The Online Music Business Crusher
CONTENTS, Book 1: Introduction
| Title | Description | Includes | |
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1 |
How Is This Course Organized | About this course and it’s three major parts. | |
| 2 | Foreword | Background information for how this course was inspired. | |
| 3 | Why I Created This Course | More about my “why” for creating this course, including some minor anecdotes and stories. | |
| 4 | Indie or Record Deal? | Helping you decide what is better for you to strive for – an indie career or that elusive record deal. |
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| 5 | Isn’t It All About Having a Top Hit? | Evaluating your chances – do you have any in a hit-dominated world? | |
| 6 | Is Music Still Selling? | What kind of a business can realistically be built by an indie musician? | |
| 7 | What About A&R? | Do you need A&R as an indie? | |
| 8 | Your Competition: It’s a Level Playing Field. Sort of. | Should you worry about your (overwhelming) competition? | |
| 9 | So, Once Again – Indie or Major? | By this point you should be able to answer this question much more definitively and with conviction. | |
| 10 | Understanding Before Planning, Planning Before Acting | Or how to get your career off to a flying start. | |
| 11 | So what do I mean by “workâ€? What do you have to do? | An overview of the kind of things you’ll need to do. | |
| 12 | Structuring Your Broad Business Plan | A conceptual overview of your blueprint for success. | |
| 13 | The Broad Plan | Key points to keep in mind and meditate on. | |
| 14 | If There Was Only ONE Thing You Had To Do… | So what do you think is the most important component of your business? |
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| 15 | Building Your Audience | General tips on how best to build an audience. | |
| 16 | Objections | Things people come up with in order not to succeed. | |
| 17 | The Big Picture | A wrap up of the first part of this course. |
CONTENTS, Book 2: Your Music
| Title | Description | Includes | |
|
1 |
Getting The Product Right, Or Is Your Music Good Enough? |
Ensuring that your music finds an audience and thrives there. | |
| 2 | A concise songwriting checklist | Here are some ideas and thought-tools for you to consider when writing your songs. | |
| 3 | A concise checklist for the self-producing artist | And here are the things a good producer keeps in mind. | |
| 4 | Session Players, Engineers, Coaches and Other Supporting Experts | Whether you’re a one-man-band or a member of a real band, consider these suggestions. | |
| 5 | Vocal Considerations | More often than not, vocal production is key to your success. Here’s what to keep in mind. | |
| 6 | Dirty Production Tricks |
Sometimes, when all your efforts fail, there are still things you can do to make a great production. | |
| 7 | The A&R Process | Possibly the most important aspect of your music business is A&R, at least as far as finding your market is concerned. | |
| 8 | Audience Research and Feedback, An Aspect of A&R | Who exactly is your audience and how to discover it. | |
| 9 | Your Image | As much as you may hate to admit it, your image is an integral part of your success as an artist. | |
| 10 | Your Music vs Your Business | If you’re an artist should that mean you can’t also make a living from your art? Boloney! | |
| 11 | Your Art And Your Incomes | Ideas for monetizing your fan base. | |
| 12 | Turbo-Charging Your Music Sales | Tips and tricks for boosting the bottom line. | |
| 13 | Fan and Audience List Building | Understanding the nature of your marketing list. | |
| 14 | Building Fans Using Email | Some marketing tricks you will want to know about. | |
| 15 | Leveraging your “social presence” to you and your fans’ advantage. |
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| 16 | Building Fans Through Contests, Gigs and Song Submissions | More offline and online exposure – and occasionally income – opportunities. |
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| 17 | Building Fans via Press Releases and Promotion Venues | Excellent (and mostly free or low-cost) online promotional places. |
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| 18 | Your Own Site As the Ultimate Fan-Building Machine | The sorts of things you or someone on your team will need to do every day. | |
| 19 | Getting Fans From Your Local Market | Your music business starts at home. | |
| 20 | Your Team and Your Operational Budget | People you need to have on your side and how to pay for them. |
CONTENTS, Book 3: Your Business
| Title | Description | Includes | |
|
1 |
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. | IM Insights and Tips, Business Models |
| 2 | 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. | |
| 3 | Build Your Site – Buy a Domain | Everything starts with acquiring a domain address – the way people will find you online from now on. | |
| 4 | Build Your Site – Host Your Domain | Once you have a domain name, you need to place it online on a “web host”. | Hosting, cPanel |
| 5 | Setting Up WordPress On Your Site | Putting a professional-looking, highly functional and flexible site together is easy with a tool like WordPress. | Site Templates, WordPress |
| 6 | Configuring Your Site | Now that your site is up and running, it’s time to fine-tune and tweak it a little. | WordPress |
