Book III: Your Business

The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business

The Online Music Business Crusher Super Course Book III: Your Business

This book was updated on March 15, 2014

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CONTENTS

 Building Your Web-based Music Business - Now that you've had time to consider your music business from a birds eye view, it's time to start actually building it. Includes bonuses: IM Insights and Tips, IM Business Models.

 Setting Up Your Site - Your considerations when preparing to build a site. There are many options, some better for the short-term, others better for the long-term.

 Build Your Site – Buy a Domain - Everything starts with acquiring a domain address - the way people will find you online from now on.

 Build Your Site – Host Your Domain - Once you have a domain name, you need to place it online on a "web host". Includes bonuses: Hosting, cPanel

 Setting Up Wordpress On Your Site - Putting a professional-looking, highly functional and flexible site together is easy with a tool like Wordpress. Includes bonuses: Site Templates, Wordpress Mastery

 Configuring Your Site - Now that your site is up and running, it's time to fine-tune and tweak it a little. Includes bonuses: Wordpress Mastery

 Researching Keywords - Understanding keywords will accompany you throughout your online journey. Includes bonuses: Keyword Research

 Discovering Your Niche - It's critically important to know precisely what your niche, or rather sub- or even sub-sub-niche is. Here's how we discover it.

 Insuring Yourself: What Are My Chances, Really? - Being realistic in your expectations is fundamental to your success.Includes bonuses: Affiliate Links

 More About Your Competition - Your competition is probably much smaller than you think. Here's how you find out.

 What Is SEO and SEM and Should An Artist Care? - When working online you ignore SEO at your peril. It's not hard, so the sooner you get your head around it, the better. Includes bonuses: SEO Tips

 On-Page Optimization - There are two sides to SEO. One of them is optimizing your site content, a.k.a. on-page optimization. Includes

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bonuses: Site Optimization

 Off-Page Optimization and Backlinking - The other side of SEO is so-called off-page optimization, which mostly comes down to ensuring that other sites link to yours in a process called "backlinking." Includes bonuses: Site Optimization

 Extended Setup: Your Own Site Is Just The Beginning - Setting up your home page is only a part of the whole prep.

 Setting Up Social Accounts - Among the things you need to also set up are your social accounts, bookmarking accounts, etc. Includes bonuses: Google Mastery

 Subscriptions and Essential Services - A hugely important aspect of your success online is to set up essential services which will make your online business not only easier, but also much more likely to succeed. Includes bonuses: PayPal User Guide, PayPal SandBox Configuration

 Other Useful Tools A Musician Needs To Have - Some online tools are not an option but a must. Many newbie webmasters overlook those until it's too late. We'll look at the essentials here.

 Developing Content For Your Site - Your music is not the only content you'll need. You need written content on your site in order to make it easily searchable - and to enhance your visitors' experience.

 Copywriting, Copyrights And You - Copywriting skills are essential to have or to outsource. They're truly indispensable when writing ads, headlines or titles - and even content. Includes bonuses: Copywriting

 Writing Your Blog and Articles - Written content is an integral part of any website, and the more you know about it the better your music- promotion chances will be.

 Creating Videos - Today it's practically impossible to achieve any measure of artistic success without videos. We'll have a deeper look at this in this chapter. Includes bonuses: Video Marketing

 What Else Should You Have On Your Artist’s Website? - Videos, music, written content - all that is essential on your site. But there's more.

 The Look of Your Artist’s Website - The way your website looks is a hugely important component of how you'll be perceived by your fans. Includes bonuses: Autoresponder, Graphics Library, Site Templates

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 More About Graphic Design - An important aspect of your site is your graphic design. Thankfully, there are excellent and very affordable (even free) solutions to this.

 More About Your Branding, Networking and Promotion - You insure the future success of your music business with branding. We'll have a look at this in this chapter.

 Getting Ready To Promote - Now that your site is packed full of content, it's time to prepare to promote it by all means available to us.

 The Magic of Paid Traffic - Paid traffic can be the fastest way to make your website profitable. We'll look at all you need to know in this section. Includes bonuses: RSS Networks, Mobile Networks, Social Networks, Video Networks, Writing Networks, Various Networks, Classified Ads, CPA & Affiliate Networks, CPV Networks, CPC/CPM Networks

 Calculation Considerations - Correct calculations are the foundations of any business, and music business is no different. We'll look at traffic acquisition here, when it does and when it doesn't make sense.

 How To Choose the Best Network For Your Music or Offer - Promoting music using paid traffic networks needs to be done advisedly. Not all traffic networks are equally good for you. Includes bonuses: AdWords, Facebook

 Choosing The Serving/Payment Model - There are many different ways to pay for traffic, so we'll look at the most popular ones in this chapter.

 What Kind of Ads Should You Use? - When promoting your music or your parallel products, you need to know how to structure your ads and what kinds of ads to use. Includes bonuses: Paid Traffic

 Test, Then Scale Up - Once your traffic campaign is rolling, as soon as you reach profitability, you only need to scale it up in order to achieve the financial results you're after.

 Your Income Sources, Your Music and Some Examples - There are dozens and dozens of ideas for how musicians can make money online. Here we'll look at only a handful of the most effective ones.

 Product Selection - When setting up your music business, you need to have more than just your music to sell. Here we look at parallel product ideas to bolster your bottom line.

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 The Magic Of Multiple Income Streams - The surest way to fail in anything is to put all your eggs in one basket. In this chapter we look at how to set up multiple income streams for your website. Includes bonuses: AdSense

 What Is Your Product - Let's define what a product is for your music website. Not just your music. Let's delve deeper.

 Building Trust and Loyalty with Supporting Information - Your business depends on your relationship with your fans and website visitors. Needless to say, it's got to be a very good relationship!

 The Secret of “Extended Product” - The real secret of online monetization is not in the obvious product sales, but in the slightly hidden ones.

 The Most Popular Ways To Monetize Your Site - Here we look at a bunch of ideas and ways to monetize a website. Includes bonuses: Autoresponder, AdSense, Affiliate Marketing

 Selling Products You Fully Own - When selling parallel products or services, it's often a good idea to develop a product of your own. Includes bonuses: Product Creation, Product Launch, Local Market

 Your Relationship With Your Visitors and Fans - The driving force of your "conversions" (i.e. your ability to make sales or to engage your visitors) is the quality of your relationship with your fans. We'll take a closer look at this now.

 Understanding the Sales Funnel - It's nearly impossible to make reliable sales without a system in place. This type of system is known as a "sales funnel." Includes bonuses: Funnel Mastery

 Landers - When people visit your site, where to they land? There are many ways to make them land where you want, depending on what you're promoting. Includes bonuses: Funnel Mastery

 A Few More Words About Squeeze Pages - One of the simplest and most effective ways to build your subscriber list (fan base) is through giveaways. And you give stuff away using "squeeze pages."

 List Building – Your Fan-Base Is Your Lifeline - A registered list of your fans and subscribers will be your biggest asset throughout your online career. Includes bonuses: Autoresponder

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 Elements of Autoresponder Campaigns - It's impossible to maintain a fan list of any substantial size without a tool known as the "autoresponder". Includes bonuses: List Building

 The Holy Grail: Optins and Conversions - When running a business online, it's critical to be able to convert as much of the traffic you receive to actions - optins, signups and sales. Includes bonuses: Optin List

 Interconnecting Everything - Your web properties are by now quite extensive and diversified. You need to be sure that you can control them as easily as possible, by integrating them all under one roof. Includes bonuses: Autoresponder, PayPal User

 Membership Sites and Continuity Models - One of the best ways to conduct a long-term business is using membership sites and the so-called "continuity" payment models. Includes bonuses: Membership Resources

 Launching Your Online Music Business - Things to keep in mind when launching your online music business.

 Different Strokes For Different Folks - There's a whole lot of flexibility in the way you can prepare for your online success. We look at various budgeting alternatives here.

 So What Are Your Chances, Really? - Looking at your entire music and business realistically.

 The Importance Of Monitoring - You can't run a business blindfolded. Monitoring is absolutely essential. Includes bonuses: Google

 Maintenance and Site Management - If you set everything up well, your daily monitoring and site maintenance can be a breeze.

 Scaling Up - Once everything is running smoothly, you can scale up and increase your earnings almost at a push of a button.

 Additional Budget Considerations - Things to keep in mind when preparing your budgets and plans.

 The Future of Your Online Music Business - Whether your music business will work short-term or long-term is entirely a function of how you set up your strategy.

 Final Notes - Closing remarks and a word or two about your authors.

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 Selected Resources - Lots and lots of very useful links and resources for you. Includes bonuses: Outsourcing, Traffic Resources, Traffic Exchanges, Traffic Sources, Bookmarking, Social

NOTE: bonus materials apply depending on membership levels, please check the www.meermusic.com site for details.

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Building Your Web-based Music Business

Your website and online business will only be as good as your execution. It needs to be said, so we might as well get that out of the way. This course should provide you with great help and lots of shortcuts – but the actual work… that’s up to you.

My approach in this regard is probably a bit different to what you may have come across from many so-called marketing “gurus” who generally offer “shortcuts” and promise “rapid ranking” or “fast, easy money” if you just follow their “secret” method. I have purchased well over 100 such courses over the past few years. I have yet to find one that delivers – not to say there aren’t any good ones out there, it’s just that they’re mostly all long on hype and short on delivery.

The only real shortcuts are the ones that make common sense: the fundamentals must be right.

That’s why I strongly suggest in this course that you spend the time it takes on preparing everything correctly from the get go. That truly is THE biggest shortcut you’ll ever find. See it in your mind’s eye, then execute it. Don’t bite more than you can chew, but whatever you do bite, chew it well!

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Once you know what you want to do online – whether it’s selling your mp3’s or your merchandise, or something “parallel” like affiliating with a product or service X, publishing a newsletter with AdSense ads, an Amazon affiliate program, promoting your offline widget company or your uncle’s dentistry services or WHATEVER – do the required research FIRST and then build your web property accordingly.

You CAN make a viable and profitable online business within as little as 3-6 months using the methodology discussed in these pages without working yourself to the ground. A business which can work as a daily support for your music venture. A business which may be able to entirely replace your day job. And then some.

And if all else fails, you can build an online property which you might one day resell at a premium - if you build it the way described here! ;)

So, now let’s build this thing!

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Setting Up Your Site

There are MANY ways to set up a business online. Some of them don’t even require a website of your own (for example, using such public blogging platforms as Squidoo or Hubpages or only promoting some affiliate product link), although I would not recommend those methods as your main approach.

After all, you want to build something you own and which has long-term value.

All websites communicate with the users using a scripting language called HTML (“HyperText Markup Language”), but there also exist a great many programming tools and web creation platforms which allow you to make your site without ever knowing a single line of HTML code. You can program your site using any

Page 10 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business number of high level languages like PHP, ASP or Flash, or you can use any of the multitude of the so-called CMS (“Content Management System”) programs, such as Wordpress, SiteSell or Blogger.

Among the “easy” solutions which are currently very popular among musicians are sites such as Bandzoogle, Wix, Web.com, Weebly, 1&1, BuildYourSite, Homestead and FatCow. You can also get templates from places like GoDaddy or NetworkSolutions, and quite a few other hosting companies. Setting up a functioning site with many of those systems is truly a breeze and will normally not take you much more than an hour or so just to get started.

BUT… these are not solutions I would recommend for anyone who wants to build an independent music business where you retain full control of every aspect of the site, its interconnections and so forth. So, while some of these sites (especially Bandzoogle or Wix) have some fabulous setup ideas (which you can check out and get inspired by for free), I would still recommend that you go with Wordpress which beats all other solutions when it comes to flexibility and power. And it’s not hard to master either.

So, in this presentation, I recommend using Wordpress for ALL your website- related needs. This is because Wordpress is not only just about the easiest way to create any kind of a CMS site (not merely a “blog”), but it’s among the most flexible and powerful tools available and has by far the largest online community support. And it’s 100% free. And – it’s really easy to get started with.

But there’s more to online life than just your Wordpress website. To have a chance of reaching sufficiently large numbers of potential fans, you also need to build your presence on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest, you absolutely must have your own YouTube channel, be visible on social bookmarking sites, and so on.

I will now show you how to set all of that up – and how to use it to your advantage, instantly boosting the value of your web business.

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Build Your Site – Buy a Domain

I’m going to assume you don’t have a site yet, but if you do – read through this section anyway. There are a lot of points here which you need to check in any case. You start by buying your own domain.

You need a “web domain” in order to be easily found online.

Think of it like the address of the premises you buy or rent to put your office or shop in. Except that it’s online. You can then use your domain to interact with your potential customers.

There are two broad rules for establishing the name of your domain:

 A domain which describes your product, generally or specifically (sometimes called an “exact match domain” or EMD)  A domain which is simply a “brand” and contains, at best, only general references to your niche.

An EMD has one major advantage: it’s quite a bit easier to gain good organic rankings on Google and other engines. Even today, in 2014, after Google’s

Page 12 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business innumerable search algorithm changes, EMD’s continue to have important advantages in search results.

But an EMD also has some disadvantages: It may come across as too “salesy” to people, and… Google may penalize it if it perceives it as a “keyword spam domain” (which will NOT happen to you if you follow the advice in this course).

Many people exploited Google’s apparent predilection for EMD’s and created meaningless commercial sites by the dozen, which “littered” the search results without offering anything of real value to the searchers. (As a result, Google had to downgrade the importance of EMD in its algorithm – but rather than entirely eliminating it, it simply raised the bar for the rest of the site and added some more rules.)

A second possible drawback is in cases where people create domains for specific products. For example “nokialumia710.com” which is so specific that as soon as this model is discontinued the domain and all its content will lose value rapidly. A less specific one might be “nokialumia.com” or, broader still, “nokiaphones.com”. (The more popular a given domain name is – the greater is potential future resale value.)

More general domain names - but still “related” to your niche – are a good thing to have.

However, if you do your preparation the way we will outline here, you will succeed with or without an EMD, so it may be advisable that you simply go with your existing brand name, e.g. johnsmithmusic.com. And why not!

NOTE:

 You can expect to pay around $10 per year for your domain name with a .COM ending (i.e. so-called “TLD” = “top level domain”). The “.com” TLD is typically the most recommended, although if you do everything right in

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the way you promote and set up your site, this will become a secondary consideration.  But be aware that most desired domain names may not be available to purchase. Someone’s already bought them. If they are not, and if you really want a particular domain name, you can consider extending the original keyword-based name a little bit. For example “johnsmithmusic101.com”, or other similar ideas.  Be careful not to make your domain names too long. Under 20-or-so characters is generally considered best.

Let’s look at the steps you need to take now:

1. Decide if you want your domain to be your artist’s name, a keyword-based name, or a bit of both.Next, visit a registrar and purchase your domain. I recommend www.NameCheap.com, but many people use GoDaddy as well. Type in your ideal name and see if it’s available. If it isn’t then either pick a different name or modify it. For example if JohnSmith.com is not available, perhaps you’ll be happy with either JohnSmith.org or JohnSmith123.com? 1. Artist name can be for example JohnSmith.com or TheSmithBand.com 2. A keyword name can be for example CoolGrungeMusic.com or NewPopHits.com 3. A mixed name can be for example JohnSmithMusic.com or TheSmithGrungeBand.com 4. If you’re totally stuck for domain name ideas, you can also visit a site like NameStation, Impossibility. Domainsbot, DomainR, Lean Domain Search or BustaName. More ideas here. 2. When you buy your domain you will automatically create an account with NameCheap. Make a note of your username and password – you will be returning here shortly, after you set up your hosting, which we will look at in the next step.

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Build Your Site – Host Your Domain

Once you have your domain – a process which takes only seconds to complete with the likes of NameCheap or GoDaddy – you must “host” your domain somewhere where it can be “propagated” and thus found all over the world. And that means you need a “hosting company”.

Once again, you can Google the endless options, but my recommendation is either HostGator or BlueHost. They’re really cheap and really good. You can pay from as little as $5 (or even less) per month, even though I generally recommend that you take the “pro” hosting from HostGator for just under $19 per month at the time of this writing. Pro hosting allows you to have unlimited storage and unlimited number of domains and emails – and LOTS more. They also have a pretty cool “Baby” plan for about $6 and really good “Business” plan for about $10.

In fairness, there are also free hosting solutions out there (I even cover one of them in an attached video within this course), but I generally do NOT recommend free hosting solutions – they’re much more fiddly to set up and you never know how reliable they will be for you. And, finally, you won’t be in full control of your own domain!

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Whatever you do on the web, always be in full control. This disqualifies some freebies like "free" hosting.

NOTE: Sometimes when you buy a domain (see previous step), the registrar will ALSO offer you hosting. You may decide to take it, but watch out: many such hosting services don’t offer “complete” packages for the basic fee. For example the all-important “cPanel” (a superb little program that allows you to manage your domains and more) isn’t offered as standard by the likes of GoDaddy – and this may later give you some headaches! Unless you pay EXTRA.

So, typically, just use the registrars for domain purchases and hosting providers for your hosting.

Typically a brand new domain will propagate across the web within just minutes from setting it up (once you follow the steps below), but the standard disclaimer is that it MAY take up to 48 hours. I’ve had some sites where I waited for up to 4 hours before the domain name propagated sufficiently.

If you want to know about your web hosting options, I have uploaded a short but very informative course on just that to your Member’s Area: Web Hosting Explained.

Briefly, here’s how you set everything up:

1. Visit a hosting company. I recommend www.HostGator.com. 2. I suggest you pick a pro plan for around $19 per month – that’s because it gives you unlimited “everything”, though many of their cheaper plans are also great. If you follow my instructions, after a few months, you’ll be glad you have no account restrictions here. This said, you can also take an economy hosting (around $4 per month) and upgrade later.

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3. When given the option to purchase a domain, skip it – you already have one (unless, of course, you really do prefer to have BOTH your domain and hosting under one roof). At this point tell HostGator you already have a domain and enter its name in the appropriate field. 4. Once the registration and purchase are completed, you will be sent to your HostGator account and you’ll receive an email with a confirmation. In that email you will see your two new “DNS” addresses. You’re almost done now. 5. Go back to your NameCheap account, log in, open “manage my domains” then select “change DNS” and enter both the new DNS addresses there and click on SAVE. You’re done.

If you have more than one domain, repeat the same process for each one. Additionally, you must tell your hosting company that you want all those domains set up. You do this (and many other things) through a cool little hosting management program called “cPanel” (“control panel”).

I have made available a detailed cPanel course for you here: cPanel, in case you want to get deeper into it.

It is VERY advisable for you to have an “FTP client” installed as well. That’s a program which allows you to download from or upload files to your hosting server. I use Total Commander which is also a superior replacement for Windows file explorer, but many more people use FileZilla or some others. You can Google that too. And you can also use your cPanel for this, although it’s not quite as flexible as a dedicated FTP client.

In your FTP client, set up an FTP connection which will generally use the same connection parameters as those you use to access your cPanel (i.e. your ftp URL which is typically something like ftp.johnsmith.com, your username and password).

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In all cases, you will have received FTP setup instructions from your hosting company in your welcome email. If not – you can always look that up within your cPanel, and if you don’t have cPanel – you can get that information from your hosting provider’s support desk.

So now you’re all set – but you still don’t actually have a site up and running. We’ll do that in the next section.

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Setting Up Wordpress On Your Site

You may now upload your site to your FTP account, if you use a standard HTML editor, but as I indicated earlier, I would strongly recommend that you consider installing Wordpress instead. There are MANY reasons why this is THE #1 best solution for just about all conceivable situations, and I won’t go into them here. Suffice it to say once again that Wordpress is the easiest and most flexible site- building environment in the world and its maintenance for you will be by far the most economical, given virtually all other options. It is also easier to be found (e.g. on Google) if you have a Wordpress site!

If, in spite of these spirited recommendations you would still prefer to set up an HTML-based site, I have provided a useful resource for you with dozens of Preconfigured Website Templates. (You’ll also find these templates useful when constructing your special-purpose landing pages, which you may at some point elect to do outside of your Wordpress environment).

And, naturally, you also have the semi-automated site builders like Bandzoogle or Wix, which, as I said, I don’t recommend that you use even though they will certainly give you “instant gratification”. But I prefer long-term solutions where I have full control, and that’s why we’re looking at Wordpress here.

You need to know that there are two kinds of Wordpress. Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org.

The first (.com) is for sites which are hosted “for free” on the Wordpress.com servers, and the second one (.org) – the PREFERRED one – for sites which you fully own and host. In the future, all my references to Wordpress are really references to WordPress.ORG.

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Wordpres ORG is the preferred solution because you OWN and CONTROL everything you do.

While you’ll find detailed installation instructions on Wordpress.org, if you have the cPanel on your hosting account, you don’t need to follow those instructions. cPanel will do it for you, in seconds.

Using cPanel, simply click on “Fantastico deLuxe”. Once you open it, select Wordpress, enter your domain name, enter your desired username and password as well as a BRIEF description of your site, then click OK and… a few moments later your site is set up!

In a new browser window you can now type in your domain name and – you should see the default plain-vanilla Wordpress installation, complete with your site name and description and a sample post or two. It’s that simple.

The site is now ready for you to configure and fill with content, which we’ll deal with in upcoming sections of this course. For now, you just need to know that your site is ready and waiting for you.

If you want a much more detailed overview of how Wordpress works, how to install and use it, I made available for you a complete Wordpress Course.

So let’s review everything step by step:

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1. Go into your “cPanel” account (HostGator will give you the URL for that) 2. Find the “Fantastico deLuxe” icon and click on it 3. Find the “Wordpress” radio button and click on it. 4. Click on “New Installation” link 5. Type your domain name, e.g. JohnSmithBand.com (or choose it from the drop-down list, if it’s not already selected) 6. “Install in directory” – leave that blank (unless you’re creating a sub-folder within your domain) 7. “Admin access data” – type in your username for this site, e.g. JohnSmithBand (remember the capital letters are not the same as lowercase). Do NOT use “admin” as the username. It’s too easy for hackers to crack! 8. “Password” – enter something here, at least 8 characters in length and try to have some special characters in there as well. 9. “Admin nickname” – you can enter the name here that you want everyone to see each time you make a post. It could be “John” or “JS” or “admin” – whatever you like. This is just what visitors to your site will as the author of your posts. 10. Enter your best email address – if you would like to receive emails on your new domain, then you’ll need to create it (see further below), but in the meantime you CAN if you want to already now tell the system what your email will be, for example [email protected] 11. “Site name” – enter your site’s name, for example “The John Smith Band Music Page” or whatever you like. 12. “Description” – write a short sentence about your site, for example “Enjoy cutting edge funk with John Smith and band”. 13. You can then click “Install Wordpress” – and you’re done. You’ll get one more “OK” to press after that along with the option to send yourself an email notification of a successful install. Use your ordinary email address for that. 14. And now set up your new email addressNOTE: you can view a comprehensive presentation of just about “everything” you’ll ever need to

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know about the cPanel, right here: cPanel Instruction Course. All of the above points are illustrated there in great detail. 1. Click on “Home” in your cPanel and then look for the “Add email account” icon. Click on it. 2. In the account name field, write what you want your email to be, e.g. “john”. 3. Then select your site (if it doesn’t come up automatically), e.g. @ johnsmithband.com 4. Leave everything as per default, and click OK. 5. Now go to your email client (e.g. Outlook) and add your new account to its pick-up list. 1. Click on Tools, then Accounts, then Add Email Account 2. Fill everything out, and remember that both your POP and your SMTP servers will be mail.johnsmithband.com (substitute “johnsmith” for your real domain name) 3. Your username is your email, but enter it as john+johnsmithband.com rather than using the @ sign. 4. Enter your password and click SAVE. 5. Now you can check your email! You’re done! 15. NOTE 2: you can watch step-by-step Wordpress setup videos (which also include the domain and hosting setup) – very comprehensive and easy to follow, right here: Wordpress Course.

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Configuring Your Site

You should now be able to see your site, LIVE, simply by typing its URL into your browser’s address bar. But… it will look kinda boring and plain. Not to worry. This is just the default Wordpress installation and it’s ready for you to do your own magic. And, you’ll be happy to know that it’s really quite easy!

Here’s what you do:

1. Ensure that you can view your site on the web, using your browser. Simply open a new tab and type in, for example, johnsmithband.com 2. You will see the most basic, default Wordpress template there with a “hello world” post – and that’s about it. All’s good! 3. Remember that in some cases it can take a few hours for your domain name to propagate across the web, so don’t stress if your site doesn’t come up yet. In most cases, however, you’ll find your site is available within literally just minutes. 4. In order to EDIT your site, you need to know the standard admin access for all Wordpress sites, and it’s johnsmithband.com/wp-admin (naturally, you use YOUR domain name here instead of my example johnsmithband) 5. When you open your admin (you need to enter your username and password first), you will find yourself in the Wordpress environment and will be able to completely customize your site. 6. But first, go to the “Settings” menu then select “permalinks”. Next, select “custom structure” and enter the following: /%postname%/ 7. And then SAVE. 8. Remember that you can also watch the step-by-step Wordpress setup videos – very comprehensive and easy to follow, right here: Wordpress Course.

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Next, you’ll want to pick a theme you like. A “theme” is just a “skin” or a “look” of your site. There are tens of thousands of free and premium themes, some especially designed for music artists. Look around on Google and you’ll find lots and lots of ideas.

But initially, just pick “any” decent looking theme. You can later very easily swap it for a theme you like better.

One of the beauties of Wordpress is that it allows you to “re-skin” your site in seconds.

So let’s look at all the steps now:

1. As I said, Wordpress comes with thousands (literally) of FREE themes (or “skins” or “looks”) that you can choose from. By default you get 2 or 3 themes pre-installed and they are the “2011”, “2012”, “2013” and “2014” themes. But you can add many more in seconds.

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2. Click on “appearance” then on “install themes” and browse through their standard themes, or indeed type in your requirements and see what comes up. 3. Each time you see a theme you think you might like, click on it to install it. 4. After you’ve picked a small handful of those, do a “live preview” on each of them to see how each will look for you. 5. When you find the one you like the most, click on “activate” and you’re set! Go back to your URL in your browser for a moment and see what your site looks like now. 6. If you don’t like any of them, keep looking – or – go to Google and type in “best music Wordpress themes” or something similar. You’ll get more free choices AND you’ll also get premium options. Sites like ThemeForest are among the most popular for picking HOT-looking themes. Typically a premium theme will cost you between $30 and $70, one-off. 7. Remember that one of the beauties of Wordpress is that you can ALWAYS change a theme on the fly at any time in the future. Click a button - and your site gets a whole new look! 8. Also keep in mind that theme selection CAN take many hours if you’re particularly picky about what you want. In that case, at first just settle for “second best” and only later should you spend the extra time looking for your ideal theme. 9. You can also outsource the theme creation job to someone. There are many services out there (e.g. fiverr, guru, elance, 99designs, etc) who will do this for you cheaply (from as little as a few bucks to as much as a thousand, all depending), or you can “outsource the outsourcing” through MarketingEasyWeb. 10. Note that initially doing everything by yourself is a good idea, if you want to understand the nature of what needs to be done, before outsourcing it to someone else.

The next step is to extend the functionality of your Wordpress site. We do this by installing the so-called “plugins”. Plugins are little programs which make certain

Page 25 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business things possible. For example if you want to interconnect your site with your Facebook account – there’s a plugin for that. If you want a signup form on the sidebar – that’s another plugin. And so on, ad infinitum.

So, let’s look at how to install plugins now.

A Wordpress site “straight out of the box” is already very powerful and “Google- friendly”. But it needs a bit of extra attention in order for it to be as powerful as possible and to speed up the promotional process.

Luckily, Wordpress comes packed full of FREE tools which you only need to install – and in most cases hardly anything beyond that.

The number and functionality of plugins is limited only by your imagination. Even to the point where if you really can’t find what you need – you can have that built, cheaply! But the plugins that are the most necessary and useful are all already developed and ready to be used by you.

1. MOST plugins are free, though some are premium. You will only need the free ones, at least in the initial stages. 2. Here are the plugins you will want to install on your site. In each case, just click on the “plugins” menu, then “add plugin” and type in the names given below, and after that click “install” and, finally, “activate”.Some of the above plugins will require that you register or install certain features. It’s all very basic, but if you’re unsure of yourself, you can outsource it to any of the sites I mentioned above. 1. Akismet by Automatic – Free and Premium available – Quite simply this is THE best spam protection for your blog. Requires a registration and a free API key. 2. Simple CAPTCHA – Free – An additional anti-spam measure. 3. Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachhold – Free – Search engines need this, so don’t let your site be without it. 100% hassle-free. Set and forget.

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4. WP Realtime Sitemap by Daniel Tweedy – Free -Like the XML sitemap, but more suitable for your human visitors. Paste shortcode on a target page, and you’re done. 5. Yoast WordPress SEO by Joost de Valk – Free – Without a doubt THE best general SEO plugin for your site. Forget Platinum SEO, Forget All-in-One SEO – THIS is the one you need to use! 6. Contextual Related Posts by Ajay D’Souza – Free – While you of course always need to have outgoing links within your posts, this plugin automatically links your internal posts, giving your lots of brownie points with all the major search engines. 7. Facebook Comments by Alex Moss – Free – This plugin allows Facebook users to comment on your blog using the familiar (and fully integrated) Facebook interface. 8. GD Press Tools by Milan Petrovic – Free – A collection of excellent SEO tools which assist you with your site optimization. 9. Google Analytics for WordPress by Joost de Valk – Free – This is essential of course because you MUST track your site’s progress with Google Analytics. This plugin automatically connects you to your Google Analytics account. 10. Digg Digg – Free - This is an excellent social sharing plugin. 11. TinyMCE Advanced – Free – A handy extension of your basic Wordpress editor functionality. 12. NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster by Next Scripts – Free – Automatically publish your posts to your Facebook, Twitter and G+ accounts. 13. Pretty Link Lite by Caseproof – Free and Premium available – A superb link cloaker and ad tracker. Once you start using it, you won’t want to be without it. 14. Subscribe To Comments by Mark Jaquith – Free – Increase the interactivity of your site by allowing people to track their comments and be notified each time someone adds a comment to your post.

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15. W3 Total Cache by Frederick Townes – Free – This is by far the most efficient (and easiest to use) caching system for your blog. 16. Wassup Real-time Analytics – See who’s visiting your site, in real time. 17. Wordfence Security – Protect your asset. 18. There are a few more, but we’ll get to them a bit later. Additionally, you can have a look at Kim Roach'es recommendations here. 3. If you want to do it yourself, then here are the (simple) instructions: 1. Akismet – click on the API link and get your number from them. This requires a personal-use registration and you can choose to pay $0! 2. Yoast Wordpress SEO – fill out the most important fields only. Start with “Dashboard” and enable tracking, hit SAVE. Next click on “Titles and Metas” and check “use keywords”, then go to the “home” tab and fill out your meta description as well as your basic keywords (I’ll tell you more about keywords in a separate enclosed eBook), but for now just enter things like “john smith, john smith band, john smith music, indie music, independent grunge,” and so on. Don’t have more than 10 keywords there. As for your description, write a short sentence about your site and try to squeeze into it at least one of your most important keywords. You can also fill out the “social” section with your accounts, but see the next section as well: 3. Facebook Comments and Social Auto-Poster – You’ll need to know your application keys for Facebook and Twitter, and the explanations for how to find them are provided within the plugins. 4. Google Analytics – If you haven’t done so already, set up your own Google account (it’s free), which takes about 5 seconds to do. Just go to Google.com/accounts and create a new one. Next, type Google.com/analytics and register your site for Analytics. It’s pretty self-explanatory. Next, copy the Analytics code and paste it into your plugin on Wordpress.

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5. And… that’s about it for now!

There are many other great plugins, but the ones above are plenty enough to get you started, and may even be “enough” - period. You install them directly from the Wordpress “Add Plugins” menu and simply type the above names, then click on “Install” and “Activate”. You can also download the above plugins to your own hard disk (just by clicking on the above underlined links), if you prefer, and then install them in Wordpress from there.

