How To Make Money As A Producer | 10 Ways

Producing might be your passion but we still have bills to pay. So in today’s post I am going to show you 10 ways on how to make money as a producer.

If you'd prefer to watch and listen to the list of 10 ways to make money as a producer then you can do so at the video below:

As a prerequisite; you must be knowledgeable in your craft and you must have clear goals.

Do you want to be a billboard charts music producer?

Do you want to produce TV commercials and online ads?

Do you want to be a teacher in college or on the internet?

Where do you want your career to be in 30-40 years?

After answering some or all of these questions, you can now strategize on how to make money.

You need to know where you're going first.

Second, production can be a work of art, so in a way you actually have to be good at your craft to get to your goal.

After all, the more skilled you are, the higher you can charge. You should spend time mastering your craft and learning how to produce because it's a lifelong journey of learning.

After all, you earn money through your skills.

If you are a beginner, it would be very difficult for you to make money right away because you are still honing your craft. When you're learning, you're not very marketable. Yet! Although, there are outlier stories of beginners nailing it in their first year, that might not be a case for everyone as we all have different paths when it comes to learning.

As long as you are confident with your craft and you have a clear goal, you can now start thinking about how to make money.

I want to show you 10 different options that you can make money as a producer. Based on your situation, you can weigh out which one could be more short term or long term for you depending on your preferences.

1. Mixing, Master, and or Produce on Marketplaces: Upwork or Fiverr 

You can go to these marketplaces, create a good profile highlighting your skills in music productions such as mixing and mastering. You can charge as much as you want. However do consider your skill set in terms of the services that you will provide.

There are a variety of price offers in either Upwork and Fiverr.  For example, you can charge low, especially if you are just a beginner. However if you would charge on the higher end, you also have to deliver the same quality for the price.

Either way it is a good starting point to earn money as a producer.

2. Voiceover Work

There are a lot of  businesses or small companies that usually look for voiceover work, mostly for ads. If you have a really nice vocal tone then you may have just found your money maker!

To start, you can target local companies that normally don’t have big budgets for doing ad work (like a small jingle) or any voiceover work. You also have an advantage since you already have equipment capable of recording and skills to produce for these local businesses.

Additionally, if you personally don’t want to record yourself, you can bring a voiceover artist over and record them instead. You just take your share of the revenue. Reach out to these local businesses especially if they’re in your town, village or city. Give them a quote with a reasonable price based on your skillset and you might find yourself earning in this way.

3. Television and Internet Ads

This one can be applicable to small and large brands. It can be a long term thing as it would be more difficult to start out which is a good thing since you can continuously improve yourself on the way.

To start, you can make mock music for ads and build an online portfolio. Research different ad agencies around the world and when you're ready. Pitch them your online portfolio.

As a hint, look at what ads are on TV or the Internet. Which ones would you like to re-make? Simply copy them for the purpose of learning how to make a song for an ad. Of course, if you're going to copy it outright make sure to not publish it. That would be against the law!

4. Making Music For Sound Marketplaces

You can check Epidemic Sound Music and Artlist.io for this type of work. You can sign in as a creator and sell music on these types platforms.

These platforms may require you to be a certain level of creator for quality purposes.

Normally music on those platforms are used by smaller brands. Big brands could also opt for music on these platforms but they would likely go somewhere else to find music. That's  what number three is all about.

Big brands would prefer to be more exclusive in terms of music they use, so you might rarely meet these brands on those platforms. This can still be a source of income for you in the short term; however if you are really passionate about it you can also make it more long term. 

5. Producing Music For Indie Artists

There are tons of people making music nowadays. It seems that a lot of people have had time to write songs during the 20s pandemic.

Now a song wouldn’t be totally complete without any mixing and mastering. You can reach out to artists in your city, who most likely don’t have a following nor any released music, to offer them our services in music production.

You can have a reasonable quote like 200-300 bucks if you are a beginner. It’s not expected to be amazing at that price but as long as it is good enough.

This is a short term type of work, but then again it’s a good thing to start with smaller independent artists but that would eventually get you to work with bigger artists.

And if your goal is to be a producer for Billboard Chart top hits then this type of work would be ideal for you and a bonus to that is you can improve your crafts and skills on the way.

6. Sample Packs and Sound Libraries

I bet you have heard about sound libraries like Splice or Output by Arcade. You can actually make a profit by selling packs, midi loops, and basically any sound. The disadvantage of selling packs is that if you don’t have a following or anyone to sell it to, you might not get any revenue at all.

So you have to build up your online audience, and once you have a bit of a following you can release your packs like “ My favourite mini chords that I use all the time” and people would likely buy that pack as it was created by you.

Additionally, you can also grab your instrument and create sound loops. Again, this might be difficult to do as a beginner with no following, you certainly have to boost your skills in order to actually make revenue. If you’re passionate about this, it can be a medium to long term source of income.

7. Beats and instrumentals

This does require some expertise on actually knowing how to make a beat or an instrumental so it might be difficult for you if you're just beginning. If you get a hang of it, this can be a good money maker for the long run. Here is a great video on how to sell beats online.

You can sell your beats and instrumentals on your own website. For example, you could start a Shopify store or you could sell beats on a site like Beatstars

If you really love doing this, then you can potentially make career out of this

8. Affiliate Marketing

This one doesn't necessarily give you a lot of money, it’s more of a low hanging fruit but it's good to have anyway and can be setup for the long term. This can be passive income in a medium to long term range.

Affiliate marketing is basically a company giving you a unique link that gives you a percentage or a bit of revenue when someone clicks or purchases anything using said link.

A popular affiliate music marketing program for artists, musicians, and producers is on DistroKid  They give unique links to all their users where you can post on your social media.

Those links give off a 7% discount on new customers if you sign up to Distrokid using the unique link. For example, here's my unique link.

The creator who was given that link can actually get $10 once a person signs up for this link. So technically, if you click on that link and sign up on my page then I get 10 bucks, cool!

Other companies also have these affiliate links and the revenue might vary. It might not be a lot of money at first but if you have a following, it can still be some sort of revenue by the long term. It doesn’t even require much effort.

9. Teaching

If you have mastered your craft then it’s a given that you could be teaching this knowledge to others who are keen to learn.

You can either teach 1:1 to sell courses as well.  There are benefits to both; for 1:1 you can charge a good amount but this would be challenging if you haven’t built your craft yet and or even built a relationship with potential customers.

On the other hand, courses are a lot more work upfront but later on it becomes passive revenue because you don’t have to spend the time teaching it anymore as it would just be there online.

This is how I personally have my income. I create paid courses that usually take about a month to create but once it is a final product, you can market it and sell it online. This is one of my long term sources of income and you can definitely do this too if you set your goals to it.

If you're interested, you can check out some of my online courses here.

10. Youtube Adsense/ Sponsored Videos

This is more of a long term money marker since it requires many thousands of hours watched and millions of views to make money on Youtube.

However, you could do sponsored posts with a smaller more loyal audience and this could sustain you in the short term but could become something bigger more long term.

Conclusion  

So if I was to ask you, in 30 years from now:

What kind of money would you like to be making?

What do you still want to be doing?

What would you say? Ask yourself honestly because this will help you pick what you should get started on today. Let me know in a comment on this video if you have any questions or you just want to reach out.