Online Music Marketing

This online music marketing blog here at online-musicmarketing.com has been debugged for unwanted links, and I’m up to speed on the tutorial videos. So let’s begin!

Here are the current statistics for online-musicmarketing.com:

• Google Page Rank: #40 out of 35,000 competing pages for exact match

If the average Googler sees 10 results to a page, then online-musicmarketing.com appears as the very last result on page 4. At the very least, I don’t want online-musicmarketing.com to slip to Google’s page 5.

• Number of yesterday’s visitors: 14

This tracking data is provided by Google Analytics

• Affiliate Sales: $0

(Self-explanatory ) Completed tasks from my Thirty Day Challenge needs analysis:

• Decided on numbered entry format for case study logs. This will allow case study entries to be sorted separately for anyone wanting to follow along. This also allows a distinction from the general music publicity blog posts.
• The WordPress Direct (WPD) theme that I originally wanted to use simply does not accommodate sale offer widgets at this time. I’ve already filed a repair ticket with WPD, but I’ve decided to stick with the current “Mint Chocolate” theme.
• My affiliate link for Ariel Hyatt’s online-musicmarketing.com eBook isn’t ready yet, so I’ll continue using the Amazon affiliate link for the print version of Nine Weeks to Music Success.
• The affiliate program for Market Samurai, the fabulous internet marketing tool used during the 30DC, is not ready yet, but as soon as it is, I’ll add it.

So I have my work cut out to raise the page ranking of musicpublicityblog.com. The good news is that the blog in its current form made it to a page ranking of #40 out of 35,000 sites, which is a nice start for a page that only went live on August 12, 2008 (I deleted my “Hello World” post – Sorry!). If you’re reading this online music marketing blog in real time, keep checking in because the fun starts now!

Technorati Tags: online music marketing

Before continuing the online music marketing blog case study, I’ve created a Needs Analysis to determine my next steps. After reviewing my Thirty Day Challenge notes, I identified what was needed to get the online music marketing blog primed for a second round of testing.

Objective: Get online music marketing blog and myself up to speed for testing

Current Status: The music publicity blog is currently on Page 4 of Google for exact phrase matches for “online music marketing”

Goal: Rank #5 on Page 1 of Google for exact phrase match.

Current Issues:

• I haven’t decided on a format for this case study
• I found a great WordPress Direct theme for the online music marketing blog, but the theme does not accomodate sale offer (affiliate product) widgets
• The WordPress Direct theme I am using has an unwanted widget with a dummy email address
• Many of the WordPress pre-designed themes contain unoptimized links in their footers which interferes with the search engine optimization (SEO) strategy
• I need to review video tutorials for WordPress Direct and Market Samurai
• Need to exchange affiliate link from Amazon.com print book to 1ShoppingCart eBook

TASK LIST WordPress Direct

• Remove unwanted footer links from online music marketing niche blog
• Remove sidebar widget with dummy contact email address

Video Tutorial Review

• Review Thirty Day Challenge videos for supervised auto-posted content
• Review Thirty Day Challenge video on setting up sales banners
• Review Market Samurai tutorial videos

Affiliate Products

• Gather affiliate links for Market Samurai, WordPress Direct, Hostgator, and 1ShoppingCart
• Save as document for future use.

While I haven’t decided on a format for my process yet, blogging about my case study testing has already helped organize my ideas, and clarify the most important actions. For example, blogging about each individual day of the 30 Day Challenge could be interesting, but as a result, the online music marketing blog would become more optimized for the 30 Day Challenge. As that is not my goal at all, I will focus my blog posts on online music marketing in order to satisfy the organic traffic visiting from search engines.

Technorati Tags: online music marketing

When we think about online music marketing, we often think of music websites like MySpace.com and Reverbnation.com as the best places for online music marketing.

While music sites are great for attracting music lovers, it’s also worth getting publicity on websites that have nothing to do with music at all. I call this The “Hit ‘Em Where They Ain’t” Strategy. Singer/songwriter Matthew Ebel has gotten his mp3s on tons of music podcasts, but he’s also placed his music in a financial aid podcast. As his music is the only music heard on this podcast, Matthew’s songs stand apart from the rest of the spoken podcast.

In another example, Phill Mason is a musician and internet marketer who won last year’s Thirty Day Challenge. His recent claim to online music publicity fame is that he’s written the theme song for this and last year’s “Thirty Day Challenge, which is used for much of the videos. Since the Thirty Day Challenge had thousands of participants, Phill’s theme song became an online hit for Thirty Day Challengers. The participants were already excited to do the Thirty Day Challenge and make their first $1 online, and having Phill’s theme song rallied the troops! Long story short, Thirty Day Challengers tweeted and hollered until Phill offered the Thirty Day Challenge theme for download. In true internet marketing fashion, Phill created the Thirty Day Challenge Ringtones to meet the demand.

