US$750,000 for Jamaican Dancehall and Reggae Artiste and How to drive Traffic to your YouTube Page

Streaming in Jamaica has hit a snag, it seems.

Like our American counterparts, many music producers are claiming that they're not making enough money from their content, be it Music Audio or Video online, as the traffic level is too low as reported in the article “Streaming sites hit sour note with local musicians”, published Sunday, March 01, 2015 by Steven Jackson The Jamaica Observer.   

To quote Administrative Director at music promotion outfit Headline Entertainment, Carlette Deleon, pennies are apparently not considered money, even though they are US pennies, quote: “It is certainly a cause for concern that it is only pennies on the dollar. Advertise­supported and subscriber­based [payment] for Spotify, Pandora and even Youtube are not very lucrative for innovative artistes, or even big artistes as Taylor Swift demonstrated when she pulled her music from Spotify. We are in a state of flux...we need to find a new paradigm”.

This is a concern that many musicians and Artiste in Jamaica expressed at the Changing Business of Music forum held at the Mona School of Business and Management in Kingston on Tuesday February 24^th 2015.

But the truth is that the music producers mentioned in the article are really just lazy and the musical clients that they represent are equally lazy. YouTube and streaming services are a fairly good source of revenue for artiste even as they promote the artist work to their fans online as noted in my blog article entitled “YouTube and the Lyrics Videos Trend - How Lyrics Videos ride the Streaming Trend as Musicians Cash in on Sing-Along Craze”.

Not to mention they don’t known the value of Money! Plus, if it’s merely pennies, wouldn’t it logically imply that if you increase the number of views, you will get dollars?

The trick to making money from YouTube and in fact any URL is Traffic.

Jamaican Artiste and YouTube Streaming Revenue - Small Axe fall Big Tree

The truth is, while earning money from touring makes more money in one go, with Reggae or Dancehall Artiste often being paid upwards of US$500,000 or more for sold-out concerts, that money isn't steady money. It's based purely on securing bookings for gigs abroad as well as selling physical records, song royalties and sponsorship deals, with the bulk of their revenue coming from gigs.

This is not much different from YouTube Content Providers, who make the bulk of their money from direct sponsorships as explained in my blog article entitled “Variety Marissa Mayer's Yahoo Tumblr Partner Program - 30-70 Split to attract YouTube Stars, Value Brands and Grassroots Fans as Youtube's Kingdom Crumbles”.

But while these have the instant gratification of making loads of money, Streaming, especially Video Streaming via YouTube, present an opportunity to continuously make money from content, delivering a steady income each month and a pathway to instant fame as explained in my blog article entitled “Variety Survey says YouTubers more popular than Hollywood Celebrities – Popularity driven by Teenage Fandoms and iCarly Effect”.

Even the example offered by Music Producer Mikey Bennett of artiste Pharrell Williams making US$25,000 (J$3 million) from his hit single Happy that was played only 43 million times actually works against his arguement, quote: “No disrespect, I not interested in Spotify or Youtube. Let me give you a statistic, the song Happy [Pharrell Williams] only received about US$25,000 (J$3 m) in total and was played 43 million times. So let us forget about Spotify. What I want young artistes in Jamaica to do is to...find some coaches, because it is your shows that will make you money”.

Mathematically that works out to be US$0.0005 per Ad per play or US$5 per every 1000 play of the song where an advertisement was displayed. If he got that much traffic per day, he can easily pass US$750,000 per month, which is good money no matter how you slice it.

Please note that no duration was given with this statistic, so I’m not sure if this was achieved within a day or over several months. But if it was in a day, which is more likely, and his video continues to have the same traffic level over the course of days, weeks and months then it’s a testament to the quality of the music video, the song and the artiste and the values that he represents.

More importantly, it's also a product of having such a good fanbase and online marketing, as most likely that YouTube URL had been shared on multiple Social Media Websites, which is a form of Social Media Marketing as explained in my Geezam blog article entitled “Social Media Marketing - Advertising and Marketing in Ja on a Shoe-String”.

Rather than support Music Producer Mikey Bennett this examples points out all that's missing from Jamaican Dancehall and Reggae Artiste. Most Reggae and Dancehall artiste don't have high quality videos on their YouTube Channel or properly named or curated content. Even worse, many artiste often fail to promote their YouTube videos frequently to their followers on Facebook and Twitter as well as advertise their channel.

In short, if more Dancehall artiste had high-quality videos on their YouTube channel like Pharrell Williams and were constantly promoting on both Social Media and Traditional media, then clocking US$25,000 per day or US$750,000 per month would be a regular affair for many Jamaican artiste.

So Dancehall and Reggae Artiste, before you start complaining, you need to get your YouTube Channel and Social Media game in order, as you’re basically throwing away US$750,000 per month by not having a proper YouTube Channel!

How to drive Traffic to your YouTube Page - Making money from Advertising by Proxy

First, before you can make money from advertising on YouTube, you're YouTube account has to be an American YouTube account.

