Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and with it another holiday shopping season begins.  First, of course there’s Black Friday, and now-a-days we also have Cyber Monday (the new younger sibling of Black Friday).

So for all of you independent musicians out there looking to capitalize on the holiday shopping season here’s my recipe for marketing your merch online:

Selling Physcial CDs and Digital Downloads
Be sure to offer your music products in various formats (both as physical CDs and digital downloads).  Surprisingly, the overall majority of people still consume music via CDs-- according to Dave Poler’s poll regarding how poeple prefer to consume music--however, digital downloads is a very close second.  By offer your music in multiple formats you increase the likelihood of sales without alienating any particular way a person wishes to consume your music.

I personally like to automate as much of the online shopping/buying process to make it easy on both the consumer and myself (it helps me manage and keep track of things more efficiently).  For folks who want to order my physical CDs I use the on-demand service provided by Lulu.com.  That way when someone places an order on the site, Lulu takes care of the credit card transaction, the CD is professionally manufactured, packaged and shipped directly to the consumer.

For my digital downloads, I use Nimbit’s service, which does a similar thing--handles the credit card transaction and handles the download process immediately following the purchase.

What I like about both of these services is that there is no set up fee to the musician.  There are other services like CDBaby.com, which is great and can allow you to have both CDs and digital downloads in one spot, but there is a set up fee.  However, the benefit of the set up fee is that you can get your digital downloads distributed to places like iTunes where it’s often harder for an independent musician to get there music added on their own.

Sale of Other Merchandise
If you offer other merchandise (T-shirts, hats, stickers, etc.) make this available as well.  I use CafePress.com for online sale of such merchandise.  Again, this is an on-demand service where items are not produced until an order is placed.  I use the free version of CafePress, but they do offer a paid Premium version as well.

Sales at Live Shows
Don’t forget to have to have all of the physical merchandise folks can buy online at your website available at your live shows, too.  This can even include digital downloads by way of having digital download cards available for purchase or as a free giveaway with one free download song for signing up on your email list.

At live shows I like to also have a few items available for sale that are not available for purchase online.  I often design and screen print my own T-shirts with equipment I own at home and make those exclusively available at live shows.

Don’t Forget to Your Fans Know
Finally, you have to let your fans know about what you have available, and you want to make at easy as you can for them to find and purchase the merchandise they’re looking for.

Use your email list to let fans know of available merchandise in a timely fashion (around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, hint, hint).  Use Twitter, your Facebook status, MySpace, LinkedIn--whatever social networks you’re on, let those you connect with know because they may be looking for what you’re offering, but not be aware of how to find it.

Posted by: Nick Venturella

Learn about building your independent music career in
The Local Music Journey book. 

You can download a FREE excerpt here.

As a creative individual, who is now a father, and has been a husband for close to a decade, I’ve noticed some major shifts in my ability to work on and complete projects in the way I had been used to prior to being married, and certainly prior to becoming a father.

Now, I have to give a disclaimer here, I’m not saying that my ability to find creative time prior to family life was better than it is now, it was just different.  Back then I was able to spend a whole weekend working on art and design projects or writing and recording music for my next album.  With a family, those long afternoons of immersing myself in creative work now become short bursts of time in 20 minute increments to be taken advantage of. 

It’s not a bad thing by any means because I honestly want to spend the majority of my time with my family.  However, I still have the need to be creative, so in the past year or so I’ve been discovering how I can capitalize on the bits of time that become available, often sporadically.

I recently read an interview with Michelle Ward on the Life of a Freelancer website.  Ward is a life coach for creative types.  Late in the interview she was talking about this concept as it related to her transitioning into her own business.  That’s when I realized that the “rub” comes from the transition.

Really, what I’ve struggled with has been my ability to transition from one mode of working to another that is less familiar to me.  Lately though, I’ve been able to keep my creative projects in mind, armed and ready, so that when a 15 or 20 minute window opens I can make the most of it.  This isn’t easy to do, it takes some practice, but I really think it’s helped me hone my creative skills toward getting to the main thought or point of each task, simply because I know I don’t have time to waste.  In that way I have become better at working more quickly, but still with a high level of quality...my efforts are simply fueled with more focused energy.

