I've never tried it on CD Baby, but I have done 1/2 price sales a few times at gigs, and my CD sales increase dramaticly. The last time I did it, my CD's sold out before the gig was half over!

I am doing a concert at a performance center next month, where people have to pay admission. I always feel like I should offer some kind of a deal after they buy a ticket, so this time I am going to offer CD's at a "pay what you want" price.  Anybody else have any luck with doing that?

Great idea Dean! I currently don't use bandcamp, but I have been thinking about setting up a membership site. This might be an easy way to give it a try?

Funny thing about 50% off sales. I have noticed that many people will buy a CD, or even two at half price, even though they already have a copy they paid full price for previously. Some people really can't resist a bargain!

I'm doing a Thanksgiving deal this week.  Gave away a free album of new, unreleased, and live stuff. Then followed it up with a big sale.  Sale started yesterday and its going really really well.  Basically just trying to get the folks off the fence for the latest album.  But a lot of the sales are folks getting my previous albums.  I'll let you know how it all ends up.  

Okay…Results.

Ended up with 20 purchases for Thanksgiving.  Not an overwhelming number.  But pretty cool nonetheless.  I had been working the folks from an older (hostbaby) list to come over to my aweber list via a free 8 song album of rare/unreleased/live songs (And I made the album cover out of construction paper…pretty sweet): 

http://www.deanfields.net/goodies.html

So, assuming the hostbaby people have been a part of my posse for a while, most of them have already bought most of my catalog.  And, the remaining folks on my list have already gone through the follow-ups and LTO.  Perhaps, since I've been doing this for almost a year now with yall, I've gotten better at followups and the LTO??.  So, many of those purchases may have come from people who are just more inspired to buy now.  

Interestingly, almost all of the purchases were of my back catalog.  Which is pretty cool.  Im gonna assume that these are people who dig it enough to get more of my albums.  

Dean Fields said:

Okay…Results.

Ended up with 20 purchases for Thanksgiving.  Not an overwhelming number.  But pretty cool nonetheless.  

Dean...I think that's great, man! 🙂

Anna Zoe said:

Hey All ... just an update on my 72-hour Holiday Sale...

 

When I switched my mailing list from Reverbnation to Aweber I unfortunately went from about 1800 contacts to 145. Now I realize a lot of them probably weren't opening my emails, but there were a lot that WERE that didn't re-confirm when I did the switch, I'm assuming because it went into their Junk Folder and they never saw it. I consider it a necessary loss for potential gain.

 

That being said, I did exactly what John suggested for the 3-day 50% off sale, and I sold 9 albums out of 145 people, 2 of which had already bought the album when first released. I did post the sale on FB and Twitter each morning at 10am as well. Nothing amazing, but better than nothing!

 

Thanks for all the advice! See you again at Valentine's Day...

Hey Ann,

Always celebrate the small victories - selling 9 out of a list of 145 is pretty good and as John pointed out above - most artists are selling zip online for an entire year.

Do you still have access to the Reverbnation list? Perhaps you can send out a few more reminders to get them on your Aweber list? Otherwise, market your squeeze page and you'll build your list in little time. Even if it isn't as big right away, you'll at least have a quality list with all the features you need to convert more sales in the future.

Congratulations - I'm always so impressed to just see 'normal musicians' out there even having a sale! That's a huge step forward compared to most musicians out there! Keep it up.