A live show is the culmination of years of practice, grind, networking, and connecting with fans. It’s… a big deal. Now imagine posting photos from every show on your website. Photos of playing, with fans, load in, sound check. Then post the link on all your socials.
Remember – your website can have links to… your store. Where you have things for sale.
Imagine driving 1000+ people to your site every night, and then selling a few shirts. Or a record or two?
You do realize all the websites that cover shows are making money off you, right? They get on social media, “hey, check out our photos of so and so from last nights show in NYC!” They drive traffic to their website where they have banner ads, and prominent links to their Patreon site.
That could be you. You could be getting those eyeballs, turning casual listeners into rabid fans. Rabid fans buy merch.
The “content” you’re making sits on your socials. Yes, it looks pretty, but it could be working for you long after you leave the 3rd stop on your tour. Sell $100 per night through your website over 20 nights, thats $2000. Instead of just getting 2000 likes.
And here’s the thing – you don’t even have to do this yourself.
Since you’ll still be posting your thoughts and photos and all that to socials, you could have someone build those posts every night, without a lot of input. Let them curate the band’s photos, and maybe some social media posts from those in attendance.
Post the link on socials the next day, and drive a few hundred people to your site.
Hire someone (like me) to manage and build that. Make some money. Or, fuck, take this idea and do it yourself!
Just stop shoveling all of your life work onto social media for the likes, and the engagement, thinking the algorithm will magically make you go viral and somehow you’ll sell a shirt.
Note: this post started off as an off the cuff Twitter rant (here), which I then copied and pasted into WordPress. This post can now be updated, linked to, and read for years to come. Turn your social media posts into evergreen bits of magic on your own site!