Below is a guest post from UK music marketer Chris Rockett. I asked Chris to share something with the GYRS crowd and I think this is a great post on getting started with Facebook Ads. We all know that Facebook is huge, but you have to do a lot more than just throw a whole bunch of money out there and hope for the best? Here are some ideas from Chris on how to get your ads seen by more folks. You can connect with Chris on his website where his talks about Music Promotion, Band Promotion and advice for a successful Music Career.

If you want to write something from GYRS, send me an email to marketing@genyrockstars.com and you can share your info and knowledge with over 10,000 indie musicians and industry pros.

If you really think you have what it takes to make it in the music business, but don’t know know how to reach the right fans for your music, you have a big problem…

Like many other musicians you will probably have wasted a lot of time so far trying to get fans to come to your site using stuff like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, but the fact is, while all that stuff can work if you keep at it for a couple of hours a day, it takes so much time and effort that you can sometimes be left with no time to actually create your music – which is the thing that in the end will be the key to your success.

This is where paid advertising comes in…

With paid ads you just set up an email subscription form on your website and then use ads to send hits to that page from people who are looking for information on similar bands that you think you sound most like.

This is a great way to do laser targeted marketing because you already know that they are much more likely to become fans because they got up off their butts and are actually looking for information about your music niche.

The biggest problem with most music marketing is the amount of time wasted on tasks that really don’t push your fan base forward.

Why Google Ads Suck!

I’m sure you’ve seen this stuff before, Google have a whole set of natural search results in the center of their search result and then a bunch of paid links at the top and on the right. So each time that a user clicks on one of those ads the advertiser has to pay for the click.

Perfect right?

You just buy a whole bunch of clicks from people searching for Metallica and your death metal band will have more fans than Lady Gaga….

Wrong…

The problem with Google pay per click is that you might have to pay anywhere up to $1 a click for your hits.

So let’s do some math.

• You buy 1000 clicks = $1000
• Out of those 1000 clicks you get 5% of the people to join your list = 50 (Actually a 5% conversion rate to email subscriber would be a great number, it would probably be more like 2%)
• Out of those 50 people 10% buy your $7 album = 5×7=$35

So after spending $1000 you made a grand total of $35 leaving you 975 out of pocket…

Not good at all!

This is where Facebook ads come in…

By using a Facebook ad the way I will show you in the rest of this post you will be able to get clicks for as little 1 cent a click which will massively raise your profitability.

Lets look at the math again…

• You but 1000 clicks = $10
• Out of those 1000 clicks you get 5% of the people to join your list = 50
• Out of those 50 people 10% buy your $7 album = 5×7=$35

So you have spent $10 and made $35, and that my friends is a great business which you could run all day, everyday, forever!

How to set up a 1 cent Facebook ad, step by step…

Please don’t just jump in the system and start bidding all over the place, if you do that Facebook ads will actually cost you more than Google ads. You need to follow the system below to have any chance of success.

WARNING: Please read the Facebook terms of service before you run any ads because if you mess this stuff up or break any of their rules your account will get banned! Bye Bye Facebook…

WARNING: Running a paid advertising campaign has its risk and although the steps in the guide below can give you a better chance of success there are no guarantees so neither myself or this blog take any responsibility for your financial situation.

Step 1 – Set up your lead capture page and target your perfect fan

You need to create a custom page on your website that offers your new fans something really really really cool in return for their email address.. Don’t use your band website or your Facebook page because if you buy clicks and do not try to get an email address you will be throwing your money down the toilet.

Go into Facebook and click on this link

Then this button

You will then be presented with a whole bunch of demographic options that will help you pick out your perfect fan. Think about this stuff for a while and be ultra specific.

For example, if I was in a heavy metal band I would do something like this:

Age - 23-35 (Because people any younger are less likely to spend money online and people older are not as engaged with music, as a rule.)
Country – pick the country and region that you live in at first because this will start filling up your local gigs.
Keywords – Metalica, Iron Maiden, Megadeath, Anthrax

As I said before you want to target your perfect fan by using keywords that they might have in their profile. So for the heavy metal example I choose stuff like Metallica, Megadeath and Anthrax because those bands are all closely related and would give me a great chance of talking to my perfect fan.

