So the time has come for another income report. First of I would like to say thank you to all of you who are posting your results here on EagleCinematics.
It’s the only place I know of where this is happening so openly. It’s really awesome as it gives us all an idea on where to upload and sell our music.
The results
I now have a total of 18 tracks on-line. Here are my total sales since I started composing and selling stock music in February 2012:
Pond5 has sold 8 tracks – $140
Revostock has sold 14 tracks – $211
Productiontrax has sold 10 tracks – $305
Affiliate earnings from the music libraries – $98
In total $754 in sales
So whats happened the last 6 months?
First of you probably noticed the new design on EagleCinematics. I thought is was time to bring the site into the new millennium and this is the result. I’m quite happy with it and are working on getting the last details sorted out.
After the “re-launch” I have set my mind to writing new articles at a more regular basis . This should make it worth you’re time to visit EagleCinematics more often.
Right now I’m really fired up about the whole music thing and this will be reflected here on the site and hopefully in the sales. The following month all my time will be spent on stuff that has to do with royalty free music.
Affiliate websites VS royalty free music
Again most of my time these last 6 months have been spend on my affiliate websites. It’s totally unrelated to royalty free music, but thought I would share these results anyway.
This month my affiliate earnings will be be landing above the $2500 mark. I am also in the process of recreating one of my most successful sites (running on my own CMS) in WordPress. This takes a lot of time as all of the ~130 articles has to be re-written. Getting the new site up with good pictures and so on also takes up some time.
The downside to this is that the royalty free music did not get as much focus as I would have liked. I’m still on track to make 50 pieces of high quality stock music within the end of the year, but my original goal of a 100 sure would have felt better.
Given that the next month will be spend on promoting and creating royalty free music I will also be uploading my music to new libraries. Including Themusicase, LuckStuck and Zukkio.
Affiliate vs. royalty free music is an ongoing battle at my place, but for the next moth royalty free music will win in work-time spent – thats for sure.
…by the way “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield was a pretty good kick in the bud thanks for recommending it in the comments Ken 🙂
I wish you all the best in your selling your stock music
Given that most of you commenting are making more than me (flushing) please keep posting your results here on the site. One day I’m sure I will be king of the sales stats 😉 but I need more tracks for start.
On that note I’m off now to compose some new high quality corporate tracks to boost my sales and writing some good articles for EagleCinematics.
Love the new look! Am curious about your affiliate side. Where does one do this?
Glad you like the new design. Still some tweaking to be done, but its coming along. There’s a lot of stuff to know when it comes to making successful affiliate websites. In short it goes like this when I do it:
1) You find a great topic to write about, preferably something you know a lot about. The topic has to be about something where there are affiliate products to sell. The ideal topic has low competition and high demand in the search engines (very hard to find).
2) You pick a good domain name and buy space at a web hosting company. I use HostGator myself.
3) Create a search engine optimized website. The best system to use these days are WordPress, easy to install and user friendly. WordPress also has a ton of great plugins, but it has to bet set up right to get the best results.
4) Sign-up to an affiliate network. I like using Commission Junction. Lots of programs, pays on time and has an easy to use website.
5) Start writing keyword targeted articles that will hopefully show up in the search engines. In these articles you then place affiliate text links from Comission Junction. If a user clicks on your link >> ends up buying a product in the web-shop you referred them to >> you are paid a commission. The commission can either be a percentage of the sale or a fixed amount.
6) You then build links to you site. This will again help your ranking in the search engines.
7) Market you website online on other sites like, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc.
8) Repeat points number 5-7 like crazy and if you got it all right you will start making some sales.
If you want more info on the whole affiliate and online marketing thing I can recommend http://www.smartpassiveincome.com. Damn good site run by a nice guy 🙂
nice new layout!
and congratulations for your earnings.
you don’t have a lot of files online, yet you achieve nice sales.
i’m wondering why at productiontrax and revostok no one is buying my files… 😀
Thanks Matteo 🙂
Yes my tracks sell quite well. It’s mostly my corporate tracks that sell on Revostock. My Productiontrax sales seems to have come to a stop after they change their search algorithm a couple of months ago. Now I only get a few views every week.
At the moment I simply try to make tracks that are just as good or better than the best selling tracks at pond5 or Revostock – That strategy seems to work.
Hey Anders nice site re-design. This is actually Ken who recommended the “War of Art” book, glad you got something out of it. InLight-Tone is my library “stage name”.
Congratulations on making so much with your affiliate marketing. I ran 4 sites that were related and never managed to get past the $1000 a month mark, though I sold them last year as a package on Flippa for $6500 so all in all it wasn’t too bad.
I’ve been trying to devote myself to music completely but not doing well so far. Almost makes me want to try the internet marketing again!
Thanks, it’s pretty cool when you can buy a new professional design for $80. It did take some time to get it as I wanted, but compared to doing a new design myself it was a bargain.
I also think it’s quite hard to make money from stock music. Basically it takes a lot of time to create our product which is good music. With affiliate marketing you can mostly focus on what it’s all about – selling. When I hit 50 tracks I will start spending more time on promoting the tracks. Right now I sure would like to have more than 20 tracks to promote.
Focusing on music is so much more fun than promoting other people products, but a combination with another income stream seems wise. Some people have told me that making a living from stock music can’t be done – I am still determined to prove them wrong. 🙂
With stock music I think it’s like every other businesses endeavour – it’s an uphill battle at first. You see almost no money, but then slowly you reach a tipping point and the ball starts rolling (most people just give up before they reach that point).
