How to build your fan base while doing local gigs and getting paid for it

How to build your fan base while doing local gigs and getting paid for it.

Created by ​Mari Timans 1. Being a musician is hard , let's be honest!

Back in a days i was in a band , we were doing local gigs for the love of music. We played in birthday parties, funerals, opening for other artists, played in local bars and restaurants, coffe shows. You name it, we have done it. The old music industry destroyed us as musicians in general. We had our parents telling us to quit and get jobs , friends laughing at us telling us we will never make it because the industry is just hard. And you know what ? That’s exactly what i ended up doing. I quit my music dream and got an entry level position job in an accounting office. Sad, but true. And this is my story.

I know many of you just like me feel the pain of being an artist and not being able to make a living out of what you mostly love, YOUR ART! It’s depressive , you feel worthless , you feel like you life doesn’t have a purpose.

But , let me stop you a little bit there and tell you what happened after i quit…

I was in a limbo for the past 15 years of my life after i quit my band. But….. in reality i never quit music , i never had the guts to actually stop writing songs and doing my home recording and productions because that is what i mostly loved doing , that is what brings me happiness in life.

For years i was in the closet. Yes, in the artists closet.

At some point i even stopped mentioning that i am a musician to anyone.

Until 2016… the worst happened!

My dad passed away! ………….

It was around mid night when i got a phone call from my brother giving me the bad news.

The room started spinning , i couldn’t breath. I started feeling dizziness, my heart was racing and i felt like i was having a heart attack, i was about to faint from so much anxiety.

Panic attack was kicking in. It felt like an eternity , the time stopped , my brain freezed and i couldn’t think.

I finally got myself to calm down a little and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels i had at home for the past couple of months.

That night , i drank all of it. The whole bottle!

And i drank another one on the next day , and a third one on the third day. I was disoriented , numb , lost. It was painful!

I week went by and i was still in shock of my dad's passing . The fact that i couldn’t be present for his funeral because he lived overseas was eating me even more inside.

After a week i gained strength to go to work , even tho still heartbroken , unable to eat or sleep properly.

After work i would grab a glass or two to calm myself down and deal with the panic attacks.

2. Until one day….the worst of the worst happen!

I got so drunk that in an attempt to fix my laptop that got infected with a virus i ended up wiping the whole operating system.

Without making a backup copy of my files.

All my projects where gone , all the beats and tracks that i have produced , some ready to release … all gone!

I even tried software to recover some files and ended up recovering a couples of them , but most of my project where gone! Finito!

10 years of hard work . Gone!

As a music producer i was left with nothing to show my work. No portfolio. Thousands of projects erased , flushed down the drain.

Until today i can’t forgive myself for that. It has been 3 years and i still hate myself for such a stupid mistake.

I haven't touched any DAWs ever since.

I quit!

I gave up.

That’s when I decided to make a career change , i understood that my whole lifes work was gone for a reason.

I decided to start learning marketing and specifically online marketing, since i already had the creative side in me i just went for it.

I had a lot of information thrown at me , but always heard my mentors talk about defining your niche.

I would look at myself and think…. Well, my niche really is music and that’s the only thing i know doing. I

don’t know anything else beside music and songwriting and production and sound design.

But i could not figure how to make my love for music pay my bills. After all, the music industry is such a hard place , so hard to get signed and start making gigs and getting paid.

So i continued my research for months and my marketing studies. Experimenting with new ideas , writing down formulas , studying music business , social media marketing and sales , local businesses , etc.

3. And one day it hit me!

If back in the days when i had my band i realized this , my life wouldn’t be the same today , i would have had a very successful career as an artist.

You see what i found out is… the problem between the offline and your online audience has been solved back in 1994. When QR codes were invented for cars.

You might be thinking … QR codes ?

YES!

Think about it for a sec… QR codes allow you to connect a url , or other type of information to it and track it.

So, how does this apply to building your fan base as an artist you might ask.

Let me explain……

You see, i came up with this concept and it’s simple.

4. You can connect QR codes to your social accounts to build your fan base.

Thinks about it like this…. When you go and do a local gig, you can display a QR code poster and ask people to support you by following you on social media.

For example , you can say: “Hey guys!

