Welcome to my brainstorm! I decided to just do a brain-dump of different things a band can sell at their shows and on their website. This list is far from exhaustive, and I’m sure there’s a ton of other cool things. But, I wanted to have fun and write down some ideas. Especially since I need to start making merch for my band, soon!
To Sell at Shows
1) T-shirts. Guys, don’t forget to get women’s shirts. They sell out quickly. Also, have more than one type of shirt design. Create new shirts every few months to satisfy your fan base. Give something new for people to purchase each time you play a market.
2) Stickers: Stickers are super-cheap, so have a range. Smaller stickers to give away. Larger stickers for people to pay for. Plus, you can plaster stickers everywhere to get your band’s name in front of eyeballs.
3) Buttons: I actually can’t recall how many buttons anyone actually purchased from my band. However, they are a great giveaway to people since they are extremely cheap.
4) Patches: Not enough bands are doing patches anymore!
5) CDs: CDs may be going the way of the dodo, but they still sell at shows. Try having a range of CDs: live recordings, limited editions, acoustic version, digital re-mix. Not every fan will want the variations, but your true fans will want every single thing. The more collectible you can make your stuff, the better.
6) Download cards: Most people get their music digitally, nowadays. CDs have the potential to sit on a shelf instead of being listened to. I wrote an article a while back on cool ways you can sell your downloads at your shows.
7) DVDs: Personally, I haven’t tried selling a DVD at a show. But, why not? Record your live shows, your music videos, and behind-the-scenes shots and put it into a DVD. But, as with CDs, be careful not to go overboard on ordering.
8) Posters: Again, I don’t see enough bands making cool posters. I remember I used to have my bedroom walls completely covered with band posters all the way through high-school and college. Plus, if someone buys and hangs up your poster, you can get your band’s name in front of more eyeballs. Make people curious to see you in the future.
9) Drink Cozies: Because they are cool.
10) Guitar Picks: I never thought of it, but other bands have told me that people go crazy over buying custom guitar picks from them. It’s an unexpected seller.
11) Vinyl: No experience with vinyl personally, but music collectors really dig vinyl records. I even hear that 80% of people that buy vinyl records don’t even have a record player. So, I think the allure is in the artwork and collectability.
12) Flexi Records: My friend, Erik, is running a cool project for flexi records. These are plastic records that were shipped with magazines back in the day. However, you can make them all types of colors and designs. Check out Erik’s site and see if it’s something you’d like to do for your band.
13) Old Drum Heads: I saw GWAR do this. They take old drum heads, add custom artwork, and then autograph them. Then, they sell them at shows for about $100. Instead of throwing away your broken gear, maybe you can turn it into art?
14) Different clothing: Hoodies, panties, bandanas, boxers, muscle shirts, sports jerseys. These items are usually more expensive, so your markup needs to be higher. Start slow with items like these to see if people actually want to buy them. You don’t want a box of panties that cost $15 each that no girl in her right mind wants to buy. (Ask your fans first if they’d actually buy this stuff.)
General Digital Sales
15) Digital Distribution: Use either CD Baby, Tunecore, or ReverbNation to distribute your music to the major MP3 and streaming sites.
16) Streaming Royalties: Register with SoundExchange to get your pennies.
Digital items from your website
17) E-books: A journal of your antics over the past year. A book of pictures, lyrics, and explanations of each of your songs. You can even make up your own adventure that’s completely fictitious and sell to your fans. Also, if you can bundle something like this with an album download, people will definitely be more willing to shell out cash for your digital music.
18) Albums and singles: If you’re selling albums and singles from your site directly, zip up additional goodies to entice people. Pop in high-quality pictures. Like the e-books above, include lyrics. You can also include a “making-of” documentary that’s exclusive to the album purchase.
19) Videos: Create high-quality videos that only people with the download code can view. They can either stream it from your site or they can download the video to their drive. How about a full on video album?
20) Membership site: Get monthly recurring payments. Create exclusive content for your fans, give them the behind-the-scenes key, and offer them specials no one else can get anywhere.
