Why Be Social?

Selling music online can be tough without first developing a loyal fan base.  How does one go about developing and engaging people online you ask?  Well,  lets start with the basics.

If you use your social networking tools properly, you can easily keep your fans up to date on your new albums, performances, and promotions.  Getting your fans involved with your music career is a great way to get even more fans.  Take this scenario for example:

Joe Schmo follows you on Twitter and learned about your upcoming  show Friday night.   He attended and loved your show.  When he’s at the show he tweets to his friends about how great the show is.  A few of Joe’s buddies, in turn, follow you on Twitter, and decide to check out your website.  They tell more friends about you, THOSE friends follow you as well — you see where this leads.

So, let’s talk about a the two most popular social Networks of the day and provide some examples of how to use them to generate more followers (Twitter) and likes (Facebook).
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Selling Music: MP3 power!

With emerging technologies like smart phones, portable MP3 players, and WiFi hot-spots sprouting up everywhere, it’s no surprise that digital music sales are on the rise.  In fact, the extremely popular iTunes store  now sells 28% of all music in the US, and holds 80% of the download market.  So if you’re not selling on iTunes your missing out on potential sales.

How much money can an artist make from selling downloads?  An interesting study compares the sales a musician would need to make in order to reach a minimum wage income: check it out HERE.  CD Baby revenue structure compares favorably with many other companies.

As a reminder, HostBaby is offering a great deal for our customers.  CD Baby, as you well know, is a great company for selling and distributing your CDs and Mp3s.  As a HostBaby customer, you’re allowed 5 free album submissions to CD Baby per year (account must be in good standing).  This includes singles.  Check out the details HERE. Getting your music online for sale is easier than ever!

Who are You? – Picking out a domain name

Building a presence on the web can be very important to an artist’s success in the music industry.  Sure, there are lots of music selling services like iTunes, Rhapsody, and even CD Baby, but having your own personal website with your own domain is useful for several reasons:

1. ACCESS:  Why make fans search for you on various music store websites when they could go straight to your content?
2. VARIETY OF CONTENT: With your own website, you can provide your fans with all kinds of cool information and you get to choose what they see.
3. PERSONALITY: With your own website you get to determine how you and your art are presented. Here you may shine as an artist, show off who you and sell your music and your art.

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Videos.  Are.  Cool.

One of the best ways to promote yourself as a performer/artist online is by sharing videos of your music performances.  These days there are thousands of video tools and sharing sites that make posting videos easier and more affordable than ever before.   With so many options out there, we’ve decided to highlight some of the methods and techniques that make the most sense to us.
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The Power of Fan-Driven Sharing

There are many ways you can promote and share updates of your HostBaby website. You can use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, ListBaby, Digg and other services to update the online world with your musical comings and goings. These are all great things to do when you have time between gigs, but why not enable your fans to do some of this work for you? What if, with the click of a button, your fans could easily and quickly tell all their friends about the cool things they found while checking out your site!

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The power is yours!

Hi folks!  As most of you know, we offer unlimited Email accounts when you host with us.  But some of you may be wondering, what is the best way to get to your Email?

We, at Hostbaby, offer everyone access to Webmail.  Webmail is an internet (or web) based Email client.  You can perform all your basic tasks from Webmail (send, receive, forward, reply, send attachments).  Every hosted domain with us should have access; you simply go to http://(yourdomainnamehere)/webmail.  This way, you can check an Email account hosted by us online at any machine with internet access. 

There are some good advantages to using Webmail, especially if you’re a casual Email user:

1. It’s easy to access ANYWHERE, as long as you have internet access.
2. It has very little system requirements.
3. It’s from Hostbaby, which immediately makes it cool.

However, if you frequently communicate via Email, there are some other Email options that may suit you better!
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POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

We’re all about empowering our users!  There’s nothing sweeter than making your own site, and being able to make updates on the fly.  Plus, a lot of our templates are pretty darn sweet.  Making sites with the Wizard can be pretty darn easy.  However, there are some tools that just about every Wizard user should have at their fingertips.
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