*UPDATE* If you would like me to build your website for you Contact Me Here
Some people will tell you that you don’t need your own website these days, and that you can get by just sending your fans to facebook pages or twitter.
But the one big reason this makes that tactic so risky is that you might annoy facebook one day and they will shut you down faster than you could say “Bye bye fans”.
Scary thought…
*Tip* In this post Hagop teaches you how to make your facebook page safer.
The main reason that I think most people shy away from putting together their own site, is because they think that their is no way to do it yourself without paying a company $5000 to help.
Or they miss one of the benefits…
Reasons you should seriously consider building your own website.
- You have complete control over the content and free rain to write whatever you like.
- You can test the best placement for your email opt-in.
- You can run a blog that will be a constant source of new fans.
- You don’t risk getting all your fans bombed by one of the big social networks.
So In this article I want to show you how easy it is to set up a website that brings you traffic with a simple blog that even a child could manage.
If you’re not very techie and feel that building a website is beyond you, would it surprise you to learn that it’s actually possible to do it very cheaply and quickly, even for a total newbie.
I know it sounds like a little bit of a dream but you can actually build a very smart website in under 2 hours that will be placed on your own domain name like www.myband.com, and includes all the incredible functions that a site built by a professional would give you.
First we need to look at the concepts and then we can go into things in more detail.
Domain name – this is just the www. url of your website, so if your band was called “Rotten Eggplant” your domain name would be “www.rotteneggplant.com”. (I’m going to use this as an example throughout this article.)
Hosting – this is where your website lives on the web. You should think of your hosting account like a file on your computer that if updated will change the way your website looks.
WordPress – this is your content management system and you should think of this like the area of myspace where you can input your latest information. The part that the visitor does not see.
You should not confuse a WordPress.com blog with what we are doing here. The difference is that you will be installing your own version of WordPress onto your domain name. We will use a piece of software that lets us do it automatically so don’t worry.
WordPress Direct – this is basically a magic tool that will let you set up a site in a few seconds that is fully configured to work perfectly with google and will also have lots of cool features like a facebook button and twitter apps.
Google analytics – gives you information about the visitors to your site so that you can see what promotions are having the best impact.
Aweber – this is the software that lets you collect email addresses from your fans so that you can send them a series of email messages automatically.
So now you know how this is going to go down lets get started.
You will notice that there is a cost involved on a few of these sites but I have done my best to keep everything down to the bare minimum of under $23 at first and then a very low monthly upkeep. If you compare that to having a website built for you it’s really nothing. With a bit of effort you should be able to get your band income to cover that in a matter of a few months.
You should read through the whole plan a couple of times before you get started.
Step 1 – Hosting and Domain (15 minutes at most, Cost $22.16 / $8.95 per month)
Once you get to the Hostgator homepage you should click on the button that says “view web hosting plans” in the middle of the screen.
It will give you a whole bunch of options but we want to go for the “Hatchling plan” because it gives you a domain name with one website which is perfect for what we’re doing.
Now click on the “order now” button…
You should then put your band name or your own name into the “choose domain name” box as this will be the website address of your site.
You will now need to choose a user name and pin, as well as entering your personal details.
There will also be a cost for registering the domain name which should be somewhere around $12.
You should then click the “Create Account” button.
You will then be taken to the thank you page. Hostgator will confirm that we have purchased the Hatchling package
Check your email and you will find that Hostgator has sent you the login details for your account.
You can then log into your control panel and start to have a look around.
Well done!
You have just got your hosting set up and bought your first domain name. Let’s move on…
Step 2 – WordPress Direct (30 Minutes, Cost FREE!)
Once again WordPress Direct is a magic tool that lets you install a professional and google friendly website onto your domain name in a matter of a few seconds. This might not sound like a lot to you but when you think that building a site the traditional way could take up to 6 months it’s really incredible.
Now go to the WordPress Direct home page and log in.
Click the “install new site” button on the right, this will take you to a theme gallery where you can choose how your website will look. This is like choosing a theme on myspace or twitter and makes designing a website a piece of cake.
Once you choose a theme you click the “install to new site button”.
Then you need to enter the information about the domain that Hostgator sent you.
So, in website full address, I’m going to put www.rotteneggplant.com but you should put your own website address.
For the Main FTP password enter the Username from the email Hostgator send you and the FTP password is the password from that email.
Where it says hosting providers you should choose Hostgator.
Choose a title for your website i.e. your band name.
Enter an email address that you will check because this is where the message to your website contact form will go.
Enter a password that you will remember and then click the “Check Settings & Proceed to Next Step” button below.
The slogan can be anything you like and you could consider your unique selling point for instance “Rotten Eggplant, the horniest band on the planet!”
Obviously that was one of my bad jokes but you see what I mean 
The form will look something like this but with your information.
