Doing monthly and yearly reports

Creating and filling in the numbers for your sales of music, merchandise, and products both online and physical each month helps others to see your success, but it can also show you where money is coming in versus money going out. These reports also include expenses from gas to tolls, gear to copyrighting fees, and physical to online advertising as well.

These reports include all the numbers that come in on a monthly basis but also can stretch out over the year as well. The following is a sample list of expenses. This isn’t a definitive or complete list, and there are other costs that may come up as well. All these costs should be added as line items across each month. In the first set are the basic costs:

Copyrights/publishing fees	Merchandise ordering
Legal/lawyer fees	Web hosting/domain costs
Business/corporate fees	Graphics
Payments to band	Accounting/taxes
Recording costs	Website build costs
Gear cost	Photography/videography
Printing/mailing	Publicist

The next set of costs is tied into the operational, marketing, and promotional elements:

Physical promotion/promotional items	Solicitation mailers
Online promotion	Gas/ parking
Radio promotion	Food
Memberships	Clothing
Manager	Hygiene items
Vehicles/car maintenance	Makeup
Banners	Laundry
Rehearsal space rent	Hotels

Breaking down the online promotion even further, add subcategories for promoted posts on Facebook and on Twitter, as well as advertising for those sites and others. The key point is to break down what’s going out just as you track what’s coming in to give the best look at what’s being spent and how it’s coming back. In turn, this gives much more detail than just summarized numbers for an extended period of time.

Even if a line item, such as annual memberships, reflects $0 for 12 months, you still need to list all the zeroes. Should an investor see the tracking and the detail put into it, they have a better idea of exactly the costs to know how to make profits, growth, and exposure better.

Tracking sections for solicitations, sponsorships, and investors

Online programs in Excel as well as certain financial programs can help organize your data and keep it looking a little cleaner for presentation. Those extra steps that give the details in the numbers but also clean them up and make them a little prettier can help with sponsors and potential investors. The more streamlined the information, the easier it is to take in.

The tracking part of your presentation comes after the main pitch and all the pretty stuff; don’t lead with it. Give the basics on you, your plan, and why you want to have a potential sponsor or investor involved. Showcase the brand, the ask, and the marketing plan first; then bring in the tracking sections as the cherry on top to show what you’ve been able to do in the past number of months, years, or other specific time period.

It’s okay to do summary sheets that then lead to more of the details, but have those details and extra sheets ready. Prepare all the materials, but give a simple summary page of the key numbers first.

Alexa traffic rankings

The Alexa ranking is easy to get from a free toolbar download available on Google Chrome or any browser. The Alexa traffic rankings count down the most highly visited websites in the world. Tracking your Alexa ranking isn’t about trying to have the lowest ranking, but it can show just how much traffic comes through your site. If you are under the five million mark, you have some attention going, and of course realize sites like Twitter and Facebook are often numbers 1 and 2. This is also covered in Chapter 15.

Again, it’s not about being number one, but more about showing a dropping Alexa ranking each month to show a rise in website engagement for you and your music. Too many tell very tall tales about how a website is doing. The proof is in the numbers and the spreading out of those numbers over time to give much better data.

Subscriptions

On your website or through your blogs or mailing list sign-up, track the growth by the month. Just like many of the other elements you’re tracking, show the growth over time of subscriptions and the engagement of fans that are signing up and staying connected with your updates. This data spread out over time gives a potential sponsor or investor a sense of your growth tempo that can be adjusted to a marketing budget. If investors see a certain number of subscriptions and then see the money you put into marketing, even at the smallest amount, it can give them some sense of what to spend to make that same growth happen on a larger scale.

There are numerous mailing list and subscription software programs and tools like Mail Chimp that cannot only help track your list but also give you extra data, including who’s opening that mail, too.

