How to double your CD sales (in 90 days or less)(II)
- 20somethingmedia
- May 9, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 20, 2024
Continuing from last week’s article;
Pursue radio exposure of any kind
Of course, you can mail unsolicited CDs and hound program directors until either they play your songs or you give up trying. Or you can use some often-overlooked tactics to get on the air: Supply station with several of your CDs to give away as part of an on-air promotion. Write and record a humorous theme song for high-profile shows and on-air personalities.
Find a current event tie-in to one of your songs and get interviewed on the air about it. Ask nightclub owners who advertise to use your songs in the bed of their radio and TV commercials. Buy cheap overnight ads to promote your new release.
Promote dirt-cheap sampler CDs
Put together short, inexpensive sampler CDs of your best songs and either give them away to potential fans (in exchange for a name and email address) or sell them for a buck or two at live shows. You may not make money on this tactic upfront, but if you follow up and persuade even 5 to 10 per cent of the people who take home your sampler to buy your full-length CD, it could be well worth it.
Better idea: Team up with four other artists and produce a compilation sampler CD. You’ll benefit from the combined promotional efforts of all five acts.
Squeeze all you can out of the internet
The web has most definitely become the great equaliser. No secret here. It’s easier than ever for independent artists to reach a worldwide audience. A big chunk of web activity is dedicated to music, and it seems there are more sites every month that sell indie CDs or cater in some way to unsigned acts and small records labels. You need to be using the internet to spread the word about your music. Thousands of artists are already doing it. Now go get your share!
Here are some steps you can take to sell more of your music online:
Get your own domain name
While there are many music websites that will offer you a free page or section, your best bet is to register your own domain name and direct it to wherever you choose to host your pages. There are two big benefits:
A web address like www.johnsmithmusic.com carries more credibility and is easier to remember than a long and winding address like www.musichotspot.com/music/johnsmith.
Most major search engines these days rarely list the free hosting URLs because they generally don’t last long.
Registered domains are simply taken more seriously. And rates have never been cheaper. One of the most popular sites for registering low-cost domain names is Go Daddy at www.godaddy.com. Fees are only $8.95 per year. DirectNIC at www.directnic.com is another good one, with domain name fees of $15 a year.
Publish a fan email newsletter
Websites are great, but they’re basically online billboards seen by surfers passing in the night. To sell more CDs, you absolutely must collect the email addresses of people who have willingly agreed to get regular follow-up messages on your musical activities.
Therefore, you have to start promoting your free music newsletter like it’s the coolest thing since YouTube. Offer people incentives to sign up. Having a large and growing subscriber list is one of your biggest keys to online sales and notoriety. To help you manage your list, here are four services that can help:
Ezine Director
Constant Contact
Topica
Yahoo! Groups
Make sure your fans can order securely online
If you make sales only to people who snail mail checks and money orders, your CD sales progress will remain slow and painful. The good news is that there are a seemingly infinite number of options for accepting credit cards online.
CD Baby, www.cdbaby.com – A one-time $35 fee gets you completely set up with audio samples, CD artwork, band bio, and more. CD Baby is the premier site for indie music sales and is extremely credible and reliable.
Amazon.com Advantage Program, www.amazon.com/advantage - if you have a UPC code imprinted on your CD, you’ll be able to get listed on the planet’s largest, most active e-commerce site. Sign up for Amazon’s Advantage program and get access to millions of music buyers.
PayPal, www.paypal.com – this is yet another service that allows you to accept online payments… with no up-front costs. Fees are only 30 cents per transaction plus 2.2 to 2.9 per cent of each sale
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