How to Rake in Big $$$ This Black Friday With Your Creative Biz

A killer cashflow plan for itty bitty creative businesses who are shy about promoting themselves (steal these ideas!)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Forwarded this email? [Subscribe here]() for more [How to Rake in Big $$$ This Black Friday With Your Creative Biz]( A killer cashflow plan for itty bitty creative businesses who are shy about promoting themselves (steal these ideas!) [Ash Ambirge]( Nov 3 ∙ Preview   [READ IN APP](   Remember how [last week]( Christopher the Trash Man and I were BEST FRIENDS??????? And remember how last week, I gave this man MEDIOCRE PEANUT BUTTER CAKE????????????? (Hey, I am trying.) Well, well, well. My strategy may have backfired, because this week, Christopher the Trash Man ghosted me. Straight up ghosted me! Never picked up my garbage on trash day. Nope. Just left it there in my driveway, all sad and lonely and left out in the cold. 🥶 Either this means I have killed Christopher the Trash Man. Or, Christopher the Trash Man was so offended by my lack of culinary skills, he decided to punish me for such an egregious act. LITTLE DOES CHRISTOPHER KNOW THAT I HAD BIG, JUICY BEERS WAITING FOR HIM THIS WEEK. Which is not at all true, but Christopher doesn’t know that. Hell, maybe I had strippers. Maybe I had a check for one million dollars! I’m a lunatic like that. The other day a friend mentioned offhand how he never could afford college apparel from his alma mater when he was in college AND NEVER HAD A HOODIE, so I logged onto the university’s website and bought seventeen-hundred sweatshirts and had them sent to his house. Because that is the kind of lunatic I am. Perpetually over-the-top. There is nothing about me that isn’t over the top. Sometimes I like this about myself. Other times, like [when I am meeting religious people in Iowa]( it gets weird. Speaking of weird—the other day I went down to my friends’ gloriously cool daycare center, this behemoth of a place in the center of town where every single person I went to school with now sends their kids, because it was Halloween and the girls that run it, my pals, decided to do this generous, generous shit where they literally cooked 120+ spaghetti dinners and gave them out to parents for free at pick-up because they knew they’d be busy getting their kids ready to go trick or treating—and who has time to make dinner?! (I KNOW, SO NICE.) So I go down there to help sling meatballs (oh my god, have I poisoned the whole town?) and these parents are picking up the containers and they’re seeing ~me~ in there and I’m greeting them with this rabid fucking smile and I could see the fear in their eyes. Oh good lord, what is she doing here?????????????????? Is this edible? Are my children going to be cursed by the blood of satan? (Or something. I don’t really know what people think. But I imagine that having a brand called “The Middle Finger Project” hasn’t done me many favors in the church.) Which is all to say: I am probably the most over-the-top person in this town, and the 3,000 layers of pearls that I wear on top of my sweatshirt probably isn’t helping. So! Christopher the Trash Man should absolutely expect me to be waiting for him with a case of beer on the tailgate of my Jeep truck this next Tuesday where I am going to tell him “LOOK AT ALL THE SHINY THINGS I HAD FOR YOU, CHRISTOPHER,” which absolutely sounds molester-ey, and absolutely is something I really shouldn’t write in the same breath as that last paragraph, but here we are. So, where were we? Ah! Your upcoming Black Friday sale. (That I am making you do.) You didn’t know that’s where this was going, did you. Well I’m just full of surprises. [Last week]( we talked about how the holidays are actually one of the most profitable times of the year for independent businesses, despite how everyone thinks that everyone is too busy buying big, giant candy canes for their lawn (don’t do that). Every week here at TMF, I write one business advice column for creatives (paid subscribers have full access) because if the theme here is “unconventional happiness,” then most everyone ends up going down the “starting my own business” rabbit hole at one point or another because it’s really the only way that you can make beaucoup bucks while having the freedom to run off to France (have you seen [this bitch]( and still have enough time to make little finger sandwiches and work on your novel. Doesn’t that sound delicious? (Keep your eyes peeled: I have big 2024 plans for us for [Meat & Hair]( my creative writing newsletter & school. 