How

Unbelievable Beats
Makes Money
From Free Beats The Producer
Shaun started composing music seriously as a teenager.
When Shaun Friedman of Since then he’s continued to build his production skill
UnbelievableBeats.com decided to do set - becoming an expert in FL Studio, ProTools and
Reason - and to grow his income sources from music.
something with his library of unused
When he launched UnbelieveableBeats.com in 2006
beats, he built a Bandzoogle website to his beats hadn’t earned him any income. “My beats were
promote them online. in the closet doing nothing,” Shaun said.

But instead of selling his beats, he gave The success of his free beats project sparked his
entrepreneurial spirit, and since then he’s kept on
them away for free to build his mailing list,
launching new projects to expand his career.
and found other creative ways to make
money from them.
Project Summary His Goals
Get visitors to the website by giving away free beats, grow
a mailing list of artists who want beats, and find ways of
Shaun’s beats project monetizing the audience and mailing list.

had three main steps:

The Challenges
#1 Grow traffic Shaun was starting out as an unknown, with a brand new
website and no audience, and with a lot of other

#2 Build a mailing list producers competing to sell beats to artists.

#3 Make money How it Turned Out

Since launching UnbelievableBeats.com Shaun has
grown his mailing list to 20,000 subscribers, and earns
part of his living by monetizing his free beats. He has top
search engine rankings for the keyword “free beats” which
brings a lot of traffic to his website.
How Shaun Grew Website Traffic

Organic search engine rankings are the biggest source of

traffic to UnbelievableBeats.com. Shaun launched his
website on Bandzoogle, which offers the features and
flexibility he needs to optimize his website for search
engines, and also has a lot of automatic SEO features built in.

He also had over 100 free beats - more than most (or maybe
any) other websites at the time - which helped him stand out
in a crowded space.

UnbelievableBeats.com has high Google rankings for the keyword “free beats” and
other similar search terms.
How Shaun Built a Huge Mailing List

Shaun used a well-known marketing tactic called “gated

content” to grow his mailing list. He set up his free beats so that
some of them are only available to download if the user gives
their email address. He used built-in Bandzoogle tools to make
that possible.

Some of the free beats on UnbelievableBeats.com can only be

downloaded if the user joins Shaun's mailing list.
Bandzoogle’s platform
actually allows users to
download a free beat with a
‘requires an email address’
option. Their email is
automatically captured and
added to my mailing list.
–Shaun
When a visitor to UnbelievableBeats.com clicks to download a beat, an email
signup form appears.
 How Shaun Makes Money from Free Beats
The keystone of Shaun’s free beats strategy is YouTube
AdRev, a tool that detects when one ofhis tracks has been
used in a YouTube video and assigns him a portion ofthe ad
revenue from that video. Shaun also makes money from his
free beats in other ways, and he says using Bandzoogle helps
makes it possible.

This YouTube creator used one of Shaun's free

Christmas jingle remixes in a DIY craft video that has
Bandzoogle is a portal that
over 400,000 views.
allows me to do anything.
–Shaun

Some of his other monetization tactics include:

A book called FL Studio Cookbook which which sells on Amazon and
promotes to his free beats audience.

Music production lessons which he promotes to his free beats audience.

T-shirts that he sells using the built-in Bandzoogle store feature, and
promotes them to his free beats audience.

A library of premium beats, which he sells licensing for using the

Bandzoogle store feature.
display ads and promote products that he sells. Music publishing libraries like SoundReef, Mibe Music and Pond 5.
The Results

Shaun’s UnbelievableBeats.com project has been helping

him grow his music income for over ten years.

Goal #1: Grow traffic

Result: By giving away a large number of beats for free and
optimizing his Bandzoogle website for search engines, Shaun
was able to reach top rankings for keywords related to “free
beats” in Google.
Build a pro website
Goal #2: Build a mailing list
Result: That organic search engine traffic helped him grow an
for your beats
audience of over 20,000 email subscribers over the past ten
years. Sell and promote beats on
Goal #3: Make money your own custom website
Result: His mailing list helps him tie his audience and his
monetization strategies all together, and helps him earn a living
as a music producer. Start your free trial