Damon Howard ⋅ Humble, TX U.S. Air Force, Senior Airman ⋅ 4 years served

Brian,

I really appreciate the time you have taken on my frustration. I totally agree with what you are saying about just having one website. I will stop putting them all out there. The only reason I am keeping the old website is for FTP purposes. Street-music.us is with Yahoo and they have integrated their FTP with FileZilla so I am familiar with Yahoo’s FTP process.

The mobile and ecomm sites are the same. If you go to smusici.com on a tablet or phone then it automatically directs you to m.smusici.com which is the mobile app. The domain for the blog smusic.co is the one I want my main site to be because it is easier to remember than smusici. Not to mention Universal Music Group uses umusic.com. I was surprised smusic.co was available so I had to jump on it. I bought it when I set up the blog for smusici.com. Wordpress was offering a domain of your own instead of smusici.wordpress.com showing it is forwarded to smusic.co. At this point I almost feel like I am too far into smusici.com domain to change it to smusic.co. I just got the SSL certificate for smusici.com. The streetmusicindustries.com is just too long. I always say S “music” I .com to make it a little easier.

I’m sure you have heard the saying fake it until you make it? I even read a post from Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Mobile, etc.) the other day on LinkedIn and he said if you are selling something you don’t have experience with by all means lie to the customer like you know it all to close the sale but learn all you to satisfy the sale. With the different services I offer on the site it is really broken down into 3 areas (Disc Manufacturing, Music Distribution and Management) everything else are side deals. I develop and publish websites; I know internet marketing, and about the contracts & agreements, I have 45 templates that are used in the music industry so I sale the template or I can fill in the info. As of now I don’t have a CD/DVD duplicator but when I make my first sale I will go buy one. I'm really testing the market before I put money down on the CD copy machine. The music distribution I have not been in an official agreement but I know how to do it. Here lately I have been pushing to get Artists, Bands, and Labels on my site to be a Featured Artist, I think that will help drive traffic to my site. I am doing it for free but if they want to sell music or merchandise then I would get a cut. It may sound like a lot but it’s really not. Management is what I feel most comfortable doing especially dealing with the hardcore street rappers in Houston, man I tell you if you can be around that you can pretty much handle anything.

I stick to Twitter and Facebook plus I pay for direct ads with them. Im trying to get away from Google since they are twice as much. They cancelled my Adsense account because they claim I was clicking on my own ads. I’m starting to test out LinkedIn and Pinterest for advertisement purposes. I don’t use Instagram but a lot do in the music industry.

My company has been through the Amazon process of getting verified so that’s my next step. Amazon offers links and ads to be place on my site and if some buys from my site I get 6-8% commission.

I said data base administrator but really meant data entry. What I wanted to do I can’t because smusici.com is with web.com and their site builder program which is very limited. I am on the phone every other day with them and have 2 ongoing support tickets going on simultaneously. Been using Yahoo and their site builder program since 2005 and probably called them twice. I read that web.com is the top rated web company with over 500,000 templates, I am not happy with their products.

The 2 books are urban book and more sell in paperback then in digital. The author says he could sell 200 right off the self. Plus the digital publishing is cheaper. We went through amazons createspace.com website, they really make the publishing process easy for the independent authors.

Yesterday I was in a T-shirt print shop quoting logo shirts and they lady‘s son performs (he's white with a rock-hip hop style) and will be performing at the House of Blues in Houston. She played a video for me and asks me if I liked it. I was slow to respond, slow enough for her to put answers in my mouth and all I said is I want to meet him.

Once again Brain thank you for your connection. What is the website link you have in your post? Do you build sites since you a very knowledgable on the subject? Take care and hope to hear back from you.

Best regards,

Damon Howard
Street Music Industries
smusici.com

Brian Richardson ⋅ Columbus, IN U.S. Army, Sergeant ⋅ 8 years served

Damon,
I won't pretend to know anything about the music industry. But I can offer a few comments on your website.

In general I think you need to consolidate. You have an old site, new site and blog site. I feel the blog should be a part of your main site. You don't want people to have to remember different website addresses for all those places.

I don't think there is value to having it spread out among 3 locations. You can point people that type in the old website address to go to your new one if that is happening. If people are not going to the old address, just close it down. You don't want to maintain 3 sites.

Blogging can be tough. It needs to happen on a regular basis...once a week, once a month, once a quarter. If you truly don't have time to do it, remove it from your site for now. I also wouldn't try and separate it by state (I saw something about that in your jobs listing). There is a big difference in a blogger and a database administrator. You can allow guest blogging for free. A true database administrator would cost you money.

Where are your customers? How do they interact with you or your niche in general? You have about all of the social media sites listed. Are they active? If not, pick the ones where you get the most traction and work on those. You don't need to try an be on every social media site available if it does not generate traffic for you.

And I don't want to add more to that plate, but streetmusicindustries.com is available. Is there a reason you went with smusici.com? It just seems a little harder to remember.

Regarding your services...do you do all of the things you list on your site? It seems like a lot, but again, I don't know the industry. Would it make sense to pare down your offerings to something you can really concentrate on and be great at?

Regarding your books. I know print books can be expensive. Would it have made sense to stick with digital until you knew the print versions would sell?

Paypal is probably sufficient for your needs. You might not need to worry about a second merchant account unless it has a specific purpose that PP can't do.

Hope this helps some. Feel free to contact me directly thru my site if I can be of further help.

Brian Richardson
www.VetLaunched.com

Damon Howard ⋅ Humble, TX U.S. Air Force, Senior Airman ⋅ 4 years served

Brian,

Simplify.com a division of MasterCard closed my account. I’ve been using PayPal so guess I will stick with them. Really my frustration lies with my #1 artist I manage went to jail on Dec 10, 2015 and I just dropped over $x in 2 book projects to get them edited in digital format for amazon upload. We got the 2 books on amazon but my investment also included 200 paperback books. $x out of that went to investing in 500 CDs of his latest album. So the day I picked up the CD order is the day he got arrested. Let’s not forget about the $x more I put towards his lawyer. I want more than just rap artist; rock or pop would do. Been going to clubs and meeting performers but nothing has sparked interest.

Another thing that frustrates me is driving people to my website. Online marketing is so expensive esp. in music. Google wants $2 - $5 per click to be on the 1st page for music industry keywords.

I just got this feeling inside that’s telling me to stick with it and not give up. I am just thankful enough to get disability from the USAF. That started last Nov. Anyways thanks for the response. Let me know your thoughts.

Damon Howard
Street Music Industries
smusici.com - e-comm site
m.smusici.com - mobile site
smusic.co - music blog
street-music.us - old site
@StreetMusicInd - twitter
#street.music.industries - facebook

Brian Richardson ⋅ Columbus, IN U.S. Army, Sergeant ⋅ 8 years served

Hi Damon,
Sorry to hear of your frustrations. Did you have something specific that you need help with? Are you looking for a merchant account? Or is the frustration coming from not getting the traction with customers and profits?

Brian Richardson
www.VetLaunched.com