Music Success in Nine Weeks: Chapter 7 How to Build your Mailing List

Chapter Seven in Ariel Hyatt's book is "How to build your mailing list". There is a box in this chapter that says: Building your Fan Base = Building your e-mail list AND the size of your e-mail list = the size of your income.

This is a reality check for me. My mailing list is one area I haven't spent a lot of time on in the past and one of my financial goals is to earn enough to do a music video, so seeing it like that, I'd better get on it!

A few months ago I signed up to do my newsletter with reverbnation, (www.reverbnation.com/cadyfinlayson). I like it because it's easy (easy to add music/photos/widgets, etc. ). I took the Music Success chapter to heart and have been more consistent and regular about sending it out (those were the other points mentioned).

So this week,drum roll... I set weekly "office hours" to work on the mailing list. My goal is to do it once a week for one hour for the next 6 weeks. I decided not to worry about how many people join just yet, only that I'm inviting people and considering it a regular part of my business (by the way if you'd like to receive the newsletter list, sign up already. (on the front page at fiddleandguitar.com and on celticfiddle.blogspot.com on the right panel).

This got me thinking about the whole "office hours" thing and working for yourself. Being both a little bit of a workaholic (ok, a lot!) a pretty good procrastinator, and often over-extended, I think having a plan about all my music business activities might be in order. I started writing down all the things I'd like to set aside time for. I also looked at the list and saw that it was too much.

Musical
1. Daily time to write music
2. Daily time to practice violin (warm-ups/maintenance practice)
3. Weekly time to practice violin (exploring new tunes/possibilities)
4. Daily time to practice singing while playing and using octave pedal. (even 10 min)
4. Rehearsals with bandmembers (2x a month?)

Music Business
3. Weekly time to add to mailing list.
4. Weekly time to concentrate on booking gigs/applying to festivals.
5. Weekly time to concentrate on music licensing (sending out material/contracts, etc. )
6. Weekly time for mailings (cd's, applications, conference prep, etc. )
7. Weekly time for organizing gigs (calling bandmembers,publicity sending music, mapquest, etc.. )

I started thinking about which things I could hire someone else to do. I decided for sure that I could commit to the practicing and the mailing list (baby steps!).

I also was inspired this week by another to-the-point remarkable book called "The Truth about Getting More done" -written by Mark Fritz. There was one quote in there "If everything is important, then nothing is important". Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

So to recap, as Ariel points out, your mailing list is your most valuable asset. It's your income potential! It has been a goal to build it for a while, but now I have a specific hour to work on it each week. For a little extra inspiration, I am taping a $20 bill to my computer during my mailing list office hour! And I'm going to try the other suggestions about having a "Live Show Bonus".
It sounds like a good way to get the word out about the new Electric Green CD without feeling like a commercial car salesman!