Online Music Promo - Engaging, Email Lists and Actually Monetizing: Lucky 7 Final chapter

Okay on we go with the very last episode of our 3 part series on getting your head around online promotion basics and then it just mutated into a seven part whopper!

In today s stunning conclusion it’s just all business. It’s not basic anything anymore because we’re actually engaging fans and we’re actually monetizing it.

Here's whats happened so far:

Part 1 is here: In digital we trust - preparing for digital music marketing and promotion

And part 2 is here: Are you ready? Content you need for your digital online promotion campaign

And part 3: Google and the importance of words on the web: more “who’s going to write our blog copy” now then “who’s going to direct our video”

Part 4: Getting your head around using social media and web 2.0 to promote your music

Part 5: Setting up a music artists website

Part 6: Music Artist Website promotion: Marketing and Sales

And don’t forget: Our new artist community has launched @ http://www.newmusicmarketing.com/ - it’s still free to join in July and we’re starting to add new in depth content already.

And of course tomorrow @ The Depot in Devonport I’ll be be giving a presentation on all this stuff Check it out if you’re in auckland.

So it was cliffhanger end last time when we suddenly discovered while we were promoting our websites and building the power of our musics brand message to connect with audiences – it was the good old email list that formed a fundamental strategy for monetizing all along!

There are many unique propositions you can be using to monetise this valuable, influential brand you’ve built up and these relationships you’re building with your audience, but your potential fans don’t want to be bombarded by what you want to sell them. That's not real. They want to connect with a message that makes them open to having you earn their trust. And this is where the proposition of having new fans sign up for an email list is probably one of the most successful strategies to create income long term, because the relationship is based on respect for a fan who welcomes your interactions, and will be prepared to spend money as the relationship and the unique value grows.

As the music industry evolves, I always say well . . . the last time I saw the rulebook on making money, it was flying out the window. Only one thing holds true and that is creating value for the fans and managing the relationship leads to artist success.

I think most of the old music industry think Radiohead was just a bad dream. They need to wake up.
Okay so lets wrap up this thing by describing some different ways you can innovate to create revenue from your website and email list – and remember what I’ve said about new music business models – its not a horse race! You can ride every income stream that is worth the effort.

The idea is to continually innovate and optimize so that you are enhancing the value of your most profitable interactions and minimising the effort of your least profitable interactions. This is fundamental in guiding the innovative process.

Lets look at some areas for innovating monetization:

Pricing structure: Trent Reznors last Nine Inch Nails release was remarkable for the number of pricing iterations he created on different products available, so there was a product for fans at every level from a basic $5 download all the way up to a limited edition item valued a $300 that netted him $750,000 over the 48 hour period they took to sell out. The remarkable thing was also that this was an instrumental album, that though creating further options for licensing and synching, however was not really NIN's core content. But NIN's core fanbase is fully engaged and they dont care.

Income streams: The asian music market, where rampant piracy cripples the value of physical goods and copies, has led the way in showing how developing wide and deep ranges of products and service under the brand of an artist can actually leverage the effects of piracy.

The opportunities here to innovate abound. Maybe you need to have a serious and open minded think about what kind of products and services you can provide. I realised I could go to 6 year old’s birthdays and play pirates for $200 a pop, there’s this guy I heard about who offers to write and record love songs - mainly for the wedding market.

There's Bob Baker's buddy who sold 15,000 CD's on the pier playing cheesy love ballads twice a week for 18 months.

What have you got? Is it your raw technical skill? Is it your charisma? Is there are specific message around a common issue that peopel conenct with through your music? Do you have prolific output?Do you make a fashion statement with what you wear or a sexual statement with what you don't?

You need to identify exactly where you can creating the most value with your specific skills and doing those things that you love that dont seem like work and leverage it!

Fan supported: In the fan supported model which has already been demonstratably successful, the artist set up a system by which there was increasingly personalised rewards for example - $10 pre ordered a copy of the CD, $500 gave you a thank you in the CD liner notes, $5000 gave you a trip from anywhere in the US to stay courtesy of the artist for a weekend during the recording and participate on the backing vocal of one of the songs.

Ad supported revenue: We often talk about the digital revolution creating an “attention economy” that is, in a digital environment where copies of content cease to have financial value, the value is then transferred to the attention created through content and the opportunity that remains to create revenue from attention through advertising.

Advertising networks online are getting increasingly sophisticated, and although I hold fast to the assertion that in 2008, 1000 page views should equal 1000 cents earnings - and currently after blogging for over 9 months, that’s about what I earn from my blogs in a week – I honestly believe that conditions for online advertisers will improve across the board as the medium continues to improve and show its effectiveness. First, muso’s will start out with Google adsense ads, before looking into joining an ad network potentially capable of delivering more lucrative and more consistent targeted ads charged per impression, finally a successful established musician should be able to attract sufficient interest to be able to cut out the middleman and sell advertising directly to niche partners.


Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is a lucrative form of online marketing that drives online sales with high commissions, thus attracting many like a modern day gold rush. Those with online products will join an affiliate network that will provide its “partners” (bloggers, webmasters etc.) with ad offers. The tracking of these sites and offers is a highly sophisticated commercial operation and once a sale can be traced to somebody who once visited your site with the corresponding ad displayed, you will be accredited with a 40%-75% commission on the sale value. As I’ve discussed before the range of products is staggering, and sure, miracle diets etc. do tend to sell better BUT what you’ve got to realise is that there are free offers that pay out. This means you can leverage your email list to present a variety of offers to your fans. But the fact that you are able to collect 75% commission on digital products does raise possibilities about relative product value.

E.G. – Buy a month worth of digital movie rental for $US40 (of which the band gets $US30) and get our new album (worth $10) free!!!

You getting me? Things could get interesting.

Monetized communities:

So monetizing communities is based around the concept that the content that drives your promotion and monetization through advertising etc. becomes exponential once you have harnessed fans to actually create content for you.

Discussion about you, discussion with you, discussion about content, interaction with content, deconstruction (“mash up”) of content . . . when your fans are doing this for you, you’ve now got a a wild freeform content generating, web ownaging machine!

You want them designing their own t-shirts and selling them to one another and taking a cut. “c2c” means “consumer to consumer”.

The way we do business is about to be fundamentally changed online.

But yes. Artists must accept relinquishing control.

In 2013 If some kid photoshops your face on a dogs body and sells 50,000 t shirts online then you’re going to have to take your 25% cut and massive exposure and sulk in the corner.

But on communities gotta touch on what I’m doing personally with kurb – as a working model – so you can see in practice the model of a high value online community that is monetized. And the fact that you can see that I’m doing it, it’s not some huge leap for you. Cost me a few hundy.

With http://www.newmusicmarketing.com I’ve set up a forum platform from which to distribute high value content. In my case it’s content that I feel is to valuable to share freely – in your case it’s most likely your music. But in creating a platform on which to monetize premium content and your fan relationships you can create dynamic propositions.

You can build a list of 1000 hardcore fans who are happy to commit to paying $1 per week ($1 per week????) and be part of a premium experience that gives them premium access (you stop in the members over the week to interact) and access to premium content: your music, videos, special exclusive content, giveaways, competitions and prizes, special free gigs, seriously, innovation can run wild!

BUT

like I said. It’s just one horse in the stable. Your making $1000 p/week of your premium membership sites – your also making pocket money out of advertising, digital retail, royalties and licensing, your gigging of course – even your good old CD’s and merch . . . y’know? The futures not dark.

But you gotta get started now. It’ll take years for your online presence to dvelop and mature.

Okay, So I hope you’ve enjoyed this series!

I’ll be doing a post soon about going back over your blog and editing it for optimisation as a clean up each of the articles in the series.

Part 1 is here: In digital we trust - preparing for digital music marketing and promotion

And part 2 is here: Are you ready? Content you need for your digital online promotion campaign

And part 3: Google and the importance of words on the web: more “who’s going to write our blog copy” now then “who’s going to direct our video”

Part 4: Getting your head around using social media and web 2.0 to promote your music

part 5: Setting up a music artists website

And don’t forget: Our new artist community has launched @ http://www.newmusicmarketing.com/ - it’s still free to join in July and we’re starting to add new in depth content already.

And of course tomorrow @ The Depot in Devonport I’ll be be giving a presentation on all this stuff Check it out if you’re in auckland.

It’s time for me to get on with developing my community at http://newmusicmarketing.com

And I’ve got work to building my blogs presentation to build a more powerful brand and develop more and new ways of monetization.

Look for me at http://musicmarketingblog,info as I'm getting my act together here!

And make sure you subscribe by RSS because I just know I’m going to be talking more about branding, engaging fans and more about developing these relationships and monetized interactions soon.

Cheers!

Making money online with your music

...There is an even bigger philosophical question—why does a hobbyist "deserve" a break in the first place? The most common argument is that big media do not play indie music, and indie artists and labels would receive free promotion they otherwise would not receive. While I wish this were true, I am just not as convinced as others that this type of promotional webcasting greatly benefits artists or labels.

There may be some anecdotal evidence that some listeners "find" new artists and then "buy" the music. But I think the point is way overblown. I am more inclined to believe—based on the experience of my artist and indie label clients—that some listeners "find" new music and then, more often than not, illegally download the music.
Think about what you just said for a moment: Following that logic, the U.S. recording industry might just as well turn off the lights and go home!

Why? Because you're implying that no matter what you do—get people excited about music again, get stellar reviews in the press for a great new band, showcase an artist on Letterman and Leno—there's no point to it, because the people who learn to like an artist's work are simply going to illegally download it.

I think that sums the essential malaise of the record industry, Jay. It seems to me—and to friends of mine who've left the major labels in recent years—that the music industry has given up on trying to sell music, and is just trying to legislate and sue its way into protecting whatever cash it can as it fades into its demise.

But it doesn't have to be that way! Let me suggest six ways the music industry could take advantage of the growth in webcasting—and other related technological developments—to maximize its health.

