If you’re a singer/musician looking to make some money from what you love, we’ve created a wonderful guide for you to bank upon. Singers and musicians have lots of opportunities to make money combining online and conventional methods.
Spotify, Youtube, a Blog/Website, are all great options for singers to make money online. Singers can also get more conventional singing opportunities by creating a personal brand presence online [using social media like Instagram, Facebook, a blog, and more]. Unlike the olden days, opportunities are plenty for a new singer to make a mark in the crowd. Let’s explore!
#1 Start a Music Blog
Starting a music blog/website is a great opportunity for singers to make money, and at the same time create a personal brand for themselves. The very first idea that comes to every singer’s mind would be starting a Youtube channel. But I believe starting a personal blog/website is equally or even more important than starting a Youtube channel.
A blog/website helps you to make money in different ways. You have total control over your content unlike Youtube and you don’t need to worry about all your content vanishing on an unexpected day (Youtube does that to many singers!). As I said, you have multiple options to make money with a music blog.
- Make money from online advertisements
- Make money selling online music courses
- Make money with affiliate marketing
- Get paid opportunities to sing or play instruments
You’ll be wondering is it really possible to start a music blog and make money, right? I’ll show real examples of websites/blogs in the music niche and a guessed estimate of how much money they all make.
YourEDM – Electronic Dance Music Blog
YourEDM is a classic example of how to make money from music using a blog. This blog focuses on a specific niche -electronics dance music. They write about the latest news in EDM, review new releases, feature new launches, and publish other articles about EDM.
Following the footsteps of YourEDM blog, you can also start a new blog in another niche in music. You can bring in your own views and creativity to your blog to stand out. Let’s make a guesstimation of how much traffic they have and how much money they make.
The stats show they receive around 0.5 million visits every month (actual stats would vary slightly). YourEDM makes most of their money by serving online advertisements like Google Ads or Ezoic. Based on the traffic, this blog is making roughly an amount between 5000 to 7500 USD every month from online advertisements alone.
They also have other revenue sources like featuring music releases, sponsored articles, promoting bands, and other types of revenue sources. The blog YourEDM makes a good deal of money online and the founders behind are running this blog as a full-time business for sure.
Want More Examples?
If you research properly on Google, you can find hundreds of music blogs that make good money using various online methods. PitchFork – is another example of a popular website in the music niche that receives over 10 million visits every month. They make most of the money from online advertisements and with this kind of high traffic, they would be making somewhere between 0.1 to 0.2 million USD per month. They also make money from affiliate marketing promoting music downloads from sellers like Amazon.
PopJustice is another popular music blog started by music journalist Peter Robinson. This blog receives around 0.5 million visits a month on average and makes money from online advertisements, affiliate marketing, and other revenue options. HypeBot and BrooklynVegan are two other examples of music blogs making money online.
How can you start your own music blog?
You now know how to make money with a music blog. Are you ready to start one for yourself? Starting a blog is pretty easy than you think! You can start one in 3 easy steps. You need a domain name, a web hosting account, and install WordPress content management system. Let’s see how to start a blog for yourself.
Get a Domain Name
Get a Web Hosting
Setup WordPress
2. Start a YouTube Channel
We have seen lots of youtube stars(those people whose songs became hit through youtube). Start a YouTube channel and create music videos. You have to build a brand through your YouTube channel. Many of the artists did start their career on YouTube.
With more than 13.8M subscribers, Boyce Avenue is the best example of a YouTube channel getting it right through YouTube. They started doing small cover videos, the internet started watching them and made them celebrities. The band consists of 3 brothers Alejandro, Fabian, and Daniel Manzano. The Boyce avenue is clearly making millions through their single YouTube channel.
So how can you make money with your YouTube Channel?
1. Advertising
Everyone knows that youtube pay for ads. Upload your song video on youtube and share it with the world. You can monetize your video with advertisements. More views to your videos mean more advertisements or making it simple more views can generate you more money on youtube.
2. Affiliate Marketing
You can promote affiliate products through your music youtube channel, like the musical instruments you use, selling ebooks course, etc. If your viewers click these affiliate links and do a purchase, you will be getting good commissions.
3. Selling singing course through Udemy
As you might know, Udemy is one of the best online portals through which you can learn different skills. If you are a good music teacher, you can sell your courses through udemy. Here is a singing course listed in Udemy, the Elite Singing techniques which has more than 9.2K students enrolled. The course has been sold for 100 USD , which means the course provider has done a business of more than 500,000 USD.
4. SoundCloud
SoundCloud is an online music streaming website where users can upload, download, and share their music with the world. Millions of artists have uploaded their soundtracks in Soundcloud . Signing up in SoundCloud is free. The free users have an upload limit of 2 hours. Well, you can always upload more songs exceeding the limit by switching into the premium account (for a small payment).
If your average track is around 5 minutes, a free account is sufficient to accommodate 24 tracks which are not that bad.
How to make money from SoundCloud?
The above-given screenshot is of the Hucci Novacane EP soundtrack in SoundCloud. You can see that this particular track was played more than 692K times(Screenshot looks different, this is the new data, the screenshot was taken 1 year before). This is what makes SoundCloud special. You can popularize your songs through Soundcloud. Soundcloud does have the features to share the songs through social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc easily.
Check Out the Buy button on the top navigation bar of the page. You can place a buy now URL in your song settings page so that the user can buy the song clicking on the link. The more reach you get, the more chances your song will be bought.
Considering the above track I’ve mentioned, it had more than 692K plays and what if just 1 percent of the plays were converted to the buy now page?
1 percent of 692,000= 6920 sales.
These are approximations, but you see the possibility right?
5. Sell your singing services in Fiverr
Fiverr is one of the latest trending new generation market places where you can offer your skills(drawing, photography, modeling, programming, singing, etc) as service. As the name indicates, the services are sold for 5$(You can always upsell as shown in the screenshot below like you can offer a 1 day delivery for $40, etc). Lots of singers make their daily living through Fiverr. You need to be creative with your fiver gigs in order to stand out from the crowd. Offer something unique, build ratings and reputations, focus on delivery and quality instead of money(initially) and you can definitely earn money through Fiverr selling your music gigs.
JasminChloe is another successful lady in Fiverr who makes good revenue selling her singing skills. She records and sings your song in her studio for 5$. If you are not that familiar with Fiverr, have a look at some of the top rated services in fiverr in various sectors.
6. Revenue from streaming
There are lots of music streaming services like Spotify ,Rdio,Beats Music, etc where you can generate revenue through streaming your music. Unfortunately, these services are not available in many countries that I did put this into last of the list. Well, if it is available in a country it’s a sure shot method for singers to make some money online.
7. Freelancing through Upwork
Upwork, formerly known as elance has lots of freelancers and job listers. Through Upwork, you can get hired for your singing skills. You can offer voice-overs, singing, music, orchestra as services. Many singers have more than 40 USD per hour rate in Upwork singers section.
Hope you enjoyed this blog post. Did we miss some other methods through which a singer can make money online? Feel free to bring it up in the comments section.
