By Marc Bastow

Building a nest egg takes time, and part of its care and feeding is the oldest line in the investment book: Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Sound advice now and for the future. Finding stocks that have paid dividends virtually forever like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Exxon Mobil (XOM) is great, but after the most recent stock market run-up, investors are a little leery of some of the sky-high prices these champions want for your share of wallet.

How about if we expand our vision out to some strong dividend players, each in different market segments, none over $40 per share and all with solid dividend yields that well exceed the boredom of Treasuries?

Putting your money to work with these players will provide long-term dividend benefits at what might be considered certainly reasonable prices, if not bargains.

AT&T

If the success Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 5 is any indication of profitable days ahead, then AT&T (T) should be getting ready for a party as one of this red-hot product's primary sellers.

But it actually gets even better because AT&T has also hooked into the success of Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle Fire tablet through its 4G LTE wireless service, which is bundled into some of the tablets. It's also available for Apple's iPad.

All of which is a way to say that AT&T is right in the middle of the wireless and mobile revolution, playing on all sides of the street with all the major players.

InvestorPlace Chief Technical Analyst Sam Collins has taken notice and is a big fan of AT&T. A recent downturn in the stock makes it available at less than $40 per share. What do you get for your money? Well how about 44 cents per share quarterly and a nearly 5% dividend yield!

Coca-Cola

There really isn't too much more to say about the Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) poster child and long-term dividend investment leader Coca-Cola (KO).

KO's recent 2-for-1 split gave anyone who's missed a chance to get in at a fair price of under $40 per share (and yes, 20 times earnings for these guys is fair) and a fresh chance at a 25 cents per share quarterly dividend.

KO has paid a dividend since 1893 and has the world's largest distribution system, with consumers in nearly 200 countries guzzling Coca-Cola's products at a rate of more than 1 billion servings each day. Don't expect that dividend history to change.

General Electric

I'm getting more and more pleased with General Electric (GE), which I bought earlier this year on a hunch that has panned out fairly well to date. The company is now enjoying the benefits of an upstream dividend from a leaner, meaner GE Capital group, and is able to pass that cash along to investors since GE has gotten out from under the TARP umbrella.

More importantly, while recent earnings reports are mixed, GE's overall business picture is picking up very nicely.

The company also just opened up a relationship with Brazil-based Petrobras to manufacture wellheads, and continued bumps to its 17 cents per share dividend, which currently yields  3%, look likely. All for a price under $25 per share today.

Marc Bastow is an Assistant Editor at InvestorPlace.com. As of this writing he was long AAPL, XOM, JNJ, MSFT, GE, and INTC.

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