The next opportunity I want to suggest to you is asking your fans to pay for your new album. From June 2010 to March 2011, I raised over $25,000 in fan donations to fund the production of my record ONE UP. It’s possible, people. But no one will give you a dime if your campaign is “I really really want to make a record- please give me money!”. You need to create an opportunity for your fans that will inspire them to participate.

I offered different levels of donation from $50 to $5,000, which meant bigger prizes for those who donated more. Play big! Never think no one will ever give little old you that much. You will be surprised. The prize for a $1,000 donation was singing with me on a song. This is an experience exchange. Someone did donate $1,000 to my record, and she told me the studio experience was worth it ten times over. A couple also donated $5,000 and I wrote a song for [read more]]]> The following is an excerpt from the e-course “In The Key Of Success: The Five Week Jump-Start Strategy”. You can get the rest of the course here to jump start your career today!

The next opportunity I want to suggest to you is asking your fans to pay for your new album. From June 2010 to March 2011, I raised over $25,000 in fan donations to fund the production of my record ONE UP. It’s possible, people. But no one will give you a dime if your campaign is “I really really want to make a record- please give me money!”. You need to create an opportunity for your fans that will inspire them to participate.

I offered different levels of donation from $50 to $5,000, which meant bigger prizes for those who donated more. Play big! Never think no one will ever give little old you that much. You will be surprised. The prize for a $1,000 donation was singing with me on a song. This is an experience exchange. Someone did donate $1,000 to my record, and she told me the studio experience was worth it ten times over. A couple also donated $5,000 and I wrote a song for their wedding anniversary (in addition to giving them the other levels’ benefits: a free mp3, credit in the album, a signed poster, a homemade brownie, etc.). Again, I gave them an experience, a memory, something unique for them to have forever. These are the things to offer your fans to make it personal.

The gist of my fan funding campaign:

• I set up a one-page landing site using basic HTML that users would see first before
  heading to my website. (Mine is still live so you can still see it even though it’s hidden.)
• I set up a PayPal account to accept donations on my own time table, on my own
  website.
• I sent out a monthly email to my fan list with the SPONSOR button and link in the
  email (the fewer clicks the better) telling people what I was up to and how they
  could be involved.
• Once people started giving, I gave them regular updates on the recording process-
  photos, sound clips and webisodes to keep them in the loop and to let them know their money was going to good use. You could even throw your donors a party!

It may also be a good idea to get some feedback from a handful of fans before you start the project. Ask them what they would want as incentive to give to your record. You will learn what is valuable to fans and then be able to offer them exactly what they want!

“What about a fan-funding site like Kickstarter?” you ask? The debate about sites like Kickstarter can go on for days. My biggest concern is that some sites challenge you to make a certain amount of money by a certain deadline, and if you don’t meet that goal, you don’t get ANY of the money. [For the full debate discussion, download the E-course at http://www.cbemusic.com/ecourse.]

9-Step Fan-Funding Campaign Checklist

You will now set up a fan funding system in less than a week!

1. Send an email to fans asking what they’d like to see as a reward for donating to your next project’s funding venture. Tell them you’d love an answer by the end of the week. If you haven’t yet set up a mass-mailing system for collecting and managing emails, I highly suggest using Constant Contact.

2. Use the answers plus some of your own creative ingenuity to develop a rewards scale from $5 to $5,000.

3. Create a one-page website to store all of the information on the project. If you don’t have any web design skills, request that a friend or fan help you make a simple site for this project. Also, post on Facebook and Twitter… someone will be able to help! Offer them one of the tiered prizes.

4. Set up a PayPal account and create a Sponsor button. (You will be creating a “donate” button, but be sure to name the button “Sponsor”. “Donate” implies money is going to a non profit, so unless you are a 501c, don’t be misleading.) Embed this button on your website.

5. Schedule a timeline for the production of your record, even if you are still in the songwriting stages.

6. Announce to the world via social networking and email blasts that you are launching a fan-funded project. Be sure to include a direct link to the PayPal page. Make a short video announcement as well, like Barnaby Bright’s. Remember to keep away from the “starving musician” victim voice, and be the inspiring opportunity- creator that you are!

