Episode 1~ TOP TIP: How To Score Great Deals At Government Auctions
YOU CAN SOMETIMES BUY VALUABLES FOR A FRACTION OF THEIR VALUE. FOR EXAMPLE, WHEN I CHECKED JUST NOW THERE WAS A HOME ON A GOLF COURSE AND A LEXUS SUV UP FOR AUCTION. BUT BEWARE OF IMPOSTOR WEBSITES POSING AS THE GOVERNMENT AND TRYING TO RIP YOU OFF! HERE IS THE GENUINE GOVERNMENT AUCTION PORTAL.
Episode 1~ MAKE MORE: How To Make $30,000 a Month In a Creative Career —Even Music!
GUEST: Ryan Heenan
TITLE: Fiverr Jingle Writer and Video Producer
CONNECT: www.ryanheenan.com
www.fiverr.com/customdrumloops
Q1: RYAN, DESCRIBE YOUR JOB BACK IN 2012.
I went to Berkley College of Music and studied the music business. After graduating, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. So I was teaching music in a preschool full time and giving music lessons here or there to supplement my income.
Q: AND, FORGIVE ME FOR ASKING, BUT WHAT WAS YOUR ANNUAL INCOME BACK THEN?
I was making about $30,000 as a preschool music teacher back in 2012.
Q: AND THEN ONE DAY —AND WHAT AN IMPORTANT DAY IT WOULD TURN OUT TO BE— YOUR BROTHER TOLD YOU ABOUT AN ONLINE MARKETPLACE CALLED FIVERR.COM. HOW DOES FIVERR WORK AND WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT AT MAKING MONEY ON FIVERR?
FIVERR.COM is a marketplace where freelancers advertise services they will do for as little as 5 dollars. Things like voiceovers, editing resumes, graphic design and, in my case, music.
When I first joined, Fiverr was a $5 platform. It had a low initial price but other things could be built in for extra money. I started trying to do drum loops, which is a drum sound that you can play over and over. They’re popular with hip hop and song writers so you don’t have to hire a drummer. This was 2012. I still haven’t sold even one! But I signed up with that handle so I still have it.
Q: SO THE DRUM LOOPS WERE A TOTAL FAIL, BUT WHAT IMPRESSES ME, AND WHAT OTHER PEOPLE, INCLUDING NON-MUSICIANS CAN LEARN FROM, IS THAT YOU KEPT REINVENTING YOURSELF UNTIL YOU DID SUCCEED. AND, BOY DID YOU! WAIT TIL YOU HEAR HOW WELL RYAN IS DOING NOW. WHAT WAS YOUR BREAKOUT SERVICE THAT FINALLY WORKED?
There were a lot of businesses asking can you write a jingle for our business. I had studied that in college. My first jingle took an hour and I got $5. But now because I have pushed through, I have a system. To write a jingle doesn’t take me long. To write it and record it – usually takes 4 to 6 minutes. That comes from lots of practice and a tight system. Each one is customized. I don’t use templates but I do reuse elements. If something is dot com I know the last two lines will be a phone number or website. There is a structure that is followed which is more efficient than if I was going to write a new artistic song from scratch each time.
Q: I KNOW YOU’VE HAD HUGE CORPORATIONS AND ODDBALL START-UPS AS JINGLE CLIENTS… CAN YOU GIVE US A FEW EXAMPLES TO INSPIRE OTHER PEOPLE WHO MIGHT WANT TO FREELANCE AS CREATIVES.
•I did a jingle for the Freakanomics podcast. They were doing an episode on products you think are good for environment that are not.
•I was in Time Magazine with Zoey Deschanel! I lead off with that so it sounds way better. Joel Stein who does the Awesome column, he got in touch with me and I thought it was a joke. He said I am doing a story about outsourcing your life. Could you make me a jingle? So I did write one for him. Line was” I sit listening to vinyl and conjuring up images of Zoey Deschanel.” Was a ukulele reference.
•Most inappropriate and funniest project was for a company called Stick a Dick. They made gigantic pink penis stickers for people who parked like a dick. You stick it on their windshield and they peeled off in tiny fragments. I wrote a jingle for that!
