In this video, I’m going to talk about 6 ways to make some serious changes with your music channel. 

I decided to make a video on this topic because of a convo I had with an artist in one of the Facebook groups that I belong to.

He made a post about some of the goals he’d like to achieve with his music by the end of the year.

And some of those goals included: 

• Hit 20k streams on Spotify
• Hit 3k followers on Instagram 
• And one about playing a major festival in 2021

When I saw this post, I made a comment about how these were awesome goals, and recommended he include an income-related goal, something like “Make $5,000 by the end of the year”.

To which he replied that he’d love to do that, but he just didn’t think it was possible for him to hit that amount of money as his streaming numbers were not so great. 

And after chatting for a bit on Facebook, I realized that he was relying solely on streams to make money with his music. 

And it’s not just him, tons of singers are in this same boat as well, and if you know anything about me, you know that I believe streaming is one of the worst ways to make money with your music, as you need a whole lot of streams to make any decent amount of money.

For example, to hit that $5,000 mark, you’d need over a million streams – a number that not many new singers hit.

There are much better ways to make money with your music that don’t require you to hit millions of streams, and in this video, I talk about them and show you the math of what you need to do to hit that 5k number. 

Here are 5 ways singers could make $5000:

1. Creating and selling your own products

The first way to make some serious change with your music by creating and selling your own products.

And this could be anything from Merch, concert tickets, physical copies of your music, anything that you feel your fans would like and want to buy from you.

The great thing about selling your own products these days is that you can start doing it right away. You don’t need a massive following or even money to produce what you sell. 

There are platforms like Spreadshirt.com that offer print-on-demand services, which allows you to only pay for the product when you sell it to a fan.

Plus they’ll also handle all the shipping and processing as well. Which is really cool.

The Math

Let’s say you decided to sell T-shirts on your store, and the average price of your T-shirt $30, to hit that goal of $5,000, you’d need to sell around 167 T-shirts.

Might sound like a lot, but it’s so much more doable than trying to hit 1 million streams on Spotify.

2. Create and sell your services – what is this? example, the math

Creating and selling your own services is another great way to make some money with your music business.

This is when you offer some sort of help or assistance to other artists, labels, or even businesses, and they pay you a fee for the benefits that they are receiving as a result of that service.

Some services ideas you could provide as a singer include:

• Help other artists or labels write songs.
• Charge for features, and this could be for verses, choruses, or both.
• Teach your fans how to sing or play an instrument if you’re awesome at singing or playing an instrument.
• You could even help other artists or labels with their music production if you’re really good at that.

The math

Say you offered songwriting services, and charged a minimum of $300 per song, to make $5,000, you’ll only need to write about 17 songs and you’re balling.

3. Selling other people’s products or services

If you’re not up for the idea of selling your own products or services, then another thing you could do is sell other people’s products and services to your fans.

And you can do this through what is known in the business world as affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, you promote the products or services of other businesses to your fans and get a small commission every time they make a purchase through your link.

Although you could make a ton with affiliate marketing, you’d need a lot of your fans to buy as commissions are typically very low.

The Math

Let’s say you got $10 in affiliate commissions, to make $3,000 a month, you’d need to sell 300 of those products or services every month.

4. Getting Sponsorships and brands ambassadors deals

This is where you negotiate a deal with a brand to promote that brand or a product that the brand offers to your fans, and in return, they pay you a one-time or recurring amount of money for doing so.

You may need to build a decent following first before you can sign one of these types of deals, but it’s not really necessary. You just need to really understand the value you bring to these businesses when you approach them.

The Math

How much you make with sponsorships and brand deals comes down to how good a negotiator you or a member of your team are.

As an example, let’s say you’ve got a sponsorship package of $1,000/month for brans, to hit that $3,000 a month number, you’ll need just 3 brands sponsoring your channel.

I’m a huge fan of brand deals as they can be quite substantial, and in future videos, I’m going to be talking more about them.

5. Starting a Premium fan club or Patreon

This method of monetization is my favorite method.

A premium fan club is simply a membership site in which you charge fans a monthly fee for access to that site, and in return, they get more time with you, exclusive content, perks, discounts, and more.

Starting a Patreon is a great example of this.

What I love the most about this method is that but you can generate regular and consistent monthly income with it. Much more predictable and reliable than relying on music sales, merch, and live shows.

The Math

As for the math, if you started a premium fan club and charged $10 per month if 500 fans signed up, you’d be making $5,000 every month.

Again might seem like a lot, but to hit this number with streams, you’d need to be doing over 1 million streams every single month. 

Before you go

So I’ve shared 5 ways to make $5k with your music. Hopefully, you found these ideas get you thinking differently about you could make more money with your music.

Is there any other way that you know of making money with your music that has worked well for you? Let us know the comments below

In my next video, I’m gonna be talking about setting goals for your youtube marketing strategy, why it’s important to set proper goals, and how to do it the right way so that you achieve them.

So make sure you subscribe to that channel, or if you prefer get on the mailing list and I’ll send you an email when it goes live.

Until then, thanks for watching and remember, if you want to make enough money with your music to do it fulltime, you’ve got to stop thinking like an artist and start thinking like an entrepreneur.