The 5 Laws Of Occult Economics: Why We Suck At Money
by Gordon • • Prosperity, Rants • 18 Comments
Look. This question that has been rolling around the blogosphere for a week or so is not new.
Shit, it’s almost seasonal. Every couple of years it comes round but -say this with me- the answer will never change. And once again, the argument has veered away from economics into the morality of whether you can judge spiritual products within a monetary system.
I’m going to dispense with the philosophy. Yes. Yes, you can. Just not very well, it turns out.
I resisted this rant for the better part of a week because this blog is newish. (Long time lurking, little time posting.)
I made a few comments on some awesome blog posts on the topic, thinking maybe that would be enough to stave off the rant.
But it wasn’t. Remember that scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit where Judge Doom starts tapping the first half of the line “shave and haircut” all over the diner? And Roger tries to resist but then bursts through the wall and shrieks “Two biiiiiiits!”
What follows are the Rune Soup Five Laws of Occult Economics. Plus a little bit of advice at the end.
1. Price moves to the marginal cost of production
In a competitive economy, price moves to the marginal cost of production. So if you have even a single competitor, you don’t get to determine your value. The market does. You can’t just decide one day that people need to give you money.
Occult examples?
- Books. Anything you write I can find for free. Legally. Because it costs nothing to produce and price moves to the marginal cost of production. So, if the cost of producing occult texts is free, what does that tell you about your ability to make money from it? You’re going to need to precisely locate the value of your text in my life. Are you a world famous race car driver? Did you discover Atlantis? Did you impregnate the daughter of the former governor of Alaska? Because if you are just some guy then this is not your golden ticket.
- Being an Elder (?!). You want me to pay you money so you can talk at me? But that fat guy in the velvet cape on the other side of the festival is giving it away for free. I’ll have to think about it.
There is a lot of competition producing what is -in the eyes of the market- more or less the same thing. This is the textbook definition of a commodity. That means you are competing on price alone.
2. Market size is everything
That’s why all these ‘tradesmen analogies’ frustrate me. A US plumber’s market size is 300 million customers a year. And they are motivated customers. They are calling you at 3am because their basement has just filled with their own shit. In that situation, the plumber can name his fucking price. Just get over here and bring a big pipe.
A bored, double-divorcee who is thinking about your weekend course on ‘Celtic Storytelling’ is a tiny, unmotivated market. You can’t just name your price there. (You can, actually, but you have to be happy making zero dollars. If this is the case, then the whole blog post isn’t for you.)
Try and work out exactly how many potential customers there are in your market for your product. Like… Absolute maximum. Picture your DVDs and books being translated into Armenian if you think you have a good shot at going global. This is the digital age, I’ll believe you if you say so.
Then work out what a 5% market share of these customers amounts to. Some tips:
- 5% Market share is ludicrously ambitious for any start-up.
- What would it cost you to get to 5% market share? It will be more than you can make.
3. Demographics are also everything
Why scramble for a percentage of welfare cheques from a tiny bunch of weirdos who live in houses that have wheels on them and who jingle like a sleigh-ride when they walk under the weight of all that pewter jewellery? Go corporate. Trust me, I’m a freelancer. Go. Corporate.
It turns out our “elders” can’t even afford dental care. This is not a market you want to go after.
Know what Share of Wallet is? It’s the percentage of your total after-tax income that you spend with a particular company. It’s used mostly by large retailers to work out what to stock and who to advertise to. Here’s why it’s useful.
To grow your profits by -say- 10% each year, you can either increase your share of wallet at the bottom of the market (low income, welfare, etc) by 15%. Or, you can increase the share of wallet at the top of the market by less than 0.5%.
Which sounds easier to you?
Go and find some rich people. It works for religions based on dead science fiction writers. It can work for you.
4. Nobody has a right to a business model
Your dreams are worth exactly zero dollars. If you believe your thoughts are worth something and the market doesn’t then you have two option:
- Shut your pie hole! Don’t ‘give away’ all that valuable wisdom and then turn around and say “oh, you have to pay for that.” That’s known as the Gypsy Jewellery Trick and gypsies play it on unsuspecting tourists here in London. (And Paris. And Barcelona. But not Berlin. Funny that.) If you believe you should be paid for the things you say then shutup until someone pays you.
- Adopt a freemium model. Watch the video for what this means.
All the prosperity spells in the world won’t help you ‘get paid for elder services’ because magic must have a manifestation pathway. You will have better luck spellcasting for a flying car because that has more chance of actually existing by the time your current incarnation ends.
5. Indy, you’re digging in the wrong place
Think about the freelancing model. Some things you do are going to be free. And you will do them because you like them. It was ever thus in the freelancing world.
Corporate gigs, on the other hand, are absurdly lucrative. (Five figures right out of the gate.)