Posted by:  Nick Venturella

4-Hour Work Week (Amazon Affiliate) Recommended Reading

Christopher Penn recently posted a blog/podcast about “Doing more with less.”  I love the innovative, resourcefulness concept behind many of his comments.

One of the things he references early in his talk is that technology by itself is boring, essentially it’s just a tool to achieve a certain outcome, but the person behind the technology--the one driving it’s use--can make something new, engaging and exciting with it.  Penn, goes on with an example about photographers and digital cameras...Digital camera’s are so technologically advanced that a skilled photographer who knows about light and composition can take a photo with a mobile phone camera that is as beautiful or more so than an amateur with the latest and greatest SLR digital camera--the reason:  the human behind the technology.

This got me fired up in a really positive way.  I love the idea of being innovative and resourceful, using whatever you have at your disposal to create something exciting and professional.  Essentially, my whole creative career has been based on this concept.  I’m a minimalist when it comes to equipment and tools of the trade.  In fact, I like overcoming the challenges of various limitations--limits on time, scope of a particular concept, or the materials and tools to which I have access.

Those limitations won’t stop me, they just make me more creative and innovative.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that I get a greater sense of accomplishment once I’ve completed a project where I’ve overcome the challenges of various limitations.

So the next time you give yourself an excuse to not do something because you think you don’t have the right tools I would encourage you to think again and ask yourself, “How can I do this with the tools I have access to?”

Posted by:  Nick Venturella

The Artist's Way (affiliate), Recommended Reading

The following is a guest post written by Larry Mitchell. The post came about through a response to me (Nick Venturella), by way of my Resourceful Musician Blog. 

Larry Mitchell is a classically trained violinist who has been helping musicians of all stripes become more successful in selling their music.  He works in marketing for Mixonic, an online CD duplication firm specializing in independent musicians.

Selling CDs - $500 a month.

It sounds like a good trick doesn’t it. Selling your CDs has never been more accessible to the independent musician. We will do the math and figure out how to make $500 a month from sales of your CDs.

We could wave a magic wand and poof, it would happen but in this realm here we need to plan and have a strategy in place to drive those CD sales.

There are numerous sources of CD income. First take a look at selling your CDs by yourself literally from person to person. Start by bringing CDs and setting up a sales table at your gigs. Have someone take care of selling while you are performing. If you work a minimum of say six times a month and sell 5 CDs at $10 a piece at each gig there is $300.

There are several online outlets such as CDBaby, TuneCore, Amazon, even eBay that will sell your CDs. If you are getting on average of $7 a CD from these online outlets and sell twenty CDs that is another $140.

Okay time to start selling around town. Make your stops at every local record store outlet and drop off your CDs. Perhaps you will make $7 per CD. In a month target a minimum of 20 CDs sold; that is $140

We are already up to $580. Why stop there. Are there any swap meets, or craft fair in or nearby where you live. A good day’s work there selling a minimum of 10 CD’s less what you pay as rental fees for the space and you are still making a profit.

Have you thought of calling corporations, charities, even local governments to see if they want to give away your CDs as special favors. Here you will not make as much per CD but still we are talking cash flow and its all good!

You see it does not take long to get to $500 and beyond applying a little bit of planning and initiative. It is up to you to move your CDs however, in todays world wide marketplace it has never been more inviting and feasible to make money selling your CDs. The ideas presented here are only a few. Give it some thought and then sell baby sell!

Download Nick Venturella's FREE special report: 
10 resourceful tips to help indie musicians make more money

Just read an article this morning on Digital Music News about a study by Ian Hogarth, co-founder of Songkick.  Hogarth’s research showed that approximately less than 30,000 musicians are making a living as musicians.

Topspin’s CEO, Ian Rogers, was delivering the news about the mass majority of musicians not making a living from their efforts at Noise Santa Barbara this past weekend.  Rogers offered a theory behind the cause of the statistic--increased cost of marketing music.

Rogers reasoning for the cause was that while production and distribution costs of recording music have dropped due to more affordable technology and the internet, the cost to gain the attention of a large audience has increased. 

