Sell Beats Online: A Producer's Guide to Making Money

Don’t let these recent Internet producers fool you, selling beats
online isn’t dead, you can escape the 9-5. You can do what you
love. You can get paid when you’re chilling friends and family. And
get paid when you’re asleep.
That is not a dream. That is the reality.
To get started, you don’t need a team. You do not need a manager.
You do not even need a lot of money.
You only need three things:
1. Good music
2. A way to put your beats in-front of an audience
3. Basic Marketing
If you want to sell beats, you need to have fire beats « duuh »
If you do not have fire beats, save this guide and go practice
If you have fire beats already, you can turn your beat making skills
into a profitable business. There are thousands of artists who are
willing to pay you for your music.
Like these:
I ran the numbers to see how much revenue the beat selling market
generates. I concluded that the market must have been generating at
least $40,000,000 a year.
Even if you manage to get 0.1% of that, you would still be making
$40,000 a year.
This was in 2017; imagine how much they pay to producers now.
This proves that artists are willing to pay serious money for beats
these days.
Now let’s get down to business.
We have put together for you a helpful guide discussing everything
you need to know about successfully selling beats online.
All you need to start selling your beats online is:
1. Beats
2. Beat Store
3. Email List
4. YouTube Channel
5. Social Media
There are plenty of online options to sell the music you produce,
you just have to figure out which of them work best for you based
on your output, budget, and goals.
Afterglow AfterglowBeat stores offer software that streamlines the
beat-selling process for you. They have ready-made features. Just
sign up, set up your profile, upload your sounds, and start selling
within minutes.
Some of the most popular beat stores out there are:
ƒ BeatStars
ƒ Airbit
ƒ TrakTrain
ƒ Soundee
OR
Your own website
Having your own beat selling beats is the most ideal because it
shows how professional you and your brand are. There are
countless beatmakers that are trying to sell their beats online
through various mediums, but few actually have their own
website.
You may be thinking that it would be too much work to have
your own website, but it’s really not that difficult. With
Bandzoogle, you can easily design your own beat selling website
using templates that can be quickly customized to match your
brand.
THIS IS GOLD
An email list of customers or prospects is a gold mine if treated
well.
With an email list, you can:
ƒ Update your customers about new beat releases
ƒ Drive traffic to your YouTube videos to gain views
ƒ Send people offers or create a sales campaign
ƒ Build business relationships with (potential) customers
ƒ Imagine, you upload a new beat to your beat store. The first
people you want to reach out to are the ones that already
showed interest in your music.
There are many ways to get artists to sign up for your mailing list.
But let’s be real, no one signs up for a “monthly newsletter”
anymore.
To get them to sign up for your list, you need to offer them a bribe!
(Other terms you may hear are: Lead magnet, content upgrade,
bonus content, freebie etc.)
On my beatstore , I give away 6 free beats. Ridiculous, right?
Almost too good to be true.
Well, that’s exactly what you want. Make an irresistible offer almost
too good to be true. One that they can’t refuse.
YouTube is the music mecca with 2 billion unique users and 3
billion monthly searches (opens in new tab). Those impressive stats
make the video giant the second-largest social media network and
search engine in the world.
Creatives from all genres use YouTube regularly, so it’s no surprise
that the platform is fast becoming the most-favored channel for
selling beats.
Due to the volume of content on YouTube, it can be difficult to
show up in search results and generate a lot of sales in the
beginning.
But once you learn how to sell effectively on YouTube, you’ll be
making a lot of money not just from your beats, but from the views
your videos attract.
To sell your beats on YouTube, you need to start making and
uploading videos of yourself talking about beats production and
making beats. If your videos are interesting, you’ll attract an
audience that will keep growing over time.
Once you’ve built a sizable audience, you can begin promoting your
beats on your channel and direct interested buyers to your beat
selling store.
It is the perfect hangout for artists, which makes it a good
marketplace for your beats.
To get noticed on Instagram, you need to approach people.
That’s it.
Hit that follow button, post genuine comments and DM them.