(First, though, I would like to circle back to your above quote for a moment. When I discovered an artist named Bruce Springsteen back in 1973, I lived in a dorm where there were more copies of Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. dubbed onto TDK SA-90 audio cassettes floating around than there were actual copies of the LP. In other words, as you say above, "more often than not" people had an "illegal" copy. But records still sold! In fact, it was thanks to the illegal copies that Springsteen gained new fans who later went on to buy actual legal copies of his future releases! If you think about this from a lawyer's perspective instead of a marketer's perspective, things go haywire, because your instincts are to try to stop the dubbing, but if you succeed, you're worse off than if you didn't. Whoa, there's a parallel here! If you think about Internet radio royalties from a lawyer's perspective instead of a marketer's perspective, things go haywire, too, because first you get the laws worded in your favor, and then you field the more aggressive legal team, and then you win a super-high royalty rate. But it shuts down an industry that was actually good for you; so by succeeding, you're worse off than if you hadn't.)

So, trying to get back on track now, here are my six suggestions:

1) Take advantage of the Long Tail: To expand on what I wrote on Monday, Internet-delivered radio is revealing the true "long tail" of consumer demand for different musical genres. Example: Even though reggae isn't a popular enough format to deserve one of the 20 available slots on a given city's FM band, there in fact is a reasonable amount of consumer interest in a reggae-formatted radio station. (In any given city, perhaps only a few thousand people. But nationally, that's hundreds of thousands of people!) And there is a reasonable amount of interest in traditional jazz, Broadway, blues, Celtic, electronica, bluegrass, yoga music, classical oboe... This is the direction that music sales will move in—fewer sales of the big hits (which you may think is caused by casual CD burning or peer-to-peer file sharing, but very well could be primarily due to this phenomenon) and more sales of everything out there at the long tail. Labels who adjust to this change in consumer behavior will have a better chance of thriving.

2) Rethink CD pricing: A typical music CD contains about 50 minutes worth of audio and sells for about $12—and a Best Buy shopper back in 2001 might have thought that was an OK value. But in 2007, in the "TV Series on DVD" section of the store, that same Best Buy shopper now sees that somehow the video industry has managed to pack 20 hours' worth of video, plus audio, often with incredibly expensive production values (e.g., Alias season 3), into more attractive packaging, and somehow offer it at a price point of $30. So, you hold one in each hand—in your left hand, 40 minutes of audio for $12; in your right hand, 20 hours of video plus audio for $30. And you think, "Hmmm..." Other industries are learning that you have to compete on price and value, and that sometimes when you lower prices, you increase your total sales volume. Given the improved value your indirect competitors (DVDs, video games, etc.) are offering, I really don't think your clients can hold the $12 price point.

3) Rethink download pricing: Technology has handed the music industry a potentially wonderful new opportunity—tens of millions of people now own MP3 players that hold up 20,000 songs each. What a potential market for download sales! But what's the ideal price point? Let's take a teenager as our example: Jeremy owns an MP3 player that holds 20,000 songs. At the right price point, you can get him to buy a lot of songs. Is the right price point $1 or $1.30 a song? Do you reasonably think that Jeremy is a prospect to pay $20,000 or $26,000 to fill his MP3 player with music? No, he isn't! That simply cannot be the right price point. (It's also ludicrously high on its face—when there are no costs of shipping a physical product, the price should obviously be lower than when there's a physical product. Consumers know this.) Find the right price point, and you'll invigorate your industry. (BTW, I know you offer "rental" plans that can fill an MP3 player for $15/month. But they lack broad appeal because we live in an "ownership" society.)

4) Rethink your approach to peer-to-peer file sharing: Record labels in the 1930s tried to prevent radio stations from playing their LPs because they thought it would hurt sales—after all, why would someone buy the disc if the radio was playing it for free? As it turned out, airplay actually helped sales! The Bing Crosby records that got airplay sold a lot more copies than those that didn't. The same may be true of P2P. Remember, the music industry's best year ever coincided with P2P's strongest year ever (i.e., the year Napster was at its peak). People sampled vast quantities of music via P2P and they bought the stuff they liked on CD. It's counterintuitive but it might be true.

5) Quit being a jerk to your customers: Every month, the record industry causes an untold amount of pain for thousands of consumers by suing them for exposing song files via P2P services. You're causing tears, heartbreak, stress; you're taking away vacation savings and college funds. And you do it in such a way—a slow steady stream of lawsuits every month—that you derive virtually no worthwhile public relations value from it. You guys simply severely damage thousands of people's lives every month because you can. (You might respond, "They're infringers! They're not 'our customers'." But I'll bet that's not true—I'll bet they buy as many CDs as anyone else. Downloading tracks and buying CDs are not mutually exclusive activities.) You do have a point to get across: "File sharing is illegal. Don't do it." But there are better approaches that would be more effective in delivering the message and would hurt fewer people. Perhaps, for example, you could use the concept of "flighting"—if you're going to do lawsuits, do them in infrequent batches, with concomitant publicity. (Gets your message across more clearly and hurts fewer lives at the same time.)

