A Beginner’s Guide to Creating Finance for Recording & Travel Expenses

The great thing about being in the music business is that you have a number of resources at your fingertips for creating income. Now bearing in mind that at the top level of the business the recording income is dropping off rapidly, at the bottom end there still is quite some scope there for creating funds.

In order to create these funds you must have a product, and this product comes in a number of forms. The first and foremost one is that if you can perform, there's your product.

Being able to perform means you have the ability to monetize that performance in a number of ways, and this can create a consistent and sustainable income. Once you understand how to earn money from gigs, then earning enough to pay for recording and/or travel becomes a matter of planning.

All you need to do is set yourself a target and then work out how many of those performances you need to do before you achieve that amount of income.

For example if you know you can earn $50 a gig, and you need $400 to record a single, then that's 8 gigs.

But not all gigs are created equal...

There are essentially 3 types of gigs:

• You'll get support slots which aren't great for earning money, although you might be able to move some merchandise.
• You'll also get promoter gigs - again where you can move merchandise but money wise there isn't a great deal in it.
• Finally there are self-organized gigs. These, especially when you're starting out, are where you can make the most money and can have the most impact on your expenses.

The simplest way to do a self-organized gig is research a number of venues you can potentially rent or venues whereby, due to times of recession, are really keen to pull customers in and keep people in their premises. This means they should let you have the venue for nothing if you are going to be filling it with people.

With the latter option you need to negotiate with the owner of that venue to either pay you a flat fee for playing, or, if he allows you to use the venue for free, you can ticket it and charge people for coming in. Both these options put you in a position where you can start to create a nice little bit of income for your performance.

If you are going to be ticketing the gig then you've got to get a handle on the right ticket price. I always suggest that you go for a unit equivalent cheaper than everyone else in that town if you want to pack it out. To put that in simple terms... if everyone else is charging $10, charge $9. But make it an absolute no choice. If your gig is a dollar cheaper, then they are going to come to you.

To further capitalize and expand on your earning potential then you need to produce a product as well i.e. a physical product like a CD, button, t-shirt or some other desirable item. Then, when you're doing these performances, you can also market these items to the audience. Bearing in mind that if you produce a reasonable amount of these items you'll get them for good price/costs, this is another great way of bringing income in for you.

If you carry on doing this, and you do it for the majority of the gigs you do, you've got a great little system going there for you to start pulling in enough money to build up towards paying for recording costs & travelling expenses.

For some additional ideas on how you can further monetize your band/products, please watch this exclusive video.

Mark Smith is the Owner of C-Management, a music development, consulting & digital distribution company based in Southampton, UK. They have been representing artists, songwriters, producers, & DJ's for some 13 years. More recently Mark has launched the website www.musiccareermasters.com to teach aspiring bands and artists the key strategies they need to make it in the music business.