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So you got the band. You got the songs. You got the gigs. Now what about the merch? If getting on a tour is the goal for your band, or if you just want to make some money at shows, merchandise is the way to go! One, it makes you look more professional, two it can generate cash flow for gigs, and three it helps build the band as a “brand”. If you’ve ever opened for a headliner on a national tour, you know they have a booth set up with a tone of merchandise for sale. Everything from CD’s to buttons to t-shirts. Why? Because that’s how they afford gas to the next show. Unless they are the Foo Fighters, they most likely aren’t making a ton of money on their CD sales in retail locations. So they are hustling at every show. You should do the same. Weather you need to pay for the gas or just need some strings, every piece of merch that goes out has your name on it and when you can get people to wear your shirts around town, you can bet people will come to see you just out of curiosity.

So should you DIY or have somebody do it for you? The answer depends on what you can figure out yourself and how much you’re going to use it. As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t ever recommend buying the gear to make t-shirts and sweaters unless that is going to be your day job. There is a fairly large investment of time, space, and money. Buttons however are a different story. For $200.00 to $300.00 you can pick up a button press that will do everything you need and its really easy to punch out a ton of buttons. The nice part about doing it yourself is flexibility. You can have a large amount of styles of buttons without a huge change in time required to make them. Remember, you never know when someone will see something that they can’t live without! Same goes for apparel variety, is the spice of selling them shit!


Now you have to sell CD’s. That at the end of the day is the whole point…or getting chicks. I forget, but anyways you need a CD. Rule is a good looking demo is better to sell than a crappy looking polished recording. Once they get home and listen to it the polished CD is by far better. So basically you need both. How to get it depends on time and your skill level. Recording it yourself has more than just the CD as a benefit. You can also record songs or pieces of songs to work on it. You can take your time on the mixes and really experiment around with your sound. Cost usually ends up being more than cutting one CD after you get a whole studio full of gear, but you can cut as many CD’s as you want. If you guys are tight and can really lay down some clean tracks in a studio, you can do a good sounding demo for fairly cheap. They’ll do the mixdown and give you a CD you can have mastered and duplicated in an attractive package. (Don’t forget to get a barcode if you want to get it into retail locations) Either way is fine, as long as you end up with a good looking good sounding CD. If it still looks like a demo, no one will buy it. Just a little warning if you are trying to sell CD’s with hand written sharpie on them. Pay the money and get the logos and covers printed. You’ll sell a ton more CD’s.


So back to apparel. T-shirts are the first thing you need to get together. Various sizes in one style is ok to start with, but if you want to build your band and sell some gear you need to get more than a t-shirt. So most girls like girl shirts, and they usually look better in them than a regular guy shirt. Get the girls to wear your shirts…if the girls go, they guys will go. Get a few designs going with your bands logo in a few different but instantly recognizable styles. Think the Rolling Stones “mouth” or Aerosmith’s wings logo. Something you can lay out many different ways that will represent your band. IMPORTANT! It has to look cool enough to make someone who sees it want it without knowing who you are. Style! Style! Style!


So, at the end of the day sell whatever will sell and put your logo on everything. Boxers, lighters, key chains, whatever. But before you invest a ton of money on a large quantity of merch, test it out in a small quantity. You don’t want to get stuck with $2,000 of watches that won’t sell till the price is $0. Be careful till you know it works. Just because one person asks for it doesn’t mean everyone will want it. Once you know something will sell, get large batches of them produced. Usually you can get quantity discounts on most things you have to get manufactured, and price shop! I hate seeing friends getting ripped off on merch when they could have done a google search and spent 5 minutes price shopping and saved 50%.


Good luck out there and as always, let me know if you have any questions about this subject.


Jeremy Gift
free musician