Episode 3

Busk/Sell/Create

We are going to address 3 more ways to create income so you can keep your focus on music long term and not have to take a job at your in-laws hardware store. Busking, selling your old merch and songwriter for hire…

0:00:01.6 S1: Welcome to the show that explores the methods and strategies on lock in the financial side of your music business with over 40 years combined experience. Here are your host, Chris Webb and Dave Tanka.

0:00:17.1 S2: Welcome to musicians tip jar. We talk about musicians and money. I am Chris Webb, joined by my co-host, the one and only Dave Tamkin.

0:00:25.8 S1: Nice to see again, Chris.

0:00:27.8 S2: We are going to address three more ways to create income now, so that you can keep your focus on your music long-term and not have to take a job at your in-law's hardware store. Busking, selling your Merch and songwriting for hire. Those are the three aspects. We're gonna try to give you some ways to be actionable right now.

Today's episode is brought to you by Stone Cottage Studios. To believe that music and visual art is transcending, has no borders represents everyone and has the ability to live the heart and soul, they believe that music has the power to unite and light, motivate and inspire on how-to studios provides a venue for musicians to reach their fans through video and audio production right here in Boulder, Colorado, check out their interview-based artist sessions, live streaming events and filming and recording projects at www.stonecottagestudios.com

0:02:55.6 S2: Yes, I did. I actually have two quotes this week, the first one, this is dare to where the flush clown face, that's from Frank Sinatra, which I think fits a lot of times as musicians... When we're trying to put ourselves out there. Second one, everything is scary if you look at it, so you just gotta live it marriage, the thing is that a lot of times, we put these people on pedestals that don't allow us to think that they're human beings anymore... Right, and that's why I love when they say these kind of things, it just reminds you that then we've all been there, and I mean, here we are trying to get through these first six episodes, trying to figure out how we do what we're trying to do, and effectively help other people get through this pandemic and this wherever we are, in your face, individually or music and money, trying to give you ways to immediately continue being a musician for a living. I am so afraid that so many people that were successful touring acts are gonna now be working at Ace Hardware because they don't have any other way to do it besides play shows.

0:04:33.3 S2: Yeah, so let's get down to some content here, first, we wanted to start with busking, busking obviously is the term used for playing on the street, street performer is another term that's often used, but whatever you wanna call it, when you're out there with your case open playing music for the general public and Pastor buyers. We're just gonna give you some ideas of things that you wanna think about while executing your busking, the first of which is, there are some areas like Pearl Street in Boulder, for example, where you have to have a permit in order to legally... Busk,

0:06:38.2 S2: Well, I don't hold it against them. I probably wasn't playing very well either, so the next thing, after you've checked on the permits, he's picking your location, now again, these can be connected, sometimes places will have a permit will give you a set spot at a set time that actually can happen, but more often, you're just gonna improve by finding a spot where there seems to be a pretty good traffic, the type people that might be interested in hearing your music and setting up shop and playing, choosing high traffic spots and locations is probably the best place to start. I certainly don't wanna play in my neighborhood because the only people that go by are teenagers on their bikes.

0:08:31.3 S2: There's probably a lot of places where they won't allow you to use the amplification, so you kinda have to have a plan for that too, right?

0:10:18.1 S2: Matching your environment. Another thing I wanted to mention, this is not obvious thing too, except for that sometimes people over-do it one way or the other, right? People, yes, it's Christmas time right now, but people do not wanna only hear Christmas songs, right, but obviously playing none at all or not being prepared for anybody's request for a Christmas song is a bad idea. I don't go busking during Christmas and not have any Christmas songs in your sales or even in your repertoire, signs with the names of your PayPal and your Venmo, even one of those... What do they call the scanner symbols. Is there a name for those things, you know that you can hold your phone up and it scans it and then you just click on the link... A QR code. Okay, yeah, yeah, so having your QR code on a big enough thing that people don't need to get close to you with covid right now, people do not wanna touch hands or share money here in the hand or any of that, or... I don't even really wanna collect money, to be honest, it was always dirty now it's just like added layer of it, so having that QR code, not a big enough screen or a big enough piece of paper that they can just scan that and...

