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7:48 am
June 10, 2011
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QuoteJohn, that training was fantastic. I wish I had known that stuff when I did my first music videos. That said, I've done remarkably well, and now I see why. I accidentally did most of the things you recommend. For example, I didn't know what key words to use, so I looked at the top ranking videos to see what they used. I have a lot of backlinks simply because people like the videos and tweet and promote them on facebook and other websites. I ask people to do that in my Aweber followup series.
I'd really like to rank for "smooth jazz" instead of "smooth jazz sax" and "smooth jazz saxophone." But, I'm grateful for what I've gotten. I do get views and traffic. And, I'm back on the front page of Google again: smooth jazz sax. Again, not to brag, but really to validate that what you are saying is true: keywords, descriptions, backlinks.
7:58 am
June 10, 2011
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Just thinking about this some more…wow! The potential… 
One strategy that some musicians use to get traffic to their YouTube channel, and thus subscribers, is cover songs. If those cover song videos are properly tagged, described, and backlinked??? Then, after you have subscribers, you send them messages telling them you have free downloads at http://www.yoursqueezepage.com. 
Yeah, baby! Those subscribers already LIKE you!
Absolutely, YouTube and cover songs is a huge opportunity. I have been swearing to myself for a while now that with my next release I will do 30 days of web cam cover songs just for that reason.
Incidentally, I just noticed that my CD Baby test video is now at #4 in Youtube when you search "sell music on itunes" (and the links are really only just starting to kick in.
And my Robert Johnson video has more than 9000 views.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Youtube cover songs are going to be a big part of my strategy for helping my daughter build her career.
Check out the keyword "Safe and Sound" in Youtube. You'll see my daughter's cover at #3, right behind the official Hunger Games version and Taylor Swift's version. She's at 220,000+ views and getting another couple thousand per day. She had virtually no subscriber base to start, so pretty much all those views have come from search.
I'd previously helped some of her friends get videos ranked, but I now feel like I've got the process wired. She should have jumped on it and started posting more videos but she was too busy with school. Now that she is out for the summer we're going to crank it up. To be successful with cover videos and really build a following you need to post on a regular basis--her plan is to post a new one every other Friday. She has found a couple of film students to help her and they will be recording the first one on Thursday (we did Safe and Sound during the Christmas break on a whim).
The problem is that they haven't really converted into email subscriptions. She has a link at the front of her description and she put an annotation on the video (although it could be improved), but it has only netted a couple of hundred subscribers. However, I've come up with an idea I hope will explode the opt-ins.
Up until now we've been offering a song from her upcoming EP. Instead of that what I'm going to do is offer a download of the cover she is performing in the video. I'm thinking that that will be far more targeted...the viewer arrived to watch a cover video, so if they like the song they will be far more likely to take the effort to download that then a song they know nothing about.
Most/many successful cover musicians on YouTube do something similar in that they provide a link where the song can be downloaded--a link to itunes. Well, we all know that a subscriber is far more valuable than the few cents from a single itunes download.
I'm an attorney and internet marketer, but I'm here to help my daughter build a career as an independent singer/songwriter. -- taysings.com, youtube.com/taysings
Wow – cool, Mark! I hope that you'll have the time to drop some updates on us as the project progresses.
Have you seen this blog post on taking advantage of YouTube cover videos?
The author covers a ton of useful info, especially w/r/t handling the licensing arrangements for downloads of the song (via Rightsflow, which I've heard good things about elsewhere, but haven't tried for myself). Hope that's helpful, and congrats to you and your daughter!
"Radio Nowhere? What the hell is that? We wanted him to be a lawyer" — My Mom
Okay, so she didn't like it. But you just might! Loud guitars, award-winning songwriting, and visits from the devil.
Check it out and pick up a free EP here..
I haven't seen that post, that you VERY much, that will be very helpful.
