Learn how to make money and work for yourself by selling your ideas.

Do you know how to make money? If you're like most of us, you've followed the road most traveled: school, internships, entry-level positions. You probably spend forty hours or more toiling behind a desk for a paycheck that barely covers your expenses. This may be an excellent way to make money for your boss or company, but who is making money for you? Wouldn't you rather be working for yourself?

Most of us were taught the wrong way to make money, explains marketing strategist Stefanie Hartman. Ninety-seven out of every one hundred people will go their entire lives without learning the right way to make money. The good news is that virtually anyone can be taught how to make six figures annually.

Hartman suggests that there are three strategies for making money:

1. Trade time for money. This is most likely the strategy you've employed up to this point. In this scenario, you work; they pay - barely. Most of us spend all of our time and energy making money for someone else instead of spending time with our friends and families. Even if we do manage to make a decent living, we hardly have the time to enjoy it.

2. Invest money for money. Do you have money to lose? Because the only way to make money by investing is if you can afford to risk losing your initial investment. Most of us can't, which is why only about 3% of the population are successfully using this strategy to make money.

3. Trade value for money. Using this strategy, people just like you are learning how to make money by selling their ideas. They're capitalizing on their own imaginations, and are spending next to nothing to get started.

Do you want to work for yourself, make six figures, set your own hours and finally have time for your family? If you think you're ready to start making money for yourself, you want door number three.

Money is simply an exchange or reward for something, says Hartman. That something is either time or value. If value is your preference than your first step is to define your value. What do you have to give that will enrich another's life or business?

Everyone has value. Everyone has a special knack, a particular talent, or a wealth of knowledge not possessed by others. Maybe you know how to help people conquer their fears. Perhaps you are an expert at organizing, decorating, or fixing home appliances. The point is that you know something that you can teach to others; and people will gladly pay you to learn.

In real life we constantly trade information with our friends and family to help them out, says Hartman. So why not turn that into a business? Why not share your information with even more people, and make money in the process?

Hartman goes on to explain that it's pointless for us to struggle for years making money for someone else. Wouldn't you love to make six figures a year from your couch or home office? she asks. Making money has nothing to do with age, formal education, gender or geography.

Remember, says Hartman, everyone has value! Millions of people are using intellectual property marketing to make money for themselves. So can you.