I wish it were just so simple. But the point’s been missed, you’ve made a mess, and who would have guessed that it’s as simple as it seems.

-Katy Perry ‘Simple’

As I was driving in to work the other day, I listened to radio station Kiss 103.5 in Chicago. Usually, I don’t make it a habit to listen to Kiss because it embodies everything I don’t like about the music industry. Kiss is owned by a large company that basically dictates who is successful and who is not on mainstream radio in America. I do like good songs, however, and you do get a nice blend of songs on that station. A new song caught my ear as I was getting out of my car. It is by an artist named Katy Perry and the song is called ‘I Kissed A Girl’. As soon as I got to my computer, I headed over to MySpace and took another listen to the song. It was catchy, but nothing groundbreaking. It will probably be a hit. It has a few controversial lyrics and a terrific beat. Katy is attractive, and an excellent singer but my first impression is she is a cookie cutter pop singer. Watch a bit of the video below, it will help prove a point later in the post.

I Kissed A Girl

I headed over to Wikipedia to a little more investigation. There was very little information about the singer (which has changed in the last few days as the song has started to make it big). One thing that struck me as odd was she released an album when she was 16, back in 2001. Then there was no history until 2007 when she digitally released the single “Ur So Gay” on iTunes.I have been struggling in the music industry for the past 10 years. If Katy Perry was a true artist, there would be a history. No one just starts playing music, stops for 7 years, and then comes out of nowhere with a new look and sound. I just figured her new label buried it. Record labels like to do that from time to time.
I started doing a little web surfing and stumbled upon a handful of YouTube videos. Katy has been working for many years at becoming successful in music. She has starred in other peoples videos (Cupid’s Chokehold by the Gym Class Heroes), and she has been honing her craft for years. You watched the first video, now check out this one. It is called ‘Simple’ - It was on a movie soundtrack released by Java Records in 2005.

In 2004, Katy was listed in Blender magazine as the next big thing. She has been dropped by several labels, and has encountered many a hardship trying to get that big break in the music industry. She has been open in discussing this, especially at shows. In need of a change and, perhaps, better luck, she took a risk and reinvented herself. Ever since unveiling this new, more grownup ‘look’ and sound late last year, it has been full steam ahead for her music career.

I like to incorporate things I have learned in the music industry and apply them to blogging.

If you feel your talents are being overlooked, there is no shame in reinventing yourself. Evaluate what you are trying to accomplish and make changes when needed, even if it means adopting a new persona. As long as you are true to your personal vision, reinventing is a great way to get a fresh start at something you love.

When I first started investigating on how I can make money blogging, I was shoved in 20 different directions. After weeding through the garbage, I have compiled a list of what I feel are some of the best resources on the subject. After just two weeks of promoting and working these new blogs, most of the techniques I have learned on the following sites have proven accurate and trustworthy:

Pro Blogger - Darren Rowse is single handedly the most influential of the professional bloggers, at least in my opinion. His website is loaded with all kinds of important information you need to start a successful blog. I read his website for about an hour a day, everyday. I am sure that will change in time, but for now, I am learning by absorbing.

Blogging Experiment - Ben Cook had an idea. Take a blog from making zero dollars and have it earning him a full-time income within one year. His journey is quite interesting. I read his blog daily. Not only is he a shameless self-promoter and occasionally gets on your nerves, he has some great ideas on how to make money using blogs and isn’t afraid to push it as far as possible to get the results. He is a rockstar. Here is an example of why to love or hate him.

Yaro Starak is a professional blogger that released a great and FREE e-book on how to make money blogging. A lot of the information in this e-book can be applied to your blog right away to help increase your profits. If there was one single resource I learned the most from, it was his e-book.

WebKEW - Marshall Brain founded How Stuff Works dot com year ago, and shares most of his monetization secrets on this blog. It is rarely updated now, but the information is still relevant. This was the first blog I stumbled on when I decided to make a run at this whole blog concept.

As I said, there are 9 million other resources, places to go, things to read, and tricks to try. I spent nearly 6 months researching and I have found those 4 sites influenced me the most!