Step 2 – Create your ads

This is the real meat of the facebook system and you will have to get a few different parts right to make a sucessful ad.

Headlines

You want to speak right to your perfect fan upfront. So go with something like this…

• Do You Like Heavy Metal?
• Have you been to a Metallica show?
• Who’s Your Favorite metal band?

Using this kind of headline makes you seem a little psychic to the person on Facebook and you might spike their interest.

The problem that sometimes happens on Facebook is that people see so many ads that they start to become blind to them and never click.

One thing that you will want to do when you get more advanced at this stuff is to rotate your ads so that the people you target will be offered something new each time they log in and be more likely to click.

Ad copy

In the text of the ad you should talk about how clicking will make their life better and as any good marketer will tell you it’s always best to focus on the benefits rather than the feature.

Example: A man want to cut his lawn…

Bad ad: The Lawn 2000 has four blades and a 40 metre chord

Good ad: Our top of the range lawnmower cut grass faster and more precisely than any other on the market, you will have the best looking grass in the neighborhood in the fastest time so you can spend time relaxing with a cold beer.

See?

The second ad focuses on what the customer is really trying to achieve, and this is much more powerful than telling him all the great features of your mower. He does not care about that stuff, deep down he just wants to have the best darn grass in the neighbourhood.

So that’s enough about grass…

How would this work for our Micheal Jackson fan example?

Bad ad: We sound like Micheal Jackson and when you click here we will give you a free track.

Good ad: If you’re a fan of Micheal Jackson you’re going to like band xxxx, everyone who clicks here in the next few minutes will be able to enjoy a free track from the exclusive new album. (It’s cool to ad a little bit of urgency in there for good measure.)

Images

When you’re picking the image to use in your ads make sure you find something that resonates well with your market and also sticks out and looks a little bit strange. Once again you are battling against banner blindness and you need to take every opportunity to counter it.

So for instance if I was going after Micheal Jackson fans I might get a picture of Micheal and give him red devil eyes and rotate the picture on it’s side.

That way there is no way an MJ fan could scroll down the page and miss your offer.

Step 3 -Your Budget and Ad Spend

The last part of setting up your ad is choosing your budget for the advertising campaign and you have to get this right or you will loose your shirt.

Paid advertising always has its risks and you should never spend more than you can afford to loose, you’re just testing for the moment and you can expect your first few tests to go down the toilet.

So when it comes to bidding on Facebook you want to follow a few rules.

1. Start with a budget of no more than $10 a day. (If you are getting 1 cent clicks this will still give you some good traffic.)
2. You must use pay per impression and not pay per click. If you choose pay per click you will have to pay up to $1 for each visitor to your website.. But pay per impression is great because you can bid $0.50 per 1000 impressions and if you only get 25 clicks out of those 1000 people you will be getting clicks for around $0.02.

Note: Impressions means the number of times your ads is shown to the Facebook user.

The more clicks you get the better value your ad spend will be, but the real magic here is targeting your fans perfectly and with great detail.

That way they will be so impressed by your ad that they won’t be able to help themselves!

Final Thoughts.

So now you have all the skills to start getting some really cheap hits to your website from Facebook but once again I feel I need to warn you that any paid traffic strategy has its risks and if you go in with all guns blazing you could loose a lot of money.

There is obviously no way I could tell you every detail of Facebook ads in this post so just stick to the golden rules below and you should be fine:

1. Never spend more than you can afford to loose
2. Stick to a $10 a day budget.
3. Target your ads with great details
4. Use pay per impression
5. Rotate your ads frequently and test new versions.

I wish you all the best of luck in your Facebook testing…

Today I have a nice guest post from Matt Rod of Changing Clocks from South Africa. Matt reached out to me about his latest video made entirely from Creative Commons photos on Flickr. I then asked him to write about the experience to help you guys get some ideas on the process. Enjoy the post and leave your comments and feedback below!

