This is the first of a series of posts in which we will look at different ways a musician can start to make a little bit of money online, and learn some essential skills in the process.
It’s my hope that learning this stuff will let you get out of the 9-5 sooner and help carry you through any tough times when musical pickings are low.
If you’re in a hurry here is the whole idea of this article in 14 words…
Work as a freelance online “handy person”, and get paid to learn online marketing.
“Make money online” websites obviously have a bad reputation because lots of them get the big red scam label. But the fact is that there are millions of honest website owners out there looking for reliable and creative people to help with their business.
…and I can’t think of a more proactive and creative bunch of people than you lot!
The best part is that once you start to work for a successful online business owner they will train you in the Jedi mind tricks that seem to bring people to a websites like magic!
You can then easily transfer these skills to get music fans jumping all over your offers.
As I’ve said time and time again…once you know how to market ebooks, soccer balls, dildos or Elvis bobble heads you know how to market music as well. So why not get paid to learn?
Wax On Wax Off
Think of this kind of freelance work like the Karate Kid. In that classic film the master makes the little hero dude wax his car for like 3 months, and then suddenly we realize that the waxing movement was really training the kid to fight like Bruce Lee.
This is just what freelance Internet marketing will do for you…
Once you’ve written a few hundred thousand words of web copy and been paid for it, writing on your own blog each day will seem like a piece of piss.
Some people will employ you to do daily tasks that help get their sites ranking in Google and suddenly “Skadoosh!”, anytime you fancy ranking your blog for “Crazy-ass mofo rapper from Sweden” you’ll have the skills.
It’s like going to musicians business school and being paid for it!
Very cool…
Where To Find The Work…
Now we know that this is a totally cool way to learn marketing it’s time to find some job opportunities.
Below are a few sites I’ve used in the past that are bursting with jobs:
Sit down with a pad and make a list of some of the tasks that you could help people with.
For fun I just made my own list and I think you could figure out how to do a lot of this stuff too:
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Website Hits
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- Link building
- Content syndication – Re-purposing content for video, podcasts, articles, guest posts.
- Twitter marketing
- Facebook page management
- Forum marketing
- Contacting potential JV and affiliate partners
- Podcast creation and distribution
- Google / Facebook advertising
- Video distribution
- Article marketing
- Daily Blogging and Blog management
- Keyword research
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Web Design
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- Squeeze pages
- Mini sites
- Blog Design
- Sales page creation
- Split testing web pages
- Membership site creation
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Copywriting
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- Sales letters
- Video sales letters
- Viral reports
- Advertisements
- Articles
- Blog posts
- White papers
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Graphic Design
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- Logos
- Static and Animated web banners
- Newsletter design
- Brochures and flyers
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Product creation
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- Interviewing experts
- Video creation
- eBook Writing
- Turning existing ebooks into audio products
- How-to content for membership sites
Phew…there is a lot of stuff you can do!
The next part of this is to sign up for the freelance sites and fill out the bio information so that you can give people a picture of the kind of skills and experience you can offer.
A little secret…
I’ve hired a number of people from freelance sites myself, and after a lot of trial and error here are the essential skills that get me interested in a new person:
- The person must be easy to reach.
- Work must be completed on time.
- Simple instructions should be carried out without a lot of back and forth communication.
- If it’s a writing job the person must have excellent English, and never ever copy from other sites.
If you hit on each of these points in your bio you will show that you understand the process and that you are a good candidate for the job.
I’m not saying that you are going to make a million bucks with this, but once you do a few low paid jobs and get some good feedback you can start to move up the ranks and get paid more.
But Chris! I Don’t Have No Skills Dude!
The biggest thing that holds people back from this kind of work is the idea that you need to be Charles Dickens to write online copy, or that you need to slash a brush like Pablo Picasso to design web banners.
Just visit a few of the links and I think you will be shocked at how easy some of the jobs are, and what you CAN do.
If you find a job that sounds like a mind bender just Google it and there will probably be a free online tutorial that will show you how to get it done step by step.
Google turns everyone into a super-brain and there’s NOTHING that you don’t know how to do.
Other options
If you need to learn marketing fast then I think these freelance jobs are a perfect fit, but if you want to build a long term income stream them I would suggest you set up a blog about your favorite musical equipment and start to write product reviews about anything new that comes out.
This will take much longer to bring in substantial income but you will now be the driver and once you get it set up you can even employ other people to do everything for YOU.
But that’s a story for another post…
I really hope you got some new ideas out of this and that it will help you raise some money.
Remember that you are not limited to just freelance websites. You should look at every successful business you come across as a potential source of new work. If you go where the money is you should be able to uncover little pockets of gold.
That’s all I have for today but don’t just close this page and forget about it…you’ve invested time in reading so you owe it to yourself to at least visit the links and check out some of jobs.
Good luck, I’m rootin’ for ya…
- Chris
Watch the video podcast version below…
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