. Would love to try it mysefl but a bit gunshy approaching businesses off the street, However once in I can do well, its just getting in that is the problem. Have to work on that. Thanks again