A Music Video Created Entirely of Images Sourced from Flickr and License Under Creative Commons

Because the web is so visual-based, I realised the importance of visually capturing a song’s sound. And so after Changing Clocks released our EP this time last year, I began actively seeking out someone to create a music video with. The DIY music crowd kept telling me, “you don’t need money, just ask a film-student, look around!“. And so I did, I reached out to half the East-Coast. After about 6 months of asking countless film-students, bloggers apparently interested in making videos with point-and-shoot cameras and old friends without any success, I decided my energies would be better spent elsewhere. It seemed people weren’t as enthusiastic as everyone made them out to be (unfortunately!)

But it kept nagging at me. I knew that if we could create something that would visually capture the essence of “I’ll Be Back This Summer” people would be far more likely to listen to the whole song and give it a chance.

I wanted something simple, catchy, fun and humourous – hopefully a reflection of the song. I eventually decided I just needed to do something myself, and brain-stormed a of couple ideas. I settled on the following: A Music Video created entirely with Images sourced from Flickr.com licensed under Creative Commons.

I spent a week sourcing hundreds (around 400!) of photos that I felt reflected the sentiment being expressed in the song at the time. Because I wrote the music and lyrics, it was easy for me to do as I naturally had an idea in my head as to what things should look like. And honestly, it was really quite fun: many of the emotions I felt were just captured brilliantly by hundreds of photographers I have never met!

I then used iMovie on my Mac and painfully added every slide to the video, and then trimmed each slide duration to match the song rhythm. It took time to get it to work, but overall it was just marvellously fun. I was genuinely excited by the visuals and how they really fitted with what I wished to express. Overall there were 116 photos used in the 2 minute 20 second song.

The video, lyrics and all wonderful photographers’ names & original images can be seen at http://changingclocks.com/summer-video/

Of course, the song is available there for free too if you sign up for the emailing list. Or if you’d rather like, iTunes.

Changing Clocks is a young Boston-based band playing highly original Pop/Rock music. A combination of male and female vocals, catchy songs and clever lyrics make Changing Clocks worth a listen. The band is headed by Matt Rod, born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. Check out their EP at http://changingclocks.com or their latest single “Chance” at http://changingclocks.com/chance-free-download.

Ah, the launch for NME Blueprint is over – no more pithcing for a little while! Today we get right back into the content with a gnarly guest post from Carla Lynne Hall. She previously posted about her experiences at the New Music Seminar in New York. Today she talks about a real life case study with SEO, or search engine optmization. I think its a great piece, because while she tells you the upside, she also mentions how it wasn’t the magic pill that some tout it to be.

BTW – there is an awesome webinar going down tonight with my buddy Preston Ely on lifestyle optimization. It might be a little left field from music marketing, but there is something to be said about musicians that have goals and life aspirations. I think you are going to like what he has to say. Register for it here.

Hundreds of people go to search engines like Google every day seeking musical talent in your hometown. While they might not be looking specifically for you or your band, they are using music-related keywords to find a local band or music teacher. By optimizing your band’s website or blog for certain keywords, you can attract new visitors to your site.

After learning this little-known technique, I couldn’t wait to test it out. To find my own local keywords, I began by brainstorming musical categories related to my local area, and tested them out on Google Adword’s Keyword Tool. This free tool is invaluable because it lets me know the actual keywords that people actually use when they go to Google. This will help me choose the best keywords to describe my music.

I’m a singer/songwriter that lives in New York City, so the results of my brainstorm using Google’s tool looked like this:

• new york singer songwriter: 480 monthly searches
• nyc singer songwriter: 210 monthly searches
• new york singer: 14, 800 monthly searches
• new york city singer songwriter: 36 monthly searches

After analyzing the results, I decide to focus on “nyc singer songwriter” as my primary keyword, and “new york singer songwriter” as my secondary one.

In order to maximize these keywords on my websites, I did the following:

I bought the domain NYC-Singer.com and added “NYC Singer Songwriter” to my site’s title section

I sprinkled the phrases “NYC Singer” and “NYC Singer Songwriter” throughout the text copy of my site.