I spent the better part of the last decade in the music industry honing my marketing skills and when I switched over to web marketing, I wondered how many of my skills would transfer over. I was happy to see that promoting a blog is really no different than promoting an independent band. It takes time, hard work, a little know-how and most importantly, good content.

Blog vs Song

The number one factor in band marketing is a good song. Image, fan base, web presence, and stage performance are really secondary when it is broken down. A good song is a good song, and THAT is what makes a band worth while in terms of financial success. You may not like a band like Fall Out Boy, but you cannot deny their ability to write musical and lyrical hooks. The exact same thing could be said for a blog. Regardless of topic, the content has to be thought provoking, well written, and the blog layout needs to be smooth. Just like a well crafted song. If you have this, you have the first element needed to have a successful blog.

Radio vs Digg

Before the time when the internet ruled music, there was a lovely medium called radio. When I first start doing band promotion, in the late 90’s (the ice-age), the key to marketing your music was to get it on the radio. You would start small, maybe trying some local high school or college radio stations, and hope that you could get your music played on one of the local programs on the bigger stations in town. The key determining factor was the listener base. If the song was good it was requested more often. The more a song was requested, the better chances it would make it into regular rotation and therefor, earning more royalties. The exact same thing could be said for a blog. Services like Digg are similar to the old radio. You have an article published, and if it is good enough, it will make it to the front page, or ‘regular rotation’ of Digg. When this happens, you will have a lot more traffic to your site and you will begin to see your profits increase, just like how radio impacts a song.

Promotional Photo vs Wordpress Theme

Promotional photos are usually the first thing noticed about a band after their music. It might be on a flier, poster, website, advertisement, or countless other places. As the old adage goes, Image is everything if the content is good. Bands that look like bands tend to have more fans, garner more attention, and present a great ‘first impression’ for those people who are trying to learn more. The exact same thing could be said for blog marketing. You could have the secret to eternal life, but if your blog has a million and one advertisements, horrible spelling, and a color scheme straight from a Commodore 64 it will not be a popular blog. And popularity is the key to revenue. So even though content is king, the image and presentation is right next to content as far as importance goes.

The Plan

One key element that I noticed working in the music industry is that you might meet the best songwriter you have heard in years, and he has no idea what to do to make his music heard by large amounts of people. He has the look of Harry Connick Jr, the guitar skill of John Mayer, and he languishes in a basement club playing to 20 people. This happens in the blog world all the time. Someone has exceptional content and a great layout, but they have no plan on how to promote their blog. Or, if they have a plan, they usually set unattainable goals. Brandon Boyd of Incubus once said if you make small goals and reach every one of them, you will make it to the level you want to be at. Make small goals and succeed.

Hard Work

Once you have the content, the image, and the plan, blog marketing and band marketing become the same exact animal. It is all about the hard work. There is no such thing as a one-hit wonder. Even the musicians who have ‘one-hit wonders’ had to make a calculated effort to get to that level. The equivalent to that in the web world could be a website such as Elfyourself.Com. Even though the website came out of nowhere, generate huge volumes of traffic and delighted millions of people, it was a well-crafted idea and the plan was executed perfectly. Some bands work for 10 years to get their one hit. Some work 2 months and have 10 hits. Either way, they had to have the content, the image, the plan, and then executed the plan with hard work.

There is a lot of talk these days about how the record industry is losing money because of pirating and illegal file sharing. I am a songwriter who has spent thousands of dollars of my own money, to recoup very little, and I have downloaded plenty of music illegally. I don’t think it is hurting the artists; it is hurting the labels. That is from the industries inability to adapt.

The value of music is a complicated issue. Different music has a different personal value to people, and even then, different values at different points in a persons life. The personal value of a song varies. To a songwriter, a song’s value is not exclusively a paycheck. To perform in front of an audience, to have your song felt and understood, is often something less tangible than money. Yet there are those who say that dropping the price of music, or moving away from the fixed price model, is going to devalue music. The truth is that music has been undergoing a devaluing by major record labels for many years.

