How to make money giving the bird to people you don't even know.

How cool is that? Give the bird to someone you don't even know and there's a good chance you can make a few bucks off of them.

A good friend of mine and former employee is doing just that--and making four-figures a month to boot.

He's a writer--a very good one--and he's also a marketer, a very good one, and he's combined the two.

It's called social media and Ben Wallace has used Twitter to go from the depths of absolute obscurity in Amazon.com's rankings to literally owning the top spots in his genre--comic fiction.

He did almost all of it with Twitter.

Now, before you quit reading thinking that if you're not a writer/author, it won't work for you, let me assure you that it will.

As a retired marketing/ad agency executive, believe me when I tell you this: The advice and technique Wallace gives in Giving the Bird: The Indie Author's Guide to Twitter will work for virtually ANY small business.

Let me, a guy who has marketed for giants like Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Sears, American Airlines, Pearle Vision, Sonic Drive-Ins, JC Penney, Sprint all the way down to home-kitchen based confectioneries assure you that, yes, it WILL work.

Simply substitute the word "writer" or "author" where it is mentioned in the book and replace it with whatever profession or business or service you provide. Then follow it, keep at it, mine it, nurture it and your followers will grow and as your followers grow, so will your reputation and thus your business and thus your income.

This is not one of those ripoff direct-response piece of crap ads you see all the time where you read, scroll down the page, read some more, read a few testimonials and then get hit with the "To discover how to do this yourself and make gazillions of dollars working just mere nano-seconds a day, send $99.95 to this address and blah blah blah."

The book costs $2.99 and I cussed Ben up one side and down the other for pricing it that low. He's got thick skin, though. After all, he used to work for me and that tends to callous up the skin pretty quick.

The book is only available in e-book format which makes perfect sense--it is using electronic media.

It takes about an hour, maybe two to read, then go back and re-read/skim over some sections.

Then, start putting it into play. Manage your expectations as nothing huge happens overnight--which you don't want. You want to build a solid, firm foundation and that is something Ben emphasizes in the book.

His main forté is comic fiction and I've bought several of his books and enjoyed them thoroughly. He's a gifted writer and his style is to write as though he's sitting across from you at a table conversing while the two of you chew on french fries and eat hamburgers.

Oh, and he's one of us, too. When he interviewed with me right out of college, he showed me a bunch of spec work for various handguns.

Need I say more? Buy his book, read it and learn from it and pass on the advice to other entrepreneurs you know.

With this bunch of bozos in Washington running our big businesses into the ground, small business is going to be the only financial engine our nation will have left--so let's make it happen.

Buy the book. You won't regret it.