When I'm not hosting this podcast, I am writing books, but it is really hard for me to write when I'm at home, so I like to find remote cabins in the middle of nowhere to just hang out and write. But I hate the idea of my house just sitting empty, doing nothing but collecting dust and definitely not collecting checks. And that's why I'm an Airbnb host. It's one of my all-time favorite side hustles. Other popular side hustles are awesome, too, don't get me wrong, but they often involve big startup costs. By hosting your space, you're monetizing what you already have access to. It It doesn't get easier than that. And if you're new to the side hustle game and you're anxious about getting started, don't worry because you're not in this alone. Airbnb makes it super easy to host. I mean, if I could do it, you could do it. And your home might be worth a lot more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb. Com/airbnb. Host. Money rehabbers, you have money hidden in your house. Yeah, just hiding there in plain sight. Okay, so I don't mean you have gold bars hidden somewhere in walls, treasure map style, but you do have a money-making opportunity that you're just leaving on the table if you're hosting on Airbnb.

It's one of my all-time favorite side hustles. By hosting your space, you are monetizing what you already own. It doesn't get easier than that. For me, hosting on Airbnb has always been a no-brainer. When I first signed up, I remember thinking to myself, Soph, you pay a lot of money for your house. It is time that house return the favor. And to get real with you for a sec, I felt so much guilt before treating myself on vacation because traveling can be so expensive. But since hosting on Airbnb, I feel zero stress for treating myself to a much-needed vacation because having Airbnb guests stay at my house when I'm traveling helps offset the cost of my travel. So it's such a win-win. I mean, if I could do it, you could do it. And your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb. Com/host. Hey, guys. Are you ready for some money rehab?

Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player, Gamestop.

And should I have a 401k?

Because then I said- You don't do it? No, I never- No.

You think the whole world revolves around you and your money?

Well, it doesn't.

Charge for wasting our time.

I will take a check.

I got an old-school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNV DC, and Bloomberg.

The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand, the Cole Lappin.

Before we get started, I wanted to say Merry Christmas Eve to everyone that celebrates and wishing all of you happy, happy Happy, happy, happy holidays.

I hope you're surrounded by loved ones and you get to wear your fuzzy PJs all weekend or heck, all week. You know, that work from home life. Okay, let's get into it. It has been so fun for me to read your comments on Apple podcasts and to get your emails and DMs. It really, truly makes my day getting to read all of your stories. So thank you. After releasing episode 37, Turn Your Hobby into a Jobby, I heard a A lot of stories of people getting serious about their side hustles. One of the obvious metrics to assess whether your hobby can become a jobby is whether you stand to make real money from it. If you want to explore the possibility, you'll have to ask yourself questions like, how or how much? These are some of the questions we'll be going over in today's Listener Intervention. So, Kevin, welcome to Money Rehab.

Well, thank you for having me.

Tell me a little bit about what's going on.

Well, several years ago, I off a deployment and had a bunch of my sketchbook. So we put together some children's books, a hobby, launched them on Amazon, yourself published, and they did pretty well. Years down the road, when COVID hit and we reconvened, I'm one of the few artists that still do actual physical paintings. So we got together, started working on some books and thought that we have the original paintings left over. How do we sell them? How do we market them? How do you price them? And I did a little bit of work looking around on the web, and there doesn't seem to be a consensus on how an individual artist goes about pricing their work and finding that. So I thought listening to your podcast, I thought this might be a good topic for that.

It's a great topic. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you're selling and how much you're selling it for and where you're selling it now?

Okay, great. What we do is Amazon has a platform by which you can generate your own material and to self-publish it. It sits out there and generates income. You make the books, you put them out there, you market them. People can go to Amazon, purchase them, and then you just receive profit from that. And we did that with two books about a decade ago, and then they're still making a profit. They're still coming in. So when a pandemic hit and we were forced to stay home, we really thought, okay, let's lean into this and make some really great books. And we realized we had all this original artwork left all these paintings. And we had never really wandered into that arena. How do we sell the original paintings? A lot of people are saying, just read your market, but that opens several other questions.

