Merchandising Your Music – Open Your Own Cafe Press Store

Make Extra Money Selling Your Music T-Shirt, Mugs, Hats, Bags and more with your own Cafe Press Store!

Merchandise your music and songs like the majors and open a online store on CafePress.com. Its not hard to do. Its a great way make some extra money that compliments your music sales. Cafepress.com also handles all the headaches of customer service, collecting payments, shipping and returns for you. You just have to upload your graphics and set up your store.

This is how Cafepress works. They have a ton inventory on different products like T-shirts, hats, mousepads, bags, and many other items which are all blank. They give you instructions on how upload your own graphics, maybe your band name, or the name of one of your hottest selling songs. You then select which items you want the graphic to appear on and set its price. Cafepress has their base price for each prodcut and you set your above that at the amount that you would like to get paid for each sale. When the T-shirt, for example, is sold, Cafepress pays you the amount over their base price. Say a blank T-shirt costs $15 base price, with your graphic, you set the price at $20. When it sells, Cafepress pays you $5.

You will need to have a basic knowledge of how to create the graphic you desire, or you can hire someone on elance.com, or guru.com or even vistaprint.com has reasonably priced graphic designer services. Cafepress gives you instructions on the type and size of graphic that works for most of the products they offer. Remember, printing on Black has additional instructions.

Go to www.Cafepress.com and sign up as shopkeeper. There are two type of shops you can have on cafepress.com One is a basic shop that is FREE, but you can only load one design for that entire shop. If you want to upload another design you have to open another shop. If you are premium shop owner, it will cost you $6.95 a month or $60 for year, BUT you can upload as many designs as you want. You can also customize the shop so that it more closely matches your existing “music” website.

I always suggest that you use any opportunity to get the word out about your music. Put your music website in each graphic that you create for your Cafepress merchandise. If someone buys one of your hats or T-shits, that would be some great Free advertsing for your website and can help you build your fanbase.

6 Tips To Promote Your Music Like a CEO

Do you want to be able to quit your day job and focus on your music full time? There is a way to do it but you have to put on that business hat of yours. I know that is sometimes hard for those of us who are artists, but we can truly experience the freedom to live our dreams on our terms if we also make a living off of our talents. The internet has given us an outlet to share with the world our music, but we can also focus on our local fan base, too, through some of tools that are offered online. Here are a few tips to help you promote yourself or your band and sell more CDs.

1. Learn How to Write Good Songs. You can learn so much by listening to hits and song writing abilities of artists that have come before you. You may want to take a lesson or two in song composition if you get stumped on how to pull something together.

2. Make Sure Your Music Sounds Professional. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on studio time nowadays to make professional sounding recordings. With pro tools your music can be produced in a home studio and sometimes sounds just as thick as the majors. Make sure your fans are able to buy your music and its levels sound as clear and crisp as the other music they have on their MP3 or CD players.

3. Perform, Perform, Perform. Get on the phones, get out to the clubs, talk to booking agents or whatever hook-up you have and book your shows. You have got to get out there to make a name for yourself. Don’t forget to video tape your performances so that you can have some material to place up on your acts website (not just MySpace…a little about this later…)

4. Promote and Make Sales During Shows. Have someone close to you go around during your show and have a sign up sheet where fans can placetheir info on your email marketing list. Also make sure you have a merchandise table set up so that fans can buy your music at the show. Look into investing in a credit card swiper, or if you are really selling a lot of merchandise, an electronic wireless credit card swiper so you can take credit cards at your shows and sell a ton of stuff…CDs, T-Shirts, Hats, Bags, buttons. You’ve gotta diversify. If you sit at the table after the show, you’ve gotta have photos to autograph…make sure you are nice, too.

5. Use the Heck Outta The Internet. You have to set up your own website with your own domain name…www.youract.com, not just a myspace page. You will get more sales that way. Some people just want to go directly to you. Have a box on your site where fans can sign up for email notices for your next performance. Also, make sure there is a way to buy your music on your website. www.cdbaby.com, and www.tunecore.com, are independent music distributors that set up mini websites for you for about $35. you input all the information about your music and they upload the audio for you. They sell your CD for a fee but can also set you up on ITunes and for individual song downloads and more. Load your vidoes to YouTube.com. Maybe set up a Facebook page or be a Twitter Tweeter, so that your fans can know what you are up to. Start a blog about the act and all of your adventures in the music industry and more.

6. Whatever you do be consistent. Set up a routine on when you are going to get the word out on your performances and send an email every Tuesday maybe. Update your status daily on Twitter or Facebook. Try to perform at least Twice a month or more. Announce when you put up a new video on You Tube…

After doing these things you should be on your way to building your following, so that you can make a living doing what you love…making and performing good music. If you have any other tips let us know in the comments below…