We are playing here today at no cost to the venue, we don’t have our tip jar here today, we do this for the love of art. So please support us by pointing your phone camera at this code and follow us on Instagram/Facebook/etc”.

People will understand that you are already doing the work for free and since you are not asking for tips , they will feel obligated to at least follow you.

Of course you can improvise with it. And of course you can still combine it with having tip jar anyway. Be creative!

Let’s do a quick math , if you are doing 2 gigs a week and you are getting at least 20 people to follow you on each gig depending on how big the venue is of course, in a week you can get 40+ followers . It’s 480 followers in 3 months . And that is just a rough estimate and much better than not building a fan base at all. How many times you played a gig and people forgot about you ?

With this system , not anymore, now you will be encouraging them to take action. I know this might sound to low of a number , but think about it.

Once they are a part of your fanbase , they already saw you perform , they are considered a warm lead at this point and all you have to do once you release your new music is share with them and they listen.

It’s more streams to you, more royalties , more merchandise sales, more exposure for big labels to start noticing you.

And guess what ‌ at this point you know they enjoy going to the venue you played , so the second time you play in the same venue they visited before . You can actually reach out to the business owner and negotiate a gig fee in exchange for a shoutout on your social media account.

Because the same followers you have now, already know the venue and are very likely to show up at the same place again .

And you can explain to the business owner that you will be doing a promotional post for them on your social media for free as long as they pay the gig fee.

You can remind them that some of their clients are actually your followers. If you make them understand that you will be bringing them more customers that will convert into more sales for them. They will gladly pay for the gig, or just the shoutout itself.

You can even get an agent to negotiate that for you and you just pay them commission.

You can scale this by playing in different venues first, and then charging them over and over again.

The idea here is ‌ the venues customers become your customers and you just bring them back and introduce them to new venues around town while getting paid for doing what you love.

And if you are not a musician, this strategy applies to comediants , dancers , public speakers , djs, etc. If you are showcasing your talent, this will work for you.

The good news is , you can rinse and repeat the same process. You can use the QR codes every time you are playing gigs at the same venue. So you can be on a hunt for more followers.

5. So how to connect all this and put this in practice? � The QR codes​ : The QR codes will be used as an instrument for you to make the venue customers become your followers.

Once the person points their smartphone at the code , it gives them a message on they phone and all they have to do is click on it. And they will be redirected to the link that you set up.

The best resource you can use for QR codes online is a website called : ​MyQrAd You can track your QR codes, i like this website because you can start for free and it allows you to change the url address without having to print a new QR code. ● Once you generate the QR codes​ on MyQrAd You have to save that as an image onto your computer so you can then upload that on print on demand websites or take it to a local printing shop. ​Access the website by clicking here. ● Upload it onto a print on demand online store.

- For this one i use , ​Printify​. You can customize your merchandise and get them to

do the heavy lifting and deliver it for you to you door. ​Access the website by clicking here.

- You can also use a ​Printify​ to printing posters and flyers. ​Click here to access the Printify website. ● Things to keep in mind.

- The most effective campaigns will be on tshirt prints and posters , simply because they will be just more visible.

- Don’t forget to include a call to action.

People have to understand what to do when looking at the code.

You can write something like: “Point your phone camera at the code and follow me on Facebook ” or “Support me by following me on Snapchat , just point your phone camera and click on the link” or

“Take a picture , last longer”.... lol ...

You can be creative with that and try multiple things and phrases. (​When you upload your QR codes in Printful or Printify , they will give you the option to customize your design and you can add the text to it)​ - Last but not least, you can use this strategy to make others do the promotions for you.

How ?

You can create a raffle on your social media for t shirt giveaways. Or you might decide to give away something else for free like a wristband or even a flash drive with your music on it. And you can put the QR codes on it, your QR codes on the tshirts with a call to action.

This way when you fans are using the tshirts they are doing the promotion for you . ;) More followers for you!

_______________________________________ If you like this content >> share it with your friends and family who are also artists and lets change the world together!

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>> No you phone is not going to read the QR on it , unless you are reading this on a computer >> If you point your phone at this code while on a computer it will work :)

Yours, ​ ari Timans M