Showing interest in music from artists that you appreciate goes a
long way.
DO THIS EVERYDAY.
Find other accounts who you WANT TO BE LIKE and go
through their followers.
Follow 20-30 people at a time from this list a few times per day.
Be active on your feed when they come up, leave meaningful
comments, interact, etc. After a few days, start going back and
unfollowing the oldest people you followed this way.
Don't unfollow everyone--keep following and interacting with
people you like, people who commented, messaged you, etc...but
cut dead weight that hasn't caught your attention. Consistency is
key on insta.
Ideally you should be making a few posts per week
There are billions of active users across various social media
platforms, so there is surely a great number of people amongst
them who are looking to buy high-quality beats. This means that
there are plenty of opportunities for you to sell your work.
The key to selling on social media is to avoid sharing promotional
or sales-y content and focus on sharing high-value posts that people
can naturally engage with.
No matter how good your beats are, people are eventually going to
tune you out if all you keep posting on your page is “Buy my beats,”
or “Just dropped some heat! Check out my new beats at
blabla.com.”
Social media is supposed to be fun and lighthearted. Show people
who you are, what you do, and why they should care.
Share short videos of your production process, the beats you’ve
made, and more. Talk about beat making, the songs you can’t get
enough of, and everything in between. If you’re talking to people
and not at them, you’re more likely to inspire interactions and
engagement.
When you get people to respect your beats, people will ask if they
can get it online, and then you can tell the pretentious beat store to
shove it.
Once you’ve come up with beats to sell, you need to figure out how
much you want to sell them for. Beat prices are influenced by artist
reputation, brand, uniqueness, quality, the target audience, and the
platform you’re using.
Your goal is to sell as much as possible, so try to stay within a
reasonable price range in each marketplace, while avoiding
underselling yourself. The average starting price for beats is about
$30 for non-exclusive licenses, while exclusive licenses can cost
more than 20 times that.
Remember that you can sell beats over and over, so letting them go
for lower prices won’t hurt you in the long run. As long as your
reputation grows and your skills improve, you can charge more for
the beats you produce.
Boring alert: there are lots of licenses that beat sellers can use, but
they can be broken into main types, exclusive, and non-exclusive.
The key differences between the two are as follows:
There is only one exclusive license, whereas you can offer as many
non-exclusive licenses as you like, with varying user rights.
Beats with better audio quality and more user rights get higher
license prices.
Exclusive licenses can only be sold once to one person alone, but
you can sell and resell non-exclusive licenses to an unlimited
number of artists.
After an artist buys the exclusive license for a beat, no one else can
buy a license for that same beat.
Actually producing beats is only a small part of your work as a beat
seller – you need to focus most of your energy on marketing.
What’s the point of spending hours mixing and mastering sounds if
you can’t find any people to buy your beats?
How are you going to get people to listen to your music? How will
you attract new customers? How will you close deals and drive
conversions? How will you incentivize customers to keep coming to
you for more?
Fortunately, there are several strategies you can use to promote
your beats online and be seen:
ƒ Create a blog and write music-related posts that engage and
inform.
ƒ Take content creation a step further by creating engaging visuals
like infographics, videos, and other multimedia assets.
ƒ Starting a referral program to incentivize affiliate marketers to
sell for you.
ƒ Build a mailing list for new and existing customers.
ƒ Actively participate in niche online forums and groups.
ƒ Share content and market your business on social networks.
ƒ Craft a customer loyalty program to incentivize customers to
keep buying from you.
How you spend your time marketing will determine how much
money you make from selling beats. You need to be consistent and
have a strategy for releasing new products. Start by building trust
and showcasing the person behind the brand.
You probably have a list of expensive high-tech equipment that you
dream of buying someday so you can make better beats, but the
truth is that you don’t need so many tools or even a large recording
studio to make beats that sell like crazy.
