If you haven’t noticed, Soulja Boy is one of the most influential rappers of all time. but when he first came out, they said he was ruining hip hop.All because he was promoting himself through the internet instead of getting the traditional street cred everyone else was dying for. He was the first rapper who took the route of the internet and started posting his music on soundclick.He was charging $1 per song and getting about 20,000 downloads everyday. So at 16 years old, he was making $10,000/day after soundclick took their 50% cut 😧By 2006, the days of passing out your cd’s up and down the street, traveling to LA/NY, and having a connection to an A&R to help you book a meeting with a label were outdated.So while those same artists who were talking down on him and were hoping to get on radio or have mtv play their song just once, Soulja Boy put his efforts into being big on the internet where people could listen anytime and put it on repeat as many times as they wanted.Because of his innovative way of promoting himself, he jumped over the competition.Going viral on myspace and youtubeLetting himself get closer to his fans by adding pics, bio, and of course updating his profile playlist with his newest songs, Soulja Boy's fanbase followed him and he immediately grew to 700k friends and became the #1 independent artist.Then youtube came out and he quickly got on that. He uploaded his 1st single ‘crank dat’ and went viral before going viral was even a thing.It was all written and produced by soulja boy with a home studio and a $200 mic. again, being the first rapper to show that you didn’t need expensive equipment and studios to make a hit song.Internet Growth HackingWhile growth hacking was popular in the 2010’s, Soulja Boy did it with his first album in 2007. Naming it souljaboytellem(.com), his website saw a surge in traffic as the album sold 117k copies first week. Whatever he was selling on the website (merch, vinyls, concert tickets) must have seen a major boost with all that extra brand awareness.A little black hat marketing also played into it. he clickbaited before people even knew what that was. On limewire, he would upload ‘crank dat’ and title it with names of the top 10 most downloaded songs as well as top 10 songs on billboard.So instead of 50 cent or britney spears, all they heard was “YOUUUUUU”The song spent 7 weeks at #1, received grammy nominations, and became the 1st song to sell 3 million digital copies. not to mention one of the most popular dance fads of all time.Could you imagine if he had tik tok back then 🤯All this hype and independent success got jimmy iovine interested, who gave him a million dollar interscope deal at 17. the whole million dollars up front. no partial payments, no contingencies. just straight wired to his bank account.Millions of dollars from ringtonesThen in 2008, ringtone money came in. 'kiss me through the phone’ was the perfect song for that era. he started getting called a ringtone rapper but none of that bothered him because he sold more than 2.6 million ringtones.Talk about product market fit.In the song he gave out his phone number that fans could call through the company SayNow, who later sold to google. He was making $100k/month because he sang the number in the song and his fans subscribed.so one song alone made him millions from both ringtones and texts.The first rapper to…Soulja Boy was the first rapper to do a lot of innovative things:be on myspacehave an iphonestream on justin.tv (twitch)have a gaming teamhave a video game consolewrite and produce a #1 song at 16They said he killed hip hop, but he brought new life to it. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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