💀) The Middle Finger Project with Ash Ambirge is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. [Upgrade to paid]( This week, however, I want to get you revved up to make oooodlles of end-of-the-year cash, because you are not going to ignore Black Friday and you are not going to ignore Cyber Monday, even if you are shy about promoting yourself and want to walk into the ocean at the thought of running a sale, because ignoring both of those things comes with a consequence of thousands of feel-good, happy-to-have-exchanged dollars that your business needs so you can stress less and eat figgy pudding more. This is THE time of the year to have some fun with it, and if you don’t believe me, read [last week’s column on why](. Now. You’re going to fall into one of three categories: - I sell services (where you work with clients). - I sell products (like courses, memberships, books, etc.). - I sell both and also have webbed feet. Damn. So for our Black Friday convo, let’s start with services, because this is actually kinda tricky: it is hard to discount time. Most service peeps are barely including enough profit margin as it is—waves to everyone who calculates their time and realizes they have been working for $3/hour— so when you start throwing in discounts, especially big splashy ones like 50% off, it’s very likely you may end up working for free. Or worse, at a loss. And no one wants to pay to do work. But, that IS what can happen if you decide to jump on the Black Friday 50% off bandwagon with your services. Holy hamrods, things can go downhill…fast. That’s because you’re selling your time, and by discounting it, you essentially have to work twice as hard in order to make the same amount of $$$. EEEEEKKKKKKKKKKK. That doesn’t sound like the greatest promo to me? That sounds like a well-meaning but (oops!) attempt at getting cashflow that you are going to be real, real mad about come Thanksgiving, when everyone else is sitting around drinking eggnog and talking about the political divisions in the United States and YOU HAVE TO MISS ALL THE FUN. This is why, my dear dolly, a digital product is going to be essential for any—and all—creative businesses. Yup, even yours. And even if you don’t have one yet. BEAR WITH. In our twenties, my best friend was an international wedding photographer who got paid spaceship tons of money to fly all over the world photographing two people freezing their ass off on the Cliffs of Moher in the middle of November. As one of the first “influencers” of our time, she was hugely in demand. Couples would fly her all over kingdom come and pay for all of her expenses, plus a fat service fee. I used to beg her to create a digital product that would help other aspiring wedding photographers figure out how to go global with their work & charge top dollar. She never ended up doing it, and I used to scream and shout about the literal hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual income she was leaving on the table as a result. Because, while getting paid big bucks in exchange for your time to fly all over the place is grand, it’s also (a) Exhausting; (b) Unsustainable over the long-term; (c) Something you might stop wanting to do once you have a family or other priorities; (d) And requires your 100% physical presence, whether you’re sick, ill, feeling weird, or just want to eat a popsicle in your garage. This is why my philosophy is that every single creative business under the sun should 10,000% have a digital product: it’s a way to parlay your knowledge and ideas into a product that can sell with or without you. *****Independent of your time.****** But, you know this. This isn’t your first day on the internet. But, perhaps the reminder is useful—along with a discussion on how you can actually make this work for you now, especially while we’ve got a massive opportunity to sell it during Black Friday & Cyber Monday. So, let’s talk about two different plans for running a killer Black Friday sale this year—one for those of you who don’t have a digital product (yet), and one for those of you who do. Shazam! ⚡️ --------------------------------------------------------------- IF YOU DON’T (YET!) HAVE A DIGITAL PRODUCT Oh my goodness, the world is in the palm of your knuckley little hand. You might feel like there’s no hope because it’s too late and that ship has sailed, especially four weeks out from Black Friday, but actually? You might be in the best position of all, because anything you do right now is going to be new. That’s right, I said something new! This, right here, is key: You don’t need to have a digital product in order to sell a digital product. What is she, high? Nope, that’s not in my wheelhouse. But what is in my wheelhouse is productizing knowledge. Because knowledge is something that you can put into a digital container—like a book, an audio, a workshop, or a course—and sell separate from your time. You are selling value, not time. And get this: not all clients need your time in order to benefit from what you know. The done-for-you model can be awesome, but it’s not the only way to do business. Ya dig? But what happens when you don’t have a digital product created yet to sell on Black Friday? You pre-sell it, mom. You can do this one of two ways:... Subscribe to The Middle Finger Project with Ash Ambirge to read the rest. Become a paying subscriber of The Middle Finger Project with Ash Ambirge to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. 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