The Online Music Business Crusher CONTENTS, Book 1: Introduction Title Description Includes 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...

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. [emember_protected...

So now you have a profitable business. What’s next? Essentially, two or three alternatives: [emember_protected for=4-5] Sell it (website “flipping”) Increase your current model to its maximum capacity Start a new...

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...

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....

Once your site has hit its stride, you will need to maintain and manage it at the lowest possible cost without sacrificing quality. [emember_protected for=4-5] You will also need to remain vigilant and monitor all your business drivers to ensure that all your current...

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...

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...

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”. [emember_protected for=4-5] Stage 1 – Research and Planning Book 1: General mindset,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

[emember_protected for=4-5] 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...

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...

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. [emember_protected for=4-5] Think of a squeeze page as a kind of a...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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:...

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...

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...

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). [emember_protected for=4-5] A test phase, where you spend the least amount possible per traffic...

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...

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...

Most people want to cut corners. “Hey I can get 100,000 visits for three cents each! Why should I pay for AdWords?” [emember_protected for=4-5] But, as always in life, it’s not about quantity but QUALITY. So, you...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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

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...

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...

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...

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”....

There are a few other things you need to do, in order to be fully prepared. They include the following: [emember_protected for=4-5] Setting up a PayPal account. This one’s FREE. Signing up to an automated social bookmarking service like OnlyWire or...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...