This year is all about being focused to ensure that you can obtain everything that you aspire to in your music career. I went through some of my research I did over the years and came across a course I did, that was offered by Chris Standring. He is the owner of aandronline. So let us get your music career in focus for 2011 by providing you with this 7-day course. If you will be successful will depend on you, if you will put any effort into it. You will see several links to other relevant sources of information and I do urge you to check them out as they come highly recommended.
So lets get this thang cracking!!!
So lets get this thang cracking!!!
Part One:
As an independent artist there is one thing you have over any band signed; total control over your career. From here on you must be competitive in order to exist professionally and to make a dent in the marketplace as an artist. I know too many artists and groups that get depressed because they can't get a break. Don't forget that if it is a record deal you are looking for, there are all sorts of problems that can come in to play, and getting signed will NOT take all your worries away believe me. I see the same mistakes made with bands signed to record deals. They do not take control of their business and before they know it the label has dropped them (for any number of reasons) and they are back to square one, only to be 5 years older. No deal. No gigs. No plan.
So the answer is to take control of your career now at this stage (whatever stage it is) and decide to become successful whether you have people surrounding you taking commissions or not. At any stage of the game you should be able to land in a position where you have a career you can build on because you have taken care of business. Some things you can do on shoestring, other ideas you will need to stump up a little cash. However, everything I talk about is tried and tested so print this as it comes so you can refer back to it time and time again. It's all good stuff! Some you will know about, some will be new to you. Ok so here goes. Today we are going to talk about your website and ways to make it more effective.
1) Get your own domain name and control your own website
You may have a website at MySpace.com or other third party portal e.g. Facebook, Reverbnation, etc. This is all well and good. However, you MUST get your own website with your own domain name. Something like; www.paarlvalley.com or www.paarl-valley.com or something that you own. Now I know you might think but Myspace is free and that in our previous post we urged you to have a Myspace site. That is all good and well, but don't forget, at some point a MySpace.com may go out of business, and most probably will. If you have not been on top of what is going down in the industry, then let me give you some headz up. From what I have heard from my connects in the States, Myspace is in BIGGGG financial trouble. They are going to fire some… well a Helluva of staff or might sell it to some other company. The company that owns Myspace, News Corp said that they got to fire 1100 staff members or they will dump the division unless a miracle turnaround materializes. Then where will that leave your website? I don't suggest you tear down any existing external sites provided they all link to your own 100% controlled site. You can get cheap domain names all over the Internet. I personally don't like those places. I want to deal with personal tech support if I need them, and I want a trusted company. www.networksolutions.com should be your first port of call to find and purchase a domain name. You will need a web host to host your site. You can get very competitive rates. Try Total Choice Hosting - they offer very affordable plans. If you are in South Africa or abroad then I will suggest that you make use of the following: www.withtank.com in Cape Town or Globesky, www.globesky.com in Wellington, and no not Wellington in Australia. Lol! Withtank charge R120, but adding tax you will pay up to R140 for your domain name. Globesky is approximately the same and ought not to be more. Withtank also offers a hosting package with a Sitebuilder to design nice sites. Check out these sites that was build Withtank, www.codedmusic.net and www.pioneerunit.com.
2) Focus: Sell Cds and collect fan data
Your website should be professional, attractive and extremely easy to navigate. Your prime focus is to point people to your "Order" button and seduce them into giving you their e-mail address so you can sell direct at a later time and keep them informed of your tour schedule. You can, and should, implement the use of auto responders so once fans are subscribed to your newsletter, you can have an automated series of emails sent to them (personally written by you) encouraging them to buy your Cds. Create a 'call to action', much like a 1 week sale a clothing store might offer. Encourage your subscribers to purchase today as by 'next Thursday' the offer goes away. You can set up an auto responder to even remind folks that the 'sale ends tomorrow', for example. If you have a Gmail account then you can make use of Google documents to create a widget to collect fan data after they have subscribed. You can then e- mail your fans from your personalized e-mail address that you can set up with Gmail after you have purchased your domain name. If you do not know how then drop us a message and we will show you how.
