I've been selling beats online since 2018, and while I haven't made millions of dollars doing so (yet?), I've definitely tested many of the tips and tricks you can find online. Today, I'd like to give you my opinion and tell you a little bit about my experience. I'll save you the classic intro where I tell you you have to become better at music-making, and that you have to be disciplined and consistent. I'll take for granted you're good at music, and even if you were not, I don't think your beats need to be that good to sell like crazy.

So let's assume you have a bunch of good beats uploaded on a beat-selling platform like Beatstars or Airbit... Now what?

1. Start a YouTube Channel

In 2023, you can't expect to post your beats on YouTube and sell a ton passively anymore. Still, YouTube is an excellent platform to get your stuff out there and find your first few hundred fans.

I started my first channel in 2018, posted all types of different beats with all types of keywords, and - sure - I made many sales over the years, but it never really took off. A few months ago, I changed my strategy and started a second channel focused on a specific niche and a specific set of keywords (related to dancehall, afrobeats and amapiano beats) and my new channel has already out-performed the old one, in only a few months.

My tip: Focus on a specific niche and post a few keywords consistently. The niche you should pick can't be too small, but it shouldn't be too big. If you're comfortable making many musical genres, start different channels in specific niches, post beats for a few weeks on each, then keep the one that pops and delete the others.

I'd also recommend making quick YouTube Shorts for every single beat and posting them on IG, Tiktok and X. You'll never know who might hear those.

2. Post on Socials

Speaking of posting short videos on socials: posting static videos for your beats is a good start, but you shouldn't stop there. In fact, you just can't.

You're gonna have to do something most producers are the afraid of: show your face.

Even if you feel silly, showing yourself making music, listening to your own tracks, grooving, jamming with other artists... All that is gold! Of course, it doesn't hurt to jump on trends and use popular hashtags. You can ask people to remix your track, drop a verse, sing a hook...

You can easily find what popular people are doing and do what they did, but make it your own.

Just remember who your audience is. For instance, if you're a beatmaker, your target audience should be singers and rappers, rather than other like-minded producers.

Also, don't be a perfectionist. Creating content won't be your main gig, so as long as your music is fire, your content can be a little cringe.

Cringe-y content is way better than no content at all.

3. Contact Rappers Directly

The heart of any business is sales. Selling doesn't mean to be pushy, it just means contacting people who could use what you have and help them out.

There are many aspiring artists that go unnoticed online. Find the ones you think could use your music and tell them about yourself. Make a genuine connection.

This is super time-consuming, but there's no better way to sell beats than to establish that human connection by commenting on vocalist's posts on IG, DM'ing singers on SoundCloud, YouTube, and wherever else you can find them. Having a profile with a bunch of cool content won't hurt either (see step 2!)

Be the fan you wish you had. Making people feel good is the best branding you can have.

As long as you don't copy-paste SPAM messages like the ones we all get - and ignore - all day long, you won't be bothering people.

Stay positive, reach out, don't be pushy or needy and see what happens. It's worth doing that 1 or 2 hours a day, even if that cuts into your music-making time.

4. Should You Pay for Ads?

I've paid for ads on Beatstars. I've paid for ads on YouTube. I've paid for ads on IG and Facebook.

Did any of them bring me sales? Sure.

Was it worth it? I'm not so sure...

This is my personal experience - and keep in mind I'm a musician and not an online ad connoisseur - so maybe I didn't optimise my ads for conversion or whatever.

To me, ads exist to boost a sales method that already works, but it's real easy to sink a bunch of money you may or may not have and end up where you started. So before I'll pay for ads again, I'll make sure I've done everything else on this list a MILLION times.

From what I heard, IG ads seem to be the most cost-effective way to make sales. You can boost a simple and effective video from your Reels, or you can make a carousel with many of your beats playing over a picture of your cover art.

Again, see what other successful people in your niche are doing at the moment and build on that!

If you want, you can create a profile and follow the kind of people a rapper would follow. Pretty soon you'll be bombarded with ads targeting rappers, so you know what you're up against as a producer. You can then delete that profile and bring your expertise back to your regular IG.

From there, consider your objective. Do you want to make a quick sale or do you want to build an audience that will come back to your store again and again because they feel they've developed a connection with you?

If the connection thing sounds good, consider starting a newsletter... (and keep on reading!)

5. Start a Newsletter

It might sound counterintuitive to start a newsletter in 2023, but that's actually the most modern thing you can do. If you only connect with people on socials, what will happen the day people migrate to another platform, or if there's a glitch and your account gets shadow-banned, or *gasp* deleted?!?

Emails on the other hand will most-likely always drop in your audience's inbox, and it will be way easier to keep in touch in the long run! If you check the stats, a newsletter can get some pretty cool conversion rates as well.

The only thing is, if you're going to slide in someone's inbox every week, it better be good and offer something in exchange for their attention. If you're selling beats and that's what people follow you for, why not give them coupons, deals, and even limited licences to exclusive free beats?

But how do you get those emails? Well, for instance, a great strategy could be to bundle a few beats together and do this:

Post a video announcing your giveaway
tell them the link is in the bio
send them to a landing page that gives them the zip file in exchange for their email
tell them you'll message them once in a blue moon (but, of course, they can unsubscribe anytime.)

That would be a post worth boosting with IG ads!

6. Start Somewhere

That’s it, I hope this blog post helps you make your beat-making dreams a beat-making reality!

If you're just starting out, you probably won't master all those techniques immediately, but remember to take things at your own pace and keep moving forward. Don’t be too hard on yourself, and don’t get discouraged if some of those techniques don’t work right away. Just keep pushing.

Please write to me and let me know which strategies worked for you!

If you'd like to know where to find the best synths and plugins for beat-making click here. You can also subscribe to my newsletter if you'd like to receive exclusive royalty-free loops and cool freebies every week (sounds familiar?? 😏👇)

Image Credit: Internet Money + CashMoneyAP