I would add that the increased cost of marketing may not just be an increase in hard dollars spent on marketing, but simply time consumed by marketing-related activities (i.e. blogging, social media marketing, press release writing, street team organization).  Some variation of all of those marketing avenues has all existed in the indie music industry, but the sheer volume needed to make an impact these days has greatly increased and I could agree with an increase in cost of marketing in both money and for sure in terms of time spent on such activities.

Rogers eludes to the idea that consumers are in control of how they’re marketed to, so musicians have to work harder to gain their attention.  Musicians are competing for consumer attention amongst the mobile devices, video games and other internet sites/software that are competing in the same space.

In the past there weren’t as many options and technology was expensive so it was a barrier just to try and compete.  Now, as Rogers suggests, we’ve gone the to other extreme and there are so many options, technology is more affordable and because there are less barriers toward getting in the game to compete, clearly there’s more competition. 

So what’s the good news out of all of this?  In my opinion the good news is that there is no one route you have to take to get where you want to go.  I too get discouraged from time to time about the ability to make a living from music in the ideal way that I want (spending all of my time writing, recording and performing), but I’ve been able to find complimentary ways to keep me in and around music, and other creative endeavors that are important to me while still making music and making a living.  At the core, Nick Venturella is a musician, but I’m also a visual artist, author, speaker, marketing professional and entrepreneur--each role I’m involved in allows me to utilize my various skills and talents, and collectively I’m able to make a living.

I think what’s going to happen more and more as our indie music industry progresses is that we’re going to have to become creative entrepreneurs rather than just musicians making a living from only the recording and performing of our music.  My hope is that music can still be pretty central, but I suspect those who will sustain themselves in the indie music industry will figure out ways to compliment their musical endeavors with related products/services.  That could mean you also teach guitar lessons, or if you’re good at social media marketing (which a lot of indie musicians get really good at due to no marketing budgets) perhaps you can freelance those services. 

There are definitely ways to cobble together a living in and around music.  You need to be creative and resourceful and play to your strengths.

Posted by:  Nick Venturella

Read more about building your independent music career in The Local Music Journey book.  You can download a FREE excerpt here.

Not long ago I was discussing music marketing tactics with a fellow colleague in the music industry.  The discussion was great--there were some instances where we saw eye to eye and others where we didn’t, which is good, that’s typically where new ideas and growth come from.

It’s worth noting that my colleague is of the baby boomer generation and has industry experience prior to the steep decline of the major labels.  In contrast, I’m on the cusp of gen X and Y, and my industry experience has only been of a DIY independent nature. 

So, my music industry colleague asked me, “How would you market a new album if I gave you a collection of songs?”  He asked this question, and in my mind I think he had an idea of what he thought the answer should be (perhaps I’m presuming too much, but that was my initial thought).

I tried to be thoughtful as I began to answer with ideas of building a buzz online via blogging and social media, utilizing online contests and related offline promotions and live shows, but my ideas kept driving everything back to online tactics that can help quickly build a community around the music, if done correctly.

His response, was, “Yes, but how would you market the album.”  Clearly, we had a difference of opinion about what ‘marketing an album’ entails.  I was thinking about building relationships with fans surrounding the album vs. interrupting fans with advertising and radio play.  On one hand the audience being marketed to has some control regarding how they receive those marketing messages vs. having no control over how they receive marketing messages, with more interruptive tactics (ads and traditional radio play).

These differences illustrate experiential and possibly generational points of view.  My question ends up being:  Are both routes correct?

I ask that question because one crucial piece of this conversation that we both failed to address was, who is the target audience for this fictitious album we’re trying to market?  Because, if my target market is baby boomers who are used to purchasing actual albums (on CD perhaps) then maybe what I perceive are my colleague’s thoughts toward marketing an album are correct.  However, if the target audience are from my own generation, more comfortable with blogging and social media, then perhaps I’m right.

My main conclusion is that I don’t think there is a least common denominator for how to market an album to the masses.  In fact, I don’t think anyone is marketing albums to the masses anymore in which case addressing your niche audience and catering your marketing specifically to that audience is perfectly acceptable and exactly what you want to do.

Posted by:  Nick Venturella

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10 resourceful tips to help indie musicians make more money