Giving away audio stuff for free never sounds appealing for any person that owns a business in the beginning, and Selling Beats Online is not different. This happens mainly because of the idea that someone will benefit from our own hard work, while we get nothing. But this is not the entire truth.
How to make money giving away free audio stuff
Giving away free stuff as an Online Beatmaker can be very profitable for your business and brand in many ways. Let’s see how.
Promotional use
You can give away free stuff such as beats with basic license rights or drum kits and invite people to share your content, blog posts, new beats or even your website as an exchange. That way you help the people that need your music and you get the promotion that is extremely valuable for your brand. We all know that making people familiar with our brand name and image is one of the most important things all businesses should focus on.
The perfect place to apply this technique is of course the social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and so on. Of course you can also use e-mail campaign to enhance the promotion. E-mail marketing is always a great solution.
Lead generation
Have we already mentioned E-mail Marketing, adding more subscribers to your lists is a crucial part of your Beat Selling business. More subscribers mean more potential customers, and you can achieve pretty big numbers using freebies again as a way to attract them.
In exchange for their E-mail address people can benefit again from free stuff concerning your brand. Again the most obvious and usual would be some free beats, a new software that you created or a package of loops, drums etc.
Building authority
Another very important result of you giving away free stuff, is that you can start building a name as a brand authority. The definition of being an authority is that when people have a particular problem or request relevant to your expertise, you will be the first person (or brand) they will consider to approach.
Let’s say for instance that you have created a very helpful Step by Step Guide on How to Create Beats. This guide was offered for free by you and has been downloaded 1000 times to this day. Each one of these 1000 individuals that have benefited from your knowledge will know come to you for more answers to their questions etc. You have now created a potential customer database with people to which you can offer webinars, private courses, services and so on.
Product upscale
You can offer a product, the first part of a series (for example Trap Drum Kit Vol.1) for free, and you can then offer Vol.2 and Vol.2 for $19.99 each or $29.99 as a bundle. This requires quality stuff given for free so that people stay satisfied and come back for more.
Same principles apply to giving away Beats for free too. You can offer a free quality beat for free at first, and then make a bundle of 5 beats of the same great quality that people can make more songs with, or even an entire Mixtape or Album and price them accordingly.
Why give away your work for free?
Each business has something special to offer to its customers, and being an Online Beatmaker has some of the most advantages when it comes to giving away free stuff.
While many other businesses struggle to create a useful product for their subscriber, Online Beatmakers have plenty of digital products to offer due to the nature of their profession. For example:
Beats. You can offer a number of beats with no commercial rights and no profit rights for promotional use only or even tagged. This way people can practice their lyrics on your beats but they have to purchase the beat if they decide they want to use it in their mixtapes or in a video for instance.
Drum Kits and Loops. All beatmakers know how to create their own drum loops, kits, loops etc. You can create a certain number, make a package and offer it for free in exchange for a subscription to your list.
Software. You can create and offer your own software, for example a bass or guitar plugin, an EQ, a compressor and practically anything that can be used in making beats or audio mixing. This of course requires more advanced programming skills and knowledge, but it is still one great way to attract people and drive traffic to your website.
E-book. Share your expertise with others. If you have some special skills in making beats, audio mixing or mastering, cover design and much more, you can offer some basic knowledge to people and after they subscribe to your list you can offer more advanced techniques using E-mail Marketing.
What you can offer
When selling beats online, there is a large number of digital products you can offer to the people in exchange for their e-mail addresses.
- E-book (Guide)
- E-mail guidance
- Video tutorials
- Drum kits
- Software
- Free beats
- Free services
E-books are the most common free digital product businesses offer their subscribers. They are usually guides or solve a problem relevant to the industry of every individual business, in this case Selling Beats Online. They can be small books starting from 2.000-3.000 words and extend up to 10.000 or even 15.000 words.
Email guidance works in a similar way to e-books. It is a series of e-mails that guide or solve a problem related to the industry the people are in. Their number varies from 5 to 10 e-mails. They usually are not as descriptive as the e-books and have a smaller total length compared to the e-books.
Video tutorials are a great thing to offer for free, as videos captivate peoples’ attentions immediately and very easily and they are highly likely to guarantee peoples’ engagement to your website or youtube channel. If you are a fluent talker, they are highly recommended.
Drum kits or drum loops is a very common free product related to the industry of Selling Beats Online. Each beatmaker is more or less capable of creating his own drum loops, naming and packaging them and offering them to his subscribers. Of course, the result hast to be of high quality to engage the subscribers.
Software is a more complicated solution as it requires programming knowledge, but if you are not one of the lucky ones with those advanced skills you can always hire a programmer and create your own equalizer, audio compressor or any kind of plugin you want. This way, the possibility of subscriber engagement increases dramatically.
Free beats is the most regular free product online beatmakers have to offer in exchange for an e-mail address. You can choose for examples 10,20 or sometimes 50 of your finest beats, make a package and offer them for free. You can include basic license rights in the package, or non-profit licenses which guarantees that you can resell these beats as many times as you want from your website, because the licenses are not exclusive.
Free services can be offered for free usually for a particular purpose. When for example you have a new service available on your website (for instance Audio Mastering Services) and you want to promote this services to your clients, you can offer them a demo of this service for free in exchange for their e-mail address. This way you advertise it and your customer gets a taste of your services and decides whether he wants to use it again or not.
Upsell your products
A crucial moment when it comes to increasing conversions through e-mail marketing, is the upsell. What upsell means is that you as a seller add extra perceived value to a product that you already sell, so that a satisfied customer that was willing to buy your first line of product, buys the next ones too.
For example, you sell through your website a drum loops package named “Golden Drum Loops”. You have a few satisfied customers that bought that product and you want to sell more to them. So, you create a series of the same product (for instance Golden Electric Bass Loops”, “Golden Percussion Loops” and “Golden Special Effect Loops”) and you offer them along with your first product as bundle.
Satisfied customers will be more than willing to buy those products too, because they now are sure and trust the quality of your products, and know that they will make good use of them like they did with the first product.
Upsells can be applied to most product, especially digital ones, as long as they add extra value to the first product that was available and they benefit the buyer.
In order to successfully upsell your products there are a few things that you must be aware of and pay close attention.
First and foremost, you need to be as familiar as it gets with your products (which is easy if you created them) so that you are able to answer every single question your clients may have. You must be able to describe your products in detail, solve any given problems and provide your customers with tips on how to use the products properly.
In order to achieve this, you have to keep regular contact with your customers, find out what they want, what are their necessities and what things did not satisfy them and try to improve them. Make them feel comfortable talking to you and try to be friendly.
Make the upsell relevant. Try not to sell random products to random customers. Prefer selling products relevant to what they have already purchased so that you do not lose your target point.
Don’t press your clients and let them decide which product and prices seem affordable to them. Make your case and give them time to consider your offer.
What you need to upsell is improved versions, upgrades or the next part of a series you have already released. This way the customers perceive the offer to be of high quality, relevant to the products they have already purchased and consider them to be necessary for them in order to continue being satisfied.
Conclusion
You can see that the big secret here is to make your business and especially your brand name as attractive to people as possible. Giving away free audio stuff is the most popular and possibly the most effective way to gain subscribers and build huge mailing lists.
I would advise everyone, especially newcomers to the Online Beat Selling business to apply those methods from the very beginning because they take time and require lots of patience and work.
Constant advertising is the key for every successful business. You may have the best Beats or generally music of the world but being unable to promote your work equals to no sales and no substantial income, which is why many talented people over the years have been discouraged and stopped making music.
Consider everything written above and do not make the same mistakes.
You can do it, and you can do it now!
