A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Make Money as an Internet DJ

OK, so, you've downloaded the DJ software of your choice, you've spent hours collecting the best tunes, and many more hours honing your DJ skills. You've mixed dozens of seamless masterpieces, using only the best music in your chosen style. You've found all the proper forums and posted links to your sets, perhaps even enjoying the accolades of the other forum members.

But, after a while, this isn't as satisfying as it once was. Receiving forum member feedback on your sets is the only reason you spend so many hours crafting them, and almost no one even comments. Well actually, i reached the exact same point quite some time ago.

Since that time I've put in some effort and have worked out with a sweet way to use the Internet and make some money with my DJ skills. Like anything else, this "system" (i don't know what else to call it), does take an investment of your time, a passing knowledge of your particular DJ style's Internet "community", and some patience thrown in for good measure. However, since starting with this just last summer, I'm now making some decent extra money just mixing up music, and because of the viral nature of the internet it can only grow. In December, i made $800 simply by mixing my favorite tunes du jour together and distributing it using the Internet. I will make even more this month.

A little background on myself. My name is Richard Scott. I love music and i LOVE to DJ. I have DJ'd at more than a few parties over the years and even a few of times at a local club. To me, watching people enjoying themselves, dancing to music i have picked out and mixed, is a total buzz.

About 5 years ago, i found Atomix DJ software and used the software to virtually "spin" techno sets for both myself and the Internet masses. Always imagining that the music i was mixing was going to played at parties or even pretending as i mixed that i was playing live. After a while, I started my own website sharing my mixes and promoted the site posting on forums around the 'Net (i'm not going to give the name because i sold it for next to nothing when an offer was made and now they have a thriving recording label). I posted mostly in hardcore and hard techno forums as this was the style i played, though since then i have mixed everything from vocal house to jungle and back. I released my sets under a few different names and yes, i will admit i even enjoyed a small amount of internet "fame". Sort of like Tila Tequila but without the pretention....(eyeroll) :)

But soon, within a couple of years anyways, i found that mixing music for anonymous downloaders just wasn't satisfying anymore. Plus, at that time, i was personally paying for the bandwidth these anonymous lurkers used to grab my mix sets and then just surf on. I tried adding a Paypal "Donation" button to the site but i don't think i ever did make for than $10 or $20 from that one. I did manage to make about $300 off of Google ads, but considering my bandwidth bill at the time was about $400/month, i pretty much decided to cash it in. I let the site go for a song and at that time I basically jusr stopped distributing my sets. Mind you, i never did stop collecting music or DJ'ing or even making sets for myself to listen to.

Since those days i have moved on from the original Atomix software i used to a couple of professional DJ software packages that i now use on a regular basis. One is Virtual DJ Pro 5.0 and the other being Mixmeister Studio 7.0. I won't get into the merits of either program because they both have their good and bad points. In my opinion, Virtual DJ is better fit for live use (say, for playing a party using a laptop) and Mixmeister is better suited for perfecting pre-recorded DJ mixes. Both have demos available to try them out, i would definitely recommend getting into either one or both of them as they really make the DJ experience alot smoother.

Getting Down To Business - 9 Easy Steps To Mixing Music For $$$

The following 9 step guide is a pretty simple point form guide to what i've done to make money with my DJ sets. For this guide, i will be using Beatport for my example "online music store". However, there are a half-dozen other music download sites you can and should use to increase your profits, more on this later.

1). Open a consumer account with Beatport.Com, a regular account you can use to purchase and download music. You will need a consumer account to become an affiliate. Open your Beatport affiliate account here

2). Open an affiliate account with Beatport. Becoming an affiliate allows you to sell both individual songs and entire albums as a Beatport Representative. Admittedly, this step does take a little perserverence, as to become an "affiliate for Beatport", you will need to sign up with Linkshare. They basically manage the Beatport affiliate account issues, from the accounting (they pay you), right on up to banner ad delivery (and almost everything else in between). I say perserverence because it is a serious chore to get going with Linkshare. As a Canadian, i found the process a little less painstaking, but if you're a U.S. citizen, they have a LOT of paperwork for you to go through. But don't let this discourage you. It is well worth it let me tell you, when those checks start coming in, you'll be glad you did it.