NOTE: You don’t want “too many” plugins either. Too many may slow your site down, so when deciding on what you need, select the things you need the most first and see how your site handles it.

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Researching Keywords

Let’s look at something now which is – by far – the most important aspect of setting up your site correctly: keyword research.

If you want to be stumbled-upon by Internet users (as opposed to visited by those who already know your web address), then you need to ensure that your URL comes up in Google’s search results (and other search engines). To accomplish this, you need to optimize your site for the search engines (the process also known as “SEO” – search engine optimization) – and SEO starts with keyword research. So let’s discuss this in greater depth now.

Keyword research is the foundation of your online success.

A “keyword” is any word or phrase which a user types into a search engine (like Google Search). Those keywords which people tend to type the most are, naturally, the most popular (sometimes called “niche” keywords to describe their general nature, as pertaining to any given niche, e.g. “dogs”) – but these keywords are also so general that it’s impossible to assume that anyone who

Page 30 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business types, for example, “dogs” is actually interested in anything other than mere research.

For this reason, it’s not very important for a website to conquer any of those massive keywords, but rather much more specific “buying” keywords, i.e. keywords which in some ways indicate the searcher’s state of mind: he/she is typing that in order to make a purchase. Those “buying keywords” are also known as keywords with “commercial intent”.

Researching keywords with commercial intent

 While there are tools which attempt to evaluate “commercial intent” in a keyword, they’re usually not very reliable. Your own logic and knowledge of human psychology can outperform them any day.  What we mean by “keywords with commercial intent” is whether a given keyword, when entered by a searcher, indicates that he or she is looking to buy – or are they perhaps only browsing?  So, if someone types “dog training” or “indie music”, they MAY be interested in buying a product but, more likely, they’re just browsing, looking for free resources. If they type “dog training book” or “indie music book” chances are much better that they’re actually looking for a book to buy. If they type “Dog Training Tricks by So-and-So” or “indie music promotion by XYZ” it is even more likely they’re actually looking for this specific title in order to purchase it. Also, if they type “buy dog training book” or “buy music promotion book”, it appears that there is clear buying (commercial) intent.  Keywords which have commercial intent tend to be longer (so-called “long-tail” keywords) and tend to have fewer monthly searches than the broader (a.k.a. “browsing” or “niche”) keywords. So, while “dog training” or “indie music” might impress you with the sheer number of monthly searches (because it’s a “niche keyword”), it MAY be relatively useless for you to conquer it (in the short term at least), because people who have

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typed it in are very unlikely to be looking for something to BUY. On the other hand “buy dog training book” or “buy music promotion book” may have a much more modest number of searches, but a MUCH higher likelihood of bringing your potential clients. Put differently, it’s better – and cheaper – to target 1000 potential buyers than 1,000,000 indifferent people.  When looking for products you are considering to sell, use Google Keyword Planner to confirm their EXACT search volumes and always try to go for those with the most monthly searches. I’d say no fewer than 1,000, though some people don’t even look at keywords which yield less than 20,000 per month. This will greatly improve your chances.

Researching demographics

In this section we’ll look at demographic research from the point of view of preparing to advertise and targeting your promotions at specific types of people. Naturally, you’re not yet ready to advertise. But – you’re definitely ready to target your content at those people, so you might as well look at it in much the same way.

 Targeting your promotions (and content) is KEY. But it is possible to target your ads/content wrongly, sometimes disastrously so. It’s not enough to target potential buyers – you must speak their language as well. Some products (or, in your case, most likely, music styles) appeal more to women, some to men – others appeal to particular age demographics yet others won’t. Some will appeal to certain professions or certain levels of education. You need to know all this about YOUR product/music BEFORE you start writing ads for it.  High quality CPC (ad networks where you pay per click) social networks like Facebook or dating networks like PlentyOfFish will allow you to target

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you ads right down to the tiniest details of your prospects – but you must first know those details yourself.

Here’s the simplest way to research demographic information:

 Decide on one or a small handful of your most important niche-level keywords. So, if you’re promoting your “cutting edge grunge music” then your NICHE is “music” or more specifically “grunge music”. Another keyword might be “independent grunge music“ – and so on. Just go for the top 3 or 4.  Now visit www.google.com and enter your first keyword. Look at the first result and copy the target URL into your notepad. You MAY also want to do that for the next one or two results.

Now do the same for your second and possibly third keyword.

 Are the top 3 results for each keyword linked to the same URL or are they different? Have you seen any of those URLs more than once? Chances are that the one with the biggest number of top Google results is the first one to start with, but not always. Have a look at their Alexa rankings to establish which ones are the busiest sites. There are a few ways to do this:  Visit www.alexa.com, then either install their toolbar in your browser or just click on “Site Info” and paste in your first URL. Study the rank and the stats. Ranks above 100,000 are smaller sites, below 100,000 are busier ones – as a rule of thumb (though not in every case).  Or – and this is probably the best way – go to www.seoquake.com and install their toolbar. From now on not only will you see all kinds of information about EACH site you visit (including Alexa rank and much more), but you’ll also see instant analysis of all Google Search results.  So now, take your 3 top URLs within your niche and go to www.quantcast.com and enter the first URL. Do the same in Alexa.com SiteInfo. (Some sites will only show up in Alexa, while Quantcast will give you full details only for sites which have registered with them).If you

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discover that the difference between two targeted demographic groups is insignificant, your text will be written in a certain way. If they are significant, you may want to write different text for the one group, and alternative text for the other. o First, note that daily traffic should be in the thousands at least. If it isn’t, maybe you didn’t pick the most representative site for your niche. o Now scroll down and take notes of all the most important demographic trends. If you notice a strong difference between various demographic groups – this may be a strong hint as to how you should target your ads. For example, when you check out reverbnation.com (one of the leading music sites in the world) you will notice that males slightly outweigh females. You’ll also see that nearly 50% of all traffic there is from the USA. This might be enough for you to decide to target your ads or articles (or song/video descriptions and tags) at US-based males. But to be sure, you should also check a couple of other sites afterwards and see if their analytics confirm your findings. o Pay attention to all the key demographic figures and make notes. You’ll want to target your ads, articles, tags and descriptions at the best-represented groups (in most cases anyway).

The more targeted your copy – the more cost-efficient and better your campaign results will be, whether paid or SEO-based.

I have also enclosed a small Keyword Research Resource for you, so make sure to check it out.

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Discovering Your Niche

What’s your niche? Don’t say “music”. That’s hardly a “niche” you could ever hope to dominate. You need to be much more narrow than that. “Pop music” isn’t really a “niche” either. You need to be a heck of a lot more specific. Knowing EXACTLY what your niche is will be your BIGGEST shortcut in all your commercial – and artistic – endeavors.

You must stop everything else you’re doing and FIND OUT NOW.

Going any further with your music BUSINESS will be severely hampered if you don’t know your niche, simple as that.

Who exactly is it that gets the most excited about your music? And don’t count your mom or best friends. You need to know that your music connects best with a particular demographic, because only then can you narrow down your targeting.

And why is that important? Not only because it will help you fine-tune your music and your message, but also because it will make ALL your promotions, SEO and web development not merely more efficient but also substantially cheaper. It will also result in much higher conversion rates for everything you do.

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Since I don’t know your particular music, I can’t advise you on the specifics of what your niche is – other than telling you to look around, take notes, ask your fans all you need to know about them, and then develop a “profile” of your typical (or most represented) fan.

In this section I will therefore give you a “marketing angle” on how to discover your niche using Internet-based tools. The added advantage of this will become apparent to you later on as you start injecting secondary income streams into your music business. Each new product or service will also need to be targeted very narrowly, so knowing the methodology which is applicable to ANY niche will be most important for you.

So let’s have a look at a more generalized process of “niche discovery” now.

Some niches are extremely lucrative, others very obscure and difficult. But I can almost not imagine any niche that is “impossible” to monetize online. You’re into 80’s-sounding girlie pop with acid jazz elements? You love mushroom picking? You a fan of the X-Box? Perhaps you love books on specific topics? Or watching cool movies? Or trading rare stamps? Drawing pictures? Anything?

Whatever you decide to get into, just make sure you love it enough to stick with it for a good while.

Researching your niche isn’t hard at all. Firstly, since you already know quite a bit about it, you already have an “idea” of how popular it is around the world. But don’t take your own opinion on it as fact. CONFIRM IT.

The simplest way to research your niche is by visiting the Google AdWords Keyword Planner (formerly known as the Keyword Tool). You need to create a (free) account with Google, if you don’t already have one. It takes less than a minute, and – you’re ready.

Once you open the Keyword Planner, enter your “seed keywords” into the keyword box.

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A “seed keyword” is a phrase which you believe people will use to find things about your particular product or niche. So, if you’re trying to establish who might be interested in a three-piece girl group that looks like Destiny’s Child but sounds like Dixie Chicks on acid, your keywords might include:

 New music  Music like Dixie Chicks  Destiny’s Child look  Acid jazz pop  Pop jazz fans  Dixie Chicks fanclub  Indie jazz pop music  Independent pop jazz music to download  And so on…

No need to type “all” the keywords you can think of. Anything between 10 and 20 seed keywords will do. Now ask the Keyword Planner to generate some ideas for you.

You will be able to view “keyword ad group ideas” and “keyword suggestions”.

They’re the same keywords, but they’re just organized differently. You can now sort the keywords by the number of exact searches (by clicking on the heading) and you’ll get a very good idea of how popular each given keyword is. If the average number of searches is about 2,000 or more per month, per keyword (on “many” keywords), then you’re on to a potentially very lucrative niche. If there are at least some keywords with “commercial intent” – all the merrier.

Now that you know how popular your niche is, you need to confirm it. You do this by following these two simple steps:

1. Check your competition 2. Check the trends

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Naturally, there are many other ways – some very elaborate – to check all of this, but the method I’m giving you here is very effective and easily sufficient for the vast majority of cases.

To check your competition, visit Google Search. And then type your best keywords in quotes. For example:

“buy acid jazz” (note the quotation marks around the keyword – also note the clear commercial intent in that keyword: “buy”)

As I’m writing this, buy acid jazz returns 27,400,000 pages on Google while “buy acid jazz” (in quotes) returns 121,000. (These results will often vary a little bit when doing searches, but the broad ranges will tend to remain consistent.)

Look at the number of returned results IN QUOTES. THAT is your “organic competition” for that keyword. You can also, and indeed should, look at the “competition” column within the AdWords keyword planner as well as the “average CPC” column. Those two tell you something about how much competition you have on the PAID traffic front within your niche. The “organic competition”, on the other hand, is the amount of FREE competition you have.

If the numbers are large, hundreds of thousands or millions – that’s ample confirmation that MANY people are interested in competing with you. It may also be a signal that competing here will be difficult – at least initially. But don’t get discouraged too quickly. There are always alternative long-tail keywords!

Next, visit Google Trends. Type in your 5 main keywords and look at the graph. Have the keywords been dropping in popularity (and if so, is it “too much?”), or have they been stable – or have they, perhaps, been growing?

Finally, also visit SpyFu and look at who is currently investing in your best keywords and how much they’re paying.

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You now know that the niche you’re hoping to conquer is vibrant – or not. Unless you’re in some really obscure niche, chances are that the results will be positive for you!

One more thing I highly advise you to do is to look for existing forums and blogs specializing in your niche. The more of those you can find – the merrier. Enter something like “acid jazz forum” or “acid jazz blog” and take notes of their names and URLs! And then check the popularity of those forums/blogs using Alexa rank and site info.

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Insuring Yourself: What Are My Chances, Really?

Now that you know that your niche is indeed popular “enough,” you need to know what kind of chances you have to do well in it.

It doesn’t matter much if you have a lot of money to promote your site or not (by paying for traffic). What really matters at this point is whether you’re able to “conquer” your niche in free “organic search”.

When you understand keyword research - everything else becomes a breeze.

This “conquest” does not mean that you will dominate “all the best keywords” any time soon. It simply means that you must know that you have a good chance of conquering at least a small portion of traffic-yielding as well as profitable keywords.

Traffic Yielding Keywords are:

 Keywords which have at least 100 global/regional average monthly searches (The Google Keyword Planner will tell you that). Some webmasters insist they need to have at least 2000 searches, but if you reach top of page 1 of Google SERPS, even 100 will be pretty good to start! Still, the more the better.  Keywords whose organic competition (that is, your keyword in “quotes” within the Google Search results) is less than 30,000 – it can be more or less in some instances, but this is the general rule of thumb. Again, you establish this by typing the keyword in quotation marks into Google Search. The stated number of related pages is your “organic competition”.

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Profitable Keywords are:

 Just like traffic-yielding keywords… AND  They’re ALSO “buying” keywords. This means keywords which are typically typed by people who are in a “buying mode”. A typical and somewhat simplistic example might be “buy new acid jazz music” or “listen to pop jazz”. By “buying” or “commercial intent” we mean not only sufficient interest to make a purchase, but also to take any kind of action, like signing up, etc.

If your research tells you that you have a good number of such keywords, you are now reassured that if you invest your time in developing your site within your target niche, you will have much-better-than-average chances of success, going in.

Let’s now go through some key points when conducting research:

Regardless of what you’re researching (your music niche, a product you wish to promote, etc) here are some general rules you SHOULD adhere to:

 You need to be congruent, that is to personally understand and LIKE this product or service. This is a massive shortcut, believe me! This attitude will give you better insights into the mind of your fans/buyers and it will also help you build-up your site further with supporting articles and other related products. It will also help you establish yourself as an expert in that product or that niche – not “merely” an artist – which will come in handy if you decide to take your site to the next level – a “content” site.  If you’re researching for a product or service, you need to be SURE that it is of GREAT QUALITY. This will dramatically reduce the rate of returns – and it is always the most ethical way of running any business. This is another critical shortcut. People who sell inferior products rarely, if ever, succeed in any meaningful way. And as an artist, you need to take extra

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special care here so that your choices don’t make you come across crassly commercial and just in it to make a few bucks!  You need to KNOW that there is a LARGE market for your particular product. Yet another massive shortcut! Too many marketers get into products which are either too obscure – or too competitive. First establish how big your niche actually is. If your product is something that maybe 10,000 people around the world will like, that’s usually not an ideal product for most marketers, and it will require a different type of promotional approach altogether. You need to establish that SUFFICIENT DEMAND EXISTS for your product before you do anything else. Do this in the following way:  Type your product name into www.google.com and see how many pages are returned in the results. Now put your product name in quotation marks and see how many competitors are there for it. So it could be Cesar Millan’s Dog Training and “Cesar Millan’s Dog Training”. Now write both those numbers down. I’ll tell you how to interpret them in a moment.

Page 42 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business o Now type your niche name into www.google.com and do the same. So it could be dog training and “dog training”.

o o Now visit www.google.com/trends and check both the product name and the niche name to see whether the trends are good (i.e. either flat-lined or growing) o Next, visit http://adwords.google.com and log in. Registration is free. Next, drop down the “Tools and Analysis” menu and pick “Keyword Planner”.

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o o Next click on “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas” and enter both your niche and your product name in the keyword box.

o o Now search. Write down the Global results for both the exact and broad matches – and if you’re going to be targeting a narrower market, also write down the Local results. Additionally, hover over

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the “Competition” field where it says “high” or “low” and you’ll see that there’s actually a number there, e.g. 0.73 or 0.11, etc – write it down. Finally, write down the estimated CPC number (i.e. “suggested bid” per click).

o o Next, visit www.spyfu.com and type in first your niche keyword(s), then your product name and write down who is your biggest competitor(s) as well as how much are they paying for those keywords. If there are no competitors for this – you might be wasting your time.

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o o Next, visit www.quantcast.com and type in the URL of your largest competitor (if in doubt, type your niche or product into Google Search and look at the top listings). Study the resulting demographics carefully and determine the kind of audience your product has. In the example below we took ASPCA as a demographic model, since it has such a large number of visits.

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o o Now, let’s look at those numbers. o Niche: dog training . Broad results: 230,000,000 (Google Search) . Phrase results (organic competition): 4,410,000 o Product:: Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan . Broad results: 11,160,000 . Phrase results (organic competition): 1,750,000 o Dog Training (AdWords Keyword Planner) . Exact competition: 0.92 (92%) . Exact global searches: 60,500 per month . Exact local searches: 33,100 per month . Exact CPC: $1.78 . Trends are slightly downward o Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan . Exact competition: 0.17 (17%)

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. Exact global searches: 1,000 per month . Exact local searches: 320 per month . Exact CPC: $1.34 . Trend is slightly down o Selected SpyFu data . CPC: between $1.91 and $2.35 . Advertisers: 98 . Biggest advertiser: Williams Dog Training Company . Their daily AdWords budget: from $294.71 to $881.12 o Affiliate terms (i.e. are they offering an attractive-enough package to resellers, which you can check by digging through their site and reading their affiliate terms) . The affiliate program for this product pays out 8% per sale, has a 35-day cookie duration, and transfers money to you once your commissions exceed $25. . The products included in this promotion vary from books to dog collars, some of these things can cost a few hundred dollars per sale, others only a few. . A cursory glance (ie. not totally reliable) tells us that an “average” sale will yield about $10 in commissions, although there are higher-yielding products there too.

Use the same kind of thinking and research process for all your products or services including, naturally, anything music-related as well. Below, I’ll now show you the “so what?”

 The numbers above tell you that the niche “dog training” is a huge niche (with at least 4 million organic competitors (which confirms that many people are interested in it)  You can also see that approx. 1.7 million pages target this specific product

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 But you can see that Google reports, say, 60,500 guaranteed searches for the exact niche term and 8,100 exact searches for the product name. Both numbers are pretty good.  Were you to only rely solely on AdWords marketing and/or organic Google Search marketing, you could “count on” certain minimum numbers. For example, AdWords ads (known as AdSense) get around 10% of the clicks on page 1 in Google Search, so “dog training” might get you up to 6,050 targeted clicks per month – at a rate of around $2 per click. This would total around $12,000 cost per month, or roughly $400 per day – in line with what SpyFu reports.  Were you to advertise on AdWords, you would HAVE TO make monthly sales in excess of that cost. Were you to wish to reach the same kind of number of qualified clicks for LESS – you would have to find cheaper (but still GOOD) traffic sources, or alternative (cheaper) keywords.  Further studying the above numbers, you can see that this product has a steady and reliable sales pattern, but the average per-sale income is relatively low (unless you were to target only the higher-end products with your promotions). And the predicted targeted traffic for this specific product is rather low (around 1000 per month, globally).  Generally speaking, this kind of a product would probably not be top of my list for promoting – if that was the ONLY thing I intended to do within that niche. This said, you can easily make calculations which might justify promoting a product like this – the only thing is that at such a low per- product profit, you may be waiting a long time before you see significant incomes.  A site selling a low-yield product like this would have to have additional income sources to have a chance of earning its keep. Promoting this sort of product to a pre-existing LIST which you already own would be the best way to go.

As you study various niches, you’ll discover that there are many which have numbers MUCH higher than in the example above. There are individual products

Page 49 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business which have more monthly exact searches than the entire above niche. THAT is the kind of secondary product you should focus on at first, to supplement your music business activities.

Later on, once your whole business is ticking along and your member/fan list grows, you may well add other, less-profitable or less popular products to your range, you can diversify and expand.

Remember, as long as the service/product(s) you decide to promote are COMPATIBLE with your music in some way – you’re gonna do just fine!

If you already have a product you’re dedicated to (e.g. you’re already selling something like that at your gigs, t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc – or something even cooler than that), simply run the same tests we described above and see if it’s within “tolerable” limits. If your product or service is “too niche” or “too competitive” you will have to work that much harder to succeed with it. But don’t worry, we’ll cover all that in this course. It’s POSSIBLE to succeed with almost “any” product, if you do it right.

When considering an alternative product to add to your merchandise line, keep your fans in mind (you know about them by studying your niche more in depth) – what do they find cool enough to pay for?

While we’re still on affiliate products, let’s consider the “ideal” per-unit profit. If you’re affiliated with a physical product (say, via Amazon.com) you’ll typically only get paid between 3% and 10%, so you’ll want to promote higher-end products in order for your commissions to add up quickly enough. If, on the other hand you’re affiliated with an “e-product” (downloadable), and typically less known to wider audiences, your commissions will tend to be much higher (up to as much as 75%) – but selling that will be a lot more difficult than something people already know. Also, high-ticket items are harder to sell than low-end ones.

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Sending inexpensive (but good quality) traffic to low-ticket offers often makes sense (if you can get the numbers to add up), but it rarely makes sense with high- end products where your traffic needs to be of top quality – and thus much more expensive. For that, you’ll want to find the highest quality traffic, even if it costs more. We’ll get to that later on.

As a rule of thumb, for a typical affiliate product, you should aim for NO LESS than $25 per sale (earnings to you), but ideally more like $100 or higher. Unless you’re marketing to a pre-existing customer list which you already own and have a great relationship with, in which case it doesn’t matter.

While you will prefer to promote products which have a higher per-unit commission for you, an important exception to this is when it’s a product or service which involves a “continuity mode”, i.e. when it involves monthly rebilling. Things add up pretty quickly in those cases.

So, we now KNOW that your supplementary product(s) must be HOT – and this means, not only truly helpful and useful to your fans/buyers, but also sufficiently profitable for you.

An interesting side note here: when promoting products to your fans, it’s often a good strategy to ask them to “buy this to support the band”. No hard sell, just an appeal to their loyalty! If they love the product anyway – they will.

If you’re looking for good sources of products and services where you can earn commissions to supplement your music business, check out the enclosed Affiliate Links Resources page.

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More About Your Competition

Whether you’re researching competition for a product you want to promote or simply to see how much effort you need to put into your site in order to dominate your particular music niche in web searches, the process is pretty much exactly the same. So let’s have a look at it.

You may have a great product (be it your latest album or an affiliate product you want to promote alongside it) which ticks all the boxes, but it might be in a saturated market. Conversely, it may be in a scattered or very small (“niche”) market. What do you do? How do you find out?

The preceding sections have already shown you how to research your product and niche, and in that process you will already have gotten a great glimpse of your competition. SpyFu and Quantcast are among the best tools to use here, as is Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Google Search. But let’s recap and refine all this now.

What do you NEED to know?

The fact that competition exists is obvious. And a good thing too, because it confirms that your niche is commercially interesting. The fact that your competition is probably ahead of you in terms of market penetration is also safely assumed at this point.

But what you need to know is how dominant they are, how many of them are there, and what kind of a “sub-sub-niche” is still available for you to fill.

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What this means is two things:

1. Are they consistently coming up in Google Search results on “all” conceivable “buying keywords”? Or are there some buying keywords you could take from them? 2. Are there aspects of the product or service that you provide which could complement their main product – or perhaps even replace it? 3. How much are they spending on their promotions and how can you compete on a smaller budget? 4. Are they beating you only on the paid traffic front, or also on the organic traffic front? 5. How many affiliates do they have? In other words, is it better to beat them or to join them?

To do this research, you’ll need to use a spreadsheet in order to organize your discoveries. Before you even begin, see it in your mind’s eye: what will you need to have in there? What are you looking for?

To discover “your niche” and starting point, you need to find the best keywords for your particular product, and then see who else has thought of those and how well they are performing.

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Let’s continue with our “dog training” example even though it might be anything musical as well, such as “new country music” or whatever. So, if you’re planning to sell a product or service called “super widget for dog training”, there are two considerations: (1) which broad niche is this product in, and (2) how many competitors do I have to beat in order to become “visible” to organic traffic.

Start by examining the broad niche. In this case it would be “dog training” (and, of course, if you’re researching music, then it might be, say, “independent music”).

So, enter “dog training” into Google Search and write down the top 30 results into your spreadsheet.

Broad Keyword: (e.g. dog training)

SERP - URL

 Top Ad 1 - www.thedogtrainingsecret.com  1 - www.cesarsway.com  2 - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_training  3 - www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vlXqT13AVc  4 - www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/dog- behavior/training-your-dog

… etc – until end of page 3, when you’ll have 30 results

You’ll find that some of the companies have more than one result within the top 30. You’ll also find that some have PAID to be listed, either on the side, on top, on the bottom or in the middle of the search results. Make a note of that! And you’ll also find that some results are “commercial competitors” while others are “non- commercial information competitors”. In the above example, Wikipedia and ASPCA are in that category, while CesarsWay and TheDogTrainingSecret are commercial competitors.

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Have a look at whether some of the companies are found BOTH in the organic results and in paid AdWords ads. Very often, companies which advertise do not have much of an organic standing. Occasionally, companies which consistently appear on top don’t have any paid ads that you can easily find. But the pro players have both. It’s just that you won’t know it until you start researching “keywords with commercial intent.” We touched on this above, but let’s go a little deeper. There may still be “lesser” commercial keywords which your competitors haven’t conquered – or haven’t bothered to.

“Commercial keywords” are the keywords which reveal something about the mindset of the searcher, in terms of their readiness to take some sort of a desired action. When people type things into their Google search bar, are they just browsing or are they looking to take some kind of an action?

Open your Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

 Enter “dog training” (or “indie music” or whatever) along with a small number of other seed keywords (see the preceding section for details).

 You will see Google’s top recommendations. The ones you’re most interested in are the most expensive ones and the ones with the highest AdWords competition.

 Import the keyword data into CSV file and open that with your spreadsheet program. Now, sort your data, first by CPC bid, then by AdWords competition.

 Take the top 10 most expensive keywords and mark them, then take the top 10 most competitive keywords and mark them as well. Now take all the marked keywords and place them in a new spreadsheet or table, just to have a clearer and less cluttered picture.

You’ll now want to repeat the above broad keyword research for EACH keyword, but you can limit yourself to top 10 results if you prefer. Although I would

Page 55 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business recommend that you do top 30 anyway. In fact, I often do as many as top 100! It’s a lot of work, but you can outsource it to a virtual assistant quite easily. Anyone can do this sort of thing and it won’t cost much.

You will now start seeing which competitors are the strongest. You can (and should) additionally visit SpyFu and enter each of the targeted keywords to see which companies advertise the most. It’s a tedious thing, I know, but that’s why you have outsourcers and online personal assistants who will do this sort of thing for you for really very small money.

The above research will reveal the companies which have done the best SEO as well as those which are spending the most in paid traffic.

You’ll also see that some paid keywords actually have quite low monthly traffic yield (Keyword Planner tells you what the average monthly search is), but people still pay top dollar for them. Why? Simple: you can never conquer any niche with just ONE keyword. You need to optimize your site for multiple ones and “plug as many keyword holes” as you can. The same goes for paid traffic – you create campaigns which target multiple keyword variations.

Now that you’ve done the above, you need to check EACH keyword in Google Search. You want to know your SEO-based “organic competition.” This means you need to type in each keyword in quotation marks and write down the Google result. This is the number of pages which contain that particular phrase, i.e. you can take them to be your direct competition, as far as SEO goes. Keywords which have results below 30,000 are the ideal targets to start on.

It may be that you’ll see your potential target keywords already at this stage. It may also be that each keyword you’ve discovered thus far has simply too great organic competition. Or perhaps all the keywords you like are simply too expensive. Not to worry – you just need to keep looking!

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If the above step didn’t yield anything “manageable” for you, and even if it did, it’s now time to focus on “lesser” keywords: i.e. keywords which have much lower monthly traffic yields.

Go back to your spreadsheet now and sort the original CSV so as to see the keywords with the lowest competition, cheapest CPC and highest monthly search traffic.

Make a list of, say, 10 of them and repeat the above analysis, taking care to study at least the first 10 results on Google as well as “phrase match” (“organic competition”, where you enter a keyword in quotation marks) for each of the selected “lesser” keywords.

Chances are that you will now find keywords which YOU can conquer, i.e. keywords where the competition is below 30,000 and/or whose CPC cost is very low (i.e. well below the average cost of the “prime” keywords).

In a moment, I will explain exactly how to optimize your site for these keywords and how to conduct paid campaigns for them. In the meantime, keep those discoveries safe – you’ll soon need to implement them!

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What Is SEO and SEM and Should An Artist Care?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization”, while SEM means “search engine marketing”. Many webmasters use these terms interchangeably, but there are some important differences. One is a sub-set of the other.

The objective of SEO is to get found in search engines, i.e. rank as high as possible on various targeted keywords. The higher you rank, the better chances you have of receiving regular, well-targeted traffic. SEO involves “white hat” (no tricks!) techniques when creating your high quality content, researching keywords, link building, using social media and improving the navigation and interactivity on your site. In most cases SEO is essentially FREE, but due to the arcane complexity of some of the steps, it is common to outsource much of that work to SEO experts (and thus it becomes a PAID form of traffic acquisition).

SEM is a broader concept than SEO in that its objective is to be found not merely by using those arcane techniques we mentioned above, but also through paid ads or any other initiatives that will get your site noticed. When you use SEM techniques, you’re basically marketing using search engines as if they were “normal” sites where you can buy ad space. A typical example of this are “sponsored results” in Google, while you search. You can often see those on top of

Page 58 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business the organic listings, sometimes on the side, occasionally at the bottom and, increasingly, also in the middle of organic listings.

But everything begins with keyword research and SEO. There are two basic sides of this coin. The so-called “on-page” and the “off-page” optimization.

On-page is everything you can do within your site itself – write articles with the appropriate balance of keywords and tags.

Off-page is everything that pertains to your site but is outside of your direct control – for example backlinks from other sites, blog mentions, social mentions, etc.

If you want to have a successful website, you need to embrace both SEO and SEM. I will explain the key concepts below, and as usual, I provide in-depth tutorials for each topic on the MeerMusic site.

If you like, now could be a good time to take a break and peruse the enclosed SEO Tips videos.

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On-Page Optimization

To understand what on-page SEO is all about you first need to have at least a rough idea of how a search engine (e.g. Google) works. So let’s understand how Google works first.

Google’s primary stated mission is to serve the Internet community by helping us FIND information on any topic there is. Apart from the OBVIOUS fact that they also need to make money while doing it, their PRIMARY mission is to serve the online searchers. If the quality of the results they provide is low, people won’t hesitate to try other search engines. If the quality is great - people will keep coming back.

Eventually, people discover that the way Google organizes the results is because of Google’s understanding of what matters most to most searchers. So, if you type “indie music” into the search engine, Google will find MILLIONS of pages, all of which refer to “indie music” in one way or another. HOW then does it decide to list “page A” first and “page AA” 27th?

What would YOU do if you were Google?

Given that your mission is to serve the online searchers, and that you need to be able to index and evaluate BILLIONS of pages programmatically, many of which are written in languages you don’t even understand, you would have to construct your algorithm in such a manner that it not only be able to “make sense” of all that data, but also be able to organize it in a way which - to a searcher - would be the most satisfactory and intelligent.

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So, if the first page listed by Google when you type “indie music” were something like “West Indies” the searcher would almost certainly not be as satisfied with that kind of a recommendation (which is what Google’s results actually ARE), as with, for example, “MusicXRay” a website which deals with “real” independent music.

But YOU know this, because you’re human and can read. Google’s algorithm, on the other hand CAN’T “read”, because it does not have a human intelligence! It’s just a program. It must therefore employ other means of establishing which content is RELEVANT to your search and which is not.

So, on your list of instructions for your programmers, you would insist that they find ways to:

 Always provide the most relevant results, ordered from the “most” relevant to the least relevant. (Relevant vis-à-vis the keyword the searcher entered)  Evaluate the input search term (i.e. “the keyword”), look up what it means and how it tends to be used in daily speech, and how that term relates to other terms on the page.

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 Study how respectable the given page is, by checking who is linking to it and how many of those links exist (and also how respectable the pages which link to this page are!)  Determine which keywords are the most relevant/important basing on how they are placed on the page and earmark the page for OTHER searches which may be more relevant still.  Find ways to discover cheats, i.e. people who create pages only to rank, but not to provide the kind of content your searchers value. This means people who either “keyword-stuff” or people whose pages are linked to other low- value pages, etc.

