The Square = More Mechandise Sales
This guest post is from Christopher Joel, an independent musician from Nashville, TN who plays with The Intrepid Travelers and is the author of Your Band Blog: How to Use WordPress As Your Band's Website.
I just read about a new product coming out early next year that will be a massive help to performing musicians running into an age-old problem. You have an excited fan who really wants to buy your CD, t-shirt, sticker, whatever, but they only have a credit/debit card. For most of us, this means a lost sale. However, this new product, called the Square will remedy this nicely!
The Square is a card-swiper that connects to your iPhone that reads credit and debit cards. It’s from the guy who started Twitter, Jack Dorsey. You don’t have an iPhone? The best part is, this can be used with just about any phone (iPhone and Android phones right now). The website says it can be used with any device with an audio jack.
I doubt your 80’s Walkman will help you much. Even better: one penny from every transaction goes to a charity of your choice, so you can help improve the world and make more merch sales at the same time! So now, your excited fan can swipe their card, confirm the transaction, and head home with piles of your merch!
Supposedly, they will be giving away the Square for free, you’ll just sign up for service. There aren’t many details out there right now, but they say there are no contracts and monthly fees and your customers get an emailed receipt. Many news sources are saying it will work like Paypal, with a per transaction fee. As a touring artist who’s getting ready to print up physical CD’s, this solves a problem before I’ve even had it!
What tricks and tech do you use to sell more merch?
Seems to me most people going to shows know to bring cash for the door cover, the bar, and for merch. Still, not a bad idea. Isn’t there already an iPhone app (sans swiper) for processing credit cards? Another idea, if the venue has internet, set up a laptop and let users punch in their own info into PayPal. You could also just write down their credit card info and process it all later. Of course, these solutions (including The Square) open some privacy questions.
CD Baby offers a free credit card swiper — the old school style that just makes an imprint, but hey, a sale is a sale.
Wow I wasn’t aware that they were going to make this available to the general public/indie musicians. I was under the impression that is was for large,mid & small business’.
Thats awesome though!
I used that system at a number of shows. It’s not as fast and you have to make sure the numbers print and sometimes you have to collect additional contact info, but it is a way get it done.
Some bands assume there will always be ATMs readily available, but if you are playing a concert out in the middle of a park, there may not be anything nearby.