Website income

There are people who earn a living from websites. These people design websites primarilly for advertising.

A band website is designed primarilly for the band. It is a different thing.

Advertising distracts from the message and leads people away from your website - your interests conflict with that.

Your website is the place people learn more about your music and the people who make it. They come to your website because they're interested in you and your music. Provide them with content to keep them there and bring them back.

Offer free downloads to gather email addresses, promote gigs, sell merchandise - if you get enough visitors you will sell some but it's VERY much a numbers game. Keep in touch with a newsletter.

The purpose of your band website is to sell your band/music anything else is a distraction from that and should be avoided.

I did the newsletter thing for quite a while in the days before Myspace etc, when the internet was a lot younger and it was quite popular, but notably as people honed their computer skills it tailed off a bit.

Making money from websites has got a lot harder, on this very weekend six years ago , I had over thirty musicians working for me at the same time, largely because the agencies were after the acts that they had not worked out how to find yet, that I had, via simple use of search engines. All we did was scan in pictures of acts and make sure we were top on search for "music agency".
A contract sent between clients and acts and I didn`t have to move at all, if I chose not to.
It hadn`t occured to me until now, quite how much the free uploading sites walloped my business.
The 2nd division booking agent was not essential anymore.
The acts have paid for it as well though in more ways than they realise.
If I was given a years diary to fill for a venue, I would allways use my safe bet regulars, now it`s a free for all, which of course has brought back pay for free and pay to play.
But there you go, it WAS possible, we increased the companies finance four fold with only a 20 g hard-drive and a BT/aol dial up connection with no advertising on the site.

A side issue with the Internet is if you have a good idea that works it soon comes to the attention of others with better funding.

It's who gets the brand name turned into a verb first who wins.

Another side issue problem we had the with internet business, was the occasional hoax customer, which some people obviously think is a hoot. I really can`t think of an answer to that one.
I was completely pestered one day by an Irish events company determined that I should book them Madonna!(hhhmmmm yeah right!)

There was another guy from Finland who regularly asked to book BB King.

I had no in-road for that one, although oddly enough, I worked with a trumpet player a few weeks later who I hadn`t seen for a while, because he had been on tour with BB!
A small world , made smaller by the net of course.

Time wasters exist however you do business - in the local music shop they have customers referred to as Friends, as in "Your 'friend' is here to see you, go out there and see him". (Record shops and music shops - a disappearing social hub?)

On another thread you refer to websites making you wait while the page downloads so you can get into the site.

Known as "skip intros" - because that's what people do given the choice. It's like having a shop and insisting customers admire the doorway before you let them in.