Selling Merchandise to your Mobile Fan Club

You have all heard the term leaving money on the table. Sometimes this refers to a negotiated business deal that you might have done better. But it can also refer to money that's there for the taking if only you ask for it. Your fans are incredibly motivated when they see you at a concert, and merchandise sales remain a powerful money-making opportunity for most music artists. When was the last time you were at a concert that did not have a merch table, no matter what size venue? And at the large music festivals, the merchandising is so important that it's typically removed from the artist to the benefit of the festival organizers.

We all know that convenience and availability are one of the prime motivators for making purchases. It's not just impulse buying, but often merchandise presented to us in a moment when we are ready to buy results in a sale. Selling your merchandise to your fans on their mobile phones is a perfect opportunity to capture this dynamic. The Adva Mobile platform provides three terrific opportunities for you to make money from selling merchandise to your fans.

First, you can sell physical goods like posters, T-shirts, pins and other items on your mobile fan club site. It's easy to set up on the Merchandise setup page on the Artist Portal. Fans pay through PayPal -- a trusted source -- and once the sale is made, the money is transferred to you almost immediately and we send you a notification for you to complete the fulfillment, by shipping out the goods or delivering the goods at the concert.

You don't have to sell goods via PayPal: You can also setup a merchandise item on your mobile fan club, that would hold a link to wherever you want to sell your goods, like iTunes, Napster, and Amazon. Your fans are brought from your mobile website to those storefronts to complete the purchase.

You can experiment and play with it, and present a simple introductory experience to your fans. Tell them that whoever comes to your merch table at the gig and shows their phone with some evidence (SMS or site) that they are aware, or joined your mobile fan club, gets some discount off your merch. Just for fun: nothing big that will upset people, something that would motivate fans to try it out. Eventually they'll discover the gigs and merch page themselves and start buying stuff from you.

 
Coming soon -- ring tones and other small dollar items that fans can pay for on their wireless phone bill. Stay tuned for this new capability to earn money in the next few months.

Everyone who is using the Adva Mobile service to engage their fans should have merchandise for sale on their mobile website.Login NOW to your artist dashboard and put merchandise up for sale. Send an SMS blast out to your fans telling them of its availability, and watch the dollars roll in.