Selling CDs: An Independent Musician's Guide

Let's say you have 1000 CD s to sell. Chances are good that if you sell all of them, you or your band will make a decent profit. But how about 3000 or 5000 CD s. I'm not going to tell you that it's easy to sell 5000 CD s because it's NOT but it CAN be done.

Gigs

I think that everyone knows that the best place to sell your CD is at gigs. When your at your gig, mention from time to time that you have a CD for sale. Have a drawing and give one away.

Website

Have your own website for you or the band. Make sure your website has the capability of streaming a few songs from the CD and a link to where they can buy your CD. Do NOT make your only musical presence on the Internet your MySpace page. By all means, have a MySpace page but also have your own .com website.

A Money Back Guarantee

Offer a money back guarantee. I know what you're thinking. "No way! They'll just rip my CD to their computer and then get their money back". That's possible and you might get a few of those. However, procrastination is a very powerful force. Most people will not go to the trouble of re-packing the CD, running it to the Post Office, pay for postage, and send it back. They likely wont do that even if they don't like it. You'll usually get very little returns when you sell your cd.

Increase The Number Of Gigs

I know that's easier said than done but here's how you do it. If you're playing most of the venues that support your type of music in your area, expand your area. Once you sell your CD to all of those people, the CD sales at those local gigs will dry up. If you're packing in a decent crowd locally, move up the ladder. Find all of the venues that support your type of music in a 100 mile radius. And book shows at those places. "But no one knows me that far away". How are you going to change that.? I'll tell you this, if you do into a new club and tell them that you average an attendance of about 300 people at gigs and as much as 500 when you play in your own back yard and you can back that up with references and/or documentation, that you'll get a gig. After you've built up a following in that 100 mile radius and sold most of them your CD, do the same thing in the next 100 mile radius. Rinse and repeat. By doing this, before long, you will have sold 5000 CD s

Credit and Debit Cards

You want to make it as easy to buy your CD as possible. Take credit and debit cards at your gig. If someone at a gig wants to buy your CD and just spent their last $10 bill at the bar and you don't have a swipe machine, you've just lost a sale. A company like "CD BABY" who you can also sell your CD through offers a swipe machine that is close to free.

5000 CD s!

Think about that. 5000 CD s. If you have a recording budget of $5000, a promotion budget of $1500, and it cost you $5000 to get 5000 CD s manufactured, you can make some decent money. Here's the breakdown. You or your band has spent $11,500. This was done by recording, ordering your CD s, ordering promo materials, and re-ordering CD s and promo materials. If you charge $8 per CD that's a profit of $28,500. If you charge $10 per CD, that's a profit of $38,500. Now if you're a home recording enthusiast like myself, you slash your recording budget down to nothing or close to nothing and make even MORE of a profit.

Hopefully, this article gave you some helpful advice on how to sell your CD s . It can be done. Now it's time to get started. Good luck!