Yeah, it’s really hard to sell stock music! Sometimes I just want to give up when I read that you should have at least 500 tracks on multiple libraries to make a living! Now, Im 30 years old, if I want to have 500 tracks with my actual situation (working full time) and make 1 track per week, I would need 10 years…… 🙁 quite depressing… but I still can’t see myself stopping composing so I guess I’ll continue!
You can try and take a look this new article I just published How many tracks do I need to make a living selling music? – might help you get a different view on things 🙂
Ah! Thanks! Just what I needed! Makes me feel better! So corporate music has the best sales? Mmh i’m gonna look into that!
Well… August was below $200 again because I had no wide sales. And I still have no sales from several sites I thought would bring in some. Guess it doesn’t hurt to stay with them. Lots of hits on Tunesociety but no sales. Audiojungle, Pond5 and Musicase still seem to do best. I dropped Musiko because they never replied to my uploads.
AUGUST 2013 Total:$143
909 Music
Audiojungle:$48
Audiomicro:
BuyStockSound:
Luckstock:
Million Duck:
Musicase: $36
Pond5: $45
Productiontrax:
Revostock: $14
Soundcheque:
Tunefruit:
Tunesociety:
YouLicense:
Zukkio:
It would be nice for you to see more money for all the work you have done uploading and tagging, but I’m sure you will hit a $200+ month if you carry on. Are you also seeing some of you tracks getting the most sales on different libraries? Three of my tracks seem rather popular – the rest not so much.
Not a real solid trend but there are a few songs that seem to sell more than others. Some have surprised me.
I am posting this here because i could not find a suitable section.
it is a copy-paste from a comment on audiojungle forum (http://audiojungle.net/forums/thread/4-days-straight-without-a-sale-/109548?page=3#895829) saying how google research algorhytm could affect royalty free sales…:
actually, i must say that in august/september i saw a sudden decrease of sales in AJ, while my SFX sales on pond5 increase (several sales but few money involved!). no sign of lifes from other websites, beside 1 sale on revostock in september…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Penguin
Basically, Google recently changed and, now, are periodically rolling out updates to their search algorithm, potentially affecting online businesses across the board. Presumably they’ve done this to favour their own advertising, links, platforms, etc.
Just search for ‘Google penguin update’, and you’ll quickly discover the negative impact it’s already had, with many online businesses being completely wiped out by it and reports of lives ruined. The SEO work Envato must commit to, in order to stay on top of this must be tremendous, and personally I think they’re doing a great job of keeping the engine running.
Quite a few other sites I sell on have been hit pretty hard to the point where I’ve been affected personally and sales have almost completely stopped for me and other composers alike. I have my own data charts showing a sudden and steady decline of sales on these other sites, since the Penguin updates started rolling out.
Just goes to show how important it is to keep an eye on these things if depending on selling online as it can all change in an instant.
Yes it’s very important to spread your investments when it comes to earning money online. Don’t use all your time and money in getting SEO traffic from Google. If you only have traffic from one source you might end up loosing it all, from on day to another.
Getting traffic from more than one source will also lead to mere sales and make you business more robust to change. I try to send targeted traffic to the music libraries from YouTube, Twitter, SoundCloud and of-cause this blog.
By the way, building an e-mail list with your customers is one of the best ways to market you products and make sure you’re not dependant on others when is comes to making money in your business.
The post above is another reason why I don’t plan on going exclusive with one music library. The old saying “don’t put all you eggs in one basket” is still good advice 🙂
Well, Sept income was the best yet but only because I had a $150 payout from a deal through Film Music Network, my first one, for use of a simple piano blues piece in a corporate video for a large healthcare company. Odd… some sites continue to yield no sales. October is next!
SEPTEMBER 2013 $289
909 Music:
Audiojungle:$59
Film Music Network:$150
BuyStockSound:
Luckstock:
Million Duck:
Musicase:$36
Musiko:
Pond5:
Productiontrax:
Revostock:$34
Soundcheque:
Tunefruit: $10
Tunesociety:
YouLicense:
Zukkio:
I had 83$ from pond5 – 17 sales. I had several SFX here and SFX collections that are getting some attention… 🙂 beside low cost sfx i also sold some songs and logo/idents
36$ from audiojungle (9 sales)
13.5$ from revostock (1 sale)
no sign of life from productiontrax
on musicrevolution i discovered i have 4$ earnings from streaming
Here is my income break down for October. So far I’m averaging about $225/month. Okay, but still would like to see more. Today I’m going to sign up non-exclusively (with help from Music Library Report) on some more places and see how they do.
OCTOBER 2013 Total: $208
909 Music: 0
Audiojungle: $53
Film Music Network: 0
BuyStockSound: 0
Luckstock: $13
Million Duck: 0
Musicase: $12
Pond5: $43
Productiontrax: $23
Revostock: $61
Tunefruit: 0
Tunesociety: 0
YouLicense: 0
Zukkio: 0
I can see why you would like to see more income. When you consider all the work you have put into composing, uploading, tagging and so on, it does not seem like that much money. But if it was easy I guess every musician would do it. We just have to keep working at it.
Thanks again for keeping us all updated on your progress 😀
By the way I made a total of $149 last month (now 26 tracks online) so at least it’s going in the right direction.