Budgeting your Music Business: Time VS Money
Today’s blog post is all about budgeting your music business. I think a lot of producers trying to make some money online forget that budgeting your business is one of the biggest keys to success in any industry. The fact is if you are strapped for cash it’s very important that you put your money in the direction of the most effective possible investments.
What you want to think about is actually how you can put in more work and spend less money. This is an interesting concept because the rich businessman will have no trouble dropping huge amounts of money investing into their business and forcing success through sheer numbers. However you may find that this same businessman ends up spending $1,000,000 to make $1,250,000 for instance, when in reality a smarter entrepreneur with the same amount of money could probably turn $1,000,000 into $10,000,000.
So what makes the difference between such a person who succeeds more than another person with the same budget? The truth is that it comes down to two important factors (well, among others). There are just two ways to make money from what I’ve seen, and that’s either spending TIME or MONEY. But in my opinion, you never want to spend too much money when you could be investing your time, and vice versa.
Time is worth more than money, sure. You can always earn more money or spend it but time is something that is constant and never changes. You can’t buy back time and there’s no way to get a refund either. But sometimes if you’re just starting out, you need to spend more time than money. Why do you think I might say that? The answer is obvious: because sometimes when you’re starting out you simply don’t have any money.
The only thing you got working for you when you’re broke and unable to spend money on your business is an abundance of time. Assuming your home life isn’t too chaotic that is. I think everybody has problems but with good sleeping habits and work ethic you can overcome a chaotic life and still get work done. Just a couple hours of hard, focused work can be enough to get you started (though I would recommend spending more time than that).
Budgeting your music business is all about how you can gain as much success as possible from a limited amount of money and time spent. Personally I think that automation is the way to go. You can easily purchase software or bots to help you build your business numbers. Our article on Twitter Marketing covers some software that you can use to achieve results on Twitter. Another software we like using is described in the article we wrote about promoting yourself on Soundcloud.
But aside from that there is one investment that is sure to help you achieve in your business: a website built for you that enables you to build your very own email list. If you don’t have a website ready that has all the proper email opt-in forms, social media boxes and more, then you are probably not going to achieve the same kind of success you were hoping for.
Even if you can’t afford to purchase a beat selling website (as you may know we offer web design at ConvertingLayouts.com for music producers and artists), then at LEAST get yourself an email marketing service. The one I just linked to is my favorite one of all, especially if you’re just starting out and don’t have many resources. You can build DIY email opt-in pages that can act as your own website while you get the funds up for investing into your own web design.