0:11:29.1 S2: I do a lot of gigs where I get Venmo tips pretty commonly over the last year and a half, at least, so I think that it's definitely something that is acceptable and it's become more acceptable now they don't have to touch or interact at all. Yeah, absolutely. Make Big, make professional so that it looks nice and they would think about it and of course, then the last part of that is just, don't suck Noor material. That's right. You gotta be entertaining. No one's gonna tip you if you're not entertaining, you know what I mean? And sometimes Austin, we have the strange juxtaposition where were artists yet we're introverts, like that's a very common combo, and so you put yourself in a covert situation and you really have to push to be entertaining sometimes to them, you can be in your own little world. But it's not gonna gain you much tips, and that's what you're here for, really, honestly, at least in its discussion

0:12:27.7 S1: Last week, we talked about live streams, and I did one on the face, the time the 5th, and they asked for a non-secular Christmas song. So right before we went on for life, name ahead free songs, and then like, Well, I have to come through with one, so I learned annotate this moment, I played it and then I played two of my own and then and came home later that night, and I played it for Antigone. Your best work. Not your best work. And because we're doing this every week, they thought it could have probably started the day before, I probably could have owned it a little bit more and show up and practiced it, been ready for it, I think I did okay for what I had to do for three songs, but definitely know your material if someone's kind enough to ask you to play or if you think that you deserve, some tips were asking, so up to perform in fixed, that's something I do not do on frohman, I'll play it for you next week during

0:13:39.1 S2: A... As you wanted to mention something else about Twitch, right. But another area of asking you a few in wanna do

0:13:47.1 S1: Your house. Well, if you are leaving your house, I think, and you're gonna bust and you're a little bit nervous, but you feel like you need a little bit more of that confidence to show up to something different than you're doing because we're bringing up ideas just to go out there and put yourself out there. It's easy to buy something to clip your phone too, and my stream that bus and do it for an hour, do I cram live stream and double up on it and have a great... And you can get feedback if you're not getting feedback from the people that are walking by on the street or that we're used to playing for an audience. And people are just going about their business. At least you have your fan base right there saying, This is something different, this is cool, I love that song, so you can feel a little bit more connected than you might if you're going out alone and promote it, so you're gonna go bus kind SCRAM or Facebook and say, I'm gonna try this for the first time, if you haven't done it before. And say, I'd love for you to show up and say hello.

0:14:53.4 S1: I'm out there on the street by myself. I think asking for that support, people are willing to give it because they're probably in a situation in their life where they could use some support too.

0:15:05.6 S2: I love that. And if you want a list of different places where you can live stream, refer back to... Way back to episode number two. Alright, moving on, the second thing we are gonna suggest you do to make some money right away, it would be to sell the merge in your closet. Now, that's just sort of the tournament came up with to describe this, but it's a pretty broad area, in fact, it may not be any close, it might be a no cross space, my pain, your addict might be on your bed, your significant other might turn it out who knows, but you're gonna go find out and you're gonna see what you still get, and you're gonna bundle that all up together and kinda figure out, this is just another way to let your fans support you, let those people that like your music support you and give back to you in a way that's not just like a freebie, we're not here to get donations, that's not what... We're not gonna do that, right? That's not okay to do. We're not... That's when you go get a javad hardware, right? That's what you do to make money.

0:16:13.5 S2: And that's what we're talking about is this is not quitting, this is ways to keep you from quitting, so creating those into bundles and into packages with signed... If you have CDs, you can sign them so that they're a little bit more personalized, you can write letters to them directly on there... We all have an restarting

0:16:36.7 S1: Bundles. You're saying, I have a CD Graham stickers, grab a t-shirt. Reveals the hat is 25 the t-shirts. Normally, 25, the CDS, 10 or 15. And you're saying for all of those... So for 30... Right, exactly. You know? Yeah. Okay, there's been clear.

