You’re trying to make it as a rap artist. You have many hurdles that you need to overcome the first of which is finding beats. Well good new there, you finally have quality free beats that you can download. Now what. You need to promote yourself. So here are 10 ways that you can promote yourself using my free beats. Good luck and enjoy!

10. Develop a Mailing List – This is something that I have done to help promote my free beats. Use aWeber or a company like them to help you keep track of the people that are going to your website. This way you can collect an email address and let people know that you have new music available or a new show coming up. You may not even need to use a company like aWeber and just manually collect email addresses. The emails are important so don’t loose them.

9. Facebook- Facebook gets the second most traffic of any website in the world so it would be wise to take advantage of that. Start by using your friends and family and see where it goes. You can us this in conjunction with youtube to get some more views on your videos or in conjunction with datpiff to get some more plays on your mixtape. A lot of people promote themselves with facebook ads but I have not found those to be cost effective. This is why I have facebook this high in the list. You need to have it and focus on getting likes but I have found there are better ways to get people to listen to your music and my free beats.

8. Give it away for free- Every time you do a show you should have a large stack of your CD’s for people. If they liked your performance they will probably grab a cd and then you are one step closer to having a real fan. I’m giving away my free beats to help build a following and you should think about using these free beats and then giving away your music for free as well.

7. Search Engine Optimization – You need to have a website to implement this but even just having a Facebook page or Datpiff page would work. Next step is use the Google keyword to see what keywords people are searching for that relates to you as an artist. Try keywords like “new rap artist” or “new pop artist” then see what website ranks the highest and see if you think that is something you can beat. You are going to need to build links to your website because that is how search engines operate. There is too much information on this for me to even delve into but start doing research. Once you rank for the keywords you will have a constant stream of new people hearing your music. Not a bad deal. This website is ranking on Google page 1 for free beats, free instrumentals, and free rap beats. These keywords probably wouldn’t be good for you but you could find others that are.

6. Blogs – Start reaching out to blog owners. Gather a huge list of contact emails from people that are blog owners of blogs that relate to you. After you do this there are two options as far as what you can do to reach out to them you can either reach out individually or send a email to yourself and attach all the emails you gathered as a blind copy or BCC. You will have a higher success rate if you reach out to everybody individually although it will definitely take more time for you. Once you record over some of my free beats tell the blog owners that you have music that you think there readers might be interested in. Don’t reach out and ask people to “do you a favor and post your music” or say “please listen and post if you like”. You aren’t going to be that successful if you go about it like that. Its best to make it seem like they need you more than you need them. So say you think there readers would be interested in your music and ask them if they want to post.

5. Twitter – So many artists have got careers started for them by using twitter. Wiz Khalifa is a perfect example of an artist that blew up through twitter. Twitter is great for music to go viral. So the important thing is to have good music. This is where my free beats come in handy. Next is to start tweeting and hitting up and following people that are talking about artists that relate to you. For example if you are similar to Wiz Khalifa do a search for Wiz and see who is talking about Wiz and go and follow them or tweet at them. They might be interested in you. Don’t get in the mindset that “I sound like nobody” while this may be true think outside the box and find somebody that you can compare yourself to or at least that you feel like people who like them would like you.

4. Purchase a Domain and Redirect it to DatPiff- Go to Godaddy or one of the other companies that lets you purchase a domain. I would purchase the domain that is the name of you as an artist. Like I own agesbeats.com and I have it redirected to my Soundclick to help me brand myself and send traffic to my Soundclick to move up the charts in Soundclick. The idea behind this is that I can use the fan that I am gathering from other methods to move myself up the charts on Soundclick and in turn gain new fans from that. Use my free beats and then put your domain on bumper stickers, inside your mixtape, online forums, etc. Now the traffic will be sent to your Datpiff and that will increase your visibility on your Datpiff page and on Datpiff in general, which is very important.

3. Hustle the Streets – This may be number 1 and if it wasn’t for the lack of international reach it probably would be. It is important to really focus on this, as there probably isn’t a better way to really develop a fan base. What you need to do is sell your music on the streets of your neighborhood, school, housing project, and college, whatever. Not only can you start making some money off your music but also these people may be your first fans. Don’t just stick with the people you know. Once you have my free beats in hand you need to start approaching strangers. Think of yourself as a street salesman that needs to sell himself. Like all things this will take time but can be an important way to get people to start going to your shows. Don’t worry if you piss a couple people off in the first place.

2. Youtube – I feel very strongly about the opportunities of Youtube. It is the 3rd busiest website in the world. Video upon video upon video get uploaded everyday and with all those video there are just as many people spending precious moments of their day strolling around Youtube looking for something that they like. So why can’t that thing that they stumble upon that they like be you. The best thing about Youtube is the international opportunities to get your music heard. With your ages free beats you can now record songs and put them up on Youtube. The question now is how do you get these videos to get views. The best way to do this is to tag and title your songs with names that people are searching for. This way you are stealing traffic from artists that are already popular. Don’t feel bad. Lil Wayne is going to be just fine if you steal some of his traffic. Say you rap over one of my beats. Put a Lil Wayne verse on the beat to and put him on as an artist. Now people searching for Lil Wayne could possibly hear your version as well. An extra bonus, if you sound good next to Lil Wayne you are probably doing something right! I have been utilizing this technique as well. I have posted beats and titled and tagged them as Lil Wayne Instrumental if it sounds like a instrumental Lil Wayne might use. Try it for yourself and see how it works!

1. Industry Networking- All of this is going to go to waste however if you don’t network within the music industry. This is the most important step so take my free beats and start knocking down door. All of the other steps are leading up to this. You can’t do this without the other steps because they are what is going to make people want you. You are fighting a loosing battle if you can’t make the record labels want you and they want to see that you are building a following on your own. So pick up the phone grab my free beats and start getting some meeting because the record labels are what are going to take you all the way.

Thanks for reading. I hope this advice has given you new ideas of tackling the problem of being a musician. Remember don’t give up. All of this takes time and you will most likely not see any real progress for a long time. Just remember you are laying the foundation for the future. Please remember to credit Ages as the producer for anything that you use with my beat. Even better would be to link back to my website using free beats as the title. Thanks for the support and good luck!