21) Exclusive content: I see people do this for their Kickstarter campaigns, but never as a service from their site. How about $100 for a unique song for a fan? (You can change the price based on demand.) An exclusive booking at some one’s house? $50 to sing backups on your next song or album. Or get in the next band video? Why wait for a Kickstarter campaign when you can constantly have ways for your fans to support you and give them something in return?
Indirect Sales
22) Affiliate links for your gear: Document your gear on your site and provide affiliate links so people can purchase the gear. With affiliate links, you get a percentage of the purchase if someone buys the gear.
23) Affiliate links to other bands’ music: If bands that you like have music on iTunes or AmazonMP3, why not create an affiliate link to their albums? You help promote them, and, if someone buys their music, you get a percentage.
24) Google Adsense: Sign up for an Adsense account and put these little advertisements on your site. You need a lot of traffic to really get any value from these links, but they can build up over time. You can also make them unobtrusive with litte text links so they don’t make your site look like MySpace.
25) YouTube Partner: If you get enough views on your YouTube videos, you can partner with them to get a percentage of ad revenue.
That’s the end of my brain-dump! I’m sure there’s more, so let me know in the comments below!
Buttons are the bomb! every band i like, i want a button. for my camera bag, my book bag, my laptop bag, my carryon bag and my coat lapels and i own lots of coats! The BaDD HaBBiTs also did keychains and I have one and have had it for over a year. Everyone asks me about it.
Hmmm, keychains with a bottle opener! :) Great addition to the list, Donna!
Thanks! i know a few bands that have tried drink cozies or beer holders but as you said in the blog – not all fans want to buy that sort of thing (they’re still trying to sell them off two years later)
That’s a great point. It’s best to start small and not lose your ass on merch. I’ve heard horror stories of people buying certain items by the thousands and can’t sell a single one.
Buttons for sure! They are not only great give-aways, but you can also produce 5 separate designs and sell them as a package. Create demand by not offering a few of the designs as a give-away. Make them exclusive to the pack, or just very hard to get a hold of. If you’ve got a jar full of free buttons, only put in a few each of the exclusive designs. Target the the collectors, or superfans! Your pack can be advertised as including “rare and hard” to find buttons.
Ooo, I like the exclusive pack idea! I’m going to steal that one for my band! Limited edition buttons…collect them all!
I love the membership site idea. I think all the time how a well done subscription model could sustain bands pretty well with a decent fan base. Some fan clubs work in a similar way, but I don’t think the artist ever sees any meaningful amount of the proceeds. Plus, it’s consistent and predictable money, which is a luxury that artists almost never get. The challenge is creating that extended offering, whether it be bonus content, free access to shows, or what have you.
Great post man.
Jeremy
Think Like a Label
I need to experiment with the membership idea to see what works. Right now, my band doesn’t have enough of a subscriber base to really start a membership site. But I think after a year, it could be something that really adds value. I just need to figure out what content would really entice people to be willing to pay $5 (or more) a month.
“I wrote an article a while back on cool ways you can sell your downloads at your shows.”
Link?
http://howtorunaband.com/2011/08/24/sell-a-cd-without-the-cd-a-more-eloquent-download-for-your-merch-booth/
Thanks for catching that, Anne! I updated the article.
You’re welcome. By the way, you’ll do your blog a big favour if you link to your own content, and with descriptive link text, e.g.: just link the whole phrase, “cool ways you can sell your downloads at your shows” to the article in question. (And don’t link with text like “here” or “article”.) The web loves good links, and so do search engines.
Thanks for the tips, Anne! I’ll make sure to do this in future posts.
Guys what we need is a way to sell bundles online. Like a big cartel site that you can sell stuff from that looks good. Big cartel charges 9 dollars per month for the service. Topspin allows you to bundle but you have to pay 10 bucks per month plus here’s the kicker they take 20% off the entire price of the bundle. Which I don’t like. Either charge monthy or get percentage but not both. Bandcamp lets you do it too but they too take 20% and the way the offer it is on the music page which it not a clean way to offer it. It looks hidden and its not what I want. ANY IDEAS PLEASE!?