Backlinks

Although backlinks don’t necessarily equate to profits, keeping a list of backlinks and the growth of those that are pointing back to your site shows the work that’s being done to expand your website out and connect it with others sites that can lead back to you. The more backlinks you have coming to your site can equate to the popularity of your website. It also is highly looked upon by search engines like Google, which gives more credit and visibility to a site that has more or growing backlinks by seeing that site as more relevant. Tracking these backlinks and their growth shows that your popularity is growing, even if it’s just page by page. This information can be found by using the Open Stat SEO plug-in on Google Chrome.

Pages indexed by Google

This line item checked once a month and added to the list covers the number of pages Google has indexed from your site into its search engine. These indexed pages show up in searches that much more and help your website as a whole to show up more often in Google searches related to music.

More pages are indexed by Google and other search engines if the pages are correctly laid out and SEO friendly. Check out Search Engine Optimization For Dummies by Peter Kent (Wiley and Sons, Inc.) for a series of great tips to format a web page so it can be indexed that much better.

All social media sites

This is where you show true growth on social media over time. Saying you have a hundred thousand followers on Twitter in a year can sound like you may have just paid for those followers and they all magically came in to play. From being able to buy views, to followers, to friends and likes, social media numbers and growth, while very crucial, have become that much more scrutinized.

A much easier way to get around those doubts, highlight your professionalism, and prove the truth behind your numbers is to simply track those numbers at the top of every month to show a longer and more realistic pattern.

With months that have larger jumps, you can look across your numbers to have a better understanding of where your conversions and profits came from. Not only does this give you great information to help determine what’s working and why, it also sets up a simple sheet that can be used as excellent ammunition and proof to sponsors and investors as well.

Set up a list of your social media sites starting at the first of the month, and collect the following information that’s added in column to look like Table 17-1.

This part of the list shows only five months of data and four key social networking sites, but tracking all social media sites for a full year is a good idea. It’s an easy system to track after you set it up, and it can be done on a simple spreadsheet. Again, it’s less about the total numbers and more about showing how your numbers grow in order to grow the opportunities.

This type of tracking helps build confidence in people you connect with down the line as you build up that fan base and those numbers over time.

People who track your growth can easily go into sites like Twitter and scroll through your followers to see if they’re even real. It’s not that they can easily catch you by pinpointing and checking a series of profiles. Whereas fake profiles slip into everyone’s accounts, if you have too many, it makes it look like you bought them, and it could turn away potential investors.

YouTube, including views per video

Along with tracking the monthly numbers of subscribers on your YouTube page, create a second page and track the video views. Sounds a little nuts, but by tracking the rise in views, you can learn what videos are most popular as well as keep track of video titles to make sure you don’t repeat them.

Set up a simple list as follows:

It’s not just tracking numbers; it’s understanding the process that works best for you. For example, the cat video did much better than the other two, so that could mean more cat videos might help. Live at Orchid Island was the worst of the three, so it’s safe to assume that titling a video named “Live at” is an overused search.

Music and merchandise direct

Tracking your music and merchandise can be a little more challenging if you don’t organize and track your inventory. Make sure to always cover what you bring to a show, give away, sell at the set prices, and sell at a discount.

Track it, regardless if it’s cash or not. Make sure you have some kind of tracking in place. Whether you enter it into a spreadsheet or you have a financial program like QuickBooks, every sale has to be registered.

It might seem like it’s easier on a cash sale to just pocket the money — but don’t. Musicians and artists are some of the most audited people out there when it comes to taxes. And you want to show as much in sales as possible and as much growth to those who look at you for sponsorships and investment. Your ability to track, share, and identify what you made and where you made it as well as show every dollar that goes out and every dollar that has come back showcases your organization and makes you appear as a better investment with less risk.

With certain merchant applications like Square, you can make a sale from cash that registers in your Square account and issues a receipt to the email of the customer. This is a great merchandising tool to investigate.

Music and merchandise distributed

Tracking distributed products is easier because through all distribution channels, at least the legitimate ones, you see reports on what sold as well as the percentage you’re getting. From Amazon to iTunes, Reverbnation, and the rest, there’s a contract that clearly lays out what’s being sold, what percentage the distributor gets, and when you get your agreed-upon percentage.

