My Tips and Ideas On How To Profit From Your Music.
These are some of my very best tip's and tricks to help you Make money from your mixtape.
Rap mixtapes are always for free on the net but if you do some research and some hard work you can come up with amazing ways of turning your mixtape into money.
It's not easy for musicians these days to make money from music. But if you put your mind to it and put in some work the money will follow.
This article is not going to make you thousands today but I am sure that it will give you many ideas that you had not thought of.
THE MAIN VIDEO PRESENTATION :
HOW TO USE YOUR
MIXTAPES TO MAKE MONEY
You can use the profit from your music to continue your amazing career in the music.
There a number videos and resources on my website that can help you. The video above is a bit long so use the content locker below and download the video to keep so you can refer back to it later.
I have also added in more content and videos to this article to become more than just another blog post.
This will be your new go to resource to find out new ways on how to make money with your music online.
Before you start burning all your hard earned money away, Here are some tools and resources that will definitely come in handy in your music career online.
Daniel Hartnett The Corporatethief Beats / Blogger / Beat Maker
RESOURCE STEP 1 SET UP YOUR OWN WEBSITE/bLOG !!!
This one of the core essential things any rap artist , musician , band , or DJ should do from the very start of their career.
A website is your online sales person. Your website is base camp for your new fans.
It's the focal point of what you will control in your music business. So don't be fooled by the "FREE SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES".
As you go through your music career you will learn how important it is to have a website or a blog and how un - free social media sites really are.
BlueHost : Most of my websites are hosted on a blue host.
From all of the training website courses I have taken Blue Host is always recommended.Ease of use with one click WordPress install makes setting up a website so easy.
It's cheap and they give great support for their customers.I would definitely recommend the blue host to anyone that is setting up a new website today.
If you take a look at the video below I will show how you can set up a WordPress website using Blue host in less than 15 minutes.
You don't need to know any fancy web coding skill just need to follow the way I do it in the video and you will have your own site today. Good Luck
PS . You might want to watch this video in full screen
Building A Website In Less Than 15 Minutes
ESSENTIAL RESOURCE 2
HOW TO START A FAN EMAIL NEWSLETTER
Due to the ever increase social networking noise most music fans are bombarded by Tweets, and new Facebook updates in their time lines on a daily basis.
As for email, most people would only get a hand full of email up dates from the services that they use online. Email marketing is one of the most crucial tools to have in your music marketing kit.
Email may seem like an old school method of marketing but it is one of the driving forces in online marketing and it continues to prove fruitful for me and for tons of online musicians.
If you choose to skip this step in the article, you are leaving a ton of money on the table in the future.
Email marketing is so vital to your success as a musician that I would urge you to start build an email list before you
start a website or any social media presence.
AWEBER EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE
Aweber is the email marketing system I user. Aweber is a great company and I would be lost online without my email list of newsletter subscribers..
Email marketing is a great way to reconnect with clients and music fans I would strongly urge any artist that is promoting their music to start building their email list today with Aweber.
As you go through your music career your email list of music fans will be come the main way you earn money from your music.
This will include selling merchandise , concert tickets , online live shows, fan funding and crowd funding, limited addition albums and songs.
That email list of music fans will become your bread and butter in the future so look out for them.
Give them a ton of value and treat them like human beings on an ATM.
SO IF MIXTAPES ARE FREE
HOW DO I MAKE MONEY OF THEM ?
1 music licensing
HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH MUSIC LICENSING
This can be very great if it's done correctly.
Rap artist's like Drake, Kid Cudi,and The Weekend all started off with free mixtapes but licensed the music to T.V. shows.
TV Shows like How To Make It In America and Entourage.
SUCCESSFUL RAP ARTISTS THAT MADE IT BIG WITH FREE MIXTAPES
KID CUDI
THE WEEKND
DRAKE
Music licensing is one of the main income streams today that saving the music industry,
and lots of artists are turning to this for a great source of profit.
Some streams can bring a years income depending how hard you work at getting the music out there to the people that need to hear it.
As long as your music is yours, you will get royalties for the songs you have written.
As I said at the start think tiny when you start out.
Start at your local radio station and find people like night club managers and local business managers maybe even the radio station itself will rent your music for ad campaigns.
