10 Easy Ways To Make Money As A Gospel Musician

10 Easy Ways To Make Money As A Gospel Musician In Nigeria

Many upcoming gospel musicians think or they don’t know they can make money with their music. They just want to keep making more song without any income coming back to them. Most upcoming Gospel Musician too think this is not possible, this is a big fat lie!

This is the reason why most upcoming artiste quit making music or gospel musicians switch to making secular songs, they think gospel musicians don’t make money from their music. Let’s take a look at top gospel musician in Nigeria for instance, they make a lot of money from the music they make by utilizing some strategies am going to unpack in this book.

As an upcoming musician or gospel musician if you have good business sense, making money shouldn’t be a hard nut for you to crack; little creative ideas can get you started.

Below are the ways you can make EXTRA CASH with your music, let’s go.

1. SELL YOUR MUSIC

Digital distribution is a must to excel as a musician you must put out your music for sale on digital stores both international and local platforms. These platforms includes Itunes, Apple music, Deezeer, Spotify, Boomplay, Youtube etc.

The image below shows how much each music platform pay for streaming i.e once someone play your song for at least 30 or 50 seconds.

Boomplay pay around N20.00 to N50.00 Per stream or Download while Amazon pay you when someone buy your song. Amazon sell a track at $0.99, let’s say fifty people were able to buy your song, $0.99 x 50 = $49.5 (N17,829 converted to naira) WOW! You just made N17,829.00 from your music. That’s awesome right?

Don’t let anyone tell you “nobody dey buy song for naija”. As long as your production & mixing is quality and you  have created enough value for your music then is N356.4 too cost, that a fan can’t purchase your song?

Selling your music at shows or concert is also important. You can put your song on CD-Rs, just make sure you sell it at reasonable price.

You can also check out local record shops in your area, get them to sell your CD-Rs for you in quantity. You might be wondering how you are going to get your songs in these online platforms, don’t worry I will talk about this later.

     2. GIGS/LIVE PLAY/CONCERTS

Doing live play or concert is also essential when it comes to making money as an upcoming musician or Gospel artiste.

Live play, gigs, concert or whatever you might want to call it is a wonderful/fantastic way to make money as a musician. Notwithstanding you have to think right in anything related to live performance. Try get your own shows, concert or gig.

While planning your own gig you have to consider your “Track records”, if you are just an upcoming musician, you are not supposed to charge large fees. Building up large fan base will take up time. You are not in any position to expect large fee of you are relatively upcoming musician.

For starter, you can start with a free show once or twice or do some give away in your to be known and recognized.

No matter how little you earn at start, you need to view it as one of the steps in building your reputation to greatness and always stay concentrated on building up yourself and your career.

     3. CREATE A WEBSITE

Creating a website/blog is a great way to showcase someone’s business, skills or talents. So, there is no reason why you should not set up a website for yourself as an independent musician to showcase your music skills etc.

Every popular musician you know today have website where they display details about their song, next event or next album release date, you don’t believe it? Search for any popular musician name and add the keyword “website” (for instance “Frank Edwards Website” or Nathaniel Bassey Website”)

It is really a great idea to display your music on a website. The website will also feature some of your talents. On your website, you can feature your next event, ongoing events, and videos of you in a live show etc.

One more advantage about owning your own website is that you can sell any of your products either your music or other services you offer on it and set your desired price.

Have no idea on how to set up a website? Go to Google or Youtube to set up your own website using WordPress.

Still finding it hard to set up a website yourself kindly reach me through Whatsapp on +2348116066383 or through any of my social media outlet. I will help you set up a professional artiste website which will house your songs and products at cheap rates.

4. YOUTUBE CHANNEL

YouTube is another platform where anyone no matter what you are doing (niche) can earn you extra income. YouTube has been proving its success over the years and a lot of YouTubers are earning from it. So you can earn from YouTube too!

The most exciting thing about using YouTube is that it’s ABSOLUTELY FREE. You don’t need to pay a dime before you start your own Channel or start earning although there are some requirements which you will have to meet before you start earning which includes “Getting 1,000 subscribers “ i.e. before you tube start paying you, you must secure a thousand subscriber on you channel.

Now how does YouTube works? Have you ever noticed those advertisement showing before, during or after videos you are watching on YouTube? That’s how it works! YouTube will pay you whenever someone watch 30  seconds of the ADS or click on it. Isn’t that a wonderful and a free way to get income?

All you need to do is just create a Youtube channel, set it up and start adding your videos or music to it.

Make sure you keep sharing videos from your channel to make your fans or people subscribe to it and always provide great content to keep them glued to your channel

     5. TEACH MUSIC OR INSTRUMENTALS

Many musician teach one instrument or the other. You can too!

What instrument do you know how to play? Piano? Guitar? Or drums? There are millions of people out there wishing they see someone to teach them one. Or more of the instruments.

It doesn’t matter whether you are Upcoming or renowned musician, you can sign up as a subtitle teacher in music school or create one in your area.

You can even create a YouTube channel where you can upload video of yourself teaching these instrument or  music itself which will also generate extra income because within short time you will get many subscribers if you are a good teacher and YouTube will start paying you as I have mention above.

6.  SIGN WITH RECORD LABELS

If you work hard enough as a through network connection and better promotion of your music in the right way you can earn a living by signing record deal with a record label.

7.  STREAMING

Streaming of music is becoming more popular and lucrative over the years. It should be clear to you by now that your music needs to be on one of these streaming platforms.

As I have mentioned earlier, whenever your music is streamed i.e played for at least 30seconds on streaming websites they pay royalties. Although their payment may be small but it will definitely add up with time if you can secure large number of streams.

Remember I promised earlier that I am going to show you how you can get your music or video on these streaming platforms? Now here we are: These platforms include iTune, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, Amazon etc. (which are international) then Boomplay and MTN Music play in Nigeria and  Africa.

How do you get your music on these platforms?

All you need to do is find a trustworthy digital marketing companies, sign up with them, upload your music and start earning. There are many of these companies on the internet but I will recommend CD Baby or TuneCore for you.

    8.  SONG WRITING

If you know what you are doing as a musician you could start writing songs for others musicians or compose music specifically for theme songs and get paid for it.

    9.  GET PAID FOR PLAYING INSTRUMENTALS

As a musician planning to go fulltime, you don’t need to sell yourself too cheap or for free. Get paid to play instruments in churches, wedding, birthday parties E.t.c

Have a document of your prices depending on how you want it, if a church invites you to play your favourite instrument, tell them how much you change for an hour or for the amount of time you are going to spend there, It is not a crime to get paid for using your talents.

10.  TRY FIVER

If you don’t know fiver by now then you are not doing your home work! What is fiver? Fiver is an online company where people pay you for your services as low as $51 no matter what you offer graphic design? Web design? Music? Instrumentalist? There are thousands of users looking for your services.

To start, register an account with fiver for free, then choose “seller” customise your account and display your gigs. Just so you know to start getting customer on fiver is very hard because most people patronizing ,fiver are whites but once you have a customer which you saved well trust me more will keep coming.

Now, what can you offer as a musician on fiver? You can offer & be a voice over artiste, song writing etc.

  In Conclusion …….

Making money as a gospel musician in Nigeria is not quite easy, you just have to be focused and always have the end in mind.

If you can put to practice at least two or three of these methods I mentioned above then it shouldn’t be hard for you to make extra money as a gospel musician in Nigeria. Always know that consistency and commitment is the key to success.