You’d come up with many more such rules and requirements, but even at this early stage you should begin to see what matters most to Google. It simply wants to find the best content! And once it finds it, it wants to list it in order of relevance.

If you could figure out a way to program this - as Google has - surely, you can already see the kind of RULES you would want satisfied in order to grant pages a high ranking! And if you can MAKE those rules – you can FOLLOW them!

So here are some simple on-page optimization rules to keep in mind:

 Relevance - When you write about something important in an article or on a page of your website, then make sure that the WHOLE text makes sense (to a human) and leads the reader straight to the point. But if you write about “how to buy a used car” and you never mention words like “spare parts” or “mileage” or “changing gears” a HUMAN reader may still understand perfectly what you mean, but Google... might struggle. I will show you how to determine which ADDITIONAL words to use on your pages in order to “un-confuse” Google! (They’re known as “LSI” keywords, by the way).

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 Density - When you write about, say, a “car” - how will Google know that you wish to rank for “car” and not for “spare parts” which you have also placed on the page? You accomplish that by using your target phrase (or, as we call it, “primary keyword”) “enough” times for Google not to have any doubts. But you must also be sure not to use that word “too many” times, so as not to make Google suspicious that you are “keyword- stuffing.” We will teach you how to optimize pages to win not just your primary keywords but also your secondary (”semantically related” or “LSI”) keywords.

 Semantic Environment - That’s a level of consistency between not just words on one page but also divergent pages on the whole site, as well as all incoming and outgoing links. This concept has a lot to do with LSI keywords, but is broader still. I’ll soon show you how creating powerful Semantic Environments can help you multiply your rankings and authority on Google. Really fast!

 Trust Rank – You need to establish “how trusted” your site is on Google. Trust Rank is one of those semi-secret concepts on Google which some less-initiated webmasters even doubt exists. Google barely even mentions it on their webmaster pages. And those who do accept that it exists, usually don’t know how it’s calculated or how important it is. And Google isn’t saying! So, if you understand that it does indeed exist and how it’s calculated, you’ll soon know how to optimize your pages to generate maximum trust with Google’s algorithm! This method is as upgrade-proof as anything you’ll ever learn!

 Internal Links – You need to provide your readers with links to related content on your own site. You do that by “anchoring” specific words or phrases within your text and hyper-linking that to the target pages on your site. The “old-fashioned” way to do this was to hyperlink your target keyword, thus ensuring that Google would see that THIS is your targeted

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keyword you want to rank on. But today this approach is seen as “keyword spam” - if you overdo it. It’s advisable to use LSI keywords for hyperlinking as well as irrelevant keywords! Basically the breakdown should be about 10-20% of hyperlinks using primary keyword, 50-70% using secondary LSI keywords and the rest using irrelevant keywords such as “click here”.

For more information please refer to the enclosed Site Optimization Guide.

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Off-Page Optimization and Backlinking

There is a flip-side to on-page optimization and it accounts for at least 50% of all the factors that will get your site to rank in search results. I’m talking about what is known as “off-page” optimization. Some people simply call it “backlink generation”.

Let’s look at what is involved.

 Quality Backlinks – Probably the biggest business in the online marketing world is the sales of backlinks. There is no question that Google values backlinks highly, but do you think it considers all backlinks to be equally valuable? Do you think it would it rank a backlink from, say, the White House, a bit higher than from your cousin Joe? Do you think it would it be more impressed by 10,000 profile links on dozens of nameless “social sites” or by a mere handful of contextual links on the Washington Post site? Always do your best to put your links on quality sites (e.g. via comments, profiles or posts – or by mutual agreement with the webmaster, which is obviously the most difficult to obtain).

 Reciprocal Links – Here we’re in the “on-page” SEO with one foot and “off-page” with the other. You can exchange links with other sites (as long as they’re good quality links, i.e. not buried somewhere on their site without any context on a page filled with other meaningless links). While these types of links are sometimes worth less than one-way links (i.e. links where you do not reciprocate the love), it depends on who you’re trading with and how. If you can exchange highly visible links with a high- authority website, it’s going to be seen as very valuable by Google and your authority will grow as a result. Google uses a technique called “link-juice passing” which awards points depending on “who” sends the link to you.

 Unreciprocated Links – Here’s an On/Off-page hybrid. It is important to provide reference links to certain concepts on your pages which will

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establish a connection between you and high authority sites on the web. For example, when writing about, say, “indie music”, you will do well to provide a link to, say, a Wikipedia article about that or a newspaper article, and so on. Ideally, choose NON-COMPETITIVE authority sites (i.e. very popular and highly respected) and also get your links to open in new pages/tabs (using the “_blank” tag in HTML or by clicking “open in a new window” in Wordpress).

Off-page SEO is critically important to your success because Google (and other engines) see those as a “popular endorsement” of your site. If other sites point to yours, you must have something they like.

But beware: FAKE links, or FORCED links (i.e. links which are placed on “link farms” or on low-quality sites) can actually COST you CREDIBILITY with Google.

So, if you have 10,000 backlinks from just 2 or 3 cheap domains all pointing to your site using one or two highly prized keywords, rather than ranking you higher Google will actually demote your site – and MAY even “sandbox” it, i.e. remove it from its results entirely!

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It is BETTER to have 10 genuine backlinks from good sites than a million from trashy ones!

For more information please refer to the Site Optimization Guide.

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Extended Setup: Your Own Site Is Just The Beginning

Apart from having your site up and running, you also need to plug yourself into the most important social networks, subscribe to a few critically important services – and – create (and test) your sales funnel. In this section we will look at all those additional considerations.

Some people leave these things for later, and you may elect to do that as well. Musicians particularly recoil when they hear things like “sales funnel”. Please don’t. Call it what you want but this is just a name for a PROCESS of engaging your visitors.

If you did a good job with your planning, research and site building as per my advice above, then you already have a complete business ready to roll, and skipping this step is simply not an option!

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Setting Up Social Accounts

If you don’t already have your social accounts (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc) now is a good time to create them – why not! You CAN put that off till later, but you will find that doing this already at this early stage will make things easier further down the road.

The social general-purpose accounts that you “must” have in order to assure maximum power of your site include:

 YouTube  Facebook  Twitter  Google Plus (check out the dedicated course here)  LinkedIn  Pinterest  Wordpress.com (yes that’s the “hosted” Wordpress, you want an account there too!)  HubPages  Squidoo  Reddit  Other social accounts which are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you also register with include:  All the major “social bookmarking” sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg and about 50 others. I will provide you with a full list of those in the Resources section at the end of this course.

Once again, you can do all this easily by yourself – or you can get an inexpensive outsourcer to register your accounts for you.

At this point, we strongly urge you to peruse our bonus course Social Basics.

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Next, you also NEED to sign up to many of the most important music-related social networks. The most important among them all is YouTube, which is also a “general-purpose” network, but it just happens to be the biggest thing going for music as well. Many people forget that YouTube is in fact a SOCIAL NETWORK. So you need to create your profile page, set up your account – and do pretty much the same sort of thing you do on any other network.

But then there are also specialized networks which focus more or less entirely on music. Here are some of the most important ones (the rest will be listed in the Resource section at the end:

 Apple Ping  SoundCloud  MySpace  LastFM  ReverbNation  MixCloud  8Tracks  HulkShare  Eventful  BuzzNet  FanBridge  OurStage

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It’s highly advisable that you set up a profile on each of those and that you post there regularly. Take part in the ongoing conversations.

All social networks allow you to have a member’s account and a “profile”, and some also allow you to have a signature (much like all “forums” do). Always ensure that your signature contains a short blurb about your and/or your music (or your product) – something that is intriguing enough for people to click through on, and it must also contain a link to either your home page or your particular sales page.

It is possible to integrate many of your social accounts with your Wordpress site, so that when you post something there, it will automatically show up on your Facebook and/or your Twitter, and so on.

In other cases it may not be possible, and the only way you will be able to interact is by posting comments, answering questions, etc.

Posting INTELLIGENT comments or answers can give you excellent quality traffic. I sometimes post on various forums (music, marketing as well some political ones!) and if I do a good job of formulating my post well, I’ll get an instant hit of 5, 10 even 20 visits. Sometimes even more. And later on the visits from that one post will continue trickling in for weeks or even months. And each time, the person clicking through is “highly targeted” and potentially interested in what I’ve got to offer.

Another interesting variation on the above is posting answers on Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers, Reddit or dozens of others. The same principle is involved – if you write something useful and intelligent people WILL click through your signature link. But a word of caution: some sites, especially Yahoo Answers, are

Page 71 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business dominated by marketers who can attack you and even get you banned if you’re seen to be deliberately self-promoting – or if you’re perceived as too much of a “threat!” For this reason I rarely use these any more, but I have done so in the past with good results.

NOTE: your measure of social success is measured by the number of “likes”, “followers” and comments you receive. There are ways to increase or speed up this process, which I’ll get to a bit later, but be careful when outsourcing this – more often than not you’ll receive thousands of MEANINGLESS “fans” who will never interact with your site. I’ll cover this and other related topics further in this course.

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Subscriptions and Essential Services

There are a few other things you need to do, in order to be fully prepared. They include the following:

 Setting up a PayPal account. This one’s FREE.  Signing up to an automated social bookmarking service like OnlyWire or SocialMonkee and/or TrafficGeyser. All of these involve a small monthly fee or an annual subscription.  Signing up to an autoresponder service like aWeber. There’s a modest monthly fee involved here as well.

You may argue that you can sign up to these services “as and when you need them” and you will be right. If, for example, you believe that your site preparation will take you a month or longer, then you might as well wait until you’re ready to launch before you set these accounts up. But – you will need them in the end anyway, and I just don’t want you to forget about them. I will briefly explain what they are here.

 Briefly, PayPal is used for your online transactions. It’s what they call a “payment processor”. The tools that PayPal provides as well as the fact that most people online use almost exclusively PayPal for all their transactions means that you simply “have to” have it. It allows you to collect money from your customers (from their PayPal as well as their credit/debit cards), and to make payments, when needed. I recommend that you check out the PayPal User’s Guide in your Member’s Area as well as PayPal SandBox Tutorial.

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 OnlyWire and SocialMonkee specialize in automated social bookmarking posting, where SocialMonkee is a bit more hands-on and more powerful, but also more time-consuming. OnlyWire is “set and forget” and much easier to use. Whenever you post something on your site you want all your social accounts to be alerted, and doing that manually can be a pain. So a service like this is an essential time-saver.

 As for TrafficGeyser, it does the same as the above but is additionally and primarily focused on video promotions. It’s also more expensive. If you had to do only one of those, you should go for TrafficGeyser. Ideally, you should have TrafficGeyser and OnlyWire – unless you like the extra power of SocialMonkee, in which case, substitute OnlyWire for that.

As ever, you can do it all yourself or hire an outsourcer.

You will also need a few more ESSENTIAL tools to be ready to finally launch:

 Google Analytics – If you haven’t got a Google account yet, go ahead and make one. It’s free. Next go to http://google.com/analytics and sign in. “Add your site” and copy the Analytics ID (you’ll need that for the Google Analytics Wordpress plugin we mentioned earlier). And now, come back here daily and watch how your site is gradually growing in popularity, analyze the various menu options and slowly but surely learn how it all works. It’s quite simple and you WILL understand it without any instruction within a few days. But if you need more advanced features and don’t feel like learning them – you can cheaply outsource that service as well, using the most popular outsourcing services.  Google Webmaster Tools – This step is critically important, so DO NOT FORGET IT. Go to http://google.com/webmaster and log in with your

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Google account. Next, “Add your site” and authenticate it (either using FTP or even your mobile phone). Now you can check the various functions and slowly absorb them. They’re easy to understand and will prove very helpful to you when optimizing the promotions and SEO on your site. And as usual, if you get stuck or want to turbo-charge your promotions, you can shortcut the learning process by finding a good outsourcer.  Google Authorship/Google Plus – If you don’t already have a GooglePlus account, go ahead and login with your usual Google credentials to http://google.com/plus and set it up. This is a social network which will soon rival Facebook, plus, it also has many additional features you need to avail yourself of, including your “authorship”. Now visit http://plus.google.com/authorship and register yourself as well as upload your image – if you haven’t already done so while registering for your Plus account. The Google Authorship is a BIG help when you start promoting your articles, so don’t skip this step!  Google Places/Maps – If you have a company based in a specific geographic location you simply “must” register it here. It takes a few days to get accepted (they snail-mail an authentication code to your address), but it will REALLY help you with your SEO. If your music project is not geo-specific, it may STILL be a good idea to register your headquarters here.  SEOquake – If you use the Firefox or Chrome browser, then go ahead and install this tool right away. It’s like surfing with your eyes wide open! It shows you some of the most basic stats and info about all the sites you visit while browsing the web and researching. It also includes Alexa rank, so you won’t need to install the Alexa Toolbar as well.  Mozilla Lightbeam – Works with Firefox only, and shows you who’s tracking YOU online! Not essential, but really fun and informative.

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Other Useful Tools A Musician Needs To Have

Depending on the scope and type of your website, you may also benefit from a few additional tools. Some of those I’ll list below are “essential” while others are a “bonus”.

Video production – essential in virtually all types of online promotions, most especially MUSIC.

 Do It Yourself o Camtasia Studio – Great for recording your screen. On the Mac, use Screenflow instead. Another free alternative is iMovie / Windows Movie Maker. o Amazon S3 - Amazon's cloud hosting. Affordable and reliable. If you have a high-trafficked site, it’s quite essential to speed things up. o Easy Video Suite – Assists you with uploading and managing your videos, including podcasting. Very easy to use. o Wistia - Allows you to host your videos and create cross-platform- compatible video players. Comes loaded with video analytics, iPhone/iPad support, video heatmaps, video player customization, social sharing, and much more.  Outsource it o Fiverr – This one’s a bit hit-or-miss, but some really good ones exist, if you have the time to experiment

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o ReelContent – A very professional company which always creates the highest quality videos for you. o BlissMediaWorks – Also great, and very affordable too. o SmartShoot – A video outsourcing site where producers can bid for your project. o Outsourcing Management – Outsourcing can be a headach and time-consuming. Here you can pass that headache on to someone else!

Additional utilities to help you with your content creation

 Google Calendar (plan and share your appointments)  Wordpress Editorial Calendar (plan your article launches)  Dragon Dictation (turn your speech into written documents!)

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Developing Content For Your Site

There is NOTHING more important on your site than content. Not just music – but also videos and WRITTEN content.

More often than not, the difference between a successful site and a failure is the quality of their content. If you’ve been working online without much success, the reason is almost certainly lack of GOOD QUALITY content.

And yet, people tend to overcomplicate this – or over-simplify it. I don’t know which is worse.

 The “complicators” stress and sweat the small stuff, never quite finishing, always fine-tuning, winding up never releasing their articles or videos.  The “simplifiers” write inferior quality “quickies” or rip off and “spin” already-existing articles and spam the web with them.

Both are victims of wrong mindsets. The first group suffers from “paralysis of analysis”, the second from… gullibility. They were told that this is how it’s done! It isn’t!

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THIS is why you MUST LOVE your niche. If you do, you already know more than 99% of people about it. You should use that passion when writing your content, or when vetting content written for you by outsourcers.

You don’t have to post 50 articles per day and spam the web with them (which is NOT to say that you shouldn’t promote your articles beyond the confines of your site – you should, but more on that later). Just write a few GOOD ones per week and promote them naturally, using the tools and techniques recommended in this book – and you WILL do very well.

Make your articles MEANINGFUL and USEFUL. And absolutely DO NOT write TRITE! Each bit of wasteful content like that COSTS YOU return visitors!

So, what to write? Write INTERESTING things about your music, product, service, niche – whatever tickles you. Just don’t be boring. Be informative, engaging, entertaining.

Do some interesting research and share it with your readers. Impress them with your passion and depth of knowledge. Each article can be 500 to 1000 words long, illustrated with nice photos or graphics, formatted in such a way so as to appeal to the eye. And also make sure that the language you use is appropriate for the audience you’re targeting. Writing “yo dudes” may work for a surfing site, but will fall flat if your audience is mainly made up of corporate types. Makes sense?

If you’re not a great writer, then you SIMPLY MUST invest in a good writer or two. You can (later) also invite others (e.g. your fans) to post on your site. Meanwhile, you can use the links in the Resources area at the end of this course to find excellent writers on just about any topic – for small money.

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Remember you need to feed your site with content on a regular basis. In fact, when you prepare your site, it’s good to have a few weeks worth of content SCHEDULED within Wordpress.

You can also use the following websites if you need help with your content: topsy.com (great for content IDEAS and discovering influencers in the various niches), scoop.it (content discovery), contentgems.com (content discovery & sharing) – as well as many of the other outsourcing links we’ve shared above, not the least of which is, of course, our Outsourcing Management Services.

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Copywriting, Copyrights And You

Many people are confused. Many spell one when they mean the other. What is “copywriting” and what is “copyrighting”?

They’re in fact two completely distinct and unrelated concepts. “CopyRIGHT” is an author’s right to the exclusive exploitation of his or her work.

“CopyWRITING” is the process or creating good “copy”. An advertising expert might write a few blurbs about you or your product. This is the one that matters!

Here we’re going to have a brief look at copy WRITING.

One of the most important things you’ll need to think about for your site is good “copy”. Slogans, titles, body text – everything that’s needed to help you make a sale, i.e. CONNECT with your prospects.

I’m NOT talking about hype or overly sales-oriented copy, but rather succinct and powerful messages. This is particularly important when used in ads, but not only. Titles of your articles or videos fall broadly into the same category as well as any texts which require maximum brevity and maximum information and emotional content at the same time.

When selling a particular product, for example, your copy must reflect the true nature of your product, the “sizzle” rather than the “steak”, and must not mislead.

The vast majority of site owners skimp on this part – to their demise. I’ve done it too and I understand the temptation to think “I know how to write copy as well as anyone”. In most cases, you really DON’T!

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Ask yourself: are you really just as good as someone who does this for a living?

Good copywriters can be expensive, and even at the low rates you can get from CoachTIP, you’ll still have to spend a little bit. So, it’s understandable that you’ll want to cut some corners. But just be aware, that the broad consensus among virtually all webmasters is that the biggest of all the reasons for failure online boil down to one thing only: COPY THAT DOESN’T CONVERT!

A good copywriter writes for a living. You probably don’t. Chances are extremely good that he/she will be able to transform your “okay” copy into a business- getter. The sooner you learn to work with professionals and play to your strengths – i.e. outsource what you’re not an ACE in – the sooner your business will turn a profit. Here are some great copywriters for you to keep in mind:

 Cori Padgett – Worked with some of the biggest brands on the web and offers a wide variety of services from sales copy to blog article writing.  Kristi Hines – Another top copywriter with a roster of high profile clients and a CV which reads like Whos-Who on the Internet.  SixDegreesContent.com – Run by Courtney Ramirez, offers a whole team of writers specialized in various aspects of copywriting.  ArtileZ.com – Another great team of writers, and more affordable than most.  Brian Mcleod – Quite simply one of the very best in the business, and another one whose roster of successful clients would impress just about anyone.

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 Other really excellent ones include: Kevin Rogers (One of the top Clickbank Copywriters), Vin Montello, Matt O' Connor, as well as top autoresponder copywriters such as AnitaAshland.com, Jay White or Ash Ambirge.

Don’t forget to ask check out the enclosed Copywriting Basics.

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Writing Your Blog and Articles

When writing your articles (or commissioning them from outsourced writers), keep just two broad things in mind: style and substance.

Substance is what it’s all about. But having interesting content written in an incomprehensible or un-engaging way is not the idea either. So the style of your writing must be clear and engaging. It must also be appropriate for your target audience.

If you’re a songwriter, chances are you’re probably a good article writer as well. Write about things that matter to you and things that will engage your visitors, prompt them to post comments, disagree or agree with you. Write as long or as short articles as you like, but remember that the longer ones will be more helpful in SEO terms.

If you decide to outsource your writing, you need to know how to instruct them. Be SURE to tell them who the article is aimed at and what narrative STYLE to use. But don’t over-do it either. If you’re in a youth niche, don’t go overboard with slang or current metaphors. Just keep it simple and fun, but don’t pretend to be what you’re not or be too cool for your own good. Similarly, if you’re writing for high-brow audiences, don’t assume you must use long, pseudo-educated words to impress them. And don’t avoid colloquialisms entirely.

If what I wrote here doesn’t make sense – you really do need to outsource your writing.

So, let’s look at some of the most important considerations when writing for your site. A well-constructed article needs to have the following:

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 A great, engaging TITLE  A summary line or a “byline”, briefly describing the article (whetting the reader’s appetite for reading)  Avoid long, run-on sentences  Avoid heavy, never-ending paragraphs  Use attention-getting “hooks” when possible (i.e. pose questions or introduce “cliff-hangers” between sections, etc)  Section and sub-section titles  Correct usage of your target keywords (see our SEO section for more on this)  Useful and correctly anchored internal as well as external resource links  Be informative, funny, entertaining, controversial – anything but neutral.

When you understand what really matters to others within your niche, writing an article will be that much easier. But also keep in mind that your readers have access to an unlimited number of other articles, so if you fail to engage them – they simply won’t read your articles and you will have lost potential customers.

Remember also that your site will need two broad types of articles: “pillar” articles and “current” articles.

 Pillar articles are those which are timeless and should have a separate menu link to them. Stuff that people will find interesting and useful today or a year from now.

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 Current articles, if really well-written, can also become “pillars”, but their primary purpose is to keep readers informed about what is going on “now” in your niche – or in your band’s life.

You should have a nice number of pillar articles on your site and you should make it a point to add at least one each X days or weeks.

As for current articles, the “ideal” formula is to post one per day, but the absolute minimum is one per week. The frequency of your posting is DIRECTLY related to how well you’ll rank in the search engines.

Organize your articles into categories (this is super easy within Wordpress) and make sure to have a menu link to your categories within your top or sidebar menu.

If you’re like many people – great at speaking but not great at writing – here’s a cool little tool you might find useful: DragonDictation allows you to convert your voice recording into written text! Just don’t forget to edit it afterwards.

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Creating Videos

Increasingly, creating videos is not merely an “option” – it’s virtually a “must.” Especially if you’re an artist.

There are estimates which state that over 60% of all web activity today is used on watching videos! Many people prefer to watch and listen than to read. Even those who love to read also like to watch!

I’m not just talking about your music videos. They’re a must of course. You in the studio, backstage, your latest release, your musings – anything. But this also applies to many of the articles you’ll be writing to fill your site with content.

Some of your best articles can be easily converted to videos.

In fact, keep that in mind when writing. If your article makes a strong point about something, it will make that point just as well – or better – in a video. And videos can go “viral”. At least, it’s MUCH more likely for videos to be shared, as compared to articles.

Knowing this should inform your broader promotional strategy.

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There are many simple ways to create videos. Most don’t require any special expertise. This is not to say that they shouldn’t be done well. It just means that practically anyone can learn how to create excellent videos at the lowest possible cost. Even for free.

One of the most ways is to convert PowerPoint slideshows to videos. If you know how to design simple slides with text, read them out, and change pages in synch with the voiceover – that’s all it takes. If this sounds a little too boring for a musician – heck, spice it up with cool graphics and sound effects! You can still create a great little video in just minutes, once you get good at it.

There are programs which automatically convert PowerPoint presentations to video and even help you upload them to YouTube and other video sites.

Slideshow videos can contain text only, pictures only, or a combination of both. They can contain background music and voiceovers or be silent. I recommend voiceovers in 99 cases out of 100. As for background music – it depends. If you know how to mix the music well so as not to distract but rather to accentuate certain things – by all means go ahead.

Videos also work well with the narrator (e.g. “you”) actually featuring on the screen. This has the added benefit of making your viewers familiar with you on a more personal level.

Live action videos, with actual clips, are also a great way to go, but require just a little bit more work to get them to work well. Your last gig featuring your screaming fans may be just the vid you always wanted to go viral. (The more fans you’re able to feature and “tag” in your video, the greater the potential for that elusive “viral” spread).

In all cases keep in mind that the “production style” of your videos must be appropriate to your audience – just like your articles.

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In MOST cases (though by no means all) professionally produced videos work better than amateur jobs. By “professionally produced” I don’t necessarily mean broadcast quality, but rather attention to detail, clear, uncluttered, well- organized, good quality images, etc. In other words, with a little care, you too can create “professional” videos. The tools that exist which help you do this are simply phenomenal.

While I strongly recommend that you learn to create your own videos (and I will provide you with links to all you need to know about this), I recommend even more strongly that you outsource your video production, at least initially. You can find video outsourcers for “peanuts”.

It’s only important that you have a SCRIPT for your video before you get started on anything.

Even if you’re just planning to convert an article into a video, it still helps to have at least a basic script. For example:

1. Opening title with music intro 2. Byline, read out by narrator, with narrator in the shot 3. Zoom out narrator, zoom in first sentence of the text 4. When we get to the word “now”, make a special effect there 5. One sentence per slide with narrator in the background 6. End slide with outro graphics, music and narrator 7. Keep URL on all slides in the bottom third of the screen

Naturally, this is just one example. You can make it much more complex or much simpler. Whatever works.

Additionally, when you create your video it is NECESSARY to ALSO do this:

 Write a few alternative titles for it  Write a lengthy description for it, using DIFFERENT sentences to what is actually in the video

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 Write target keywords down, including your MAIN keyword  Ensure that your main keyword is in the title, used at least once – or even twice!  Ensure your main keyword is also used generously (but not over the top) within the body of your description and your additional keywords are used there too  Transcript of your video should be linked to the video using “annotations” and/or “captions”

When you’re finally ready to upload your video to YouTube, you’ll have all you need prepared in advance. When you later promote your video to other video sites, you’ll only want to alter the titles with each upload (not strictly necessary, but often quite helpful). You MAY also decide to alter the description a little bit for each upload (this is known as “spinning”).

At this point, if you want to jump straight into creating your first videos and video campaigns, pause reading this book and check out the enclosed Video Marketing Course.

And here are some of the most useful links and additional resources for you:

 Camtasia Studio – Super easy video editor for beginners. The most popular video program online (use ScreenFlow if you’re on the Mac)  Free alternatives for video production: iMovie (for the Mac) and Windows Movie Maker (for the PC)  Audacity – Free program which allows you to record your voice.  Audio Acrobat – create and broadcast on-demand audio and video  Amazon S3 – Amazon’s cloud hosting for your videos.  Easy Video Suite – A superb program for all your video creation and marketing needs. Great for beginners, but also very useful for most advanced users.  Wistia – Host and create your videos then analyze their usage. Superb tool.

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As always, more links will be found in the Resource section at the end of this course.

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What Else Should You Have On Your Artist’s Website?

Articles and videos are only one type of content for your site – but not the only one, although most webmasters stop there. The clever ones, however, go a step further.

Websites which contain free software, funny graphics and viral images, interactive quizzes or even free games, free classified ads for your fans on your site (yes, there are free Wordpress plugins for that too!), incentive ads (e.g. click to get something for free – works great with name-brand CPA offers where you earn per click and even more per referred sale), etc, do really well and by engaging their visitors that much more, they increase the chances of converting some of them into buyers.

The objective is always to keep your visitors engaged, spend more time on your site, browse more of your pages.

All of this will increase the chances of converting them to customers and loyal followers.

Lively comment sections on your site are also

a superbly important thing to have.

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Your website content should contain:

 Your bio and EPK (electronic press kit)  Copies of your press releases, perhaps in a separate section  Pilar articles (stuff that never gets old)  Current posts  Special reports, ideally about your niche or your kind of music  General articles of high interest to your visitors  Stories, opinions, controversial rants  Reviews – of you by others as well as others by you, if you feel it’s appropriate  Interviews with you  Gig schedules  Your merchandise  Your music downloads section as well as your music videos section, organized by topic  Ads or special offers, both specific to your music or product as well as any others you may decide to host on your site  Signup to receive our newsletter, or sign up to become a fan, etc  Extended section for VIP members, password protected  Photo galleries  Downloadable posters, free and paid  Promotional materials for your street teams  Forum for your fans  Free games or programs  Free books or other giveaways – ideally tied into some contests which you may organize

And these are just a few things off the top of my head. Look at other successful sites and copy the stuff that tickles you.

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The Look of Your Artist’s Website

One of the beauties of Wordpress is that there is virtually no limit to how you can customize it or how it can look to the visitor. Apart from that, there are thousands of “themes” or templates available, both free and paid, with which you can transform your site in seconds.

This incredible advantage of Wordpress is also, potentially, a weakness. It’s not uncommon for people to spend hours, even days, trying out different themes, tweaking them, then discarding them – and so on ad infinitum. And sometimes they’re still unhappy at the end of the whole process.

So, even with the “instant-expertise” that Wordpress places in your hands, it is still a good idea to consider hiring a designer. Doing so will additionally ensure that YOUR LOOK is unique. If you’re after a particular “feel”, you may also find that it will save you time – and perhaps even money – if you just go straight to someone who really knows what he/she is doing. Outsource.

Keep these things in mind:

 The look and feel of your site in general  The look, feel and specific function of your landing pages (a commercial site must have multiple “ways in”, via dedicated landing and “squeeze” pages)  Graphic continuity between your main site and your other (social) properties

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 Sketch everything out on paper first, then look for themes which are the closest match. Free themes first, then paid ones. And if all else fails, consider hiring a site designer.

But there’s more to your site than just your home page and the accompanying content pages. In fact, if your objective is to create a site which becomes a sales vehicle for your music and any possible products you may promote, you simply have to also develop additional (semi-separate) “landing pages”. Think of these as alternative ways in to your site. They are very useful for promoting specific things, because they don’t contain any distractions, no particular menus or irrelevant links – just the main message and a call to action.

While you can use landing pages for anything you like, you have two basic types which are most commonly used:

 A sales page  A squeeze page

A sales page may or may not be connected to your “funnel” and thus also your auto-responder. It’s best if it is, but it’s also possible to just set up an affiliate link to a particular offer which your band wants to get behind and promote that directly to your fans.

A squeeze page, on the other hand, is a tool whose purpose is explicitly to build your list. You will typically offer something for free – a special report, recordings, whatever you can think of that has value – in exchange for the visitor’s email

Page 95 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business address, and his/her permission for you to contact them with any follow-ups. See the attached “Autoresponder Basics” course for more on this.

You can design your landing pages using the same Wordpress theme you already have installed (but you’ll usually need special squeeze page plugins in order to be able to achieve that “detached” look), or you can code them separately using HTML or other tools – or tools such as LeadPages.

Once you upload your landers to your site, you can promote them separately to your target audiences.

It is also a good idea to have alternative versions of your landing pages. That’s because you never know which design will convert the best. Is it the one with this photo or that? The one with a brief video or without? The one with the sign-up form on the left or right?

In order for you to know which lander sends you the most signups you need to track it. You can do this for free using Google Analytics, or better still a Wordpress plugin called PrettyLink Lite – or you can subscribe to a professional ad tracking program such as Hypertracker.

Once you see which page works the best, you can focus your promotion on it, rather than waste your efforts and money on any others.

Just remember that your landing pages should ALSO have a similar (consistent) look and feel to your home site. Just like all your other web properties including all your social accounts and profiles.

It might help you to avail yourself of some of the pre-made standard graphics elements I’ve provided for you here: Your Graphics Library for all your graphic inspiration, as well as Website Templates if you decide to create additional pages on your site using HTML.

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More About Graphic Design

An artist’s image is very important, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. But this isn’t limited to “you”. It should be extended to your site and all your related web properties.

If you happen to be a great graphic designer as well as a musician – super. But in most cases, that’s not going to be your specialty.

That’s another corner most webmasters cut. I did too, and still do now and then. It’s okay to make some amateurish graphics to test ideas, but once you decide to launch – do yourself a favor and hire a professional. You will find lots of excellent links in this course where you can get awe-inspiring work done for peanuts.

Once again – do not delay your own progress by improvising and making it all up as you go. Get into the mindset of DELEGATING.

Remember: Work ON your business, not FOR it.