0:16:58.3 S2: Right, yeah, no, that's a great point because the other part of that too, is that some people maybe didn't know you had those things, and if you go through the whole list and then they find out that you can get it all in a bundle, they're gonna take the bundle... Also, before we go too far, when you're looking at these things, you gotta make sure you're paying attention to the shipping costs because I've made the mistake a few times where I sell things and then I find out my shipping is about 60% of the cost of what I sold it for, so you gotta watch out for the cost of shipping when it's coming from directly from you, I

0:17:34.0 S1: Was just say, I am a mistake of shipping my parents once, that was... That was expensive. Male's expensive than Chong, my bed. But if you're gonna ship your drawers or ship your bed shipper does, that's to a... Right, well, especially if you're going through a Cline, never wanna ship your pants on going through a clan, shipping is very important. I think we were talking earlier about different services and bands, band camp has a great, you know, situation where they throw on in the shipping or even no problem, so a user can see what it costs and they took care of it all, so they just send you what the profit is. And you don't have to worry about that. So that might be, you know, but I've never tried to ship my pants on Bandcamp, so...

0:18:34.9 S2: Yeah, so Bandcamp would have to have that. Merges that, correct.

0:18:39.1 S1: Alright, you don't... Because you keep it, and then Bandcamp just tells you what the order is, which is awesome, so it's just a way, if you're not gonna set up your own Shopify or Square Space or ban Google, you're going to be able to use that... Just put in the codes, and then they pay through Bandcamp and then... You just ship it out.

0:19:03.3 S2: Yeah, that's great. The other way to get that word out there is going right back to the situation where we can live stream, all of these things can be combined in their own little bundle of busking while live streaming while bringing your Merch, selling your merge at your boss, selling your Merch on the live stream, and I recently was watching another local band in Fort Collins, they were doing a live stream selling the gear that they don't use out of their practice space, they had all this nice gear that this wasn't getting used anymore, and they decided this was a good time to sell it, and so they were signing it, and then people would just bid onto that Facebook... I actually don't remember what the app was, but they were able to just bid on it and then it was just gonna get mailed to them, and I thought that was the coolest thing because you hear the band just telling you stories about different times they played that where they bought this or what they used it on the recording session, and all these cool things that they did with the equipment and now they're...

0:20:07.1 S2: Now they're selling it to their fans who are probably a lot of other people who either wanna play or do play, you know, it's not just your shirts, it's what I'm gonna say, or your parents that you can ship Instagram

0:20:22.2 S1: Just opened up within the last 20 days, or you can take a link for wherever you're selling your March and make shops on. Inscribe has had that for a while, but now you have an SRAM, which is very new. So put on the link where you sell your Merch, put it on the top of your Instagram page.

0:20:45.8 S2: Nice. And also, besides your merge and your old instruments and gear, you can sell the original papers that you roll ERPS on, you can sell custom video messages, and by the way, what this will be in a later episode, but you can certainly sell lessons too, or one on one sessions with other people about how your song, whatever the topic, you have all these services that are products to these other people, so that's it. We will do another episode about lessons and teaching, but I just wanted to put it in there because if you don't have merch, these are other things, you could sell your pants and she them, sign your parents and

0:21:36.2 S1: Bullshit. Every one of us that have an played for a long time, BDS under ROC red inter-closet and they've become almost worthless, if you don't sign them or use them as a agreeing card or a thank you card to say, Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for being there for me for these years, thank you for buying the teacher, if you have nothing else to give away, when someone buy something of your sin like a CD and say thank you to that person, put their name on it, and show them that you appreciate them because they have nowhere to plant their car hasn't accept their laptop doesn't accept that, they know they have a photograph, they can play records in the room, but nowhere to play that CD. So I joke around like, we have music for sale, we have coasters for sale, our coasters are the CDs you can put Catholic behind it, but really I think it's still something that you can just give things with it, and when I'm out there... 'cause you probably paid a 150 if you bought a 1000 of them, so give them away, make someone stay a little brighter and thank them for appreciating what you do, because without them, you wouldn't be able to do it.

0:23:04.8 S2: It's too... Yeah, unfortunately, I had a whole box of t-shirts that got put in the giveaway bag at some point last year and brought over a good will, that was one of those over-sights where ski should have given them the CDs. But somewhere there's a family of eight wearing Chris web, and so

0:23:34.8 S1: All mediums... You don't fit everybody equally, but they're a little bit warmer, a holiday season, the t-

0:23:47.4 S2: Shirts that no one will... Last thing too about this is that you wanna make sure that your site set up to accept sales, whatever that site might be, like you said, bang, camp, it was a good way to go. And then obviously, there's a whole letter of other options that will be in the notes.

