What's up guys it's Tom welcome back to another video today I want to talk to
you guys about a little website called sound better now there are a ton of
different ways that we as musicians used to make money on the Internet these days
right there's all kinds of websites where you can sell beats where you can
sell sample packs you can upload your music to Spotify you can go out put
music you can do all kinds of stuff one of the ways that I use is a website
called sound better and what it is is it's a platform that connects musicians
and creators with studio session players mix engineers producers mastering
engineers all across the board you can work with somebody from every corner of
the globe you can work with people with no credits all the way up to people who
have worked with like Kanye West and The Killers and you name it tons of heavy
hitters on the website everything in between I've been on sound better for a
few years now and in that time I have as a premium provider racked up over 200
five-star reviews I've been very successful at it I had a ton of clients
from literally every continent in the world and I want to share with you some
of the ways I think you can succeed on sound better calm from scratch having
never had a profile and get to a point where you are earning a decent income
from it on a monthly basis like I do is that being said let's dive into the
website and I will show you a few simple things I think can help you to succeed
and make some money on sound better so first things first we're on the main
page here we're on the home page the first thing you gotta do is you gotta
set up a profile I'm gonna go to my profile real quick and show you what it
looks like so here we are on my profile it's pretty self-explanatory when you
get into the back end of it you can do everything in there you'll go to edit
profile and it will have all of these steps laid out that you can fill out my
main bullet point is this fill out everything literally everything there is
a huge questionnaire at the bottom down here that goes on seemingly four days
fill it out fill out every single question there is a little micro blog
over here where you can do updates fill it
out post updates think of it as another social media platform like Twitter or
Instagram or anything else just say a little something what's up had a good
week whatever the point is fill out everything all the way up here fill out
all your gear fill out all your genres Terms of Service everything all in your
bio be original be creative be thoughtful you have to remember that
when people come to your profile the thing that they are looking for is
information about who you are about what you've worked on about what you've done
about whether or not they're gonna be able to work with you and I can tell you
that in my experience your credits while helpful are just about the least
important thing that people care about what they care about is do you seem
personable and do you have a lot of really good comments and 5-star reviews
that's what people care about and then on top of that what is the music you
have posted sound like does it sound like something they want their music to
sound like which leads me to my next point number two on your profile Mitch
down on the things that you are good at be multi-faceted and what you offer
within those things but niche down don't say I sing country but I program
EDM or I mix hip hop but I play speed metal guitar pick a lane and then within
that Lane you can do several different things so me for example I have listed
that I work on EDM electronic heavy rock pop pop rock rock and soundtrack by and
large pretty big and epic stuff then within those genres I have live drum
track that's my specialty but then I produce a mix I master can
build tracks all within that stuff and then the audio samples I have listed
support that in fact me personally I could probably use an update on my audio
samples to make them even more narrowly focus into the things that I do well I
don't want somebody come into my profile wondering what it is that I do it should
pass a very simple grunt test like this guy do oh well it's pretty clear it
should be that simple so fill out the whole thing niche down and then pick the
things you want to offer within your niche step 3 apply for a premium
membership out of the gate now this may seem kind of counterintuitive but
explain why this is important when you sign up for a profile there are two
tiers on the sound better you can have a free profile which anybody can create
and then there is a premium profile which costs $39 a month if you pay it on
a monthly basis the premium profile gives you access to things like the job
board which is right here where you can bid on work that other people post so if
someone comes to the website and says I need mixing for one song you can bid on
that along with other people and you might win that job and then you've got a
new client so it gives you access to people who don't come to you directly
you can meet a client on the job board rather than them finding your profile
and coming directly to you that still happens but this is another Avenue and
the second thing is you appear higher in search results just for the fact of
being a premium provider you're not guaranteed a spot at the top but all of
the premium providers the chunk will appear all of above all of the free
providers in search results so it's worth it however there's a catch you
don't get to just buy a premium membership because then it would flood
the market and no one would ever get any work so they create a supply and demand
method whereby they see if there's a gap in the supply of providers who do a
specific thing like let's say you play accordion and there's like one dude on
here who's a premium provider for accordion but there have been ten
accordion jobs on the job board in the last month they're probably gonna
greenlight another - accordion providers so that they can fill that demand with
supply very simple if you're not in the queue waiting to be greenlit for premium
you're not gonna get it so my advice is to go ahead and apply for premium hop in
the wine and then when they get to you you'll go through an interview process
they'll determine whether or not you're the right fit to be a premium provider