| 7 | Researching Keywords | Understanding keywords will accompany you throughout your online journey. | Keyword Research |
| 8 | 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. | |
| 9 | Insuring Yourself: What Are My Chances, Really? | Being realistic in your expectations is fundamental to your success. | Affiliate Links |
| 10 | More About Your Competition | Your competition is probably much smaller than you think. Here’s how you find out. | |
| 11 | 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. | SEO Tips |
| 12 | On-Page Optimization | There are two sides to SEO. One of them is optimizing your site content, a.k.a. on-page optimization. | Site Optimization |
| 13 | 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.” | Site Optimization |
| 14 | Extended Setup: Your Own Site Is Just The Beginning | Setting up your home page is only a part of the whole prep. | |
| 15 | Setting Up Social Accounts | Among the things you need to also set up are your social accounts, bookmarking accounts, etc. | |
| 16 | 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. | PayPal User, PayPal SandBox | |
| 17 | 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. | |
| 18 | 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. | |
| 19 | 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. | Copywriting |
| 20 | 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. | |
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21 |
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. | Video Marketing |
| 22 | 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. | |
| 23 | 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. | Autoresponder, Graphics Library, Site Templates |
| 24 | 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. | |
| 25 | 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. | |
| 26 | 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. | |
| 27 | 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. | RSS Networks, Mobile Networks, Social Networks, Video Networks, Writing Networks, Various Networks, Classified Ads, CPA & Affiliate Networks, CPV Networks, CPC/CPM Networks |
| 28 | 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. | |
| 29 | 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. | AdWords, Facebook |
| 30 | 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. | |
| 31 | 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. | Paid Traffic |
| 32 | 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. | |
| 33 | 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. | |
| 34 | 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. | |
| 35 | 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. | AdSense |
| 36 | What Is Your Product | Let’s define what a product is for your music website. Not just your music. Let’s delve deeper. | |
| 37 | 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! | |
| 38 | The Secret of “Extended Product†| The real secret of online monetization is not in the obvious product sales, but in the slightly hidden ones. | |
| 39 | The Most Popular Ways To Monetize Your Site | Here we look at a bunch of ideas and ways to monetize a website. | Autoresponder, AdSense, Affiliate Marketing |
| 40 | Selling Products You Fully Own | When selling parallel products or services, it’s often a good idea to develop a product of your own. | Product Creation, Product Launch, Local Market |
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41 |
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. | |
| 42 | 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.” | Funnel Mastery |
| 43 | 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. | Funnel Mastery |
| 44 | 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.” | |
| 45 | 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. | Autoresponder |
| 46 | Elements of Autoresponder Campaigns | It’s impossible to maintain a fan list of any substantial size without a tool known as the “autoresponder”. | List Building |
| 47 | 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. | Optin List |
| 48 | 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. | Autoresponder, PayPal User |
| 49 | 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. | Membership Resources |
| 50 | Launching Your Online Music Business | Things to keep in mind when launching your online music business. | |
| 51 | 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. | |
| 52 | So What Are Your Chances, Really? | Looking at your entire music and business realistically. | |
| 53 | The Importance Of Monitoring | You can’t run a business blindfolded. Monitoring is absolutely essential. | |
| 54 | Maintenance and Site Management | If you set everything up well, your daily monitoring and site maintenance can be a breeze. | |
| 55 | Scaling Up | Once everything is running smoothly, you can scale up and increase your earnings almost at a push of a button. | |
| 56 | Additional Budget Considerations | Things to keep in mind when preparing your budgets and plans. | |
| 57 | 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. | |
| 58 | Final Notes | Closing remarks and a word or two about your authors. | |
| 59 | Selected Resources | Lots and lots of very useful links and resources for you. | Outsourcing, Traffic Resources, Traffic Exchanges, Traffic Sources, Bookmarking, Social |
