I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on this blog before, but anyone interested in business and making money (not in the “fast money” sense, but in the “reaching your target audience” sense) should check out Mark Cuban’s blog.

If you are a basketball fan you know Mark Cuban as the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks. His behavior is sometimes contraversial (or so one is led to believe by the press). He’s a bazillionaire, but really seems like a pretty down to earth guy. I’ve never met him so I suppose I don’t really know the real deal here, but everytime I’ve seen him or read his writing I have come away thinking either “that dude is the best sports franchise owner their is” or “man, this isn’t just some wanna be jock that got lucky and made some money… this guy has some brains.”

Cuban rarely blogs directly about his team. His typical post are more business / economic related and contain great insights about how businesses should go about making money. For example, in one of his recent posts he discusses how newpapers could turn it around via their online portals. The same logic can be applied to other content providers. I know it sounds simple to say “get the customer’s credit card number”, but that really is a great first step. Then it is easier to convince them to spend money on services on a whim or even a subscription basis. Yes, easier than paypal or simply allowing them to reenter the credit card information. Make it easy and let them know often about the extra services you offer.

I only decided to write this post because I am often struck by Cuban’s knowledge about how to make money. I look at it this way… if I have a billiionaire telling me that I don’t make it easy enough for them to spend their money at my establishment (online or brick / morter), but that they can think of ten offerings I could provide (easily) and I could grow my business / customer base in the process you better believe I’m going to listen and I would encourage others to do the same.