Its hard to believe it … I have been creating websites since 1999! So I’m celebrating 10 years (That’s 70 in web years!) of helping entrepreneurs, musicians and artists create an effective web presences!
I first started getting involved in web design during my tenure with Vanguard Records & The Welk Music Group (Yep. Lawrence Welk!) when Kevin Welk took the reigns of Vanguard to grow the label from its strong Folk roots with Joan Baez, Ian Tyson, and the Weavers to more Singer/Songwriter and Pop with Maya, Driving Blind and more. Gigi Cartwright was Welk’s creative Director at the time and, since I was Sales & Marketing AND heavily tech-savvy, she included me in much of our design and web efforts. I knew back then that the web was going to be THE most effective way to promote musicians, bands and labels in the future.
The music business has certainly changed from my first year in “the biz” in 1983! But my vision has proven quite true. In fact, dare I say, that the internet – especially MySpace – is about the ONLY place a band or indie record label can get exposure these days. Most of what’s left at the retail level is … well … underwhelming.
My first “official” web design client was Uproar Entertainment. I quickly acquired many record labels as clients working with them while I was working with indie music distribution company Allegro Music. In fact, many of those clients are still with me today! James Wanless (Voyager Tarot, Intuition, Way of the Seer, Green Wisdom Cards, etc.) has been with me since 2001 and I now develop not only all of his websites but product packaging and marketing materials!
When I look back at some of my older sites I realize how much technology has changed, how much the internet has evolved, and, of course, how my own skills have grown to include more than just design but search engine optimization, online reputation management, search engine marketing, social media marketing and so much more.
I have come full-circle from marketing to web design and back to marketing!
Why? When I started designing websites traffic flew to your site simply because you were online. The new experience of the web virtually guaranteed traffic. It was “Field of Dreams” – “Build it and they will come.”
It used to be that way in the music biz, too. If you had a great album you were guaranteed airplay and sales, the label backed you all the way. Then, when the technology behind creating an album became affordable, we reached the tipping point and by 2002 there were 12,500 NEW albums flooding the market every year! That’s 34 albums every day!
Translated into web terms, there are several BILLION web pages added every day! in July of 2008 Google had indexed over 1TRILLION (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs! (View Source)
In both industries we have to ask the question “How can you get discovered?”
I had a record store with 100,000 CDs – 80,000 different titles! Which albums sold more? The answer? The ones who not only created great product but did the best job marketing their albums … driving traffic into the stores to purchase their albums.
The web is the same.
Now you know who to call when you need to drive traffic to your website, don’t you?
