Getting Your Fans To Sell Your Music For You

Today, more than ever, you have to think out of the box when dealing with music promotion. In fact, it’s beneficial to brainstorm crazy ideas and even execute them once in a while.

By doing this often you may occasionally hit upon something that you’re fans can really interact with.

Here’s one of these random ideas…

Getting your fans to sell your music for you.

Think about it.

After your release date is over and sales from the initial promotion have died down, why not keep purchases flowing by enabling your die-hard fans to be your personal sales team.

They already enjoy the product, like to speak about it, and most importantly they have direct influence over their friends, whose tastes they already know and can influence.

I’m thinking that with some creativity, a little thought, and an online affiliate program, this could be set up fairly painlessly.

Bloggers caught on to the idea quite a while ago, to sell their information products, and haven’t looked back. I think any semi-established aytpical artist out there should be trying out this method too.

An affiliate program basically allows people to refer potential customers to a particular product (in this case your music), via a special link which contains a tracking number. If the sale goes through, both you and the affiliate split the revenue in some way.

If you’re saying to yourself, “Why would I possibly want to lower my revenues further by allowing fans to take a cut of my sales?”

The answer is this.

These people aren’t taking away from your music revenue, because quite simply, this revenue was never guaranteed to you in the first place. What’s happening is that these people are reaching potential fans that you yourself couldn’t reach, and therefore couldn’t sell directly to.

Remember the percentage you give your affiliates needs to be worth it. It needs to motivate people by actually allowing them to make money, if the sale happens.

I’d recommend anywhere from 40 to 55 percent for digital and physical music products. This allows you to fully cover costs and still make money while sitting back and letting other people direct potential fans right to you.

So what kinds of affiliate programs could you set up? Here’s some ideas to get you started:

Monetary Affiliate:

This is a standard affiliate program where users can encourage friends (or strangers) to follow a personalized link where they can make a percentage of every complete sale.

Non-Monetary Affiliate:

As an alternative to sharing a portion of your revenues, you could offer your affiliates store credit in exchange for every complete sale. This would work well if you’re an act that constantly has new merchandise, with die-hard fans that love to buy your swag.

Points System:

A system can also be created where fans can amass points by referring people to the store. An atypical artist could easily turn this into a game, complete with score boards and perks for the people who reach certain point levels. Perks could include items like: free merch, exclusive songs, and concert tickets.

If done properly, affiliate programs can help you in three ways.

• Connect you with people you weren’t able to reach before
• Enable you to sell more product with the same amount of effort
• Further engage your ‘true fans’ by giving them direct access your success

Why not give it a try? You can test it on an upcoming album launch, for a limited period of time, and study the results.

Will you allow your fans to sell your music?

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