Q: SO YOU WERE ALREADY DOING WELL WITH JINGLES —I CAN’T WAIT TO REVEAL WHAT A NICE LIVING YOU MAKE FOR YOURSELF NOW— BUT THEN YOU PIVOTED AGAIN. AND I THINK PIVOTING TO GIVE CUSTOMERS WHAT THEY WANT IS AN IMPORTANT LESSON FOR OUR LISTENERS. WHAT CAME NEXT?
Next people said “can you put my jingle on YouTube?” So I learned animation and video editing platforms. Then the same buyers said “if we sent you a voice over with script could you turn it into a video?” They wanted to diversify their marketing.
I realized I could bundle music, marketing and video and built it up to doing animated jingles or white board videos with characters or visuals and also explainer videos. It’s the same idea but instead of music it’s talking.
Q: OK, SO I KEEP HINTING THAT YOU MAKE GOOD MONEY NOW. DON’T TELL US HOW MUCH YET. BUT DO TELL US HOW YOU MAKE MORE THAN 5 DOLLARS ON FIVERR. PEOPLE WHO WANT TO FOLLOW IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS NEED TO KNOW. IS IT THE VOLUME? IS IT THE FACT THAT MANY GIGS GO FOR MORE THAN $5 EVEN THOUGH THE SITE’S CALLED FIVERR? OR WHAT?
Last month I did 62 explainer videos and 49 jingles and one instrumental. Cost depends on how intricate they want to go. Sometimes I sell the full band or extras where you can build a package. One today is 30 seconds and $270. That is the whole shebang. And that will probably take me 15 minutes to do.
Q: OK, SO REMEMBER, 5 YEARS AGO, RYAN WAS MAKING $30K A YEAR AS A PRESCHOOL MUSIC TEACHER. RYAN, HOW MUCH ARE YOU MAKING NOW WRITING AND PRODUCING JINGLES AND MARKETING VIDEOS?
Now on Fiverr alone I do $30,000 a month. Within the last year it has really picked up – year 4 was over 5 figures per month consistently. I also work outside of Fiverr with local businesses in my community now. Doing all those Fiverr projects gave me the portfolio I needed to land that outside work.
Q: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO CREATIVE PEOPLE WHO THINK IT’S NOT POSSIBLE TO MAKE A LIVING DOING WHAT THEY’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT?
I have turned my passion into a business and it doesn’t feel like work. I have the freedom to travel, set my own schedule and open a business with my wife. Look for ways to take what you love doing and make it into a practical product that businesses will buy. At first I thought I would be selling Happy Birthday songs to individuals, but things took off when I created something businesses needed and wanted.
Q: OF COURSE, NOT EVERYONE LISTENING IS A MUSICIAN, BUT YOUR EXPERIENCE APPLIES TO ANYBODY WITH CREATIVE TALENTS. YOU HAVE ADVICE FOR PEOPLE WHO WOULD LIKE TO USE THOSE CREATIVE SKILLS TO MAKE A LIVING ONLINE. YOU SAY:
Be time-efficient. Create systems to make the work easier/faster, like I did.
Create a “gateway” service. This is the one that gets people in the door. Do a good job and you can then sell them bigger projects.
Follow the 10,000 rule. To become an expert you have to devote 10,000 hours – make mistakes, learn, and then you have more clear vision.
Be patient. Tortoise and the hare. So many people get excited and go out and do it and have drum loop failure like I did. Don’t quit! Keep reinventing yourself.
You can do what others do, but do it differently. Lots of people offer jingles on Fiverr. But I would say to clients – I will have this back to you in 24 hours. That was faster than other people. That made it possible for me to get orders from clients who needed it immediately and that was different.
Episode 1~ SAVE MORE: How To Save Thousands of Dollars by Refinancing Your Car Loan
A FEW YEARS AGO I WROTE A BOOK CALLED SAVE BIG ABOUT HOW TO SAVE LOTS OF MONEY AND IT HAS MORE THAN A HUNDRED STRATEGIES IN IT, BUT… NOOOO… NOT THIS ONE! THE BOOK WAS LITERALLY AT THE PUBLISHER BEING PRINTED WHEN I FOUND OUT ABOUT THIS STRATEGY THAT CAN SAVE YOU THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS.