7. Determine the length of the project to decide how many updates you will be sending. If the project is more than one month, send an update once a week. If it’s over a year, once a month. You don’t want people drowning in your project, but you want to communicate enough so they don’t wonder what you’re doing with their money.

8. Send updates about how the project is going. I liked to send an email with a quick 2-3 minute video of me talking about how it’s going, mixed in with some footage
of songwriting, recording, heading to the studio, etc. If you aren’t so hot with video editing or basic production, shoot another email out to fans and friends requesting assistance. Offer one of your rewards for said assistance!

9. BE ON TIME. Make sure to send everyone their rewards by the end of the project. Be up front about when you will be sending them their rewards. If you can’t be on time with what you initially said, then at least communicate it.

You now have the main tools to jump start your fan-funding campaign and make the most of your fans’ enthusiasm for you. Go rock it!

For tons more tools to get the results you want for your music career, go get yourself this valuable e-course. It’ll be the best money you’ve spent on your career. Yes, better than that new gig bag, and yes, better than that hair cut you got for you last big show, and yes, better than the money you spent on in-app add ons. I personally guarantee it.

xxoo,

Cheryl

Cheryl is a composer and singer/songwriter. Her website is www.CBEmusic.com and she writes a music industry blog called Living On Gigging. She just released “In The Key Of Success: The 5 Week Jump- Start Strategy,” an E-Course for musicians and artists on how to jump-start their careers through finding their true purpose and taking effective actions.

The unseen artist yearns to be seen. The unheard musician needs to be heard, and the under budget company wants to under pay everyone. While this may be more of my more cynical points of view, I’d like to start off by saying that while promises of “exposure” in exchange for goods (in this article, for the sake of argument, we’ll use a track off your recent, self-released record) is usually a scam, that is not always the case. My tour mate Shaun Ruymen has a track in the new movie “You Again”, and he most certainly has a great chance of exposure. The opportunities for exchanging your music for real, mass exposure are out there, rare as they are.

That being said, I move on. MOST of the time, when promised exposure in exchange for use of your track, chances are it’s because there’s no chance of being paid. And in most areas of the music business where there is an audience (a real audience, where you will really get said exposure), there is usually money. The PROs (performing rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC) are close behind, ready [read more]]]> exposure |ikˈspō zh ər|
noun
• an act or instance of being uncovered

The unseen artist yearns to be seen. The unheard musician needs to be heard, and the under budget company wants to under pay everyone. While this may be more of my more cynical points of view, I’d like to start off by saying that while promises of “exposure” in exchange for goods (in this article, for the sake of argument, we’ll use a track off your recent, self-released record) is usually a scam, that is not always the case. My tour mate Shaun Ruymen has a track in the new movie “You Again”, and he most certainly has a great chance of exposure. The opportunities for exchanging your music for real, mass exposure are out there, rare as they are.

That being said, I move on. MOST of the time, when promised exposure in exchange for use of your track, chances are it’s because there’s no chance of being paid. And in most areas of the music business where there is an audience (a real audience, where you will really get said exposure), there is usually money. The PROs (performing rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC) are close behind, ready to collect your royalties. Rarely will you find an opportunity that gives you REAL exposure with no money attached. You have more chance of finding a gig that pays really well but doesn’t offer much of a new fan base, or exposure. (Like college cafeteria shows and ski resorts, for example. Paying the bills [and dues] but not necessarily getting your music heard the way you would like.)

