8 Extra Ways to Make Money with Your Home Studio

The music industry can be really tough especially until you establish your brand and create a customer base.

If you have acquired some gear and skills there are some things that you can do to add to your income and not be fully dependent on your main act.

Here are some ideas of what you can do. We listed 8 ways to make money while you are starting your career in the music industry.

I wouldn’t suggest trying them all at once, of course. Find one that you feel you have the greatest chances of doing right and stick to that for a while.

1 Sell Sounds and Presets

These can be the usual drum hits, sound effects, loop packs or VST presets. Make sure they are of good quality.

To get the ball rolling contact shops to get your packs listed and then contact all the reviewers and news blogs that you can to get some exposure.

Needless to say, the packs that you want to sell need to be top notch in terms of quality so make sure everything sounds good and it’s properly mixed.

2 Offer Mixing and Mastering Services

If you are decent at mixing and mastering there’s no reason not to start offering these services.

To begin with I would suggest you set up some demos of before and after for potential clients to see. Next, it’s a matter of promoting your services and for that, you can begin with sites like soundbetter.com or even fiverr.com.

Before you dive in, make sure that you have a decent pair of studio monitors and again, at least decent mixing and/or mastering skills.

3 Sell Voice-Overs

There are a lot of people that need voice overs for various things like videos, video ads, radio ads. various kind of intros and so on.

To start offering the service you can use a website like voices.com, voicebunny.com or some of the marketplaces presented in the other points.

4 Rent your Studio

If your studio is in a location that you are comfortable to share and to share its location online and you have some nice gear then why not rent a few hours of it?

To promote your studio, one option is to list it on studiotime.io but I wouldn’t rest on that. Try to get into local classifieds and forums as well.

5 Review Stuff

You probably deal with gear on a regular basis and of course, software. So why not review them?

The idea is that you start a blog or YouTube channel, review software and/or hardware and make money with affiliate programs for various shops that sell the things your review.

6 Freelance Writing

If you have some writing skills and you are always in the music industry mags, keeping tabs on what’s going on maybe you should get involved in writing.

To get started start a blog of your own to have writing samples. Then, make a list of potential clients, big blogs, and magazines and email them offering your services.

7 Sell Courses on your Expertise

Maybe you have some expertise is mixing, or mastering, or simply recording. Find some existing courses to see how they are structured. Based on that add your own knowledge and opinions in the mix and create the course.

If you don’t have great followings on your social and website use existing courses platforms to sell the course to benefit from their existing user base. Take a look at skillshare.com, openlearning.com, and udemy.com

8 Start a Podcast

Podcasts are massively popular these days. You don’t need much to start one but you need a decent idea.

Once you have your idea of a good podcast look for potential sponsors. Don’t wait to get popular to do this. Contact your potential sponsors, tell them about the podcast and ask for a sponsorship.