Author: Manhattan Magician

Is eCommerce the Mystical Income Stream Manhattan Magician has been Searching for?

Being “Manhattan Magician” here in NYC is not always easy. The pandemic took its toll on me and was kind of a demotivator when it came to developing news effects and patter. I was not interested in doing magic shows via Zoom to fill my top hat with ducats. While indoors waiting for my second Covid shot, it became my passion to bring forth new online methods that magicians can bring in earnings. And one of these techniques I thought about and think it is at least worthy of consideration.

eCommerce the Magic Way

We here at ManhattanMagician.com have relationships with online consultants and other tech professionals. And when picking the brains of some of these media folks, the platform that kept coming up in conversation was eCommerce. The reason that they thought eCommerce could be a winner for conjurers is because they saw the format as a possible promotion tool while earning money.

Manhattan Magician’s Take

What is my take on why my digital expert friends thought that starting an eCommerce store could be a good monetary move for magic artists? My guess is that they probably meant that that a prestidigitator might consider starting an eCommerce store to sell eBooks about doing magic, offer online magic courses and maybe even t-shirts that have printed on them “I am the world’s greatest magician that nobody knows about.” Things along those lines I would imagine. From this point on in this blog post is from my dear electronic geniuses who have kindly given me the permission to publish below an excerpt from an eBook on eCommerce they are working on. So, if you are someone who makes their living waving a magic wand, you may want to check this out to see if anything resonates with you or gives you ideas on how you could use the eCommerce platform. Over and out from me and thus begins the eCommerce eBook preview: 

How Were eCommerce Stores Helped During the Pandemic?

The pandemic experience for all of us has been different and varied. Some industries had growth while other ones wilted away. And jobs were impacted in different ways too. Some employees continued to do what they do but did so remotely from home, while others in industries that could not be done electronically were hit hard and lost their jobs. During the long time spent indoors the concept of “working” changed. And it became obvious that if you wanted to survive in a comfortable manner you needed to figure out a way to have a job that, if need be, could be done long distance and not necessarily in the office or other workspaces.

Should You Have Your Own Ecommerce Store or Sell On Someone Else’s?

Some people, due to the pandemic, made the decision to seek an eCommerce dream as a way of making certain that they would have at least one income stream coming in no matter what happened. Those who sought this transition found themselves being torn between two different paths when it came to how to sell their products online. One path was to invest in having their own eCommerce store, which would mean that although they would have to both manage their site and promote it, they would be able to have more options to do what they wanted to do and not have to follow someone else’s rules.  Plus, they would be able to keep all the income that came in and not have to give another entity a large percentage of the money coming in. But on the other hand, if they used a third-party seller like that big one, they would have to give a large chunk of the profit coming into someone else. But the benefit to selling on someone else else’s ’eCommerce site, depending on how big and successful that site was, they would have access to more potential customers and might make more sales though only being able to hold on to a part of it. Though, when you work with one of the biggies to sell your ware, there is going to be a big chance that no matter how much you SEO optimize your page with keywords, you will get extraordinarily little and sometimes none of the traffic you need. The reason why that that the gigantic platforms do this intentionally, is because they want to get richer by you having to pay them for you to be sent visitors. Given the fact that both sites of the fence have their pros and cons, one possible approach that truly could be the best of both worlds is to use these two different approaches to eCommerce at the same time. Some have found this amazingly effective and your decision of whether to have the two paths meet, might be worth thinking about.

Are eCommerce Sites Profitable?

When trying to answer the question of whether eCommerce stores are a suitable was for the regular person to make a living, it all comes down to an ambiguous response that some of you are going to be very unhappy with which is that “it all depends.” There are several factors that go into making the decision of whether to move forward comes down to some basic questions to ask yourself and do research on. What are you selling? Is there a niche group the desperately wants your product and seeks yours out because they have a hard time finding somewhere to purchase like yours? How will you promote your site meaning will you have to pay for ads and traffic, or have you figured out a way to use free resources like being linked to other sites in your industry, being engaging, responsive and interactive with social media? What are the basic numbers for you? Are you selling physical products and if so, how much does it cost for you to get or make them versus how much will you charge for them? Or will you go the digital download approach such as eBooks and online course for which you do not have to worry about inventory for but still need an effective and workable to drive the right traffic of individuals who are avidly seeking out to buy now what you are selling?

Hello. I am Manhattan Magician and am proud to be interviewing performer/entrepreneur Yianni Stamas in a brief discussion about ways that conjurers can promote themselve. So let’s begin.

MM
Yianni, tell me, what is the easiest way for a prestidigitator to position themselves in this world of distractions with everyone vying for their slice of the attention pie?

YS
I believe it is still possible to be creative in building your visibility as a performer/entrepreneur without having to spend a lot. A New Year’s Eve article I did on MagicPreneur (that is going to run concurrent with this one) is on the topic of gaining traction as a magician or mentalist through the use of selling on Amazon.

MM
Please tell us more about that.

YS
The paradigm is really quite simple and includes selling magic books and tricks. An example of this kind of thing in the past is Mark Wilson’s Complete Course in Magic written in 1975. Though, that was a long time ago and many of your readers may be too young to remember the book.

MM
I remember Mark Wilson, my friend had his course. In fact, you can still get it online.

YS
A more current example is Jeff McBride’s Magic & Mystery School which is a private school located in Paradise, Nevada that teaches you how to do theatrical magic, mythology and storytelling. Jeff recently joined the Zoom call of a magic organization I am a member of and has always been an innovator.