I forgot one important part of the "Safe and Sound" story. About 3 weeks ago Taylor received, totally out of the blue, an email from one of the casting directors for The Voice explaining that she'd seen Taylor's video and that they wanted to invite her to come to Hollywood for a private audition! She did the audition and ultimately didn't make it onto the show, but what incredible validation for Taylor's music (and for my ranking prowess! lol).
I'm an attorney and internet marketer, but I'm here to help my daughter build a career as an independent singer/songwriter. -- taysings.com, youtube.com/taysings
Just thought I'd follow up on this with an example for anyone who's interested. I've decided to give this a whirl to see what kind of traffic/conversion I can get from cover videos, and just posted a quick version of "Refugee", by Tom Petty. Here's the link.
The text on the right is actually a web version of an email to my list about the video, so you can see the copy I used to get my subscribers to check it out. Again, hope somebody finds this useful, and I'll try to come back and update with results.
"Radio Nowhere? What the hell is that? We wanted him to be a lawyer" — My Mom
Okay, so she didn't like it. But you just might! Loud guitars, award-winning songwriting, and visits from the devil.
Check it out and pick up a free EP here..
8:03 am
June 7, 2011
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Hey Charley,
Mike, cool to see you doing this. A popular cover is extremely competitive, but definitely worth trying. I haven't seen anyone go after anything quite that competitive yet. Cool to see. How many links did you build to it? Or link packs from fiverr?
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Hey Charley: thanks for the info on the link - I've gone back and edited my original post, or you could click the link in John's response.
John, I actually didn't intend to do such a popular cover - it was a mistake!
I started by making a list of Petty-related keyphrases for EZine articles, using Market Samurai to find things that I thought I might be able to rank for with an article.
At the same time, I was sort of randomly daydreaming about Petty hits that would work with my M.O. - if you're 1) going to build your arrangement around looping pedal capabilities, and; 2) not going to spend much time practicing beforehand or editing afterwards, it's surprising how quickly that narrows the possibilities, as far as which songs will work...;)
Anyway, I realized that Refugee was kind of my only option, then got excited about it and went ahead and made the video...and then realized that "Tom Petty Refugee" had definitely_not_been on my list of attainable keyphrases. Duh. I guess these are the kinds of things that point out the difference between an SEO expert and a guitar player!
That said, though the video is nowhere to be seen in Google's main search results, and buried on page 3 in YT's search results, it is #8 here in a Google video search for "Tom Petty Refugee" (from google.com, not signed in). It's currently at 290 views, and I've had one subscriber.
As you've seen, I emailed my list about it, as well as pinging Twitter, FB, and Tumblr. And I bought 3 Fiverr link packages: 'manually Build 150 High PR Backlinks', 'add your site to 600+ social bookmarks + rss + ping' , and build eminent backlink pyramid with 5000 profiles links,links are all from different domains and about 90 percent are dofollow'. Here's hoping my subscriber drops $15 on CDs ;).
Let me know if you have any other questions about what I've done so far, and of course if anyone has input on how to do this better, I'm all ears - thanks!
"Radio Nowhere? What the hell is that? We wanted him to be a lawyer" — My Mom
Okay, so she didn't like it. But you just might! Loud guitars, award-winning songwriting, and visits from the devil.
Check it out and pick up a free EP here..
1:45 am
June 7, 2011
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You might try adding a few more link packs. Particularly ones that are content based, such as article spinning packages. The most important one of all is the traffic geyser video submission pack. It's my hunch that the articles and teh video backlinks are the most important part of the equation. I'd be really curious to see if that boosts you. Build the backlinks with a varied collection of "tom petty refugee cover" You probably would have stood a better chance if you targeted that (with cover in the title). You could always try adding that to your title, description, and annotation to see if it helps.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
thanks, John.
Just bought a traffic geyser pack - we'll see how it does.
"Radio Nowhere? What the hell is that? We wanted him to be a lawyer" — My Mom
Okay, so she didn't like it. But you just might! Loud guitars, award-winning songwriting, and visits from the devil.
