Hi out there music business lovers, Matt from Kurb back again with more talk on how artists are making money in the new music business. I am convinced now that although the value of recorded music has fallen so dramatically as to make recorded music songs next to worthless, musicians have the internet at their disposal to make money in new ways that sees fans getting what they want and musicians getting decent money.
After 6 months with us now paying $US200 p/month, I have no doubt that any artist has the ability to make money in a new way - what is this way?
Well it’s like this:
- a great website
- a great internet campaign made up of social media interaction, advertising, and SEO services
- an email list with powerfully compelling newsletters and free song giveaways
- affiliate offers attached to each newsletter, dozens if you wish, all paying commissions of 50%-75% on sales of products valued from $9 to $99 and beyond . . . now how many songs would you have to sell on itunes to match that?
So why not build real relationships with fans so that they purchase products in this way and you send them your music free? Fans get more, bands get more, I get my $200 p/month - everyone’s happy!
If you’re a committed artist with the right advice from a team like us, you’re bound to make this work offering fans something of superior value alongside an authentic connection which leads to sales that actually put decent money in your pocket.
Interested in our $200 p/month music artist promotion and marketing package? email me, Matt: kurbpromo@gmail.com
So what’s an affiliate marketing offer - how does it work?
Well the following link goes to a site called moviecapital which you can stream or download 25 movies from a massive database for $29.95.
If somebody purchases after clicking this link I’ll receive a pay out of $25.74 commission. Now that is way, way more than if I sold a download copy of my latest CD and I don’t think 25 movies for $29.95 is going to be a terribly hard offer to sell, especially since it’s completely legal and convenient.
So when working with a client to build this kind of system to market their music and use promotions to make money in the music business, what I’ll start with is combining blog posts artist have given me just to strengthen the newsletter and that’s probably a technique I’ll use, once I’ve sent an article for building backlinks, i’ll combine each blog post of the month down to about a paragraph in the newsletter so it’s punchy and filled with real “news”, not padding.
Because of the automated mail out system, talking about remixes of an old tune and other post with reviews of other musicians is good because it’s non time specific, it means a fan can get this in two weeks or two years and it will still be relevant, it still gives us an opportunity to offer our deals whether buying music directly or affiliate offers.
Once we have a 6-12months worth of newsletters, we refine the newsletters again - always refining, we will have links going back to the blog which, again offers opportunities to push our 2 sets of offers – direct artist purchases of downloads or relevant affiliate purchases.
So you need to have your current purchase links available for itunes, because we want to have that either/or choice going on – buy the songs, or buy the affiliate product and get the songs free.
the business model is really revolving around money coming through clickbank, but you’re maintaing a personal relationship with fans they will email you to let you know they purchased the product and at what time, you should be able to analyse in your stats exactly when a purchase was made in order to verify.
Then you email download links to them with a friendly message we put together.
So until we get to a few sales per day you should be able to handle that yourself and we’ll think about how to “cultivate” special fans for more purchases.
I think a really special physical product like a cd and maybe something a little more special can be a reward for repeat purchasers. If fans make repeat purchases that lead to $100 worth of commissions for you, then I think mailing out a cd and other customized products will be another way to motivate that core fanbase to repeat that behaviour, effectively developing a 2nd list of special fans.
Maybe save the t-shirt until the $200 mark, if you see where I’m going. If a fan buys 10 click bank products and you receive $200, I think posting out a t-shirt would be a positive way of connecting with core fans.
But until then, artist we’re working with will need to keep the writing coming, with 10 string of email mail outs all with the offers available we’ll have plenty of content, but if you look at the newsletters i’ll be thinking of ways we can promote the offers more effectively (attractive designs integrated into mail out, anything we can do to make the offers seem more authentic) and later on perhaps leveraging the fanbase with non-sale based promotions to grow the numbers on the list.
Once we have a good 6-12 months worth of newsletters, we’ll also keep going over the newsletters we’ve already done to improve the “conversion” of sales and basically optimize the whole system.
So for one of my clients we found 23 products to promote - 13 are baseball related because baseball is a relevant niche to this artists music and 10 are music or other. Although this is plenty to kick off with, this is one of the things we’ll continue to review.
When we get sales, thats when we’ll start focusing on products that sell and swapping out the ones that don’t - or are inappropriate or of an inferior standard - for new ideas of what could possibly work for our building audience.
of course, i know it’s not that easy, but any way you can incorporate the products into your write ups (that become press releases will obviously help sales, but of course, you dont want to come across as pushy to your fans, especially in the early days.
I honestly think the best approach is to be honest and tell fans the most important thing is that the commissions allow you to keep funding and developing your music and if the audience get a great product or possibly a gift for a loved one, well thats a great bonus.
the good news is that with 13 baseball products, we can be talking about and pushing baseball topics - or whatever may be relevant to your niche - on the site as much as you like!
so initially the strategy is to keep pushing out content with these offers attached somewhat scattershot just to see what will work, when the sales finally happen, thats when we begin to refine - promoting the very best products in new ways, and increasing the reward for regular buyers.
i.e. when a fan has bought a set number of items say, 5 or 10, thats when we consider having a premium ace diamond product - for example, a cd + t-shirt combo to send out.
remember that all these links, if someone clicks them and ends up buying the product within 24hours, thats a payday for you.
and our aim working with the artists we promote and provide online marketing for is before a years promotion is out, to make every day a pay day!
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