How to Make Money with Ringtones
An estimated 9 out of 10 Americans carry a cell phone. Worldwide, there are about 2 billion cell phones in use. Out of all the groups that use cell phones, it is the teens that are growing the ever expanding cell phone market. Teens are also a driving force behind ringtone purchases. What do these statistics mean for you? The ability to make money with ringtones.
People are addicted to their cell phones and spend an inordinate amount of time and money personalizing them to their satisfaction. The cell phone ringtone market, alone, generates $5.2 billion dollars in revenue annually. With cell phone technology advancing at the speed of light and more people around the globe using mobile phones, the potential to build a lucrative business selling ringtones is great.
How to Sell Ringtones
Understanding how ot sell ringtones requires that you follow one of two paths: be a content producer or join an affiliate program. The easiest way to get started making money with ringtones is through an affiliate program. Basically, as an affiliate you are a commissioned sales person who drives traffic to a third party site that will pay you a cut of the profits each time someone purchases a ringtone.
Selling ringtones as a content producer can potentially earn you more money but also entails a lot more work. You have to cut the ringtones yourself, save them in a usable format (which can vary by phone) and then get them uploaded to the website for people to download. And unless you are selling original content, you will have to secure permission from the artist in order to legally use their work which usually means paying them royalties.
Making Money as an Affiliate
To make money as an affiliate, you must first sign up with an affiliate program. Several companies exist on the market that will pay you good money for each referral you send to them. Some specific recommendations are Azoogleads, Funtonia and MediaPlazza. Go to their websites and sign up for an account.
Next, once you have an affiliate account you will need to set up a website from which to start selling ringtones. Some affiliate programs will provide you with a subdomain of their site that you can use. However, it is best that you use your own site on your own domain. That way, you can control how it looks as well as add other things, like Google Ads or other affiliate products, that will generate more money for you.
The last step is to generate traffic to the site. You can find some suggestions on how to do that below.
Making Money as a Content Producer
To make money as a content producer you will first need to create ringtones to sell. To accomplish this you need an audio editing program. There are several high quality programs on the market such as Garage Band and Adobe Audition. However, if you are low on funds the freeware program, Audacity, will do just fine even though it doesn’t have as many options as the premium programs.
Use the audio editing program to cut a 30 second slice of the audio file you are using. With songs, the chorus is often the best place to get a 30 second sample. However, use your own sense of creativity to cut the music in a way most people would enjoy listening to it each time their phone rang. Save the sample as an MP3 file. The majority of newer cell phones support this file format.
Once you have finished creating your ringtones, it is now time to start selling them. Your best option, especially if you are not web savvy, is to create an account with a third party host, such as Myxer or Lulu. They will allow you to sell your ringtones through their site for a cut of your profits which is a good deal since they will handle the payment and downloading of the ringtone.
How to Drive Traffic to Your Website
The majority of your effort will go towards marketing your website. Even though ringtones are a popular item, you will be competing against many other ringtone website owners for those dollars. A few ways to drive traffic to your website:
- Search Engine Optimize your website for keywords relating to the ringtone you are selling. Most people use search engines like Google to find their favorite songs so it is important that you do all you can to make sure your site shows up in the search engines.
- Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns through Google, Yahoo and Bing are also good ways to drive traffic to your site. Just be careful and learn about using PPC effectively otherwise you could end up wasting a lot of money and getting no results.
- Writing articles and submitting them to directories is a good way to get the attention of interested readers. Additionally, you will build links back to your site which will help your site rank better in the search engines.
- Try to generate word of mouth recommendations. You can do this by hosting a contest or offering something for free, such as cell phone wallpapers, which will draw people to the site.
- Watermark YouTube music videos with links to your website. When people watch the video, they will see your link and visit.
Legalities
It is important to note, once again, that you must secure permission from the artist before using their work to create ringtones. Failing to do so can result in you being slapped with a copyright infringement lawsuit. To get this permission, you will usually need to send a letter to the artist care of their recording label. Do a search on the internet to find the appropriate addresses.
Though there is a lot of competition in this industry, it is possible to make good money selling ringtones. Just work hard, keep your nose clean and you’ll be generating a regular flow of cash in no time.