It Takes a Chunk of Ad Change to Build a Village, or Adventures in Self-Promotion, part 1
I admit, I'm always a little puzzled when on/off line acquaintances tell me that they are surprised to find out that I do write, sing and perform music. I mean, seriously. Do a search on Google for my name, and you'll see links of my work to music sites I've never heard of. I then look have a look over my Twitter stream, my FriendFeed stream, and even over on my Myspace accounts. Lots of pimping of other people's work. Hardly a peep about mine.
I've now gotten to a point where all that is going to have to change. As with many women, I'm scared of coming across as boastful, arrogant, or even spammy when I try to encourage eyes and ears to my music. In my 16+ years as an online addict, I've seen many an attempt to show off their wares be meet with ridicule, sarcasm and, in some cases, out and out anger. There was once a massive subculture that didn't take too kindly to being "sold to" on their respective BBSs, and the like. These days, there is really no room for that kind of thinking. Promoting oneself on the internet (or anywhere else for that matter) has always been a fierce business, but, especially in this economy, everyone's out for their own. To this end, you cannot be afraid to put yourself out there, make yourself heard, and reap the resulting rewards (or scorn). Sure, you run the risk of annoying your friends. But if they didn't support what you are doing, would they be your friends? Anyway, to that end, I've decided to work harder (and hopefully a little smarter) to sell my CDs online. I've decided that, rather than spam the hell out of some of these music sites, I'd do the right thing and participate in some of these music site ad campaigns. I'd start small, try to extend the time, and work it out from there. A lot of these sites will allow you to promote either a page or a song. I opted for song promotion and picked the first "single" off of my last album, "Incident at Motel 6". Granted, this album was released over a year and a half ago, and I've kind of sat on it without saying anything until now, when I'm in the middle of another project. But, what the hey? It's been good to me, and I want to share it. So, last night, I paid about $75 for an iLike ad that was to run for 150 clicks, and be seen in all countries accessing iLike in the electronic music genre. Small audience, right? Should take a few days to come to fruition, right? It was over in 2 hours. $75 bucks for a two hour campaign. Serves me right for thinking the iLike site had such a small following:
As of this morning, these were my stats on the campaign:
Ok, not a smash hit, but noone hated it either, at least not so far. I also have to consider that Last.fm is Euro-centric, so the listens/loves/skips/bans will probably show up while I'm asleep. I also tried getting my music on Pandora, and aside from the rather stringent requirements, I kept getting this error message when I tried to put in my UPC code for the CD (which IS on Amazon.com).