I added “NYC Singer Songwriter” to the title section of my Rock Star Life Lessons blog.

Although “new york singer” gets 14,800 searches each month, it’s not the most relevant choice, as many of those searches are for Singer brand sewing machines in NYC, as well as New Yorkers who have the last name “Singer”. Not to mention the other singer songwriters in the entire STATE (not city) of New York. As Google prides itself on giving relevant search results, it would be difficult to maintain a solid ranking for that keyword.

So armed with this information, should you buy the domain for your keyword?

After testing this theory on my own site at http://NYC-Singer.com, I’d only recommend it for professional musicians, bands and services such as NYCWeddingBands.com and MusicianCoaching.com.

While NYCRockBand.com may get traffic, there’s no guarantee that you’ll receive a return on your investment of time and energy from websurfers searching on that term. However if your NYC rock band has a blog, you’d do well to have a “NYC Rock band” category, and pepper the occasional blog post with that term.

Should you buy the URL, and have it forwarded to your band site?

What I’ve learned is that domain forwarding is invisible to Google. The singer who purchased NYCSinger.com, and forwarded it to her music site only catches traffic from websurfers who enter that URL specifically (and how many people do that?). And since her website title (or site) doesn’t mention “nyc singer”, her site doesn’t even come up in Google searches.

It’s now over a year later since choosing these keywords, and I’ve had a bit of a rude awakening. Last year at this time, my sites held the #2 and #3 slots
on Google, behind the long-running NYC Songwriter Circle. This year, NYC-Singer.com ranks #18 in regular results.

If this site had been a blog, creating more blog posts on that topic would increase Google ranking.

My Findings On Local SEO For Musicians

One thing I learned is how powerful keywords are for blogs. My blog, Rock Star Life Lessons features the keyword ONLY in the website title. But for each new blog post that gets indexed by Google, the website’s title is also included, which adds strength to my “ownership” of the chosen local keyword.

Using your band’s local keyword in the title section of your band’s blog instead of purchasing the domain is a better choice.

My site at NYC-Singer.com would have ranked higher if it had been a blog with regular updates.

All said, maintaining ranking for some keywords can take more time and energy then it’s worth. If you’re seeking to maximize your online music marketing, the better use of your time would be collecting fan email addresses!

This post was written by Carla Lynne Hall, a NYC-based singer/songwriter and music marketing consultant. She blogs about the life of an indie musician at her Rock Star Life Lessons blog, and is launching a new podcast and video series for Fall 2010.

Last night we hosted a really cool live chat on uStream that related to Internet Marketing and the Music Business. The chat lasted a little over an hour and saw somewhere between 50-70 indie musicians and service providers come and hang out. One of the coolest and unforseen  opportuities that came out of the live session was the interaction between you guys.

From helping each other with resources, to sharing email addresses to collab on designs, merch and video editing. I was really pleased with the whole evening.

Of course, I got to plug the NME Blueprint, which the first session starts on Monday and we are holding only a few more spots. I was overwhelmed with the number of musicians that scooped up spots last night. If you are thinking about it, I would jump in today.

What I wanted to do today was post the replay of the chat – it is long, like really long, but it’s here for you to check out. Below the video is an overview of some of the key concepts discussed, as well as a new bonus being offered for members of the NME Blueprint.

• TubeMogul – distribute your videos across multiple platforms
• Artist Data – Syndicate your shows across multiple event sharing sites
• Aweber – our recommended email service provider
• FanBridge – a musician focused email platform
• iContact, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact – other options for email service providers
• Audiolife – get merch printed on demand, from CD’s to shirts
• oDesk – look for outsourcing professionals
• New Music Economy – the original music business course from Gen-Y Rock Stars
• BandWPThemes – our custom WordPress theme for musicians
• Grooveshark – awesome platform to advertise your music in a pay-per-play model
• Facebook Ads – best geo targeted advertising solution to find fans based on characteristics
• I’m sure there are more, but my memory is spent. Leave anything I missed in the comments below

NME Blueprint Update:

We have nearly all of our slots filled now. We have room for a few more and I want to put you over the edge and get you involved today!