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Here are some of the best places to outsource your designs from:

 99designs.com – Multiple designers compete to win your bid.  MicroLancer.com – Specialized in logos, Wordpress, e-covers, book layouts and more  KillerCovers.com – Amazing designs for your eBooks, DVDs, CDs, etc.  Pixelofgenius.com – Top-notch graphic designer.  Other equally fabulous designers include Adam Maywald, KillerSalesDesign.com, DesignGuruRyan.com, DoYouImpress.com and Dribbble.com

And here are a couple of useful “related” links:

 PSD2HTML – Convert your PSD designs to high quality, cross-browser compatible, valid XHTML / CSS markup.  DimpleArt.com – Very affordable, high-quality caricatures you can create for your website, squeeze page, and overall branding.

I must also point out that although all of the recommendations in this book are top notch in quality, MANAGING freelancers can be a little tricky sometimes. This is yet another reason why using Outsourcing Management is such a good idea. They typically charge you 25% (up to 50%, depending on the type of job) above the outsourcer price to coordinate everything for you. You get the benefit of the highest expertise on the web at the lowest prices – without any of the hassle that sometimes accompanies these things.

So now you have all the basics in place. It’s time to start looking at promoting your site – and your music – and showing you some concrete ways in which you can earn enough (mostly on auto-pilot), to be able to sustain yourself and be able to do nothing other than music for as long as you like!

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More About Your Branding, Networking and Promotion

As I mentioned earlier, your brand is your most important asset. You need to use it in all your promotions, both off- and on-site. The subtle impact of your brand, be it on page headers or email footers will gradually imprint itself on the minds of your target audiences through consistent repetition.

So what exactly is your “brand?”

 Your name and/or your artist’s or band’s name  Your images - logo, photos, artwork  Your story  Your music  Your videos  Your articles  Your slogans and tag-lines  Your avatars  Your signatures  Your contact info  Your website URL  Your avatars and icons  etc

While your brand needs to be “everywhere”, it doesn’t need to be too flashy or too “big” (in terms of design within the media where you use it). Some people like their branding to be subtle, almost unnoticeable, others prefer it to shout from the pages. I’m mostly in that first group, but in truth it’s a very individual thing.

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Now, as I mentioned earlier, you need to brand “all” your web properties consistently, but as with everything in life, there are some exceptions. For example social networks where that kind of branding might be seen as a “no-no” or simply too pushy.

When you create your profiles on sites like Reddit, Slashdot, Digg or BoingBoing you might even consider creating anonymous or fictitious accounts so as not to appear to be promoting yourself too blatantly.

And not that this is a justification or anything but… everybody is doing this. Yes, even the major labels. In fact, especially them. And so does your government and spy agencies!

Note also that you need to be careful abut the website user agreements on some networks. You want to make sure that they don’t usurp ANY rights to your work which you decide to showcase there.

And never – EVER – give away even an iota of control over your copyrights. If in doubt, ask a lawyer.

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Remember: the purpose of your creating your site and then joining all these different networks, forums, membership sites and so on is PROMOTION.

If you had deeper pockets, you might throw a lot of money on paid ads and hire armies of fake fans to vote you up and create hype around your music. But this is by no means a guarantee of success. Wealthier doesn’t always mean better. Many major labels fail miserably in their promotions, even after they’ve wasted hundreds of thousands on them. This is because most major labels are still stuck in the past and, frankly, do not know how to correctly promote online. The indies beat them regularly. Offline – that’s another matter. But online – you can kick their butts for a TINY FRACTION of their budget, if you know what you’re doing.

In this course the idea is to make you aware of simple guerilla promotion techniques which – if you apply enough of them – can not only put you on the map but also get your very respectable incomes. It requires work and some minor investments, sure. But if you’re focused, you CAN do it very successfully.

So it’s a good idea at this point to refresh our memories of the kind of tools you have at your disposal and how you can leverage them to your advantage in building your artistic career as well as your daily bread-and-butter business.

You have:

 Your brand and all accompanying rights to your image, graphics, copyrights, etc.  Your website, including all of its intellectual content.  Your web-wide memberships and presence, where you’re exposed to potentially unlimited numbers of new fans.

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 Your (growing) list of members, access to whom will continually and steadily increase in value as your list grows.  Your music and performances, in and of themselves unique to you and the very reason why your brand continues to grow.  Multiple income streams, which you generate not merely from music but also from any number of additional programs you decide to introduce on your site. And let’s not forget that you can – if you choose – also give others limited access to your audience. As your site’s popularity continues to grow you’ll find this will be increasingly more attractive to advertisers.  Organizations, planning and future vision, which set you apart from the millions of other indies who don’t have that and never will – even if their music rocks.  Knowledge of all existing promotional channels, and awareness of future possibilities. You’re in the thick of it all, and thus head and shoulders above the vast majority of traditional music labels.

When you look at it like this, it’s obvious that you REPRESENT VALUE. Should you ever wish to enter into any kind of a business relationship with a third party – and investor, crowd-funding, music labels – you will be perceived as serious, well-organized and… artistically brilliant to top it all off!

Needless to say, that kind of value is monetizable on many levels. It’s worth to build it, don’t you think?

So now it’s time we look a little closer at the nitty-gritty of what is available to you on the marketing and promotion front.

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Getting Ready To Promote

All that work we’ve done thus far would come to nothing – in commercial terms at least - if we didn’t take it to the next level: let everyone know.

There are millions of absolutely phenomenal sites that nobody’s ever heard about. And I’m not just talking about “commercial” sites. After all, the techniques described in this book apply to ALL sites, regardless of their purpose.

But it’s a shame, isn’t it? A site someone’s poured love and effort into and now it’s buried under the millions of other poorly promoted sites. Whether you’re building a commercial site or not, ultimately your biggest task is to let others know it’s there. And doing this isn’t nearly as hard as you might imagine.

In fact, “promoting” a site on the Internet begins with a few simple steps that anyone can do and afford – they’re free. You just need to “optimize” your site for search engine, using principles of “SEO” (“search engine optimization”). If you’re a Wordpress user, plugins like Wordpress SEO by Yoast can help you do this within seconds or minutes – and while it takes a bit more than that to actually “conquer” the web, simply by installing Wordpress with Yoast SEO (and following the most basic instructions) you’re instantly ahead of MILLIONS of competitors.

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But there’s more to all this than just that, of course. If you don’t merely want to be found once in a while, but rather be found CONSISTENTLY on a wide array of keywords, and then not just on Google but across all search engines. And that’s not the end either. You also want to be visible on social networks and in all corners of the web.

So learning about how to promote your site is the other side of the coin, once you’ve built and set everything up.

The good news is, promoting online can be significantly cheaper than a similar effort offline – although the latter shouldn’t be ignored either.

In broad terms, your promotions can be broken down like this:

 Promoting on search engines – using SEO and SEM (search engine marketing) techniques. This includes both free and paid options and involves not only on-page optimization but also off-page (e.g. backlinking).  Promoting on targeted and highly trafficked websites (including social sites), typically involving paid ads (so-called “media buys”), but also possible to do for free if you’re able to guest-post your articles, videos or other media (with links pointing back to your site).  Promoting through free and paid ad networks.  Offline promotions (e.g. placing ads in old-world media, postcards, radio or TV promos, newspaper ads, posters, etc).

In the upcoming sections we will deal with all you need to know to successfully – and inexpensively – make your site well and truly VISIBLE to people who never heard of you, but will now be able to stumble upon your work.

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The Magic of Paid Traffic

When you have your next album ready, or when you simply want to run a promotion on a particular item that you’re promoting, you will want to achieve results as fast as possible and then move on to the next thing. If you’re already well established with your SEO, switching gears is easy. But most people aren’t and certainly most artists are not either. This is when considering paid traffic begins to make sense.

Many webmasters ignore the seemingly difficult SEO and simply pay for their traffic. This way they can pinpoint exactly what their traffic acquisition will cost and as long as that cost is lower than what they make on their promotions, all is well.

But the thing is that you need BOTH – organic and paid traffic – to succeed online. If you suddenly STOP buying traffic – your business stops receiving visits immediately at that precise moment. If you stop doing SEO, your traffic continues at a rate corresponding to the quality of your SEO.

I have already given you a general run-down of how to SEO your site and more concrete instructions will soon follow. But in the present section I would like to discuss all the essential considerations you’ll need to entertain in order to BUY your traffic outright. While not a replacement for SEO, this can be a fantastic way to rapidly scale up your entire operation.

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Naturally, remember that paying for traffic only makes sense if you’re selling something. If you just want people to visit your site and listen to your music, then it’s perfectly sufficient to limit yourself to “free” promotions, i.e. SEO and social networking.

But when you do have something you want to sell, then paying for traffic makes a whole lot of sense, as long as you know how to find good quality sources. A typical calculation might look like this:

 Am selling something where I earn $25 commission per each sale  I buy a targeted Facebook (or other) campaign for $500 and receive, say, 2,000 exposures.  My ad is hot and well-targeted, so 10% of the people will click through, i.e. I get 200 well pre-qualified visits to my offer page.  The offer is smoking hot, so I convert at least 20%, i.e. I make 40 sales.  40 sales give me a turnover of $1,000, i.e. $500 profit.  I can then reinvest that profit and repeat the campaign. If I get the same or similar results, I can cautiously assume that this is a reliable pattern. And so I scale up.

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 My next campaign may be double that, and the profit will likewise be double. And if that happens, I scale up again. And again.  In some cases, it’s possible to literally double your money week on week. But in most other cases, there are other considerations to keep in mind (we’ll touch on that in a moment).

This is a very ROUGH idea of how online incomes are made. The key variables are the cost of traffic and conversion rates. And, of course, the per-unit incomes.

Knowing the above, you now know what you’re looking for. All the techniques I’ll discuss over the next bunch of chapters have something to do with either one or all of these variables. We’ll look at different techniques, different traffic networks, different payment methods, different “creatives” (i.e. your ads, landing pages, “swipes” or email messages, and so on) – and all the wild and crazy ways of experimenting with paid traffic until you hit the mother lode.

The weird thing is that the same source never quite works the same for two different people, so there’s always an element of trial an error involved. But there are also many very clever techniques to minimize the risk.

So, the ideal is, of course, to find the cheapest quality traffic with the highest level of targeting. This is why SEO is so priceless. It’s technically “free”, and yet when people visit your site, they’re automatically highly pre-qualified. If we can come as close as possible to this effect using paid traffic – we’re rocking.

Another thing about paid traffic is that there are some traffic sources which are dirt-cheap and much too un-targeted to be worthwhile for “specific” offers – but they may be very valuable for “general” offers, such as for example AdSense ads, some CPA offers and so on. So many webmasters invest in HUGE (but cheap) traffic in order to ensure that they clock up enough ad views (for which they get paid both when they are displayed and when people purchase).

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While I personally don’t follow this technique much, I will explain further on how it works along with many other techniques. Who knows you may like it and go for it.

So - using paid traffic you can rapidly secure MILLIONS of visits to your pages within minutes or hours. There will be situations where you you'll need that kind of boost.

So where do you buy GOOD traffic?

By far the two of the biggest kids on the block today are Google and Facebook. You can buy CPC ads on Google using their AdWords program or you can do the same on Facebook using their text or hybrid ads. Both of these major sources provide very high targeting quality and if you’re well-prepared for working with them, you may never even need to look for paid traffic elsewhere. But AdWords tends to be much more expensive than Facebook.

While Google and Facebook (and also a few of the other major search engines) are the big kids on the block, their total ad volume is only somewhere around 30% of the global total. So who serves the remaining 70%? That’s the so-called “second-tier” networks. They may be individually a lot smaller than Google, but they’re very competitive and sometimes you can buy superb quality traffic from them for next to nothing. They’ve become so threatening to the majors that Facebook has revised its ad policy and is now actively trying to compete with them on price. And that’s good news to you.

So, the majors, apart from Google and Facebook include YouTube (which is part of Google), Yahoo, Bing/MSN and Yahoo. Then there are the “almost-first-tier” traffic sources (some people think of them as the “first tier”), which are sites like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Ask, etc.

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And then there are the “second-tier” sources which include ad networks such as IndustryBrains, AdSonar, Business.com, Affinity.com, PlentyOfFish (which is a dating network), etc.

Finally, there are many popular niche sites or e-zines where you can purchase ad space either directly or through agents. This sort or “media buying” can be the best traffic source for some types of offers.

You’ll find that many popular music blogs or forums will only be too happy to accept your ads! And they can be very cheap, especially when you’re trying for the first time.

 The pros of using the second-tier networks include MUCH lower prices, but the cons often include lower-grade traffic (but not always, if you know what you’re doing). Another thing in favor of those networks is that you can advertise pretty much anything you like, while the first-tier networks tend to be more like “Big Brother” with all their rules and restrictions. Sometimes ridiculously so.

 The pros of using the first-tier networks include generally MUCH higher traffic quality, but the cons tend to include substantially higher prices – although Facebook’s ads are now actually quite affordable and there are ways to really cut down on costs making Facebook one of the hottest potential traffic sources in 2014. But – first tier networks like to act like your Keepers. Big Brother comes to mind. They will manually vet your ads and reject anything they don’t like – and that can be anything they decide. This can sometimes be very unpleasant and off-putting. But… outside of SEO, they do have the best traffic.

For an extended list of traffic sources, check out my very comprehensive bonus resource pages here:

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 RSS Networks  Mobile Networks  Social Networks  Traffic Exchanges  Video Networks  eBook and Writing Networks  Various Networks  Classified Ad Networks  CPA and Affiliate Networks  CPV Networks  CPC/CPM Networks

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Calculation Considerations

Before we get into a few more concrete examples, here is some more general knowledge for you.

When you first start buying traffic, keep the following broad assumptions in mind, using an example of purchasing, say, 10,000 clicks from an ad network. I’m basically reminding you of and slightly re-phrasing the example I gave you in the previous section:

1. Purchase: 10,000 visits 2. Initial conversion: 1% of people who click through to your landing page will take further action, so, for example, 100 signups if your landing page was a squeeze page. So you now have 100 "roughly prequalified" people on your list. 3. Now, assume that your squeeze page and freebie will convert 10% to sales, i.e. 10 people. 4. So, whatever you paid for those 10,000 visits resulted in 10 sales. If your traffic cost was, say, $200 and your per-sale profit is, say, $10, then 10 sales would mean you made $100, i.e. a $100 loss. If your per-unit profit is, say, $40, then you will have made a 100% profit. 5. That’s how you set up your calculations and during the testing process you fine-tune your variables BEFORE you even begin thinking about scaling up.

If a given traffic network sends you visits for, say, $1 per click (AdWords may easily fall into that category), then your tests need to reveal whether it’s worth paying them that dollar as opposed to buy from, say, Clicksor, for $0.10 per click.

It COULD happen that your $100 spent on AdWords will result in 10% conversions out of 100 visits (10 conversions), whereas your 1000 Clicksor visits for $35 might convert at 0.5% giving you only 5 conversions. It’s easy to calculate which one’s better.

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THIS is why when you first start using ad networks, you need to TEST using only very small amounts (the lowest they allow, which can be as little as $10 per day or a minimum campaign budget of, say, $50 or $100) in order to discover how well their traffic converts for you.

But there is more to this than that. You also want to run at least A FEW tests on each network, using DIFFERENT ads. Perhaps this AdWords ad only converted at 10% because “this” ad just wasn’t right?

With that in mind, your paid traffic campaign needs to consist not only of different traffic sources (ad networks), but also of different ads and different landing pages.

If you’re promoting your latest MP3 album download for $5.99, each sale must not cost you more than that. So, if you pay $200 for a traffic bulk which results in on average $0.10 per lead, and 10% of your leads convert to sales, then each sale costs you $1. If you’re selling for $5.99, then your profit is $4.99. And that’s a great model, but the only question is how far can you scale that. This is something you can establish through careful tests.

So, in order not to get overwhelmed with it all, spend the extra time BEFORE you act. Develop perhaps two or three different landing pages, each REALLY good

Page 112 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business and each with specific differences you can monitor. For example, landing page 1 has video, some brief music samples and you talking to your fans; landing page 2 has a short video with one song, and only some written text; landing page 3 has only text and maybe a few song samples.

And similarly, your ad 1 might use a “hyped-up” slogan, your ad 2 uses a “mystery” slogan, and your ad 3 uses a “no nonsense” line. And so on.

And then, before you actually test them: have a GOOD LOOK at your ads and landing pages. Are you SURE they’re GREAT? Show them to your team and friends. What do THEY think?

See, this is where a professional copywriter could be a really good idea! Still, if you’re doing it on your own, take EXTRA TIME to evaluate your ads most critically.

Only once you have your BEST two or three alternatives should you approach your different traffic sources (ad networks). If you prepare yourself WELL, you will be pleasantly surprised at just how effective and profitable paid traffic can be!

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How To Choose the Best Network For Your Music or Offer

Most people want to cut corners. “Hey I can get 100,000 visits for three cents each! Why should I pay for AdWords?”

But, as always in life, it’s not about quantity but QUALITY. So, you need to do a little due diligence about your targeted network.

Going in, you KNOW that Google AdWords and Facebook, for example, have a VERY good reputation overall. You may pay a bit more there, but at least you know that as long as you TARGET your campaign correctly, the visitors you get will probably not be time-wasters. There’s NO GUARANTEE that you will succeed, but you may estimate your chances as much better than from an “inferior” network.

So what about the second-tier networks? Here, you need to ask around and see how good they are in YOUR particular niche. Perhaps a given network gets most of its visits from the internet marketing niche, whereas you’re in a grunge music niche? You need to know that in advance. And it’s not enough that the network TELLS YOU that they are able to target the music niche. They MAY be lying or

Page 114 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business exaggerating! So, it really helps to ask around. Go to marketing forums on the web and simply ASK. “Hey guys, do you know if XYZ Network is good in the grunge music niche?”

For MUCH more information and detail, please study the attached AdWords Mastery and Facebook Mastery sub-courses.

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Choosing The Serving/Payment Model

When you pay for traffic, you either pay for the exposure of your ads without a guarantee that anyone will click – only that they will SEE your ad – or you pay per guaranteed click, regardless of how many times the ad is shown.

This first method is called “CPM” or “PPM” (cost/payment per mille, i.e. per thousand views or impressions), while the second is called CPC or PPC (cost/payment per click).

There are also other variants of these such as the very popular PPV (where you pay per 1000 views of a full page rather than a mere ad – but this involves a rather intrusive pop up system which may not work for music – though it might work sometimes, depending on how you set it up); there’s also CPA (cost per action/acquisition) where you pay for people to take an action such as signing up, as well as another variant of that known as CPL (cost per lead).

Each method has its advantages and its disadvantages.

CPM or CPV tend to be much cheaper for the volume of exposures but you get no guarantees that even one person will click through to your page. Of course, if you design your ad well, then statistically you can be pretty sure that many people will – that’s why these ads remain very popular. But – that’s a risk.

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CPC, CPA or CPL tend to be much more expensive but you at least know that you get the visits you paid for. But you DON’T know (until you try) if they’re sufficiently well targeted. Perhaps you’re wasting money!

This is why doing some prior research is so important. If you learn that Facebook is able to target members who really respond to heavy metal, whereas PlentyOfFish has no heavy metal fans to speak on, then you might as well focus on Facebook and forget the others.

As a rule of thumb, however, it’s best to start with CPC /PPC. At least you’ll know exactly what you paid for and what you received. If you pay $0.10 per click and you spend $100, you should get 1,000 clicks. Period. You can then analyze that very easily using your monitoring program (more on that later).

As you get good at this game, you should also try all the other models – but START with CPC!

Incidentally, almost all forms of ads rely on keywords. So, first you pick the keywords you think are the best for your offer, then you “bid” for them (i.e. agree to pay a per-click price which will ensure that your ad will be listed nearest the top of any listings), and then you also pick a bunch of “related” keywords in order to have a good mix of terms – either of which may get you noticed. This is why the keyword research I mentioned earlier on is so important not only for SEO but also for your paid traffic needs.

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What Kind of Ads Should You Use?

Some networks restrict you to only one or two different ad types, others have almost no limits. Ultimately, you need to decide which type of ad works best for YOU. Is it a text-only ad, a hybrid text-and-image ad, an image ad? Is it an email? Or should it be a banner sized at 300 x 250 pixels or a sky-scraper sized at 180 x 600? Should it be a full page that pops up for the targeted user, or a little ad that appears while he/she is surfing a particular site? Should it blend in with search results? Should it just be a link within a popular article?

Similar considerations apply to your landing pages. Should you have a video or not? Should your text be long or short? Should you have massive headlines or small ones? Should the opt-in form be on the left or right – or below?

As you can see, there are many considerations here. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

And you need to study YOUR OWN behavior online to have a better idea of what works FOR YOU. If it works on you – it may work on your target demographic!

Here are a few things to always keep in mind when designing your ads:

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 Ad copy & images – Depending on your budget and selection of advertising networks and resources, you will already now have an idea of what types of promotions you will be going after. Perhaps it will be banner ads – in which case you need to have a few prepared in advance, following 3 or 4 of the most popular standard formats. Or maybe it will be text ads, in which case have your headline and body worked out in multiple versions. It might also be hybrid ads (like those you see on Facebook, where you have a bit of text AND an image). Or perhaps they will be emails you will want to use in solo ads. In either case, have the whole thing prepared in advance and take care to do the following:  Make sure you come up with multiple POWERFUL headlines. Text ads typically only allow up to 25 characters, so you really need to pack a punch here. Email ads don’t have this limitation, but you still need to be disciplined and clever here.  Make sure you have compelling, powerful copy for the body of your ad. Typically up to 70 characters are allowed, although in some cases you may be able to go up to 130. Make sure you include a call to action as well as your display URL. No limits to body text in email ads, but – again – make sure your message packs a punch.  Be prepared with your URLs which lead to specific landing pages. o Those URLs can be direct-to-source using your affiliate code (not recommended, because you won’t be able to build your LIST, plus, your URL will be visible to all the CPV marketers who will try to “hijack” it with their promotions.). If you do decide to go this route, make sure to at least cloak your link using a URL-shortener like tinyurl.com o It can also be a specific page on your site – or, if you’re using an ad tracker, you can enter multiple pages for split testing. o It can also be your tracking ID (see below) including the above multi-page method.

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o Also, you can disguise your link using a 301 redirect or a Wordpress plugin like Pretty Link Lite.

At this point I recommend that you check out the provided “Simple PPC Secrets” along with three more special traffic reports (“TrafficWave”, “Paid Traffic Basics” and “Secret Paid Traffic Resources”), which are all an integrated part of the enclosed Paid Traffic Mastery sub-course.

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Test, Then Scale Up

Regardless of which traffic source you ultimately choose, you need to test it, and if it works, scale it up at a pace you can sustain (while always continually monitoring).

 A test phase, where you spend the least amount possible per traffic source in order to establish a baseline metric for your offer and traffic source (i.e. how well are you converting at that level and how good the traffic source is). The objective is TESTING and getting opt-ins. You MAY also get some sales, but this is, ostensibly, NOT the objective here. If you can get people to opt-in, then selling to them as already-prequalified prospects is the second stage.  A confirmation phase, where you repeat the test (possibly slightly scaled up) using only the best-performing sources and ads. The objective remains to get opt-ins, sales remaining a secondary concern.  A sales test phase – where you ensure that your prequalified prospects actually buy from you at a sustainable rate.  A scale-up phase, where you bet on your best horses.

You can do a test phase for as little as $25 in some cases. This is, in MOST cases, not enough to arrive at SOLID conclusions but for those on a ridiculously tiny budget it MAY be the only way to test the water. However, a much better (and

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SAFER) test number is something in the area of $500. This will enable you to run multiple tests, try various promising ad sources, experiment with different versions of your ads, different demographics targets – and still drive MANY thousands of visitors to your offer.

It is entirely possible to earn good money even during the test phase, but IT SHOULD NOT BE YOUR OBJECTIVE.

Yes, I know it sounds a bit crazy. “What? You don’t want me to make money as fast as possible?” No, I want you to make money RELIABLY for a LONG time – when you’re ready. Rush slowly.

Spend your test budget on building a LIST (sign-ups to your autoresponder optin form), and sell to them in the NEXT step.

The objective of the test is to confirm the scalability of your traffic source and conversion rates from-seeing-your-ad-to-clicking-through and then from-visit- to-opt-in. If you choose to SELL directly (send traffic directly to your affiliate offer) as opposed to going through the extra step of SIGNING UP – it may work for you, but you will be potentially robbing yourself not only of future sales but also of the invaluable market intelligence which a test is designed to give you.

Your confirmation phase will require at least a repeat of the same amount as the test phase, and possibly a little bit more (you should reinvest your proceeds from a successful initial test). In this phase, you will be able to DROP the non- performing ads and/or traffic sources and invest ONLY in those which bear promise. You will also be able to compare your baseline metrics from the test phase with your confirmation-phase ones, and you’ll thus be reassured of what you can REASONABLY EXPECT from a full campaign.

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Your scale-up phase will focus only on your best performers (ads as well as traffic sources) and you will want to throw as much money as you dare at it. If you’re regularly making 200% on each investment – what’s there to stop you from doing it again and again?

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Your Income Sources, Your Music and Some Examples

As an artist the first thing that probably comes to mind when someone asks you about your “product” is “my music.” If you’ve been around the block a few times, you may also add to that “my merchandise.”

But, as I explained earlier and as I think you well understand by now, selling UNKNOWN music isn’t exactly easy. It is almost certainly not enough for an unknown indie to count on job-replacing incomes from just record sales. Definitely not in the beginning.

So what do you sell?

I have given you a chart of possible income sources earlier in this course. One or more of them may be the thing you’ll want to focus on first. As a rule of thumb, when selling something on the Internet, you should aim for products or services which are scalable. So, if you’re selling something for $25 but can only sell 1000 of those (e.g. tickets to your gig or music lessons, etc) you will be up against a rising promotional cost versus a fixed maximum income. And that’s not a good idea. You can promote things like that to your pre-existing list, where promotions cost you nothing.

When you invest in broad web promotions, you really have only two viable models that work. Either you’re NOT selling but rather are investing in a targeted list – or you’re selling something which can be scaled up with no real ceiling.

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So, for example, you may discover a popular product that goes nicely with your image and which is in high demand both within your niche and outside of it, and where you earn, say, $25 per sale. Investing a portion of your precious time and resources into a promotion like that might be just the ticket and a way to ensure a constant stream of incomes to support your musical career.

In reality, however, finding one such product is difficult. For this reason people set up multiple products and types of offers so that while each of them individually may yield only a few hundred bucks per month – all of them put together suddenly add up to a tidy sum. But – this requires more work.

This said, once that work is done, you’ll free up a ton of time and will be able to re-focus on your music once again.

The other promotional model is not to sell, but rather to build a list. In this situation you do not try to get them to pay you for anything but rather quite the contrary – you offer something for free. It can be a copy of your album, a free report which you have created – or whatever you can think of that people will value enough to give you their email address in exchange for receiving.

The freebie that you offer automatically qualifies your members – your list – so you know that you can periodically email them not only with interesting information and follow-ups but also with offers to purchase something.

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There is also a third way: you do both of the above. So, you either offer something for free and then forward them to a sales page, or you send them to a sales page which, just before they buy, asks them to sign up to your list (and get a free bonus if they do so).

There are many ways to set something like this up.

Case Study #1

Here’s one wickedly simple and brilliant idea an indie artist I know has tried with good results. He promoted a popular mainstream artist’s latest album and merchandise and offered his own album as a free bonus to people who bought through his affiliate link, thus his list of contacts was pretty much identical with the list of people who actually bought that famous album. His own album, on the other hand, was highly compatible with the famous artist’s album – some would say even better. Having collected over 2,000 list signups (and sales) within just a few weeks, here’s roughly how he monetized this:

 2000 list members with a future value which we’ll look at in a moment  2,000 mainstream album sales with a commission of $0.20 per sale = $400 profit on album sales.  Conversion of 5% in month-1, selling music-related gear, books, merch and other things, averaging about $4 per sale. That’s 100 sales at $4 each, i.e. another $400.  Conversion of 5% also in month-1, selling other loosely-related products with an average commission of about $20 per sale. That’s 100 sales at $20 each, i.e. another $2,000.  Conversion of 2% also in month-1, selling his own eBook with videos and bonus music, with a clean profit of $35. That’s 40 sales times $35 = $1,400.  So in month-1, he netted $400 + $400 + $2,000 + $1,400 = $4,200!  In month-2 he repeated roughly the same result. In subsequent months the sales started dropping off, but since he no longer PAID for his

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promotions but rather just marketed to his existing list, whatever he made has 100% profit. After a year he earned over $35,000 on JUST that ONE promotion where he made those original 2,000 sales and which “only” made him a lousy $400!  He had half a dozen other similar promotions and while some didn’t yield anything meaningful at least two others did, bringing his annual PASSIVE income to just over $150,000. Would something like that be satisfactory for YOUR band or artistic project?

His total cost for that campaign was under $1000 with about half spent on testing, outsourced graphics and other minor costs. He combined at least 4 different traffic sources, Google AdWords, Facebook, and two second-tier networks. His follow-up campaign (direct emails to HIS list) which cost him exactly zero consisted of 2-4 monthly emails over the entire year. Only one email in a month contained direct pitches, the others were fun, games, entertainment, gossip, news, reports – all very cool and valuable stuff.

Case Study #2

Another artist, actually a band, did something similar but using three separate income streams. One of them was a separate AdSense-based site with music gossip which one of the guys in the band kept up to date. Another was also a separate site, also with a general entertainment profile but aimed more at gamers and featuring lots of great CPA offers (that’s the kind of offers where you get paid for each signup through your link, and people often get free stuff including physical samples from the promoters – usually well-known brand names). The third income stream was from their own band site where they had a paid membership model with a monthly re-bill of $5.

 Their AdSense site cost them between $500 and $1000 per month in traffic costs and generated between $3000 and $4000 net profit each month.

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 Their CPA site cost them about $500 in content generation and outsourcing and another $500-or-so in traffic generation. It too yielded between $4000 and $5000 net profit each month.  Their own site initially only brought in about $300-$400 per month, but each month they grew their membership by about 20% so after a year their membership site yielded about $2,500 per month.  Their average monthly income was about $8,000 over the entire year, i.e. nearly $100,000 in year one! Again, an amount which is easily sufficient for most artists to comfortably continue creating and producing music and not having to worry about a JOB!

The above case studies are, predictably, the “good ones” – the ones that worked really well and can be used as positive examples. As such, they’re not all that common, but to be sure they’re NOT UNCOMMON either.

Still, in the interest of fairness and transparency, let’s have a look at another case which I know will illustrate the most common stumbling blocks encountered by those who are nevertheless well prepared, but who just happen to have some growing pains.

Case Study #3

Once this band learned of many of the techniques and methods you are now learning from this course, they embarked on creating a site and researching ways to generate multiple income streams. It took them about 2 months before they finally settled on a viable strategy and their site was up and running. As it happened, they didn’t have many gigs at the time and their efforts to rally fans to sign up to their list largely fell flat on their face. After another 2 months their mailing list had fewer than 100 signups. Their SEO campaign failed to rank them on any of their targeted keywords and the one paid campaign they tried for an affiliate product didn’t yield any sales whatsoever.

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Their music was hot and lots of people said they loved it. Yet very few bought their merchandise and practically nobody bought anything through their links. Six months into it, they have spent over $5,000 on their business and earned about $200 on minor commissions and other initiatives. They were now demoralized and demotivated, not believing that it was even possible to make a viable business online.

But then in a last-ditch effort, they spent a few hundred bucks on getting some advice from a well-known online marketer based in Singapore (the band themselves were based in the US). He quickly isolated the problem areas and suggested various fixes. The band were now broke, or rather unwilling to risk any more of their hard-earned money, but they resolved to implement these fixes themselves.

