How Amanda Palmer Made $19,000 Using Twitter

Amanda Palmer, lead singer and pianist of the Dresden Dolls and solo artist, writes in a blog post about how she made $19,000 using some creative strategies on Twitter. She performed a “Donation-Only Gig”, did a Webcast Auction, and started the trending topic on Twitter, “Losers Of Friday Night On Their Computers”, on May 15^th. From Amanda’s post:

“I twittered a guest-list only event in a recording studio in Boston, to take place a week later. The gig lasted about 5 hours, all told, with soundcheck and signing. I took mostly requests and we had a grand old time. First come, first served. The first 200 people to ask got in, for free. I asked for donations and made about $2200 in cash. I gave $400 back to the studio for the space and the help. We sold some weird merch. I think we should call it an even 2k.”

Here’s how she made the other $17,000:

On Friday, May 15^th, Palmer was at home, and posted a message to her followers, calling them “Losers Of Friday Night On Their Computers” (LOFNOTC). It read:

i hereby call THE LOSERS OF FRIDAY NIGHT ON THEIR COMPUTERS to ORDER, motherfucker.
9:15 PM May 15th from web

Thousands of people answered and participated in the LOFNOTC group by using the #LOFNOTC hashtag in their messages. Palmer says Zoe Keating described it as a “virtual” flash mob. She recalls on her official site, “One thing led to another, and the next thing you know there were thousands of us, and we’d become the #1 topic trend on Twitter.”

Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton also joined LOFNOTC, and besides “hanging out” online, Palmer designed a t-shirt in real time for the group:

Here’s the original design for the back of the t-shirt:

The t-shirts ended up making $11,000. Here’s how Palmer puts it:

“Total made on twitter in two hours = $11,000.
Total made from my huge-ass Ben-Folds produced-major-label solo album this year = $0″

Palmer also blogged and twittered about her “webcast auction”, a three hour event that she orchestrated from her apartment.

“While we hocked weird goods, I sang songs and answered questions from fans. We wore kimonos and drank wine. It was a blast. People on Twitter who were tuned in re-tweeted to other fans. The word spread that it was a fun place to be and watch. We had, at peak, about 2000 people watching the webcast.”

You can see everything she auctioned (with the final bids) in the original post. Total made: over $6,000.

It’s an amazing story, and certainly is an example of just some of the many ways independant musicians have leveraged Twitter. Most importantly, the service is allowing artists to become more closely connected to fans. As it happens, Twitter-users buy more music than non-users, and if you add creative ideas like Palmer’s, the social and financial benefits of using the platform, for musicians, are immeasurable.

What other “Twitter events” have you picked up?