In this video, the speaker outlines a wide array of ancillary income streams that musicians can pursue beyond traditional music sales. He emphasizes leveraging personal expertise to write books, securing TV and reality‑show appearances (and negotiating music placement within those shows), producing low‑budget YouTube series, and encouraging artists to help their entourage launch businesses modeled after Rick Ross’s franchising approach. He also mentions high‑risk financial activities such as day trading, Forex, cryptocurrency, and Amazon store ownership, while cautioning against their volatility. Additional ideas include creating comic books or graphic novels, and using print‑on‑demand dropshipping services (Merchly, Printful) for merchandise without upfront costs. Throughout, he stresses that generating ancillary revenue is essential to fund marketing, promotion, and ultimately achieve profitability in a music career.
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Hey everybody, so have you Googled all of the different ways that you can make money as a musician, as an artist, as a rapper? Um, there are a ton of ways, many of which I've discussed over the past, um, 2 months. Um, but I haven't touched on ancillary income, um, and today I want to talk about mostly books and TV appearances. Um, and wow, I didn't comb my hair yet. Um, you can write a book about something that you have knowledge on, and we all have different things that we've done in our lives that have led to having specific, specific knowledge, right? Like for me, I can write a book on how to get a record deal because I've done a bunch of record deals. I can write a book on how to make money with your music because I've helped a lot of rappers become millionaires independently. Um, you can write about anything that you have knowledge or anything that you've done a lot of research on and sell it. Um, you can also do TV appearances. You can become part of— and I cringe when I say this because I really hate reality shows— but you can become part of a reality show provided you're not out of character, provided you're not to look like a buffoon, and provided that you're not made to look like you're being inauthentic. Um, there are just other ways besides just recording music to make money. And of course, we've talked about getting your music into film, TV, video games, um, advertising. But if you're going to appear on a reality show or any kind of TV show, then there there's no reason why you can't negotiate to have your music put into that show as part of your payment, right? Um, I have a client that is filming his own TV series right now for YouTube, and he's coming out of pocket to film it. He's doing it very cost-effectively. He got together with people that he met in his life and on Instagram um, somebody that was willing to put up the filming and the editing, another person that was willing to contribute their writing, um, different actors that were willing to be part of this project because they believed in it. And he will put it up on YouTube and he will promote it using his fame and the money he's making from his independent rap career. And he's pushing forward hoping that that will catch on and that people will watch it and share it with each other. Um, he's also started other companies. He started a landscaping company for one of the, um, guys in his entourage to run so that they could make money. And he's building that not because he's tired of handing out money to his boys, but because he wants everybody to be able to run a company the way he's running his record label and building his career. He's helping the guys around him find meaningful and gainful employment where they can make money, and he's just, he's just bankrolling it. Um, Rick Ross was the first rapper— I mean, a lot of rappers have done this, but Rick Ross was the first rapper that I actually heard speak about this, where rather than just give money to his entourage, he actually um, started companies and put them into the, um, GM position so that they were running the businesses for him. Um, Foot Locker, Wingstop— I can't remember what the other companies were, but I just thought that was so brilliant. And I share that with everybody that I work with because it just makes sense. Um, then there's other artists that create income. Um, one of my clients just started day trading, and I don't recommend that you do this because it takes a lot of research and study to get good at this, and it's very, very, very risky. And I'm not suggesting that you should go into another risky business to fund your career in this risky business, but I do have a client that day trades. I have another client that, um, does Forex exchange, um, and I think he studied it for 2 or 3 years before he got into it. Um, I have another client who does something with Bitcoin. I've never really Um, I've never really investigated fully what he does, but I know that he makes money somehow with Bitcoin. He also has a couple of Amazon stores, um, that he markets himself where he makes money. And he's the investor, he's actually not the rapper. He's investing in a rapper out of Ohio. Um, I have another client who's gotten really proficient with business credit, and he's built his company on business credit. Again, that's very high risk. I do not recommend you do something very risky in order to get into an already very risky business, but there are many ways that you can make money with your music and outside of your music, and, um, there's no reason why you can't make comic books and sell them, you know, tell your story about who you are through a comic book. It's just a natural, um, transition in terms of the marketplace of who our, our target market is, um, or a graphic novel, you know, do something different, do something where you can either bundle it with your music or you can sell it separately to your fans. All of my clients set up merch stores immediately. I didn't used to do that. I used to believe that you had to have a really large following in order to sell merch, and then I stumbled upon, um, Merchly and Printful. And I forget which one you can set up through Spotify, but I do have a video from this 2020 series on that. I can't quite remember how far back it was, but it's there. We're talking about merchandise and we're talking about setting up, um, dropshipping so that you don't have to come out of pocket to print t-shirts, but there's a lot of ways that you can make money with your music and outside of music, things that can really advance your career. Because the one thing I think that this 2020 series has conveyed to you is that this is not a free industry. You need money to be able to market and promote and to build your career. And the closer you can stay to music to do that, the better it is, because then your time isn't being spent in a completely different industry or learning something completely different, it would just be really awesome if you made money with your music. All of my clients do, and we're getting to the point where they are going to break even, and then everything going forward will be profit. And that is the goal. Okay, guys.