You mentioned different markets. Do you have an idea of where you want to sell? Have you asked those customers how much they would want to pay? In other words, have you tested your product?

Yes. We were really lucky in that the work that I do is aimed at a very specific genre. So they have conventions, and there are existing publishing houses and collectors for that work. So I started out there. So we knew we had an audience. And we're in the process now of broadening that. We started out with the Steampunk market, and we did pretty well with that. And I really like... I'm getting into the retro sci-fi stuff. And it's gotten quite a lot of attention, but I'm I haven't, because of the pandemic, obviously, I haven't been able to go out to shows and what have you promote that yet. So it got us wondering. I sell mostly illustrated work. Like an artist. I mean, an author will approach me and say, Hey, I've got this idea, and then we'll negotiate a price on that. And then I usually will negotiate into the price if they want to keep the original work. But in this case, I'm the author making the book, so I have this leftover paintings. And that's where I was wondering about how to go about getting a price on those.

Have you tested your pricing?

I'm going to go ahead and say no, not necessarily. Not on the original work.

Okay. That's my biggest suggestion to you is to test. Test, test, test, test, test. It sounds like there's already a need for your product or a audience for it, or there's some demand for it. Oftentimes, when people are starting businesses or side hustles, I suggest to test that first. This is not a new concept. When the two founders of Airbnb started their company, actually as a side hustle just to pay rent, fun fact, they didn't just get out of bed and throw everything behind their idea thinking that it's the greatest idea in the history of the world, which a lot of entrepreneurs do because it's like their baby. They tested it first. They set up a basic website with pictures of their extra room and images of the air mattresses and whether or not they could include breakfast or not. And they really analyzed what that traffic looked like before they left their jobs and went into this business in a big way. So I would suggest to test, test, test anything you're planning on doing as a side hustle, as a potential business. Ask people if they want that product. You may think that there's a huge demand.

You may be right. You may be wrong. And so there are a lot of different ways you can ask people about that. A basic way is do a Survey Monkey. Anytime I launched another product, I would do survey monkey testing to figure out how much to price it at. I didn't just come out with a price out of my batuti. I asked people what they would pay.

That's a great idea.

So set it up on Survey Monkey, it costs a little bit of money. But honestly, the data that I got personally for things that I was launching was invaluable. It was well worth the fee that I paid to set up the survey. It went out to people that were in my target demo. I asked them how much they would pay. Ultimately, interestingly enough, I overrode what I found in some of the data because I was selling, for instance, in the last survey I did, I was selling a financial class. I found, shockingly, that people would actually spend more than I thought, which is high class problems. I didn't feel personally comfortable pricing a class about money at a higher level because I was teaching people how to make money. But I was totally shocked at the numbers. It was definitely not what I expected to see. So you could be shocked either way, but you just don't know until you do it. Okay, that's great. There are a lot of different ways that you can poll people. A Survey Monkey is just one option. You can obviously use free tools on social media. You can just ask people on your social media, How much would you pay for this?

You could send out a little survey through any email list you might have and ask people what they would pay. You could come up with a few different options. You could show them an example, and you could say, Hey, would you pay 100 bucks, a thousand bucks, a million bucks for this? And then you'll get a lot of data. You can be creative depending on your product. I talked about this in one of my books where this popular UK beverage company called Innocent Drinks, they tested their product at a music festival. And after people tried their smoothies, they could throw the empty cup in two different trash cans. Yes or no? The question was, should I give up my job to start this business. And at the end of the festival, the yes bin was overflowing, and that was enough to have them leave their jobs and chase their smoothie dreams. So depending on your business, you don't necessarily have to spend a bunch of money. There are a lot of different tools you can use to spend a lot of money, Nielsen and other things, but you don't have to, especially if you don't have the money to spend, you can get creative.

Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back.

Money Rehabbers, I got to tell you, I just got back from Industrius, and I am obsessed. Industrius is a company that provides co-working spaces and flexible office solutions for modern businesses, entrepreneurs, and remote employees who don't just want to work from their bedroom. I live in LA, as you know, and I travel a ton. And when I do, I always worry about finding a good place to work with a strong WiFi connection and a legit desk situation. Industrius has a ton of different locations in major cities, so it really gives me the peace of mind that I have a home away from home when it comes to getting stuff done. But when I am at home, I love the Westwood location's floor to ceiling windows. It just makes you feel like you're on top of the world, which is definitely the vibe you want when you're trying to take over the world. I also love the telephone booths they have that allow you to take private calls there. But also, if you have a Zoom, there's a ring light because Zooms are always better that way. We know this. Go to industriusoffice. Com, click Join Now, and use the code moneyrehab to redeem a whole free week of co-working when you take a tour.

A whole free week. Free. It's my favorite price. Do you ever get FOMO, fear of missing out? Well, do you ever get FOMO-Tupita, fear of missing out on the perfect hire? If so, I have the antidote. It's LinkedIn jobs. Linkedin jobs helps you hire professionals you find anywhere else, even those who aren't actively searching for a new job but might be open to the perfect role. In any given month, over 70 % of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites, and that adds up to a serious squad of awesome candidates. Linkedin has over a billion professionals on the platform, and these candidates are super qualified, so much so that 86 % of small businesses get a qualified candidate within just 24 hours. I work with LinkedIn jobs for all of my dream team needs, so they're hooking up money rehabbers at linkedin. Com linkedin. Com/mnen. Go there and you can post your job for free. That's linkedin. Com/mnen, as in Money News Network. To post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Now, for some more money rehab?

Well, one of the things that we thought about doing was incentivizing, getting people to contribute information, help us build our database. And so we made decals of some of the artwork, sent them out to people who have frequented us in the past, basically just increase our awareness. And then maybe that's something we could do. We could incentivize people to say, Hey, give us some feedback, and we'll draw from those people who answered us, and they'll get a package of decals or shirts or what have you, and mail it, still increasing our brand.

It's a great idea because that's actually what a lot of survey companies do anyway. When I was in college and had no money, I would sign up on the little bulletin boards for those surveys. I would take the number from the sheet that had a bunch of little things coming out of it, and I would sign up to do science surveys and all sorts of weird stuff for $20 an hour. And so you could just take that into your own hands and say, Here's how I'm going to compensate you. You can ask your friends and family. Oftentimes, you're not going to get the most unbiased answer or honest answer from them. So that's why I think finding strangers that are in your demo and compensating them is where you're going to get the best information. And that's what survey companies do. I mean, people don't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. This is not charity. And so if a survey company is going to pay somebody or give somebody a gift card, there are a lot of sites where you can sign up and be a person who takes a survey and gets stuff.

But you could also do that essentially yourself, where you're getting something of value in exchange for your time and your opinion.

Great. It would seem that the thing to do would be maybe do this annually because when you start out marketing artwork in particular, I would think that the market would evolve, and you might want to occasionally test and see if you can charge more or if you're underselling yourself.

Absolutely. And there could be a time where there's no demand. You want to be really honest and use that information as a place to pivot. You can check analytics from any website that you might set up. You can also create a small budget for Google AdWords for your product. So you can get an ad, let's say, in literally two minutes, where you can see which keywords get the most traction for you. You can look at metrics like conversion rate or the number of people who actually signed up for your product after seeing the ad. So all of these stats will help you understand understand how much money you need to throw down to acquire a customer and whether or not it's worth it. There are a lot of companies that are so-called zombie companies where they're just trudging along and they look like death. That's where they're called zombie companies. And I think a lot of those companies would be revived or come back to life if they did some basic testing where they looked at metrics for their most optimal success. So I did a show called Hatched, which was different from Shark Tank, where we heard pitches from entrepreneurs, but they were all consumer products.

