Why do some AudioJungle authors succeed so quickly?

Sorry, it’s actually my first on the envato community. My apologies.

No problem at all and welcome :slight_smile:

I want to agree with Lumen here.

The key is to create consistently, and treat this as a job. If you do not upload on at least a semi-consistent schedule, you can not expect to get far.

If you’re aiming for the biggest success, you also must create the most USEABLE items possible. Beginning from the end point in mind.

What emotion am I going to communicate in this song? Trust? Carefree fun? Young and fun? Love?

Communicate simply.

Including in your descriptions.

Don’t make your description so specific that no one will be able to imagine using it in their project. Keep your emotion focused, but allow it to remain somewhat open so the end user can imagine how perfect the song will be in their project.

For promotion, pick a social media outlet and upload your tracks there. Personally, I recommend at LEAST these 2 things:

  1. Post all your music on SoundCloud, (with a link back to where to buy it) and add them to relevant groups.
  2. Maintain a presence in the forums here. We have seen a direct correlation between sales and how active we are on the forums.

With consistency, this is how we have found you can create your own luck.

Just don’t give up, and the results come. :slight_smile:

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But how do you communicate trust?

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That’s a good question. How DO you communicate trust? That’s your job as a musician. :slight_smile:

Pull it out from inside of you. Listen to others who have written songs communicating the emotion. There’s tons here! Feel it first, then create from it.

Many of the corporate songs all communicate trust. Confident piano, guitar plucks, maybe some supportive strings or chimes/glockenspiel, a comfortable 1,4,6,5, a nice solid foundation of a warm bass… Speak trust with these voices.

Yeah, that’s like a manual on how to succeed here on AJ. Nice advices! What seems to be my problem is to get traffic to SoundCloud and Facebook without harassing my personal friends. That’s the threshold I have to climb over. I can see a slow increase all over the platforms just by keep on uploading and be active, but as I said… SLOW increase. After your advice I will start my activity on this forum as well!
So, get used to “the man in the hat”! :slight_smile:

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Glad you enjoyed the advice Rimo!

When it comes to social media, it’s easy to get discouraged. We think it’s about needing likes and shares and comments and if our numbers aren’t up we think we’re failing.

That’s not the case at all.

Remember that every single listen is a real person. 1 like or listen from someone who actually cares is worth 100,000 likes from random people that scrolled by and just slapped the button.

There’s very little reason to ever need to hit up or ask your friends to like your page. They are not your demographic (unless they’re all making films or commercials that need music.)

Just realize that likes don’t matter, the content matters. Simply allow it to exist in these places. You are just increasing the changes that the RIGHT person can find it.

To drive the point home, our Soundcloud has less than 100 followers. Yet we have made sales from people finding us there.

It’s not about the amount. It’s about the intent & focus.

You are right about the fact many of us (including me) care too much about getting “likes”, but what’s more important is to get some views… Otherwise it’s kind of useless. However, as I said, a slow increase is better than nothing. I realize the key is to be persistent.

As far as I’ve noticed, a lot of Audio Jungle authors publish their works very often. That probably should mean, that a lot of them had a lot of their works from earlier, so now, they just found the channel, where just with some modifications and adaptations they could sell their work. :slight_smile:

Success comes from 1 track getting featured by staff. If it is a solid pick, It will sell 20 to 80 times the week it is featured. It will then go to the popular items page the following week and continue to sell like crazy (Right Lumen?) and that single track then becomes the item that represents 50 to 75% of the total income for that author. Basically success comes with writing 1 “hit”…but it can not become a hit without some promotion on this site. Yes there are examples when tracks get to that popular page with no promotion, but that is a big challenge. Even the top 5 authors have a hard time charting their new tracks these days. It all starts with a featured track. Finally, Lumen, Congrats again! You absolutely “nailed it” with that corporate track and that is an incredible accomplishment to see that piece sell the way it did last week!

Lumen and Elevate Audio are the examples how the consistency in uploading good tracks worth the sales :smile:

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Well than I have communicated trust all right :slight_smile:

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Well put and in the bulls eye. Forget about all that crap about being consistent,hard working, promoting and other stuff…

Thank you for your kind words of support. I only need to add some really essential details. A road to your personal hit is a really strange and long road. That’s why i placed “learning” elements before “luck” in my formula. You need to learn, learn more, learn and learn and learn. “Learning” means listening to examples of best selling music, analyzing WHY it is successful, writing music, analyzing buyers reaction and tuning your production process more and more and more. I also thankful for authors, who gave a lot of support and fresh ideas - Mat Steiner, Luca Francini, Dirk (Waderman), etc. A friendly community, ready to share with you ideas and inspiration is one of the biggest plus of Audiojungle. “Luck” is also necessary element. But if you trying to view this elements from Envato point of view, you will probably notice how Envato focused on active authors, who trying to participate in forum discussions, sharing ideas and learning. I am 100% sure, without Featured author two year ago, without my first featured track year ago and especcially without my second Featured track this year, i would not be where i am now. It would be harder for me to push through obstacles. And that’s why i thankful for Envato and Marketing team behind those decisions.

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I want to add one more thing for your excellent advice. “Usability” of your music for buyers is the most essential element, and it solely depends on what buyers need, not what YOU want to record. Just imagine my background, from which i came to this market. My favorite author was Jean Michel Jarre, my favorite genre was ambient electronica. I spent months for re-adjusting my taste, my mixing and composing skills, my sample libraries and instruments, my mastering, hundres of things. All in all, as royalty free author you need to establish balance between originality of your music and usability, where usability is one of the key to success and originality is a way to not be buried among almost indistinguishable tracks.

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Good points @Lumen. We should never stop learning and improving our craft. And there’s so much we need to know: composing/arranging, production techniques, computer /daw troubleshooting, social media promo etc and its always evolving so It’s never ending!

Thank you. Yes, this is our job - to learn more and do it on constant basis, especially in our fast evolving world.

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This is a fantastic thread with lots of useful advice. Would you say having a youtube channel helps?

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Keep creating material that is high quality!

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On my pc, I have a favorite folder packed with authors who achieved nice successes (some in a relatively short time) without a single «hit» track in their portfolio. Many don’t even have «corporate/inspiration/ukulele» stuff.

One have a good deal of abstract/ambient works, another mostly rock, others never make the popular pages, are never featured either, most do zero social marketing, some have only between 1 to 15 sales per items, but shared between tracks in very varied portfolios (or at the opposite, more focused on less frequented categories like country, etc)…

Trying to acquire a high understanding of the needs (changing with seasons, events, etc) of a target public is probably more helpful, in the long run, than wishing for luck or dream hits.

That said, I agree with you that having one or two lucky hits is the winning ticket for many authors here; but this folder indicates that more than a few other alternatives are also possible. :slight_smile:

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