Check it out and pick up a free EP here..
Cool...Im stoked to hear how it goes.
DRESSED HIS WIFE UP LIKE A HORSE FOR HIS NEW ALBUM COVER
http://www.deanfields.net
3:49 am
June 10, 2011
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Ok, I just went to the Traffic Geyser site and am not sure how you guys are using it. It looks like an all-in-one control
panel for all your media "outlets," so I'm not exactly sure what it does.
12:36 am
June 7, 2011
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Tim Curry said
Ok, I just went to the Traffic Geyser site and am not sure how you guys are using it. It looks like an all-in-one control
panel for all your media "outlets," so I'm not exactly sure what it does.
Hey Tim,
We are just referring to buying a $5 Traffic Geyser video submission pack on Fiverr. Not actually buying Traffic Geyser itself.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Thought I'd give a quick progress report on this video. My Fiverr Traffic Geyser gig was delivered almost a week ago, and interestingly, traffic to the video has...essentially stopped. I think right now I have about 5 more views than I did last Friday. I'll post here again if there are any notable changes in the future.
"Radio Nowhere? What the hell is that? We wanted him to be a lawyer" — My Mom
Okay, so she didn't like it. But you just might! Loud guitars, award-winning songwriting, and visits from the devil.
Check it out and pick up a free EP here..
11:49 pm
June 7, 2011
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Thanks for the update Mike. I'd be surprised if it's related. The video has been out for a while and if I saw things right, traffic was slowing before the Traffic Geyser gig. perhaps I'm mistaken.
Traffic Geyser gigs usually spread the video submissions out over time. This was one of those 30ish video submission packs, right? They wouldn't all be out yet, and they wouldn't all be indexed yet. And just to make sure, you're linking to the actual video page right?
What you want to do is make not of the rankings you have within Google video and youtube itself, and Google itself if there are any, and monitor those rankings. I have seen it take a good month for a video to take off after this process. Sometimes it's faster.
I also really recommend the article spinning pack. All of these things matter.
I have never spread it out like you are doing it though, so I don't know if the fact that the link sources are coming in in chunks like this is effecting you. I don't think it would but hard to say.
NOTE* I just checked your ranking in Youtube search and you are at #8 for Tom Petty Refugee cover and on the first page (#20) for Tom Petty Refugee. That's certainly an improvement from the 3rd page, no? Search volume varies so you might just have hit a slow week, and you are still pretty far back to really pick up much traffic yet.
Add this pack to it and see if it effects things: http://fiverr.com/vapsjee/writ.....-backlinks
But give it 3 or 4 weeks from the time that publishes to judge. I'll happily cover the 5 bucks if you want to invoice me via Paypal. I'm just curious to see. I would vary your keywords so you are building links with tom petty refugee cover, tom petty refugee, tom petty, refugee, in that order and even more variation is fine.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
3:42 am
June 7, 2011
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Hey Mike,
I just checked out your rankings and it looks like you are still climbing.
You are now at #5 for "Tom Petty Refugee" in Google video.
#17 in Youtube for "Tom Petty Refugee".
and #7 in Youtube for "tom petty refugee cover" which is above the fold, so that's cool.
The traffic is still slow so that means you will need to rank higher to get the traffic on this, but I think the movement is cool to see. #5 in Google video kind of surprised me. That's not bad for a keyword like Tom Petty Refugee.
Can I convince you to throw that article pack at it? I'll happily pay for it. I just want to see what impact it has.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Hey John - thanks for reporting in on this. I hadn't thought to check it in several days.
I went ahead and ordered the article pack, and I'm cool to just pay for it myself (you can buy me a beer sometime 😉
I'll let you know when the guy is done, so we'll know when to start looking for results.
"Radio Nowhere? What the hell is that? We wanted him to be a lawyer" — My Mom
Okay, so she didn't like it. But you just might! Loud guitars, award-winning songwriting, and visits from the devil.
Check it out and pick up a free EP here..
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