credit: MangakaMaiden Photography
Imagine you had an enthusiastic email list of fans who happily financed your career, making it possible for you to put even more time and energy into pumping out the amazing tunes!
In this post I’m going to lay out a simple process for getting the ball rolling, so you can get up and running ASAP.
The System
If you haven’t done much online music marketing yet let me give you an overview. Then I will lay out each part step by step.
- Get people to your email sign up page using your blog and other fan getting tactics that I talk about here. Then treat your subscribers like royalty and make them love you. If you skip the “royalty” thing you will fail.
- Get together all your previous recordings and create a digital download that you can sell to your list. Focus on providing amazing value.
- Promote your new product.
The idea is to keep this very simple for yourself and the fans.
First Know Your Numbers…
OK so let’s hypothetically say that you want to make a new album and it’s going to cost you $20,000 to record, release and tour. We need to work out how long this is going to take so we can plan ahead and to do this we need to break out our trusty old calculator.
- Using the methods below you can easily put 15 new people on your list every day, that’s 5475 new people every year.
- If you can create a digital download that sells for $20, and 20% of your subscribers go for it ,then you will have made $21,900 for a year of work.
Bingo!
1. Getting New Fans On Your List
I have talked about many tactics for doing this in the past, but at the end of the day It comes down to just a couple of things…
- Turn your blog into the encyclopedia of your music scene, so nothing moves without you writing about it, or interviewing the main players.
- Write as well (or slightly better) than every other blogger in the scene. This just takes daily practice. The “Daily” thing is very important!
- Sign up for Aweber and add a pop-over to your blog that shows up for new visitors. Run multiple versions of your offer and see which one gets most people to sign up. (This will get a high percentage of people on your list and as long as you always treat them well they will forgive the pop-over.)
- Write lots of guest blog posts in your music scene with a link back to your site.
- Answer every Facebook comment, Twitter post and blog comment you receive. This might seem like a lot of work but it will build a large and loyal fan-base in the long run.
Make it your goal to get up to at least 15 new people per day over the next month even if you have to spend 3 hours per day working your plan.
2. Creating Your Digital Music Product
This does not have to be difficult, and you should aim to have your first try up and running in a day. Otherwise it will drag on for a month.
- Create a no-brainer offer for your fans. Include all your past recordings, live video, Q+A sessions and anything else that you can throw in that adds to the perceived value of your offering. Aim to create something that is worth at least $100 and then when you offer it for $20 fans will be more likely to say YES!
- Now put all the files in your product into a zipped folder on your computer, and upload it to a password protected page on your blog. (Or Amazon s3 if you are worried about your website download limit.)
Last but not least, create a page on your blog to sell the album. Follow these tried and tested sales tactics and don’t be cheesy about it…just keep it simple.
- Tell them what you got = your new album.
- Tell them why it’s cool = think up a nice little story and provide an exclusive offer.
- Tell them what to do next = hit the buy now button!
- Add social proof = include reviews from happy music bloggers and fans.
To take payments just set up a paypal “buy now” button because it’s easy and people trust it.
3. How To Sell The Digital Download
We’re in the home straight now, and just need to get people buying your music so that you can start saving the pennies for that new album.
Get people excited…
This is always the first step because if you just show up and say “buy my stuff” your promotion will fall flat.
Here are some ideas:
- Make a few blog posts and give away some snippets from the album, talk about the recording process and how excited you are to share the new music.
- Let people know that you are going to run a discount for the first 100 people who buy.
- Contact music bloggers and offer a special discount to their readers.
This is all about generating a buzz in your music scene. If you don’t have a big readership right now, work out who does and then offer them an incentive to endorse your music.
100% commission anyone?
Automatic follow up messages…
The great thing about Aweber is that it will let you launch your digital music product to every person that ever joins your list.
So on the first day that they sign up you might send an email welcoming them to your newsletters. Then on day five you might start to introduce the album. (Another tactic is to let them have a “one time only” deep discount in the first email.)
Just remember that you should send out 70% cool free stuff, and the rest can be “soft-sell” and the occasional “my new album is out email’.
Are You Going To Try This Out?
It would be really cool to hear how you guys plan to use this strategy, and anything you’ve learned from emailing your own fans.
Have you tried selling music before, what happened?
Leave me a comment below and let me know.
- Chris
P.S More and more these days I’m getting rid of all the messy music marketing tactics, and focusing on leveraging fan relationships to finance ongoing work.
I find that everything else is just a means to make that happened.
Watch the video podcast version…
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