6) Embrace your friends: Most of my recommendations above are about phenomena associated with the webcasting era but not about webcasting specifically. Here, I'd like to address that point. Virtually all Internet radio properties today were launched by music fans—people who love their genre (or genres) of music and want to see the musicians and labels involved succeed. They've designed Internet radio products that are, in fact, getting people excited about music again. (Again, see here.) Regarding this whole royalty imbroglio, to quote Jack Bauer, "You're making the wrong play." Instead of asking for a royalty rate so high that it would bankrupt webcasters and shut them down, as you did in your successful case to the Copyright Royalty Board, you'd be better off offering webcasters a livable royalty rate and a plan to work together to sell more product to consumers. If you guys do, you'll be surprised how effective working together can be!

sex, drugs, and affiliate marketing: anyone for tea?

Because I haven’t been posting too much on my blog my adsense revenue has slumped down under 50c a day. You gotta be posting daily to keep the momentum if you want to get those earnings up.

Remember I only have ads enabled on my blogger.com network which totally underperforms wordpress. It's quite obvious that Wordpress is starting to pull ahead of the pack in terms of favoured platforms because of the custom features available on the self hosted platform.

http://kurbpromotions.blogspot.com

You can also see amazon and google ads on my site http://www.kurb.co.nz

I’ve actually become a little inert on the blogging front there because my main focus ahead of launching my new online promotions venture is negotiating the technical aspects of shipping the whole lot of my wordpress operation from the limited free platform hosted by wordpress to the self hosted platform.

Unfortunately this is going severely damage my Google goodness I've got going here but I'll be going into this in another blog about why I'm doing this and why it's important soon. Just again. Technical stuff is a nightmare, so I'm doing it once, I'm doing it right!

Back to the ad revenue, unsuprisingly, the Amazon thing has been a bit of a flop. Someones not going to reading about music promotion and then instantly feel like buying a book or downloading an album from Amazon. I was aware of this, it's just that Amazon and Ebay are the two most rudimentary affiliate programs and it's a good place for artists to get their heads around affiliate marketing as a revenue source because, much like everything else on the net, once you start to tweak and optimize the system you have in place, then you start to see an increasing stream of results.

The most basic description of what I do is I study internet marketing (aka IM or MMO "make money online") and I try to apply the principals to musicians.

Remember I've talked about going deeper into affiliate marketing networks and coming to grips with how this industry works. And please let me stress again, that as musicians we're preparing for a new era to begin possibly within the next 12 months where foundations created now will turn into significant revenue streams.

previously I described an offer in which an affiliate could recieve a payment of $1.50 for each person who signed up for a toolbar that allowed access to free E-cards (greeting cards you print out or send by email)

A new offer I just looked at through one of these more advanced ad networks was a competition rewarding a cash prize of $2500 for the affiliate who could sign up the most people for a free 30 day trial of some green tea product. Not only that but each commission for the free sign up was $US26. Now let me be completely straight up with you about how this game works. From my awareness of techniques being used on the net at the moment, you are most likely required to submit your credit card details and if you do not cancel the order with in 30 days of signing up, your card will be automatically charged.

That's right, these people make an industry out of people being to lazy to forget to cancel payment for their free green tea.

Whether they cancel or not - you still get $26.

Now I'll just draw a line here for people who may not be familiar with the picture I'm painting.

If you have 1000 people on your mailing list and you send them an email saying check out this green tea offer, dont forget to cancel within 30 days or you'll end up paying for it, 100 people check it out and sign up, and you're banking $US2600.

Now as I said there are products to the days you can affiliate with. This was exactly what Lisa Loeb was saying. She tells her fans that she chooses these environmenetally friendly tissues or some such, and she's probably got cut action on the cut.

Now the good people at the affiliate marketing network, being that we're living in a digital age and all, have planty to help you out with, starting by suggesting that if you have access to a lot of married women 35+, then you're likely to get a lot of people interested in this green tea.

Got some great little diagrams here too.

uhh or not. check out http://kurbpromotions.blogspot.com


and personally I actually really recommend green tea as an energising and cleansing beverage!!! I would have no problems suggesting my fans drink more green tea.I guess remember this is about connecting with your fans. If green tea is not a good fit with your brand or you feel it would be irresponsible to put your fans into a position where they would end up paying for free green tea because they forgot to cancel their credit card payment - that's really in the essence of the message you provide to your fanbase.

Innovating as a musician: New ways to make money online.

In order to help everyone to better understand the ways people go about creating an online income, I wanted to provide a simple list, complete with a simple explanation of each method. I will also try to point you toward some resources that you can use to dig deeper into creating online income.

Remember!

It’s not a horse race!

Research, try different things out, innovate in ways that will work for you and your unique proposition, push forward with that, and drop the things that take effort and resources that aren’t working!

But if you got a hundred different ways to make a dollar every day well you’re not doing too badly in the music industry. In fact you’re doing great cos than you can make 100 into 200 or you can make $1 into $2.

Again, it’s all about innovating and getting to the heart of where and how value is created for the user or purchaser.

#1 - Starting a Blog

Blogs are informational websites that people use to share information. The basic idea here is that the sharing of free information can bring visitors to your website, and you can in turn make a profit from that traffic. Most blogs will show the latest articles (known as posts) on the homepage, making it very easy for people to find the latest information that has been shared.

People use a variety of methods to bring traffic to a blog including search engine optimization, social media, paid advertising, email marketing, and press releases. Recently there is a growing trend of bloggers using traditional media such as television and radio to gain exposure to their blogs, but in all honesty this is only happening for elite level bloggers.