0:24:06.0 S1: I wanna add to this if you don't have t-shirts, you don't have much, you ran out before this pandemic, and you wanna try out some new local ideas, some new merch ideas everything from maybe coffee mugs, to pillows, to beach towels, to sweat your hoodies, I put a bunch of different websites you can go to in the notes from print dot com, T, spring dot com, society 6, March bar print, scale press, you can do one-offs and your margins are the same if you bought in bulk, but if someone wants just one t-shirt, you can make that teacher for them, and right now it's about just giving back and maybe you make 10 instead of 17, 50, but there are ways that you can still... So much, if you don't have it right now, and you're just made to order, so checks out, and we can have another podcast about that later, but... I just wanna throw that in there.

0:25:10.4 S2: Yeah, I love the idea of a no warehouse merch store. That's certainly gonna be in our more advanced episodes, but definitely a great point that if you're willing to put that energy into it, like you said, you don't need to have anything... That is a big, big point. The last section we're gonna talk about is writing your songs for other people, being in four higher songwriter is actually pretty easy to do, at least to put yourself out there. There's a lot of sites. It doesn't mean that you have to be a song in either, you can be any instrumental, any instrument can be hired, obviously add tracks and the other people, which we have lots of friends that are all various different instruments, and they all... I can send over tracks to my drum friend and he can record tracks in his house, it's certainly something we all can do, so we just go list a couple of places where you can go and post your service of creating Brothers, the first most commonly used one is Fiverr, where you can pretty much add any service you want up there, and it's pretty easy, I've created in the count there, and it's quite quick.

0:26:30.0 S2: Upwork was another one, sung Finch, which now I won't get off my Facebook feed since I signed up for that one. So I know that they're doing good with their Facebook Ads, and it's really impressive actually, and I don't know how they're actually making that much money, because some of the things were like 50 bucks for a son... All of these will be in the notes of the episode with links or... So I was like, the notes out and after this, it's your job to put them up there, so... In sound better is another one.

0:27:07.5 S1: Air gives much better than sound workers or that website to... A competition was extending. And

0:27:24.1 S2: The last one we were gonna put on the wet air gigs, and again, all of these are gonna be in the show on, so you don't have to be stranded for pencil while you're driving, I think

0:27:31.9 S1: You can do is offer this to your fans too, under email list, if you're in Facebook, are you getting married? I'm not let me write a song for you.

0:27:43.8 S2: Is it your anniversary? Did you forget? I'll save you a box, that's the best deal of the day for that person, seriously, even if it is an instrumental melody, some people don't want lyrics in the song that they're gonna use for a certain... I had a son recently used for somebody's trip to... I think they were going to Scotland, and they made a YouTube video of all their pictures from their family trip, and they paid me 20 bucks to use one of my songs, and I was like, Absolutely. And I wasn't even advertising that they just emailed me and asked me. So the fact is that if I had just been asking people is... We're offering it as a service. I bet I probably would have gotten a lot more of those and I still could. I mean, those opportunities are just sitting there, we just have to think of putting a little effort into them, we have Creating a page, any website, which is kind of what we mean by saying put yourself out there to offer your songwriting part writing, create page package levels this was something else that I've done to package levels, so that you offer writing the song, you also can offer...

0:28:56.7 S2: Within that, I offered three edits, so I'll send them, set them the song, and then they kind of say, Well, yeah, but we never went to Hawaii, so use that line in the song... Okay, change that line, you do three edits to get in a good spot and then you can add to that with add-ons would be things like at a high quality recording of a live recording of you singing it and playing it on a single instrument, or adding instrumentation, which a lot of us can do these days, adding studio musicians could be another option, in which case you could hire some more fiber people to help you out, so you don't even need to know people, you can literally just third party out and the drums and the face and everything to make it just the way they want it, so they could say, I really wanted an accordion on the song, and you'll be like, No problem, I know someone, but you don't... You just know Fier and there's going to be somebody, location, fiber. So really, you could seriously make that into anything that somebody wants and it just keeps adding end of the price, so that's just another way of using your talents and your equipment for making money.

