In this weeks episode, Crys and JP talk all about cash grabs, what they are, when you might want to use them, and how to successfully use them to make some extra cash fast.
Show Notes
Wide for the Win by Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Transcript
Crys: Welcome to the Write Away Podcast. I’m Crys Cain with my cohost…
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Crys: How was your writing week, JP?
JP: My writing week was good. I had said that I needed like a creative outlet and I found one. And it wasn’t the short story. Oops. But other than that, it’s been good and I’m starting to get into the editor notes for book one. And that’s an interesting venture. It’s really, it’s excellent notes. I’m just like staring at it like, oh no, this is such a high mountain to climb. So I’m going to have to zoom in on little tiny bits of it and just go from there. So I just need to set up a game plan and then I’ll be ready.
I’ll let you.
Crys: As always, I have no idea what I did at the end of last week, but I know that Monday was extremely productive. Yesterday was interesting cause I intended it to be a writing day, but my assistant got my royalty reports back to me, and so I sidetracked into accounting, which I kind of love.
I love playing with the numbers, and this will tie into today’s topic of what is a cash grab. But I found a $600 accounting error in my favor where I had accidentally attributed one of my audios to a co-writer. And so I informed them of the mistake, but basically it’s like, hey, $600 I wasn’t expecting. And that’s nice.
JP: That’s awesome. I love whenever those good mistakes come around.
Crys: Like sad mistake for her because that’s sucky on my part to be like, hey, like you’ve already gotten $600. I prepaid you $600 out of the money that’s coming to you, apparently. Apparently that’s what I’ve done.
JP: Yeah. But it happens right. We’re people, not robots.
Crys: Absolutely, and I’m slowly making my spreadsheets super awesome. But this was just one of those things where I put the ID for the audio in the wrong line of spreadsheets and I’m happy I found it.
We wanted to say welcome and thank you to our new Patreons, Alicia McCalla and Katlyn Duncan. Thank you guys so much. We love you.
Okie-dokie. No comments this week. So we shall just go on talking about money. Yeah?
JP: Yeah. Let’s talk about them dollar bills.
Crys: So I made the comment last week that I made a cash grab by putting out a boxset. And what is a cash grab? That’s what we’re going to talk about. When I say that, what do you think, JP?
JP: I think of ways to obtain money in a short term period of time.
Crys: Yes, exactly. And this becomes easier for us authors to do as we have more IP. And it also becomes a little less “eeeee.” I don’t even know what that sound was, but that’s the sound of like slightly weird, like icky, gross feelings about money.
And so sometimes people will say that they’re making a cash grab by writing something that’s purely for the fans, that they don’t have a lot of interest in. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if your business turns into just doing that, it becomes a not fun business. You put yourself in a very small hamster wheel that you have to run very fast on.
JP: Yeah, I think with that definition of it being like the short-term profit, if you run a business on short term profits and you have none of those long-term tools that you can use to obtain money over longer periods of time, you’re going to burn yourself out and burn your audience out for sure, because they’re just going to keep getting these little snippets, little things that they can quick grab at, but nothing that kind of sustains and lasts longer.
Crys: Yep. So in our author business, the things that come to mind that I have done as cash grabs are putting out bundles, and sometimes with extra short stories at the end, cause that encourages people to buy and read. Of course, the first thing they do is ask for the short stories separate if they already have all the books, and especially being in KU, I try to hold back on that for longer, because I want them to buy the bundle. The KU, if that’s what they’re looking for, because this is an interesting KU tip, if you are in KU and you put out a bundle, and you put out short stories at the end of that bundle, you do not then want to put the short stories out in KU.
What you want to do is force KU readers to pick up the bundle, to read the short stories. Because often they’ll read through the whole thing and you’ll get extra KU money. But you only want to put the short stories on sale on KU, you cannot put them on sale anywhere else.
So for instance, I have a bundle of six books. I put six short stories in the back, each pertaining to a pair of characters from the first six books. I then release a smaller bundle, that is just the short stories. And that is only for sale. It’s not in KU, you cannot put it for sale on any other platform then KU because they are in KU in the bundle, if that makes sense. But you encourage people to pick up the bundle, which means you get more KU reads or more purchases. But you do have the short stories bundle available for people who want to buy.
