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If you are beginning to gain recognition as a music artist, then it is time to build yourself a website for your music. Every music artist should have a music website where they put up and store information about them and their music.
A website is like your online home, it gives you a centralized location to get all the information about you out to your fans, your new songs, music videos, or album releases.
As good as other social media platforms like Facebook and SoundCloud are for reaching out to fans and self-promotion. It is good to have a base camp or a ground zero for you to be able to control your brand and firmly establish your online presence in the long run.
Your website can as well help you secure press and promotional opportunities as well as gigs.
In general, websites are ideal for musicians because they host everything that a fan or promoter needs to have in order to know what you’re about. Your social media links, merch, and tour dates are only a few of the things every website must have.
Many potential fans and professionals will take you more seriously. When a valuable music industry person who might be interested to work with you tries to find out more about you, they are most likely to check if you have a website where they can get all the necessary information they need about you.
Another huge benefit of owning a website as a music artist is that your website can help you earn royalties. You can monetize your music website and convert it into a stream for passive income.
In this era, there are content management systems that let you build your music websites for free. These content management websites include WordPress, Wix, etc.
You get total control of your music website which makes it easier to set up an effective sales funnel. You get more storage space to store as much as you want on the site.
There’s a list of ways you can monetize your music website and I’m going I’ll be going through them in this article.
How To Monetize Your Music Website
Making money from your music website is one of the ways musicians can make passive income while creating their craft. The following are steps to monetize your website:
Sell Digital Music On Your Site
Your website is going to consist of so many different things such as tour information, press kits, music albums, photo albums, music calendar, tour dates, etc.
To keep it organized, you should have a page dedicated to your music on which you sell your music. Offer your music for sale on your website from albums, CDs, EPs, and Vinyl to selling single tracks.
You can offer your music in different formats such as MP3, WAV, or FLAC format. A big benefit of this is that you keep 100% of your sales income unlike selling through other platforms.
You can even achieve more by creating buzz around your upcoming release by letting fans pre-order your new release before the scheduled release date. Although you might be tempted to put up all your music for sale, offering a few free digital downloads is a great way to build your fanbase.
Also, you could offer this free track in exchange for their email addresses which you’d use to grow your email list.
An article that can help with this is ‘A Musician’s Guide To Email Marketing‘
Sell Physical Products In Your Store
If you have any physical product like a branded T-shirt, hats, stickers, branded phone cases, handwritten lyrics, etc., basically anything you have for sale. This gives an opportunity to express your creativity outside of music.
The better the quality and value of products you offer to fans, the higher the chance you’ll make sales.
You should sell tickets to your gigs and concerts to your fans on your music website; give your fans that option. You can either do it directly from your own website or as most musicians do it, via a third-party ticket website and link it to your own music website.
Apart from physical products, you can also sell digital products for instance; eBooks of your album lyrics or a short music download sheet for your latest single. You can also sell tickets to your live stream as this helps to make the online environment more exclusive and intimate.
There are so many products you can market on your music website, you just have to explore. Allow your creativity and pick what you are most passionate about to sell.
Sell Ad Space
People pay you so they can use your music website to get their products out to your website audience. If you decide to sell your ad space, a lot of advertisers compete for this space. That means more money, more relevant ads, and more spaces that are filled.
Selling ad space involves designating blank or available sections of your music website for ad hosting. These ads sell in a programmed manner through a bidding process or directly to advertisers. Adverts take up forms such as banner ads, sponsored content, and videos.
You can come up with the price for each ad space yourself, saying how much it will cost per month for advertisers to advertise on your site.
Requirements;
To sell your ad space, your music website must have a sizable audience or visitors; this is what attracts advertisers to your site.
Your site must have original content that keeps readers on the page and coming back for more.
Your music website must be intuitively responsive and user-friendly with a very clear navigation bar and clear indicators of how to move between pages and access information.
Advertising
Advertisements come in all shapes and sizes. Your site can display images, videos, texts, and interactive ads.
A great rule of thumb is to make sure these ads are part of the lifestyle the music industry is selling, e.g. ads for the latest headphones, sound players, what you know your fans will love.
Another option would be advertising in your mailing list by allowing banner adverts to be in your newsletters.
Advertising however depends on the amount of reach and fanbase you have. If you do not have a solid fanbase with a significant amount of visitors, your ads are likely not to convert and this would in turn not yield revenue as you get paid per click.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular and quickest ways to make money on your music website.
The way it works is that you promote products belonging to a brand or company and get a commission for any product that is purchased through you, that is, your affiliate link.
The best part is that it is usually done on a website that you have and if you have a strong fanbase or a loyal community, you could be sold out in minutes.
Read our full guide on “A Beginners Guide To Affiliate Marketing”
