Lessons

Lesson Info

Income from Fan Clubs & Sponsorships

Fan clubs, this is another thing that you can institute it's a little more complicated, depending on how you want to handle it because she especially well, if you have somebody that can help you administrate this it's great, you could charge for special access or early releases, other things like that subscription fees are great if you can get them because it's, just something that you you get for access for stuff that you're already creating that works out really well, there's a lot of different sites that can do this is always we're just going to give a few examples of what you can do in this zone. Patron ism is an interesting site that takes the old patronage model. They came from history, how a lot of musicians are were compensated and says, hey, how about having a whole bunch of fans get together and be the patrons for an artist that's? Not quite crowdfunding, it's, similar it's patronage instead and it's what worth checking up the site if you're interested once you grow a little ...

bit, if you really want kind of more of a professional level fan club topspin, tuchman media might be worth checking out for you there, too. Of course, you can always run it yourself using tools like wordpress or drew paul, where you can make websites with premium sections. And then you have to find a way to charge people in order to do it and expire their memberships, or you can use something like a member of your a little more tech savvy, and they allow you to create a special part of your website that's access on lee and expires the memberships automatically and handles all that kind of stuff sponsorships? How can you get sponsorships, especially you might be thinking, hey, if I'm just starting out, I don't know how I can even get access to something like this that's only for major musicians, ones that are represented by agents, this is more within range, then you would think, and if you're more business minded and you can get in the heads of the business people that you're going to be working with, I think you're going to find that this is within your reach because what it businesses want, they want exposure, and if you have a following their actually interested in reaching your audience, the easiest way to do this by far is to organize your own event because what basically they love to d'oh is reach a whole certain number of people you could say you're going to reach a thousand people if you just put like a little banner will put a banner for you right here on this stage in the front of the stage and can you give us some money in order to help fund the event will say it's sponsored by whatever it isthe right there nice and straight forward it's a lot of people that do event sponsorships and put together events for this very reason is that sponsorship money is the easiest value proposition to make to a business person the kinds of places to think about our local businesses in your area now these air within your reach like I said if you do the right kind of proposal local music retail stores because if let's say you're a super talented musician they would love to have to say that I'm sponsored by low insert local business here look local music business here that's great you could actually send people directly especially you play a lot in their area this is not a difficult proposition to make to them and of course musical instrument manufacturers or even within range the main thing is that you think of businesses that match your music or style now one of our favorite examples of this is frank and dread which is a steel drum artists he does caribbean style music and there was a caribbean style beach wear clothing company and he thought we interviewed him a couple times and he always had the most interesting business ideas every time we talk to him you have thinking about ok how can I doom or with this because he was playing out constantly and he's playing it restaurants that have that caribbean theme so he wears the beachwear clothing while he's playing and he talks about him every once in a while and now he's got a sponsor and an extra source of income again I think perfectly natural I don't think that's so up but it depends of course on your art again we'll never tell you you should force this it's not gonna work out too well if you d'oh but if it's a natural fit go for it think about this it goes beyond that though we always love giving websites because we know that's more easily within reach for people let's face it there's a lot of things we talk about like licensing if you could make the connections person a person you don't need a website to help connect you because you don't want that middle man taking out a cut right? But when it comes to doing something like sponsorships there's a lot of brands out there that are looking to connect with local bands or indie bands or bands was like a really dedicated following sonic bids which I used to just be about booking live is now about forty percent connecting bands to brands is the best way to say it and so if you're looking to get interested in doing this you might want to look into it it does cost money to join sonic bids it also costs money too basically fill it out and try and go for a particular bid thank you but a lot of a lot of artists successfully connect with brands after that point you end up having gigs at places like kia which might be kind of interesting or the gap which is considering their sponsoring local artists is kind of interesting and may fit with what you've got going wing on red bull has been awesome to the music community they have an entire website just dedicated to actually giving music instruction. This red bull music academy just has information out there but it also allows you as an artist to try and work with them directly line about how to approach these companies and if you should have a proposal prepared or how you could prepare yourself that's a really good question let me let me start I want youto you wanna go first? All right all right let's go ahead all right so you got to cover it right? Well, I kind of do what I'd like to hear what you have to say so yes proposal help small businesses are easier to approach the anything that's the main thing is their small businesses I mean it's like a local pizza joint maybe you can get them to do it it's not like you just like hey can I talk to the owner of a local band I'm about to set up a big event you know, with five other local bands remember we talked about booking cartels you take that booking cartel, you book a venue somewhere and then you turn into event maybe try and get the community involved and you say pizza place you wantto throw in we'll put a banner up for you and there's gonna be a lot of thousand local people should show up the news is covering it you know that's the sequence that you do you try and get backing from some big name remember we talked about barred credibility and then you just cascade that down and then you get the pizza place okay? The pizza places covering it hey, you local brewing company do you wantto put your name on the banner? Yeah, we'll join in that's how it works. Yeah, and I was just going to say yeah, it helps the you know, have some sort of a plan when you go in and talk to talk to these guys if it's a local