5 Music Funding Secrets

By Daniel Wright

The phrase "starving artist" has become a cliché because it's often true. Indeed, it can take a long time before an independent artist starts earning enough from their music to make a living. Musicians often find themselves in the proverbial "catch-22" of having to take a regular job to fund their music but then not having enough time or energy left at the end of the day to pursue their musical endeavors. The good news is, there is a way! There are music funding "secrets" any artist can use to start earning passive income to fund their music projects.

Secret #1: You need a system that does the heavy lifting for you. Think of the word SYSTEM as an acronym for "Saves You Some Time, Energy, and Money". That's because a good system, once setup, will continue to do the work for you while you focus on your music. To succeed in making money online as a musician, you need to make use of a special type of system known as a "funnel". You may have heard this term before and scratched your head wondering what it is. A funnel is simply a system that collects the contact information (an email and/or phone number) of someone interested in whatever you're offering and then "funnels" them through a follow-up sequence. Funnels are always used by the top online marketing gurus because they are proven to work.

Secret #2: Your funnel system should initially focus on affiliate programs where you don't have to provide any product or services. You merely recommend certain tools to others like yourself who will benefit from them just as you have. In turn for your recommendation, you earn a commission. However, you can't just pick any old' affiliate program to plug into your funnel. This is one of the biggest secrets of all to make money online as a musician. You need to be selective and focus your efforts on promoting high quality tools that will pay you recurring monthly income. Did you catch that? It's crucial and bears repeating: the secret to music funding is in recommending tools that will not only benefit other musicians, but also earn you recurring income month after month. You don't want to be spending your time chasing new sales each month. You need to be able to keep earning from your funnel system's referrals month after month, year after year. Recurring monthly income is the key!

Secret #3: You need a funnel system that will automatically follow-up for you with those whom have entered your funnel system Again, you can simply use email or, for added punch, also utilize SMS text messaging which gets much higher open rates. Are you starting to see how, once setup, your system will be doing all the heavy lifting for you? That's the magical leverage of having a funnel system!

Secret #4: Your system should provide training on how to use the tools you promote. While setting up a funnel is something just about anybody can do, it can be helpful to have step-by-step training videos to make the process easier, especially for those who are less technically adept.

Secret #5: You can then leverage your music funding funnel and the skills you've learned from it to create other funnels for promoting your own music, merchandise, virtual or live concerts, "pre-saves" on streaming platforms like Spotify, and on and on it goes! Just like with your music funding system, you can create a sequence of follow-up emails and SMS messages to engage your new potential fans and lead them back to your music, video, social media profile, merchandise offer, or whatever else you want them to check out.

Having a music funding system is the ideal way to support yourself as an indie artist and answer the question "How to fund my music without trading hours for checks?" It's a great solution to generating income from home so you don't have to take a job that drains you of the time and energy needed for your music projects. Then, when you're ready to promote your next song or album, your system will be there for you to do that as well!