3) Popup subscribe boxA great way to get folks to subscribe is to add a pop-up subscribe box to your site. You can configure it to pop up as they land on your index page. Seduce them into subscribing. Give them a free gift when they subscribe. Whilst pretty much all browsers block popups now, your popup should be what they now call a 'hoverad', something that as of this writing cannot be blocked by browsers. You can get tons more ideas regarding incentives here
4) Start a newsletter/ezine
Once a while you should send out a band newsletter with all your news. Make sure you personalize each e-mail so fans are made to feel important. When your mailing list gets a little bigger I would recommend some software to send out your newsletters. The software is called Mailloop and it is a stunning tool as well as Email Marketing. I personally use it and could not live without it. It will personalize your e-mails, clean your lists, get rid of subscribers who subscribe more than once (usually by accident), enable you to send e-mails to fans living in certain territories e.g; Johannesburg, Durban, New York, Texas, Japan or anywhere you have fans. Subscribers are subscribed and unsubscribed automatically. It does so much more too.
I would even recommend studying Internet marketing. In fact I would go much further. I would say it is now a necessity. Don't forget we are watching retail stores go away now (Tower, Warehouse, Blockbuster etc). It is only a matter of time before they ALL disappear. Prepare for tomorrow's new business model: The Internet. It's here already but the day is still young, so if you want to prosper as an artist then you MUST get studying now. You can learn everything there is to know about this new music business model here
5) Optimise Your website for search engines
Your website should be found on all search engines. Make sure each page has a <title> in the html. Have a good <meta description> that describes your band but most importantly, make sure there is lots of text links that point to and from each page. For best results, make sure you have a site map at the bottom or top of each of your web page. Something like this:
You may have a website at MySpace.com or other third party portal e.g. Facebook, Reverbnation, etc. This is all well and good. However, you MUST get your own website with your own domain name. Something like; www.paarlvalley.com or www.paarl-valley.com or something that you own. Now I know you might think but Myspace is free and that in our previous post we urged you to have a Myspace site. That is all good and well, but don't forget, at some point a MySpace.com may go out of business, and most probably will. If you have not been on top of what is going down in the industry, then let me give you some headz up. From what I have heard from my connects in the States, Myspace is in BIGGGG financial trouble. They are going to fire some… well a Helluva of staff or might sell it to some other company. The company that owns Myspace, News Corp said that they got to fire 1100 staff members or they will dump the division unless a miracle turnaround materializes. Then where will that leave your website? I don't suggest you tear down any existing external sites provided they all link to your own 100% controlled site. You can get cheap domain names all over the Internet. I personally don't like those places. I want to deal with personal tech support if I need them, and I want a trusted company. www.networksolutions.com should be your first port of call to find and purchase a domain name. You will need a web host to host your site. You can get very competitive rates. Try Total Choice Hosting - they offer very affordable plans. If you are in South Africa or abroad then I will suggest that you make use of the following: www.withtank.com in Cape Town or Globesky, www.globesky.com in Wellington, and no not Wellington in Australia. Lol! Withtank charge R120, but adding tax you will pay up to R140 for your domain name. Globesky is approximately the same and ought not to be more. Withtank also offers a hosting package with a Sitebuilder to design nice sites. Check out these sites that was build Withtank, www.codedmusic.net and www.pioneerunit.com.
2) Focus: Sell Cds and collect fan data
Your website should be professional, attractive and extremely easy to navigate. Your prime focus is to point people to your "Order" button and seduce them into giving you their e-mail address so you can sell direct at a later time and keep them informed of your tour schedule. You can, and should, implement the use of auto responders so once fans are subscribed to your newsletter, you can have an automated series of emails sent to them (personally written by you) encouraging them to buy your Cds. Create a 'call to action', much like a 1 week sale a clothing store might offer. Encourage your subscribers to purchase today as by 'next Thursday' the offer goes away. You can set up an auto responder to even remind folks that the 'sale ends tomorrow', for example. If you have a Gmail account then you can make use of Google documents to create a widget to collect fan data after they have subscribed. You can then e- mail your fans from your personalized e-mail address that you can set up with Gmail after you have purchased your domain name. If you do not know how then drop us a message and we will show you how.