The thing about the word exposure, is that it is just “an instant”. Extreme exposure can give you 15 minutes of fame, at best. What your music needs is to be steady, ubiquitous, available, and constantly pumped into listeners ears. You know how to do that. And if not, here are my 6 tips:

1) Tour. Hit the road and get new fans. Done and done.
2) Share. Give away recordings of new songs you did in your bedroom for free. Write a blog about what you’re up to. Let the world know you love what you’re doing, or when you’re struggling, or that you’re succeeding past your wildest dreams!
3) Co-write. Two heads are better than one. Two records are too.
4) Hire an intern. Have this person’s sole purpose to be to get you exposure- write articles about you and send press releases. Pay them a % of your CD sales and don’t take them for granted. Bring them with you when you make it big.
5) Get out of the house. Go to shows. Go to music conferences. Make friends with the panelists. Get on a panel next time. Your name gets in every brochure and website about the conference.
6) Go to the movies. Look on craigslist for recent auditions for movies. Get in touch with the directors/producers and offer your music. The more music you place in films, the more likely you get a film going to Sundance. Always make sure to get a little money for your music, even if it’s just $100. (I’m personally training the indie film industry to respect how important music is in films, thus to pay for it like they would an editor or director)

In the end, it’s about attaching value to your music, not letting “the industry” take advantage or undercut that value, and finding the balance between trading your value for something else of equal value. Often times, exposure is an unknown, unreliable empty promise that you cannot forward to your tax guy at the end of the year. Seller beware.

PS. Get it in writing. Before it goes to air on national television, before it gets sold on someone else’s compilation CD and before you lose an opportunity. Do not be afraid to take a stand for your music and its value.

The question is an ever-changing how? How do we use new technologies to gain exposure? How should we spend our money and time on reaching more people? How should we shuffle through the dozens of public relation and promotion companies to choose the right one to develop OUR relationship with the public? And is it worth it?

This is what I have learned: you need to know what you need before taking on a PR plan. It doesn’t matter if your plan is to put up posters all over town or hire the top PR firm in your area to make elite connections for you. You need to know what it is you and your music needs. I’ll tell you my story and my mistakes and hopefully help you figure out your PR direction.

After I produced my very first album, I had only done a few shows and had [read more]]]> As far as I know, every musician is looking for more exposure. To be heard by other people is to have our art honored, accepted and justified. It is a connection, a performance, an intimate relationship to have our words, melodies and creations shared with the world. And it is our livelihood.

The question is an ever-changing how? How do we use new technologies to gain exposure? How should we spend our money and time on reaching more people? How should we shuffle through the dozens of public relation and promotion companies to choose the right one to develop OUR relationship with the public? And is it worth it?

This is what I have learned: you need to know what you need before taking on a PR plan. It doesn’t matter if your plan is to put up posters all over town or hire the top PR firm in your area to make elite connections for you. You need to know what it is you and your music needs. I’ll tell you my story and my mistakes and hopefully help you figure out your PR direction.

After I produced my very first album, I had only done a few shows and had no press whatsoever. I had just made a simple website and had some friends email me some press-esque quotations about my music, just to have SOMEthing on my “press page”. I had zero street cred. That’s when I heard about a small PR company that sends new indie albums to the music niche world. I decided getting some real reviews for my album wasn’t a bad idea. I paid the flat fee of about $1500 and mailed out a bunch of records and waited around. For a few months, good reviews would slowly trickle in from publications I’d never heard of, and I added them to my website. But what I realized was that the people that were reading these reviews were also musicians, and I wasn’t gaining new fans. So I hired a radio PR company. I sent them a few hundred discs and they sent them out to the appropriate stations, sending me weekly reports of who was playing my records. Something I could list on my website and use to beef up my slowly growing press page. Still didn’t see too many cd sales or surges in fans.

After scolding my self for wasting my money, I spent the next year doing my own PR… emailing magazines, tv and radio stations, and newspapers, trying to get any mention of my next show, my album, or me in the public eye. My successes were that I could usually get my performances listed in magazines like Time Out NY. My favorite is when I researched the editors for about 100 big magazines and emailed every single one of them, personally, and received one reply. That reply was from Ernie Rideout, then the editor of Keyboard Magazine. He was going to be in town and though he couldn’t make my show, wanted to meet me. So we met, and a professional relationship was formed. I was featured in Keyboard Magazine twice, and later went on to write an article for them. Ernie and I remain friends. Suddenly, my no-name music magazine reviews seemed unimportant, and the one that counted and gave me real credibility was the one I got for myself. Lesson learned.