Make sure you are signed up to performance rights organization like ASCAP or BMI, SESAC, IMRO
These PRO's {Performence Right Organisations Click This Link To Learn More About PRO'S} will collect the income for you, that you may will earn from licensing your music to T.V.
ASCAP
BMI MUSIC
SESAC
IMRO {IRELAND}
There are lots of sites online like TAXI.com , whoisthehottestrapper.com , Youlicense.com , xraymusic.com and music dealers that will help you sell your music to these companies but beware some of these companies charge fee's and subscription fees to keep those who are dedicated to their music and want make this as a career.
If you choose this route to make sure your music sounds perfect or your just wasting your time and money. Don't worry about trying and failing. It's much simpler to get a music placement than to be actually signed.
2 MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR MUSIC
BY TOURING AND SELLING CONCERT TICKETS
Touring can be the most valuable way you can make money from your mixtape .
Don't think you have to play massive areas to make money, think tiny and build on your achievement.
Take over your local area first.Look for little venues nightclubs, and college bars are a great place to start.
Make sure you go out and look for college bars as they are always looking for acts as the social life of a college student is eventful every night not just at the weekend.
Most industry hip hop artist's make money from their mixtapes or albums by touring.
WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM ?
Many musicians never made as much from album sales as the record company took most of the money.
And used the latter for promotion and recording.
Simply by setting up small gigs every week you can make money from your mixtape. Get very active with your promotion .
13 MUSIC MARKETING LESSONS I LEARNED FROM CHANCE THE RAPPER : CASE STUDY slide share presentation
3 Learn how to sell
merchandise effectively
Selling merchandise on your band website can be one of the best form of revenue streams that many artists will neglect.
As music creators our mind sets are geared to sell music.
So we place so much energy in to a product that consumers just don't want to pay for as much as they used too.
The music industry is an ever changing industry. You as a musician need to shift your mindset from the old paradigm of just sell music as a revenue model.
It's time that you use your music as a conduit to influence people to buy other products like your own merchandise.
Don't feel like you are selling out merchandise is big ticket item and musicians make a ton of money doing it.
From pop stars like Will I Am to Justin Beiber to Metallica and Ozzy Osborne.
There was a time when we had to buy a certain amount of physical product for our merchandise orders.
Most wholesale merchandise vendors would only take orders for a certain number of items ordered.
This left the music out of pocket before they start.
The musician has now under ordered on the amount of merchandise
need for a give show or his or her websites demand.
Thank full we don't live in this draconian era now days and we have print of demand vendors that will give us to freedom as musicians to make money from our merchandise as order coming from our fans.
So you no longer have to sell your merchandise for below cost price as it's gather dust in your mom's attic.
A friend of my online Shawn Folk from Pay Us No Mind has a great video tutorial about how music can make money from their merchandise from a print on demand site called Print Aurora
4. HOW MUSICIANS MAKE MONEY FROM
SPONSORSHIP'S & ENDORSEMENT
Find someone to sponsor your mixtape like a drinks company, nightclub or local radio.
Have a shameless plug of a company might seem like "selling out" but it will take your career to where it needs to be.
If you too worried by what everyone is going to talk about you maybe the music industry isn't the right place for you.
Here is a video about Grapevine Logic and how you can use to create YouTube Sponsorship with your music videos.
Check Out Grapevine-logic this is similar to a website I mention later on called Fame Bit.
This site pays YouTube channels and social creators for creating interesting content like music or videos and interviews.
A lot of YouTube musicians are opting into this for to make money with their music instead of just using
Adsense which can change over time, or they are having issues with their monetization network.
The Grapevine platform allows you to connect your YouTube channel and Instagram profile safely and easily. Anyone with a YouTube channel can join the Grapevine Community and access our Creator Match Tool which allows you to find and collaborate with other content creators on Grapevine.
If you have over 10,000 subscribers to your YouTube channel or over 5,000 followers to your Instagram profile, you can unlock access to our Grapevine Marketplace with hundreds of brand sponsorship opportunities.
Easily filter and navigate the Marketplace to find sponsorship's that fit your channel, apply to work on campaigns, and manage relationships easily through the Grapevine Message Center.
"I recall when I was in the band when I was in my teenage years I saw a band that never got paid for any gig they did but had a drinks company banner hanging up at the back round of the gig for every gig".