3) Popup subscribe boxA great way to get folks to subscribe is to add a pop-up subscribe box to your site. You can configure it to pop up as they land on your index page. Seduce them into subscribing. Give them a free gift when they subscribe. Whilst pretty much all browsers block popups now, your popup should be what they now call a 'hoverad', something that as of this writing cannot be blocked by browsers. You can get tons more ideas regarding incentives here
4) Start a newsletter/ezine
Once a while you should send out a band newsletter with all your news. Make sure you personalize each e-mail so fans are made to feel important. When your mailing list gets a little bigger I would recommend some software to send out your newsletters. The software is called Mailloop and it is a stunning tool as well as Email Marketing. I personally use it and could not live without it. It will personalize your e-mails, clean your lists, get rid of subscribers who subscribe more than once (usually by accident), enable you to send e-mails to fans living in certain territories e.g; Johannesburg, Durban, New York, Texas, Japan or anywhere you have fans. Subscribers are subscribed and unsubscribed automatically. It does so much more too.
I would even recommend studying Internet marketing. In fact I would go much further. I would say it is now a necessity. Don't forget we are watching retail stores go away now (Tower, Warehouse, Blockbuster etc). It is only a matter of time before they ALL disappear. Prepare for tomorrow's new business model: The Internet. It's here already but the day is still young, so if you want to prosper as an artist then you MUST get studying now. You can learn everything there is to know about this new music business model here
5) Optimise Your website for search engines
Your website should be found on all search engines. Make sure each page has a <title> in the html. Have a good <meta description> that describes your band but most importantly, make sure there is lots of text links that point to and from each page. For best results, make sure you have a site map at the bottom or top of each of your web page. Something like this:
Home | News | bio | Order CD | Fun Stuff | Photos | Subscribe | Join Our Street Team
6) Trade links
All the search engines now want to get the popularity of google.com and it seems that google is placing most relevance on link popularity. That means that it will rank your website higher if there are more links pointing to your site than others. The links have to be relevant to your Website however. Contact other music related websites and trade links with them. Not only will your search engine rankings go up but you will also get traffic from those sites too. Consider exchanging a small banner with other band sites. You can trade links with A&R Online by submitting your band info to the free band directory. Signup here.
7) Make it easy to order CDs
From ANY web page on your site you should have a "Listen" button and an "Order CD" button. Make it extremely easy for anyone to listen to your music and then buy it online. I am constantly seeing band websites that have terrible navigation problems and I am hunting around for any particular info I might need. Make it easy for everyone! Keep large images to a minimum, as there are still many dial up users with slow computers.
8) Accept credit cards online
This is a must. There will be two major places you sell your CDs and merchandise. a) At gigs and b) online. I would suggest two things. Firstly, if you are not selling more than a few CDs online every month, you should sign up for an account with CD Baby (www.cdbaby.com). There is a small signup fee and they will process credit cards for you and pay you a check every month. They will also ship your CDs for you if you don't want to. They will give you a button to place on your "order CD" web page which will send buyers direct to their server so a credit card can be processed. For more info go here. You can also set up Paypal on your site very simple. They will take a small percentage of each sale. If you belong to FNB in South Africa then you can set yours up through them. According to my knowledge are they the only bank here that offers that. You see. If you want to have a Paypal account then you must have a Credit Card to verify if you really are who you say you are when you open up an account. If you don’t have a credit card, then you won’t be able to set it up. That is where FNB comes in. You can open up a Paypal account through them if you are a client with them, with your savings account, cheque account and credit card if you have one. They are going to transfer money out of your bank account to your Paypal account, ±R15 that will reflect on your bank statement. The code in your statement you use to verify your account. You can then transfer the R15 back to your bank account by clicking on the “withdraw” tab. Now you are set up and you can transfer and withdraw money to your Paypal account from your bank account and vice versa. Paypal is very secure and I highly recommend it. I also have an account with them and made use of their service without any hitches.
Secondly, if you are selling a good amount of CDs you should get your own merchant account. This is not a big deal to set up and I highly recommend the 1shopping cart program. Friends of mine uses Practice Pay Solutions who implement this shopping cart. As a merchant account user, you will only pay a commission of 2.4% on each sale. This is the way to go if you are starting to sell units. Check them out here.
9) Give away free stuff
Giving away free stuff on your website is a great way to get folks to give you their name and e-mail address. Think up some fun things to give them. Of course these free things should be nothing you need to personally get out of your chair over. Automate your web site 100%. A free gift should be something that can be downloaded. Maybe an e-book of photos and band memorabilia. Kind of like a scrapbook. Maybe some previously unreleased mp3s. In order to get these freebies, they should enter their first and last name, e-mail address and location. Then you can sell to them later via your e-newsletter.
