Nah, just kidding, we know your drummer can't read. This page of tips is for any other member of your band interested in getting the most out of Bandcamp. And if you're an MBA or manager that's OK too -- just pretend the title of the page is "Best Practices for Optimizing D2F Bandcamp Growth Channel."
Tell your fans where their money is going. The record industry has been insulting the music-buying public's intelligence for a long time, and the public is justifiably jaded. Why would a fan pay $12 for a download when 90% of that money probably goes to The Man, who turns around and gives 10% of it to the RIAA so they can sue little Timmy for using Leper Messiah in the video birthday card he made for nana? It's up to you to re-educate your audience. You've got to tell them that this is the place where their hard-earned money goes directly to you. Tell them on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, in the album description on your Bandcamp site, everywhere. Fans want to support the artists they love, so tell them that that's what they're doing when they buy here!
Let fans name their price, but set a minimum. We've already written about this approach in detail elsewhere, so here's the short version: if you're thinking about selling your album for $8, set it up as "let fan name price" with a minimum of $8 instead -- you'll make more money. Name-your-price albums on Bandcamp with a non-zero minimum sell for an average of 1.5 times that minimum. Your biggest fans want to pay you more, so why not let them do it?
Voeg je songteksten toe. That's of course Dutch for "add your lyrics." We would have just written "add your lyrics," but that sounds a bit trivial and we didn't want you to gloss over this section. Why? Because adding lyrics is one of the most important things you can do to increase sales. Two reasons for this:
Add bonus items to your downloads. Fans will be more inclined to pay for a download if it means they'll get bonus content like photos, videos, guitar tabs, liner note booklets, and so on. Adding that stuff is easy: just follow the instructions here. Next...
Tell your fans what's in the download. Don't treat bonus items as some sort of Easter egg; treat them as an incentive for fans to pay for and download your work. That can only happen if you tell people about them, so do exactly that: click Edit on your album page, and fill in the details in the field labeled "description." And don't forget to sell the sizzle! Instead of "includes extra artwork and the video in .m4v by [dude only you have heard of]" consider language like "Download includes never-before-seen shots from the now legendary recording sessions, and the infamous video for Eyes of a Blue Dog, banned in The Hague and optimized for viewing on your mobile phone."
Customize your domain name. Replacing your bandcamp.com address with music.yourbandname.com (or even just yourbandname.com) will not only increase the professionalism of your site, it will also improve your search engine ranking. So, if you want the place where you're selling directly to your fans to appear closer to the top when fans Google you, set up a custom domain.
Consider signing up for Micropayments. If you anticipate that most of your transactions will be under $12, then you'll pay less in fees by signing up for Micropayments.
Add (big) images to your package listings. You're already selling physical and digital side-by-side from Bandcamp. Fabulous. But where are your product images? Would you get excited about buying "CD and Download Bundle"? This is not the generic brand dystopia of Repo Man. We let you upload up to five images for any package, and we let you make them big. Fans are more likely to buy if they can really see what they'll get, so take some product shots and put them up!
Those were the Dos. Here are the Don'ts:
Don't make your album visible until you're ready for people to start buying it. We occasionally hear from fans who bought an album, and then discovered that their download contains only one or two tracks. Though that's sometimes the artist's intent, it's more often the case that they were just still uploading tracks, but had the album set to visible. Yes, the interface does indicate how many tracks you're going to get in a download, but you can't really blame a fan for getting so excited about a release that they forget to read. The solution is simple: until you're ready for people to download an album, check the box on the album edit page that says "hide album." Similarly, if you're not ready to start selling a physical package, check the box that says "hide package."
Don't convert your mp3's to lossless files and upload them to Bandcamp. The tracks will sound bad and fans will send you refund requests like this (actual) one: "I converted to WAV and chucked it in Audition to check the spectrals, looks like a transcode to me!" So please: upload only original, lossless material.
Don't obscure your link colors. If you want people to click your links, don't set their color to match your text color. Instead, pick a high-contrast color, or just leave the link color set to its highly effective blue default. For similar reasons, let your music tell your fans just how black black-metal you are -- dark gray text against a black background only tells them how little you want them to buy your music.
Don't name your package "Physical CD". Please join us in fighting the good fight against the use of the terms "physical CD" and its equally redundant cousin "digital download."
And one final Do so we end on a high:
Include both album and track art. If you add unique art to your tracks, we'll embed them in the download and iTunes (and other media players) will display them as they play. It looks super cool.
Did we leave out your favorite tip? Please share it with us! Thanks to Pim van de Werken, Daniël Dols, Coen van der Horst Linders, Antonie Fountain and Wouter Dullaert for correcting our Dutch, which originally said something like "add your lyrical poetry." Yay Babelfish.