To make money with a blog, people use a variety of different methods including selling advertising space, products, and services. Many other blogs make great money by using affiliate marketing, which is selling products for others in exchange for commissions.

This method is a great way to go, especially if you want to start casually. You can start a blog with no pressure, and allow it to build up over time.

Musicians tip: Musicians can use their blog not only to communicate with fans and draw in new ones but can also create authority, trust and rapport in a wider community by discussing issues of interest to the musician and the lifestyle associated with the music the community is built around.

#2 - Starting a Content Website

This method uses the same basic idea as idea #1. You will use free content to attract visitors to a location where you can sell advertising and products, and create exposure for your brand as a musician and music community authority.

Technically, a blog is a content website, but for the purpose of this guide, ‘content websites’ are the traditional content sites that aren’t blogs. A popular choice amongst webmasters is of course lyric sites.

You got a website with lyrics for 2 million songs?

That’s a lot of search volume.

That’s a lot of advertising space.

You may be wondering to yourself what type of content people use to create content websites. These sites can be built around literally anything, but many of them review products and services or report on news specific to an industry or niche.

Like idea #1, people use a lot of different methods to bring traffic to content websites, such as search engine optimization, social media, paid advertising, email marketing, and press releases.

Musicians tip: As a musician, always think about your niche. You a black metal band and got a lyrics site for every black metal song ever written? And every one of the thousands of pages has a link to your website, your blog, your myspace and an add for your album linking back to your cdbaby and itunes sale pages?

Yeah um that’s gonna HELP with your internet promotion. Help A LOT.

Of course building, maintaining and administering a monster content site could become pretty much a full time job in itself.


#3 - Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is the process of promoting products for other people and companies, in exchange for commissions. For example, let’s say that you have a site that provides people with home loans. I could sign up as an affiliate and then push people to your loan site. When people get a loan, you will make some money and will pay me a commission. I would be the affiliate marketer and you would be running an affiliate program.

There are thousands of different affiliate programs that you can use to make money online. Here are some examples of some of the more well known programs:

• eBay - eBay’s affiliate program pays you commissions when you get people to sign up for eBay, and also pays some commissions if the traffic you send ends up buying something on eBay.


• Amazon - Amazon’s program pays you commissions for pushing people to Amazon. You earn a commission when a person you pushed to Amazon buys a product. Amazon commissions start at 4% and go up from there and depend on how many conversions you can get.

Affiliate marketing is often combined with a few of the other ways to make money online. For example, bloggers often use affiliate marketing to make money from their blog traffic. List builders (see list building section) use affiliate marketing as the primary method of making money with their lists. They will usually send their list an affiliate offer (an offer to buy a product or service) around once per month (sometimes more or less often).

Musicians tip: Affiliate marketing, when you’re ultra clever and have already established a loyal fanbase of 1000+ subscribers represents major opportunites for reasonably established artists to make money in the future that creates value all over the place. Really exciting area for the future.

There’s so much scope. Remember there are affiliate plans for so many things.

Offers can be

novelty – as in a different kind of product associated with the theme of a release or band related news item.

niche – I mean if youre in a punk or emo or metal band with a distinct culture around the music you’re going to be mad not partnering to make fashion items and accessories available as an affiliate. I think any niche can come up with specific high value products tailored to the audience.

trust based – this was something I posted before. When you have an affiliate offer that actually costs nothing, you can ask your fans to sign up as an act of good faith. In my previous example, affiliates were being paid $US1.50 for every sign up to a free ecard service. Get a large teenage or any loyal kind of following and youre going to be printing money.

Value based – There’s not only value for niche related products what if you affiliate with a product that’s just . . . a good product? What if I told everyone to set up skype and make 3c a minute phone calls around the world with a $30 USB handset and I collected $4 for every handset sold through my link?

Some items run commissions as high as 50% (why do you think internet marketers are so keen to sell you penis enlargement pills?)

#4 - List Building

List building is one of the more aggressive and powerful ways to make online money. The method combines amazingly well with affiliate marketing, and most good affiliate marketers rely heavily on building lists to scale up their businesses.

A good list builder will usually set up a site specifically to capture names and emails. You have probably done a search in Google to find a page that offered you a free product. All you have to do to get the free product is type in your name and email, right? By downloading that free product, you will probably be signed up to be on that marketer’s list. He will then be able to communicate with you in the future and will send you and everyone else on the list offers. A certain percentage of the people on the list will take advantage of those offers and this will get the marketer paid.

Good list builders will come up with ways to help the people on their list, which will keep them on the list for a longer time period. They are able to create a win-win. Over time, their list grows larger and larger which provides them with larger and larger income. Good affiliate marketers sometimes end up with millions of names.

To build their lists, list builders usually use a service like Aweber, which helps them to create forms to capture information, and stores the names and emails in a database for future communication.

List building combines with quite a few of the other methods, including blogging, affiliate marketing, lead generation, and starting an online service business.

Musicians tip: That’s what it says. Your mailing list is SO important now!!! You think giving your mp3’s away free is a silly idea if you can build a fan list of 10,000 people who have connected with your music and trust you?

