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Follow these guidelines to start making money by selling your beats online!

Choose Your Brand Name:

When you start selling beats, you’re actually starting a business. Choose a unique brand name for your production company. With a unique brand name, your business will stand out and be memorable to customers. For example, if your name is John Smith, your production business could be called "John Smith Beats". Also, creating a unique logo to go along with your production can further the memorability of your brand.

Upload Your Beats:

You must upload your beats so they are readily available for customers to listen to and purchase. There are many beat selling websites and you should upload to as many of them as possible. The more exposure, the better! Most of these beat selling websites take a commission out of your sales, but it’s never much. SoundClick and MyFlashStore are both free, and they have the highest traffic of listeners. I recommend making an account on each. Once you have your MyFlashStore player (or other media player) all set, embed it on as many other websites as possible!

Create Your Own Website:

Creating your personal production website is necessary in order to stand out from the competition. When you upload beats to other beat selling websites, like RocBattle, you are sharing space with thousands of other producers. Your personal production website is solely yours, and a place where you can really connect with your audience. You’ll need to purchase a domain name (ex. JohnSmithBeats.com) and make the layout as clean and professional as possible.

Within your website be sure to include the following:

-Production brand name / Logo

-Your beat store

(you can embed the myflashstore player OR embed any other media player along with PayPal checkout buttons if checkout is not included in player)

-Contact info (email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blog, etc..)

-Explanation of rights (lease vs exclusive)

-Wow factor, short bio, production credits, resume, or any other information you think your audience would find useful

-Mailing List: Building a mailing list is very important.

sample drum kits is one of the most effective ways to directly market to your potential customers. There are several mailing list services that are free, I recommend Mail Chimp. You can embed a signup form directly on your website. I also suggest offering a free beat to anyone who signs up, so they have an incentive to join. Once they sign up, your mailing list service will store their name and email address. With this information, you can send out a newsletter periodically to market to your audience.

Promote:

If you’ve created your brand, uploaded your beats, and made your own professional website to sell your beats, then you’re all set and ready to start selling! However, you won’t just sell beats by letting them sit there. Listeners must be aware of your website and have a reason to go there. This is where marketing and promotion comes into play! The internet offers many free opportunities for promotion. A few websites that allow free promotion opportunities that I’ve found to be particularly effective are Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Headliner.fm, and DatPiff. Also, many different hip-hop forums (like the SoundClick forums) have a section where you can promote your beats. Stay active on each of these websites and forums, but don’t ever spam people with your advertisements! Be yourself, be professional, and always keep people aware of your brand.