You can get one by either having a friend abroad sign up one for you or logging on to the Internet via a Proxy or a VPN (Virtual Private Network) as explained in my blog article entitled “Surfing the Internet Anonymously using VPN - How to use Streaming Set Top Boxes over VPN”.

Once logged on to the internet via a Proxy or a VPN, you can then sign up as if you're an American, taking care to use a US Mailing Address, preferably for a friend who can receive stuff for you and send them down to you in Jamaica.

Then you have to sign up for Google Ads and choose the payment Option for money made from Google Ads, which can either be via check or payments to your Paypal Account.

Most Jamaican YouTubers didn't think of that before they created their YouTube account. Hence many of them have a regular YouTube account with loads of traffic but no way to monetize it with advertising.

Albeit this is a lot less than what the your creative talent is worth, imagine you had a YouTube URL (Universal Resource Locator), a website, a blog or a download link that got that much traffic in one day. Not only would you be famous, but you'd also have the opportunity to monetize that YouTube URL to make money.

Getting paid can be via a variety of ways, including Paypal Prepaid MasterCard, Payoneer and a host of other Prepaid Cards listed in my blog article entitled “How Jamaican make money online using @Payoneer - @PayPal, @paxuminc, @ecoPayz and @okpaycom Prepaid MasterCard Alternatives”.

Merely read this article and you're all set! Now all you need is original high-quality Video Content.

How to use pay-per-click URL Shorteners –YouTube Videos make money without Google Ads

If you already have a YouTube video and didn't not know that you had to have an American YouTube account to make money from advertising, this next step is for you!

One of the easiest ways to make money is via using pay-per-click URL Shortening services that have a CPM (Cost Per Impression) about US$4 per 1000 ads per day as listed in my blog article entitled “How to become an e-book Publishing House via e-book Piracy - Tablets in Schools sets the Stage for Rampant e-book Piracy”.

Below is a list of URL Shortening services that allows you to make money from posted YouTube videos or other content:

1.      Adfly

2.      Adlock

3.      AdSync

4.      Advli

5.      Cashfly

6.      LinkBucks

7.      ReduceLinks

Once you sign up to these services and follow the instructions within to convert your URL's into shortened URL's, you'll be immediately faced with a problem. Most of these URL shortening websites produce URL's that are a jumble of letters and numbers, like Adfly.

Also, most of them have little or no active tracking of traffic stats. To solve both problems, you'll need to get a registered Bitly account. Bitly is also a URL shortening service, but unlike the ones listed above, it has a unique feature; it allows you make custom URL's.

So the jumble of numbers and letters produced by the URL Shortening services that pay money per click can be further shortened using Bitly. This shortens your Adfly or Linkbucks shortened URL's that are easy to read and enter into a browser, be it on a desktop computer, Tablet or smartphone.

How to get 1000 visit per day on your YouTube Channel – Advertising in Traditional Media Rocks

Once that is done, it just a matter of promoting your shortened Bitly URL for your YouTube channel in much the same way you would promote your shortened URL for your e-book as explained in my blog article entitled “Crowdsourced, Teleworking Flex-work Publishers needed for UWI and High School Students with Tablets in 2014 - How Jamaican Writers can make money via ePub Publishing Books”.

The Best places to post your shortened Bitly URL, believe it or not, are as follows:

1.      Social Media i.e. Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp

2.      Email

3.      Newsletters

4.      Personal Blog or Website

5.      Business Cards and Flyers

6.      Traditional Media i.e. Radio, Television Newspaper

But you need traffic in the thousands of impression per day, not hundreds. To get that level of traffic, you'll need to advertise your shortened Bitly URL.

The cheapest route is in Newspapers and Magazines both locally and Internationally, a technique that also works well for Referral Links, another way of making money online as explained in my MICO Wars blog article entitled “How Jamaicans can make Money from Referral Websites”.

Also, you can advertise your shortened Bitly URL on Social Media, as they have various ad packages, the most popular being:

1.      Facebook

2.      Twitter

3.      YouTube

4.      Pinterest

It'll take awhile, but after several creative, well placed ads showing your shortened Bitly URL in the classified as well as in the front of the Newspaper or Magazine  both locally and Internationally, the money will start rolling in at a rate high enough for you to pay for your ads.

Ditto too for advertising in Social Media, but the costs for placing advertisements is much higher than a Newspaper as their reach is Global and not restricted to the area that the Newspaper has circulation. Also with Newspapers, some days have better circulation than others, typically the Sunday Newspaper.

At that point, it might not be as high as the 43 million views and you might not make US$25,000.  But you'll certainly come very close to that figure whenever you go to withdraw money using your Paypal Prepaid Mastercard, Payoneer Card or just change a good ole’ Paypal cheque.

Remember, Sharing is Caring so share this article with as many of your Reggae and Dancehall Artiste as you can!