When you’re talking about bundles, do you mean the package of stuff like a t-shirt+CD+sticker+etc?
Why can’t you sell the bundle directly from your own site? You could use PayPal or E-junkie to process payments. PayPal takes a percentage, but nowhere near 20%. E-junkie has a monthly cost, though, so you probably don’t want that unless you’re selling in large enough numbers.
The other alternatives are Ebay and Amazon stores, but I’m not sure what percentage they charge.
Is your fan base really into buying bundles? Or are you just wanting a general store to sell bundles to the masses and hoping people will buy them?
Thanks for answering. Im trying to add value to music. No one is really buying music or wants to buy it since they feel they can get it for free. So If you sell an autographed cd + poster + t shirt my hope is people will see the value on that. And will be willing sto spend 25, 30, 35 bucks depending on the bundle being offered. And also having the fisical autographed copy of a CD for a fan has more value than a download with no connection to the artist. I like the idea of doing it thru pay pal but there is 2 problems. How do i create a page with the pay pal buttons for my wordpress. And 2 how do I figure the shipping and handling cost and the tax to be charged per bundle?
I disagree that your fans won’t buy your music. Usually, your true fans will support you. However, I also agree that a bundle like this can be really cool for fans. Especially if they can get all the items cheaper than if they bought them separately.
PayPal is actually really easy. First, you sign up for a merchant’s account.
https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/merchant
Then, they provide customizable buttons you can embed anywhere you can cut and paste HTML. In your WordPress page (post or widget), just switch to the HTML view (or use the text widget). There you can cut and paste the HTML for the “buy” button.
It can take a few days to get approved for the merchant account, but I didn’t have any problems getting one.
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Lighters!
Good one!! I wanted to do matches, too, but to hand out at bars for free. But lighters are a solid #27! Thanks, James!
10) Guitar Picks: I never thought of it, but other bands have told me that people go crazy over buying custom guitar picks from them. It’s an unexpected seller.
I’ve worked as a Promoter for 4 years and I always check out the merchandise that the opening bands and headliners bring and this always ends up being a popular item. Most bands will use them to throw out into the crowd and they help people remember your band if your just starting up.
Also I didn’t see this on your list but I ordered these magnets (http://promo-ted.com/:quicksearch.htm?quicksearchbox=music+&submit.x=0&submit.y=0) once to promote a summer festival and sold them for $5 at the beer stand. I thought I would end the summer with a bunch of these left over but I sold completely out. Little items like that are easy and quick sales that will add up over time. Also they are great give away items which led people to buy the most expensive ones. If your going to order promotional stuff always be sure to do the math first because you don’t want to get stuck with stuff left over ( I have 3 boxes of festival t-shirts from 2009 sitting in my garage)
Also a tip to young bands – Stay with your merchandise after your show and take pictures and sign the merchandise for fans. Trust me I know what sells merchandise as I make commission off each band and always always always make them do a meet and greet at the merch tent (especially if its a show where alcohol is involved sounds horrible but its true).
Hey, Ali! This is great info! I didn’t even think of magnets. That’s a great addition to the list!! I’ll check out that link.
Buying too much: Yes, I’ve definitely been bitten by that before. From CDs to other ill fated ideas. I’m a huge fan of testing the market first before going full out. Instead of buying the big box of merch, maybe start with just 10 items to see if they’ll sell. Martin Atkins even suggested testing t-shirts by learning how to screen print. Test which design does best before ordering boxes full of shirts.
Stay with the merch: I am so with you on this. I’m constantly annoyed at bands that are never at their merch table. I’m the type of guy that loves to buy merch at the end of the night right before I leave the club. Bands are usually nowhere to be seen or they are too busy drinking to sell their stuff. Or, even worse, they’ve packed up all their merch and left for the night. As much as it can suck and be a little boring to stay with the table all night, my personal philosophy is to stay until the bitter end with the merch. Even if there’s only a couple of people left at the club. Be the last one out.
Thank you for the great tips, Ali! Since you’ve worked with more bands than I have, I love hearing information like this. You rock!