Timothy Sykes says he took about $12,000 in bar mitzvah money and turned it into about $2 million. That’s obviously impressive, but the list of people who’ve made fortunes is long and growing daily. What I’m more impressed and curious about is how he’s building his personal brand online, developing a cult following around it and profiting from it all.

In my interview with him (download it below), I asked him a little about his stock trades and investing philosophy, but I focused on how he’s making a name for himself. Here are some of my notes from the conversation.

Howard Stern Marketing 101 -Timothy is deliberate about getting your attention, like when he went on CNBC and used beautiful women to show stock charts.

Use new media – He told me that going on Fox Business didn’t get his site extra hits and generate sales. But a blog on Black Cards that he appeared in some time ago, still sends him consistent traffic.

Sell, baby, sell – His site is now up to $45,000 in monthly revenue. It got there because he’s selling premium services, instead of just running ads.

Kill quickly – I’ve been hearing this a lot in my interviews. Entrepreneurs try something and if it doesn’t work, they kill it quickly and try something else. He told me about TIMBUCKS, a program where he was trying to bribe his readers to write for him. It didn’t work. Now it’s on the copping blog.

Give ‘em meat – He says we’re all going to get tired of this new fascination of watching people’s everyday lives unfold on Facebook, twitter, micro-blogging, etc. You have to give people meat–substantive ideas and tools that they could use–to build a real business.

Right click and download my interview!
(48 minutes)