The issues they needed to focus affected many levels. Their designs were ineffective, too confusing and lacked strong calls to action. There were no attempts to “sell the sizzle not the steak” (copywriting problems). The products they promoted were old hat and have long ago lost their hot markets, i.e. any further promotions were doomed from the start. Their promotional music was presented in an uninspiring way. Their newsletter was boring. Their photos and images were sub-standard. Their daily posts were confusing, unintelligible and, yes, boring as hell. Their SEO was focused on all the most difficult keywords and no wonder that it failed. Their email campaigns were spam-like in quality. And so the list went on.

Unsurprisingly, as the fixes rolled in, one by one, things started looking up. 3 months later their list grew to over 1000 members and a further 3 months down the line their monthly sales averaged around $500. Meanwhile, they had almost no running costs other than the usual ones.

It took them a further few months before they managed to regularly earn around $4,000 per month – purely from their website. At that time their gigging schedule also improved greatly and they each managed to pull over $2,500 per

Page 129 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business month from that time on. To the best of my knowledge they’re still going strong and are earning now more in the area of $4k per month – each. And it’s a 4-piece band.

So now, in the interest of total transparency, here’s one last case study which did NOT succeed. This is by far the most common scenario and I know many such people. I will thus create a kind of a composite for you to illustrate the many things that have gone wrong – but should have.

Composite Case Study #4

 One band couldn’t agree on the look of their site or whether they should pay someone to do it or if they should do it themselves. After 3 months, they created something that looked boring and corporate.  Another band created a superficially beautiful site but one which was dead slow to load, and where it was near-impossible to figure out what’s going on. Are they selling something? Giving something away? What’s going on. After many months, the site proved to only be a burden and a time-waster and it didn’t yield any fans or signups – anything.  Another artist spent months trying to figure all this out and wound up with a huge information overload, which he compounded by buying more and more internet marketing courses, each of which told him something different – or something incomplete – confusing him further still. Many months later, his site was barely operational, confusing and unappealing. And nothing happened.  Another artist got off to a good start and promptly proceeded to spend money on paid ads, promoting products nobody’s ever heard of – but which offered fantastic commissions. A few hundred dollars later, he switched to another scheme. And then another. Each of his initiatives cost him a lot of money and each failed miserably.  Throughout all that time these artists’ creative outputs suffered and they were worse off after trying to start an online business than before!

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Some people choose to be overwhelmed by the prospect of “all that work”. Others get stuck on even the smallest expenses. Others still, believe they can “do it all” and get bogged down with trivial, time-consuming and energy-draining activities. Most suffer from information overload. Few ever take a step back, analyze, ask the right questions and proceed to fix things.

So let’s get this straight. Yes, there IS quite a lot to learn. Yes, there are some costs involved, especially if you decide to outsource some work and if you decide to acquire paid traffic. Yes, it’s possible to miscalculate and lose money, time and energy. But you can’t learn if you don’t fall occasionally. And you can’t succeed if you don’t have a clear plan and are consistent about its execution.

The objective of this course is to SHOW you as much as possible of the things you need to know. But the objective is NOT to teach you how to do everything by yourself. Rather, the idea is for you to understand how everything works and then decide which things should be done and by whom. And also to give you the tools which will help you monitor and understand everything that’s going on.

You can be sure that setting up a viable online business is not merely “possible” – it’s being done every day by literally thousands of people – musicians and artists included. What sets them apart from the failures is clarity of mind, knowledge of their tools, and ability to delegate. And, no, luck doesn’t really have all that much to do with it!

OK. Let’s get back now.

One of the things you’ll deal with at one point in your website’s development and as you keep adding potential income streams to it, is “product selection”. The next few chapters will deal with just that.

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Product Selection

Quite apart from any music-related products (your MP3s, merchandise, posters, etc) you will at one point want to expand your range. So let’s have a broad look at what your potential products can be and how to pick them.

In general, your “product” can be:

A physical product you’ve created or which you’re affiliated with

 An e-product (typically software or an eBook) which you either created by yourself and fully own or are an affiliate of  Special offers or ads that you run on your site and where you get paid either for exposures or for signups – or any number of other possibilities  No “specific” product, but rather “content” and niche-specific on-site information which, if it’s great, will drive traffic. Such “engaged” traffic can be resold to other webmasters who need exposure for their ads  You also need to consider a product “set”, i.e. products you will want to present to your prospects once they’ve purchased from you (so called “upsells” and “downsells”)

Once you have a specific product in mind you need to establish its keyword popularity on the web, exactly as explained in an earlier section of this course.

If it appears that even a moderate “conquest” of your keyword set will indeed give you good quality traffic of at least between 1,000 to 5,000 organic visits per month – all that remains will be to work out a strategy for how that will be accomplished.

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A good product is one where you have the following:

 You really like and understand it, so you can add value to it on your site, via articles, reviews, comments, special reports, etc  It’s of great quality, so your reputation will never suffer through association with it, and so that your returns will be kept to a minimum  It’s low-maintenance, so that once it’s sold it’s pretty much out of your daily concern  It’s profitable, either on a per-unit sale basis or because of continuity rebilling, and your total cost of promotion must be at least 50% lower than your total sales  It has manageable competition  It has huge demand  You know where the market for it is, and how to get in front of it

Take the time it takes to decide on your product. You’ll be working with it and on it for many months and your bottom line will depend on how well you do your initial homework.

It’s better to find one GREAT product and focus on it, rather than a bunch of mediocre products and just skim them. Definitely this is the way to START. This is really a true bona fide SHORTCUT to online success. Remember that people who are successful online are highly focused. And you should be too.

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The Magic Of Multiple Income Streams

While you should start with just one product, once you’ve mastered your approach, you will soon want to expand beyond that and effectively creating multiple income streams.

There are two levels on which you can multiply your income streams:

1. By introducing additional and alternative products, services or hosted ads 2. By repeat-selling to your existing clients, including continuity sales

Having multiple income sources is not only a “good idea” but it is, in reality, a “must have”. Rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, you need to find clever ways to diversify – but without distracting your customers from your primary offers. But note: you should consider expanding your range only after you’ve fully understood the process using just one product or income model. Otherwise you’ll spread yourself too thin and risk failure.

Given that you’re already a little experienced, here are some ideas for how you can expand, what to do and what NOT to do.

Thus, placing an ad for “something else you want to sell” on a page which is focused on selling your primary product is not a good idea.

But – and here’s where having a content site becomes a clear advantage – you have lots of non-income-producing pages on your site which can easily be

Page 134 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business enhanced with related affiliate or CPA offers, hosted ads (e.g. AdSense) and the like.

It’s a good idea to offer RELATED products and services, for the sake of consistency and avoiding mixed messages or suspicions of desperate opportunism.

I enclose a great little AdSense tutorial within this course to help you maximize the passive income-getting power of your website.

AdSense is a hugely popular income model and lots of people use it. It’s so hands- off and easy. But AdSense is not the only game in town. You should also consider researching CPA offers and Amazon affiliate (“associate”) programs. You may also find that e-product marketplaces like Clickbank can be most useful to you as well.

Beyond introducing alternative products and services or selling ad space, you also need to consider re-marketing to your existing client base. It can be highly effective and it’s 100% free once you have a list. Once a client has spent some money with you, they’re more than twice as likely as any other prospect to do so again.

Subscription-based services (where you charge a fixed monthly amount and keep delivering new products or enhancements, typically downloadable reports, etc), also known as “continuity sales” are one good way to go.

Another way is introducing “upsells” either during the primary sale process, or during the follow-up process. We deal with all of these options further within this course, in much more detail, but in this section we just wanted to remind you to keep these all-important factors in mind.

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Multiple income streams involve adding new monetization models as well as more products to your site. It can be done very tastefully without turning your artist’s site into a commercial marketplace.

But now we need to further refine a few concepts, and we thus return to the notion of “product”.

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What Is Your Product

Let’s loosely define your “product” as “whatever it is that will monetize your website”. Your music perhaps. Your book. Your affiliate programs. Your ad space. Your services. Your merchandise. Your gigs.

Your success of monetizing your website by selling your product depends not only on how attractive that product is, or how nicely you present it to your visitors – but also on your reputation or authority, or on the quality of your site’s content and the overall feeling your visitors get when they visit you.

So, in a broader sense, your product is the complete experience.

When presenting your product, you have the following elements to consider:

 Supporting information, directly or indirectly related to it (e.g. your articles, pictures, testimonials, etc)  Ads - either individual graphics or whole pages dedicated to presenting the product, be it its features or what problems it solves  Sales funnel – what forms part of your “product cycle”? Is it just the “main product” or do you have follow-up sales planned?  Your relationship with the visitor/ member/buyer

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Your supporting information must be of great quality, authoritative and trust-building. And above all, it really should be unique to you. So, if you’re promoting your album, that’s quite easy. But if you’re promoting a different or a complimentary product, it helps if you can somehow make it unique to you. You can do that by writing about how YOU use it, or show a picture of you using it, and so on.

Your ads need to engage, with their colors and design as much as with the “copy”, i.e. the sales texts you use in them. The ad copy you use needs to be consistent with the rest of your site and in keeping with your perceived character. If you’re known to be low-key and no-nonsense, then screaming, hype-filled ads will jar your visitors and maybe even put them off from visiting your site. If you’re a colorful and loud personality and that’s what your fans like about you, low-key and “boring” ads might flash by entirely unnoticed.

Your sales funnel must be logical and easy for the visitor to engage in. The idea is to take them by the hand, so to speak, and lead them from one action to another.

1. Here mate, accept my valuable free gift. 2. Just give me your email address so I know where to send it. 3. Would you also like to have “this” product? It goes really well with my free gift and it only costs $X? 4. If no, then enjoy the free gift and look forward to hearing from me some time in the future. 5. If yes, then pay here, and here’s your special product as well as your free gift. And stay tuned for more information from me later on.

You also must have a plan for how you’ll build your relationship with your visitors. Do you want them to just come, buy, and disappear? Of course not.

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Or do you want them to join a follow-up list so that your can have another chance at selling to them again? Absolutely.

Do you want a relationship that’s built purely on sell-sell-sell? No sir.

Or do you want them to leave comments, interact – become friends? Yes please!

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Building Trust and Loyalty with Supporting Information

Just because people like your music doesn’t mean they’ll treat your product recommendations – or indeed any kind of business-related dealings with you – seriously.

But if they perceive you as someone who really knows their thing – things change dramatically. You’re now an “authority”. If you produced your latest album using “Plugin X by company Y”, and then write a little article about how it works, what to look out for and what kind of secret tricks people should know about – it’s much easier for you to then write something like “if you think your studio could benefit from this plugin, click my affiliate link here and get your own!”

Your AUTHORITY is one of the major cornerstones of your online business success. If you’re seen as a mere portal to buying stuff, you might do “okay” if you invest heavily into traffic, but in most situations, you’ll be just as easily forgotten.

This is why I mentioned “love” in the beginning of this book. You must LOVE your product. This way, you’ll never begrudge the effort that needs to be put into developing your site’s content around it.

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Articles, info-sheets, anecdotes, comparisons, analyses, stories, pictures, videos – all of that is CONTENT which you need to create around your product(s) – either by yourself or with the help of your chosen outsourcers. This applies whether you’re promoting your album or if you’re selling acoustic guitars – or special reports about the music industry.

On top of all that, you will also need to create fresh content on a regular basis. Initially, as you prepare to launch your site, you should have at least 10-20 articles ready in advance just waiting to be published. Afterwards, you’ll need to have at least one new release per week, but it’s MUCH better to have one per day. If you can manage to have something GOOD released more than once a day – all the merrier.

Just remember, while it’s true what they say that “content is king” – they don’t mean ALL content.

“Spun” (automatically re-written) or poorly-written articles, low quality graphics, boring videos are NOT KING. They will turn your visitors off and you will not make many sales, if at all.

Again, that’s why you must LOVE your products. If you do, then you will read your own site through the eyes of a new visitor. Are YOU impressed? Are you learning something too? If you are – you’re well on your way to success.

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Also keep this in mind: you can not create content for “everybody”. Aim at PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU. At least you can safely say that you are an expert in people like you!

Later, you’ll only need to know how to find other such people, and THAT’S your sub-niche, i.e. the very reason why YOU will be successful!

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The Secret of “Extended Product”

From a marketing point of view, a “product” is not merely the thing or service you’re selling that “one time,” but rather an “ongoing set” of follow-up products and services (product cycle), spaced over time and backed by relevant content. They may be related to each other (preferably), or not.

For example, consider this “extended product” example of a “Mushroom Picker’s Bible”:

1. Your prospect opts in to get your free report about “best spots for mushroom picking in 2014” 2. The report and the rest of your site do a good job and now your prospect decides to purchase the “Mushroom Picker’s Bible” from you 3. Once he receives it, you want to support it with any number of extras, some free, some optional – and all forming part of your “extended product” – for example, in one of your follow-ups you offer a complimentary report about “poisonous mushrooms”, or you offer a subscription to “Mushroom Picker’s Monthly Hot Spots”. 4. Further down the road, while carefully cultivating your relationship with the buyer, you may want to continue offering free and paid extras or indeed some kind of a “continuity” (monthly subscription) model.

All right, all right – you don’t want to see non-musical examples! So let’s look at an “extended product” cycle for your latest album release:

1. You release “Jeannie’s Euro-pop Hits”. 2. You make the song “Jeannie Loves You” available for free, along with a video and additional “making of” footage, articles and photos. 3. Once the visitor downloads your gift, he/she is shown the album along with quotes of super-favorable reviews, pictures, etc.

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4. If the prospect doesn’t buy your album there and then, that’s okay. You’ve got him on your list and can expose him to that offer many more times in the future. 5. If he buys your album, you’ve got a sale – and – you can now follow it up with something else. “Did you enjoy my album? Consider also “Jeannie’s Coffee Set” – it goes great with my music! 6. During another follow-up promotion you may propose that he also consider subscribing to “Jeannie’s Insider Report On The Secret Goings- on In the Pop Business”, a monthly $5 subscription which will help you pay the bills and give superb value to your fan. 7. And so on and on it goes!

All of the above form part of the “extended product”, but remember that providing VALUE is the key. The buyer must always feel not only that you have over-delivered, but that you haven’t wasted his or her time.

Some people over-deliver poor quality and even though they think they have sent out “lots of stuff” – it’s all “garbage” as far as the end-user is concerned.

DON’T send out garbage!

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In this model, if done well, it’s possible to convert a buyer more than once – sometimes multiple times, and even on an on-going basis.

Whatever you’re selling – digital or physical goods, own album, your original products or affiliate products, services or hosted ads – it is always a good idea to consider ADDING VALUE, either through free reports or special discounts on truly useful extras, tips and tricks, advice, etc.

Just be careful NOT to put the sales first! Pursuing sales too aggressively, forgetting about ADDING VALUE, is a sure way to fail at both. As the old saying goes, “money, like women, rarely come to you if you pursue them directly!”

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The Most Popular Ways To Monetize Your Site

Now that you have your product and have created a plan for your sales “funnel” (i.e. the “sales flow”), it’s time to connect it all up to your website.

One of the simplest business models is using so-called “affiliate codes”. These are just personalized links you get which are unique to you, and when someone clicks on them, YOU get the credit for whatever purchases they make through that link.

Most affiliate links have a “shelf life”. Some are valid for only a few days, others are good for a few months. You can always find that out when you look through “affiliate terms” on your chosen product’s home site. The reason for this shelf life is that some people who wouldn’t have found the product without your help to begin with, do not buy right away but decide to come back a few weeks later. This time even if they don’t use your affiliate code – but as long as they’re surfing from the same computer they originally used – any purchases they make will still be credited to you! As long as the link is still valid (also known as “cookie life”). Amazon, for example, expires after 24 hours. So if they clicked through to a particular product and buy 2 days later – you do NOT get credit for that sale. Others like, say, MyHabit.com last for 30 days, other still like ClickBank.com last for 60 days.

So, using an affiliate code is one of the most popular ways to make money online, and the way it works is generally something like this:

1. Pick a product you LOVE (of course!) and go to its owners’ affiliate page, where you will be able to register and pick up your “affiliate code”. That’s just a URL which you can hyperlink to a text or a graphic, and whenever someone clicks on that, YOU will be credited with the sale (providing they buy). Typically a “cookie” will be placed on the prospect’s computer for a specified number of days afterwards. There are also special product sites such as Amazon, Clickbank or DigitalPoint which have thousands of products you can choose from.

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2. You can decide to send your visits directly to the product-owner’s sales page – or you can send them to your added value page first (which I would recommend, because it allows you to build your own list). Such a page, also known as a “Squeeze Page” will usually offer something for free to the visitor in exchange for signing up to your list. This is usually done BEFORE you let the visitor enter the actual sales page. If you do decide to have a squeeze page, then you will also need to connect it to an Autoresponder (so that a thank-you mail can be sent along with a download link). I generally recommend aWeber for that. You can also set up additional follow-up messages in there as well, in order to keep in touch with your prospect on autopilot. 3. If you have any other affiliate products further down in your sales funnel, you connect them up in the same manner as above.

Another monetization method is to serve ads for other websites or products. The most popular such method involves Google AdSense, but it’s also possible to assign areas on your site to large ad networks, or indeed even to personally sell ads to those who apply. Have a look at the enclosed AdSense Mastery course to learn more this more in-depth.

Once your music site gets over 10,000 visits per month you will start receiving emails from marketers asking you to place their ads on your site.

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There are many sites which don’t sell anything themselves, but due to their high traffic they attract tons of advertisers and charge them for targeted exposure. Tens of thousands of dollars – millions even – can be made by the most popular sites which realize this. This was one of my MAJOR mistakes when running Fame Games back in the day. I was unaware of all this and our multi-million-level traffic was never monetized. I even refused some ad offers, believing it would “cheapen” our site…! You live and you learn.

Anyway, if you use the ad hosting mode, all you’ll need to do is to place the seller’s ad code (or, his ad with a hyperlink, depending on how you do it), and – that’s about it. If you’re dealing with an ad network, they will take care of all the ad rotations and accounting to you. If you do this off your own back, it helps to have an ad management plugin installed (there are plenty of those available for Wordpress).

If you’re selling products from your catalogue – such as your albums, merchandise or if you’re selling multiple affiliate offers – it is often a very good idea to set up an “e-shop” or a shopping cart site.

With Wordpress, this is easily accomplished using any of the multitude of tools ranging from the very simple to the truly awesome. Some are Wordpress-based plugins, or even simple payment-processor-autoresponder combos, others include more general services which you can plug into any type of site.

In the first group, you have plugins such as 1ShoppingCart, Digital Product Delivery, or Tips&Tricks eStore (which I use on the MMI site), while in the second group you can go for the likes of Clickbank (yes it’s not merely a product marketplace, but also a fully-fledged payment processor), DigiResults, JVZoo, InfusionSoft or Nanacast.

It is also possible to set up payment processing using your PayPal account (under Merchant Tools). The vast majority of people use this system because it’s very

Page 148 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business simple to do for one-off products. But once things start getting more complex, you’ll find PayPal on its own can be rather limited.

All of these tools integrate with major autoresponders, chief among them being aWeber. At this point, I would suggest that you check out the attached Affiliate Marketing Course.

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Selling Products You Fully Own

As an artist, this one is pretty easy for you. You already HAVE a product you fully own: your music.

The only thing is, is that selling independent music (without the backing of the major-label hype machine) can be very slow going. THAT is why you need to supplement your incomes with additional products.

And no products are more lucrative (providing you can sell them) than those you create yourself.

Let’s look at some broad ideas here for how you can create “info products” which people will be happy to pay for. It’s not as hard as you may imagine and it can be a lot of fun too.

An “info product” is, typically, a PDF eBook or a video which you research and put together by yourself. It needs to offer information, entertainment, advice or tips which your target audience will find very useful. THIS course is an example of an info-product, although in this case it’s a really large one. But most people start with “tiny” info-products. Reports of 20-30 pages can easily be sold for a

Page 150 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business few bucks a pop. They may take a few days to create – and as long as they contain really useful information, they’ll find an eager audience.

“Info products” can also simply “access rights”. Some websites may contain articles or videos “for members only” or “VIP newsletters” and so on. There’s no limit to what you can do in this department.

The advantage of selling your own product over an affiliate product is that you get to earn 100% and you have full control. But – be aware that this advantage can also be somewhat illusory. After all, you DO need to find affiliates of your own to help you sell your product, so you’ll need to deduct the commissions you’ll be paying them. And you’ll need to give them at least 50%! But – whatever you pay them, you’re not LOSING anything. You own the whole thing and you don’t have to do any extra work to sell it. So you can afford to be very generous with your commissions!

Why is this even a concern? Well, you can only do “so much” on your own.

If you can engage others to promote your product – and they’ll do so if their earnings on it are attractive enough for them! – you effectively multiply the power of your promotions without spending a penny more.

So how do you find affiliates?

Typically, once you’ve developed your original product, you’ll place it on an info- product network site (e.g. Clickbank or DigitalPoint) - or you can look for a joint venture (“JV”) site - and hope that they will find affiliates for you.

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If you get the product quality right (including great supporting materials, excellent commissions, etc) – you may very well succeed. The legendary marketing fortunes you may have heard about have almost all been achieved using this very model.

I have provided you with a dedicated course to explain the entire process of product creation and promotion, so without further ado, why not pause reading for now and check out this Product Creation Workshop.

I’ve also decided to include a couple of additional related resources for you, showing you how to do a Product launch (in this case, using a popular internet marketing forum, which while not ideally suited for music, will give you an excellent idea of what can be done on other more musically-inclined forums), as well as a course on how to achieve Local market domination, so do check these out now!

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Your Relationship With Your Visitors and Fans

Let’s face it – most websites we visit are quite indifferent to us. We don’t “engage” or purposefully return to them for more content.

But in some cases, we DO. Think about what it is that makes you want to return to a given site over and over again. Usually, it’s quality fresh content, amusement, information, interactivity. Whatever it is, you KNOW when a site is attractive to you, right?

Being attracted to a site is the beginning of a “relationship” in the sense that I mean it here. A true online “relationship” begins when you take action. For example, when you sign up for updates or a newsletter and so on. Free or paid, doesn’t matter. When you opt in to receive something, you TRUST that website with your email address as well as, usually, your name and/or even more information.

As you continue receiving updates from the site, you may at any time terminate your “relationship” with it, if you get bored or annoyed by their content – or if you think they’re too pushy trying to sell you something all the time.

If you look forward to their updates – that’s a beginning of a great relationship. If you value their judgment or recommendations, then that’s a relationship they can monetize!

What about when you buy something from a site – is that a “relationship”? It may or may not be. It might just be a one-night stand! If, apart from buying from them, you also sign up to receive updates, then yes. If you just buy and never return – then that’s not really a relationship, is it?

Why is “online relationship” important?

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Simple. Apart from any other considerations, the quality of your online relationship with your visitors is the foundation of your website’s profitability.

Put differently: you will not be able to support yourself and your music project with a website which does not build relationships.

You can market to your “list” (i.e. your members who have given you permission to contact them) either directly or indirectly – and it won’t cost you a penny to do that.

This is yet another reason why your CONTENT QUALITY is the cornerstone of your business. I know I keep repeating this. But it’s essential, that’s why. Because content quality translates into AUTHORITY. And authority is PROFIT!

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Understanding what I just said, you’re now able to start looking at creating a “sales funnel.” This is something which is critical to your bottom line, you need to understand it very well.

If your funnel is constructed wrongly (too pushy, too loose, too confusing, too long, too scary!) it will reflect negatively on your entire site, no matter how otherwise good it is. When building your funnel, it is therefore hugely important to always keep the end-user in mind and to strive to provide the most user- friendly environment possible.

Always put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. Would YOU enjoy your sales funnel?

Let’s discuss this topic now.

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Understanding the Sales Funnel

I agree that this is a rather “unpleasant- sounding” term. It conjures the image of treating your fans like meat going through a grinder.

But the “funnel” metaphor is nevertheless quite accurate, when you consider the funnel shape.

At the top, broadest part, you have your general visitors. Then, as the funnel narrows down, you have your prospects who opted in to your list. Next, you have sales. After that, after-sales. And so on.

So, a “sales funnel” is an engagement PROCESS that you envision for your customers. You can (and perhaps should) hire experts to help you design your first sales funnel, or you can try to copy an existing one – but that’s not as easy as it seems, because most funnels have “hidden” elements in them which you’ll be hard-put to discover unless you go through ALL the options personally.

Whether you build your own sales funnel or have one done for you, you still need to understand how it works and what are the possible steps you need to consider.

A “sales funnel” is like a decision tree.

 Would you like “this?”If Yes, sign up then deliver something you promised o Yes – go to page A o No – go to page B – then end  Would you also like X? o Yes – go to page C o No – go to exit page, then retry some days later

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 If Yes, then ask if they also want Y? o … and so it goes. That’s a basic funnel.

The simplest form is a “no funnel” option, where a visitor enters your sales page and either buys your product or leaves. If he buys, he’s directed to a payment page (often pre-made for you by your payment processor), and once the payment is made, he’s out of your hands. This is a common model for many beginner affiliate marketers. It’s very easy to set up – but the disadvantage is that you do not know WHO bought from you, nor are you able to sell something else to them.

A slightly more advanced funnel is when you’re offering an affiliate product, but rather than sending the prospect to the product page, you FIRST interject yourself with a “free gift” offer. The purpose of this freebie is to collect this person’s contact details. So, for example, “enter your email address and get this free book”, after which they get sent to the sales page proper.

But funnels can get a lot more complex than that. In fact, some professional marketers are convinced that “THE Secret” to successful online marketing is how well a funnel is constructed and the way people are coaxed into purchasing “upsells.”

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A good funnel works like a friendly sales assistant and customer care rep rolled into one. It contains follow-up messages, different exit pages which depend on the visitor’s actions, and so on. And everything works on “autopilot”.

You may now want to pause reading this book and check out the enclosed Funnel Mastery course for all the hands-on details.

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Landers

Generally speaking, a “landing page” (or a “lander” for short) is ANY place where a visitor lands on your side. It can be your original squeeze page which you promoted, your special information blog page which you announced to everyone, or indeed any number of pages within the sequence of your funnel.

More often than not, this is where you get to make a first impression on someone.

Most websites’ “landers” are just their home pages. If you already have a website, you may not even have considered that it’s possible to design multiple ways “in”.

That’s why more savvy webmasters know that they need to go a step beyond that. They actually create alternative “landing pages” which are NOT the same as the home page, and whose specific purpose is to promote a given project, service or a product.

Some webmasters design their sites in such a way that almost every page on their blog contains all the elements that a good landing page should contain:

 Enticing headline  Interesting content  Attention “hooks”  Call to action

Others (the vast majority) keep the landing pages as a separate entity entirely and only use them to “drive traffic” to them for the purpose of highly specialized promotions.

This is, in essence, what I would recommend for you, for starters.

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Prepare your specific landing pages in advance, as part of your overall website preparation process.

Optimize each lander for a specific keyword and a specific product – or an aspect of one product. And then proceed to promote them in parallel to all your other promotions.

For example, you might have a structure like this:

  Your artist’s website with the usual home page. You promote this using SEO and social links. o It includes many pages and posts o It also includes various “special” areas for members, etc  You create a separate landing page (“squeeze” page) to receive your latest single for free. You paid for some Facebook traffic for this one. o It collects the address of the fan o Then sends him to the download page

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o And sends him a thank-you email  You also have a separate page for your upcoming gig. You target your geographical area using AdWords. o You offer advance bookings at a discount o Collect the booking, then send the fan to a confirmation page o And send him a thank-you email.  Needless to say, you can go on like this, including creating ALTERNATIVE versions of EACH of the above pages and then tracking them separately. o You may create 2 or 3 versions of your “free mp3” squeeze page and then see which one worked best with Facebook’s traffic. o Of you may do the same, but send Facebook traffic to page 1, AdWords traffic to page 2 and Clicksor (or whatever) traffic to page 3. This is how all this works!

Let’s elaborate a bit more.

The most popular type of a landing page is known as a “squeeze page”. It can be very short or slightly extended, and it comes in two basic flavors:

 Basic squeeze page – you can host it on your domain, e.g. mysite.com/landing01.htm. The main function of this page is to attract opt-ins and NOT to sell. So, you’re promoting your bonus product here and have a brief autoresponder form (name, email) in it as well. The page should contain a brief video about your bonus, a strong headline and a minimum of text – just enough to arouse curiosity. You can – and indeed should – have a few alternative versions of the squeeze page, so that you can try different headlines, images and placements of the various elements on the page. One of them will work better than the others. That will be the one to bet on once you start scaling up.

 Extended squeeze page – this can be the home page of your mini-site – or ONE of the alternative “home” pages. The rest of this mini-site (10-20 pages) can contain reputation-building posts, resources, downloads, etc. It

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can also contain a protected members area, if you so choose. Other than that, you’re still basically just capturing leads and ostensibly NOT attempting to sell – just give them your sign-up bonus and treat them to some great reputation-building resources.

Some webmasters only place an ad like “sign up for a free report” ads on their primary sites, and refrain from building squeeze pages. This too CAN work, albeit normally not nearly as well as a dedicated squeeze page.

In all cases, you can experiment with pre-announcing your main product that you wish to sell them later on – or not. There’s no firm rule for this. Some people believe it’s better for your squeeze page not to even hint that they’re going to be pitched later with something else – others think it’s a good idea to let them know that you’ll want to show them something else, after they receive their free gift. You can split test this and see for yourself. Ultimately, it may depend on your free bonus product and its content. (For more on this, don’t forget to check out the enclosed Funnel Mastery course!)

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A Few More Words About Squeeze Pages

We have already covered what squeeze pages are and their role in helping you generate incomes online. But let’s quickly review and look at some of their most important aspects.

Think of a squeeze page as a kind of a business card. This is the prospect’s first introduction to YOU. Unlike a business card, however, the prospect also gets something of value from you – in exchange for his/her business card.

The benefit should always be mutual.

You get to know a nice person who gives you their permission to occasionally propose business transactions to them, and he/she gets something from you which interests them. If they really like what you gave them, they will be positively predisposed to doing further business with you. If they think it’s kinda lame – they simply won’t.

Many webmasters don’t like squeeze pages, considering them “too pushy”. But even they agree that squeeze pages hugely increase the chances of making sales. So what do they do? How do they resolve their ethical dilemma of being too pushy on the one hand and making ends meet on the other?

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The answer comes down to a combination of having some class and providing genuinely great content (thus “atoning” for the pushiness to some extent) with the knowledge that many people who buy through squeeze pages ARE actually interested in these things and the squeeze page is simply an ad – and there’s nothing wrong with ads. Better still, it’s an ad that GIVES the customer VALUE before they buy anything. In other words, a squeeze page is a quick way to provide PROOF of how genuine you are!

But what about the unscrupulous liars who will perhaps make a great squeeze page and give you a truly valuable freebie – but will totally screw you on the other end, once you shell out the money for the “main course?”

Well, sadly, there exist such cases, but they’re more rare than you might think. But be that as it may, you can be sure of one thing: they don’t last. People become wise to them really quickly, by sharing their negative experiences on forums and blog posts.

Regardless, YOU should not be in that category. This entire course is built to provide you with all the tools you’ll need to provide a truly valuable service to your fellow web surfers.

As long as you don’t start looking for shortcuts which rob you of QUALITY – you’ll never be in that category.

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List Building – Your Fan-Base Is Your Lifeline

If you’ve been around any kind of internet-based marketing for any length of time, you will have heard the over-used line “the money’s in the list”. I said as much many times in the preceding pages as well.

That statement is true - but not without some qualification. The money is in a RESPONSIVE list.

Before I elaborate, first let’s be absolutely clear: what is “a list?”

Simply put, it’s a database of your contacts – your fans. People who have signed up to your fan club, opted into your free newsletter or downloaded your music or a free report through your squeeze page, or people who have bought something from you.

If you’re using an Autoresponder (which I strongly recommend) you can even “segment” your list so that you can have “music buyers” on one list, “newsletter optins” on another, and so on.

