As expected, I’m only staying for the tech part of it, then quickly leaving before the film/music stuff starts. I don’t think they would appreciate my taste in Jodeci and Whitney Houston. And I would not appreciate their lack of marketing abilities.

If you’re around, come check out my talk:

What: “Building a Bulletproof Personal-Finance System”
When: Saturday, March 13th at 11am
Where: Hilton G
RSVP: http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/431

Bonuses:
1. Book signing afterwards at 1:50pm (RSVP)
2. I’m revealing 10 things I’ll be covering at the talk at twitter.com/ramit

Excerpts:
- What I’ll cover at SXSW (1/10): How can you use the psychology of money to automate your finances? http://bit.ly/dhEInt #iwillteach
- What I’ll cover at SXSW (2/10): How did I make $127,000 in one hour last month? http://bit.ly/dhEInt #iwillteach
- What I’ll cover at SXSW (3/10): How do you handle irregular income & expenses (e.g., freelancers)? http://bit.ly/dhEInt #iwillteach

Not going to be at SXSW?

• Read my bookmarks on psychology and finance
• Hire me to speak at your event
• Go watch a bunch of videos of me yelling at people

One of these was art school. After an art session one day, I brought home my drawing of a tree. It was so bad that my normally supportive mom actually said, “Umm…if you’re going to draw a tree, why don’t you make it look like a tree?”

This explains a lot about why I hate artists (and most non-profits).

Not just because I hate art, but because artists are terrible at marketing themselves and constantly adopt worthless beliefs like:

• “Charging for my art is selling out”
• “Good art markets itself”
• “My goal is to get in a gallery”

I wrote about this in detail when I wrote Attention Whiners: Why you STILL aren’t saving money and highlighted that it’s not tactics, but mindset that often separates people who do from people who whine.

So when iwillteachyoutoberich reader Cory Huff read my guidelines for writing a guest post and pitched me on the Myth of the Starving Artist, I jumped at the chance to run it. Yes, he might accidentally teach a lesson to these godforsaken artists, but mostly it’s just a chance to mock these terribly self-destructive beliefs.

Cory, take it away.

Cory Huff: The Myth of the Starving Artist

Last week I heard a story about an artist who makes handmade buttons at parties. For $3 he will come to your party, do a custom painting on a 1 inch by 1 inch canvas, and then turn it into a button for you.

For $3.

I couldn’t believe it. Neither could everyone around me who heard the story. It seems like everyone there knew that this artist should be charging more. Too bad that artist didn’t.

Compare that to my friend, we’ll call him John. John makes sculptures. They range in size from very small to very large. He has a thriving business where corporations call him and ask him to build something for them, and they pay whatever he asks. $30,000 – $50,000 was his last asking price that I heard.

What’s the difference? It’s a matter of beliefs.

The Starving Artist Myth

Many artists have bought into a romanticized notion that art is somehow more legitimate if it is created by poor people. This notion was popularized in the mid-19th century by the writer Henri Murger, who wrote Scènes de la vie de bohème a famous French novel about a group of poor artists living in the Bohemian quarter of Paris. The book was wildly popular and it became trendy to be a poor artist.

Over the last 150 years, Murger’s ideas became entrenched in popular culture, and artists hold to the notion that art is a product of the financially unsound and morally superior.

The Starving Artist Myth forces artists down a path that isn’t helpful.

Recently, a friend of mine mentioned on Facebook that she was trying to raise some extra money because she wanted to move to NYC to pursue her dream. I was really excited for her because she’s a tremendously talented artist. I messaged her and offered to help her come up with some good ways to do that (I do a lot of work with artists, especially in teaching them how to sell art online). A week went by without hearing from her, then two. I messaged her again, hoping to use her as a source for this article, but a week later all I had heard from her is that she’s too busy working at her survival job.

Many artists believe that the poverty and suffering that comes from this kind of busyness is conducive to better art – but I disagree. Being in touch with emotion and having strong technique make better art. Poverty and suffering are distractions that pull us away from being able to do the things that we really love doing.

Artists are not the only people to fall into this trap.