Or maybe not…. When I came out with my second record, I was ready to step it up in the PR department. I consulted with Keyboard staffers and asked them who their favorite PR companies were to work with. I was referred to a few and after interviewing with some, like the great Shorefire, realized that my little album was never going to compete with Bruce Springsteen’s latest and greatest. Yet I didn’t want to go back to a little company, only hitting the small music-niche publications. So I split the difference, I turned to a friend I had met at a big show a few years back. She worked a PR company that does PR for all sorts of clients, not just musicians. Their price was half of the bigger companies, yet a little more than the smaller. They had experience with the big network TV shows, but not with working with musicians directly. They were excited about a new kind of client. And I found my match.

After six months and several local TV performances on stations like Boston’s FOX 25 and Portland’s ABC, I thought I had spent my money well. I stepped up the PR ladder and gathered more evidence of my awesomeness (this time, instead of reviews from unknown publications, it was in the form of TV interviews and performances). As I headed to England for an acoustic tour with my drummer, I was excited to see what my PR company would come up with. Unfortunately, it was nothing except a 5am interview the day after we got back. My drummer and I spent our British days twiddling our thumbs. The low point was when he said “don’t we usually have stuff to do on tours? Like radio shows and interviews and stuff?” My answer was “yeah, when I’m running the show”.

I sent myself home, scolding myself yet again for wasting money, this time a whole lot more, on something I could have done myself. Same theme. Same problem. What’s the common denominator? Me. I CHOSE to hire these companies, for very specific reasons. When my reasons changed, I never notified the companies, and the result was disappointment.

Still holding a new album, I wanted to tour more. I thought I would try one last attempt at PR and hired Tinderbox to do a more intense radio campaign than the first company I used. Tinderbox not only tripled the amount of stations that spun my record, but they were diligent in followup. My work ethic was noted by the owner of the company, who personally took it upon himself to reach out to some of his friends in the music supervision world, and a few months later I found myself staying up to watch “The Real World” on MTV just to hear my music in the background. I guess things happen for a reason, work pays off, and there are interesting spiral staircases that I am climbing.

What I did learn was to give myself some slack and to realize that each of these companies did exactly what I needed at the time. As I started to outgrow them, it was my responsibility to reassess my music’s needs and find a new company that could address them.

So here’s the short of it: Ask yourself this: what press do you currently have? Is your answer a) My buddies wrote some reviews of my album for me. They read “This is awesome!” b) I’ve got some good reviews, nothing on-air or noteworthy enough that my mom would know the source. c) I’ve been on local TV, radio and been in some decent publications. I’ve also opened for some bigger acts.
Then ask: What do you need? a) Anything! b) To step it up and get press that can get me gigs and be recognized by the music community c) get press that my friends would be psyched about and that would get me more fans: national coverage.

If your answer is A, you maybe looking for a small PR company, like Rainmaker or PowderFinger.

If your answer is B, check out doing a radio tour- when you are thinking about touring, hire a company (I STRONGLY suggest Tinderbox- tell Jon that Cheryl sent you!!) about 2 months before your tour and use your report sheets to fill in your tour dates- you can map out where you are getting radio play and then call up those stations and do an on-air performance. I’ve learned that radio stations LOVE live acts, and you can give away your CDs to the first 3 callers, etc etc. It livens things up for them, and gets people to come out to your shows that night, and you’ve got something to do in the day besides dealing with your hangover from last night’s show.

If your answer above is C then it may be time to save up the big bucks and hit up a big-time player, the one that can make connections on a national level. If you’ve already done steps A and B, plus put in your own efforts, chances are you’ve developed a few good press relationships already that your new PR company can build on.