The NME Blueprint is the most advanced Internet Marketing Training that anyone has ever shared i the music industry (bold ass statement, but try and show me someone else that is teaching you the things I am showing you in the 12 modules in the sales video).

We have some action packed bonuses and today I want to throw in 2 more!

Everyone that picks up the NME Blueprint before the first class starts on Monday, in addition to all the cool stuff we are already throwing out there, will receive the No Limit Networking Training – an interactive class on how to find influential people online that can help you grow your business.

And I am also going to donate 10% of all sales to Rock For Hunger – a local Orlando nonprofit that throws concerts to help the homeless and children living in poverty.

If you want to learn more and be one of the 25 that enrolls in the NME Blueprint Mastermind Training – go here and enroll now.

Thanks again for an awesome chat last night and I will talk to you all soon! Class starts Monday and I have a lot to do to get ready!

-Greg

Oh – and shout out to Eric @ Evolvor, Quiet Entertainer, Randy from Cherry Suede, Corey and BJ for hanging out last night too. Good to see some familiar faces adding tips and constantly learning.

Just opened the cart for the NME Blueprint Training. Below is the sales video that explains everything.

You can learn everything you ever wanted to know about the training here or leave a comment below.

If you are ready to make the investment into the NME Blueprint and want to be one of the 25 artists in this music marketing and music business training course, click the button below to get started today.

-Greg

Wow – the launch has been kicking major ass, so much so that I forgot to post here yesterday when we launched the 2nd video in the series. The second video is all about building a fan list through emails. We broke down the advantages as well as hooked everyone up with a free squeeze page template to start using right now in their music business.

Watch the video now and check out:

• Why sending your fans to your website may be causing them to never come back to your website
• How to create a simple script that instantly turns your fans into subscribers
• What cameras to use and why the location and equipment doesn’t need to be perfect
• How to create an offer that is valuable enough to grab your fans’ email addresses
• And a ton more

Click here to check out the video and learn more about the program we are putting together for 25 artists that want to rock the next few months and change their thoughts, beliefs and techniques towards today’s music business.

Tomorrow we will be hooking you up with 4 videos from Nick Nanton and myself that you don’t want to miss. They are pretty damn dope.

Anyway – back too the editing bay and then off on the road to Atlanta to kick it with Duncan from BandMetrics and Adam from Rank Em.

-Greg

Alright – its game time! For the past few weeks Gen-Y Rock Stars has been in grind mode. Our traffic has nearly doubled in the last 3 months and I can contribute a lot of that success to you all for sharing the site, writing some killer guest posts and our team for staying a beat ahead of what is happening with not only music marketing, but the entire music business and the internet world.

During this time, we knew we had to step up our game big time and change the lives of a select group of musicians. From that concept we created the New Music Economy Blueprint. Today we kick off the first in an extremely action packed week with a video on the state of the music industry and why now – like today – is the best time to be an independent musician, artist, MC, songwriter, producer or whatever it is that you aspire to do is this business.

The video may be the coolest video I have ever shot (until you see Wednesday’s video) and alone, I think it can really jump start a lot of artists that are stuck in the same rut – or who may be creating killer songs, but have no direction with what to do with them.

So, go, watch the video and please leave your feedback below the video.

Oh and some shout outs:

• Adam Hoek – he created the intro for the video
• Smash City Gauntlet – they supplied the intro music and the main beat throughout the video
• Jeff Peak – he rocked the music industry intro to the video
• J-Ro – rocked the camera for the on-location shots in the steaming hot Florida summer afternoon

Look out for Wednesday as I hook everyone up with a squeeze page template, script and instruction video. The week is only going to get better!

-Greg

If you are ecstatic its Friday, then you need to grind harder so that Friday is just another day. Just saying.

Every week for the past 2-3 years we have been posting 2-3 Mike Tyson Knockout posts a week that detail some way that you can improve your music business. On Twitter we share links, mention artists promoting great campaigns, videos, marketing and more. Through our email newsletters we get to talk to you, one-on-one with critical music business issues.