And just think, when it grows that big and you’ve gained trust with all these people . . . I think your music career will be in rude health!

#5 - Lead Generation

Generating leads can be an extremely lucrative way to create money online. Mortgage leads, for example can be sold for more than $40 per lead, with no promise of conversion.

Usually the process of lead generation involves setting up a site to bring traffic, and then funneling traffic to a page where the visitor requests more information about a product or service. In the case of mortgage loans, the visitor would request more information about a loan. The marketer doing the lead generation (the person who created the lead) will then sell the information to a mortgage broker or company, who will in turn call the lead to try to get them to get a loan.

There are literally hundreds of different industries that rely on lead generation including:

• Loans


• Finance


• Weight Loss


• Real Estate


• Credit Cards


• Cell Phone Plans

Savvy marketers will set up businesses that capture leads in these and other industries and can make some truly killer profits.

Musicians tip:

Yeah I don’t know too much about this one. Affilaite marketing can be done smart by a band.

This kind of thing – mortgages and weight loss – im not sure will be healthy for your brand as a musician pushing this kind of stuff even if

Hey I don’t want to put you in a box but I mean – are your fans mainly fat people looking for houses? Cos if they are you could be doing alright!

#6 - Starting an Online Service Business

Those who become good at generating leads will often transition into creating their own service businesses. They usually realize that while they are able to make good money selling off leads, they could make more by creating businesses for the leads.

For example, a marketer may create a site at some point that provides people with good information about finance. They then go through the lead generation process to create and sell leads to an experienced financial planner. This goes great and the marketer makes great money, but eventually realizes that the financial planner makes a lot more from those leads than he does.

At that point, the marketer will often find a financial planner to partner with, or will become a financial planner himself. The leads are already there so the transition isn’t too complicated.

Selling services online usually takes a few simple steps:

• Bringing traffic to a website


• Generating a lead


• Selling to that lead

Since the first step in the process is bringing traffic to a website, the method is often combined with other ways to make money online including blogging and list building. Many times, people that use this method will also purchase a good amount of paid
advertising, as long as they are able to convert that traffic into clients.

Musicians tip:

Again this is highly refined depending on what skills you have outside of your music – and I should know, because it’s my game!

Don’t step on my toes and decide you’re going to become an internet music marketing guru too! haha

As a marketing and promotions guy, this technique is a cornerstone of my success – having used the concept in theory to create lucrative innovations several times and I will continue to do so for that reason.

For example – aside from kurb promotions itself most obviously – I’ve just started a new business went back to my part time job in university telling dressing up and telling pirate stories at kids parties because I already had the marketing and business skills, I just needed to find an expensive unique high end high value service or product I could deliver.

http://www.piratesofauckland.info

So yeah, if you have a kids birthday party coming up, I only charge $150 per hour!!!


DON’T FORGET: this also applies to licensing as a service!!! You might want to think about creating a page or section of your website solely addressing and soliciting for licensing enquiries.



#7 - Creating Products

Those that make the most money online are often those that create their own products. These products are often informational and can be downloaded by the purchaser.

For example, a savvy marketer will do research and then create an information product that will teach people how to lose weight. The product will probably be sold as an ebook or as a site that has a paid membership. The marketer will then use a variety of methods to bring traffic to the site including affiliate marketing (the marketer will recruit affiliates), paid advertising, list building, and sometimes blogging.

Since an informational product costs basically nothing to deliver, there is often great money in creating this type of product. I would highly recommend getting some experience before using this method because there’s a lot to it.

Musicians tip: No brainer. You’re a musician, you sell music. Recently I’ve put a lot of emphasis on innovating your product line but that needs a whole post.

You’re not going to sell a whole bunch of copies of your CD’s any more. You will sell some cd’s. And if you’ve got say

500 other products and different price points and value propositions

You’ll probably sell a fair few of those, too.

I personally will be looking into the ebook thing, maybe when you’re taking a little time out to think about innovating, you might too.

#8 - Setting up an Online Store

The old fall-back is creating an online store that sells tangible products. Some people will buy products at wholesale and sell them at retail for profits. Others will drop-ship, which is the process of selling a product before you buy it. You hold a list of what you can buy products for and sell them at an increase. Your supplier will then ship the product for you.

This method is often combined with many of the other methods including list building, lead generation, affiliate marketing, and creating products.

Examples:

• Amazon


• Lets Talk


• Buy.com

Musicians tip:

I’m also huge on this - although I don’t see it as a big long term money spinner like affiliate marketing to your mailing list could possibly become, there’s no reason why with a lot of targeted traffic, especially if you’re active in a very obvious niche, you cant pick up more of those lovely little long tail earnings.

Bruce Warila @ http://www.unsprungmedia.com mentioned in a blog about how to consider the concept of “competition” in the music business.

http://www.unsprungmedia.com/unsprung_wisdom/2008/5/12/how-to-reprogram-your-hyper-competitive-manager.html

Your fans may have already bought your album! That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be interested in more stuff that you’re probably in an excellent position of trust and authority to recommend.

Get it right and you not only pick up th e commission but that’s right – your authority and trust within your little niche community continues to grow.

