© 2010 Vinny Ribas
Quite often when you’re on the road you find yourself with off nights, fays free, long drives in between gigs. Here are some ideas to increase your income while on the road. [private_freebie]
- Offer to perform a free concert for a nonprofit if you can sell your CDs.
- Perform at house concerts. If you can’t find an established one, ask some of your fans to hold them at their own homes. Teach them what to do.
- Conduct a workshop or clinic on your area of expertise. Depending on the nature of your workshop, try to set it up through a local songwriter’s association, musician’s union, music store etc.
- Perform at a school, Boys and Girls Club, nursing home or other organization that has a small entertainment budget. After all, this is only supplemental income.
- Give private guitar lessons, voice lessons, songwriting lessons etc. Use YouTube and other social networks to broadcast a video of your playing, singing, songwriting etc, and then set up one-on-one appointments.
- Bring a compact product to sell at a local flea market (jewelry, leathercraft etc.). Find the right product and you can make some decent money. Have a boombox set up to sell your music as well. If you have several different CDs and your own merchandise, you may not need another product to sell.
- Offer to drive someone from one of the towns you’re playing in to the next. Check out websites like www.pickaride.com.
- Have extra room in your vehicle? Offer to transport something for someone else. In other words, be a private courier service.
- If the venue has a great happy hour crowd, offer to play acoustically for free or for a very small amount ($25?) for an hour in order to sell CDs and attract more people to your evening performance.
- Look for public events like small or large fairs, festivals, other celebrations etc. and volunteer to play in order to sell CDs and merchandise. Schedule this far ahead of time!
- If you have a songwriting track record, conduct one-on-one, paid song critiques.
- Don’t forget that you can run an internet-based business from the road as well.
What are talents do you have that can you put to good use while you’re on the road? Get creative! There’s money looking for your pockets everywhere you turn![/private_freebie]