The monetary value of a song should be derived from its personal value.

Ultimately, there has got to be a standardized price for music. I don’t feel the tip jar mentality is entirely practical. The drawback to fixed pricing is that it creates the concept of average personal value. For years, the labels have been diminishing the average personal value by releasing disposable songs, formulaic music, and laughable attempts at songwriting. The labels have convinced themselves that the monetary value of music is static and have neglected the personal value from which the monetary value is derived.

Not only has the value of music dropped, but so has the value of recordings.

The first reason has to do with manufacturing, distribution, and product quality. Anyone with a little knowledge of the record industry knows that the record labels have made music worse with their endless quest to reach the lowest common denominator. The idea that labels are pocketing the money they don’t have to spend on manufacturing and distribution is generally considered to be detestable. The new method of distribution represents a significant step backwards in terms of the quality and flexibility of the product. Are we supposed to pay just as much for music that you don’t have to manufacture or distribute, that is significantly lower quality, and is crippled in terms of usability? I can only hypothesize that songs are being sold in such unnecessarily low quality so that the labels can upgrade later and charge us for the music all over again in the form of collectible box sets, or enhanced mixes.

Secondly, another reason the value of recordings has dropped is storage space has transformed the way we access music.

To own a recording no longer necessarily involves listening to the song regularly but to have it available.

iPods and MP3 players have created a world of 24/7 music. People listen to different music more often. Pirating is rampant, because the price of the song is too high. Mp3 players have expanded the market tremendously but the industry won’t take advantage of that because they’re still overvaluing music.

The dropping of the value of music and the value of recordings are closely related.

When music has little or no personal value it takes more to find satisfaction. But as stated, because of easier accessibilty and storage, people will strive to have the largest collection possible. It is different from the days of vinyl, tapes and compact discs.

This is why people illegally download music. It’s not worth 1 dollar per song.

The labels think that the alternative to illegal downloading is purchasing it for $1 per song.

The alternative to illegally downloading music is to ignore music all together.

Until the price reflects the new value of the music, the music will continue to be stolen illegally online. Lawsuits are not going to change this. The labels are simply spending money that they’re never going to make back. The only way to change the current state is to match the price to the correct value; whether it’s 50 cents a song, a quarter a song, or a nickel a song. We will never know until the price starts dropping.

The bottom line is that the price of music is contingent upon personal value, NOT the other way around. A drop in price does not make music less valuable just as a price spike would not make it any more valuable. However, when the value of music drops, the price has to drop.The saddest part is that the labels have missed out on the biggest opportunity in the history of music. Had they been early adapters, they could have made a a fortune filling up these mp3 players for even a nickel per song and illegal file sharing would not even be a problem.

/rant

I spent the better part of the last month evaluating my finances and future goals of my ‘cyber‘ business. I ran some simple tests with this blog over the past two months, to see if a blog could actually create revenue. Just by posting ‘relevant’ content to current events I was able to generate a small, not substantial, amount of income. I did no promotion, no advertising, and didn’t really work on trying to make money. I just put up some Google AdSense ads and that was that.

Since this is my ‘flagship’ blog I am making changes to the layout on content for the new year.

The plan is simple. This blog will be here as my reporting / ad generating facet of my internet business as well as business industry related posts. There will be theories, metrics, and all sorts of good information on what worked and what didn’t work on my blogs and on my websites. I will also be posting daily about other blogs and the ways they are generating money, and doing sponsored reviews of other website. I hope to keep it entertaining as well without diluting the site too much with a ridiculous amount of ads.

Basically, you are going to have a front row seat on how to start and maintain a content based blog and business. The posts here as well will be focused on monetizing, and generating ad revenue. I am a novice, so you will see many failed attempts at generating revenue. Hopefully, you will be able to steer clear of my mistakes.

I will continue to post my personal musings on a soon to be announced blog, but I just feel the domain ManVsBlog.com is too good to give up on the money making side of things. So get ready for the massive changes.

2008 will be a good year for ManVsBlog! Hope you all stick around.