As all this goes into the tracking, there’s one more step you can take to make sure everything that comes from distributed sales is being tracked correctly. Test it yourself. Go through every channel where you have a download, a CD, or any type of merchandise, and with a guest account, a friend’s account, or even a testing account for the given store, buy your own stuff. This is a great way to truly track every step from the click-through to the payout. It also ensures that your distribution agreement is really being followed down to the T.

Preparing for publishing

A song that’s going to be published has to have all of its fundamentals in order to allow the song to be profitable. Make sure that everyone is on the same page with who owns what and who gets what. Before the publishing agreements are set, the song splits agreements as to who gets what, the producer rights agreements, musician releases, copyrights, and performing rights organization registrations have to take place. Check out more about publishing in Chapter 9.

Pitching and placing

The music publisher (or you, if you’re your own publisher) has to research the options and send the pitches for your music to music supervisors, film, TV, and other music producers. These pitches and potential placements are also run through video game creators, music industry executives, advertising executives, and artist management and representation. A great deal of the pitching phase means tracking current trends, tracking the new people coming into music supervision, and maintaining the older contacts. You can find more details about placement in in Chapter 9.

Tracking, collecting, and paying

After a song is placed or en route, the music publisher has to secure the licenses and the cue sheets for the song as well as start to track the data on the plays and use of the song as well as keeping an ear out for copyright infringement issues.

Lastly, collect and distribute profits and royalties to everyone involved as the agreements in the preparations phase were set up. These include the six major royalty payments covered more in depth in Chapter 9.

With all the time and craziness that it takes to handle, track, and make publishing work to the best of its abilities, bring in a professional music publisher to handle at least some of your catalog. It makes all the difference.

Narrowing the numbers

Not every place is going to give you a head count of how many people showed up to a gig or help you with all the information you want to find out. Estimates and best guesses are fine with some of these numbers. Again, all the information you’re able to compile from the performance tracking can be used for booking and shown to investors. It also gives you an idea of what kind of promotional budgets you need in specific areas.

The following is a list of all the trackable performance basics:

• Date
• Event type (opening slot, headlining slot, festival, or other type of event)
• Address, city, and state
• Venue — capacity and attendance
• Booked by
• Pay and pay equation (flat fee, percentage of door, bonus of bar percentage)
• Signed up for the mailing list
• Product and merchandise sold
• Other acts on the bill
• Point of contact for the venue
• Advertising or marketing spent by you for promotion
• Issues, pay problems, management problems

With this list it’s easier to fill out the basics the day of rather than trying to remember back to an exact show when you have been on the road for a month. Having all this data helps you with future bookings and reminds you about places and people with whom you had issues.

The more numbers and data you have available for investors, sponsors, management, and other music industry professionals who may want that additional information, the more research and the information you have ready and accessible about you to give you the best shot at support.

The other set list

From jotting down on your music set list or another piece of paper on stage how big the crowd is to getting an overall vibe of how you are being received, take down the notes before and after the show. Stay tuned into everything that’s going on around you without being too distracted from making the music and connecting with the audience.

Think of all that data as your other set list to use when you get home as you make plans to return. The more you track, the more you understand every place you go and how the people react to you as well as the business that’s being done well or, in many cases, not being done correctly. This data enables you to make better decisions regarding where and when to play, who to play with, and how to make every booking and event stronger, more effective, and more profitable.

This information is also useful for your booking spreadsheets that you build as you visit venues and work in different cities. It’s duplicate info in some ways that can be used in different areas to help your career.

Studio and recording

Track every cost in the studio, not just what you pay for the studio time and a producer. This includes food and snacks in the studio, and gas and mileage to and from the studio. Also track additional musicians you pay for backing tracks or help in the studio as well as any strings, drumsticks, drumheads, reeds, or gear you purchase for that session.