In the keyword information you should put your band name plus the genre you work in like rap, punk, metal etc…
Now click the “Check settings and proceed to next step” button.
On the next page you should not use the auto posting software.
You should also forget about adsense for now because this will put third party google ads on your site which does not look that cool for a music blog.
Just click “Install website now”.
WordPress Direct will take a little bit of time to install your blog for you.
We need to also go into the control panel and add a description because this is what will show up under your title in the google listings. This is quite important so you should take time to write something that will have people click through.
OK so you can now check your site and it will be live on the web!
Step 3 – Google Analytics (5 Minutes, Cost FREE!)
The next step is to set up google analytics which will show you lots of difference stats about how many people are coming to your site each day and where they came from.
This is important because you want to see which of your marketing efforts is working best so that you can do more of what worked, and forget about the stuff that did not have a good result.
So the first thing you need to do is sign up for google analytics at the link below.
http://www.Google.com/Analytics
The good news is that if you already have a gmail account you can use that to log in, but if not then you will have to create a new one.
Now you need to sign up and create an account for your new blog, you just hit the “sign up” button and then you will have to enter your site url and, you can also include a custom account name and your time zone.
Fill in your information and click continue and you will be taken to a page where you need to agree to the terms of service.
You just want to install the code onto a single domain.
Copy this little code without the quotes.
Now press “Save and Finish”.
You should now go back to WordPress Direct and first click “manage my sites” and then “website settings”.
This will take you to a page where you can paste in your Google Analytics code which you should do.
Click the “Save settings” button at the bottom and you will now have tracking installed on every page of your site. Check in with Google analytics tomorrow and see if you got any hits!
Step 4 – Posting to your blog (10 minutes if post already written, Cost FREE)
You can either use WordPress Direct or your main WordPress admin to post content to your blog and for this I’m going to suggest that you use your WordPress admin.
Just to clarify, your main website has nothing to do with WordPress Direct apart from that being the way that you installed it and I feel that it’s better to get to grips with your REAL site.
To post content you should follow the steps below.
To continue with our example I’m going to go to www.rotteneggplant.com/wp-admin to access my site admin area, but you should enter your own website address. Enter your username and password to gain access to your website.
Once you click “Log In” you will see a tab that says “post” in the left sidebar and you should click “add new”.
You can then enter the title and main content of your post and add your category and keywords in the right sidebar.
Then you simply click publish and your new blog post will be live.
For more information about using WordPress you should follow this link.
Step 5 – Aweber Mailing List (45 Minutes, Cost $1 / $19 per month
Now that you have your website set up you want to add an email collecting form so that you can keep in contact with your visitors, and let them know what’s going on in your career.
Once you have signed up for Aweber you should log into your account.
Part 1: Setting up your initial Autoresponder…
Find the list settings tab.
Change the name of the list to something more relevant. It will currently be defaultxxx something, so you should add your band name or your own name if you are a solo artist.
Enter a description about your mailing list with some of the features and benefits that your readers can expect.
Enter a “from” name and an email that you will check, this is where the replies to your email will be delivered.
Forget about the confirmation box unless you want to get an email each time someone is added to your list. You can also skip the other information for now.
Hit the “save list settings” button.
Part 2: Creating your first email follow up…
Go to the messages tab.
Hit the “Add new follow up message” button.
Enter a subject line for your first email.
Now enter the body of your message, you can either choose to use plain text or html which will adds styling. You can do both if you like.
Leave everything else as it is and click “save message” at the bottom of the page.
“Track Clicks” will let you know how successful your mailings are.
I know that was a little bit tricky but you have just added the first message that will go out to your fans automatically when they sign up on your new website.
You can continue to add messages to your follow up sequence so that each time somebody joins your list they are taken through a series of emails that build a relationship and make them love you All on autopilot!
Step 6 – Install the Aweber code on your site (10 minutes, Cost FREE)
We now need to install the Aweber code on our new website so that it will display our email form asking fans to sign up.
You should click the “web forms” tab in Aweber then click “create new web form”.
You can pick a design that works best for you and even enter some text that makes an offer of a free mp3 to your fans.
Scroll down and click…
Then…
Now click “I will install my form” and copy the code.
Now go over to your WordPress site and click the “widgets” link in the left side bar.
Click and drag the “text” widget…
Now paste in your Aweber code and click “save”.
You have now installed the email form on your site to display at the top right. You will start to get people joining your mailing list once you have some hits.
GREAT WORK! You’re done for now…
Final Thoughts.
So I know this was a very long article but I hope it showed you that setting up your own website is not rocket science.
You can do it very fast once you get the hang of it but I must admit that your first try might take a little bit of time.
I have tried my best to lay everything out clearly here but if you have any problems just let me know and I will do a follow up post.
Good luck,
- Chris.
Tags: band website, band website builder, band website design, band website hosting, best band website, best band websites, make a band website, musician website
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