But what do you do with that information?

In February we launched the New Music Economy. We have sold hundreds of copies of this step-by-step course. And while I have gotten some of the coolest feedback, testimonials and seen some great sites, videos and landing pages – I know there are a handful more that never even watched all the videos.

In June we put out BandWPThemes. This was as exciting as Ari Gold being back on tv this summer, because within hours of launching it we already had sites online using our WordPress theme. But out of the 100+ sold, there are only 30-40 sites up.

This year, Gen-Y Rock Stars has generated more income than the last 3 entire years combined (but its not all MTV Cribs folks). All from the Internet and all from doing the exact same things I teach and have learned from  (read people, go meet people and attend every conference you can get your car to). We practice the hell out of what we preach. Give value, collect emails, be cool and teach good stuff, find great affiliate products, create your own products and get even more people excited. Rinse, repeat, lather.

So what needs to happen to STOP some of you from reading blogs, clicking on Twitter links and playing the same damn shows to the same group of friends every week?

Account-a-friggin-bility!

What if you had to answer to someone every week for your progress? Someone that wasn’t checking up on you for a grade, report card or some certification, but to ensure that you were growing your music business?

I was listening to an MP3 this morning while I was getting my jog on from Preston Ely. It was from his Red Pill course – his views on Lifestyle Optimization. While sweating my ass off in the Florida heat at 7:30am, one of the things that got me to stop thinking about how damn hot it was, was the accountability issues that we all have. He talked about adding a pain point to your goals.

If you wanted to lose weight, and didn’t tell anyone, you can skip out and eat some fries and a shake and you would only be cheating yourself. But if you had someone to report to every week, it would be more painful to admit you fucked up to them, than it would be to just skip the fries and grab a salad.

Or as a musician, say you were working with a producer that you were paying $100/hr, with an assigned block of time. If you missed that session due to being late, sleeping in, hanging with your boys, drinkin some beers or whatever lame excuse nearly every musician can come up with in a heartbeat – you are throwing money away – right down the drain. That is a pain point with accountability.

The NME Blueprint

Next week we are gearing up to release another product (relax, no pitch today). It’s seriously cool and will change everything about your current productivity in today’s messed up music business. During the week we will be releasing some killer content to everyone. That’s how these launches work.

I know not everyone will jump on board with the new training (in fact 95% of you won’t because it is limited to 25 kick ass musicians). So in order to make people take some serious action, whether they jump on board or not, we whipped up some Kool Aid that will make everyone’s heart skip a beat. Next week we’ll be dropping science on:

• The New Music Economy Blueptint – an exact blueprint to start making money with your music and living that lifestyle you keep dreaming about in the shower
• Case studies on how musicians have used the New Music Economy to build more fans and increase their income as a full time musician
• How to shoot a squeeze page video, from the script to the camera to the reason why they work so well
• A free squeeze page template with step-by-step instructions to install and customize
• A video series with superstar Nick Nanton. This guy is a Grammy voter, award winning songwriter and television composer, author of at least 3 best sellers and is the number one celebrity branding lawyer on the planet. The videos we shot together are sick, seriously sick.
• An opportunity to join the NME Blueprint.

In the NME Blueprint, you will have that accountability. And your business (and your life) will change. Anyway, it’s been a super exciting first 6-7 months of the year. I’ve met some great musicians, heard some sweet, sweet music and had a friggin blast in doing so. Looking forward to seeing you all on Monday.

Oh, btw – we started a Facebook Page. Yea, lame plug. What we decided to do is, instead of just feeding content over there, we are going to produce Facebook exclusive videos, links and stories. The first is a look at a new feature from the email platform FanBridge. Plus its a place where you can interact with us and other musicians who are using the concepts we talk about here and teach in the New Music Economy.

So, go holler at us over there or talk trash in the comments below. What are you doing, right now that is helping your music career? We’ll see you Monday. Who’s down for a quick surf?

