How To Make Money Mixing And Mastering?

If you have a home recording studio you may be wondering, “How To Make Money Mixing And Mastering?” There are several great ways to start making an income with your home recording studio. Let’s take a look.

How To Make Money Mixing And Mastering?

If you are just getting started earning money with your home recording studio the first thing you need to do is Find People That Need Their Music Mixed, mix their music to the best of your ability, and they will tell others about you. Create a website where people can find you, put your portfolio on your website so people can listen to your work, and link your website to social media. Make sure you are networking with people in the business. Mixing and mastering comes in the form of demos for artist, creating original music for sound libraries, jingles for advertising, voice over work, and many other avenues you can take to start earning money tracking, mixing, and mastering in your home recording studio.

Find People That Need Their Music Mixed

So, you’ve got your home studio all set up and feeling confident that you can do a good job tracking, mixing, and mastering for clients and you want to start earning an income with your home recording studio.

Do you think the old saying, “If You Build It, They Will Come.” is true?

Well, my friends I can assure you this saying is not true.

It will be up to you to make the first moves to launch your studio out into the music world where there are thousands of people who can use your services.

You need to find people who need their music mixed.

The best way to do this is to start networking.

What is Networking?

It’s simply talking with people who are in the music business.

Be genuine and set up a lunch meeting or a coffee meet up to discuss life, business, and get to genuinely know people.

Go to local shows and venues and talk with the musicians, venue owners, sound guys, photographers, and anyone who is busy making a living in the business.

Make friends, make connections, and let people know who you are and the services you can provide.

One of the first questions you will be asked is, “What kind of projects have you worked on, or who have you worked with?”

This is where your own website and portfolio will come in handy.

What’s a portfolio?

A portfolio is simply an online resume’ that has a collection of audio and video projects you have worked on that people can view and listen to.

It’s a portfolio of sound samples, tracks, beats, videos, and mixes you have done that music professionals and future clients can check out to see what type of work you do and the quality.

If you want to be a professional and taken seriously you need a website and a portfolio.

Where Do I Find People Who Need Their Music Mixed?

The quickest place to find people who are looking for your mixing, and mastering services is online services that already have a busy list of clients looking for people like you to mix and master their music projects.

Fiverr, UpWork, and SoundBetter are great online services that will allow you to set up an account with them and you can take jobs from online clients and work in the comfort of your own home studio.

Take the jobs you want and pass on the ones you do not want.

I think when you are getting started you would do well to take as many jobs as you can finish on time and do a good job.

You may even start with a discounted rate to make sure you start getting jobs right away.

This is also a great way to start building your portfolio.

Other Online Collaboration Services Where You May Find Work

• Landr
• Splice
• Vocalizr
• Kompoz
• ProCollabs
• Melboss
• BeatStars
• SoundTrap
• WeTransfer
• Social Media

Be sure and check out all of these online services where you may find a good fit for you and your home recording studio.

Start building your portfolio.

Network With Others In The Music Business

Networking is a great way to start introducing yourself and your talents to different people in the Music Business.

We talked some about ways to start doing this with online services.

The old-fashioned way is to get out to local events and be a part of what is going on.

Dress nice, be kind, be honest, be helpful, be genuine, make friends, and let people know who you are and what you are all about.

Never discount someone in the business who may not be your cup of tea.

You never know when or where you will connect later.

Be up front and honest with others in the business.

If they ask you what your experience level is, tell them you have a nice home studio that you are currently booking / looking for clients and are in the process of building your portfolio.

Tell them what your strengths are, your favorite style of music, and any other information that they may enjoy talking about.

Don’t make this all about you.

People love and connect with people who listen and ask good questions and then listen again.

Be humble, be confident, be helpful.

This will be a great opportunity for you to tell others about your website where they can go to listen to your works, (Portfolio), find your contact information, and connect with your studio on social media.

A business card still serves a purpose in today’s world.

It’s a professional way to say this is how you can get ahold of me, and this is my website that you are welcome to check out.

Create Your Own Website

In Today’s Business World You Have To Have A Website.

A website is your online business card that tells everyone who you are, what you do, and a portfolio that shows off your talents and credits.

A website shows that you are a professional, you are talented, and capable of mixing and mastering for your potential clients.

Set up a website with a blog where you can share your experiences, stories, adventures, success, failures, and connect with your future clients.

You will also want to display your Portfolio where people can check out your work.