Is there any way you can leverage your skills in this area? Because it means you get to strike a balance between doing free things you love (blogging about magic) and embarrassingly profitable things you don’t. (Eg writing up Mexican food recipes for one of the world’s leading broadcasters. Don’t ask. And please don’t google for it in case some of it is still up there).
Do you think I’m kidding about five figures for a single client project? I’m really not. As an example, I have been to some absurdly opulent media parties. There have been leopards in cages, fire breathers, Grammy winners on demand, Tarot card readers and other psychics. (As well as enough coke to make the mens bathroom look like Santa’s workshop. That stereotype is accurate.)
If you don’t want to be a dancing monkey then I have two words to say to you. Two words that are sometimes conflated down to a single word: life coaching.
Life Coaching is just being an elder to Type A finance people. You can probably squeeze them for more money for “occult services” further down the line. I know these people. They’ll love being able to tell their work friends that their “life coach is taking them out into the desert for a vision quest.”
Don’t like this idea? See the above Laws 1 through 4.
Conclusion
But is it all bad?
Oh my, no! In fact, we stand on the brink of the greatest economic opportunity since the invention of money. Watch the video below. It’s long but it will rock your world. And if you like it, then buy Chris’s book. See? Freemium.
Related Resources
Here is a list of other blog posts from around these internets on the same topic. All food for thought.
- Strategic Sorcery: Spirituality, Money and Magic
- Head For The Red: A Sense of Entitlement, Getting “Paid” for Magic, Teaching, Instruction and Writing
- Doing Magick: Teachers, Rant Amended
- Kenaz Filan: Paying For Services, Paying For Spirituality. (He’s got a bunch of them, actually.)
- A Mage’s Blog: The Problem With Patrons
- Postmodern Magic: Money
- Gleamings From The Dawn: Fees, Dues and Donations
I have nothing smart to say because I’m monetarily inept, but I appreciate that you outlined your post with numbers. Even though I have no outstanding abilities to make money, I am reassured that I can still count to 5.
.-= Domestic Witch´s last blog ..Check Is In The Mail! =-.
Yeah, I may or may not have wasted my early career swimming with the crazy capitalists.
But did you like the hilarious picture??? Every time I look at it I chuckle.
Hey, Gordon. Thanks for the love on the blog. Glad we both agree on the Old Spice man!!
Seriously, I need to step up my game and do my tarot readings for the rich. So I can some serious cash. Gave me another idea to marinate on.
Have a fab weekend.
.-= Shell´s last blog ..Fun for your Saturday =-.
One. Nice way to show contempt towards a very widely varied demographic with the ‘weirdos on welfare’ comment.
Two. Magic does not in my experience require a preexisting pathway of manifestation. It can either create a pathway or create a direct manifestation though both are more difficult than using what is already there, and direct manifestations are unpredictable enough that one may as well put it up as a matter of grace.
Three. “You cannot serve God and Mammon” about sums up my viewpoint on the difficulties with mixing money and occultism.
May the Highest illuminate your path
Sincerely, ASRWSEOTPP-ICTX
All valid points.
But then I did mention that the post was directed at people who do think you can serve God and Mammon, as you awesomely put it.
“Anything you write I can find for free. Legally. Because it costs nothing to produce and price moves to the marginal cost of production”
This attitude pisses me the hell off–not with you personally, but with the attitude toward creative careers in general. It’s this “It costs nothing to make writing/art/etc. so anyone has the right to use it at no cost” concept that has led to writers and artists *having* to do our work for free or way less than what it’s worth (including if we’re technical writers, in which case we jockey for brief contracts with craptastic benefits, or commercial artists, in which case we’re a corporation’s bitch). It doesn’t cost an accountant to point at some papers that I bring in and explain things to me about them, but I still pay the accountant. Yet writers and artists who get upset about copyright violations are told “Creativity should be free!” As to the “marginal cost of production”, I fail to see how the food and other resources I need to stay alive for a couple of hundred hours per book, in addition to the financial cost of editing, copy editing, layout and promotion (never mind printing) is marginal.
I do generally agree with your overall argument, though. Part of why I’m getting my Master’s in counseling psych instead of just being a “spiritual counselor” or “professional shaman” is because I can reach a much larger audience. Which decision has less to do with money than it does vocation, but pragmatically speaking, being able to pay my bills is a necessity, not just a nice perk. As I develop a separate shamanic-specific practice, I am charging as I go, but I don’t expect it to be more than a supplementary stream of income.
(Also I am wayyyy behind on comments on my own blog! But wanted to say hi
.-= Lupa´s last blog ..Shamanism and Racism =-.
Oh Lupa, honey. I hear ya. I don’t like it, either.
