As I’m sure you know, making a living as a musician is not for the faint of heart. The income we earn from performing can be very unpredictable. The fact is, you can be making tons of money doing music but then one wild and crazy thing happens that puts you out of work and thus totally eliminates that source of income. Case in point, the current situation with the coronavirus. A lot of musicians around the entire globe are suddenly out of work. This season that we’re in highlights the need for musicians to build multiple streams of income. Enter passive income ideas for musicians!
Since being a full-time musician takes a lot of time and work, it’s nice if these other streams of income are passive and do not require as much effort once they are up and running. Often when people think of passive income, they have this idea of making money in their sleep. While this is true, know that passive income systems take time to build and often require upfront labor, as well as some work on a regular basis to maintain and keep active. Ultimately, once you get them going they can continue to earn you money while you put most of your focus into something else, like your music.
Today we’re going to discuss 5 different ways you can start creating passive income right now that can help you become more financially stable and give you more flexibility in your artistic endeavors. Here are 5 passive income ideas for musicians…
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1. Monetize Your Youtube Channel
If you hadn’t already heard, Youtube will pay you money for placing ads on videos you upload. You can make anywhere from a few hundred bucks to thousands of dollars a month simply by having videos with ad placement. There are requirements to monetize your channel though. To qualify, you have to have at least 1000 subscribers to your channel and you have to have logged a total of at least 4000 watch hours. Once you’ve done that, you can start to earn money. We’re currently in the middle of working towards those requirements ourselves with our youtube channel here.
The nice thing about being a musician is that you are most likely already uploading videos to youtube, so it comes naturally. Even so, the more videos you can post, the better. Besides official music videos, you can upload live performance videos, self produced videos, lyric videos, promo videos, behind the scenes footage, interviews and retrospective videos, and the list goes on and on. There’s all kinds of content you can post on youtube as an artist and the natural next step is to monetize your channel.
2. Utilize Drop Shipping To Sell Merchandise
Did you know you can have tons of products available for purchase on your online store without having to sit on any inventory? It’s true, and it can be done with ‘drop shipping.’ All you have to do is design a graphic using an editing software like Photoshop or Illustrator, then upload it to an on-demand printing and fulfillment site like Printful. You can then use their software to apply your graphics to all kinds of products, like t-shirts, hats, mugs, etc. After designing these products on their site, you can then link them to your online store for people to purchase. Nothing will get made until someone orders it. You will get a notification of the purchase while the fulfillment center handles everything else. The beautiful thing about it is that your fans will never know. We’ve been using Printful for a while and definitely recommend them.
You can also combine this with your youtube strategy by wearing and advertising your merchandise in your videos. Also you can include links to your store in the video’s description, so while you’re getting video hits, you can also sell products!
Related:
• 6 Ways Musicians Can Make Money during the Coronavirus Crisis
• Start Creating New Merchandise with Printful
3. Affiliate Marketing
Anyone who has an online audience can generate revenue through affiliate marketing. As an artist, you can quite naturally fold it into your operational flow. One of the biggest providers of affiliate marketing is Amazon through their Amazon Associates program. When you sign up you can view all of their products and select the ones you want to promote, and then provide affiliate links on your site which your fans and readers can click on to purchase these products. Everytime someone purchases a product after being referred from your site, you get a commission.
So you might be thinking “what kind of products can I promote as an artist?’ A lot, actually. For example, if you’re a musician who also likes to skate and your music attracts a lot of people who are also into the sport, then you can blog about your favorite skateboarding equipment and link out to it on Amazon or other online stores that have affiliate programs. Another example is my wife, Anitra. She recorded an entire album about having natural hair and has attracted quite a few fans who share the same sensibility. She could easily write about natural hair products on her blog and include affiliate links where those products could be purchased.
Note that there are also ways you can use affiliate marketing with your youtube channel. You can record videos where you review your favorite products, or link to products you’re using or attire you’re wearing at the end of a video and in the description. Remember though that in order to get a commission you have to join the store’s affiliate program.
4. Teach a Class
If you’re an artist, you can teach what you know. It doesn’t even matter what level you’re at, if you have knowledge of a craft or skill, you can share it. Depending on what your strengths are, you could teach lessons on beginner songwriting, guitar, keyboard, vocals, etc. Or maybe you use special equipment for recording your music or videos, then you can teach others how to use it. You can host these classes on your website or use third party platforms like Teachable to facilitate these classes. The best thing about it is if you do it right, you only have to ‘teach’ the class once. In other words you can create a pre-recorded video for the class and then sell that over and over again.
+Related: 5 Easy Side Hustle Ideas for Musicians | side hustle ideas for musicians
5. Start A Revenue Generating Blog
Out of all 5 of these systems, this one is the hardest to implement because it takes a lot of time and energy to produce a revenue generating blog. With that being said, it can be done, and if you can pull it off you can generate a whole lot of money utilizing the strategies mentioned above and more.
One example is a ‘music scene blog.’ Since you’re most likely already integrated into your local music scene as a musician, you could write about all of the happenings going on within it. You would never run out of things to write about. One of the appeals to this type of blog is that people want to know what’s going on in their town or city, so if your blog is well done and informative they’ll keep coming back. You can make money from advertising for shows, venues, and even other artists. There are lots of ways you could develop this type of blog into a revenue generating source for yourself. Check out our Musician’s Guide for Starting a Blog for Income.
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If you are interested in starting a revenue generating blog we recommend you check out Bluehost. Bluehost will help you register your official domain and they’ll give you professional web hosting services for as little as $3.95 a month. The really cool thing about Bluehost is that they easily integrate with WordPress, which is the premiere blogging platform today. This allows you to access the best features and plug-ins to make your blog look great.
So there are 5 passive income systems you can fold into your business model to generate more income. As a musician, these strategies are perfect because they’re based on things you’re most likely already doing. Now you can level up by monetizing these activities and building more profit for your business. If you’re interested in reading more about different ways musicians can generate income, then check out this great article from our friends at DIY Musician.
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