5 Steps to Make Money Online With SoundBetter

Whether you’re a music producer, mixing engineer, songwriter, or a session musician, there are seemingly endless ways to make money online these days. One of the more recent innovations is to harness the power of the internet with remote session work, and the preeminent platform that has emerged for that very purpose is none other than SoundBetter.

For those uninitiated, SoundBetter is a platform for connecting musicians with the world’s best mixing & mastering engineers, singers, songwriters, producers, and studio musicians. It’s loaded with folks who have worked with chart-topping artists from Kanye West to The Killers.

I have been active on SoundBetter for several years now, and as a premium provider with over 200 five-star reviews, I know a thing or two about how to make this platform work to your benefit.

So you want to know how to make money online with SoundBetter? Here’s how you do it:

Step 1. Fill Out Your Entire Profile

This may seem like a no-brainer, but, unfortunately, it needs to be said. Your profile is the final destination toward which you are driving your potential clientele. It is the last thing they will see before they decide whether or not they want to work with you, so you need to make a good impression.

And when I say “fill out the whole thing” I mean fill out the whole thing.

Yes, the whole thing.

Yes, even the long questionnaire. Yes, every single question.

The micro-blog portion? Yep, you guessed it. That too.

Starting to get the picture?

Everything you put on your profile is a way for a potential client to get to know you before the two you of ever speak. I can’t tell you how many profiles I’ve seen on SoundBetter that are either half-completed, completely phoned in, or an exact carbon copy of someone else’s.*

*I have come across multiple drummers in the recesses of SoundBetter (and the internet at-large) that have completely ripped off my bio, almost word for word. Don’t be that guy (or girl).

So take your time, put some thought into it, be original, and fill out the entire profile. It’s worth the effort.

Step 2. Be Multi-Faceted but Niche Down at the Same Time

Ever heard the saying “If you appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one”? Don’t be the person who tries to do everything. It never works. Don’t fill your profile with 20 different services you provide and don’t list a wide swath of unrelated genre specialties with no conceivable connection.

This is a recipe for failure.

Instead, pick a handful of things at which you excel (e.g. guitar, songwriting, producing, and mixing) and pick a handful of genres that can conceivably work together (e.g. pop, hip hop, electronic), and then select appropriate audio samples that showcase the intersection of those things (e.g. I was the guitarist, songwriter, producer, and mixer on these songs on my profile).

Because if someone comes to your profile and sees that you shred metal lead guitar, mix EDM, and sing country music, they’re not gonna have a clue what it is you do even if you do all those things well.

So pick your lane and showcase it via the services you offer and the audio samples you post.

Step 3. Apple for a Premium Membership

There are two tiers of membership for providers on SoundBetter: free and premium. Anyone can create a profile for free, but the premium account allows you to access the Job Board where you can bid on work and also prioritizes your profile further toward the top of search results.

A double win.

The only kicker is that premium isn’t a simple pay-and-reap sort of thing. It’s a process. You have to apply and then complete an interview before they will greenlight your profile.

And, you guessed it, the waitlist is long.

That’s why it makes sense to go ahead and hop in the queue as soon as your profile is complete. It can take months (or longer) to get to the interview stage of the premium process, so it’s best to go ahead and throw your name in the hat early.

When it comes to remote work, trust is the name of the game.

Step 4. Ask All of Your Current Clients to Leave a Review

Just as on sites like Upwork and Fiverr, reviews are the currency on SoundBetter. They speak as loud as just about anything else, so every single one helps.

There are two types of reviews on SoundBetter, verified and unverified. A verified review is only earned by completing a job on the platform, but an unverified review still shows up on your profile thumbnail in search results, which looks good.

By asking all of your previous and existing clients to endorse you in the review section, you can send a clear message to any would-be clients very early that you are an experienced and competent provider. This creates trust, and when it comes to remote work, trust is the name of the game.

Step 5. Start Routing All of Your Existing Business Through SoundBetter

Now we start playing the game. SoundBetter’s search results work on an algorithm that takes a lot of different factors into account, such as how active you are on the site, how recently you completed a job, how many jobs you’ve completed in the last 30 days, and your number of verified reviews, to name a few.

All of these (and more) will dictate where you end up in the hierarchy of your specialization when clients are browsing for the right fit for their project. And if Google has taught us anything, it’s that being on the first page pays dividends.

Appearing at or toward the top of the search results is the single biggest factor that will get you more work on this platform, so you want to do everything you can to make that happen. It may feel like a pay hit at first (SoundBetter takes a combined 8% of everything you make for themselves and PayPal — 5% and 3%, respectively) since you’ll make 92 cents on the dollar, but you’re playing the long game here, remember?

This is about leveraging your existing relationships to create new ones, and you’re not asking your existing client-base to do anything other than use a different platform for payment. And who knows, they may even find they want to become SoundBetter providers themselves.

Want to try SoundBetter for yourself? Sign up here and make sure you hire me for drum tracks when you do (come on, you know I had to).