my best advice is to work on everything and work with everything within a limit. I'll never sell a beat below $100, i just cant do it, it makes no sense for me to do it but if a person can scrounge up 100 bucks i'll work with them. You just wanna get on everything, every project, every artist. Free if its a decent sized project as far as promo, and paid if its just from some unknown rappers. But the more your name is out there the more opportunities you get from companies outside of the direct music industry
your beats are like a sponsorship honestly. Truthfully i used to be against paying rappers for beats. But if i could get a jay-z song for 10k.. I could make that money back by selling beats to nobodies for 500-1000 bucks a beat easily
producers gotta start looking at their career like theyre artist. Its like paying for a feautre. The bigger your resume and things you've worked on and people you've worked on, the more money you can charge up and comers