Greg Parke said:

Hey Darragh,

  I had all kinds of problems seting up my squeeze page, and I was using a computer with Vista. After I upgraded to Windows 7, setting up the squeeze page was a breeze. I don't know if that was just coincidence or what, but i wanted to pass that on!

Hey Greg,

I have Vista and don't have any of the problems you were having.  My guess is that the upgrade just fixed something else that was causing the problem.

Darragh Brady said:

Cheers for the feedback,

If you were to have a small budget to promote a new EP

would you put some aside for print adverts i.e half a page in Rolling Stone?

also what do you think of advertising on Itunes and Spotify?

What do you think of Fanbridge and are there another mail delivery systems you

could recommend that do not charge a monthy but charge on what you use?

as I do not tend to send loads of mail out till I have something to say related to releases

or important news!

Can you recommend any website designers do a new site for me.

Best wishes

Darragh

Hey Darrah, I'll answer everything point by point.

1. If my budget was small I would stay away form print advertising. I would try to make online advertising work first. It's SOOOO much less expensive to test. Once you have a profitable funnel then I might play with print advertising. Facebook is teh easiest way to get started and they are much less difficult to please than Google.

2. I haven't advertised with itunes or Spotify. My concern with both would be that the person viewing the ad would – at best- consume my music right there on itunes or spotify. My goal is to use advertising to drive people to a squeeze page. In my opinion the only real way to turn a profit is to build a list of leads you can market to over and over again with multiple products.

3. I haven't personally used Fanbridge but my general impression is that they are very limited compared to one of the big autoresponder companies such as Aweber. Mail Chimp has a pay as you go program and I hear great things about them, but as a side note... if you're not using your autoresponder taht much, then your funnel is not set up right. You should be mailing your list, at LEAST a few times a month. Otherwise they will go cold and you will see open rates drop.

4. Scott James is a good designer and fellow member of the forum. Tell him you were referred by me. http://www.websitesforrockstars.com

You can also look in the freelance networks such as http://scriptlance.com. Just make sure you look at their work, communicate with them a bit, and read reviews before hiring them.

Hey Scott,

You did you do the graphics for the MMM site, by chance?

-Steve

I used a guy I found in a classified to do the original MMM design for me for only $100, but since then I've had a designer and friend, Sean Early, make little improvements to it. But I will definitely be working with Scott in the future as well. His stuff is great.

Scott James said:

Steve Rodgers said:

Hey Scott,

 

You did you do the graphics for the MMM site, by chance?

-Steve

Hey Steve,

 

Nope.  Wasn't me.  Looks good though, huh?

 

- Scott

Yeah.  Looks great.  A little bit jealous actually 😉  I looked at your stuff too.  Nice work on the squeeze page for the girl doing "My Sharona".  Looks really good.

Steve Rodgers said:

John Oszajca said:

I used a guy I found in a classified to do the original MMM design for me for only $100, but since then I've had a designer and friend, Sean Early, make little improvements to it. But I will definitely be working with Scott in the future as well. His stuff is great.

That's actually a really nice example of outsourcing.  Paying a hundred bucks for web design on a course that sells for $97.  Talk about trading dimes for dollars....

Yeah man, I have done some crazy shit for cheap. I had some software designed for $50 recently. It's been downloaded thousands of imes and has made me thousands of dollars as a result. I get websites done for as little as $50. I even just had a voice over guy record a radio spot for me for $5. It's crazy what you can get done for cheap.

With that said, it takes trial and error to find the good stuff. Once I find someone who is good I typically pay a lot more just to get consistent quality. Like you said Steve, about trading dimes for dollars... the more dimes, usually the more dollars 🙂

Greg Parke said:

Hey John, I set up an account with Aweber, and my list is slowly starting to build. In the past, I have usually done a mass email to my other list about once a month. In one of the responces you gave earlier in this string, you mentioned sending emails more often so people don't lose interest. I'm just wondering how others are balancing the frequency of mass emails...How often to keep the interest up, vs when does it become "too much" and become annoying to the recipients?

The most important thing is that it's all going somewhere. Like they say with screenwriting, if it's not moving the story along... cut it.

Same goes here. An email for an email's sake is no good. But an email once a month is usually not enough to keep people engaged. If you don't email somewhat frequently you'll usually see the open rate drop and the spam complaint go up.

With that said, once people are locked in to who you are it's sometimes okay to back off a bit. But you need to be confident that the people on your list are really hooked on the value you offer.

My advice is to try to come up with an interesting blog post once every week or so (at least every two weeks). Then when you have a promo on you can hit hard for a few days in a row.

Good advice Steve.