-Greg

Top image by greinarr

Today I have another stellar guest post by Todd Dunnigam from Roaming Royalty. Todd is a BandWPThemes member and today he sent me an email stating that he did some outsourcing to tweak the theme. Friggin awesome I thought. So he sent over this step-by-step process for using oDesk to outsource some of your web and WordPress work.

How would you like an assistant, or even a team of assistants that do amazing work for you at a low price and only when you need it?

Do what all the Fortune 500 companies have been doing for years, outsource it. There are web designers, graphics people, tech nerds and every other kind of skilled person just waiting to work for you. Sounds great, and (in theory) it’s as easy as going to a website and sending out an e-mail with your job listing, you can go back to making music while some of this other tedious stuff gets done by someone else.

OK how easy is it really?

That’s what I set out to discover when I wanted to change up my WordPress site (built on BandWPThemes). I know a little html, a little css, I think the term is, I know enough to be dangerous, and the changes I wanted to make were beyond me. I’d read about outsourcing and fortunately I had a friend who was doing it so he was able to help me through the process. He recommended odesk.com ’cause he had tried some others and liked them best, and through odesk.com he had assembled a team of people from all over the world that he was really happy with.

step 1: sign up and post your job

Sign up is pretty easy, you have to fill out the usual information and you need to put a credit card on file which will be used to pay the people you hire. Next you’ll be asked if you’d like to post a job which takes you to a basic text editor where you describe the job you have.

Once the job is listed, people will start applying for your job. I put out an ad asking for a simple WordPress update and within about 8 hours I had 30 people apply for the job. Applicants came from all over the world. Some were part of big companies and some were independent contractors and they ranged in price from $3.33 per hour to over $30 per hour. I looked at some of the candidates and I was ready for the next step, but I hit a snag.

Odesk charges 2 small amounts to your credit card which you then find on your statement and you then go back to the website and plug in those amounts to verify your card. This is pretty common practice but the process took 3 days. When you’re used to things happening instantaneously, 3 days seemed insufferably slow.

Step 2: interview and hire someone

Out of the roughly 50 answers I got back I chose to interview 4 people. Odesk does a cool thing by matching keywords in your post to keywords in an applicants listing so you get a compatibility rating. Here’s a quick example listing:

I chose the 4 applicants based on 4 different criteria.

• the lowest price
• one recommended by my friend
• one guy who was fairly new to the site and had almost no jobs, I figured he’d be hungry to do a good job
• one who was pretty expensive but had lot’s of jobs and impeccable feedback

A quick note to potential job seekers on these sites: Look at Irnya’s headline in the pic above, that got my attention ’cause it stood out from all the other headlines, her pic didn’t hurt either.

Step 3: Put your new employee to work

So I hired my 3rd option, the guy with no track record or jobs, he was also cheap at $5.00 an hour. Imran Ali Shah contacted me and we exchanged a couple of e-mails. I did my best to explain to him what I was after, and included many links to other sites that had examples of what I wanted. I also asked him about the time frame and he said he could have it done over a weekend.

So when the weekend came around I went to our site and saw a couple of changes and I was pretty excited, Imran Ali Shah, was on the job! By the time the weekend was over, he had started to make a couple of the changes we had talked about and then seemed to abandon the project. I hit him up to see how it was going and I received a bill, granted it was only for $5.00 and some legit changes had been made but not even close to what I was thinking was going to happen.

Strike one. Lesson learned. The cheapest guy probably isn’t the best.

Step 4: Hire someone else.

So I went back and this time I hired Iryna, pictured in the ad above, she was more expensive but her feedback was stellar. Iryna contacted me within minutes of hiring her and after we had a couple of details worked out she said she would start in 30 minutes. My plans for that day were taking the kids to the waterpark so I wasn’t going to be near a computer all day, but I sent her the same instructions I had sent the previous applicant and told her to go for it. For the rest of the day I occasionally picked up my phone and e-mailed answers to any questions Iryna had, but within a few hours I had the changes I wanted made to my website for less than $40.

