HERE IS MY PLAN FOR THIS SUMMER. TELL ME WHAT YOU GUYS THINK. READ ALLLL OF THIS, ITS A LOT BUT ITS GOOD SHIT!!!
My goal is to distribute 10,000 digital or hard copies of my cd by August, 1st 2009.
I dont care if they are all sold or all given out for free. I plan to hit, sf, la, san diego, santa cruz, and las vegas.
Your probably thinking, dam that is a waste of money to print up 10,000 cds and not care if they all go for free or not. But here is the full picture.
I use to work at Best Buy, so my discount there is 100 blank cds for $7 and 50 thin plastic cases for $3. Im going to take the first batch of 100 burn them out and put them in sleeves. Im ordering 250 business cards for $6 off of overnightprints.com On the business card its going to have all my contact info and a short description of me as an artist and my goal to distribute 10,000 copies by august 1st, asking people to follow up and see what kind of progress im making. The business card is going to look way more pro then my cds but every cd will come with one. here is how im making up for the home made cds.
I figured, what makes people pay $10 for lil waynes cd or Kanyes, or even some whack artists like Mike Jones that most of us can rap better than. The difference between me and mike is credibility. Hes put in his work, he has the credibility. Here is how Im going to nail that aspect. My friend has a nice video camera with the boom mic, hes coming along. My other two close friends dont do shit all day and have nothing better to do then come out with me. So now instead of one black guy standing on the corner, its 4 people, having a cypher trying to promote a rapper. That will catch peoples attention, here is the cash crop.
I have a clothing line. Legit. Clothing (
www.legitup.spreadshirt.com) and I also run a screen printing business (
www.thecvprint.com) so basically what that means is that I can make my t-shirts for helllllla cheap. $1.77 each to be exact. Now, as I stated before my cds are gonna be looking home made but the fact that im going to be out there with four people all wearing the same shirts will add a lot of credibility.
Heres another aspect Im adding to it. Me (the artist) im going to have a hand full of cds and im going to be rapping to instrumentals being played on an ipod dock, the same songs that are on the cd. Im going to have a playlist of both instrumentals and both real songs to play for people or to perform to people. So now what do we have?
We have 4 people, one video taping a guy rapping, one rapping, two people rockn to it and asking people to check out the cd. And they are all wearing the same Legit. Shirts.
Alright, now here is all the ways to profit off this.
1. Offering the cd for $1.00 if they cant afford that then we give it to them for free. no hassle, no rebuttals. (you will notice that after one person buys one for only a $1.00 everyone else will feel like its okay to pull out there wallets too.) By asking for $1.00, you can say "Im just trying to promote with out going broke" (it rimes too) people will say "dam this guy is legit with his shit, ima throw him $5" or they will say "shit, $1.00 fuck it gimme one."
2. People may stop and watch me rap, they put money in the jar.
3. Offering the home made ghetto burned cd ANNNDDD a shirt for $10, dont got $10 its kew gimme $5. You cant find a shirt for $5, thats a deal in its self. On top of that people who dont like hip hop might still like the shirt. So by doing that I just expanded my market from people who support bay area artist, to anyone that thinks the shirt is half decent. MORE POSSIBLE BUYERS.
All of those three things are profitable and get me out there. Once a bank roll is established from the shirts and ghetto burned cds, the cds themselves will be upgraded. Making the hustle even more Legit. At the end of the day, if you are a rapper, you are an entertainer. If you cant entertain, people will not pay. Though because of cops and security this would have to be toned down in certain areas, or you may just have to execute different variations, but this is a grand hustle on a recession budget.
heres the numbers on a low estimate
10,000 copies.
--1 out of 3 CD's you sell for $1.00 thats =$3330.00 with some change.(if you can sell good, this should be 1 out of 2)
--for every 10 cds handed out you sell 1 shirt at $5.00 each that =$5,000.00 (if you can sell, this should be 1 for 5 which is $10,000. or if you sold them at $10 a pop, it would be $20,000.00
--lets say $20 in jar tips, every time you go out to sell and you went out twice a week. over four months, which is how long it takes to get out 10,000 cds, thats another $640.00 (for those bad at math, 16 weeks in 4 months, you go out twice each week and make $20, thats $20 times 32)
total earnings for 4-6 months work
cds=$3330.00 if sold for $1 each
shirts=$10,000.00 if sold for $5 each
jar tips=$640.00 if you made $20 all 32 times you went out.
TOTAL: $13,970.00 for 6 months of HARD work. not including all the connections you get from giving out 10,000 cds which lead to paid shows and more sales.
so after expenses you make about $9,000. cus its $1000 for all the cds, and $3000 for all the shirts.
YOUR TIME IS WORTHLESS UR NOT FAMOUS YET. so im not including that in expenses.
LONG POST. BUT DOES IT MAKE SENSE?