Other things I have done. I sold audio direct for a very short period of time. Bookfunnel came out with its audio direct option, and I wanted to give it a try and it was free to be in the beta, so I didn’t have to pay anything. And so I uploaded my audio to book Bookfunnel and I set up a sale with… Payhip. It’s Payhip, but just a direct sales platform. Because at this point I wasn’t doing any other direct sales and I did not want to spend a lot of time spinning up. And that’s the thing about cash grabs, you don’t want to exhaust resources that you haven’t used before, you want to use what you have to an advantage. Payhip allowed me to set up a sales link to the book final action for delivery very quickly without spending a lot of time on it. Whereas if/when I install WooCommerce on my site and I build an online platform for direct sales, that will take time to set up, but once it’s set up, it’s an asset and I can use that for cash grabs in the future.
Another thing is sales, particularly this one’s a favorite trick, if you have audio and you have ebook and they are whispersynced, you put the ebook on sale for super cheap, 99 cents, and encourage people to then buy the whispersynced audio. So you’re pushing them, not for that 99 cents sale really, you’re pushing for that $7.49 audio sale. Which depending on where you’re at with Amazon or with your Audible contract, whether you’re exclusive or not, will get you a little under $2 to $3 per sale. Which isn’t nothing when it adds up over a few folks. Those are both things. So sales of any kind can be cash grabs when you have some good systems and expectations for those.
What other things come to mind for you, JP?
JP: From those cash grabs, I’m hearing a lot of like pre-existing IP, that’s getting either repurposed or retooled.
But me being where I am, I may not have that. But I still view those shorter term projects as ways to quickly refocus my efforts in the event that I need something along those lines. So for me, one of them would be like figuring out an author service of some type or a service of some type and just promoting that.
And for me, that was aligned with my education history. So being with a science degree, I have a lot of time handling those scientific papers and really understanding and reading them quickly. And so I can use that as a leverage for people who may want world-building with more accuracy.
So I’ve been able to figure out what that service looks like and trial it out on people which they seem to really like, and it also ties into a future technical edit as well. And so I view that as a shorter term project, something that I can be like, hey, are you looking for this service that I can be like, yes, I can spend like a week or two on it.
And then I have some sum of money at the end.
Crys: Another idea for you that I have been pushing to several friends, cause I’ve seen this in more of the online marketer coach business coach realm, is creating some kind of short workshop, an hour or two, that you can offer to your followers, and this generally means that you have some kind of a group that you can offer this to. Where for 50 bucks, you’re like, I’m going to do a two hour session on this topic and it’ll be half to three quarters me teaching, and then we will have open Q and A after that. When this is extra good is when you have a product to up-sale them on afterward, and then you can offer them a discount on it.
Cash grabs are just educated, quick marketing pushes. You can plan these out ahead of time. And I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily cash grabs. It’s just when you launch them on short notice that I would say that’s what quantifies a cash grab. Like, oh, I need money to happen sooner rather than later. So maybe even something I had planned for a month or two ahead of time, I’m going to pull it up real quick because I have the resources to do it. We’re going to pull it to end of this month instead of then.
JP: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I think the key is in either aspect of using your IP for readers or using something that you can leverage for other authors, the key is community.
You have to have a community, either a community of followers that read your stuff, or you’re within an author community. Just joining TASM in and of itself has opened so many possibilities and so many doors of options for what I would consider either cash grabs or like those mid length projects that may not be the longterm novel writing.
But yeah, I’m definitely proponent of community
Crys: And that’s always one of the things that I know we both feel very strongly about is integrity. You’re not selling these things just to bill people or like grabbing for cash just to bill people out of their money. It’s, you’re offering something that people want and you just happen to need the money sooner rather than later.
JP: And I think that’s the difference. I’m not selling like open air. I have my own time that I have to value just as much as anything else because when it comes down to it, we are all businesses. And when there’s something that I can offer, I love to be able to offer something that I can show you once and then you’re capable of using in the future. Because if you are missing that piece and that’s something that I am capable of offering, I think that it’s wise to consider some type of a monetary value to that, or some type of a value to that trade or whatnot, just for your time.
Because if you give away everything for free, you will just be a poor person. You will not have the money that you need to survive. And unfortunately, in the world that we live in, you have to have money.
Crys: Now, not everyone has to take advantage of cash grabs. You could be a super planned out person and only ever do super planned out things. And that’s delightful. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Some people are personality-wise able to take advantage of cash grabs. Other people would be horrified at planning something in very short notice and putting it out there and not having the time to deliberate about it. For my editing, I don’t see me doing cash grabs very often, if at all. I don’t see a way that I’d want to do that. Whereas with the IP that I have as a fiction author, they’re very easy to do that with.