You see we’re living in an era where there’s so much information that trusted sources for high quality content are going to in the position to create a lot of value.

As soon as Dubber @ http://www.newmusicstrategies.com started his liquid crunch store I knew there was just a little bit of a push toward innovative thinking going on.

http://newmusicstrategies.com/2008/04/22/can-independent-record-stores-survive/

Dubber often seems to do these things – such as putting ads on his blog – more to illustrate how rewarding and valuable these propositions can be in the wider context of the music related products, services and value you provide.

Promoting your music on Trademe - which is like EBay

oh oh killer post on the loose!!! Look out!!!

This is very NZ related but if you can think of Trademe as Ebay, much of it applies.

Trademe is my local New Zealand version of Ebay. It’s kind of a bit different but one things for sure.

New Zealanders are crazy about trademe. They’re insane. It’s worse than P (meth), there’s likely to be suffering in every family.

I think this is because kiwis love getting a sweet deal. They want to get the best deal, no matter what!

Sites like Trademe, Youtube and things like Mp3’s are all part of a megatrend called “digitisation” which is really a revolution in communication that we can interact with each other in this way, but of course is HIGHLY disruptive to certain industries the music industry obviously being one of them, and it wont be the last by no means.


But lets cut the fluff, the most important thing about Trademe in online music promotion is that essential concept:

It’s where the people are. This is why Myspace took off. Because everyone was there! When it comes to trademe in New Zealand . . . everyone uses trademe!!!!

I mean seriously. You have a profile on myspace but you’re not taking advantage of New Zealand’s biggest online community????

Lets look at what you can do on Trademe.

You can sell CD’s. You want physical distribution for your CD’s?

Your physical distributor is now crying in his soup because he is a poor poor man now. He does not care about sending 2 copies of your CD to every store in the wop wops so he can make what? $2? on each one.

He does not care.

Go see someone at Real Groovy. Make sure you ask for it to go to the four centres. Go home, put an ad on trademe.

YAY! You've got a distribution deal!!! Congratulations!!!!

And what do you know? You’ve got a “profile” on trademe! You can search it on google, pity you CANT put your website address, that’s against the rules.

But theres no reason you shouldn’t cram as much information about your music into that page as possible. This isn’t myspace! You’ve got a customer in the shop!

This is your opportunity to paint a picture of what it is that makes you a unique local voice and win them over with a stunning depiction of your raw essence that makes them just want to support!!!!

When you reflect on the new paradigm of the music industry and bloggers going on about the “1000 true fans” model for a successful career in music, the personal connection you make when you sell a CD on trademe is doing more work than a mountain of spam to take one step closer to having a viable fanbase.


For kiwi musicians who want to work hard this is FOR REAL. Make that interaction as positive as you can make it.

Put things in the envelope! Posters, stickers . . . use your imagination!

These people are purchasing directly off the artist and that makes them feel positive.I honestly feel, especially from lots of touring etc., that everyday New Zealanders everywhere want to support local musicians. They feel good about it, but the opportunity doesn’t really arise. Work that!

And you know what’s next!!!

”Wellll what else can we sell on trademe????”

Well it’s a little bit like that magic question

“What kinda stuff can we sell from our website in the future?”

Which I will posting about soon, BUT different because trade me is only for PRODUCTS and not SERVICES.

So you can sell a CD. Or a DVD. Or a T-Shirt. Or mugs. Lighters. Pens. Balloons.

Condoms.

Uh . . . you get the picture. There’s quite a bit of stuff you can sell on trademe.

In fact that’s the whole thing about this long tail thing I’ll tell you about sometime. You have to sell something for everybody. DEFINITELY have one area that you specialize in. But DO NOT have one measley little thing that you sell.

Innovate. When you innovate, success can creep up on you so fast its scary!

LUCKY DIP!!!! 10 RANDOM SONGS ON A BURNT CD $6.73 NO RESERVE FREE DELIVERY WITHIN NZ!!!

What products can you create with the resources you have that can be uniquely branded?

Hmmmm But no services! . . . SO that means you cant sell like

A performance, offering to play somewhere

Rights to a song. Or offer to write a song

BUTTTTT guess what?

You can sell ticketssssss! That’s right.

Got a gig on? Got a felt tip? (:p) Make some tickets and sell them on trademe!!!
Remember! It’s not about making $20 selling a couple of tickets if youre lucky on trademe.

It’s that YOUR GIG IS ON NEW ZEALANDS BIGGEST WEBSITE.

Remember how I said go where the people are? MMMM

So okay how much were you spending on promotion for this gig coming up? Hundy? 2 spot? You’re doing radio??? You can get the front page of Trademe for what $40?? And like . . . 50,000 people are going to see it!!!

Could work out good if you timed it jjuuusssstt riiightttt

UHHHHH yeah.


Again. You can go on an on about your band and your CD, and all the other wonderful products you can purchase online!!! Good to have someone who can write well for that.

That’s why radio and magazines and stuff are in bigggg trouble. When you put your money to work smart online by giving it to google or trademe you can potentially do so much better with your investment, even if its $20.