So we tested them in a retail environment, and we looked at what those surveys were from people who came and interacted with the product before making a final decision because that consumer feedback is so, so important. I wouldn't suggest this to anyone who asked me about how to price their consumer product, but have you looked into NFTs?

I was going to ask you about that. That's all the rage right now. I'm hearing that from a lot of the artists. I don't do digital work, but obviously you can take a painting and photograph it and render it. A lot of people are curious about that. Right now, I'm going to wait and see how it develops. I listened to your episode about it. It got me curious. I'm still hanging in there. I think that there's some potential. I think it's going to shake out in a form that's sustainable in a little while. But I would be really interested in the next steps with that because obviously, if you look through my stuff, I tend to focus on the distinct characters. That lends itself well to the NFT market, I would think.

Yes, there have been a lot of successful NFT series that are character-driven and that they have limited amounts. A lot of them, I will be honest, have the artist or the creator with a large social following or base or some celebrity behind it. But I don't think that there's much to lose if you want to even test and see. Again, my biggest takeaway from our entire conversation is test, test, test. So if you don't know, I don't think there's much harm in testing and seeing what happens. You could be surprised and actually make quite a bit of money from it. Great.

I agree. I think it's worth looking into. Well, you've given me quite a bit to think about. I'm so glad. Yeah. I certainly appreciate you making the time because we've got a little bit to rethink here and come up with a plan, but we definitely know more than when we started. So thank you so much.

For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. Don't treat your pricing strategy like pin the tail on the donkey. You don't need to put a blindfold on and take a random guess at your price point. You can and should ask people how much they would be willing to pay for what you're selling. Plus, it's an early initiative to start engaging with your new customer community and an engaged customer community is a recipe for jobby success. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin.

Our producers are Morgan Lavoy and Mike Coscar Raleigh. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson.

Our masc are Penny and Mimsy. Huge thanks to O. G. Money Rehab team, Michelle Lans for her development work, Katherine Law for her production and writing, Magic, and Brandon Dickert for his editing, engineering, and sound design. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.

We spend our money, money, money.

Money Rehabbers, you have money hidden in your house. Yeah, just hiding there in plain sight. Okay, so I don't mean you have gold bars hidden somewhere in walls, treasure map style, but you do have a money-making opportunity that you're just leaving on the table if you're not hosting on Airbnb. It's one of my all-time favorite side hustles. By hosting your space, you are monetizing what you already own. It doesn't get easier than that. For me, hosting on Airbnb has always been a no-brainer. When I first signed up, I remember thinking to myself, self, you pay a lot of money for your house. It is time that house return the favor. And to get real with you for a sec, I felt so much guilt before treating myself on vacation because traveling can be so expensive. But since hosting on Airbnb, I feel zero stress for treating myself to a much-needed vacation because having Airbnb guests stay at my house when I'm traveling helps offset the cost of my travel. So it's such a win-win. I mean, if I could do it, you could do it. And your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at airbnb. Com/ Host. Money rehabbers, you have money hidden in your house. Yeah, just hiding there in plain sight. Okay, so I don't mean you have gold bars hidden somewhere in walls, treasure map style, but you do have a money-making opportunity that you're just leaving on the table if you're not hosting Hosting on Airbnb. It's one of my all-time favorite side hustles. By hosting your space, you are monetizing what you already own. It doesn't get easier than that. For me, hosting on Airbnb has always been a no-brainer. When I first signed up, I remember thinking to myself, Soph, you pay a lot of money for your house. It is time that house return the favor. And to get real with you for a sec, I felt so much guilt before treating myself on vacation because traveling can be so expensive. But since hosting on Airbnb, I feel zero stress for treating myself to a much-needed vacation because having helps offset the cost of my travel. So it's such a win-win. I mean, if I could do it, you could do it. And your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at airbnb. Com/host.