You can connect your home recording studio and name with social media and when people like your work, your portfolio, products and services, and merchandise they can share you with others on social media.

Having your own website connected to social media is a powerful tool where others can share their experiences, they have had with you.

You can also create YouTube videos of recording sessions and artist interviews to help build up artist and business on your website.

Your website can also be used to recommend products and services that you like.

You will find people will start asking you questions like, “What is your favorite equipment and how do you get that killer sound?

You can answer these questions on your blog and make equipment recommendations.

Did you know that you can also make an income from recommending products on your website?

It’s not hard to build your own website these days and there is some great training available today that will teach you how to build and market your website and blog so that it shows up in the search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others.

You can learn how to bring hundreds or thousands of people to your website every day.

The more people you introduce to your business the more job opportunities you will get.

It just takes a little know how.

Once you know how to build and market your own website, you can help your clients build their own websites also.

Relevant Article: If you want to learn more about building your own website and online marketing check out my Promote Page.

Different Ways To Make Money Mixing And Mastering

• Demos – Every serious musician and singer needs a good demo. Make some good demos and word will get out that you are the person to see for a killer demo.

• Recording – Many singers and musicians want to record their music to create their own album that they can sell at their shows or put online to sell with streaming services.

• Mixing – There are many mixing jobs available online with the services I mentioned above. Also, there are local mixing jobs available with bands and musicians.

• Mastering – If you have the equipment and are good at mastering you will never want for work. There are many mastering jobs available online and with your local bands.

• Promoting – Learn to rank with websites, social media, YouTube, and promote your recording studio, teach others how to promote and earn an income.

• Mix Live Sound – If you love to mix you can find work as a live sound engineer.

• Produce Music For Sound Libraries – Create original music in your home recording studio that can be placed in Sound Libraries to be used in commercials, film and TV.

• Produce Jingles For Advertising – Find work with your local radio station helping them create jingles for local businesses. Build yourself up and work with ad agencies.

• Voice Over Work – You can record, eq, mix, and master voice over work with online services and your local radio stations.

• Create Original Music For YouTube Artist – Work with YouTube artist to create original music for their videos.

• Teach People Music Production – You can give lessons at your home studio teaching your skills to others. Also, you can create digital online PDF lessons and videos that you can sell on your website.

• Produce Beats – Produce original beats that you can sell online to other producers and musicians.

This is just a small list of ideas that you can use to start generating an income mixing and mastering with your home recording studio.

Offer Your Mixing And Mastering Services Online

Above, I mentioned some of the mixing and mastering opportunities available with online services.

Online services are a great way to meet new people, network, and instantly make yourself available to an endless list of clients.

Sure, you may not start out making $100 dollars an hour, but you can start at a discounted rate, do excellent work, and build a list of faithful clients.

If people like you and your work, they will keep coming back for more.

As you get more and more clients you can build out your portfolio and start raising your prices.

It takes a little time to get the ball rolling but if you do excellent work, do the work on time, and maybe even provide a little more than promised you will find your client list start to explode.

The More Services You Offer The Easier It Is To Get Gigs

So, who do you want to work with?

The grouchy guy in the ok home studio who is not friendly and does ok work OR the upbeat, creative person, that can track, mix, master, show you how to promote, create your own merchandise, and build your own website?

I think it’s safe to say we all would prefer to work with the upbeat, friendly engineer who has lots of know-how and can get things done.

The more services you can provide to your clients the happier your clients will be and the more money and repeat customers you will have.

You may or may not know how to do all of these different things and it could be that you only have time to mix and master.

But if you are networking you probably have friends in the business that can help you with some of these tasks.

You will be recommending their services to your clients and guess what?

They will more than likely recommend their clients to you.

This is the magic of networking. You wind up getting extra clients from your connections and they get more clients from you recommending their services.

Sell Your Merchandise

So, you got yourself a little following now.

People like your work, heck, people like you and your home recording studio.

Well, I guess it’s time to create a cool t-shirt, coffee mug, and a ball cap that you can sell to your biggest fans.

No, It’s not cheesy. It’s smart and believe it or not people Love cool t-shirts, coffee mugs, and ball caps.

You can make money from your own merchandise on your own website.

This is also a fun way to advertise and spread the word.

We also talked about creating training courses that teach others how to track, mix, and master.

You can sell your own training right from your own website to help others coming up in the business.