So when you plan your online music marketing campaign, consider the other parts of your life that can be used to get more publicity for you and your music.

Technorati Tags: online music marketing

Online Music Marketing = Spreading the word about you, your band, your music.

In this case study I seek to build an online music marketing   strategy by optimizing this blog, musicpublicityblog.com for organic web traffic. After taking last month’s Thirty Day Challenge, my mind is still racing from new ideas after I understood the basic concepts.

My theory/hypothesis: By focusing the content of my online music marketing blog on multiple keywords, I will attract more focused and relevent visitors.

If this theory is true, then musicians can potentially attract hundreds of new fans each week by choosing to focus their content to agreed upon keywords.

My goals for this online music marketing case study for online-musicmarketing.com are:

• Rank on first page of Google for multiple niche keywords simultaneously
• Make my first $1 online (what the Thirty Day Challenge was all about)

As a musician seeking to develop my own music publicity strategy, my goal is for my music blog to get top ranking for multiple keywords.

So regardless of however else you are marketing your music online or offline, your music can also attract hundreds of new potential fans each week in the form of unique, organic and relevant visitors daily. In the marketing world, this is known as a “pull strategy”. Each time you fill your music blog with juicy keyword content, you are planting seeds for search engine spiders to find you continually – even years after you posted your content.

As the focus of this case study is this online music marketing blog, I will focus for now on these three niche keyword phrases:

“online music marketing”
“twitter for musicians”
“facebook for musicians”

How do we do that? Stay tuned to the online music marketing blog!

Technorati Tags: online music marketing

Your online music marketing strategy can can get a serious supercharge by using internet marketing techniques used in the Thirty Day Challenge, so here’s today’s new idea!

Last month I participated in the Thirty Day Challenge which was organized by Ed Dale, an Australian internet marketer, and his merry global online marketing team. For each day of August 2008, there was a new internet marketing lesson offered in the form of videos, live tv chats, podcasts, and pdf transcripts.

What does the 30 Day Challenge have to do with online music marketing, you ask? For one thing, internet marketing techniques can be used to sell just about anything online. For another, most musicians do not know about these methods. For yet one more thing, Ed Dale is a guitar player and music lover, and has offered suggestions for how musicians and artisans can sell their wares. So why not use these techniques for music publicity?

During last month’s Thirty Day Challenge, I had the good fortune of meeting Ed Dale in person when he came to NYC for a meetup. In addition, we even got to chat about how musicians can use these 30 Day Challenge techniques for web traffic, and he shared even more great ideas, which I found brilliant.

Ed Dale and Carla Lynne Hall

However, Ed was quick to add that his theories were speculation until someone tested them (as he started elbowing my arm But before he even laid the hint, I was already volunteering to test our collective theories for building music publicity via keyword traffic strategies.

To their credit, Ed Dale, Dan Raines, GuruBob & Co. taught manual processes of all the tasks necessary. They later taught the processes using the Market Samurai web tool. By the time the Thirty Day Challenge was over, my learning curve had been shortened, but I wanted to focus on absorbing all of the material offered. I had originally thought that my original niche blog, The Online Music Marketing Blog, wasn’t a strong enough niche, and I had intended to find another niche.

So I took a few days off before reviewing my notes in order of Day 1 through Day 31. After rereading my notes, I realized a few things:

One: Because my online music marketing site hadn’t yet reached the benchmark of 200 unique visitors a day, I had not tested long enough to know whether or not my site was successful or not. According to Ed, 200 visitors a day is a low number, and you’d want your product to make no less than one sale per 200 visitors.

Two: 200 unique visitors a day may be a poor number to Ed Dale, but the idea of 200 sets of eyeballs a day checking out my music publicity site gives me a THRILL! If your band’s website receives only 200 unique visitors a day from keyword optimization alone, think about the momentum that would build. What would happen if hundreds of people clicked on your music samples each week? If your band newsletter sign-up is displayed prominently, imagine how much faster you could build your email list.

Three: My other blog doesn’t even get 200 unique visitors daily, but after seeing what works, I can use these strategies to get much more than that.

So this online music marketing niche blog is where this Thirty Day Challenge case study testing will be done. Check in for the results.

Technorati Tags: online music marketing