How To Monetize Free Music Downloads?

Very few people will pay for independent music on a per-download basis. At least - not until they're hooked. So you give away that kind of music and are grateful they even want to download it! LOL And this even assumes that the music is GREAT.

How do you monetize that?

How do you monetize ANYTHING?

By answering a need. By addressing a want. By creating a relationship where you're treated as an authority and inspire trust.

Music alone (and accompanying merch) CAN be monetized by an indie, but FIRST they need a loyal fanbase, they need great music and really great merchandise. And even then, in 99.9999% of the cases, they'll only sell PEANUTS.

This is not to say you can't build on that. The best way is to FIRST engage the visitors to your site. One of the best ways to do that is by blogging. Writing about something important, controversial, funny, interesting - whatever - as long as it's not INDIFFERENT.

You then promote your site, develop keywords for it, and soon you have some regular readership. If your articles are really good, the visitors will interact, leave comments, etc - eventually they'll even come to you for advice and so on.

By that point, if you talk about something you're using, think it's a good product and then recommend it to others - along with a helpful link - you'll have a CHANCE to convert some of your visitors to buyers, as long as the ad is RELEVANT to what they're reading.

Once you get to a position of sufficient authority, even COOLNESS, you will even be able to accelerate the sales of music downloads!

Once you have enough content and it's rockin' make sure you make a newsletter where people can sign up to receive updates from you - with occasional promotions...

No matter what you do, it's a process. Unless you're selling an ALREADY-HOT download by a mega-star (as an affiliate), and are able to SEO your site to the top of the listings when that title is searched for - don't expect too much until you've put some effort in.

cheers paul

Hey, that is a good idea. But what I'm looking for is a way to get paid when people download free music from your website.

Awhile ago reverberation and Microsoft had a "sponsored songs" program where people could download frees music and the artist would get paid because the advertisers logo was in the album art for the free download I believe. I'm looking for somethin like that. I know there has to be a way to do it!

Bump any more ideas? Too bad pages.socialmusic.com doesn't work, it was a good idea

put the music file in a rar archive and password encrypt it ... in order to get the password people must complete a cpa survey, upload on torrent sites and there you go...

loads have people have banked from this

I guess use ads like adsense, or make them register to download, and send them offers of paid music stuff that interests them.

Maybe you could build up a serious catalog of free downloads (being careful of any copyright issues which you may encounter) and use a simple opt in page to build an email list from which you could market other music related merchandise or products your demographic may be interested in. As traffic increases, so will your subscribers. This would ultimately work best if your site targeted a particular demographic or genre of music. This is not my arena, just an idea. Best of luck in all that you do.

Why dont use Content lock CPA offer trick?