Last note: PR companies can’t polish turds. Make sure your music is ready to go, you’ve got the full package, and something worth talking about, whether it’s a tour or a new record. Be polished. That way whatever PR you do is really working for your music. The fans, credibility and sales will be worth the money and effort. Even if you’re like me and don’t realize it at the time. Every step you take for your career is a step in the right direction.

HOW TO BEST DESIGN YOUR WEBSITE

I started looking up other bands online just to see what their websites looked like. After finding a few sites I really enjoyed, I contacted the bands to find out who designed them. I called 3 designers and, based on availability, price and design talent, I chose Josh Webb (www.joshwebb99.com).

Josh and I spent a few months going over my basic requirements. I wanted the design to match the color patterns, fonts and image treatment of the graphics of my new album. For content, I made Josh a “map” that included the pages of the site I thought were necessary and what features I wanted on each.

[read more]]]> After coming out with my first album four years ago, I thought I was set after creating a MySpace account and having a friend build me an editable website. But when I was getting ready to release my second album – the one I spent 10 times as long making, put more money into designing and was overall incredibly proud of – I wanted to raise the bar on every other front as well.

HOW TO BEST DESIGN YOUR WEBSITE

I started looking up other bands online just to see what their websites looked like. After finding a few sites I really enjoyed, I contacted the bands to find out who designed them. I called 3 designers and, based on availability, price and design talent, I chose Josh Webb (www.joshwebb99.com).

Josh and I spent a few months going over my basic requirements. I wanted the design to match the color patterns, fonts and image treatment of the graphics of my new album. For content, I made Josh a “map” that included the pages of the site I thought were necessary and what features I wanted on each.

For example, part of my “map” looked like this:

1. Home

A. Email signup

B. “Next show” marquee and/or latest news

C. “Buy CD” link

D. MySpace link

2. Music

A. Music samples from both albums

B. Store (from CD Baby, or iTunes)

C. Pictures of album covers (two)

3. Tour

A. schedule from www.sonicbids.com

4. Photos

A. I’d like a quick-loading photo album, with the following albums:

1. Live – archive

2. Live – recent

3. On the road

4. Misc.

I also let Josh know that editing the pages after the site was designed and launched was really important to me. I didn’t want to have to depend on his schedule or pay extra to add some text to my “news” page or update my biography. Having only very basic HTML skills, I didn’t want to spend days learning advanced Flash or CSS.

Josh made an overall frame (the photos on the top and menu on the side) in Flash. The individual pages within each frame are in HTML, which means I can drag them from my ftp onto my computer and edit them. I use the program Fetch to access my files, edit in Dreamweaver and drag the new files back to the ftp.

CREATING CONSISTENCY ON YOUR SITE

Now that my website was up to par, I hired a designer friend to make my MySpace page match www.cbemusic.com (which also matches the CD design). I went through all of the websites where I upload and/or promote my music: Garageband, iLike, PureVolume, FameCast and uploaded the same audio tracks and pictures that are featured on www.cbemusic.com. My aim was to keep my main artist image the same across all of the pages. I also use an e-mail template that looks like my home page. When I send out an e-mail to my fans, they get a little piece of the website, which hopefully makes them want to check it out because my main goal is to drive traffic to my website in hopes building an audience and boost CD sales.

ONLINE MARKETING TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

After feeling totally satisfied with my websites and online image, I started to use these tools I had created.

Mainly I use data-tracking features in my web hosting and email programs to better target my market and see what works best. I have been using Constant Contact as my email marketing software for a few years. This allows me to import new subscriber data (email, location and name) and send emails about my shows, new albums, etc., to a targeted audience. For example, I only send emails about New York shows to people in the NY area so I don’t spam my Switzerland fans. I also try to make the body of the email readable, personable and concise. I used to have a side bar within the email that contained links, but I have found that keeping important links in the body of the email results in more clicks. Setting up a good target-marketing plan before sending that email is extremely important. What I am finding is there is much to be learned after that email is sent as well.

Devising a way to test which emails are getting the best responses is an excellent way to focus future emails. One method is to split your mailing list into a few different sections and mail various drafts of the same message, slightly changed for each section. If one version gets vastly better results than the others, you may have learned how to more effectively communicate with your fan base.