The band said to me that It was hard to get paid gigs because this place was not a big city,but they made a healthy income from the drinks company who sponsored the tour with all the free gigs they played."
You could also hit up hit up music producers who are just starting out and tell them you will place their logo and website on the cover of your Rap Mixtape or their producer tag at the start of all your
You can make YouTube video's and mention your sponsor at the beginning and at the end of each video.
If you can show your sponsor that you will be able to gain a certain amount of views within a local area they will be glad to see this.
They will know that you will be promoting them on all the social networks like Facebook and twitter. Using the revenue you get from these companies is free music marketing on Twitter.
Music Marketing Blogger / Rap Beat Maker
FREE TWITTER MUSIC MARKETING COURSE
THEN STOP AND CHECK THIS OUT !!!
We've recorded an 8 Day video series that is available exclusively
to my subscribers - you can sign up right here to get instant access.
Plus, Each day for 8 days I will send you a new video via Email with tips and tricks
to help you grow your Twitter Fan base and promote your music with Twitter.
6 YOUTUBE AND ADSENSE
WHY MUSICIANS SHOULD START VLOGGING TODAY?
Put as many videos on YouTube as you can and grow a fans base you should be
invited to YouTube's review sharing program. Join Google Adsense account and as long as your instrumental rap music is "ORIGINAL" content you can profit from the advertisements on YouTube.
This all differs on your views and how popular you are, so make amazing video's to all of the original rap songs you have. Playing lots shows you will see an increase happen on your video views.
Get more video view's by Join part on forums and places the video in your signature.
The video below is titled how to release a mixtape with a blog but I go through in more detail about vlogging too.
Tube Buddy takes out the horrible grunt work and guess work that comes with managing my Youtube Channel. If you want to ease up the workload on Youtube and you need help find out what content to create, then Tube Buddy is the perfect tool for you.
Daniel Hartnett Music Blogger - The Corporatethief Beats
TOOLS TO HELP YOU MANGE AND
CREATE CONTENT ON YOUTUBE
Uploading video's to blogs is hard work but having your video on lots of blogs that are promoting you will get your view natural growth. Find a free Facebook app called Buffer App.
This will let place your YouTube links in an automatic app that post your video every few hours to Facebook.
By Linking your Facebook account to your Twitter account and YouTube account and this will all be done automatically. I like to add native videos to Facebook so I use a tool called Tubebuddy.
Tube Buddy helps with the back-end of my music promotion with the management of my YouTube account.
When you make a music video or a hip hop beat and you want to promote it on YouTube there is so music back end work that goes with that one video.
Things like You-tube annotations, YouTube cards, you tube descriptions, YouTube subscribe buttons, help promote your music by giving the user a call to action.
But they take way too much time. What the video Tube-buddy tutorial above and you will see how great tube buddy is when it comes to the promotion of your music on You-tube
7 FAN FUNDING WITH PATREON
Patreon is a new form of fan funding program.
I really think that fan funding is the way forward for musicians to make money with their music.
. It's time that musicians stop counting penny's from streaming websites and start creating real content for those that want to hear it.
Similar to that of kick starter but a more evolved form of that type of medium.
But the good news that you can make some cash off it.
You have to come up with incentives to give to people that continue to fund your music channel or YouTube channel.
These can include concert tickets, hidden interviews, meet and greets, backstage passes, VIP access, bonus eps for fan founders only.
This is one of the best ways you can release a mixtape online.
The opportunities with Patreon are endless, creating a fan base and an engaged audience, well that's the hard part.
But when you figure this one out this could be a real game changer.
With Monthly income for the same or a little extra work a month.
It's easy to set up and quick to start. This might just be the future for the indie musicians.
I explain in the video how Fan Funding works Patreon.
PATREON TUTORIAL
Patreon is a very easy platform to use if you know what your fans want, what content to create and how to deliver it.
I am still going through different training on how to effectively launch a Patreon campaign that's effective with out creating extra work for me.
This is only difficulty that you may come across with Patreon. How to create music related content that your fan will pay for on consistent basis.
I really like this model of income for musicians because I feel that it give them a continue income source from their music.
Compared to that with Crowd Funding, when the campaign is over the money runs dry.
I highlighted a tutorial here to show you the basics that I learned about Patreon and how I set my Patreon account up.
