StrikingViper69
Shredding scales and making sales
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Background
For those that don't know, I'm a guitar player (pretty good at that) and songwriter. I've released a couple of albums, had great feedback, but poor sales. It turns out making an album and marketing an album are two very different things.
Last year, I put together a funnel to try and sell my album. It was simple:
FB ad > opt in page (get a free song) > get a couple of emails to blog posts to build rapport> get an offer to buy the album cheap
The funnel came pretty close to breaking even, but I couldn't quite make it work. Click through rates, opt in rates, cost per opt in were all good, but the download was a £5.99 and I couldn't make the numbers work.
The funnel did build my list and facebook page pretty nicely. To keep those people engaged, I've been putting up jams on Facebook live a couple of times a week and get pretty good response from people there - they're engaged, they're enjoying what I do... but will they pay...?
Membership Based Business Model
I've been thinking a lot about business models for musicians - and one model I've seen some people using is a membership website. I could easily put together a website where people pay $X per month to join, they can get:
I'm good enough that I can improvise over a backing track in one take, and have something decent that people can download. If I put an hour into it, I can make something pretty cool.
So, if I buy backing tracks, time involved in creating weekly content is 10 - 60 minutes. In fact, I could make a year of tracks in a week and drip feed them. So this is scalable and isn't too demanding on my time. I can also add the tracks to streaming services online. This makes the model very manageable.
If I make my own backing tracks, this could suck up multiple days each week in creating tracks. So being able to buy backing tracks is key.
The problem is getting started. Licences for these tracks cost $70 a pop. If I do one track a week, that comes to around $240/month. Software to setup the website would cost $180.
The benefits, are that membership to the site gives me a $60 product (or greater - if people stay for three years that is a $180 product), and I can run paid ads again (I had good CPC and opt in rates) and scale the business. Which then means I can self fund proper record releases multiple times a year - adding enormous value to subscribers - they get jams, new studio albums, "behind the scenes studio videos" etc.
The Question
What's the best way to test if this works?
I thought of putting a sales page up, asking people to pay for a year of membership (and get a discount). If not enough people sign up, I refund everyone and go back to the drawing board. If enough people do sign up, I have the money to get it going.
I also wondered if 1-3 people might sponsor the whole thing between them.
OR if people would sponsor setting the idea up and then join as monthly members.
With a monthly fee of $6.99 (or $69 a year, pay for 10 months get 12 sort of thing) I would need 42 people to sign up, to cover a year of content. I have about 1500 people my facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/sixstringdemon/) and an email list with 600 active subscribers.
Another option is:
I get enough people to sign up to run the website and backing tracks for say 2 months, and some ad spend money About $800 in total. Then hope I get enough new people into the funnel to cover future months costs that the current members are expecting. This is risky, but it lowers the requirements to 12 people signing up rather than 42. However, if this fails, my audience will (rightly so) feel cheated, and I lose my audience.
Anticipated Responses
"Why should someone support you and not some other musician?"
I have built a bit of a rapport with the people on my page - the same people comment and reply to things I post
People enjoy the jams I post
I asked and the other musicians didn't
"Is there any examples of other musicians doing this?"
Yes I've seen a few doing this already. People making $10,000/mo from this - I know that's peanuts to some guys here... but with that I could travel the world and record albums every year, and study with other great players and composers (hey, you can always get better).
Thanks for any help or insights you all can offer!
For those that don't know, I'm a guitar player (pretty good at that) and songwriter. I've released a couple of albums, had great feedback, but poor sales. It turns out making an album and marketing an album are two very different things.
Last year, I put together a funnel to try and sell my album. It was simple:
FB ad > opt in page (get a free song) > get a couple of emails to blog posts to build rapport> get an offer to buy the album cheap
The funnel came pretty close to breaking even, but I couldn't quite make it work. Click through rates, opt in rates, cost per opt in were all good, but the download was a £5.99 and I couldn't make the numbers work.
The funnel did build my list and facebook page pretty nicely. To keep those people engaged, I've been putting up jams on Facebook live a couple of times a week and get pretty good response from people there - they're engaged, they're enjoying what I do... but will they pay...?
Membership Based Business Model
I've been thinking a lot about business models for musicians - and one model I've seen some people using is a membership website. I could easily put together a website where people pay $X per month to join, they can get:
- New instrumental jam they can download every week
- Video of me playing the jam
- Download my previous (and future) albums
- Get a "behind the scenes vlog" (don't know if people would want this but I can find out)
- Download recordings of old bands I played in
- Demos of new material
- A forum to chat on
- Guitar tabs for songs (where I have them!)
I'm good enough that I can improvise over a backing track in one take, and have something decent that people can download. If I put an hour into it, I can make something pretty cool.
So, if I buy backing tracks, time involved in creating weekly content is 10 - 60 minutes. In fact, I could make a year of tracks in a week and drip feed them. So this is scalable and isn't too demanding on my time. I can also add the tracks to streaming services online. This makes the model very manageable.
If I make my own backing tracks, this could suck up multiple days each week in creating tracks. So being able to buy backing tracks is key.
The problem is getting started. Licences for these tracks cost $70 a pop. If I do one track a week, that comes to around $240/month. Software to setup the website would cost $180.
The benefits, are that membership to the site gives me a $60 product (or greater - if people stay for three years that is a $180 product), and I can run paid ads again (I had good CPC and opt in rates) and scale the business. Which then means I can self fund proper record releases multiple times a year - adding enormous value to subscribers - they get jams, new studio albums, "behind the scenes studio videos" etc.
The Question
What's the best way to test if this works?
I thought of putting a sales page up, asking people to pay for a year of membership (and get a discount). If not enough people sign up, I refund everyone and go back to the drawing board. If enough people do sign up, I have the money to get it going.
I also wondered if 1-3 people might sponsor the whole thing between them.
OR if people would sponsor setting the idea up and then join as monthly members.
With a monthly fee of $6.99 (or $69 a year, pay for 10 months get 12 sort of thing) I would need 42 people to sign up, to cover a year of content. I have about 1500 people my facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/sixstringdemon/) and an email list with 600 active subscribers.
Another option is:
I get enough people to sign up to run the website and backing tracks for say 2 months, and some ad spend money About $800 in total. Then hope I get enough new people into the funnel to cover future months costs that the current members are expecting. This is risky, but it lowers the requirements to 12 people signing up rather than 42. However, if this fails, my audience will (rightly so) feel cheated, and I lose my audience.
Anticipated Responses
"Why should someone support you and not some other musician?"
I have built a bit of a rapport with the people on my page - the same people comment and reply to things I post
People enjoy the jams I post
I asked and the other musicians didn't
"Is there any examples of other musicians doing this?"
Yes I've seen a few doing this already. People making $10,000/mo from this - I know that's peanuts to some guys here... but with that I could travel the world and record albums every year, and study with other great players and composers (hey, you can always get better).
Thanks for any help or insights you all can offer!
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