INTERPRETING YOUR DATA

Constant Contact allows me to look at a ton of great statistics. I can tell how many people opened my email (this helps hone my subject-line writing skills) and which links were clicked the most. This information helps determine how interested my fans are in reading about charity causes I’m involved with, other artists I link to and how many people clicked on directions to a show. I use all of this information, especially when creating my next email. I may have learned that 40 people clicked on my website, five people were interested in my environmental charity initiative and three people clicked on directions to an upcoming show in a small town in Maine. From this, I can see that mentioning my charity initiatives is taking attention away from more important links (like CD sales) and there is probably going to be low attendance in my Maine show. Now I know to do some additional promotion for it, or send a more personalized email to my fans in the Maine area.

What I look for in my email stats:

1. Opens (what percent of emails I sent actually were opened and hopefully read, which tells me a lot about the appeal of my subject line.)

2. Clicks (what percent of the people that opened the email clicked on any of the links, which is a good indicator of how many people really read the email.)

3. Specific clicks (knowing which links in my email got the most clicks gives me a better idea of what people are interested in.)

4. Opt-outs, spam reports, forwards and bounces (helps me understand if people are not interested or think I’m spamming them. It also lets me know if they forwarded my email to a friend, or if they just didn’t get it I can see who did what and for what reason.)

I can do the same with my website as I do with my emails. With my web hosting account (Startlogic), I can see my website’s statistics for as long as the site has been alive. I can compare the number of hits the site gets over years, months, days and even hours. I can see what pages get more hits and which pages need more traffic. I can also see how people search for and end up at my website, and what other pages link to me.

What I look for in my website stats:

1. Daily hits (this tells me which day of the week gets more visitors, which helps me know when to send emails and update my site. I try to update it on low traffic days, just in case I screw something up or need to test a link.)

2. Visit duration (this tells me how long people stay on my site. Using this info, I know if I should enhance my home page to send people to other pages within the site. If they stick around longer, they hopefully develop a relationship with me and the site.)

3. Operating systems and browsers (these are good statistics to know before redesigning your webpage. This tells you what systems your visitors are using. For example, 80% use Windows and 16% use Macs; 61% of my visitors use Internet Explorer and 25% use Firefox. This allows you to cater your site to the most traffic, making sure plugins, features, fonts and sizes are compatible with a majority of your viewers.)

4. Connect to Site From (this tells me what sites people were on when they decided to click on a link to my site. I can also see how many people typed my name or some keyword that included my site as a search result.)

Sell Your Music Online

NimbitSkin: NimbitSkin is the next generation of online music sales for artists. It lets you sell both hard copy and digital versions of your music and just about any other type of merchandise you can plaster your band name on. What’s unique about NimbitSkin is that it lets the artist customize the look of the “store” so it fits seamlessly onto any website without disrupting the page’s feel or sending your fans to an external website. Nimbit charges a monthly service fee and a one-time installation charge, but dues and installation prices are relatively inexpensive and setup takes less than a few hours.

www.nimbit.com

Hoooka: Hoooka combines the community and networking aspects of MySpace with the digital selling format of sites like iTunes. Anyone, not just the artist, can make their own virtual store on various sites, from blogs to MySpace. This aspect is Hoooka’s stand-out point: a program that lets fans sell tracks for their favorite artist and then earn a 10 percent cut of what they sell. The 80 percent revenue share with artists is great, but the site won’t let artists set their own prices. The price tag ($.99 a song) can’t be negotiated.

www.hoooka.com

Amie Street: Amie Street offers artist 70 percent of song sales (after it has made $5) and lets the artist retain all creative rights. They have a unique business model; people can download the song for free initially, and but the price goes up as the song gets more downloads (there is $.98 cap). This is an interesting idea to promote the discovery of new songs by offering them for cheap before the artist becomes “the next big thing”.