Offer Great Products With Affiliate Marketing

Do you remember above I mentioned that you can recommend great products that you like to others and make a commission when people go and check out the products and purchase them?

This is called affiliate marketing.

Do you remember we talked about creating a blog on your website where you can share your stories, answer questions and recommend products to others?

Part of your training courses may make mention of the products you like.

You can partner with companies who will pay you a commission when you recommend their product or service to others, and they buy the product.

Do you also remember that we talked about training on how to build a website that gets hundreds or thousands of visitors a day?

Think about what this kind of exposure would do for your client list. Also, think about how many potential t-shirt sales, education course sales, and affiliate product sales you could get.

There is a lot of client and sales potential all happening from your own website.

I provided a link above if you are interested in learning more about how to build your own website and how to market your website, so it shows up in the search engines.

People go to search engines everyday.

They go to the search engines because they are looking for information.

When you share a story or information on your blog it will show up in the search engines and draw free traffic to your website 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

That is one heck of a networking plan.

You can draw clients and people who are interested in your products and services with no extra cost to you.

Free targeted traffic with people who are interested in what you have to say.

What Others Are Saying

Direct Quote	Source
“Deliver good mixes fast without too much fuss. Take your own ego out of the process. I’m personally not so great at the social game, but I work hard and I listen very closely to clients, trying to predict what will make them happy with the end product. Also, get comfortable mixing a wide range of musical styles.”	https://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/42pot0/how_do_you_start_making_money_from_mixing/
“The mixing engineer is in charge of the processing and combination of multiple audio signals into one or more channels. The mixing engineer position is generally assumed to be in a studio environment where the engineer has pre-recorded tracks that he or she must mix into mono, stereo, or surround “mixdown” before mastering.”	https://mynewmicrophone.com/ways-to-make-money-in-the-audio-industry/
“Promote yourself/ brand on as many platforms as possible. Fiverr is a great place to offer your services, but you’ll need to build authority online. It would be best to use youtube to your advantage. Learn to rank videos so your brand will receive organic traffic for free. Building a presence on IG is just as important. Keep up to date with the newest social media platforms.”	https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-make-money-online-as-a-mixing-engineer
“If you make a lot of music, you probably have a library of unfinished sounds and tracks that never got put to any use. One way to make use of these unused stems is by turning them into a royalty-free sample pack. There’s countless producers out there that will pay for quality samples available for use in their own productions. All you have to do is compile a pack of 100 or so samples and put it up for sale, either through your own website or with a sample marketplace.”	https://blog.landr.com/how-to-make-money-with-music/
“Library music (also called production music) is the term given to musical pieces, in a wide variety of styles, made available for use on TV, in commercials and films, and so on, by library music companies. It’s not written to order, but chosen ‘off-the-shelf’ by the people who need it, from a large selection.”	https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/20-ways-create-cash-your-audio-gear-skills
“I have found having a “demo” mastering CD is helpful. I also keep the before and after files loaded in my computer for a quick demo. Having a client be able to hear the things you are able to do to improve their mixes goes a long way. I will offer to do one song for no charge. I also do not charge by the hour for mastering unless a client wants to sit in and book the time. I charge by the length of the project. This way the client knows their price and there is no teeth gnashing while they watch the clock.”	https://gearspace.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/25520-how-make-money-how-make-more-money-mastering.html
“Information products are huge in 2022. There are two reasons for that: There’s big market demand. You can sell them digitally. Plus, information products are one of the easiest products to sell. You’ve got the skills. Others are interested in learning them. See where we’re going?”	https://blog.sellfy.com/how-to-make-money-music-producer/

Final Thoughts

So, How To Make Money Mixing And Mastering varies and there are a lot of different ways for you to earn.

I know one sure way to not make money mixing and mastering. That is to never try!

If you have a home recording studio and you are interested in starting to earn money with your home studio, then give it a try.

We talked about some very real ways you can start earning.

I think you do need to put together a website with a blog and portfolio where potential clients and people interested can go and see what you have to offer.

If you want to learn more about building a website and learning online marketing and SEO, be sure and check out my Promote Page.

You can learn how to get started and the training starts free so you can see what it’s all about.

If you like playing, writing, recording, and producing music then you are in the right place.

Take a minute and have a look around my website.

I have many helpful articles to get you moving in the right direction.

I’m sure you will find information that is helpful to you.

Feel free to leave your questions and helpful comments below.