DOMAIN NAME & DEDICATED EMAIL ADDRESS
With all of the other options now available, having your own website is becoming less and less necessary. However, if you have not already done so, I would highly recommend reserving your domain name. The cheapest place I’ve found to do this is GoDaddy.com where you can reserve a .com for about $9 a year. Then you can forward that domain name to any site you want, so you could forward yourname.com to your MySpace profile if that’s all you’ve got. Also, get an email address that is whatever@yourname.com, that will be much better when you send a business email than some gmail account. That also gives another subtle indication that you’re here to stay. I believe there are some mail services [like aol?] that offer to give you whatever you want as the last half of your email address if it’s available.
But if you do want to go ahead and set up your own website, then you should also be able to use your domain name as the back half of your email address. YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY DO THIS. Imagine someone at a record label gets a package from someone. They’ve got a home printed CD label, a letter on plain white paper, and the person’s email address is “luv2sing87@gmail.com”, and it all came in a plain white envelope. That says amateur. Then contrast that to a professionally duplicated CD mailed with a professionally printed address label, a letter on matching letterhead, and the contact email is something@yourname.com. That will be taken much more seriously. That says you’re taking this seriously.
If you’ve looked into getting yourname.com and it’s not available, it’s quite common to have yournamemusic.com or yournamerocks.com. Or some other variation that still shows you’ve got it going on. I’d go for .com over .net. If and when you do set up your own website, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to order your CD, and make the link to purchase very clear on every single page. Get an account with paypal.com and go to the “merchant tools” section. In there you can generate a “buy now” button with all of the parameters you set for people to buy your CD and pay through paypal. Then once you do make a sale, be sure to ship it in a timely manner, and be sure to thank them for their purchase. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.
BUSINESS CARDS
If you don’t already have business cards, you should get some immediately. This too makes you seem more established, and it’s great to just pull one out quickly if you meet someone, and have them take it with them. It’s best to get a cellphone number and keep it forever. Put a cell phone number, email address, and website where they can hear your tracks on it. Don’t put your land line or street address unless you’re in a location you’ll be staying for a very long time. And don’t change your cell phone number if you can help it. There’ve been several times I’ve needed to track a singer down ASAP for a session the next morning, and the phone number I have for them is no longer current. I end up calling someone else because I need to get it booked.
LETTERHEAD
In this age of digital communication, you won’t be sending out snail mail all of the time. But when you do, putting your correspondence on your own letterhead makes you seem much more established and professional. Sending your press kit out with your logo on the address label, your letterhead, and your CD will give a much better impression than plain white printer paper and a plain white envelope.
[Hi all,
Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I
created for my college students and break it down into a series of
blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and
your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released
artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are
manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking
it down into bite sized portions. ]
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