THE STRATEGY IS REFINANCING YOUR CAR LOAN! YES! YOUR CAR LOAN! I’M SURE , YOU’VE HEARD OF REFINANCING YOUR MORTGAGE. IF YOU’RE A HOMEOWNER, YOU’VE PROBABLY DONE IT. BUT HARDLY ANYBODY HAS EVER HEARD OF REFINANCING A CAR LOAN! HERE ARE THE KEYS:
•FIRST: YOUR VEHICLE NEEDS TO BE ON THE NEWER SIDE, SO THERE’S ENOUGH VALUE IN IT FOR LENDERS TO BE INTERESTED. NOT BRAND NEW, BUT DECENT.
•NUMBER 2: MANY BANKS REFINANCE CAR LOANS. BUT KEEP IN MIND THAT CREDIT UNIONS HAVE TURNED THIS INTO SORT OF A SPECIALTY, SO BE SURE TO CHECK WITH A CREDIT UNION TOO. NOT A MEMBER? ANYONE CAN JOIN A CREDIT UNION. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE YOU WORK. JUST GO TO FINDACREDITUNION.COM AND THERE WILL BE ONE YOU QUALIFY FOR, SOMETIMES JUST BECAUSE OF WHERE YOU LIVE!.
•NUMBER 3: TRY TO REDUCE NOT JUST YOUR INTEREST RATE, BUT THE LENGTH OF YOUR LOAN, SO YOU HAVE TWO DIFFERENT WAYS TO SAVE. NEARLY A THIRD OF AMERICANS NOW TAKE OUT 6 AND 7 YEAR CAR LOANS AND IT’S AWFUL TO PAY INTEREST FOR SO LONG ON SOMETHING THAT DEPRECIATES SO FAST.
•AND 4TH AND BEST OF ALL: AUTO REFINANCES DO NOT HAVE COMPLICATED PAPERWORK OR CLOSING COSTS THE WAY MORTGAGE REFIS DO. THEY’RE QUICK, SIMPLE AND CAN SAY YOU BIG MONEY!
IN FACT, WHEN I WAS AT GOOD MORNING AMERICA, I DID A SAVINGS MAKEOVER ON A NEW JERSEY FAMILY AND HELPED THEM REFINANCE THEIR CAR LOAN. THEIR INTEREST RATE WENT FROM 10% DOWN TO 7.5 % AND THEY SAVED $1,995! NEARLY 2-THOUSAND DOLLARS IN SAVINGS FROM A STRATEGY THAT TAKES ALMOST NO EFFORT.
Episode 1~ FIND YOURS: How To Search For Unclaimed Money in 40 States At Once
UNCLAIMED MONEY COMES FROM THINGS LIKE:
Final paychecks you forgot to pick up.
Tax refunds that didn’t make it to you.
And also accounts left behind by loved ones WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY.
IF THEY CAN’T LOCATE YOU, BANKS AND OTHER FINANCIAL FIRMS ARE REQUIRED TO TURN THIS MONEY OVER TO THE GOVERNMENT FOR SAFE-KEEPING.
YOU CAN DO A BASIC SEARCH FOR UNCLAIMED MONEY IN ABOUT 5 MINUTES. IT’S FREE AND EASY AND YET HARDLY ANYBODY EVER DOES IT! SO I DECIDED TO SEARCH FOR THE 497 FRIENDS AND FAMILY IN MY CONTACTS LIST. AND GUESS WHAT? 75 OF THEM HAD UNCLAIMED MONEY WAITING! SO, I’M ALL EXCITED AND I START EMAILING PEOPLE TO TELL THEM THE GOOD NEWS! I’M READY TO BE THE HERO, GET TAKEN OUT TO DINNER…
AND THEN A FUNNY THING HAPPENED: THEY THOUGHT IT WAS A SCAM! EVEN THOUGH I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT UNCLAIMED MONEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST AND HELPED RETURN NEARLY 2-MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF UNCLAIMED MONEY ON THE AIR AT GOOD MORNING AMERICA, ALL MY FRIENDS THOUGHT IT WAS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!
…EXCEPT ONE!