Track those studio hours as well. It’s a three-fold advantage. You can write off the studio time on your taxes; you can define to investors exactly what it costs for you to complete recordings and music from start to finish and set up to final mix; and you can showcase the investment on your part and what you’ve put in already to your music and your business.

Promotion and marketing

Tracking the best results of the money you spent on marketing as well as the money that wasn’t effective gives you a better understanding of how to spend. Applying this information to future costs ups the effective expenses and reduces the bad results.

Tracking every dollar spent — from the graphic design of a sticker to the shipping of those stickers to mailing out some of those stickers for different people to post in different places — helps you know what’s working and what isn’t. Also, you track every aspect for tax purposes as well as presentations to investors, sponsors, and other music industry professionals.

It isn’t about showcasing massive and amazing numbers or trying to doctor them to look prettier. It’s only ratios and conversions. If you invest $100 in some kind of marketing and promotional campaign that helps to convert to $200 in sales of product and exposure, while small, it can show that someone’s investment of $100,000 in a similar method could return $200,000.

Doctoring up your numbers, lying about facts, or making yourself out to be doing a great deal better than you actually are makes investors question why you need help in the first place. Too, no one can trust a liar, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone who will want to work with you.

Online and social media advertising

As in the previous section, the same goes for online and social media advertising as it does for promotion and marketing. The cool thing about online advertising is that all the tracking and details based around the campaigns often come with the analytics and details already well organized in an easy-to-present spreadsheet and downloadable format.

Again, you don’t have to show out-of-the-world numbers or crazy and amazing growth. The key is to show the investment and the money you put into these ads and the results and conversions that follow.

With the information easily available for download mixed with the other tracking information you have from your social media growth to show to sales in a given period, you allow the investor to obtain a better sense of how and where your conversions come from.

Website and SEO

Tracking the costs and investment you’ve put into creating your website, which in many ways is the root of your web presence and a home base, shows that you’re keeping up on your digital housekeeping as well as making that primary site set up with the strongest foundation.

From showing the work that was done from design to coding, graphics to layouts, SEO implementation to content management, you deliver the numbers that show you’re making your home base a truly sturdy home.

These numbers can include consulting fees, or costs for webmasters to make your site load faster, optimize easier, and streamline for search engines to pick up. You find more in Chapter 10.

These are costs that you need to pay for. While investors can help build up your site, you need to own your domain names. You need to own your hosting and have the administrative rights to every social media page out there. You can assign management access to others, but this is a place where you personally need to pay for this to ensure the right control for the long run.

Touring and performing

The touring and performing category shows where you can save money and showcase yourself or band as a good investment to put out on the road. This can show how you can save on touring and performing costs, which enables investors to spend less while getting you to more places with more dates for a longer period of time.

This requires you to combine information you’ve already tracked to show that you know how to save, how to make the most out of the road on the most grassroots level, and that you’re a smart investment.

This is one of the most important places to showcase you know-how to spend wisely and save as much as possible. Showing your ability to be out on the road and stay out on the road for the least amount of money enables a higher-level budget for marketing and promotions as you keep things a little more frugal on the road.

It’s not as much work as it seems

Tracking and building basic spreadsheets for everything going out, coming back in, and everything in between may seem a little overwhelming. The organization that you create, however, makes the entire process take only seconds.

Don’t get caught up in trying to collect too much back information. That can be a massive headache and take hours and hours to complete. Although information about specific venues, people, and companies can be good to organize and slide into your tracking, when it comes to tracking your older expenses, basic summaries can still work. Simply explain that you started to fully track and showcase the exact numbers from a specific date forward.

After you set up the basic spreadsheets for data collection, tracking and posting become simpler daily and monthly tasks. As numbers come in, whether it be a sale, a receipt, or any piece of information, add it to the appropriate list or email yourself a reminder as to where to add it. The biggest task is to organize the lists for all the information; after that, you’re home free. Check out more about record keeping in Chapter 4.