0:30:10.4 S1: When you say Add this to your website, it's not something that you necessarily have to add to the header of your own website, so if someone's coming to your website is a music fan, and maybe you don't want them to know this is part of your income basket, you can still make that same page that you're talking about and not have it highlighted, so you can put that URL into fiber or whatever service you're using, and those people can still go into your website from that page, but it's not linked elsewhere. So I think that's important just to note that the other ways you diversify your income, you can still use your webpage for, but you don't have the main URL for, say Chris Web dot com, it's not listed there, but it's a sub-domain that you can advertise

0:31:07.9 S2: That's great, and you can also send it in a new Blast, and if you have your e-blast organized, you can send it to only people in certain areas or certain age groups, depending on how you have your last organized, which will be another podcast. Yeah.

0:31:21.8 S1: Especially with that, for only people that are engaged, earthenware married or... So many jokes right now. I'm just gonna start there.

0:31:37.6 S2: Yeah, hopefully, over everything else that we're talking about here is that we're giving people of motivation and make them reminding them that we live in the most accessible area ever to be in, you're stuck in your home. And still make money. Right, even as a musician. That's still true. It's never been more accessible to make music for other people, sell music, play music, cell merge, all of these things that we're talking about and teach all from your own. So hopefully, really it's just a matter of first accepting the fact that it's still up to us, there is no victim stuff going on here, right, it has to be us that makes that move. So we're gonna give you some four simple actionable steps that'll hopefully get you moving on some of these ideas from this episode. Number one, you need to check and make sure that your online store or whatever your sales system is set up and ready to go, and

0:32:44.6 S1: If you don't have one and check out bank county

0:32:47.4 S2: Band campus, easiest way to go, if you don't have one set up yet, number two, pick a spot, a site or a website if you aren't leaving your house and bus for an hour, you can combine that with your online store and combine it with episode too, about some of the tips about how to do that too.

0:33:13.0 S1: And by his fault, machine and

0:33:16.2 S2: A small man, those are just on my notes, Number three, ask for the sale. And that's obviously something musicians are terrible at doing, we often make that sound like we're victims of people not spending money on music, but I think often we don't ask enough, we don't remind people that we have these products that we have this way for them to support us, and if we just ask, if we just offer the service of writing a song for someone, if we just put that out there in our world around us on our social media, in our e-blast, that we can't expect there to be much coming back at us right, agree. So make sure you promote what you're trying to do and be willing to put yourself out there and ask for the sale, and then the last one, number four is post your service on your website or create a set service section, like you had mentioned, that allows people to be able to go there, it needs to be simple, and that's kind of why I made it. Number four is that if people are gonna give you money, you can't make it hard for them to do so, and that's why we buy such crap from Instagram because it's so easy...

0:34:28.8 S2: Right, I regret everything. I've ever bought an Instagram.

0:34:32.2 S1: I have a moon pot, because of Instagram, I think I had one this thing, I'm so relaxed and they only purchase I've enjoyed from a..

0:34:42.0 S2: Right, but it was really easy to buy it, especially at like 1130 when you were just about to fallen somehow you still managed to hit that buy button. So I just want people to think about what is the simplest way that I can create a system for people to give me money for a service and try to keep it as it was. Again, anything else you'd like to add with Dan, the

0:35:05.6 S1: Stars in the ceiling from in stara, he bought that and he's been going to it for weeks... Yeah, not the one that just screenshots it up to your ceiling with... Okay, for the last 35 minutes, that's the only thing I need to add to the land ship your pants and get the MOKA under tailing.

0:35:33.9 S2: Well, if you wanna give us some feedback on Dave's jokes or notes for future

0:35:39.0 S1: Poseidon, no feedback necessary.

0:35:44.8 S2: You can connect with us at musicians tip jar dot com, musicians tip jar and Gmail would be the best email to get to us. As always, thank you for joining us and remember, it is our reactions to life's challenges, our resolutions in the storm, they have to find the one times a concrete and the position tinting on this show should be one specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax legal business or financial professional for individualized advice. Individual results are not guaranteed, and all discuss rate GEs have a potential for profit or loss, those are operating on behalf of Tunisians tip jar llcs.