SPENCER HATHAWAY, ELISABETH’S NEIGHBOR:
“Hey neighbor!”
SPENCER HATHAWAY LIVES DOWN THE STREET FROM ME IN WASHINGTON, DC, BUT HE’S ORIGINALLY FROM CALIFORNIA AND STILL HAS THAT WEST COAST ATTITUDE.
Spencer:
“I’m just way open, you know?”
SO SPENCER TYPED HIS NAME AND STATE OF RESIDENCE INTO MISSINGMONEY.COM, THE FREE WEBSITE I RECOMMENDED —AND SURE ENOUGH— THERE WERE TWO LISTINGS FOR HIM IN WASHINGTON, DC.
ELISABETH
“Was it hard to claim the money?
SPENCER:
It wasn’t that difficult. I just had to do a little bit of paperwork and copy, you know photocopy some documents and try to find something proving that I lived at this address.”
ELISABETH
“Soon enough you had a check?”
SPENCER:
“It took a little more than a month. I was pleasantly surprised, for the “District of Confusion!”
ELISABETH
“Ha! That’s our nickname for our government here in Washington, DC.”
ELISABETH
“So, from DC how much did you get back total?
SPENCER:
I got a whopping $639 dollars back from DC in unclaimed property I would have known nothing about had you not made me aware of this program.”
BUT WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW IS THAT MY D.C. NEIGHBOR, BY WAY OF CALIFORNIA, WAS BORN IN YET ANOTHER STATE.
SPENCER:
“Part of the fun of this is that you go back and revisit parts of your life that you don’t think about. I was actually born in Des Moines, Iowa. My parents took out a life insurance policy for me on my birth. ”
MISSINGMONEY.COM SEARCHES 40 DIFFERENT STATES AT ONCE, SO WHEN SPENCER TYPED IN DC, UP POPPED IOWA.
SPENCER:
“And so I applied for it, relatively painless, once they had the birth certificate, and I received $511.92! which was probably more than the policy!”
THE OTHER 10 STATES DON’T PARTICIPATE WITH MISSINGMONEY.COM, INCLUDING …CALIFORNIA.
SPENCER:
“Let’s talk about California!”
ELISABETH
“You had money in California too?”
SPENCER SEARCHED CALIFORNIA SEPARATELY. WE’LL TELL YOU HOW TO DO THAT IN OUR NEXT EPISODE.
SO, HOW MUCH UNCLAIMED MONEY DID HE RECEIVE FROM ALL 3 STATES?
SPENCER:
$1,804!
SO WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
• AT LEAST 1 IN 10 PEOPLE HAS UNCLAIMED MONEY WAITING.
YOU CAN GO TO A SINGLE WEBSITE, MISSINGMONEY.COM, AND SEARCH 40 STATES AT ONCE.
AND ALL YOU NEED IN ORDER TO SEARCH IS YOUR NAME AND STATE OF RESIDENCE.
THAT WEBSITE, AGAIN, THAT SEARCHES 40 STATES AT ONCE IS: MISSINGMONEY.COM.
BE SURE TO SEARCH ALL VERSIONS OF YOUR NAME, INCLUDING: -COMMON MISSPELLINGS
-FIRST INITIAL WITH LAST NAME.
-MAIDEN NAME
-FIRST NAME AND LAST NAME REVERSED.
FOR STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO USE THE MISSINGMONEY.COM WEBSITE, CHECK OUT THE YOU TUBE TUTORIAL VIDEO I CREATED, AVAILABLE AT EASYMONEYSHOW.COM/01.
Episode 1~ GUEST POST: My Top Tips for Becoming a Top Fiverr Seller
Ryan Heenan is a video and digital marketing specialist. Unlike many marketing and branding specialists who focus on one piece of a company’s marketing strategy, Ryan takes a different approach with a focus on creative marketing. From whiteboard and explainer videos to sales funnels and Facebook ads campaigns, he can help you boost your conversions and collect more leads. From Fortune 100 companies to bestselling authors to local companies, he has worked with businesses of all sizes in many different niches. Ryan and his work have been featured in TIME Magazine, Forbes, Kiplinger’s, The LA Times, The Freakonomics Podcast, NY Daily News and More.
www.ryanheenan.com
www.fiverr.com/customdrumloops
In a little over 5 years selling on Fiverr, I’ve made over 8,500 individual sales. It’s a crazy number to think about.