So why is having that list so important? Apart from giving you an opportunity to build a relationship with them, they’re your first line of attack when you’re promoting something. And each time you mail them – it costs you ZERO.

Additionally, your list of prospects is one thing, while your list of past buyers is another. Common sense as well as experience teaches us that people who trusted you with their money once (providing that you didn’t let them down), will be MUCH more likely to trust you again.

It therefore follows that if you approach a satisfied customer further down the line, they will be positively inclined to buy from you again. And, needless to say, since you already have the list, your COST OF QUALIFIED LEAD ACQUISITION is, once again, ZERO!

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THAT is why it pays to invest in list building and giving stuff away.

So, how DO you manage your list? With an Autoresponder of course. An autoresponder is a program which intelligently automates follow-up correspondence with your list members – an absolute must-have in your toolbox.

Many savvy marketers focus almost entirely on list-building, particularly in the early stages of their promotions, and don’t care very much about making sales – until later. Sometimes much later.

Many experienced marketers can, over time, sell to 50% or more of their list, often over and over again. A highly responsive list like that also has a secondary value: you can “rent it” by providing your own solo ad services.

A “solo ad” is a service you may at some point provide to other musicians, venues or any advertisers you like. If your list contains 2000 rock fans, perhaps they’d be interested in hearing about the latest guitar offer from your local Guitar Center? You can send out a mail blast to your list with that offer and your advertiser will pay you for this very happily. A typical way to do this is to guarantee X number of visits from your list to your advertiser’s website. So, you may tell your advertiser that for 30 cents per visit, you can send them 500 visits. Next, using your autoresponder you mail the first 500 and monitor their “click-throughs.” You’ll see that, say, 300 have clicked. So you send out another batch of, say, 300 emails and you see that another 150 have clicked. Cool, you send another 100-200 and

Page 166 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business by then you will not only have delivered your promised (and provable) 500, but you will also have OVER-delivered.

In other words, you can use your list to work for you even without directly selling them anything.

So, the trick to list-building is not merely collecting signups but also managing your communications with them by means of automated emails, which you can later track (to see open rates, click-through rates, etc).

But an even more important aspect is being able to reliably deliver your emails to each person on your list. This is perhaps THE most compelling reason for paying for an autoresponder, rather than either building your own or getting one for free.

If you have your own autoresponder, you’ll also be using your own SMTP server to make mailouts. It will be enough that merely one person on your list complains about you “spamming” them – and your server can be blacklisted. As a result, your delivery rate will plummet.

Professional autoresponders have deliverability rates in excess of 95% with aWeber leading the pack with around 99%.

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Elements of Autoresponder Campaigns

 Generally about your eMail sequence – You’ll need to imagine – and write – the entire sequence of emails your members will get from you. Starting with the thank-you email after they’ve opted in, then following with up “a number” (say, 25) of emails spread out 1, 2 or 3 days apart (some marketers prefer to spread it out even further apart). What will you be saying in those emails? Whatever it is – it must not waste people’s time. DON’T send anything unless it’s interesting and worthwhile. And every now and then you may be able to “pitch” them something as well.  First thank-you – basically, thanks for opting in, and here’s your link to download your free gift.

 First follow-up – content: write some interesting or important information, something they should find useful (since they downloaded your free gift) and will be happy to have received. Perhaps a report about something special or a bit of general information – or a video of your concert.  Second follow-up – more content: as above – make sure it’s VALUABLE and/or interesting/entertaining/informative.

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 Third follow-up – you can now gently suggest that you have something really cool you think they will benefit from (your product, your new album, concert tickets, membership in your VIP section, etc). Don’t push it, just suggest it. If they appreciated your previous emails – they may appreciate this one too.  4th follow-up – more content.  Continue like this: content-content-pitch-content-content-pitch... – all emails pre-made and set up within your autoresponder before you start your campaign. And make sure you monitor your autoresponder’s admin panel to see how many people are opening your emails and how many are clicking through on your links, etc.  In your autoresponder you may also set up conditional actions, e.g. when they purchase, which emails should they receive? (This is often called “list segmenting”, by the way) .You may need to create a separate set for those – and – plan your next pitch for another (complementary) product as well.

Please consult the enclosed List Building Guide at this point.

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The Holy Grail: Optins and Conversions

When someone opts into your form, be it in order to receive your latest single, a free report, or sign up to your newsletter – you hope that the reason why they did it is to form some kind of a relationship with you. Put in a different way, you hope that they didn’t sign up just to get the freebie and the next thing you know is they’ll unsubscribe from your list (you’ll have your share of those people too, so don’t be too surprised!).

Most people who opt into online lists do it without such an agenda. On a more or less conscious level they want to be impressed by what you’ve got.

So, a mere “optin” is not enough. You really do want a “relationship” or a “permanent member”. And the only way you’re going to get that is – and here I go again repeating myself – if you provide VALUE.

And once again we’re going back to the original “love your product” mantra. If the products or services you provide are great – and your site content is equally solid – and your free reports are engaging, and your follow-up messages well balanced – that’s VALUE. In that situation, the likelihood of your list members unsubscribing is MUCH lower. Also, the likelihood that they will heed your

Page 170 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business suggestions (including suggestions to purchase something you recommend) becomes MUCH higher.

At this point it may be a good idea for you to check the attached Optin List Mastery Course.

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Interconnecting Everything

At this point you have all the fundamental elements of your online business in place. You have created a solid plan and backed it up by research. You’ve built a great little Wordpress site and filled it with valuable content. You’ve created accounts on the most popular social media sites. You’ve created powerful landing pages and prepared at least one autoresponder campaign and a sales funnel.

While there’s more still that you can do (and I’ll cover it all in the upcoming sections), the above is enough to give you a SMOOTH START.

The only thing now is to make sure that everything is properly interconnected.

The good news is that if you’re using Wordpress, the technical side of interconnecting all the technologies involved is really a piece of cake. Not only is it easy to hire outsourcers very cheaply to help you accomplish this, but you can also learn most of that by yourself within minutes.

I’ll give you an overview here, right now.

While there are literally hundreds of excellent plugins for you to consider (just Google them), I will now recommend the ones I use myself.

For site integration, use NextScripts Social Networks Auto-Poster and Onlywire for Wordpress (a premium service, but inexpensive). Onlywire helps your content

Page 172 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business spread via social bookmarking sites. I also use Digg Digg, Facebook Comments by Alex Moss and Wordpress Facebook Like Plugin by AJ Batac.

All your forms on the site, including the forms on any of your landing pages, should be generated with your Autroresponder (I recommend aWeber. See the attached course Autoresponder Basics). Inserting these forms into your pages is really easy (any additional instructions are provided on the aWeber site).

Finally, if you’re using PayPal (see the enclosed course PayPal User’s Guide) create a payment button and tell it where to send the buyer after a successful transaction (you can also decide where the buyer goes if he/she declines to purchase at the last minute).

And that’s essentially it. If you have a more comprehensive membership management system installed (I’ll discuss that in the next section), then some of the above steps will be a little different, but if you don’t – then you’re basically done.

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Membership Sites and Continuity Models

Everything we discussed above can be taken to a higher level still by not merely collecting fans and members but also by MANAGING them on your site.

You might see the benefit of allowing certain members (e.g. “VIPs”) to access some areas of your site, or having multiple levels of access depending on your members’ interests.

I’m using a member management system called “eMember” by TipsAndTrics-HQ, along with their Affiliate Plugin and eCommerce Plugin. They integrate perfectly with my aWeber and PayPal accounts and make the job of administrating multiple sites a lot easier.

It is also easier to manage recurring sales with a system like that.

This is called a “continuity model”. In fact, THAT is one of the holy grails of an online business.

If you can hold on to your members, beyond the first opt-in or sale (and you can only do that by providing them with more great music, information, great products and content, remember!), you can have a continuity-based business.

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The more members you have, the more tricky it will be to manage them with just your payment processor and autoresponder. Even with just a few dozen members it may be a really good idea to start looking at a membership management program like the one I mentioned above.

So what can your average membership management program do?

Typically, you get the tools to protect areas on your site, from whole categories down to individual files, and grant access to specific member levels. For example, you can have a public area where people don’t need to register to view your content and a free members’ area where there’s more content plus some extra goodies, and then a premium area for people who pay $X per month, and another premium area for people who pay $XX per month – and so on.

Naturally, you can do a lot more, including integrating with your payment processor and autoresponder. Some membership management programs also allow you to combine the membership module with c-commerce as well as an affiliate management – and all of that works as plugins within Wordpress. Really cool!

I have taken the time to research a number of the most popular membership management programs and I even checked all of their most important features so that you can make your decision regarding that with open eyes.

Have look here at the enclosed Membership Resources and Course!

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Launching Your Online Music Business

So now you know “everything”. If this was your first read-through it’ll soon be time to go back to the beginning and take notes and start building your PLAN. I’ll give you a few plan examples in a moment, but you’ll need to make one yourself.

Musicians and artists are a funny breed. I know, I’m one myself and I’ve suffered from the same personality traits that I observe all around me. WE DON’T LIKE “SELLING.”

Sometimes we “hate” not just selling but any hint of trying to convert our art into a “business”. We prefer being “discovered!” Otherwise, we’re “sell-outs”. How irrational!

Why should there be any conflict between creativity and survival?

If YOU aren’t motivated enough to ensure you can live off your music – then WHO will do this for you?

With that in mind, this entire course aims to prepare you to launch your online music business as efficiently as possible, ideally without sacrificing your creative time and energy – or at least doing so to the least extent possible. There are 6 broad stages which this guide covers:

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 Stage 1 – Research and Planning  Stage 2 – Building Your Site  Stage 3 – Other Web Properties, Interconnections and SEO  Stage 4 – Income stream implementation  Stage 5 – Ongoing Content Development, Launch, Affiliates and Promotion  Stage 6 – Daily management and expansion

They’re all interconnected and sometimes overlapping, and most are on-going. I did my best to reflect this within this guide, and that’s why you’ll often see some concepts recurring, seemingly out of sequence. This is why I recommend reading everything twice. First time to get a good intuitive idea, the second time for everything to start falling into place – and for you to be ready to implement each idea in its correct sequence.

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Different Strokes For Different Folks

Let us now take a minute and overview the entire course: what we covered so far and where it fits within the above “six stages”.

 Stage 1 – Research and Planning o Book 1: General mindset, stories, background information, what matters, things to keep in mind about your audience, the general vision – the big picture. o Book 2: Making sure your music rocks, more about you as an artist, local market considerations, more about your audience and fans, basic team-building considerations. o Book 3: Things to know when building your web business, researching your keywords, niche and competition, getting to grips with the basics of SEO  Stage 2 – Building Your Site o Book 3: Domain and hosting, Wordpress setup vs site-in-a-box solutions, building and optimizing your site, design cosiderations  Stage 3 – Other Web Properties, Interconnections and SEO o Book 3: Social accounts, essential subscriptions, services and tools, branding, interconnecting everything and preparing to promote  Stage 4 – Income stream implementation o Book 3: Your income streams, product selection, product building, extended product, sales funnel, audience/fan considerations, list building, conversion and optin considerations, autoresponder campaigns, membership sites  Stage 5 – Ongoing Content Development, Launch, Affiliates and Promotion o Book 3: Paid traffic techniques, understanding ad networks, testing and scaling, launching your business  Stage 6 – Daily management and expansion

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o Books 1, 2 and 3: understanding how to apply all your knowledge to running a high quality online music business with minimum effort, expenses and time, but with maximum efficiency and profitability

Knowing the above, let’s now have a look at a few alternative ways you could build your plan, budget and timeline.

 One scenario will assume you’re the stubborn sort and want to cut costs everywhere and do it all by yourself. I’ll call this one “On The Cheap.”  Another will look at outsourcing just about everything – the polar opposite. I’ll call it “All Out.”  And one more will look at something in-between. And I’ll refer to it as “My Small Team.” I think this is probably the best way to approach everything – a bit of a balance between using your in-house resources along with outsourced ones.

Stage 1 – Research and Planning

 “On The Cheap” o Timeline: With full focus, it’s possible for one person to do a really solid job of everything I described in the planning and research sections within 3-6 weeks.

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o Quality: Assuming that you never did something like this before, I would guess this will only be about 80% optimal. There’ll be extra work further down the line to compensate for planning errors early on. o Cost: No out-of-pocket expenses, other than your electricity. Nothing out of the ordinary.  “All Out” o Timeline: If you outsource all of this work to 2 or 3 specialists, leaving only the final say to yourself, you’ll be looking at 1-2 weeks before you got everything prepared. o Quality: If you picked the right people, you’ll be about 95% there. o Cost: Depending on your choices, you’ll spend between $500 and $3000 to get the best input.  “My Small Team” o Timeline: I’d say 2-4 weeks, with one high quality external expert and you doing the rest of the preparatory analysis. o Quality: Chances are very good that you’ll be at least 90% there and your miscalculations or misjudgments further down the road won’t be too serious. o Cost: Possibly between $200 and $1000, depending on how and what you outsource.

Stage 2 – Building Your Site

 “On The Cheap” o Timeline: This will depend on your prior experience. If you never had any previous Wordpress experience, allow between 1 and 2 months. You’ll of course be able to have “something” up and running in just a few hours, but making it all look great and function correctly will take you considerably longer. o Quality: If you’re not a good graphic designer, I doubt you’ll manage to make your site look very much above the “average”. If

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you never worked with site development, your site will almost certainly have lots of holes you’ll be plugging up over the next many weeks. o Cost: Since you’re doing this all by yourself – your cost will pretty much be zero.  “All Out” o Timeline: An expert or two (site-builder, a content developer and a graphic designer) can build you a site like what I described in this course within a week or two. And that’s allowing for feedback, changes, improvements, etc. o Quality: If you hired professionals, the quality will be tops. o Cost: Depending on your specific decisions, your can get something like this done for maybe $500-$750 on the low end, and up to between $2000 and $4000 on the higher end. And sure, you can find much cheaper offers too – but they always come with caveats and extras if you want “more.”  “My Small Team” o Timeline: With good focus and one or two outsourced experts, you can have your site fully up and running within 2-4 weeks, given that you provide at least half of the work. o Quality: Chances are you’ll wind up with a site you’ll be very happy with. Maybe not quite the highest quality, but definitely good enough to start kicking some butt. o Cost: Again, depending on individual choices, something like this should cost you somewhere between $500 and $1000 all told.

Stage 3 – Other Web Properties, Interconnections and SEO

 “On The Cheap” o Timeline: If you have no prior experience with this, then while this course will definitely help you do it by yourself, you will take a while. I’d imagine probably 3-5 weeks.

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o Quality: Chances are that after some trial and error, you’ll have everything set up very well. o Cost: Some key subscriptions here, probably up to about $200 (one-off) all told and maybe about $25-$50 monthly.  “All Out” o Timeline: You can get expert outsourcers to set everything up for you (as described in this course in the relevant sections) within about a week, tops. o Quality: It should be done perfectly well, straight out of the gate. o Cost: I’d say you’ll be looking at anything between $200 up to maybe $500 to get it all done. Tops. And then some minor monthly fees.  “My Small Team” o Timeline: I’d imagine you should be able to get everything done by yourself, but with one or two outsourced helpers within about 1-2 weeks. o Quality: It should be totally on par. o Cost: Definitely less than maybe $250 tops. Plus minor monthly fees between $50 and maybe $150.

Stage 4 – Income stream implementation

 “On The Cheap” o Timeline: Again, if you never did this sort of thing before, this will add to your trial and error time. Creating and testing a funnel, developing landing pages, etc – all that takes time and experience. Plugging everything in – your various income models – will also take a little experience. All that in mind, I’d say you’d be looking at 4-6 weeks of daily, focused work, at least a few hours per day. o Quality: Given that you didn’t leave any loose ends – it should all be average to good. o Cost: Zero.

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 “All Out” o Timeline: You can get all of this done and tested for you within 1-2 weeks, max. o Quality: If you hire the right people, the quality will be tops and your chances of early success that much higher as a result. o Cost: I’d say you’ll be looking at anything between $1000 and $3000 to get all of this done.  “My Small Team” o Timeline: Assuming you’re working with one or two good outsourcers and are yourself putting in the necessary effort to keep up with them, you should be done within 2-3 weeks. o Quality: If the people you hired are any good, your final quality should be quite respectable. o Cost: I’d say up to $1000 all included.

Stage 5 – Ongoing Content Development, Launch, Affiliates and Promotion

 “On The Cheap” o Timeline: Here you have quite a few different things all lumped together into a single “stage”, so for you to be able to do all this entirely by yourself will mean that you will really have to have had paid attention to all the details described in this course. Assuming you did, and not counting content development which is daily and may take you between 30 minutes and an hour each day, everything else will take you at least a month to organize and prepare. Add to that the preparation for paid traffic, and you’re looking at something between 1 and 2 months to get to the “I’m happy now” stage. o Quality: Impossible to predict, if this is your first time doing this. Chance are you’ll do pretty well, if you follow this guide carefully.

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But I would be pleasantly surprised if you managed to nail it on your first attempt. o Cost: Yes this time there WILL be a cost, if you do paid promotions – which is really important that you do. At the very least you’ll wind up spending between $100 and $200, but that’s really not enough to be “sure” that you picked the best traffic sources, etc. I’d say you should set aside no less than $500 per month for this stage. More would be safer and better.  “All Out” o Timeline: You can get everything prepared and researched within 1-2 weeks by a handful of experienced outsourcers. o Quality: If you pick the right people, they’ll do a better job than you ever could, if you don’t have prior experience with these things. o Cost: Between expert outsourcers and monthly traffic spend, you’ll be looking at anything between $2000 and $4000, all depending on the advice you get from them. BUT – this is NOT a never-ending monthly thing. You spend it once, at most twice. By then you will either start earning and be able to re-invest earnings into further expansion – or you’ll discover a serious flaw in your planning. Assuming that you’ve done everything using experts – that will not be a very likely scenario.  “My Small Team” o Timeline: You can do everything with one or two experienced assistants within 2-3 weeks. o Quality: The quality should be pretty good – if you picked the right outsourcers and are using your own judgment well. o Cost: Counting everything (including traffic acquisition), you should be able to get this off the ground for anything between $1000 and $2000. The same considerations apply here as in the above “All Out” example.

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Stage 6 – Daily management and expansion

 “On The Cheap” o Timeline: If you got this far, you’re already something of a budding expert! You should be able to manage your site very well. But… will you still be able to manage your artistic career? THIS is the biggest challenge for an artist who wants to also build a business. A little outsourcing really is necessary. o Quality: If you got this far – let’s hope you’re making at least some money by this point, and this means your overall quality is better than average. o Cost: None, other than any monthly fees, typically around $50-or- so. But, if you’re going to do further traffic runs – see above.  “All Out” o Timeline: If you hire a full-time administrator, then keep him/her on for the duration. o Quality: If you find a good person – he/she will keep your business afloat for you very well. o Cost: Whatever you agree to pay him/her per month. Ideally, a percentage of the profits.  “My Small Team” o Timeline: This is an on-going thing. o Quality: If you got this far, it’s all good. o Cost: Give everyone an appropriate share of the profits and keep some aside for reinvesting in your business.

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So What Are Your Chances, Really?

This is how the above assumptions might look on a time-line.

NOTE: The “S1, S2…” labels refer to the above stages; the length of each stage is the maximum stipulated length with my broad assumptions, above. It can be done much quicker in each scenario, but I had to assume growing pains! All told, using the above assumptions you’re looking at anything between about 2-3 months on the low end and up to about 8 months on the high end. With experience, you could cut each of the above scenarios by about half, if pushed.

And now, let’s have a graphical look at what your annual costs might look like, under either of these three scenarios:

And then, there’s one more question which everyone asks… “yeah, but how much can REALISTICALLY be made on a well-developed site like that?”

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You’ll understand if I don’t give you a concrete answer, right? There are simply too many variables and for every 10 people following instructions like those in this course, you’ll get at least 10 different actual implementations. And results will differ greatly, accordingly.

But I can give you a few “ballpark” figures, loosely based on my experience as well as the collective experience of dozens of others who have been down this road, and with whom I maintain regular contact.

 Broadly, for every 100 “wannabes” only about 5 will achieve ANY incomes at all, and most of those will stay in a 3-figure range over a period of a year! But most of those people work blind most of the time, hence the super high failure rate.  But if you take 100 people who take a detailed course, such as this one, and if you assume that everyone is really doing their best, these numbers improve considerably. I would BROADLY venture to say that the following stats will probably apply: o 10% will not earn even a penny after a year of site building. o 20% will earn up to $1,000 in the first year. o 30% will earn between $1,000 and $5,000 in the first year. o 30% will earn between $5,000 and $20,000 in the first year. o 9% will earn between $20,000 and $100,000 in the first year. o 1% will earn over $100,000. o A fraction of that 1% will earn over $1,000,000.

The job-replacing incomes start in the top 10%...!

Can YOU be among that ten percent? Let’s look at what makes some people succeed and others fail.

Many would-be online entrepreneurs never ACT. They learn, think about it, find dozens of objections to why the program is not right for them, and move on to the next “how-to” manual. This is why I wanted this course to be FULL-ON, nothing-

Page 187 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business left-out kind of course. I don’t want you to have any excuses. The system I’ve shown you in these pages WORKS if you actually do the required work, patiently and meticulously. Logic alone should tell you that.

But “acting” alone is not enough. You need focus, clarity of vision, a lot of energy and above all, great organization and consistency. And motivation.

 Your motivation is the first key. If you really want to build a business around your music, and if you accept the inherent logic of everything presented to you within this course, you’re set to start.

 Next, you need to organize your thoughts and create a plan of action. First envision what you’ll need, then think about who should do it, then think about the costs. Then re-think it all a few more times until you’re convinced that it’s doable.

 Next, you need to act. You need to set time aside for this – as much or as little as you think makes sense for you, and then stick to your plan consistently.

 Finally, as you progress, monitor and check everything you’re doing. Make yourself a progress chart and ensure that you’re never standing still.

 Above all, however, don’t forget that you’re splitting your time between creative/musical endeavors and your business. It takes a lot of discipline not to let one of these slide…

If you want to succeed online, you have the CORRECT formula within these pages. Knowing this, should at least in part be your motivation. DO NOT distract yourself with other courses and “shiny objects” like brand new courses promising

Page 188 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business you incredible earnings in “just days”. There is no such thing. This course, IS THE SHORTCUT.

So here’s what I advise you now:

1. Go back and follow each chapter of this book, slowly, step by step. Write down each step and then your notes. 2. Have a vision and a plan, then research it and confirm it. 3. Decide on your team. Get them all to confirm their keen interest. Have backup plans – people sometimes don’t deliver... 4. Build your site as best you can using the resources and ideas provided in this book. 5. Create your content and then connect it all the way I showed you. 6. Optimize the site using the stated SEO principles. 7. Run the site for a few weeks before attempting to drive paid traffic. 8. Take about a month or so before doing your first paid traffic tests. Your SEO needs to work first (i.e. send you at least some well-interacting traffic). 9. Be extremely careful to monitor everything and don’t spend more than you can afford to lose. 10. As soon as you have confirmed that you’re earning 150%-200% on each test, scale things up and enjoy the fruits of your labors!

And that’s about it!

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The Importance Of Monitoring

To monitor your site, you should use Google Analytics, your site log (typically via something like AWstats – your host will provide that, and it’s included in the cPanel as well) and, most importantly, an ad tracker. While you can do OK-ish with something like PrettyLink Lite, for a much more comprehensive and, frankly, indispensable tracking, you need a professional tool like Hypertracker.

Why do you need to monitor and WHAT do you monitor?

It’s quite simple, really. If you get traffic through “page X” on your site, using SEO, and another traffic source is “ad X” on ad network X, and yet another is “ad Y” on network Y, then you want to be able to quickly compare the results, in order to see where you get the best conversions. Usually, your SEO results will be a sort of an idealized benchmark, but not always. Also, a particular network and/or landing page of yours may also be your benchmark against which all other landing pages are compared.

Hypertracker and others like it monitor your pages in real time, so it’s possible to make on-the-fly adjustments to your campaigns, if need be.

Here are some things to keep in mind when dealing with monitoring:

 If you haven’t done so already, sign up to an Ad Tracker, such as Hypertracker. It will allow you to convert your affiliate links into tracking links. So, you put your original affiliate link into one field and you receive

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a tracker code which you can paste into the “target URL” area when you place your ad. This way, people will see the “display URL” as whatever you want it to be, but the real URL will be contained within the tracking code. But you also need to make sure that your display URL and your target URL match, so that when people click on your link, they’ll land on the display URL (because that’s where the tracker will send them). Your tracker will also give you a “pixel code” which you should copy/paste into your thank you page. If you have multiple products you’re promoting under one tracking campaign, you can also define them within the tracker so that you’ll know exactly everything that ever happened with any click-through your site has received and how each product was received by your visitors. Some busy thank-you pages wind up with dozens – even hundreds – of pixel codes (if you run MULTIPLE campaigns from different networks and using different landing pages, etc).

While it is entirely possible to successfully track user activity using simple site logs and free tools such as Google Analytics, you will never get in-depth and realtime information from this kind of monitoring. A professional ad tracking software allows you to see how your campaigns are performing in real time, so that you can change their parameters on the fly. You may often find yourself in situations where you’re paying a high CPC bid for a particular keyword or a landing page which just doesn’t convert – but which DOES attract a lot of traffic. If you let this go on, you will be paying for non-converting traffic. If you don’t have a real-time tracker, you’ll only learn about this the next day – and potentially a few hundred dollars later. A tracker, on the other hand, will immediately alert you to this situation and you will be able to close the loss- leading aspect of your campaign.

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Maintenance and Site Management

Once your site has hit its stride, you will need to maintain and manage it at the lowest possible cost without sacrificing quality.

You will also need to remain vigilant and monitor all your business drivers to ensure that all your current income streams retain their vibrancy and profitability.

It is important that you train yourself to be the “overseer” rather than an “employee” of your company. If you consult the rich resources provided in this course you will see that it’s possible to run a low-cost high-profit organization online with only the most conservative levels of expenditure.

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Scaling Up

Say, you spend $200 on an ad on a particular network and you wind up making 200% in profit. The natural temptation at this point to scale up immediately. we’ve even seen marketing courses which advise you to do just that! But do this at your peril.

ONE test is not what we would call a foundation. The rule of thumb is to scale GRADUALLY, increasing each subsequent “test” by 50% to 100% percent. This way you’ll always have maximum assurance that an unexpected event won’t wipe you out.

As a general rule, your profit margin should be as high as possible – while your products or services remain competitive.

Traffic campaigns which earn you on average 25% to 50% can be borderline dangerous – if your other running costs are not strictly controlled. In principle 100% gross return should be the starting point – at least as far a aggressive scaling-up is concerned.

To put it differently, if your campaigns regularly return 100% in profits, you can scale up quicker than if your campaigns return only 50% or 25%. It’s just prudence and common sense.

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Additional Budget Considerations

PLEASE do not say you “have no budget”. Unless you’re based in a third world country and living off scraps – in which case you’re an unlikely buyer of this course – you DO have at least “some” financial resources.

They may be very modest – the current financial squeeze causes hardship for almost everyone. But at the very least, you need to have a bare necessary minimum to get started with your own online business.

The good news is – setting up shop “online” can be significantly cheaper than in the “offline” world. And in 99 cases out of 100 it is MUCH cheaper.

Before we look into this, first let us dispel a myth that you can make money online “for free”. While there are methods out there which can, in isolated circumstances, result in incomes without “direct investments” – they’re few and far between and even those methods are not actually “free,” unless you’re using someone else’s computer and resources!

Your budget MUST include the following:

 Your household electricity & computer  Annual hosting (can be paid monthly).  Domain (can be paid annually)  Sufficient funds to either (a) learn how to do everything in this book yourself, which we don’t generally recommend because you’ll probably burn out really fast! – or (b) sufficient funds to outsource most of that work  Your time and opportunity costs (i.e. what you might be losing or foregoing while studying and developing your business)

Use an Excel spreadsheet (or any other) to make those calculations.

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Budget “something” for outsourcing of the most mundane tasks. Even if it’s just $10! Get into the habit of outsourcing. Most marketers FAIL because they try to do everything themselves. In the above chapters, we showed you how to do research. Most of that involves very little skill and only boring looking up, copying/pasting and typing. Are you sure you don’t want to pay someone else to do this for you?

Naturally, you’ll want to do the first run yourself, in order for you to know exactly how to instruct your outsourcers. But after that, please don’t burn yourself out working FOR your company instead of ON it!

Outsource using resources such as Fiverr, WarriorForum, Guru, eLance – and other similar ones which you can simply Google. You can also get the highest quality help from CoachTIP Outsourcing management.

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The Future of Your Online Music Business

So now you have a profitable business. What’s next?

Essentially, two or three alternatives:

1. Sell it (website “flipping”) 2. Increase your current model to its maximum capacity 3. Start a new business

Each of these options has pros and cons, and each is “fun” to do.

Selling Up - Some web entrepreneurs develop sites to a point where they can be resold for 4, 5 or even 6 figures, and then they go on to their next one. In fact, they often do multiple sites in parallel. Typically, a total budget for a site like that might be around, say, $10,000 overall, but then it gets resold for $100,000 or even $250,000. Many marketers scale this model down, where they spend, say, up to $1,000 and then go on to resell their sites for $10,000 or whatever they can get.

Maximizing the Current Model – As long as you’re able to reinvest a portion of your profits to keep increasing the traffic volume (without decreasing your conversion ratios), you can theoretically continue scaling up to infinity. In practice, all free market businesses seem to have a “natural” maximum size – so unless you can lobby your government for unfair advantages, chances are you’ll hit a ceiling within 2-3 years, assuming you’re steadily growing. For some people, this is THE ideal scenario. But even for those of you who like to leave things as they are, we would always recommend a little diversification. Makes life more fun.

Starting Afresh – Once your site reaches profitability and that elusive “autopilot” functionality, it may be a great idea to start another one. Many marketers do exactly that. In fact, some develop multiple sites simultaneously. Once you get

Page 196 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business good at it, you can, theoretically, create “dozens” of new sites each year – especially when you consider that you can outsource EVERYTHING without revealing your “secret sauce” to any of your individual outsourcers. In those cases, ALL you would need is a trusted outsourcing manager and all your new ventures would not merely “RUN” on auto-pilot, they would be CREATED on auto-pilot!

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Final Notes

I hope you enjoyed this course and found it motivating and illuminating. I realize fully that it’s a BIGGIE! Just going through everything took me many weeks, never mind creating or sourcing the required materials.

As a member of this program, apart from the bonus and additional materials and sub-courses, you’ll also be able to enjoy the LATEST updates as they become available. I’ll update everything regularly, and you’ll be able to leave your feedback and questions on the member site, underneath each chapter!

I hope you have enjoyed this course and I’m looking forward to hearing from you whenever you like,

Kind regards,

Paul Sedkowski www.meermusic.com

With additional help from

Coach Charles Holland www.coachtip.com

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About Us

Paul Sedkowski is a songwriter and music producer who’s worked with a number of artists over the past 30 years. He’s also a former radio producer and co-host (Fame Games Radio). And if that’s not enough, he’s also an SEO expert and creator of the deep keyword research methodology known as SEOlater. Following the amazing success of the hit online show, Fame Games Radio which was syndicated across the USA on ABC Radio Networks, Paul has now focused much of his time on developing a system for independent musicians, which would have the best possible chances of helping them live exclusively off their music.

* * *

Co-author, Charles Holland is a marketing coach, certified business coach and investor with over 30 years of coaching experience in traditional as well as online business and marketing. Happily married family man, husband and dad with young twins, they are living their dreams in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, CO, USA. Charles has learned the value of diversification as well as anyone. He continually advances his businesses in order to maintain competitive-edge advantages, and has helped hundreds of clients to do the same.