store maybe it's more of a relationship based type thing where you just kind of have a conversation. The other thing is a lot of the little marketing stuff that we talked about in the last lesson he's defying decisions and stuff I mean that's the supplies to winning over people tio make it very clear what what it is that you offer them and and why you guys should partner up uh, that tip us off. So, good question. Excellent question. You know what? We have a few more slides that may help you with this. One of it is what you offer here's and that's what you want to think about it's like, well, what can I offer you? And then the next part of course, is what you can get from them. So we're going to cover both advertising and exposure, ad placement or sponsorship through your announcement. Three web presences videos or maybe in person appearances, product placement can actually also work. You'd be surprised. And besides, I mean, I would mention this you're an artist. People love sponsoring artists, you know, there's a magic to the music type of thing. You could get them involved. It's great. You can also, and you can do endorsements once, especially once you get to a bigger level on your endorsement actually means something. You know, every sports star out there pretty much at some point is doing that kind of thing. It also happens for artists, and it can come in to play. You also have music that they could use. I mean, we love composing music. We haven't done this for a local business yet it would be a nice challenge. Be nice to write them a theme song or music for a radio commercial or whatever else it is that you want to dio fact you can if you have a studio, you could help them make commercials so this is this kind of proposal isn't structured and now I guess we're asking you to think like business people like real business people saying, well, this is a transaction here's how much this cost I'd click the buy button this is messy people relationship stuff or like huh? What do you want? Oh, no, I don't like the idea of doing advertising, but you know, I sure would like, you know, you can offer him something else since like, well, what if I gave you like, a maid a radio commercial for you that you could play on this local radio station? Hey, that would be cool you don't know what will work until you try it and this is why a lot of artists who grow really big kinda have business managers because they'll think this way like okay, maybe this maybe this the main thing is they're looking to get income and make the relationships happen. As jason said it's all about this, those relationships what you could get could also be varied it's not just money course that's the top one on the list, but you could also perhaps get free products to use I mean, that might be that simple where they're happy to say yeah, we'll feed you pizzas that night maybe that's a start for this whole thing and cross promotion through their press now remember we talked about borrowed audiences last time when we're talking about marketing pirate audiences they could be a borrowed audience I mean the pizza place may actually have a lot of people go through it during lunchtime and everything they put a little add up for you or free services who knows? You don't know what you can you don't know what you can get until you ask and let them brainstorm I mean this I the thing this is where it really does help to have an agent you know now this much be the musician themselves with somebody representing him it's probably a little easier to do this kind of thing either way it works out pretty well and also I think we should say that your art itself, your music genre or your style we'll also point the way to some sponsorships but also there might be some businesses that do not want to work with you because of the type of art that you do uh maybe you swear all the time or something like that that they wouldn't want to be affiliated with so, you know, picking and choosing some of these, uh, who did target and stuff might take some thinking yourself let's talk about another set of methods to make money because this whole section is about really creative things you khun dio making money off of your web presences probably the easiest way of all is to sign up for google adsense out of curious eighty of those in the audience how many of you have heard of this one of you? Okay, it's it's surprising because this thing is well within reach google's always looking for new places to put their advertising they're all about the advertising and they make it super simple you sign it for adsense guess how much it costs three right it's free because they're just looking advertised they're going tio make sure that the president's looks good, they'll actually have you say what it is they'll have these terms and agreements that say if you don't like, you will stop doing business with you at any time and then you put up the ads and this like a little snippet of html into your web site, they'll just be a little block ads there. This is common. This is something that everybody does. I don't think anyone gets too annoyed to see it because they're already used to seeing in the first place and very often actually if they're good ads, they'll actually be targeted to the person whose there because what they will do is they will scan that page and they will actually see what the text on the page says so that they can make ads that relate to whatever is there so you should get very related ads which is kind of nice at least in terms of how this goes you see you cite tools like wordpress or blogger they'll say ok incorporated and sense will be a plug in and then I'll just get incorporated throughout your site without too much work if you have ah site that was built somehow with other tools you might have to do a little bit of work to do it any web designer that's any experienced we'll know exactly how to do this this isn't hard it's very straightforward if you get really busy web presences so now remember we said before how to make and income off of your fame and your fan base if they're always showing up on your site well you could actually start selling advertising putting banners up and things like that again this is the normal way that anyone presence makes their money nobody is surprised when they see this kind of thing if it doesn't fit please don't do it but if this is going to be unobtrusive and not an issue again we know people that musicians but other types of businesses who make their entire living off of selling advertising on their sites which is really busy and has useful information for people who want to visit it so this type of thing is normal on the internet and we need to make you aware of it it's not our first choice necessarily although adsense is so easy and in obtrusive that I would say this one says it's free and easy should probably just think about doing this I understand if not this is a little bit more obtrusive and a little bit more work but if you've got a big enough sight may have been paid to have somebody sell advertising and may be worth it many services actually offered a share ad revenue based of youse plays on their sites and here's two of them right here you want to check out their terms? Of course that's very important but here's to right here reverb nation just