JP: Yeah. And I think too, like for me, I may not have contemplated some of the cash grabs that you are using with your current IP. But in the event that like, oh this month is looking a little sparse as for other months, I now have a couple ideas that you’ve tossed out there that I can be like, oh, what if I can repurpose the IP that I currently have to work in this function?
I think that part of it is just opening the discussion because one thing I have noticed outside of author communities is that more or less people don’t like to discuss their methodologies. And I think that when we all kind of view the fact that we’re all working at this together and we’re not against each other, then I can utilize someone like you who has that mentality of pivoting on a dime and thinking up new and innovative ways that I may not be thinking of.
So I appreciate you offering some of this.
Crys: And I just want to add, because this is something that came up, I think we were talking yesterday about my dread of the end of the universe.
But also, as the romance writing is wrapping up and I’m making it happen, and I am leaping before I have a consistent income that’s not romance. And that’s slightly terrifying, more than slightly terrifying. And one of the things I mentioned to JP is I know that I could go get a job.
I dread it, but I know that I could go do it. And I actually realized that I could talk to a friend who’s been doing technical writing, and one, see if he has any work that he would be willing to hand off occasionally, when I get to the point where the romance is not in my life, if I have not replaced my income, so that I wouldn’t have to commit to a full-time job, but I could just pick up some slack with him.
But also, I know that his company is often looking for people to work for them. And it’s stuff that I could do. It’s not actual writing, it’s fixing textbooks, to proofing and formatting really is what it is. And I’ve just got that in the back of my mind.
Like I was like, okay, I will talk to him this week, just so that my brain calms down. And I know that’s a possibility and that’s a kind of cash grab all in itself. Grabbing a temporary job, which is literally what all these are. Like, you give yourself a little task, a temporary job to do a project, and then you get a little money that sees you through.
JP: Yep. Yeah. And I think the key is both with your experience you’ve had with wherever you are on your writing journey, and then the experiences that you’ve had outside of your writing journey, define you and in a way that is unique to other people. And if you can figure out what those skills are that you have, so for example, working with my co-writer, I have found that at least with him, I have a really good concept as to where I can make edits so that when I see a first draft from someone else, I also am able to start thinking through those process. So I know that if I were to hone the skill of editing, that could be something that I could then provide as a service for other people.
And then, looking for jobs that may have that similar aspect. So you already have something in the potential works in the event that you need it. I think both you and I are diversifiers of our ways in which we earn income. I know that you and I both talked about various stocks and cryptos that we do.
But I think that we both really view that concept of diversifying our means so that in the event that we either let something go or we lose focus intentionally on one of those things, the other things pick up and carry us so that we don’t see those massive dips. And we may even see gains, hate that word.
But we may see gains from our other…
Crys: Alright finance bro.
JP: Oh, get outta here.
Crys: You may see benefits.
JP: I’m never saying gains again.
Crys: Get them gains. Oh, excellent. I hope this is giving people some ideas of what they can do with their IP or their time. If they are strapped for cash, that’s one of the great things that I think you learn as an indie author is just how to make use of your time and your resources, regardless of what they are. And see the value that they have and the value they have for other people.
JP: Yeah. And too, like you’ve mentioned, you’ve made your own covers which are great covers for your genre. So even contemplating the skills you may have outside of just writing and contemplating what you can do to expand on that for a quick dollar.
It’s all you, I’m not doing that.
Crys: All right. What question shall we leave our listeners with?
JP: I’m really curious on what other methods people have used for their cash grabs, or if they’re thinking about doing one, what kind of thoughts they have on that?
Crys: Or if they’d even be comfortable running something that short notice.
Thank you for joining us this week. Don’t forget we have our brand new Patreon and we’ve been recording Our Year of Tarot episodes, and we’re six months in and I’m now finally like pretty much daily reflecting on my card. I haven’t done this every other month. For some reason, this month, my card is ever present in my mind and focusing my days. And maybe it’s just this particular card, maybe next week I’ll do the episode and then completely forget about the card for the rest of the month. But I’m finding it super helpful. So if you’d like to see what us crazy, witchy, slightly hippy folks are up to in the business world, we have those episodes up over there, as well as our book club.
We have recorded the book club for June by the time this goes live, but you can join us for Wide For The Win next month, July. So hop on over to Patreon and for as little as a dollar a month, you can get some awesome benefits. We will see you next week.
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