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Selected Resources

I’ve organized the various links in two broad groups, “general” and “music”. While there’s lots of overlap between them, the “music” ones are sites specifically centered on music, while the “general” ones are… well, for all purposes, general! For your convenience, all the blue underlined titles are live hyperlinks, so you can click through from here to check them out. By the way, where possible, I’ve sorted all the listings by their relative web popularity, using the latest “Alexa Ranks”. The higher up a listing is – the more popular it’s likely to be.

General: Planning and Research

When working on ideas for your site, some of the resources below may be very helpful, while others are essential.

Planning and Research In Brief Google Places/Maps If you you're based in a specific geographic location you simply “must” register it here. Google AdWords Keyword The most comprehensive free keyword research tool Planner from the masters of search themselves. Google Trends An easy to use keyword and niche analyzer tool. WayBack Machine Wanna know what the given site looked like some time ago? This is the tool which will show you! BuiltWith Find out what tools did your competitors use to build their site SpyFu Detailed keyword and competition research tool. Compete Research where are your competitors are getting their

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traffic WhoIsHostingThis Find out who is hosting the site you’re investigating WhatWPThemeIsThat Which Wordpress theme is being used on the site you’re researching SocialMention Who is talking about you – or any of your competitors! Long Tail Pro Find profitable keywords fast Clarity.fm On-demand business advice Moat Reverse search for online ads. See what your competitors are doing Website Watcher Monitor sites for any changes WhosMailingWhat Direct email data library, superb for competition intelligence IdeaOffer Get help developing your idea

And while we’re on the topic of general research and orientation, you might want to read the enclosed BONUS PDF eBook “The Best Internet Marketing Business Models (downloadable through this link on in your Member’s Area) which discusses the most popular ways in which people earn money online. Another BONUS enclosed here is a highly useful “Keyword Research Resource“, which you’ll be able to access through this link or through your Member’s Area. Finally, in the spirit of expanding your general knowledge about all things related to online marketing, I’ve attached another BONUS, “ IM Insights and Tips“ which I’ve written together with the renowned business coach, Charles Holland.

General: Tools and Resources

Some of the links below are extremely useful. Most are free, and the sooner you know about them the better!

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Tools & Resources In Brief Google Authorship Essential not only as a social network but also as a Google ranking boost Google Calendar Plan and share your appointments Mozilla Lightbeam Works with Firefox only, and shows you who’s tracking YOU online! Dragon Dictation This allows you to convert your voice recording into written text! Just don’t forget to edit it afterwards Domainsbot Site name ideas BustaName Site name ideas Total Commander Windows Explorer replacement, viewer and FTP client all rolled into one PSD2HTML Convert your PSD designs to high quality, cross- browser compatible, valid XHTML / CSS markup. Lean Domain Search Site name ideas Impossibility Site name ideas Coachtip Good advice and other resources FileZilla The world’s leading FTP client DomainR Site name ideas OfferVault -

General: Hosting

There are loads of good hosting companies, some more expensive some cheaper, some specializing in very specific types of hosting. The hosting company I use most often is HostGator, but the list below will show you many good alternatives. Whatever you do, DON’T go for hosts who don’t offer cPanel (like GoDaddy, who should just stick to domain sales!). It will make your life a lot easier!

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Hosting In Brief Web.com A popular hosting solution HostGator Probably the most popular host on the web BlueHost Possibly the second most popular host iPage A popular hosting solution Network Solutions A popular hosting solution HostMonster A popular hosting solution JustHost A popular hosting solution WP Engine Another excellent large-project host LiquidWeb Great host for larger projects NetFirms A popular hosting solution iPower A popular hosting solution Webhosting Hub A popular hosting solution Dotster A popular hosting solution StartLogic A popular hosting solution Dot5Hosting A popular hosting solution eHost A popular hosting solution PureHost A popular hosting solution EntryHost A popular hosting solution

At this stage, it’s probably a good idea for you to consult a couple of additional resources I’ve provided for Full Crusher Course members. The first one is called “Web Hosting Explained“ (available through this link or via your Member’s Area). It’s a step-by-step instruction video about web hosting, plus a web page with more info. The second one is the “cPanel Instruction Course“, which contains 24 short step-by-step instruction videos for you, if you like to get deeper into understanding your site’s back-end.

NOTE: All “Full Crusher Course” resources are intended for you if you like to go “deeper”, but in the vast majority of cases sufficient basic concepts are covered

Page 203 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business within the main course.

General: Domain Registrars

When purchasing your domain name, you need to visit a “domain registrar”. While many hosting companies (and not only) also dabble with selling domain names, I recommend you go to specialists like NameCheap. The reason is simple: if your domain is registered with a stable and dedicated company, chances are minimal that they’ll go out of business any time soon, leaving you high and dry. Another reason: they usually offer the best support, rates and terms!

Domain Registrars In Brief GoDaddy World-standard domain registrar NameCheap Great domain registrar (cheap and reliable). RECOMMENDED. Name.com A popular domain registrar ResellerClub A popular domain registrar Register A popular domain registrar Domain A popular domain registrar Moniker A popular domain registrar InternetBS.net A popular domain registrar HostWay A popular domain registrar NameStation Get people to help you come up with names for your site OnlineNic A popular domain registrar DomainSite A popular domain registrar FXDomains A popular domain registrar Netfirms.ca A popular domain registrar

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Gandi A popular domain registrar MadDog A popular domain registrar YahooDomains A popular domain registrar ResellOne A popular domain registrar

General: Site Monitoring

Once your site is up and running, and indeed even before – when you’re researching your competition, etc – it’s a good idea to get into the habit of monitoring everything. The classic solution is to run everything through Google Analytics, but there are more options, some of which are easier to understand and use than GA. This said, Google Analytics should ALWAYS be used, regardless of what type of site you’ve going to be building.

Here are some of the best and easiest tools to help you with monitoring. There’s many more, of course, but these are the ones I use regularly.

Site Monitoring In Brief Google Analytics Site usage statistics Google Webmaster Tools Essential monitoring and diagnostics for your site SEMRush Which keywords send your competitors the most traffic? Alexa Global site rank as well as broad demographic info Quantcast Superb demographic research of all major (and registered) sites SEO Quake Browser plugin which helps you see lots of important statistical details about the sites you visit or query

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General: Web Search

Most people only ever use Google Search. But there’s more to life than that! I’m now using StartPage more and more. While they use Google for all their searches, they do not store ANY cookies or browsing data, i.e. all your searching remains private. Not that I have anything to hide, but I also like my privacy!

Apart from that, you’ll find that the other search engines come up with sometimes diametrically DIFFERENT results! When researching any topic, I strongly recommend using the same search keywords on different engines – you’ll find the best cross-section of articles, sites and resources that way, making your research on just about any subject that much more comprehensive.

Web Search In Brief Google Search The world’s #1 search engine, hardly needs any introduction. Yahoo The second largest search engine, albeit tiny by comparison to Google, still very useful in many areas. Bing The world’s #3 search engine, formerly known as MSN – still has plenty of uses so don’t discard it in your research. Ask A popular alternative to Google AOL Search A popular alternative to Google MyWebSearch A popular alternative to Google WebCrawler A popular alternative to Google DuckDuckGo A popular alternative to Google Wow A popular alternative to Google InfoSpace A popular alternative to Google Info A popular alternative to Google

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Dogpile A popular alternative to Google StartPage Highly recommended. Same as Google but without the snooping! Webopedia A popular alternative to Google Blekko A popular alternative to Google Contenko A popular alternative to Google Alhea A popular alternative to Google Mahalo A popular alternative to Google Yippy A popular alternative to Google

General: Turnkey Websites

Throughout this course I do NOT recommend that you use any of the “turnkey” systems you see so much of on the web and even advertised on TV. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re generally not powerful or flexible enough in the long run. So, their early convenience will come at a price further down the line.

Still, in fairness to you, here’s a list of some of the best turnkey solutions for you to at least be familiar with.

After that, I recommend you skip all of them and go straight for the self-hosted Wordpress solution, as recommended throughout this course.

Turnkey Websites In Brief Wix - Weebly - 1&1 - NetworkSolutions - Homestead - Web.com - FatCow - Bandzoogle band website platform

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BuildYourSite -

At this point here are two additional BONUS resources for you: “Website Templates“, which contains over 700 landing page templates ready for you to modify and use - and “Your Graphics Library“ with hundreds of downloadable files in ZIP format.

The purpose of these materials is not only to give you more do-it-yourself options but also for you to be able to quickly be able to add ready-made elements to your site, be it Wordpress or anything else you may have opted for. And when you get to creating special-purpose landing pages and the like, these resources will come very handy indeed.

General: Wordpress and Related

Below, you’ll find only a tiny selection of Wordpress-related links - primarily the best plugins which I use myself, and also one or two theme suppliers. Additionally, the links to the two major Wordpress platforms: the self-hosted one (.ORG) and the publicly hosted and free (.COM).

You should NOT use the .com Wordpress for building your site. You SHOULD be a member of the Wordpress.com social network and have a basic presence there, but NOT your main site.

You want to have full control of everything and a public solution like this will never quite give you that. Follow the course instructions for how to do this quickly and easily. Also, keep in mind that Googling “Wordpress plugins” or “Wordpress themes” will give you millions more links. But start with the ones below:

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Wordpress & Related In Brief Wordpress COM Important to sign up to as a social network, but to build your own site, we recommend a self-hosted solution Wordpress ORG Self-hosted Wordpress (recommended), The world’s leading sit building platform Akismet Helps to protect you from comment spam. All-In-One Favicon Easily edit your Favicon Broken Link Checker Just as the name says: an essential tool Contextual Related Posts Automatically create internal links on your site Digg Digg An excellent social sharing plugin Disqus The best comment management system around Facebook Comments Allows Facebook users to more easily comment on your blog Facebook Like - Fast Secure Contact Form Highly customizable contact form Feedburner Plugin Manage all your feeds through Feedburner GD Press Tools - Google Analyticator Manage Google Analytics the easy way Google Analytics for Monitor your site popularity daily Wordpress Google XML Sitemaps Help the search engines index your site correctly. NextScripts Social Networks Automatically alert your social accounts Auto-Poster PrettyLink Lite Cloak your affiliate and other links and monitor them Simple CAPTCHA Additional anti-spam protection, particularly for online forms Subscribe to Comments A great way to quietly build a list Reloaded Thank Me Later Thank your commenters automatically TinyMCE Advanced A handy expansion of basic Wordpress functionality

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W3 Total Cache Speed up your Wordpress site Wassup Real-time Aanlytics See who’s visiting your site, in real time Wordfence Security Protect your asset Wordpress Editorial Plan your article launches Calendar Wordpress Stats Like the Analyticator but even more powerful WP Realtime Sitemap - WP Super Cache A great way to speed your site up Yoast SEO The best SEO plugin for Wordpress, bar none. WP Duplicate Content Cure If you outsource article writing, this tool will be very useful to you PopUpDomination Manages pop up ads for you Welcome Gate Huge opt-in boost ThemeForrest -

At this point, if you’re a Full Crusher Course member, it might make sense for you to learn Wordpress more in-depth.

I have thus provided you with a great “Wordpress Course“, which is a set of 13 step-by-step instruction videos designed for beginners who just want to know all the most important basics, and see someone show you everything on the screen.

While Wordpress is very intuitive and easy, it still makes sense to at least watch these videos because they’ll cut down your learning time very considerably.

General: Cloud Storage and Streaming

If/when your site becomes very popular, you will want to consider connecting it to a more efficient storage (for music, videos and any other bandwidth-sucking media). Here are some of the most popular choices in that regard:

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Cloud Storage & In Brief Streaming Amazon S3 Amazon’s cloud hosting for your videos DropBox Good cloud storage site Box Good cloud storage site GrooveShark Good cloud storage site, especially for musicians MyPCBackup Good cloud storage site JustCloud Good cloud storage site SugarSync Good cloud storage site Mozy Good cloud storage site Indie Shuffle Music streaming CrashPlan Good cloud storage site ZipCloud Good cloud storage site BackupGenie Good cloud storage site Radio Reddit Music streaming Indie Rock Café Music streaming SOS Good cloud storage site

General: Ad Trackers

When running your site, it’s a good idea to know everything you can about how well the individual pages perform (in terms of visits, conversions, etc), be they your regular blog pages or dedicated promotional ones. Whether you’re generating your traffic through organic or paid sources – especially when you’re paying for it – you NEED to know. So here are some very useful “ad trackers” (they don’t just track “ads” of course) for you to consider:

Ad Trackers In Brief Hypertracker An excellent ad tracker (I use this one) AdMinder Great ad tracker

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AdWatcher Another ad tracker AdTrackZ Top ad tracker Click/Counter Tracker Top ad tracker ProAnalyzer Another ad tracker ezTrackZ Another ad tracker LinkTrack Great ad tracker ClickAnalyzer Another ad tracker Dynatracker Another ad tracker GoToProduct Another ad tracker KaizenTrack Another ad tracker

General: Autoresponders

The most fundamental aspect of your entire online business experience is your ability to develop a relationship with your visitors. You do this in many ways (all described within this course), and the one thing that they all have in common is that they rely on what is known as “the list”. That’s a list of people who are your members, i.e. either your fans, prospects or customers.

While there are many ways to build and manage a list, you really can’t do this RIGHT without a dedicated tool like an “autoresponder”. Here are some of the most popular ones for you to consider:

Autoresponders In Brief aWeber The world’s leading autoresponder service with the highest deliverability rate (I use this one) MailChimp Great autoresponder ConstantContact Great autoresponder InfusionSoft Great autoresponder GetResponse Another good autoresponder

Page 212 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business iContact Great autoresponder Campaign Monitor Another good autoresponder Office Autopilot Another good autoresponder AWProTools Further enhance aWeber’s already superb functionality AddressTwo Great autoresponder Autoresponse Plus Another good autoresponder OneClickTool Automatically adds your webinar participants to your aWeber list

If you’re a Full Crusher Course member, here are a few additional resources for you. The first on is “Autoresponder Basics“, a set of five step-by-step instruction videos. Next, you’ll do well to read up some more and to watch “Funnel Mastery” – another set of five step-by-step instruction videos and a PDF eBook. Then, consider watching the “List Building Guide“ which contains 11 step-by-step instruction videos. Finally, to give you just about “all” you need to know about this subject, check out “Optin List Mastery Course“, a 5-video step-by-step instruction course, along with two PDF eBooks. Did I mention that this is a very comprehensive and HUGE course…? :)

General: Payment Processors and Membership Systems

Another indispensable thing or two you must have is a payment processor and a member management system. While autoresponders manage your LIST, it’s not quite the same as managing your members’ access, transactions, affiliate fees, and so on. The systems below do that and more.

Payment/Member In Brief Systems PayPal The indispensable payment processor InfusionSoft Another good autoresponder, shopping cart and

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membership management program JVZoo Product marketplace and payment processor Nanacast Another good one Tips&Tricks eStore Another good one, very easy to use 1ShoppingCart Another good autoresponder, shopping cart and membership management program DigiResults Another good one Digital Product Delivery Another good one TipsAndTricksHQ Simple and inexpensive but powerful member management and affiliate management solutions

Since PayPal is a fundamental service you simply “must” have, I have provided a few additional resources for Full Crusher Course members. Among them is the ”PayPal User’s Guide“, which is just a web page in your member’s area, and another is “PayPal SandBox Tutorial“ which is a 4-video step-by-step instruction for how to test your PayPal (particularly important if you don’t have one of the above member management programs, most of which help you manage PayPal without the need of getting down and dirty!). I also thought it would be a good idea to, at this point, provide you with a “Membership Resources and Course“. This consists of two video sub-courses, one in 4 parts, the other in 10 parts - plus a technical analysis of many of the most popular membership programs.

General: Audio/Video Tools

While everyone doing any kind of business or promotions online can benefit from audio and video, for musicians and artists this is simply a must.

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While you may already have good tools for this, here are some of the most affordable options for you (including some free ones too):

Audio/Video Tools In Brief Windows Movie Maker Free alternative for video production, PC iMovie Free alternative for video production, Mac Audacity Free program which allows you to record your voice Camtasia Studio Super easy video editor for beginners. The most popular video program online (use ScreenFlow if you’re on the Mac) Wistia Host and create your videos then analyze their usage. Superb tool ScreenFlow - Easy Video Suite A superb program for all your video creation and marketing needs. Great for beginners, but also very useful for most advanced users Audio Acrobat Create and broadcast on-demand audio and video

If you’re a Full Crusher Course member, it may be a good idea for you now to consider the attached “Video Marketing Course” – a 21-vide step-by-step instruction and a PDF eBook as well as a video marketing article pack. Also, a BONUS for everyone: “Video Networks“, a web page with more links, accessible from within your Member’s Area.

Music: Music Production

For those of you interested in music production, it’s a very good idea to follow at least some of the sites and resources below:

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Music Production In Brief GearSlutz - Home Recording - KVR Audio - SoundOnSound - Studio Central -

General: Content

Content development is one of the lifelines of your online business. You simply can not succeed without it. The links below include sites which are great for content research, as well as sites where you can promote your content as well, or find people who can help you develop it for you.

Content In Brief Yahoo! Contributor Network Great content site About Great content site eHoe Great content site Topsy.com Great for content IDEAS and discovering influencers in the various niches) Sponsored Reviews Great content site Digital Journal Great content site Epinions Great content site Triond Great content site Demand Media Great content site Constant Content Great content site ContentBlvd Great content site Bukisa Great content site Wizzley Great content site

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Xomba Great content site Blogging Great content site ContentGems A great place for finding and sharing content Helium Great content site Zujava Great content site Article Teller Great content site Content Row Great content site

Written content – actually, ANY kind of content – is inextricably linked to SEO. If you write your content without considering a few simple “tricks” for how the search engines will see it, you’re potentially undermining your entire online effort.

With this in mind, if you’re a Full Crusher Course member, I provided a few additional resources, which include “SEO Tips“ a useful PDF eBook; then another eBook which has been written about a system I developed a couple of years ago, called SEOlater, “Site Optimization Guide“. Next, I enclosed “Google Basics“ a 15-vide step-by-step instruction set and a PDF eBook covering many aspects of Google’s tools, services and networks. Finally, I also attach a BONUS page for everyone, with more eBook and Writing Networks.

Music: Music Reviews

Getting your music reviewed is KEY – not only because more fans can learn about it, but also – critically – because it’s extremely useful in SEO terms. For this reason, no music business course would be complete without a list of a bunch of great music review resources:

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Music Reviews In Brief Organ Art Organ Magazine Organart is the home of a constantly updated alternative, rock, heavy metal, punk, indie, hardcore, progressive, psychedelic, pop rock music zine as well a source of alternative music news and the home of org records. Well worth a visit :) Pitchfork Media Pitchfork is a website dedicated to music and the discussion thereof. Parx-E Parx-e Web Zine friendly site eZine that will give you a Band Review The Mag The Mag an unsigned and independent music Magazine. A good place for reviews. Club Knowledge clubknowledge create an "interview" for your Website. Toxic Pete Toxic Pete "unbiased and constructive music reviews from a lover of all things musical". That's what he says and it's true. BlabNow Album Reviews, Music Industry Commentary and New Singles Roundup blog Losing Today LOSINGTODAY Indie Music Magazine.

Music: Music Submissions

It’s one of those things artists do regularly: submit their best music for consideration for various “opportunities” – film, ads, covers, etc.

A number of music sites provide this service, chief among them being Taxi and Music Xray. But they’re by no means the only ones and if you submit your work anywhere, you should at least consider many of the others:

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Music Submissions In Brief Taxi Taxi is probably the largest and most popular premium song submission service. Music X-Ray This is one of the most dynamic and popular music resource sites on the web today, and they also provide regular placement opportunities. It’s a must-have in terms of signing up there. BroadJam offers an 'opportunities' service for $5-$10 per sbmission depending on what type a paid account you have a broadjam member to enter opportunities. sign up today. you'll also get other services designed to help independent musicians like you, promote themselves. Music Loops Our site where you can submit a demo. No fees to join. Price your own tracks, lots of sales, with 50% of the price goes to the composer. YouLicense direct job opportunities are available here Artist PR - Music Dealers A new site where you can upload and create a profile and the people at music dealers pitch your tracks to potential clients. Pump Audio There is no submission fee. If your music is not used, you lose nothing. You will receive 50% of the license fees we receive for your music. Pump's deal is completely non-exclusive. Our deal will never prevent you from working with anyone else. Film Music Paid monthly subscription to submit music to be considered. Immediate Access to our Film/TV Music Jobs Database. Access to Film Music Network Live! 24 hr/day streaming audio of Film Music Network events. Immediate Access to our Film & TV Music Salary & Rate Survey. Full benefits and discounts at all

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participating Film Music Network Vendor Partners. SoundReef Swap music for promotion? Not sure what that means but worth investigating. Radio Submit - StudentFilms Jobs posted for composers and composer submitting their resumes and profiles. Free to register. Lots of posts like 'Composer Needed' and 'Composer Available'. Music Gorilla - Indie Music Business - Minimum Noise A new site with all kinds of projects for "crowdsourcing musicians". The Composers Collective The Composer Collective is comprised of cinematic composers dedicated to creating dramatic scores of the highest quality for film, television, interactive and commercial media. We group composers into innovative and productive workforces, giving the film industry a much-needed resource for intelligent music at never-before-seen productivity levels. This service is known as TeamScore™. Choosing TeamScore™ puts you on the front lines of the film business as it changes and adapts rapidly to the demands of distributors and consumers worldwide. Humtoo A global meeting place for music makers and content creators. This site is pretty cool as it is free to signup and submit your music to videos and project descriptions. Feature Sounds - JestSet Sound -

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General: Crowd Funding

While I generally prefer self-funding to reliance on outside help, I do understand that it can sometimes be quite impossible to get the show off the ground without at least some assistance. So, rather than looking for individual “angel investors,” here are some popular “crowd funding” alternatives. Just remember that you need to have a solid plan for any of this to work (see the main course for much more on this).

Crowd Funding In Brief Invested.in Popular crowd-funding site Kickstarter Possibly the best crowd-funding site IndieGoGo Popular crowd-funding site GoFundMe Popular crowd-funding site Quirky Popular crowd-funding site CrowdRise Popular crowd-funding site PledgeMusic Popular crowd-funding site, particularly for musicians Razoo Popular crowd-funding site CrowdFunder Popular crowd-funding site RocketHub Popular crowd-funding site AppBackr Popular crowd-funding site PeerBackers Popular crowd-funding site SellaBand Popular crowd-funding site, particularly for musicians SomoLend Popular crowd-funding site ThePoint Popular crowd-funding site, can do conditional pledges AngelList Popular crowd-funding site

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General: Major Social Networks

Taking part in social networks is no longer an “option”. It’s a must, particularly for artists wishing to promote their music and building their fan base.

I selected the “major” networks below not only basing on their massive popularity but also with mind to their utility as “traffic-getters”. Hence, alongside the obvious ones like YouTube or Facebook, you’ll see the slightly surprising “PlentyOfFish” (a dating network). Why? Simply because this and other such networks provide you with access to highly segmented demographics where you can promote to sub-sub-niches with laser precision.

Major Social Networks In Brief Google Plus - Facebook Major social network YouTube YouTube share your videos with fans, friends and family. The most important social site for an independent artist. Twitter You have 140 characters to tell the world what you're about, what is on your mind or where your next show is going to be LinkedIn Major social business network Pinterest Major social network Instagram Share pictures PlentyOfFish Dating network, excellent for traffic targeting

These are only the “majors”. Many more hugely influential networks below. But first, I felt you might want to go a little deeper into some of the big guns, most specifically from the point of view of paid promotions. And so, for the Full Crusher Course members, there’s the “Facebook Mastery“, a 33-video step-

Page 222 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business by-step instruction course, as well as “AdWords Mastery“ a 10-video step-by- step course and PDF eBook crucial for promoting not only on Google but beyond as well. Finally, I though this would also be a good time for you to have a look at how you can use the web to conduct local promotions – and with that in mind, check out the “Local market domination“ which is a 10-video step- by-step instruction course dealing with just that.

Music: Social Networks

Joining social networks, creating profiles on them (very important for SEO) is just one of the things you do once you decide to build and online business. The extra reach that this allows you can be invaluable. The relatively minor effort of creating accounts (which can be automated and/or outsourced) is easily offset by both the SEO benefits as well as the simple fact that with each account you’re potentially increasing your audience and its access to your work. While I don’t advocate signing up to “all” of these networks, many of the ones listed below are really VERY important for artists to be a part of. You decide which ones:

Music Social Networks In Brief Apple Ping Ping Apple’s Ping network is like Facebook for iTunes, where you can follow artists and your friends to get new music recommendations and find out what your favorite musicians are up to. Simply “Follow” an artist to get their news updates, and find out what music they’re listening to at the moment. You can add posts to their profiles, or “Like” or comment on their posts (see, we told you it was like Facebook). The same goes for friends: follow their profile, view their music suggestions and post on their wall. As the service runs through the iTunes software, you can also access it

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through the iTunes apps on iDevices. Channel 4 Music Channel 4 Music - actually, I don't think one can create a profile anymore! Mix Cloud - 8Tracks 8 tracks dares you to tell us what kind of mood you're in using only 8 tracks. MixCloud - HulkShare - Eventful If you have an event, post it here and people will find you BuzzNet is a social media music network where users can share content through profiles or messages. Buzznet is categorized by Music News, Photos, Galleries, Videos, Community, Artists, and Contests. Buzznet is a music, fashion and entertainment news website that hosts user-generated content. Readers vote for the favorite stories, which then become “Buzzworthy”. You can “like” and comment on other people’s news stories, and submit your own photos, videos, links, polls and blog posts. Users can also create their own groups, which act as forums. eMusic - FanBridge Mailing list that connects bands with their fans and even offers them deals for being members Midomi Midomi is a music search engine tool that is powered by your voice. You can sing, hum, or whistle a song and your performance will be added to a database. After singing and recording a song online, the end result can be sent to friends and other Midomi users. Midomi sells full albums and individual tracks. Midomi is a network that makes it easy to discover new music and

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people. The cool thing is that you can search for music by singing or humming part of a song. All you need is a microphone and you will be able to connect to your favorite music, and to a community of people that share your musical interests. You can listen to other member’s voices, see pictures, rate singers, send messages and also buy music. Kompoz Team up with other musicians both on and offline GoGo Yoko is a music social network that has the ability to stream and share music. Music players can be customized. Artists can set the price of the music and they also get 100% of the profit. Gogoyoko is more of a social marketplace than a social network, but it’s a great way to stream music free online, and buy tracks straight from artists, without lining record companies’ pockets in the process. You can store purchased tracks on your Gogoyoko profile, or download them to your desktop or a device. Artists get full control over what they charge for their music on the site, and they get 100% of the profit from sold tracks, plus revenue from streaming too. Follow your favorite artists, leave comments on their profiles and connect with other people who share your taste in music. TwitMusic An extension of Twitter specifically geared towards musical acts Sell A Band is a music social network where artists can request fans to help fund a music project. You can choose to withdraw the money in between the time of the fund raising efforts up until the Target Budget is reached. Listening to music and browsing the website is free. Currently a Public Enemy rap album is being funded

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(Flava Flav’s band). Sellaband is a music social network that turns the fans and listeners of bands into their producers, asking them to invest in a band or artist they support so that they will be able to get a recording opportunity. Every single investor that supports a successful band will take home a small cut of the profits made by them. Artists not only get financial support but also share 50% of the ad revenue coming from the free downloads of their music. Internet DJ is an electronic music social network and forum. Other features include event information news, charts, a DJ database, and MP3 downloads. InternetDJ is a community for fans of electronic music. It’s a platform for people to listen to others’ tracks, find fellow musicians for collaboration, and share their own music with the general public. Artists can post their music for other members to rate and review, and the website has its own charts based on what people are listening to. As well as hosting a variety of electronic music, the website has its own blog, and a user message board. QuarterLife is a medium-sized music social network that has show information, a My Studio section, Events, Groups, Chat, classifieds, etc. AloneTone - Dope Tracks Hip-Hop/Rap based forum where atrists can join forces musically A New Band a Day - AAMPP - JamGlue allows artists to upload music and get attention for upcoming releases. Artists can also build a remix contest campaign around their music. Fans can remix

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tracks through JamGlue. CatchMyWorld - Mint Music - HayStack Haystack is a social network centered around people who want to find music through friends and taste makers. You can browse music, pictures, videos and reviews of artists as well as build your own profile and personalize it with images and videos (you can even add them from YouTube). Artists are welcome to sign up directly or through their manager or their label. SoundSwift - Talent Com Media - Flotones is small music social network that shares revenue with indie artists. You can browse digital songs, ringtones, music blogs, albums, artists, and mobile wallpapers on the website. MusoCity is a music social network where music fans, artists, and retailers can connect to each other. Indie artists can also add MP3s to the website. MusoCity is a music- oriented social network. It provides accounts specifically designed for music fans, artists, musicians, music retailers and music venues. MusoCity is completely free to join and you can start browsing members profiles to make friends, discovering new artists, getting in touch with musicians in your area and finding events and music stores near you. Blissic - The Indie Place - Hear The Indie - Share The Music is a website that hosts over 60,000 songs and acts as the middleman for people that want to share music.

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The service works in about seven different languages. Datiff - Immitter - Yibster is a smaller music social network that has albums, videos, musician profiles, games, events, etc. Profiles can be customized similarly to MySpace layouts. OurWave Each band and or artist gets their 15 minutes of fame with OurWave, they are able to use this site as a promotion tool by posting their music and announce upcoming shows JamNow JamNow is a social network aimed at musicians that allows them to create audio content online in realtime. JamNow isn't a site that simply makes you “post and listen” to audio content: its platform enables realtime music collaboration and lets you schedule live jam sessions and listen to musicians that are playing right in that moment. Radio 2.0 mercora radio / a social network with an integrated free music listening service (that sustains itself through contextual music-centered ads), as well as a personal- webcasting platform. Mercora Radio 2.0 will search your hard disk for all the music tracks you have legally acquired and then you are ready to broadcast your own music library to the world. Each radio station has multiple channels and each DJ can also create his own playlists. iJigg is a music social network where users can submit and rate music. After uploading music, you can embed it into your Facebook profile or blog. iJigg is a online community that lets you comment on music and share songs. You can rate music and influence what becomes

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popular, as well as upload your own music to share it with the community and make new fans. You will need to decide whether to open a “listener” or “artist” account, which will give you access to different features (e.g. listeners can download free mp3 of their favorite music, while artists can upload their own music). Amie Street is an independent music download website where indie artists can sell their music and share revenue with the music social network. The community decides the price of the music based on the popularity. The more a song is download, the higher a price becomes. The top songs are sold for $0.98. Indababa Music is community of artists to mingle and make music together by recording tracks online. One of their featured programs is a remix content for a Weezer song May Contain Music is a small music social network that hosts music, event information, venue information, and videos. Flotones is a monetized social network for artists and their fans. The most interesting feature is the possibility to promote and distribute artist's content via mobile phones (such as ringtones and mobile wallpapers). After you register and add your content, you'll be able to promote your mobile content at your shows, on your website and on your MySpace profile. You'll be asked to sign a contract before getting paid. Nibi Mix - Sonific Sonific is a social network that offers a great way to promote your music, if you are an artist. It lets users put free music widgets with your music on their sites and promote it to their own audiences, for free. In

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exchange, Sonific users get free music to use and listen to (download is not permitted) and make their site look cooler - while you get free advertising for your music.

