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: BeatStars Airbit TrakTrain 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: Update your customers about new beat releases Drive traffic to your YouTube videos to gain views Send people offers or create a sales campaign Build business relationships with (potential) customers 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: Create a blog and write music-related posts that engage and inform. Take content creation a step further by creating engaging visuals like infographics, videos, and other multimedia assets. Starting a referral program to incentivize affiliate marketers to sell for you. Build a mailing list for new and existing customers. Actively participate in niche online forums and groups. Share content and market your business on social networks. 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: A decent computer or laptop A monitor MIDI-Keyboard VST’s and drum samples Headphones Audio interface 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: Google Drive for cloud storage, backup, file sharing, and management. Trello for project management. Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign for email marketing. Adobe Photoshop and After Effects for graphics and creative design. Grammarly and Hemmingway for writing clear and error-free copy. TubeBuddy for effective YouTube marketing. 1Password for storing passwords and other sensitive information. 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: Spending a lot of time with friends Going out on the weekends Stopped watching TV 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? Computer or Laptop Drum samples and VST’s DAW Audio Interface “Optional” Monitors “Optional” Headphones MIDI-Keyboard “Optional” CONCLUSION GO IMPLEMENT THESE TIPS