But I also love newspapers and will miss them when they’re gone.
Business, like diplomacy, “is the art of the possible” not the preferable.
And I would say that it’s not so much that any given individual creative work should now be free. The costs involved in birthing it remain the same. Also, any intrinsic value remains the same.
It’s that any ‘idea product’ like a painting or a short story derives its economic value from scarcity… From the fact that there aren’t very many of a particular item.
Scarcity, unfortunately, is in short supply these days.
This is what is causing such value destruction in creative businesses.
But DO watch the video when you have the time. I found it very helpful.
Cheers for saying hi. Love your work.
Really interesting points that I’m keeping in mind as I’m figuring out where to go with my first “major” book. There are many, many other attitudes aside from the whole “free” think that I’m slogging through while I write. While I’ve done corporate – and hate it – I lived there long enough to understand what you’re talking about, and ultimately I’ll probably borrow a few of these concepts when promoting my own book.
Found this through Lupa. Totally subscribing!
.-= Diana´s last blog ..A tool for all the witchy types =-.
This overall is a fantastic post.
I do have a few responses to a few of your points.
1. Widely published books are basically advertising that I get paid to make. Don’t get me wrong, I write them to be informative for readers to walk away with alot of info and hopefully some wisdom, but whether they get it by paying the 15 bucks at the store, or wound up stealing the torrent is not in the end a huge deal to me.
If I did not think I had something to say that was different enough to make me stand out, I would not do this. In fact I pretty well resisted doing it for years even when people were encouraging me to do it. I needed to wait until I felt I had something to say that no one was saying.
2. Market size for both people taking classes and for magical services are bigger than you think. Before I had a book, when the only presence I had was an angelfire site that was barely ever updated, I would get several requests a month. These days I literally cannot keep up with the business and am looking forward to outsourcing clients to some of the graduates of my course.
3. Your idea that individuals who pay for magic are poor trailer park people is just flat out incorrect. I have done work for the poor. I have also been kept on retainer for months on end by a Lawyer, done an exorcism of an financial advisors office outside Grand Central, and been hired (unofficially) by the police for help.
I will admit that I have moved the quality and price of my services to appeal to the upper end of the market, and even have plans for meditation/energy training that I will take corporate. I did a bunch of free meditation clinics at corporations a while back, so it would be easy to set up the resume.
The Elders cannot afford dental care because they gave no thought to how they would make money doing what they do. They were IMO pretty stupid or just so egotistical that they thought people would pay them for just being cool.
4. and 5. Amen!
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This post is gold.
Your blog is a good read, I wrote a book ‘Searching for Mooneyes’…. it’s also a good read (according to the people who have read it!) It hasn’t made me much money, but it was a great feeling to write it, and get it published. Sometimes it just isn’t about the money, its about being driven to create and have a purpose in life.
We arrive with nothing, we leave with nothing, but we can have a fantastic time whilst we are here.Live, love and enjoy the journey.
Best wishes,
Angie
I hear you, Angie… Which is why this blog has no ads and isn’t selling anything.
I’m unashamedly, proudly capitalist but I don’t believe that means everything you do should be used as an opportunity to make money.
Whilst I openly encourage absolutely anyone to get involved with personal e-commerce, there are just some projects that it doesn’t suit.
I make my money elsewhere so I have the economic freedom to create and pursue things I enjoy. I believe this mindset comes from realistically appraising the market and choosing the option that best suits my overall goals.
What’s humorous to me is how you look at the business model as fitting into a Wiccan/Pagan mindset. Sorry it doesn’t work when you’re a hippie into communal living.
One can make a helluva living using the occult. Problem is the lot of you complaining about this are narrow minded & short sighted. You have ideals that you cling to but in truth the world of business is warfare & hippies are not good at war.
I spent a lot of years in professional sales. What I sold is immaterial however I used every occult advantage I could find including:
- herbs/roots
- specific oils like bend over, money drawing & success
- candle rituals
- saints work
- planting mojo bags in cient’s office or yards
- and many other tricks of the trade
Wiccans & ceremonial magickians don’t use these because many of you think they’re just ‘props’ & the real magick is in your head. lol Well they worked for me!
If I wanted a big contract, I’d ask st. expedite use psalms & prayers & use the oils, herbs, roots, candles & everything I could to my advantage.
One thing I never did was cheat my clients. That will follow you to your grave so you end up giving more value than they pay for. Essentially I took a business plan approach & followed it religiously. Then used magick to help me. =)
The occult has all sorts of old spells for money & success; in hoodoo at least. Give it a try some sometime.
My home is paid for; I have a nice family; hobbies; a boat; living in a nice suburb; have savings; you can too. Just use what you already know & stop being a blockhead about it, mate!
The gods help those who help themselves.
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