Radio works when it plays KFC ads at lunch time. Trust me, I’m in marketing. HAHA


Okay moving right along. I actually have been working on a song called “Positive Feedback” and that’s what led me to right this blog.

I’m not even a real trademehead but even I – and I’m sure you identify with me – proudly maintain my feedback rating. It was only just now that I looked at my feedback and realised

”Great music, top guy!”

”Wicked sounds man!”

”Awesome beats!”


my feedback is now not just a pretty number but a totally compelling reason and impartial recommendation to purchase one or several of my fine products!

I can quote that stuff IN the listing, hell I can even put it on my CD Baby page, My myspace and let me just underline that point – that because of the pervasive use of Trademe in New Zealand telling people to buy your CD on Trademe is not a stretch because everyones got an account!!!

it's likely a lot of people would feel MORE comfortable buy on trademe than say Itunes!!!


So that’s my blog about trademe!

I think the most important things to remember are

- everyone in New Zealand is there, so you should too

- use your ad to tell readers about stuff that makes you unique

- innovate with your product line!!! Don’t just sell your CD album!! Get creative, look at your resources.

- You can sell tickets on trademe like it’s a default gig guide! You can use paid advertising to create exposure that goes beyond the product on auction

(that’s a big tip!!!! You owe me!!! HAHA)

- Lastly and most importantly:

You’re selling stuff on trademe. YES it is smalltime. This is your opportunity to invest in creating something out of what you have got – Other New Zealanders on trademe who are interested in your music!!!

You’ve got their email!!! You’re going to be sending them a physical delivery, you’ve got a chance to make that a significant interaction and begin building a quality fan base !!! DO IT!!!

Theres lots of other ways and reasons that online classified sites - such as craigslist - can be used in highly innovative ways for bands to sell services as well as products all over the world. But we'll have to get to that!



"So give me Positive. Feedback!

- trademe baby wont you save me!

Positive. Feedback!

- yeah just so I know, goods came as described!"

What I’m doing: Gee Matt, if you’re so good at marketing . . . why not become a pirate?

A lot of people want to hear about my success stories with bands before they’ll try out what I do for bands and musicians.



I’m only in my 20’s. I started this business over 3 years ago doing posters and I stopped being broke about a year ago when I started focusing on myspace and internet stuff. That is why I would often talk in my blogs late last year about how the techniques I’ve used to do well for myself are the same techniques I am using to help musicians, and really using kurb itself as the main subject of my examples.



I guess the thing is there aren’t that many people who are having success with bands right now, even the biggest music businesses in the world are losing value dramatically. If your business is music, you’ve got to accept that in 2008 you’re facing a challenge.



If you use kurb online marketing or digital coaching for musicians thinking you’ll make your money back – this is not going to happen in a matter of months, nor can you sit back and think for $50 a week I can wave a magic wand and make you famous.



If you want to be successful in music online as I have been in business online you’re going to have to be writing blogs, developing your site, making videos, developing new campaign propositions – I've been doing this stuff every week now!



Internet marketing is just like internet dating. Don’t expect to fall in love in the first 3 months. Unfortunately, that’s when most people give up because it didn't work straight away.



But the question remains. If I’m so good at marketing bands why haven’t made anyone famous?



Well I am happy to announce that my passive weekly income from online music and royalties is around $40 p/week. This is on material that is mostly over 2 years old. Not much, but a passive income is still something.



Most musicians don’t realise the hard slog it now takes just to get to this point.



That is why I am most certainly developing my own projects to take advantage of my own wisdom and experience.


The top internet marketers who I learn all my tricks from all say . . . the richest internet marketers OWN THIER OWN PRODUCT. As a musician you'll know: creating your own product comes with it's own problems.



But specifically, in making my own product, or service - or brand - as the case may be, I am going back to my part time job I had in uni, dressing up as a pirate and turning up to kids birthdays.



I am not passionate about being a childrens entertainer. But nor am I passionate about how little money I had when I was a full time club promoter 3-4 years ago.



But now I realise I have the marketing skills, I expect to not only be booked out doing 4 parties each weekend within 6 months at $200 a pop but also in a year from now, creating revenue from ad supported pirate content as well retailing cd and dvd content as well as affiliate revenue from referrals on pirate merchandise . . .



See when I’m talking about advertising revenue from your site im not just talking about 10c a pay-per-click from google or 2c an impression for banner space but once we start talking about affiliate stuff . . . internet affiliates pick up commissions of 10-50% on most items which means if someone follows a link directly from my site and pays for a $200 product I’m going to see a good $50 at least of that in my pocket. And that’s where you start making decent money – when you pick advertising companies who supply the affiliate ads for your site that are great at picking products that your visitors buy.

So yeah, I’m going to become a pirate on the weekends because I’ve done it before and most importantly – I know how to market content on the web and by next year if I put plenty in I should earning a grand every weekend!




Well that’s my plan for the next 18 months and that’s putting my money where my mouth is!



Ahoy, me hearties!



Kurb is all about helping musicians use the internet to create revenue both through sale of traditional products and service and the new possibilities of web 2.0.

So watch this space for more analysis on how Captain Matty's adventure is going to monetize online!!!!

http://www.piratesofauckland.info