Step 5: Enjoy your life

I can’t tell you how happy I was spending a day in the sun with the kids vs. pouring over a css manual trying figure out WTF is wrong with my site. 40 bucks? Totally worth it. So all in all it wasn’t perfectly smooth, but now that I have Iryna I can go back to her whenever, she’s part of my team. Also, good people tend to know other good people so when I asked Iryna if she did graphic design, she said ‘no’ but she knew another person who also turned out to be fabulous. So go write a song, or do some surfing or spend some quality time with the family and leave the work to someone else.

Check out Todd’s site, RoamingRoyalty.com. Join his email list and download some of his tracks. Just don’t outsource the listening part.

Today I have a killer guest post from Label 2.0 member and superstar Nashville indie DJ Quiet Entertainer. This guy has been creating killer content on his site for a few months now and I asked him to start reaching out and tapping into new audiences. So here he is today, talking about getting offline (gasp!) and connecting with your fans. I think a lot of you are going to be able to marinate to it.

Hello to all my fellow ambitious, motivated genyrockstars! Let me just start by saying: I’m just like you. I was just the voice of one, crying in the wilderness. I had done a few EPs. Played some shows. I wasn’t really sure what I needed to do in order to keep this from being a hobby. Then I found this website and others like it. I joined Label 2.0. The community there gave me a lot of focus. I took a few months to go through a complete overhaul of everything I was doing online. I thought to myself, “I’m really building a following and the fans I get are sticking!”

Then, it happened.

I was out at a show; and one of my fans came up to me to say, “Oh, it’s great that you’re actually out and doing stuff again. I thought you had retired.”

What? Retired? Did he not know that I built a WordPress site & established my homebase on the web? Was he oblivious to my new blog, where I’ve spelled out in detail how I got my music on Pandora among other things? Did he miss that I took my latest EP and uploaded it to Bandcamp and as many other places I could think of?? Was he not paying attention to all the work I did to finally create a squeeze page to help build my new music business? What about the interviews I’ve done?

Short answers: No he didn’t; Yes he was; Yes he did; No he wasn’t; & What about them?

In all my efforts to build this online brand and eventually to build the kind of business that will allow me to quit my day job and play music, I had forgotten about the offline world. There is a huge disconnect between the offline and online world. Highly driven artists with laser focus and tunnel vision can sometimes forget about the world away from the cloud.

That’s what I did. This fan and other fans like him just wanted to know two things: Are you performing tonight? And if not, when is your next show? I should have recognized this. Even online, I’m always asked, “When are you coming to play a show in _________ ?”

We must bridge the gap between the online and offline world. A great way to do that as an artist and performer is to kill it with your live show! Your killer live show will accomplish a few things in building your OVERALL business.

What Having That Live Show Can Do For Your Music Business:

• Create a Unique Fan Experience – You’re an artist. But your art is not just your music. It’s your performance. You’re creating experience art: the experience you create with your fan. Don’t underestimate how your fans feel when they come to see you. You are somewhat responsible for their good times! At least, you can be.
• Generate Online and Offline Content – Did you read Bruce Warila’s post over at Music Think Tank? He was talking about how easy it is now for fans to create online content for you. I think he’s on point. Plus, if you have t-shirts, physical CDs, stickers, posters; you’re giving them tangible content as well!
• Make You a Better Performer – The pressure of performing in front of your faithful ones who (hopefully) paid expecting to see something amazing, that will keep you sharp and hopefully humble.
• Make You More Interesting – Well, it has to. It beats sitting at your computer 7 days a week. That’s what I was doing. But, I didn’t have anything to write about until I went out to shows and started engaging people. Maybe you’re doing that at shows, maybe conferences, Cracker Barrels, etc.

If you don’t have any shows upcoming, go book one! Find some kind of outlet. Yes, you’re using all the power and leverage of the internet like most musicians haven’t conceived of yet. Just don’t forget the live show!

What about you? Are you forgetting about the live and offline aspect of your music business? Sound off in the comments below.

Quiet Entertainer is a DJ & producer based in Nashville making ambient & electronic blended hip-hop. Click here to download his Machismo EP.”