www.amiestreet.com

BlastMyMusic: BlastMyMusic is a simple, easy-to-use, easy-to-install widget that lets anyone sell their music on their own website. Its no-nonsense mp3 sales design is refreshingly simple, but the mandatory $.99 price per track is a drawback and their artist share percentage is slightly below what other sites offer.

www.blastmymusic.com

Market Your Music Online

Constant Contact: Constant Contact is probably the best-known email-marketing program for small businesses. It works well for bands, too. The program is relatively simple and allows you to manage and monitor your mailing list, see which emails are being opened and which are being ignored and loads of other useful information. Its popularity is well-earned and its low cost makes it a great tool for indie artists who manage their own marketing strategies.

www.constantcontact.com

Champion Sound: Champion Sound is a very basic easy-to-use email-marketing program that focuses on the needs of musicians and venues. Not too many different marketing options are available, but it is a very easy way to let your fans know about upcoming shows or new releases. The best part is that it’s a free service.

www.championsound.com

MyNewsLetterBuilder: MyNewsLetterBuilder is a company that specializes in email marketing for various industries that has a format specifically for musicians. They provide all the tools needed to add a multimedia experience to emails. With a MyNewsLetterBuilder account, an artist can instantly add music, videos, playlists, profiles, events and photo montages to their messages. They charge a monthly fee for their services after a free trial period.

www.mynewsletterbuilder.com

On that bookshelf I mentioned before, there are scores of “how-to” books- like how to get the gig, how to publish your music, how to start a record label. In most of them, I saw a few consistent words of advice: get a good website and brand the hell outta yourself. Okay, got it. Now what??

After coming out with my first album 4 years ago, getting a friend to build me [read more]]]> I am a control freak. Type A personality. Pisces. Left-handed. Female. You get the point. There’s very little room to wiggle in my daily-budget-excel-spreadsheet, color-coordinated calendar and perfectly stacked bookshelves containing mostly last years’ musician’s atlases, DIY novels (is there even such thing?) and booking resources. So when it comes to my internet, the one that I use to spread the word and music that is CBE, I need control, I need it to be tight, and I need access to obsess over it. These mean different things to different people, and in this article, I’ll let you know what it means to me, and maybe there’s a little light to be shed in the realm of DIY Internet marketing.

On that bookshelf I mentioned before, there are scores of “how-to” books- like how to get the gig, how to publish your music, how to start a record label. In most of them, I saw a few consistent words of advice: get a good website and brand the hell outta yourself. Okay, got it. Now what??

After coming out with my first album 4 years ago, getting a friend to build me a website that I could edit, and setting up a Myspace account, I thought I was set. But when I was getting ready to release my second album last fall, the one I spend 10 times as long making, put more money into designing and was overall incredibly proud of, I wanted to raise the bar on every other front as well.

I had heard the word branding and decided it was time to brand myself. Not like a cow… like a company, thankyouverymuch. I started looking up other bands online just to see what their websites looked like. I kept a bookmark folder of these sites, with the hopes I could find a great web designer who could check them out and understand what I wanted. And that’s just what happened. After finding a few sites I really enjoyed, I contacted the bands to find out who designed them. I called 3 designers and based on availability, price, and design talent, chose Josh Webb (www.joshwebb99.com). And with a name like that, I knew I was in luck.

Josh and I spend a few months going over my basic requirements. I wanted the design to match the graphics of my new album, with the same color patterns, fonts and image treatment. For content, I made Josh a “map” which included the pages of the site I thought were necessary and what features I wanted on each. For example, part of my “map” looked like this:
1. Home- email signup; “next show” marquee and/or newest news; “buy cd” link; myspace link
2. Music- Music samples from both albums; store (from CD baby, or iTunes); pictures of album covers (2)
3. Tour- Show schedule from Sonicbids.com
4. Photos- I’d like a quick-loading photo album, with the following albums: Live- archive, Live- recent, On the road, Misc

I also let Josh know that editing the pages after the site was designed and launched was really important to me (and my controlling personalities). I didn’t want to have to depend on his schedule, or pay extra, to add some text to my “news” page, or to update my biography, and with very basic HTML skills, I didn’t want to spend days learning advanced Flash or CSS.