The most important equipment you should have is:
ƒ A decent computer or laptop
ƒ A monitor
ƒ MIDI-Keyboard
ƒ VST’s and drum samples
ƒ Headphones
ƒ Audio interface
ƒ Digital Audio Workstation
Building a sustainable career from selling beats online can be a
time-consuming and exhausting process, which is why you need to
incorporate helpful tools and software to simplify processes. Some
of the tools you are going to need in your back pocket are:
Some of the tools you are going to need in your corner are:
ƒ Google Drive for cloud storage, backup, file sharing, and
management.
ƒ Trello for project management.
ƒ Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign for email marketing.
ƒ Adobe Photoshop and After Effects for graphics and creative
design.
ƒ Grammarly and Hemmingway for writing clear and error-free
copy.
ƒ TubeBuddy for effective YouTube marketing.
ƒ 1Password for storing passwords and other sensitive information.
ƒ GetVoIP for web conferencing and phone services.
No customers means no business. It’s as simple as that.
Selling beats won’t make you go from 0 to $10k in your first
months. To be honest, getting your first customers can be
challenging.
But I want you to think about it like this:
If you can get 1 person to buy your beats. You can get 10 people to
buy your beats.
If you can get 10 people to buy your beats. You can get 100 people
to buy your beats.
If you can get 100 people to buy your beats. You get the idea…
Your customers are worth gold. And you should treat them like that
too. Building relationships is crucial for your beat selling business.
I have invested a lot of time and energy in the latter and it paid off
in the long run.
SOME Q&A’s
QUESTION #1: I’m too busy to start a beat selling
business, How can I make time for that?
Let’s say you’re working a full-time job, go to school 5 days a week
or have kids that you need to take care off. It might seem
impossible to start a business next to your daily routines.
You did give up these things to help:
ƒ Spending a lot of time with friends
ƒ Going out on the weekends
ƒ Stopped watching TV
ƒ Stopped playing video games
Tell me… How much time do you spend on this every week?
8 hours? 16 hours? 24 hours?
When people say: “I don’t have time to start my own business.”
That means they are not yet willing to let go of things that do not
matter.
Instead, they think about their plans with friends this weekend.
Playing video games and watching TV three nights a week. In
addition, do not get me wrong, that is totally fine. As long as you are
honest with yourself.
However, until you can step out of the day-to-day and take control
of your time. You will always be reacting to the rest of the world’s
demands, on your time.
QUESTION #2: How and when to start selling my
beats online
Entrepreneurs are easily overwhelmed. They’ve got a ton of ideas
going through their minds, constantly. And they take immediate
action.
The latter is what most people often struggle with; Taking action.
In my life, I’ve come across so many talented people. Songwriters,
artists, musicians, producers. Even people that had great business
ideas, that were not related to music at all.
Most of these people failed. Talented people that I thought would
become successful.
They failed because they were unable to take action. An idea is just
an idea until you decide to do something about it.
In your case, there are two things to consider here.
How many beats do you currently have?
How much time are you able/willing to spend on your business?
If you have more than 15 beats, you can instantly start selling them.
And spend the majority of your (free) time on marketing. You’re
already sitting on a pile of gold!
Time is your most valuable asset. But your time to start taking
action is always NOW.
Simply determine how many hours a week you can spend on your
business.
Pick a number, schedule it in your calendar and stay consistent to
work on those hours.
QUESTION #3: How can I sell beats when I do
not have the right tools and equipment?
Producers struggle with their gear. We are always looking to get
better sounds and equipment that is more expensive. Frankly, it is
never good enough.
This includes me.
In my early years of selling beats online, I blamed my equipment
for the lack of sales and slow growth. Thinking that I needed to
invest more in studio equipment so I can make better beats.
The biggest mistake I made.
The lack of sales had nothing to do with my equipment. In
addition, I had to learn that the hard way.
Let’s be honest. We are not running a recording studio. We are not
recording bands or doing many live recordings. We’re beatmakers.
In addition, what do beat makers really need?
ƒ Computer or Laptop
ƒ Drum samples and VST’s
ƒ DAW
ƒ Audio Interface “Optional”
ƒ Monitors “Optional”
ƒ Headphones
ƒ MIDI-Keyboard “Optional”
CONCLUSION
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