This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, welcome. What's up? Chris Guillebeau here. Thanks for tuning in today. It has been WDS weekend for us over the past few days in Portland, Oregon, the World Domination Summit, just hosting lots and lots of people, more than a thousand people to town for all sorts of meetups, events, talks, parties and such.
It is my 10th year in a row to produce this event, except for the two years we had to take off for COVID. But thankfully back in action. So I'm a little tired, but of course, the Side Hustle School podcast rolls on. And today's episode is part of a new feature we're doing in 2022. It's called Your First Thousand Dollars.
You might guess it's all about how someone made their first thousand dollars. How in fact did they get to that point? The first thousand dollars is so important because once you begin to earn real money, the steps required to go to the next level, whatever that number is for you, it's often much easier than the first real paycheck. Okay, so with that in mind, today's feature comes from Evan Oxhorn. We first featured him long, long ago, episode 175, in fact, lawyer earns $400 a month with stock music side hustle.
He is in fact still going strong and in fact earning a lot more. So good for him, but what about again, that first thousand dollars? How did he make it happen? What did it feel like? What did he learn?
So let's hear it from Evan. He's also gonna include a quick selection of one of his tunes as well. So that's a fun bonus. And I will come back at the end with some very brief comments. [Music]
Hi friends, this is Evan from stockmusicemusician.com and from episode 175 of the side hustle show.
But I wanna tell you a little bit about how I made my first thousand dollars licensing music. Well, actually it's not gonna be the story of my first thousand dollars, but the most exciting thousand dollars that I earned and the first time that I earned more than a thousand dollars in a single moment. So the basics of music licensing are you write songs, you record them and you upload them onto a website and then you make a little bit of money every time somebody licenses that song. So if you're a musician, it's a really great way to earn sort of semi passive income because your music markets itself and the websites that you work with market themselves. And after a year or two of doing this, uploading maybe one or two songs a month, I was earning probably about a hundred dollars a month in income and that was fantastic.
I was really happy about it, but I never had like a breakthrough moment. It was just glowing slowly but surely. And then one day out of the blue, I got a earnings statement from one of the royalty companies that I work with called BMI. And BMI basically helps musicians earn money from the public performances of their music on TV or at concerts or something like that in movies, radio. And I opened it up expecting maybe $5 or $10, which is what I had seen in my previous quarterly statements.
But to my shock and very pleasant surprise, I saw a check for $1,900 for one of my songs that was being played in Romania. Yeah, somehow this song of mine had apparently become very popular or had been included in a very popular Romanian TV show and earned me $1,900 in the first quarter and over time earned me about $3,000 total. So it just goes to show that music licensing can be surprising and wonderful and rewarding. I'm gonna play a quick clip of that song just so you can hear. It's not my best work at all, but it surprises you what sells.
[Music]
Now that was a few years ago and over time I've gone on to continue to earn and learn more having had songs on shows like "The Real Housewives" and on Netflix documentaries and all sorts of things. But there's nothing quite as sweet as seeing that first fat royalty check for $1,900. Because musicians, just like anybody else, I think, feel a bit of imposter syndrome, wondering if your music is good enough or if you're making what people are interested in. And to see that somebody found so much value for my music that they wanted to include it repeatedly on their show really felt vindicating. And it inspired me to wanna teach other people how to learn, how to license their music.
So that's something that I've been focusing on over time and as I've been also just improving my music skills. I have yet to see another check that big come in, but I'm really hopeful for the next quarter. I know I've had some song, some really nice placements according to my publisher. So I'm really excited to see what those are gonna look like. And I'm really optimistic for the future of creating music, of licensing it.
And I just wanted to thank Chris and the gang for letting me come by and share my story a little bit more. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great one. [Music]
Awesome, thanks so much Evan. Really appreciate the first $1,000 story.
I also love that sample track very much on brand for side hustle school. So great to see or hear how our visions are aligned. Listeners, check out stockmusicmusician.com, stockmusicmusician.com or Evan's YouTube channel. Just search stock music musician. We'll link all those things up on the show notes page.
We've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you'll subscribe, follow, come back tomorrow. Much more is coming up. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