After a few months of back-and-forth, we got to what is now cbemusic.com. And I couldn’t be happier. Josh made an overall frame (the photos on the top and menu on the side) in Flash. The individual pages within each frame in HTML, which means I can drag them from my ftp onto my computer and edit them. I use the program Fetch to access my files and edit them in Dreamweaver, then drag the new files back to the ftp.

So now that my website was up to my par, I hired a friend who creates suped-up myspace pages. He designed my myspace page to match cbemusic.com (which matches the CD design… Cheryl “B-for-Branding” Engelhardt, at your service). I went through all of the other websites where I upload and/or promote my music: Garageband, iLike, AirSpun, PureVolume, FameCast, etc, and uploaded the same audio tracks and pictures that are featured on cbemusic.com. I went to my email-marketing program (more on this later), and had Josh do a quick design of my e-mail template to look like…. you got it…. my home page. So now when I send out an e-mail to my fans, they get a little piece of the website, which hopefully makes them want to explore the site more. My goal is to drive traffic to my website for the results of 1. obtaining a hard-core fan 2. CD sales 3. both.

After feeling totally confident that I had mastered branding, and was completely satisfied with my websites and my online image, I started to use these tools I had so carefully created.

As we all know, there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to anything technical or digital. With every web page and every email, there is a boatload of data behind it. I use key data-tracking features in my web hosting and email programs to target my market better, and to see what works and what doesn’t work in how I communicate with my listeners. Only recently, since I put out my new website in January, have I learned to really use the back end of the e-mails and web site statistics.

I have been using Constant Contact as my e-mail marketing software for a few years now, and have used their services of importing new subscriber data like e-mail, location and name, to send out e-mails about my shows, new albums, etc, to a targeted audience. For example, I send emails about New York shows only to people who live in the NY area so I don’t spam my Switzerland fans. Setting up a good target-marketing plan before sending that email is extremely important. What I am finding is there is much to be learned after that email is sent.

Constant Contact allows me to look at a ton of great statistics, like how many people and who opened my email (this helps me hone my subject-line writing skills) and which links were clicked on the most (I use this to determine how interested my fans are in reading about charity causes I’m involved with, other artists I link to, and to see how many people clicked on directions to a show, and how many people are drawn to my website, iTunes, Cdbaby and myspace links). I use all of this information, especially when creating my next email. I may have learned that 40 people clicked on my website, 5 people were interested in my environmental charity initiative and 3 people clicked on directions to my show in Bumblefoo, Maine. Okay, so maybe mentioning my charity initiatives is taking a little attention away from other, more important links, like CD sales, and that there is probably going to be a low attendance in my Maine show, so I should do some additional promotion for it, or send a more personalized email to my fans in the Maine area.

I can do the same thing with my website. Once I login to my Startlogic (my web hosting company) account, I can see my website statistics for as long as the site has been alive. I can compare the number of hits the site gets over years, months, days and even hours (huh… people check out my website during lunch more than in the evening). I can see what pages get more hits and which pages I need to drive more traffic to. I can also see how people search for and end up at my website, and what other pages are linking to me, resulting in hits for cbemusic.com. I try not to get too obsessive with these statistics because, like friend or hit counts on myspace, none of it really matters. It is helpful to translate more hits to more CD sales, so if there is any information that inspires new ways to drive traffic to the site, that’s the ticket. But spending hours analyzing the site is a waste if you could be, for example, spending the time contacting websites that link to you and seeing if they would feature your music on their site. I have to force the die-hard businessperson in me to take over the “oooh-look-at-the-pretty-graphs-with-all-the-numbers” girl. It’s useful stuff, as long as you use it.

The long of the short of it is that I try to keep my space in the world wide web as neat as my space in the world, while reacting and being pro-active in this obsessive-compulsive business I call music.