As I am writing now I am still in the pre-launch stage for the Greed I$ Good Instrumental Mixtape. Looking through some resources on fiverr.com to help with my launch I thought that this would also benefit other rap artists online with their mixtape launches.
Some of the gigs I have highlighted here in this video and blog are there to help you both in the launch stage and pre-launch stage of your mixtape. All of which include areas such as graphic design, branding, mixtape covers, blog coverage, mixtape distribution and press releases.
Many artists tend to go straight for the really poor quality gigs that will never benefit you like“1000 mixtape downloads and streams” These types of gigs are false and just a waste of your time and effort. Don’t waste your time with these types of gigs, because at the end of the day you are just fooling yourself.
I’d much rather 100 real super fans that actually downloaded my beat tape and liked my music than to see 10,000 fake downloads with no real fans. The pre-launch of your mixtape is very big time to develop a buzz around your mixtape.
Buzz is a better phrase than hype. As hype tends to be more focused with some thing that is false and shady. Building buzz is more of creating awareness and getting others to share your message.
Here are some of the gigs that I believe will help you launch a mixtape the right way the first time round. Paying close attention to your budget but still gaining some thing that has some value and worth.
I have placed most of the gigs on fiverr.com in Pinterest boards just to keep everything tidy in the blog post. Click on the see on the Pinterest button to see all of the gigs on Fiverr
Before I get talking about these Fiverr gigs, I believe that it is in your best interest to make sure that you have your own website or blog to make sure that you have some way of tracking the results. Also, I feel that spending all your hard earned fans to a website that you don’t control or own is a waste of time.
These mixtape sites like Datpiff.com , Hotnewhiphop.com are advertisement driven and are completely dominated by well know rap artist’s, these will divert your fans attention away from your new mixtape. Most of these mixtape websites will give you a download link and an embed link so that you can add your mixtape music player to your website.
This way you can track your results and keep people focused on your music. I have an article that will help you set up a website/blog if you don’t have one already.
Here is a link to show you how to build a WordPress Blog in 15 minutes
I am also a firm believer in the email newsletter over social media any day.
Here is my post about the Email Newsletter System Aweber that I use for my site
Important notice. I am only going on my experience here in this post. Always look for comments/feedback/ date of the last customer, on each of these gigs just to make sure that you get your amounts of money worth. Also, read the description of each gig to understand what you actually get in each gig.
1. Find a Graphic Designer
I am going to break these two down into2 different sections.
A. Will be how to use graphic designers to help you with your launch creating buzz? , and
B. Finding a mixtape cover designer that will meet your vision.
A. Building Brand Awareness With A Mixtape Launch. If you look at most of the major industry rappers like Wiz Khalifa etc. on sites like Datpiff.com they really use all the virtual real estate on the site to help with mixtape promotion.
Even using the website background as a promotional banner. You need to start taking of advantage of this space too. O.k. you might not be able to control the design of your Datpiff page, but you do have control over your Facebook Page, Twitter, website, Youtube and any other social media channel you have.
Try and maximize the value out of these channels as a promotional tool to help build awareness.
Many times I have rap artist’s asking me to check out their mixtape on Twitter, and yet their twitter background has images of Lil Wayne. How can anyone take your music serious when you don’t see yourself as a professional rap artist.
My Website Background During The Mixtape Launch
My Facebook Background
My Twitter Background
Maybe ask your graphic designer on Fiverr to create separate cue cards for the mixtape snippets that you add on Youtube or Soundcloud, just to add variation in your marketing images.
Also with pre-launch marketing, sites like Facebook and Instagram images are everything. Most posts won’t gain any traction without having some images that poke curiosity.
Another reason for a graphic designer here is for creating banners that you might use for advertising purposes. You can also use these banners for advertisements on your own website.
Follow The Corporatethief Beats’s board Fiverr Graphic Designers on Pinterest.
B.Creating A Mixtape Cover
The Mixtape Cover is one of the most crucial aspects of your entire project. Make sure that you pick someone that knows what they are doing or you are just wasting your time. Having a bad mixtape cover will ruin your whole project. Even if it may cost that little bit more for retouches or to start again.
You will be shocked at the amount of talent in graphic design on Fiverr.com.
Not just picking the gigs that actually help create a mixtape cover. There are so many truly talented graphics artist’s that if you approach them about your idea more often than not they can come up with the goods.
Look through examples of their work. Some great graphic designers on fiverr.com may not create mixtape covers before but might be much better than anyone that is advertising gigs as a mixtape cover designer.
Follow The Corporatethief Beats’s board Fiverr Mixtape Covers on Pinterest.
2. Building Buzz with Rap Music Blogs
One of the best ways to build up buzz for your mixtape launch is to get others to share the news. You can only do so much buzz building using your own social channels. There are loads of great rap blogs on Fiverr that will post your mixtape or snippet on their website for only $5. Just make sure you have good quality recordings.
Most bloggers don’t judge if the song is good or not, but having a quality recording is a must !!!! There are many benefits to this. One you are using someone else’s reputation to back your music, You are essentially building your own audience from the influence of the blog owners site, You are creating backlinks to your website, youtube videos, Soundcloud player which give you more search engine visibility.