3). Surf on in to Beatport as a customer and carefully choose 10 - 12 songs you would like to mix up in a set. I'm not going to tell you how or what to choose because if you don't already know your music, this article definitely wasn't written for you. Purchase them. Should cost you around $20. I say 10 - 12 because this should be about a one hour mix, depending on your mixing skills and preferences. The bottom line is your mix shouldn't be more than an hour but not much less either.

4). The easiest step here...mix the songs you've purchased. Obviously you wil want to mix them together as skillfully as possible using your chosen software/hardware. The better the mix sounds, the more people will download and/or trade it over the long run, and the more viral it will become. This ultimately means more potential "customers". You will need to convert your mix to mp3 format, i suggest settings of 192kbps/44,100Hz. This gives a nice clean sound on most stereo systems, considering that the songs you downloaded from Beatport will be at least 320kbps (you can also buy the songs as .wav files, but i don't find the sound quality over 320kbps .mp3's worth the extra money...but that's a matter of discussion for a different article) ;).

The next steps are about as computer technical as it gets, and, as the saying goes..."it ain't rocket science", but the computer savvy among you will find the process a little easier.

5). Once you have perfected your mix, create a document in Microsoft Word using the layout in the PDF example here. Change the information to reflect your own DJ name/info and songs used in the mix, and, of course, be sure to change the Beatport Affiliate ID Number to your own in the song links. Save this document as a PDF file.

6). Use a .zip/.rar packaging software such as WinZip or ZipGenius to "package" your mix along with you newly created PDF file into one zipped up downloadable.

7). Upload the zip package created in Step 6 file to your own FTP or file-sharing site of choice. There are a few freebie sites that will host your mixes, however, the free sites usually only allow a maximum of 50MB per file, which makes it pretty much impossible to upload a 1 hour MP3 mix even at 128Kbps. I really recommend setting up your own FTP server as it's totally under your control this way, but a quick Google search for "free file storage" will turn up plenty of results for you to try.

8). Download utorrent from Download.com. Use this software to create a torrent file using your .zip packaged mix and register your torrent with 3 or 4 of the more popular trackers such as The Pirate's Bay, SumoTorrent, TorrentReactor, etc. I won't bother going into detail on how to create/serve a torrent file as there is plenty of documentation available. It's a matter of a few clicks, a couple cut & pastes and your up and flying.

8). Now, pretty much the most important step of all, distribute the link to your mix as far and wide as possible. For the most part, I post the link to my mix on music forums that discuss the style of music i've mixed (for instance, i might post a link to my mix on progressivehouse.com if i've mixed up a house music set).

9). Between the mix forums and the torrent servers, you will have eager listeners downloading your mix in no time at all. If it's mixed well and they enjoy it, they will inevitably like a particular song or two that you've mixed into your set, it's never failed for me yet. They will then check out the "tracklisting" PDF file included with your set, find the name of the song (or better yet, songs) they like, click on the "Get It Now" link you've conveniently added, sign up with Beatport (you make $2.00 for a new-user sign up alone!) and then purchase the song, for which you make a 7% commission!

Now take this Beatport example and do it with ...... People are likely to have an account with at least one or more of these sites and will be more apt to purchase a song they have heard if they already have an account.

And that's it. That's the quick and dirty on how i've made an average of $1000 a month for the last 6 months, all from simply mixing up my favorite music. Remember that the more people that enjoy your mix and trade it, whether it be through seeding torrents or sharing your link, your mix may be traded for literally months, possibly years, after you release it online. Any way you slice it, that's ALOT of potential residual income for a one time effort! Now imagine releasing a mix every week....what might that do for your bank account a month, 6 months or even a year from now?

This works. And there's enough room for everyone to get in on it. Don't wait a minute longer. Get started today and don't forget to send me that "thank-you" email!

Good luck and have fun! :)