8. How Musicians Can Make Money
With Music Using Fambit.
This isn't my favorite one to use but if you work hard enough you can make some money out it.
You could try out Fame Bit.
This site allows smaller social media channels to get a cut of the pie by teaming up with sponsors online.
Spread it all over the net like Twitter and YouTube should bring some money but don't expect to make a living of it.
The amounts per advertisement are pretty small but if you get a couple 1000 downloads you make a couple of hundred dollars for your work. This will also go for pop-up adverts which could work here too.
To take anything from this blog think small and build on your achievements.It's about keep working every day and to try hard at what you do.
There are lots of ways online to make money from your music. Keep making great hip hop mixtapes and keep building your fan base.
How To Create Amazing Branded Content Your Audience Will Love
There has never been a better time to be a creator. Whether it be tech, gaming, beauty, fashion,lifestyle, or fitness, Fame Bit makes it easy for creators to collaborate with brands across virtually every vertical.
But with unlimited sponsorship opportunities, comes great responsibility to ensure that the branded content you create is just as appealing to your audience as it is to the brands you work with.
Here is the guide to ensure that you get it right! Click on the image on the left hand side to see the PDF Guide with Fame
9 How Musicians can fund the mixtapes
with crowdfunding sites
Kickstarter and Indiegogo are the of the most famous crowd funding websites online that musicians tend to use.
Crowd funding is like fund raising on steroids back up with all the elements of social media behind it.The main goal with crowdfunding is to good strategy behind it.
Other wise it will become an tangled mess and a PR nightmare. Set realistic monitory targets that you can achieve with your crowdfunding from your fans and those people that you have connected with online.
Crowd funding projects has come in to spectrum and helped artist’s get more connected with fans by pledging money to sponsor the artist vision for their album or mixtape.
Starting a new music project can be difficult even for the more experience musician.
The production costs associated with a new mixtape or album can start racking up pretty quickly if you are trying to bootstrap it.There are so many hidden charges that you will have to think of as a musician. Music production as in the cost of the rap beats that you purchase for you new mixtape.
The mixing of the album. The promotion of the albums and the creation process of music videos will all mount up into serious costs.The internet has come to the rescue of the artist’s dreams by bridging that gap from the music consumer to the indie artist.
Now most people can set up a website for low cost and have a social contention with the artist using all the various social media sites.
Crowdfunding Sites..
I recently found a great article that really broke down all the fee's associated with these crowdfunding sites.
Check out this Additional Reading Material Here : http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/crowdfunding-sites/
10 LIVE VIDEO EVENTS
This is a continuation from with the how to release a mixtape series where I have been discussing a number of ways you can promote and launch a mixtape online.This video is universal to all musicians that want to market their music on Facebook.
It's not specifically speaking of hip hop artists but a large part of my audience member's are hip hop artists looking for new way to promote their music online.
Some of the music marketing ideas that I cover in the video include, how Facebook marketing has become pay to play only and we all have been duped by Facebook by the freemium business model.For years we fell for the FREE FACEBOOK PAGE that we rented from Facebook.
Now Facebook has claimed it back, so all that hard work we did with our band pages and our rap artist Facebook pages with all those Facebook likes that we build up over the last number of Years has all been in vain.
If you want any of those people that like our musician pages to see our posts, music, music videos, pdfs, blog posts ECT, you will have use that boost post feature to get heard on Facebook.
11. Selling Rap Features & selling rap lyrics
I don't have any experience with this method, but when I interviewed Jesse Kramer From Rap Rebirth and T.J. Bear Mind Under Mohawk on The Mixtape Marketing Podcast, It seemed like a opportunity for some rappers that just want an extra side earner.
I'm still not convinced that you could make a full time income from selling rap features.
But it seems that selling Ghostwriting verses is a topical subject with in hip hop at the moment.
Even since it emerged that Drake hired ghost writers for some of his albums.
If you have the confidence in your raps, why not set up a website and start offering your rap writing skills for fee. Writers block effects a ton of musicians especially rap artists that haven't mentally prepared for their own success.
If writing rap verses comes natural to you this may be a legit way of earning some money on the side of your own music career.
Here are the 2 Podcast episodes that I speak about selling rap features and selling rap verses.