How did I pull it off? Over the years I’ve learned to create systems —Systems to deliver orders, and more importantly, systems to entice buyers to work with me.
Here are my five tips if you’re looking to become a successful seller on Fiverr.com
Tip #1: Be time-efficient
Do you want to spend 4 hours to make $5? Probably not, right? Assignments on Fiverr are called “gigs.” A time- efficient gig means your gig is something that will be easy to scale when you get busy. Eventually you want to eliminate the “trading time for money” mentality, but if you are just starting out, set an hourly number you want to shoot for. For some people it might be higher than others.
Let’s say you decide you want to make $40 per hour. If you are selling your base gig for $10, you need to be able to do five in one hour to make this amount (Five instead of four because Fiverr takes 20%).
When I first started out my goal was to make $30 per hour. Since I was selling $5 gigs I had figured out a system to complete 7-8 gigs per hour. The reason this is important is because when you start optimizing your gig extras (I’ll explain more in step #4), your earnings will sky rocket. When I first started out on Fiverr, my average order was $5. 7 gigs/hour = $35. Now my average is around $130 per gig, and some of my gigs take me the same amount of time as those old $5 gigs. $130×7 =$910 per hour. Better, right?
Tip #2: Create a gig that a business would want to buy
Let’s say you wrote the best and most creative Happy Birthday song in the entire world. It’s even better than the original Happy Birthday Song. If you try to sell this on Fiverr, you’ll run into a little problem. Most people aren’t on Fiverr looking for birthday songs. Sure, you’ll sell a few, but the bulk of business on Fiverr lies in…well…business! Position your gig towards businesses. I promise you’ll still get the random “fun order,” but the majority of buyers on the site are buying for commercial purposes. Make sure you’re casting your lure into a sea with a lot of fish —not into a goldfish tank!
Tip #3 : Demonstrate your gig on video
Forrester Research says that 60 seconds of video is worth 1.8 million words. So can you take a guess why demonstrating your gig on video is important? Even if your gig has nothing to do with a video, you still need to showcase your offering on video. Film it on your phone or —better yet—hire a Fiverr seller to make a video for you.
Video not only increases conversion rates but it also showcases your personality. And if you have a good personality, you’ll immediately beat out more experienced sellers if you appeal to the person watching your video. For example, I made videos of myself playing different genres of music on the guitar, to promote a gig where I offered to write an original instrumental song for businesses.
Tip #4: Create a “Gateway Gig”
Remember way back in tip #1 when I talked about optimizing your gig extras? You need to view your gig as a gateway gig. What does that mean? It means your main offering is a gateway to more offerings called “gig extras” on Fiverr. For example, if I offer a jingle as my gateway gig, my gig extras are for an instrumental version of the track, commercial rights, a video, mastering, faster delivery, etc. All of these additional offerings should be irresistible to a buyer in some way. Meaning they’ll get it faster, it will sound better, they can do more with it, etc. That’s what transforms a $5 order into a $150 order very quickly!
Tip #5: make sure the order can be filled in two days
Now…this doesn’t mean you have to deliver everything in 2 days. It just means you need to be CAPABLE of completing the order in 2 days. The reason this is important is because as a new seller you need a way to differentiate yourself. This doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel, it just means you need your wheel to look a tiny bit more shiny. For my first 2 months on Fiverr, I delivered everything in 24 hours or less. If someone was in a time pinch, I wanted to make sure I was their choice.
Fiverr has great search filters on their site and if you can deliver fast, a lot of people will see your services.
BONUS TIP
I’ve literally given you the EXACT blueprint that I used to succeed on Fiverr. There is only one thing missing. And this is the most important tip of all:
TAKE ACTION!
Start brainstorming ideas, write them down, set a deadline for yourself. If you don’t actually get out there and create a gig or take action, nothing I said will be relevant. This is the Easy Money Podcast. Will you go out there and be a doer and go after the easy money? Or will you sit back and make excuses? You have two options…GO!
By Ryan Heenan
