sell music online

Sell Audio

Now that we have moved into 2018, it’s time to own your sh**t and sell audio on your terms, not theirs.

There’s only one person out there who cares about your career as much as you do: You. Stop expecting others to help you build your business, sell audio on your terms and own your success! It’s great you have your podcast on iTunes, but do you know who bought your last 10 episodes? It’s awesome you have your music on Spotify, but do you actually know who your fans were on the playlist they were listening to so you can follow up? Making money is nice, but the objective is to create a solid network of 1,000+ loyal customers who you can continually sell audio to.

How to Build Your Email List & Connect with Fans

All you need is 1,000 customers who love your stuff, and you have created a successful career for yourself!

How can you make this happen?

  1. Join Patreon and turn your fans into subscribers for cool content you release on a weekly basis. How about a Facebook Group  community that is built for your niche listeners?
  2. Create live streaming events like Esperanza Spalding who in 77 hours produced an album in front of a live audience & sold all 7,777 CD’s & Vinyl Records (FYI: Selling these at $50/package, she made over 1 million dollars+ in less than 3 days!) Think outside the box and you will win, think inside the box and you might as well go stick your head in the sand now.

OK. Now it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room which seems to fart on all meaningful communication with our fellow human species. The Internet has become extremely loud and we are all suffering with severe ADD.  You probably just checked a text on your phone or an instagram post, so I’ll say it again more slowly  “Attention Deficit Disorder.” We are 100% overwhelmed by the thousands of apps, emails, texts, posts we have to contribute to on an every day basis. So how do we engage customers when they have the attention span of a gnat? 

Build Your Brand & Think With A Business Mentality

To sell audio successfully, you have to focus on building your brand, not someone else’s. Think with a business mentality. Set up your domain name with GoDaddy (In layman terms: YourName.com.) You can purchase a domain name for less than eleven bucks, but remember this is your brand name so don’t be lazy. Take some time and think about what you are trying to sell. Keep it simple & short. For Google Search Engines and for your customer typing the name, simpler the better. Once you’ve secured your domain name, it’s time to build your website.

Don’t hire someone else to create your website. Why? You will no longer be in control of your website. Remember the name of the game here is: Be in control of your sh**t. If you have someone else creating websites for you, what do you do do when your band just played live and you want to upload some pics? Or how about posting a new music video or podcast? Not being in control means you are depending on others to do the job for you.  Nothing is more infuriating to me than not being able to get work done when I want it done. Don’t go down this path, it leads to gray hair and probably more than one cancerous tumor.

Save yourself stress & time, by using a website builder platform that gives you the control & freedom you need to look great as a business and succeed. Wix & Squarespace are great starting points because you can drag & drop and keep things very simple for yourself, which includes setting up a niche template that your customers can relate to.

Sell Audio From Your Website & Be In Control

Once you’ve set up your website, now you need a great tool to sell audio tracks. No, not iTunes, it’s about your name, not theirs.  TunePort.com provides an audio widget that you can place on your website & facebook page. Unlike being on thousands of distribution platforms, you can sell audio tracks directly from your website and make things much more organized and simple for yourself. More importantly, everyone who visits your site will know your name, helping to build your brand and not another third party site.

Finally, your fans will have direct access to all your social networks and you can start nurturing this relationship on Facebook Messenger & your wall. Word of advice: Don’t sh**t out spam on a regular basis, hoping something will stick, it’s rude and obnoxious! When people do that to me I want to go Rocky on their ass. Don’t do it.

Owning your own sh**t means being smart and building your business organically. Would you rather make 1 sale through extreme emails & spams, or turn that 1 sale into 10 from the same customer?The most important objective in any successful business is building a trusting relationship with your customers, not throwing sh**t in their face. 

Call-to-Action & Converting Website Traffic into Customers

When you sell audio from your website, you have a direct connection between you & your fans. This is special & while your customer might not buy the first time, your goal is to make sure you receive your contact’s email so you can follow-up. How do you do this?  One idea is giving away your work in exchange for their email, or providing something else of value to your fan/s for free. If you are trying to sell audio tracks from your podcast, this might include behind the scenes footage of your interview. As a band, you might provide new pics of your yet-to-be released album/single or hey, hook up with the pizza parlor in your town, make them a sponsor and offer a coupon in exchange for their email.

The objective is to always get something out of the traffic that visits your website. In the online world, we call this a Call-to-Action. Follow this golden rule and you will build a list of loyal customers who will continually come back to buy your audio along with a powerful word-of-mouth vehicle. And the best part is, you did it all yourself. You owned your sh**t & you made it happen.

Here’s to much success in building your audio career in 2018!

sell music online