General: Social Networks and Bookmarking Networks

So what’s the point of providing you with all those links? Simple: you NEED to have accounts with many of them in order to boost your online profile. Some of these networks will require that you actively take part in them, while others don’t appear to care. Be that as it may, you still want to have your profiles established there, complete with links to your home site, offers and whatever else you decide. Now, while you “can” create profiles on all these networks by yourself, that would be a very boring and a time-consuming thing to do. A better option is to outsource this to someone, e.g. on Fiverr or any other freelance site. Anyway – here’s a list of some of the biggest and most important social networks (apart from the “majors” discussed above) and social bookmarking sites:

Social Net's & In Brief Bookmarking Google Bookmarks Major social network and bookmarking site Yahoo! My Web Major social network and bookmarking site. One button click adds your bookmarks to the search engine giants system, features duplicate detection to help you keep your bookmarks tidy Tumblr Important social network and bookmarking site AOL Lifestream Major social network and bookmarking site StumbleUpon - Mashable A great social bookmarking site & more Tagged Important social network and bookmarking site

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Digg Major social network and bookmarking site HubPages Major social network and bookmarking site Scoop.it A great way to discover interesting content Squidoo Major social network and bookmarking site. Lets you "channel surf" the Internet and review sites; it learns what you like and recommends more of the same Hi5 Major social network and bookmarking site Delicious Major social network and bookmarking site Slashdot Important social network and bookmarking site Ebaum's World Important social network and bookmarking site FriendFeed Major social network and bookmarking site Plurk Major social network and bookmarking site Technorati Technorati Add tags to your blog posts so sites like Technorati detect and list your tags. :) Diigo Major social network and bookmarking site. Highlight portions of a page, write on it like you would a piece of paper, share with your group, and search all publicly saved pages Folkd Major social network and bookmarking site Fark Important social network and bookmarking site Metafilter Important social network and bookmarking site AllVoices Important social network and bookmarking site NewsVine Important social network and bookmarking site BizSugar Important social network and bookmarking site BlinkList Important social network and bookmarking site Sonico Important social network and bookmarking site YouMob Important social network and bookmarking site DesignFloat Important social network and bookmarking site URL Important social network and bookmarking site News Me Back Important social network and bookmarking site Bookmark4You Important social network and bookmarking site

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Indofeed Important social network and bookmarking site Dropjack Important social network and bookmarking site LinkaGoGo Major social network and bookmarking site GiveALink Important social network and bookmarking site. Donate your bookmarks to this site to help them recommend sites and get a better understanding of how each person bookmarks. BuddyMarks Important social network and bookmarking site. Store your bookmarks online, share some or all of them, discover new sites to visit by searching the public bookmark area. Yemle Important social network and bookmarking site Social-Bookmarking Important social network and bookmarking site Linksprocket Important social network and bookmarking site Kaboodle Major social network and bookmarking site FWisp Important social network and bookmarking site Jumptags Major social network and bookmarking site Postolia Important social network and bookmarking site SiteJot Important social network and bookmarking site Acymca Important social network and bookmarking site 1 Look 4 Important social network and bookmarking site A1 Webmarks Important social network and bookmarking site Softsblog Important social network and bookmarking site StartAid Important social network and bookmarking site Diggita Important social network and bookmarking site DesignBump Important social network and bookmarking site Mister-Wong.com Important social network and bookmarking site. Bookmark and tag, search for tags that interest you, make buddies with people who have interesting saved sites. MyHQ Important social network and bookmarking site

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NetVouz Important social network and bookmarking site. Save your bookmarks in folders, tag them with keywords, share them with others or password protect them. Salisbury Woodworks Important social network and bookmarking site CloudyTags Important social network and bookmarking site Bruher Important social network and bookmarking site Bookmax Important social network and bookmarking site BlogMarks Important social network and bookmarking site. Save your bookmarks, tag them with keywords for easy searching amongst your list, share with others. Uppernodd Project Important social network and bookmarking site Pusha Important social network and bookmarking site Youdoze Important social network and bookmarking site Spider Robot Important social network and bookmarking site OYAX Important social network and bookmarking site Murl Important social network and bookmarking site Alplist Important social network and bookmarking site NautiDarcos Important social network and bookmarking site SpicyPage Important social network and bookmarking site Siland Memoirs Important social network and bookmarking site iKeep Bookmarks Important social network and bookmarking site. Folders, search folder names and more. BlogosphereNews Important social network and bookmarking site DotNetKicks Important social network and bookmarking site SheToldMe Important social network and bookmarking site Edictos Online Important social network and bookmarking site Efprof Important social network and bookmarking site Look At That Important social network and bookmarking site Golden Midas Important social network and bookmarking site Colivia Important social network and bookmarking site DesignMoo Important social network and bookmarking site

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Klicknews Important social network and bookmarking site Connotea Important social network and bookmarking site. A themed social bookmarking site specifically for researchers, clinicians and scientists. Dizzed Important social network and bookmarking site TattooEgo Important social network and bookmarking site Bluedot.us Important social network and bookmarking site. Tabbed user page showing a network of friends, bookmarks, and related tags. Allows you to import contacts from all the major mail services such as GMail and Yahoo. Easy Info Important social network and bookmarking site WireFan Important social network and bookmarking site Keeeper Important social network and bookmarking site Redrezo Important social network and bookmarking site Lilisto Important social network and bookmarking site. Ratings, notes, categories, smart categories and in- page editing. Club Elorigen Important social network and bookmarking site Xuefu Sports Important social network and bookmarking site BmAccess Important social network and bookmarking site. Bookmark a site, add tags, when you look up a tag, you get the names and a little thumbnail image of the site along with it. Eshop Tong Important social network and bookmarking site Talk Radio Forums Important social network and bookmarking site Farkinda Important social network and bookmarking site Scalene Design Important social network and bookmarking site ParkBos Important social network and bookmarking site Simple Better Important social network and bookmarking site MyBookmarks Important social network and bookmarking site

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EasyBM Important social network and bookmarking site Call Justice Important social network and bookmarking site Backflip Important social network and bookmarking site. Check out the most popular links each day, set "The Daily Routine" as your homepage so you can visit your must stop sites each day with ease. j4ak Important social network and bookmarking site Ruils Important social network and bookmarking site Bookmark Favoriten Important social network and bookmarking site Favoor Important social network and bookmarking site Linkroll Important social network and bookmarking site. Links open in new window, subscribe to tags, browse by archives. Wikio Important social network and bookmarking site Blummy Important social network and bookmarking site Mesh Link Sharing Important social network and bookmarking site Ambedo Important social network and bookmarking site Bildu Important social network and bookmarking site AllMyFavorites Important social network and bookmarking site. Create an organized page for your bookmarks that you can share with friends and family, access from any computer. Diggma Important social network and bookmarking site AllConsuming Important social network and bookmarking site Clickets Important social network and bookmarking site Ma.gnolia.com Important social network and bookmarking site. Discuss all the saved bookmarks in groups, see what the Featured Linker is all about, join discussions in the Hot Group. Chipmark.com Important social network and bookmarking site. Browse random "chipmarks", share them, sort, filter,

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and get personal recommendations. Unalog Important social network and bookmarking site. A basic social bookmarking site, but with the ability to look back at specific days and see what was going on. ScoopItNZ Important social network and bookmarking site Xilinus Important social network and bookmarking site. Tags, rating, search, public & private listing, drag-and-drop sorting. Feedmelinks Important social network and bookmarking site. All the usual social bookmarking goodies, but you can also add links via email. i89.us Important social network and bookmarking site. Export to several formats, see popular & recent bookmarks, ability to shorten URLs. Bibsonomy Major social network and bookmarking site. Public & private bookmarks, tag cloud, related tags, duplicate detection with the chance to merge their info Shadows.com Important social network and bookmarking site. Share your already existing bookmarks, discuss and rate sites and see what you can find. Hyperlinkomatic Important social network and bookmarking site. Import/export, categories, notes, sharing, block users, RSS, tags. Nextaris Important social network and bookmarking site. Folders, tags, clippings; store up to 100MB for free. Excites Important social network and bookmarking site. Organize your bookmarks by tags, add comments and notes, share publicly, subscribe to certain tags so you can be notified when a new site is added that may interest you. SocialBookmarking Important social network and bookmarking site. User

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and global tag cloud, blogs, social networking, avatars and more. BlinkPro Important social network and bookmarking site. Dynamic folders, bookmark all links of a page plus all the usual features. Connectbeam Important social network and bookmarking site. 10MB of file storage, public & private sharing, tag cloud, popular feeds and more. BoingBoing - Connectedy Important social network and bookmarking site. Import your bookmarks, batch edit them, check in on hot topics. GetBoo Important social network and bookmarking site. Export your folders to HTML, import and remove duplicates, delete all bookmarks.

At this point, you may want to go a little deeper into this whole bookmarking thing, so for Full Crusher Course members, I provide the “Bookmarking Expertise“ tutorial, which consists of 12 step-by-step instruction videos and a PDF eBook.

General: Social Promotion Tools

Getting Wordpress plugins or freelancers to actively promote things for you is one thing, but another (complementary) way is to use dedicated tools that integrate with your site and (for a small fee) do most of your promotions for you. Here’s only a small handful of the most important ones (the ones I use myself for my various projects):

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Social Promotions In Brief SocialMonkee Automated social bookmarking services OnlyWire Automated social bookmarking services TrafficGeyser Automated video and social submissions

At this point, the Full Crusher Course members may want to check out the “Social Basics“ course which includes two PDF eBooks plus web page in your member’s area. Also I attach an extended BONUS list of “Social Networks“, available in everyone’s Member’s Area.

General: Hosted Ads

One of the easiest and most popular income-generation methods online is via hosted ads. The most popular solution here is AdSense (the little ads you see while searching as well as the almost inescapable ads so many sites have). But AdSense isn’t the only game in town, so this short collection of links is to show you at least a few alternatives.

Hosted Ads In Brief Google AdSense The most popular hosted ad service Amazon Associates Alternative to AdSense InfoLinks Alternative to AdSense Clicksor Alternative to AdSense BuySellAds Alternative to AdSense Chitika Alternative to AdSense Peerfly Alternative to AdSense Adversal Alternative to AdSense YesAdvertising Alternative to AdSense Kontera Alternative to AdSense TextLinkAds Alternative to AdSense

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At this point, our Full Crusher Course members may want to go even deeper, so I provided the “AdSense Mastery“ – a 6- video step-by-step course, complete with pre-selected niche and product ideas. I also attach the “Copywriting Basics“ resource which has lots of examples and explanations contained within files in ZIP format, available within your Member’s Area.

General: Product Marketplaces

When considering multiple income streams, it’s inevitable that you’ll be looking for products to promote. Below is a pretty big list of your available options!

Product Marketplaces In Brief Amazon The world's largest product marketplace eBay Great online marketplace Craigslist Great online marketplace and place classified ads Cqout.com Great online marketplace Etsy Great online marketplace WalMart Great online marketplace BestBuy Great online marketplace Clickbank Marketplace, and also a fully-fledged payment processor Commission Junction Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products NewEgg Great online marketplace Share-a-Sales Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products LinkShare Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products Sears Great online marketplace Overstock Great online marketplace Zazzle Great online marketplace to create, buy and sell products

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Flippa Great online marketplace to buy and sell websites Envato Great online marketplace Rakuten Great online marketplace Café Press Great online marketplace to create, buy and sell products iOffer Great online marketplace Bonanza Great online marketplace MarketHealth Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products Plimus Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products eCrater Great online marketplace Gumroad Great online marketplace MadBid Great online marketplace Ubid Great online marketplace WebStore Great online marketplace RapBank Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products AsSeenOnPC Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products BluJay Great online marketplace Affiliate Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products Online Auction Great online marketplace AtomicMall Great online marketplace EpicDirect Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products NeverBlue Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products UniqueLeads Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products WeBidz Great online marketplace eBid Great online marketplace Folio Great online marketplace WP Wizard Great online marketplace to buy and sell e-products

Affiliate marketing is one of the biggest money-earners online, so it’s fitting that we expand things a little bit at this stage. So, Full Crusher Course members can delve deeper with the “Affiliate Marketing Course”– a 7-video step-by- step course which also includes 17 PDF eBooks! Additionally, for those of you

Page 240 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business who are considering creating your own product (i.e. not just your music but also something to sell on the side), here’s the “Product Creation Workshop“ – a 7-video step-by-step course and a PDF eBook. Next, I thought it would be a good idea to show you how internet marketing products are launched on a popular forum known as “Warrior Forum” – not because you’ll ever be creating internet marketing products, but because the methods and launch considerations are very similar regardless of your niche or indeed your promotional platform. So for those of you interested in something like this, here’s the “WSO Product launch“ course which contains 11 step-by-step instruction videos. Finally, for everyone, here’s a BONUS page of even more Affiliate Links Resources which you can find in your Member’s Area.

General: Press Releases

One of the most important tools in your online arsenal will be promoting your music and events through press releases. Many of the resources below are free, but in all fairness the ones which work best cost a little bit. Still, you should consider them all. The list below only focuses on the biggest players:

Press Releases In Brief PR Web PRWeb Press Release Distribution for small business NME NME new musical express ..nuf said :) PressBox pressbox free press release distribution. HypeBot Instant music “news” at your fingertips Press Association PA Entertainment is at the heart of the media industry Mi2n Music industry news network (Mi2N) is an online music newswire with over 350 news releases and announcements per week from independents and majors

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SoSoActive What’s hot in the digital age is what SoSo is all about MusisDish MusicDish an e-journal that tackles the emerging issues facing the online music industry Diskant Diskant an independent music community based in Glasgow, Scotland KlubKat klubkat is a youth culture magazine dedicated to unsigned bands and music, world travel, entertainment and the arts

General: Q&A Sites

A hugely powerful way to promote yourself if by answering people’s questions on the so-called “answer sites” or “Q&A sites”. You probably already know the likes of Yahoo Answers – so here’s a bunch more.

How do you benefit from those sites? Well, after you register you create your profile and it has a link to your main site… And each time you answer someone’s question, your link appears under your answer benefiting your with extra exposure as well as SEO points! But be aware that not all Q&A networks allow you to so blatantly promote yourself – at least not initially. You must be seen as “impartial” and gather lots of points before they let you do that. Still, it’s very beneficial, so many people do this simply because it’s a heck of a good way to generate free traffic. Incidentally, the same exact method works equally well when you post your answers on forums and/or blogs. It’s just that the major Q&A sites usually have truly massive audiences. And massive audiences CAN mean massive exposure!

Q&A Sites In Brief Yahoo Answers - Reddit major social network and bookmarking site, incl great Q&A

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WikiHow A popular Q&A site eHow A popular Q&A site Friendfeed A popular Q&A site AnswerBag A popular Q&A site BlurtIt A popular Q&A site AskMeHelpDesk A popular Q&A site AllExperts A popular Q&A site Mahalo Answers A popular Q&A site FunAdvice A popular Q&A site Brightstorm Answers A popular Q&A site AskDeb A popular Q&A site AnybodyOutThere A popular Q&A site Cramster A popular Q&A site Askville A popular Q&A site Minti A popular Q&A site Answerly A popular Q&A site Able2Know A popular Q&A site AnswerBank A popular Q&A site AskALibrarian A popular Q&A site WikiAnswers A popular Q&A site

Music: Music Blogging

Building your authority will depend not only on the quality of your music, but also on the quality of your content. The better your content is, the easier it will be for you to place it on other people’s sites (with due credit to you). You can even post partial articles to other people’s blogs, leaving them with a cliff- hanger and a “click here to read the rest of the article” (which, naturally, takes them to YOUR site). The sites listed below allow you to blog outside the bounds of your own site – and more. Again, as with most of the links provided in this

Page 243 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business course, you’ll be well advised to have at least a token presence on some of those:

Music Blogging In Brief WordPress Wordpress Blogger blogger create a blog. :) Live Journal LiveJournal Squidoo Squidoo for people who want to build a page about their passions. Search Engine Journal search engine journal blog search engine news. Hypem The Hype Machine - discover, listen to and buy music discussed on the best mp3 blogs. BlogLines bloglines :) BrainBliss Feed Shark Ping your blog, feed, or podcast for free. :) MOG Mog BlogBurst BlogBurst puts the web's best blogs in the hands of top-tier publishers to bring you new traffic, new readers, and new revenue. Requirements for acceptance into the BlogBurst network: a weekly posting, family-friendly language and content, distinct, intelligent writing style and an XML syndication feed in a standard format such as RSS, RDF, or Atom - go to their website for more inf. Vox Vox yPulse ypulse BandWeblogs Band Weblogs features music commentary, band and music blogs, music articles, interviews, opinion, tour dates, guest music bloggers and more with free promotion and advertisement for bands. I like this site :) Coolfer Coolfer a very clearheaded and forward thinking music

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industry weblog - so they say ;)

Music: Music Contests and Competitions

Many musicians like to increase their exposure by signing up for talent contests. For a very small few, this can be a great way to boost their career. For some, it’s also a way to win extra funds and exposure. With that in mind, here’s a short list of some of the most popular and important contests you might consider:

Music Contests In Brief Britain's Got Talent - Eurovision Song Contest “Naff,” you say? Of course. But… with over a 200,000,000 –strong annual audience, nothing to spit at either, perhaps… Junior Eurovision Contest - NSAI Songwriting Contest - Triple Clicks - X Factor UK - BlogTalkRadio - Guitar Center Songwriting - Contest Guitar Center Contest - X Factor USA - SonicBids Contest - Music X-Ray Contest - Music Xray Contest - Indababa Music Contest - American Idol - American Songwriter -

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International Songwriting - Competition Songdoor Songwriting - Contest Unsigned Only - America’s Got Talent - America's Got Talent - SongSpace - USA Songwriting - Competition Songwriter Universe - Yobi - John Lennon Songwriting - Contest The Chris Austin Songwriting - Contest Song of the Year - Rock and Roll Report - InGame Song Contest - Great American Songwriting - Contest Songwriting Contest - Wildflower Festival - Indie International - Calgary Folk Festival - SongDoor - Mountain Stage Contest - American Songwritnig - Awards Billboard Song Contest - Mid Atlantic Song Contest -

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HypeHustle - HMM Awards - KCCM Song of the Year - Singer Universe - Audio Independents - BlackFeather - Cooch Amateur Songwriting - Contest Indababa Contest - Songwriter Pro - UK Songwriting Contest - VH-1 Song of the Year -

Music: Distribution and Promotions

Some sites are very important to sign up with in order to get your music promoted further. Below is a list of a handful which do a particularly good job in that department:

Music Distribution & In Brief Promo YouTube You simply CAN’T succeed as a music artist without having your videos on YouTube. iTunes Apple’s payment model was once a closely kept secret, but certain circumstances have brought those valuable figures into the public light from time to time. Most recently, rapper Eminem’s lawsuit against Apple and its settlement in 2010 revealed the exact numbers: for every song sold, labels make about 70% of the sale,

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while artists make about 12%. The latter amount, if you do the math, comes to about $0.084 for every song download, and $0.84 for a complete album MediaFire - SoundCloud SoundCloud - create, record and share the sounds with friends, family and the world. MySpace is a subsidiary of News Corporation. MySpace Music recently started testing audio advertisements and they have some of the strongest marketing powers out of all the music social networks. Features include My Music, Charts, Featured Playlists, Music Videos, New Releases, Karaoke, Shows, and Forums.. Artists and or bands can link up with people in the industry or with people who love their music. This particular format allows the artist/band to post photos, upload their songs and keep all who are interested informed about upcoming shows. ReverbNation is a music marketing platform that is used by across 500,000 artists, managers, labels, etc. ReverbNation provides free/affordable venues to grow musical influence on the Internet. A place where artists can communicate with other artists, talk with people in the industry and further their career using the tools provided BandCamp - CD Baby CDbaby is one of the most popular Websites for selling your music. SoundClick SoundClick Rhapsody music distribution PureVolume - Bebo Bebo

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TuneCore TuneCore sell your music, not your soul (good strap line)! Get your music into all the leading digital stores: iTunes, Spotify, eMusic, AmazonMP3, Google Play... fast and easy, and keep all your rights. PayLoads PayLoadz A secure Digital Goods eCommerce service for anyone to sell downloadable goods online - Sell Downloads - Click Here. MP3.com MP3.com VIRB VIRB [good] SonicBids Sonicbids The Orchard - OurStage Share and promote music while networking with fans, other bands and people in the industry Ditto Music - BandMix BandMix Last Minute Musicians LastMinuteMusicians Bleep - Number One Music NumberOneMusic InGooves INgrooves Digital distribution of music. Global distribution service, access to over 400+ online and mobile partnerships all over the world. MagnaTune - RouteNote - Zimbalam - Jukebox Alive JukeboxAlive Indie Music Indie Music Catapult Distribution - Unsigned Unsigned Song Trust - Artistopia Artistopia Mondo Tunes -

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Pitch My Stuff - Unsigned Band Web Unsigned Band Web One RPM ONErpm A global digital music distribution service and a direct-to-fan social commerce solution for musicians and record labels. Sell Your Music on Facebook. Distribute to iTunes. SpotMeUp Spotmeup Simple Spotify distribution. Free way of adding your own music on Spotify. Indie Charts Indie Charts IODA Alliance IODA Independent online distribution alliance. Comprehensive services for record labels, physical distributors, artists, and filmmakers. EmuBands Emubands a digital distribution service which allows unsigned bands and artists to sell their music through major online stores such as iTunes, Napster, HMV Digital, Virgin Digital, Tunetribe... Mobile Streams - Indigo Boom - JTV Digital - SoSouth - iSound ISound Amadea Music no fees per album, you get 90% royalties Beta Records Beta Records Red Nine Music - A Wave - HiFive Music - Sweet n Low - BandWagon Bandwagon WeedShare - T United Tunited ImpNow IMPNow

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Overplay Overplay is a music Website dedicated to the promotion and exposure of unsigned bands. It's a full blown Website that offers a good chance to sell your music online, and yes there is a growing music community. Track Seller Trackseller manages paid music downloads for musicians of any kind and all around the world. Buying music from trackseller means buying directly from the artist. Trackseller lets you add a buy download now- button to your website in minutes. Upload files, add pricing - ready for sale ...that's what They say, anyway ;) Beatnik - CD Fuse CDFuse CI Info - FadingWays - HXC MP3 HXC mp3 Indie Airplay - Music Lives Beyond Music Lives Beyond Play Louder MSP - ShopSonic -

Music: Music Forums and Blogs

Taking part in music forums and blogs can be a massively advantageous way for you to spread the word about your music. Typically, you should NOT self- promote there, but your signature (with links to your site and offers) will be more than enough as long as your contributions are valuable. Here’s a short list of good ideas for you:

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Music Forums & Blogs In Brief BBC Music BBC Music Going Out goto [IN YOUR AREA]: the latest music news, reviews and features in your area. Plus: BBC 6 Music - Gigs. [UK] 2DopeBoyz - HypeTrak - Harmony Central Harmony Central :) InTheMix - Drowned in Sound Drowned in Sound EarWolf - MuchMusic - Music Thinktank - Music Banter - Kerrang Kerrang! Forums BIRP - Record of the Day Record of the Day :: Messageboard nice one :) Music Discussion - SongStuff - Resonance FM - Indie Music Reviewer - I Love Music - FoxBeard - Xclusize Zone - Ohh Crapp - MudCat - Blooter Blooter forum and blog That Realish - We Do It Right Mag -

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Music: Music Links and Resources

A short list of additional links, resources and ideas for you:

Music Links & Resources In Brief Google Music Google Directory - Arts > Music Yahoo Music Yahoo! Music Directory MusicMOZ musicmoz The Open Music Project Taxi Linking TAXI Linking Open Web Directory Open Web Directory More Music More Music Directory of websites for World-wide Bands. InkBlot Magazine Ink Blot Magazine DURP DURP Webzine - good links.

Music: Radio

If you’re a musician and don’t have any radio exposure (online or offline), you’re REALLY missing out! You should make sure your tracks get submitted to these and other online stations for consideration:

Radio In Brief Pandora - LastFM is a music community that was founded in 2002 and was bought by CBS for $280 million in May 2007. Users can create custom radio stations and playlists. Users can build a profile based on their music tastes. Users can also write public and private messages to the Last.fm community. There is a major focus on Groups

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and Events too. Last.fm, which you've no doubt used already, is a service that keeps track of what music you listen to, and then helps you discover new music based on your preferences. You can use Last.fm to listen to music, find out about artists you may like, get in touch with other people with similar music taste, discover gigs in your local area, as well as create charts that you can publish on your personal site. Last.fm also allows artists and labels to upload their own music and videos and promote them for free. Last.fm is primarily known as a music streaming service, however it also has a large social element too. Users can set up profiles, and connect to existing friends, or find new people who like the same music as them. The website also has a set of forums, and, like Facebook, users can create their own “Groups”. The social side of Last.fm is a great way to find new music, connect to new people, and find out more about artist news and events in your area. TuneIn - ShoutCast - Live365 - Accuradio - Radio Paradise Radio Paradise eclectic online rock radio. Soma FM - XFM IXfm WorldSings - Music Alley Podsafe Music Network Indie 100 - AIIradio Artists International Independent Radio live DJ's presenting your music. Real-time chat with the DJs and listeners during broadcast. All musical genres are

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represented. International artists and listeners. Maestro - Radio 1190 - MeeMix - R Radio Music RRadio Music for Independent Artists. Girls Rock Radio Girls Rock Radio - Internet radio featuring all-girl and girl-fronted bands. EORadio eoRadio - a free Internet radio station run like a terrestrial radio station, no genre channels, just listen to free music online from the best Unsigned Artists from around the globe. IndieXposure Radio IndieXposureRadio Kooba Radio Kooba Radio an Internet radio station broadcasting the best in unsigned and small label bands. Pitt Radio PittRadio - indie music community and resource. Create music playlists with songs from emerging independent/underground musicians, bands, producers, and DJs. Artists can submit and upload music to playlist charts. Stasmi Stasmi Radio new Internet radio station.

Music: Venues and Promotions

A fantastic way to build a fanbase – still among the most powerful of them all – is through live gigs. Here are some sites which may help you in that regard:

Venues & Promotions In Brief Ticketmaster - SongKick -

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Ents24 Ents24 Tickets UK entertainment guide, covering live music, comedy, theatre, shows and days out. OhMyRockness - Indie Music Festivals - Lemon Rock Lemonrock a dynamic live music gig guide updated directly by 1000s of bands, artists and venues. Aloud Aloud.com Online tickets. London Gigs London Gigs they've got a big list of London venues. Tour Dates Tourdates A gig listing website for signed and unsigned bands. SplitGigs SplitGigs a social network that helps emerging bands or musicians find gigs to play, through a simple but highly effective idea: the "SplitGig" i.e. I let your band play at my gig, then you return the favor by letting my band play at your gig. Indie Venue Bible - Gig Guide Gig Guide Ltd UK Gigs, band listings and music information... it's got the lot! Gig Events Guide Gig Events Guide UK The free online Gig Events Guide is provided to enable the independent music industry to advertise their UK gigs or events. GigsWiz GigsWiz A ticketing company for venues and promoters that pays artists to promote ticket sales online, providing instant and seamless updating and synchronization across all social media platforms. (UBP: a bit of an annoying website, sorry guys!) Alive Alive® entertainment guides are a series of monthly local and regional multi-media magazines, published continuously since 1993 and providing unrivalled free coverage of a wide range of entertainment and leisure persuits for Young and Young Middle Aged (Y/YMA)

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readers. GigMaven GigMaven Streamlines the booking process for musicians and venues. [USA] Rave Magazine Rave Magazine Publish your press releases, gig listings, classified ads and more.... all for FREE! Ticket-o-Meter Ticketometer Lets concert organizers create shows that only take place if a minimum number of tickets are sold. Propose a concert first and book it after selling tickets - the audience has your back. [USA] National Gig Guide National Gig Guide for live music gigs and events across the UK.

General: Outsourcing

As you have already gathered, doing all the work that’s needed to all-but- guarantee your online success can be very time-consuming. That’s why it’s a blessing that so many outsourcers are available to do all this work for you – and in most cases for peanuts! Apart from our own outsourcing management company (CoachTIP Outsourcing management), you can go direct to any of these:

Outsourcing In Brief Google Helpouts Another good outsourcing site Fiverr Micro-jobs site, where you can outsource work from as little as $5, but a few words of caution: finding the “right” outsourcer may take time; many of the better services cost much more than $5. Warrior Forum The most popular forum for marketing experts and webmasters, includes a “warriors for hire” section

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where some of the best freelancers reside. As with all outsourcing, however, due diligence is always advised. oDesk Another good outsourcing site Freelancer Another good outsourcing site eLance Another hugely popular outsourcing site. GraphicRiver Fantastic templates and graphics 99designs Affordable website and graphics designs of the highest quality PeoplePerHour Another good outsourcing site Icon Finder If you need icons for your products – they’re all here Guru One of the more popular outsourcing sites. Optimize Press Create your sales letter, even more flexible than LeadPages Amazon Mechanical Turk Another good outsourcing site MicroLancer Specialized in logos, Wordpress, e-covers, book layouts and more CrowdSpring Another good outsourcing site TaskRabbit Another good outsourcing site Kristi Hines Another top copywriter with a roster of high profile clients and a CV which reads like Whos-Who on the Internet. GetACoder Another good outsourcing site SmartShoot A video outsourcing site where producers can bid for your project LeadPages A superb online system for building your landing pages Ash Ambirge Top autoresponder copywriter iFreelance Another good outsourcing site Dribbble Superb graphic designers bidding for your project TaskArmy Another good outsourcing site HireTheWorld Another good outsourcing site DoYouImpress fabulous graphic designer

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Cori Padgett Worked with some of the biggest brands on the web and offers a wide variety of services from sales copy to blog article writing. KillerCovers Amazing designs for your eBooks, DVDs, CDs, etc. KillerSalesDesign fabulous graphic designer SolutionInn Another good outsourcing site DimpleArt Very affordable, high-quality caricatures you can create for your website, squeeze page, and overall branding. Adam Maywald fabulous graphic designer AnitaAshland.com - CoachTIP Services Managed outsourcing solutions, extremely cost- effective, where you can select from pre-configured package deals to custom orders. DesignGuruRyan fabulous graphic designer Vin Montello Top copywriter SixDegreesContent Run by Courtney Ramirez, offers a whole team of writers specialized in various aspects of copywriting. Pixelofgenius.com Top-notch graphic designer. Kevin Rogers One of the top Clickbank Copywriters Brian Mcleod Quite simply one of the very best in the business, and another one whose roster of successful clients would impress just about anyone. ReelContent A very professional company which always creates the highest quality videos for you ArtileZ.com Another great team of writers, and more affordable than most. Jay White Top autoresponder copywriter Matt O' Connor Top copywriter BlissMediaWorks Also great, and very affordable too

And as a BONUS, here are some more Outsourcing Resources for you!

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General: Traffic Acquisition

Finally, here are some more resources for you, especially important if you’re considering buying traffic for your offers (be it your album release or a product you decide to cash in on).

For Full Crusher Course members, we have:

 Paid Traffic Mastery – A few additional sub-courses, which will complement your knowledge about traffic acquisition  Traffic Sources - 6 step-by-step instruction videos

And also a set of BONUS pages with lots of extra links:

 Traffic Exchanges  CPA and Affiliate Networks  CPV Networks  CPC/CPM Networks  Mobile Networks  RSS Networks  Traffic Resources  Various Networks  Classified Ad Networks

Recap of All of Our Super-Course Elements:

Extra sub-courses:

o AdSense Mastery o AdWords Mastery o Affiliate Marketing Course

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o Autoresponder Basics o Bookmarking Expertise o Copywriting Basics o cPanel Instruction Course o Facebook Mastery o Funnel Mastery o Google Basics o List Building Guide o Local market domination o Membership Resources and Course o Optin List Mastery Course o Paid Traffic Mastery o PayPal User’s Guide o PayPal SandBox Tutorial o Product Creation Workshop o SEO Tips o Site Optimization Guide o Social Basics o Video Marketing Course o Web Hosting Explained o Wordpress Course o WSO Product launch

BONUS sections:

o Website Templates o Your Graphics Library o IM Insights and Tips o Keyword Research Resource o The Best Internet Marketing Business Models o Affiliate Links Resources o Classified Ad Networks

Page 261 of 262 The Online Music Business Crusher – Book 3: Your Business o CPA and Affiliate Networks o CPV Networks o CPC/CPM Networks o eBook and Writing Networks o Mobile Networks o Outsourcing Resources o RSS Networks o Social Networks o Traffic Resources o Various Networks o Traffic Exchanges o Traffic Sources o Video Networks

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