All the search engines now want to get the popularity of google.com and it seems that google is placing most relevance on link popularity. That means that it will rank your website higher if there are more links pointing to your site than others. The links have to be relevant to your Website however. Contact other music related websites and trade links with them. Not only will your search engine rankings go up but you will also get traffic from those sites too. Consider exchanging a small banner with other band sites. You can trade links with A&R Online by submitting your band info to the free band directory. Signup here.
7) Make it easy to order CDs
From ANY web page on your site you should have a "Listen" button and an "Order CD" button. Make it extremely easy for anyone to listen to your music and then buy it online. I am constantly seeing band websites that have terrible navigation problems and I am hunting around for any particular info I might need. Make it easy for everyone! Keep large images to a minimum, as there are still many dial up users with slow computers.
8) Accept credit cards online
This is a must. There will be two major places you sell your CDs and merchandise. a) At gigs and b) online. I would suggest two things. Firstly, if you are not selling more than a few CDs online every month, you should sign up for an account with CD Baby (www.cdbaby.com). There is a small signup fee and they will process credit cards for you and pay you a check every month. They will also ship your CDs for you if you don't want to. They will give you a button to place on your "order CD" web page which will send buyers direct to their server so a credit card can be processed. For more info go here. You can also set up Paypal on your site very simple. They will take a small percentage of each sale. If you belong to FNB in South Africa then you can set yours up through them. According to my knowledge are they the only bank here that offers that. You see. If you want to have a Paypal account then you must have a Credit Card to verify if you really are who you say you are when you open up an account. If you don’t have a credit card, then you won’t be able to set it up. That is where FNB comes in. You can open up a Paypal account through them if you are a client with them, with your savings account, cheque account and credit card if you have one. They are going to transfer money out of your bank account to your Paypal account, ±R15 that will reflect on your bank statement. The code in your statement you use to verify your account. You can then transfer the R15 back to your bank account by clicking on the “withdraw” tab. Now you are set up and you can transfer and withdraw money to your Paypal account from your bank account and vice versa. Paypal is very secure and I highly recommend it. I also have an account with them and made use of their service without any hitches.
Secondly, if you are selling a good amount of CDs you should get your own merchant account. This is not a big deal to set up and I highly recommend the 1shopping cart program. Friends of mine uses Practice Pay Solutions who implement this shopping cart. As a merchant account user, you will only pay a commission of 2.4% on each sale. This is the way to go if you are starting to sell units. Check them out here.
9) Give away free stuff
Giving away free stuff on your website is a great way to get folks to give you their name and e-mail address. Think up some fun things to give them. Of course these free things should be nothing you need to personally get out of your chair over. Automate your web site 100%. A free gift should be something that can be downloaded. Maybe an e-book of photos and band memorabilia. Kind of like a scrapbook. Maybe some previously unreleased mp3s. In order to get these freebies, they should enter their first and last name, e-mail address and location. Then you can sell to them later via your e-newsletter.
10) Keep it personal
There should be a very easy way for fans to contact you personally. By this I don't mean that you should leave your cell phone number and home address on your web site. Fans love to feel like they know the band; so let them get to know you. For every band member, set up a separate e-mail address for them. IE: john@paarl-valley.com and sue@paarl-valley.com etc. When fans write an e-mail, reply to them and make sure they know about your upcoming shows. Most importantly, subscribe them to your mailing list! Nurture your fans. They are everything to you!
Come back next week for Part Two for the Independent Artist Wake Up E – Course: How to maximize all possibilities for your future success! Until next time and remember that we are not denied from our dreams, instead we are just being delayed.
There should be a very easy way for fans to contact you personally. By this I don't mean that you should leave your cell phone number and home address on your web site. Fans love to feel like they know the band; so let them get to know you. For every band member, set up a separate e-mail address for them. IE: john@paarl-valley.com and sue@paarl-valley.com etc. When fans write an e-mail, reply to them and make sure they know about your upcoming shows. Most importantly, subscribe them to your mailing list! Nurture your fans. They are everything to you!
Come back next week for Part Two for the Independent Artist Wake Up E – Course: How to maximize all possibilities for your future success! Until next time and remember that we are not denied from our dreams, instead we are just being delayed.
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