It is my opinion, and some will want to lynch me for this, that artists and entrepreneurs come from very similar backgrounds. They have a passion for something that can make a difference in people’s lives. They want to do that passion all the time – some of them just don’t know how to support themselves while doing it.

How to Dispel the Starving Artist Myth

Remember: Normal = Poor. Crazy = Rich. People expect a lot of crazy, creative things from artists and entrepreneurs, and they’re willing to pay for it. Whatever you do, do it with gusto. Look at Ramit. He teaches people how to be rich, and he does it with flair and excitement, and a lot of passion. He makes people some people angry – but he’s making a ton of money doing it. People love him for the passion that he has. If people love someone like Ramit, they’ll love artists even more (sorry, Ramit – as much as you make fun of us, people love artists).

Do something people love, and eventually it will catch on. When I first saw Etsy.com, I thought it was garbage. All I saw was a bunch of home made doilies that weren’t even all that well done. But you know what, people LOVED Etsy. Artists who turned up their nose at the site now sell original works for over $3,000. Etsy has developed a reputation for having high quality, original merchandise that appeals to buyers of all kinds.

Take advantage of the Warhol Economy. Andy Warhol created a movement that revived New York City. City planners took advantage of the burgeoning art scene to create incentives that attracted more businesses to the parts of New York that were dying. There are cities all over the country that are desperately trying to attract artist communities to their cities. You can read more about it in Elizabeth Currid’s PhD dissertation turned book, The Warhol Economy (which, by the way, is a great example of how to turn your god-given talents in to money).

Give yourself permission to make money. This is one that I struggled with early as an artist, and again as a budding entrepreneur. I didn’t believe that it was possible to make the kind of money that I make now. I would sabotage myself by passing on opportunities because I didn’t think they’d really pan out. When something great would happen to me, I would tell myself it was luck and that it probably wouldn’t happen again. Once I flipped that switch, it changed everything for me.

How did I flip that switch? I’ll simply say that it took two things: changing the connection between my self-worth and money; and learning what I needed to do in order to make money.

Protect your vision. When you aim to change your life many people around you will attempt to take you down. Most of the time it won’t be intentional. Your friends and family, as well as coworkers and other acquaintances, will question your decisions, even your motivation. This can be demoralizing and cripple your efforts before you ever get started. Find people who encourage instead of question and support instead of doubt (or, even better, you can call out whiny complainers before they gain any momentum).

“But I don’t know how!” It’s almost impossible to make it as an entrepreneur without some help. Whether you pay someone or find an amazing mentor who will help you for free, you need someone more experienced than you to help out.

Who knows what the future holds for that $3 painter or my actress friend who wants to move to New York City? It could well be that they find their niche and end up fabulously successful – but first they’ll have to make the decision to be ready for more. They’ll have to stop believing in the Myth of the Starving Artist.

Cory Huff is an actor turned entrepreneur who does freelance social media consulting, and teaches artists how to sell art online at TheAbundantArtist.com.

The Earn1k launch — for my new course on teaching people how to earn their first $1,000 on the side — was one of the largest I’ve ever done. Last week, after the launch dust settled, I did a post-mortem call with my team, and I thought I’d share some of the results with you.

Even though they sound dark and ominous, “post-mortems” are some of the most useful things you can do when launching a new project. A post-mortems is simply an analysis of what worked, what didn’t, and what you can learn to improve next time. Doing this helps keep you sharp and stay ahead of 99% of people who never do this (the Craigslist Penis Effect in action).

Here are some things we learned that might help as you try to earn more money or launch your own project.

Costs matter — but not as much as revenue does. This is especially true if the costs are non-scalable, like a one-time fee for a support system. In other words, you can scrimp and pinch about paying someone $2,000 or $3,000. Or you can just make 10x more with a better product/marketing and make the point irrelevant. This is the benefit of releasing amazing content, not run-of-the-mill BS that anyone can copy.

Measuring is important, but pick your battles. I like to measure myself in a lot of areas. But it came down to deciding to measure something — or just make it better based on our intuition. We chose to improve the launch rather than measure everything. The downside is I don’t know exactly what caused some of our results. I hope to figure it out in future launches.