sign up for their fair share program you just say fair share program wherever the link is now because it changes from time to time just click yes, I want to participate that's it you've got music on reformation already and you're doing well and you haven't clicked this off there's some revenue out there you could have been making sorry but now you can get it going forward it's that easy and yes it's free lest if m same thing you too we talked about in detail yesterday, the last session becoming youtube partner and you can start getting ad revenue from it all free it's free because they're getting something out of it they're giving you a cut of what they get that's why we're in this great business space here where you're no longer trading money for trying to get something else it's kind of the opposite they want to encourage you to participate in this because they get something out of it, right? How about online tip jars? This is something we've seen fairly often actually, what about just asking your fans for money? This works more often than you would think you put a little papal pal button on your site you actually don't even have to say anything around and people get it is like, ok, yeah, but you know how about say like, the music by me a lotta which are getting more and more expensive now it is right I mean thirty dollars more thirty s so that more of the latter day goes up the more you make isn't that so? Use images or an ad on your web site rather than just putting the button? Obviously the more cute you could be about this the better you khun d'oh paypal is probably the easiest way to do it, but there's other ways to taking online payments still it's the one that we talked about where the party is it's the one where most people already have an account there and considering that you can just plug into it, use it course, papal takes a cut, but that's money you wouldn't have had otherwise, you can actually also have it give them a digital download. I've seen it very successfully used. I talked about web comics before, so I think are doing the fan relationship probably the best out of almost any other artist based site that I've ever seen, and they will do it. They will give you like a wallpaper banner based on the characters, and I donate to those all the time because I love I'm getting a lot of free stuff out of their sight. I love to donate, and I'm at least getting something. I'm getting like an image I can put on my wallpaper on my computer or some image I can look at, you could do the same thing it's very easy to have paypal send people to a link where they can do something, you just have to research that I can't spend a lot of time with the technical stuff changes too much for me to put in the slide it's very easy to do so before we move on, wei should probably boldface and underline and highlight the's last options we're not telling you to do them we're just telling you that they exist and that you have to evaluate it for yourself and your business in your art whether you want to do this this this is just very creative ways and we know that that does generate money um and but it's up to you to make that determination um I think that's I want to make sure that that's out there okay yeah like sort of general question about like, um like maintaining like the genuine on this but also like would you guys say about transparency like, you know, like why you're doing all this you know, like write think anybody ever asked why a music artist is making music? I've never I had that question I mean, they're always like, oh you're a musician, you're going to want to make music yeah, they get it the other half of it is what I like to call shakespeare's got to get paid son is basically you know, yeah, I'd love to make music, but if I'm starving I'm not going to be doing even anything so hard to write music it isthe although it happens a lot and it's usually all the songs about food yeah, but it's okay also to just you can be very transparent and you can ask for support and that's a lot of the musicians we talked to you it just makes it very you know again I said this yesterday, but it's like uh you know, I make music this is I could you you know, I could use your support and with this support I can go on and make more music for a twenty minute ages a and e can make my next album help us make more music exactly and that's ok to do ok? Yes. Ok. So let's talk a little bit about grants this is everywhere around the world is different, right? Especially is even different state to state is different federal to state there's a lot of stuff out there it's a monetary award based on meeting qualifications of some sort there's a lot of different grants available you just need to search on him and look him up it's deep enough topic there's entire books on this how to get grants for the arts there's just a few things we wanted to share about it one is that there's some tax considerations nonprofit versus for profit sometimes they won't give grants to for profit businesses. Then again, there are some grants out there that are aimed at the arts in which case they know that you is an artist or trying to do a for profit business you're not incorporated as some kind of nonprofit and therefore it's ok so that's just lots of paperwork and it's to detail for this course however, private grants are really accessible so there's much more than just government grants and one of our favorites is the awesome foundation and if you guys heard of the awesome foundation, okay, so it's it's so funny we have so many links were throwing at you and services this is one that when you check about your ability that's awesome because of the awesome foundation they give away a thousand dollars to any project they think it's awesome that's it no strings attached to go in front of a committee of people in a room like here's my proposal and you'd stand up there and you say that and if they like that's awesome looking for one thousand dollars that's it it's in most major cities around the country and they opening up new chapters all over the place, so check out awesome foundation dot org's this is one example there's a lot of things like that out there there's money out there looking for people basically and you need to go look for it if you're interested in looking for this now again, all we can do is open doors for you and just open your mind to look for these things. Is this the best use of your time? I don't know it might be especially considering that if you get a grant from the awesome foundation, they talk about you and so then you get a little advertising out of it market basically so for grants read the grant carefully. The terms are always super important. You have to follow all the instructions precisely, or the rule you out, because there's, usually a lot of people trying to get it right. And then after that, make sure you meet all the reporting requirements afterwards, because that usually exists, and you want to make sure to meet all of their needs, everything that they say. So I was just going to say, grant says it's like a full time job. He actually, if you want to try to get money out of the government, are private and stuff like that. But the awesome foundation is a good example of awesome, funny one that's within reach is within agent it's, easy to do.