GarageSpin

Garage bands and home recording studio musicians often search for ways to financially support their acoustic addictions and dreams of success in music.

Marc Gunn, an indie Celtic musician, is doing so with a series of websites that generate revenue through affiliate relationships with companies such as Google, Amazon, and others.

Building a successful affiliate income is NOT easy. And as internet companies come and go, they are also not a hugely reliable source of income for the long-term. I prefer to focus on offering products and services for my active websites, but most of my websites were created with affiliates in mind. Consequently, I've learned the affiliate game quite well.

Marc lists the actual revenue performance his sites experience, which is interesting. A music download site saw up to 500 unique visits a day and a 5-10% Adsense clickthru rate. Other affiliate programs earned between $100 and $500 a month, depending on the program.

Though he continues his day job, I'm sure every chunk of change helps. Marc is an excellent example of an independent musician using technical tools available to him to simultaneously promote his work and create a financial buffer between himself and the "starving musician" stigma.