Lots of communication problems. Once you get above 2 people, communication starts getting very complicated. We used PBworks, Google Docs, Etherpad, email, and phone, and we still weren’t all on the same page. This is why there are so many collaboration tools. This is also why it’s such a hard problem.

Have ridiculously detailed backups. After a technical snafu that cost me over $10,000 in 10 minutes, we created an insanely detailed checklist, including…

POTENTIAL PROBLEM — SOLUTION

…with every conceivable technical problem that we could encounter. This was detailed down to the level that, if my home internet failed, my shoes were already on so I could run to a friend’s house, who was standing by so I could jump back on a webcast.

Again, I never cared about this in my early days, and you shouldn’t if you’re launching something for the first time. But now, after growing for years, even a few minutes of launch downtime can cost me a lot. (And I’m just a teeny tiny player. Imagine the resources a company like Amazon dedicates to this.)

There are red flags for users who will never become customers. At my last company, our head sales guy told me an interesting thing: He said, “When prospects call up and ask for XXX [specific word], they will never buy.” In other words, non-buyers identify themselves with certain phrases, and you need to learn to identify them. For Earn1k, whenever someone’s FIRST question was, “How much does this cost?” I knew they would likely never buy. That’s because they focused on cost, not value. The people who asked, “How much can this help me make — and how do I know it’s worth it?” were much more likely to buy.

People will pay for content if you demonstrate enough value. We sold out of our $2,997 tier in 1 hour because we spent a month showing people to focus on value, not cost. I never expected to sell out. Yet I now know I under-priced that tier. So next time it will go up — dramatically.

Blogs have extreme variability in the quality of users. Most blogs have 90%+ freeloaders, aka people who never want to pay for anything and get mad when a blogger charges for anything. I love driving these people away from iwillteachyoutoberich as fast as possible. While the blog will remain free, I’ve consistently showed you guys why paying for value is important, and we now have an audience of people who are willing to invest in themselves — and don’t believe in fixed-pie syndrome.

People like when you turn away business for genuine reasons. I turned down over $100,000 of customers. I screamed at people who asked if they should join while they still had credit card debt, and told them to get their debt under control before going back. We refunded a $1,500 customer who treated iwillteach staff poorly and sent her packing. And we didn’t serve a $75,000+ segment on purpose (see below).

We were surprised: People LOVED this. It caused them to sign up more. Why? Because they knew the focal point wasn’t to gouge everyone and make as much money as possible. As I told them, “I don’t want everyone. I want the right people.” People respond when they know something is tailored for them, not everyone.

Measure your projections to see where you were wrong. At the beginning of each project, I create a simple table/spreadsheet of the results I project. The first 5 times you do this, you will be terrible. (Once, I did a projection and forgot to include one conversion #…which meant my results were 90% off…in the “bad” direction. Oops.) But each successive time, you’ll learn small ways to get better. In this case, we created 3 projections — Low, Middle, High — and then compared the projections to the “actual” results. We learned some fascinating things, including areas that we totally forgot to factor in. Next time, we’ll be better.

The $75,000 problem: As I said, we sold out of our top ($2,997) tier. Here’s an interesting thing: I could have sold at least double the number of seats over the remainder of the launch. But I intentionally turned down $75,000 in revenue. Can anybody guess why?

I know that’s different than most of the stuff I write on iwillteachyoutoberich, but I hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have questions and I’ll answer them in the comments.

Tomorrow, finally, I’ll be giving an Authors@Google talk!

And now I want to ask for your help.

Come to video office hours tonight and let me know what the 1-2 best techniques you’ve learned on iwillteachyoutoberich are. Is it automation? Conscious spending? Barriers? The A La Carte Method?

I’ll incorporate your feedback into my Google talk.

Come to video office hours tonight (Wednesday, 1/20):

• Where: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iwt-office-hours
• When: 7pm Pacific
• Ask any questions about earning more — including identifying your niche and turning your skills into income — and I’ll answer them

P.S. If you’re at Google, come see me from Thursday, January 21st at 12pm (Building 42, Room: Paramaribo Tech Talk).