You are creating more online awareness about you and your brand. Example, if fans were to Google your mixtape or your name, all of these blogs that wrote about will appear in the search results. You building up a relationship with the blog owner. No waiting for the submission process. You are getting real song listens and real views from real blog visitors.
Many of these bloggers will share your music with their social followers which tend to be in the thousands. So you are gaining social followers too if they tag your twitter name in that tweet of that page on their blog. More often than not blogger’s will try to gain reach from your social account too.
So at all times you are getting your brand out there and getting your name in front of the audiences that you need to connect with. It has been said that blogs are like the new age A&R’s. They decide what is hot right now and contribute a large about of promotion major industry artists too.
In the long run, it will be easy for you to get your music heard by labels and other bigger blogs if tons of small blogs have covered your music before.
Follow The Corporatethief Beats’s board Fiverr Rap Blogs on Pinterest.
3. Press Releases
This comes under the same table as gaining coverage on rap blogs with the paragraph above but, it isn’t super targeted directly with rap music. The press release can be a gem if you find the right gig on Fiverr.
A press release distributes your news to all the major news sites in the hope that someone from those sites will pick it up and place it in the spotlight.
Even if you don’t get the major news sites to cover your story, you should at least get some of the smaller websites to send you some traffic to your website, where your mixtape launch is hosted.
First of all, you should have written a very strong biography, a good description of what your music sounds like and links to your website. Always link anything you do back to your website so that you can track the success of that gig. If you link it to a mixtape website you will never know if the gig was worth it.
What I like also about the press release is that it will get a good amount of small blogs talking about you, which in turn, if a label or another bigger blog site were to Google your name they will see that you have built up a brand. Labels and bigger blogs like to see effort and that you are able to market your music.
The gig I have highlighted here is one of the best ones I have purchased and saw a good return on the number of people that came to my site because of it. For five bucks this one was a steal…
Follow The Corporatethief Beats’s board Fiverr Press Releases on Pinterest.
4. Mixtape Distribution
I have only seen a small number of gigs like this on fiverr.com. You need to take note that mixtape distribution is only sending your music to these sites and uploading it in some cases. IT IS NOT MIXTAPE PROMOTION !!!.
Don’t be discouraged if you only get a few listens and views on. At the end of the day, it’s just getting your name on that site. Make sure that you read what the gig says.
In some gigs they only submit your mixtape, other gigs will actually manually add your mixtape to all these sites. You can always spend a little bit of time later building up the view count promoting your mixtape on these other sites later.
The main reason I included this gig is that you are saving so much time. Having to go through all the sign-ups forms and submission processes is so tedious. For five dollars you basically are paying for a virtual assistant to help you with this boring process.
You have to consider getting others to do small tasks like these, as your time can be better spent working on other areas of your music business.
5 Professional DJ Drops
In order to get that true mixtape feel, adding that elusive Dj Drop will really show to your fans that you are serious about your mixtape. It will also show that you have put time and effort into making the most professional mixtape that you can.
I bought my beat tag drop (heard on my beats on Youtube) from knockdhouse.com. Though I bought my tag two years ago before I heard of fiverr.com.
I think it cost me $20 at the time. There are a lot of good Dj’s doing drops on Fiverr.com now for cheap. Make sure get the professional ones with tons of great reviews so that you get good sound quality and it is mixed professionally.
Make sure you are clear on what you want when you order these gigs. Some DJ’s go way over the top with effects, others charge extra for the effects. It’s up to you what you need with your mixtape.
I would advise trying being a little practice with the DJ drop on your mixtape. Like that of letting people know where they can download it.
Other Gigs to you could test
Some gigs you could test on Fiverr are radio stations and podcast spots but in my experience, they were very hit and miss and it was very hard to track if people actually came to my site from that station.
Sure I could assume that a spike in my site stats could prove that it came from that radio spot, but you never truly know. There are a number of podcast spots and Youtube show shout-outs that look like the could be a good idea, but if I honest about these they feel very much like a gamble.
I would prefer to hire a virtual assistant to help you do the really boring tasks like blog rap submission, for a couple of hours to help you with your mixtape launch. You could also get your virtual assistant to help with creating articles and biographies for your press releases.
There are a couple of gigs on Fiverr where you can get people to work for you just a couple of hours. If you can get that person to hit up at least 20 to 30 blogs for you that’s double your promotional efforts for that day.
A funny one to try out, maybe finding like 10 – 20 acoustic singer-songwriters to do covers of your song to make it look more popular 🙂 hahaha.
Follow The Corporatethief Beats’s board Other Fiverr Gigs on Pinterest.
To wrap it up
Just remember to always check the feedback from each person that is providing the gig.
Try looking at the last time someone purchased their gig. Stay away from fake views and plays their just a waste of time and you are just fooling yourself with numbers.
Make sure that you host your mixtape on your own blog so you can track the stats of where people are coming from. Most of the major sites give you a music player and a download link to help you embed your mixtape on your own blog or website.
Check out my link on how to create a website in 15 minutes here if you haven’t already set up a site.
I hope this guide to using fiverr.com to help with your mixtape launch, will benefit you in the long run.
The gigs on these Pinterest boards will change over time so make sure to check the feedback of these gig’s before you buy. If you think this guide might help someone else who is launching a new rap mixtape online make sure to share it with them.