MM
So let me get this right, by helping others learn the art of magic you are in a sense simultaneously helping to promote youself?

YS
Something like that. Though, to be successful with this method, you have to be sincere in your desire to make a difference.

Occasionally we get the input from you that you would like more posts about the process of becoming “Successful” as a conjurer. We are now going to show you an excerpt from an eBook that is being written on the topic of how to get on your billionaire path. Here it is:

“It is nearly time for blast off, it is time to leave us and live out your 10, 9, 8 countdown.

How to Make it?

Sometimes the advice given to get on your billionaire path is to be logical, think things through and be analytical. But most billionaires we have studied who we admire, seem to have in common a drive, even passion, and a big dream. When do you know if you are dreaming big to realize those dreams, or if you are just dreaming? You are only just dreaming if you do not believe completely that you are going to make it.

Your Choice of Blastoff

I have been around many “successful” (whatever that means) people with money, power and fame, and coming from this background I have to say that the more “successful” they seem to be by societies’ standards, the nicer they are. Many folks who have done well got there by charming others, while some do so by being cranky and mean spirited. The style you choose for blastoff is all yours

Getting Results

There are some billionaires who have a plan or others who do not. But even those without a plan still have a mental compass and the ability to monitor if they are off track or not. “Never take no,” some say. They talk about how they had confidence in what they were doing and felt it was their right to have their big dream come true. As we have stated earlier in this eBook if you are in denial and it fuels you, great. Just be careful that you are “awake” and able to take action that will get results.

Delegate

What kind of billionaire will you be? Some billionaires believe that getting a liberal arts education is more important than going to business school. They seem to say this because they believe that you need to be creative more than a business machine. The thing that makes sense about this approach is that if you are delegating along the way and have the ability to know talent and usefulness when you see it, you don’t have to have the skillset to do the tasks themselves.

What do you want?

And yes, through all of this know one really knows what makes a billionaire. But we do know this: YOU KNOW if you have what it takes and only you. Becoming a billionaire most agree is not just having a business sense but also see doing what you do as a kind of art form. It is also what motivates you. Why are you motivated. What do you want? What do you really want? Fame? Fans? Excitement? Filling the void?”

By now you must know, Houdini is my idol. He is one magician who did it all, prestidigitation and running his career as a business. This post is going to be a bit on the “educational” mode. But before moving forward, we would like to say that the following article was originally written for managers of a large Manhattan company and their managers and employees. I am including it here because I think it is important to widen one’s idea is of a magician doing business. Houdini was a marketer and a manager of his employees and so can you. Or, if having employees is just not in the cards in these pandemic days, reading this post will hopefully get your thinking about the opportunities presented by partnering up with a business owner in your community who does have employees. You could get this person to consider doing a “magic campaign” with her or his employees. Here now is employee marketing.

First, what do we mean by the term “Employee Marketing?” We are talking about two major things: (1) internal marketing to your employees, and (2) once they are engaged to have them act as ambassadors for your brand when it comes to marketing outreach.

And of course, we bring up the question now: what if you are a solopreneur and do not have any employees? Good question. The response is that you can either give up and decide employee marketing is not for you or push forward and find a partner who does have employees. Another possible move is to get an organization you are a part of, such as a theater company, and get clearance to pitch company’s actors or theater technicians to become a part of the promoting experience. This works the best if the promotion you are doing is beneficial to the theater company’s members.

Regardless of the way you get them, once you have an audience of employees to pitch to, do so with care. The idea is that you are literally working toward getting employees to “buy in” and the more you can get them to do so, the more receptive they will be to help.

So, you have two phases to focus on: (1) get employees engaged, and (2) show them how they can participate in the marketing program.

As you might expect, I have at one time or another, been faced by this challenge. When working with a chain, for which they were the largest in in their industry in terms of locations in Manhattan, NY, I was faced with having to actualize the described two steps. Here is how I did it.

(1) Engaging employees. I did so in person in a room filled with the managers of various locations and did a presentation for them. The idea was that once the managers were convinced to go along, they could in turn talk to the employees at their location. I did use a presentation (you could use PowerPoint or Google Slides etc.) to the managers. I described to them how beneficial it would be for the staff at their locations to get involved with the marketing program. I told them how this could build location morale.

I had materials handed out for them to study which gives them clear cut instructions of what to do with their team. Needless to say, is, that this presentation was in-person, but the same approach can be used with managers being presented to online through an online presentation free software or paid one.

If you do, do an online presentation, be sure to let them know the financial percentage increase they will get (though this is with the corporate model of the organization incentive for managers to earn more if employees sell more). If there is not the built-in financial reward, you can show them how having their team be on board with the marketing campaign, they will in turn have a more motivated staff. This concept works best if the company’s business model is such that the employees getting more customers involved means higher retention for them as well as tips and so on.

Do not forget to get the best email for all the managers. At the finish of your online presentation you can then email them with materials being promised.

This now sets into motion the employees acting on what they have learned from the managers that you trained. You need to track this process to make certain that managers are approaching motivating their team in the best way possible.

If there starts to be a lag in the process, seek out to get the employees, via the managers, to have even more “buy in” such as having them involved in coming up with campaign concepts themselves. This could be made to have more of an incentive for participation if it is maybe a contest with the winner having come up with the marketing campaign concept that makes the most sense.

Hey, you could do this for your magic business, either with employee’s of your own or somebody else’s. You are only limited by what you can see yourself doing. If you can imagine it and can see it happening to you, you will able to take steps forward.