Starting today, I’m releasing a sneak preview of a new project that’s going live soon. Code name Earn1k.

This is some of the psychology material you’ll see in Earn1k — specifically on not devaluing yourself as a freelancer.

Towards the end of the video, you’ll also see that the Earn1k course includes 8 weeks of structured, week-by-week material to earn your first $1,000, case studies, email scripts, worksheets, and more.

Get the first look at the Earn1k Course: For free signup, a 1-week advanced course on earning more money, and first access to the course when it launches, click: Earn1k.com

On the subject of earning more money on the side, I’m hiring a contract sysadmin for iwillteachyoutoberich.

You must:

• Have experience with high-traffic sites and *nix systems
• Be reliable and available to help when stuff breaks

I need someone who can:

• Ensure blog is optimized, sustaining heavy traffic from sites like Yahoo/Digg and handling thousands of concurrent viewers to my Ustream video show (embedded on the blog)
• Migrate all static media (images, videos, etc) to Amazon S3
• Do advanced caching/asset packaging if necessary
• Streamline the blog backup process
• Create, change, and delete user accounts per request
• Perform regular security monitoring to identify any possible intrusions.
• Understands asset packaging and can help recommend ways to improve the code of the site

Please do NOT apply if:

• You’ve only managed your mom’s blog or a site with only 500-1,000 visitors/day
• You are a programmer pretending to be a sysadmin

Details

• This is a paid contract position
• Time requirement: Initial work, plus ~5 hours/week ongoing

If you’re qualified, please fill this out:

[EDIT]: NOW CLOSED

A lot of you have asked for more live video sessions and more rapid Q&A, not just on personal finance but entrepreneurship and social psychology. These are fun for me since I can mock people and tell dirty jokes.

So each Wednesday, I’ll be holding 30 minutes of video office hours, where I’ll cover a quick topic on psychology, entrepreneurship, personal finance, etc. Then I’ll take Q&A on whatever you want.

If I drink a lot beforehand, sometimes the white board comes out

The first one is tomorrow: I’ll cover the psychology of barriers when it comes to earning more money — and how you can crush them. Plus Q&A.

• When: Wednesday, January 6th at 7pm Pacific (10pm Eastern)
• Where: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iwt-office-hours
• Problems with the webcast? Check for live updates at twitter.com/ramit
• Questions you want me to answer? Ask them below in the comments or during the webcast

Five years ago, when I started this site, I never thought I’d be able to fly in a team to spend a week basically doing cool things. But with the help of Charlie, Jeff, Matt, and Susan (and others), you’re going to see amazing things next year.

In January, we’ll show you a glimpse of what we’re working on, so stay tuned.

P.S. Here’s a Seth Godin project I collaborated on with people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Elizabeth Gilbert, Merlin Mann, Arianna Huffington, Jason Fried, Dan Ariely, and Tony Hsieh. Enjoy.

I have literally never seen as much traffic as last night — not even when I was on the FRONT PAGE OF YAHOO.COM.

• At 6:50pm, I logged onto my webcam and finalized everything
• At 6:55pm, I logged into my blog to add a link to the webcast URL. By this point, my server had slowed to a crawl
• At 6:56pm, over 1 person/second was trying to access iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog
• At 7:01pm, we had my webhost on the phone attempting to resolve the issue
• It took until 7:21pm to completely fix the server problems, leaving me fuming and frustrated

If you’re interested, I recorded a video with more details of what happened.

Here are some pics from the carnage (look at the time stamps and note that this is OVER AN HOUR later past the webcast’s start)

When I first noticed the problem:

Couldn’t wait any longer…so I went live with what I had:

All right, so obviously this really sucked. Thousands and thousands of you were left out in the cold, and I feel terrible.

3 things:

• I’m getting someone to help out on the server side so this never happens again. Stay tuned
• I’ll do the webcast again as soon as that’s set up
• I wanted to tell you more about the Boot Camp (registration is closing today), but just know that whether you go with my program or something else, make a plan to automate your finances before the end of the year. There’s nothing like starting the year off fresh.