for the platform but you want to go ahead and get in the wine because it
takes a while to get to that interview process sometimes it can take months
I know people who it's taken over a year to finally get that interview so once
your profile set up get in line number four this is where we start really
playing the game you've set up your profile you have filled everything out
correctly you've niche down you know exactly what it is that you do and
you've applied for premium status now is the time when you start proving to
the algorithm on sound better and the sound better crew that you're worth
being a premium provider while at the same time you position yourself in the
best possible way to start earning clientele through the website without
being a premium provider and how do you do that well the first way to do that is
to get all of your existing clientele anybody you've worked with in the past
anybody you've worked on projects with not necessarily somebody who's paid you
but say you're a producer and you have worked with other guitar players or
drummers or you're a bass player and you've worked with a producer or a mix
engineer or an artist have all of those people come to your profile and leave
you a five-star review on your profile because even though the unverified which
we'll get to in a minute five-star review doesn't affect the algorithm it
does look really good in search results when you go to search results every
providers thumbnail shows up with a few key things on it I'll go to producers
and we'll just use this as an example so you've got what it is that you do you've
got your name where you're from and then immediately under that is a number of
five-star reviews you have that matters the number of five-star reviews you have
makes a big difference so you want to get everybody you can to come and give
you an endorsement on your profile because those endorsements will show up
underneath your profile picture and zero reviews looks far worse than just one so
make sure you get a few and if you can get 20 people to endorse you twenty five
star reviews out of the gate looks amazing so have your current and
previous clients come and leave you an endorsement in the form of a five star
review one sound better as soon as you get your profile set up and then number
five this is the last one and this is the most important one in my opinion
start routing all of your current business through sound better now here's
the rub with this sound better takes 8% of everything so you only make 92 cents
on the dollar for every dollar you earn they take five percent to run their site
which i think is totally fair and then they take three percent to pay faithful
fees which also is totally fair a meeting out of the gate if you start
routing all of your existing clients health you sound better you're losing a
cents on the dollar which sucks I
especially if you're tight but you're playing the long game and the long game
is pushing your profile towards the top so that you can start winning new
clients through the website that's the goal the goal is to get into a position
where new people are coming to you through this platform so you want to
leverage your existing work to make that happen so if we go to session musicians
which is where I am I'll show you what I mean on the session musician page I am
the number one person this is not rare for me it's not always the case
sometimes I'm in the top four sometimes I've gotten down into the top eight and
even the top 12 but by and large for the most part I am on the top row and it's
usually in the number one spot and this is for a few different reasons even
though as you can see I don't have the most reviews I did for a long time but I
don't anymore dan from ok go little ban who's only
sold millions of records has the most reviews on our page right now there are
a few of us who are all sort of in the same category dan Jason Nate the four of
us are kind of all vying for the same position that plus 200 reviews right now
and we all sort of inner space but as you'll see Marcelo has 64 reviews but
he's number three it's because Marcelo has been active the reason this is is
because sound sound better works on an algorithm and the way that algorithm
works is it takes into account when did you last complete a job how many jobs
have you completed in the last 30 days how many verified five-star reviews have
you gotten recently what's your job success rate not every job ends in
getting paid some clients are really really hard to work with and it just
doesn't work there are a ton of other factors that all play into where do I
end up in the search results and if Google has taught us anything it's that
if you're not on the first page you might as well not even be there these
top eight spots on any given page are the people who are going to get the most
work for the most part it's not always the case
and it's gonna change out but if you can consistently stay in the top eight it's
huge it does you so many favors to be towards the top of the page get as many
verified reviews as you can route all of your business through there because what
will happen is you will start to rise to the top more new clients will find you
and then when it comes time for an additional
premium provider to be added to your specialization you are going to be
towards the top of that list of consideration put yourself in a position
to be greenlit for premium and then you can bid on jobs and then the whole thing
is open to you this is what's worked for me as you can see I've got over two
hundred five star reviews on here I've been active on here a long time I'm on
here every day I get new clients through here every week it's been very very
helpful for my career so I hope this helps you to do these things I'm not
gonna say guarantees your success in the platform but it's gonna put you in the
best possible position to succeed on it and that's what you want to do if you
like this video hit the like button hit the subscribe button let me know what
you think about it in the comments if you have any questions about this video
if you have any questions about sound better things I didn't answer let me
know in the comments I try to respond to every single one of them that's it for
this one thanks for watching and I will catch you next time peace
you