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Debra Recommends ifanz

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Debra Russell, Artist's EDGE, Art and Entertainment Industry, music business, marketing, web 2.0, contact managementifanz is a very cool resource originally developed for musicians, but really applicable for creative professionals in all walks of life who are building their career by building their relationship with their fans.  More than just a database and newsletter management tool, it also offers one-stop shopping for many of the needs of the small business owner!

As I teach in Multiple Streams of Art Income, Step 7 is “Strengthen Relationship”, communicating to your fans is critical for this step and ifanz can help.  This one-stop-shop can also help with steps 4 and 6.

From the ifanz.com website:

Invented by Musicians – For Musicians

Ruth McCartney, our CEO, grew up in Liverpool, England in the 60’s. She heard her step-brother Paul and his partner John Lennon lamenting the business side of the Beatles and grew up knowing that “the suits” as John affectionately called them were basically accountants who cared little for the future of music.

When the awesome task of sorting literally tens of thousands of pieces of fan mail fell to her Mother Angie, she made her pocket money by helping to catalog and answer some of the mail. She soon learned that a relationship with the fans is the second most important thing a musician can have – apart from great song material that is!

With the advent of the internet in 1995, Ruth and husband / business partner Martin Nethercutt decided to build a system to collect names and send out newsletters. Today, nearly 10 years later, iFanz now allows thousands of folks just like you to:

Collect names >> develop a relationship and a dialog >> get guidance from your peers >> blast out gig calendars >> download your data to see where your Fanz are geographically >> send a personalized automated birthday greeting to each fan on their big day>> send newsletters by State or Zip >> and much much more.

In addition to communication and database management, iFanz also offers NetShop, a turnkey online store that comes complete with credit card processing and order fulfillment. We offer CD burns on demand and over 30 items of merchandise all available with your custom imagery. One fan, one order, one royalty check. Never again worry about creating huge inventories that might not sell. NetShop products (100% cotton t-shirts, mousepads, mugs, caps, totes and more) are made to order using your design (or we can create one for you) so there’s never any over-stock. And never any upfront costs to you.

The bottom line: if your Fanz have a relationship with you, they are much less likely to steal your music. Who knows, 3 years from know you might be selling them cookbooks, paintings, photography or guitars. iFanz. Because your fanz ARE your future.

 

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Debra Recommends AWeber – Email Marketing at it’s Best

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email, marketing, InternetAWeber is a supercharged email marketing tool. Priced competitively, it allows for more targeted marketing than some of the other tools I’ve recommended. However, if you tend to get completely overwhelmed by technology, I wouldn’t recommend starting here. They’ve significantly improved their interface friendliness, but it can still be a bit overwhelming. But take a look, it’s free to try.

Aweber is a very powerful tool with backend interface with WordPress and 1ShoppingCart, and the ability to really parse your contacts into different lists.

But it’s a learning curve.

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Multiple Streams of Income

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msociI’ve been following this model in building my business and it has made a tremendous impact on my income, on my success with my clients and on how much fun I have working!

While these products are primarily focused on Coaching or Service and Consulting businesses, I’ve very successfully coached my clients in the Arts and Entertainment Industry to apply these concepts to their businesses.

I’ve also been teaching this business model in several classes recorded for the Artists Marketing & Business Academy.  And I’ve delivered the Multiple Streams of Art / Music Income workshop in Industry Conferences across the country.

Buy Multiple Streams of Income now (click through to the “Store” for the book.

Debra Recommends Blue Ocean Strategy

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Debra Russell recommends, business success, niche marketing, multiple streams

How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

The concept of the Membership class – Create Your Own Pond – is founded on the work in this book.

Amazon’s review:

Kim and Mauborgne’s blue ocean metaphor elegantly summarizes their vision of the kind of expanding, competitor-free markets that innovative companies can navigate. Unlike “red oceans,” which are well explored and crowded with competitors, “blue oceans” represent “untapped market space” and the “opportunity for highly profitable growth.” The only reason more big companies don’t set sail for them, they suggest, is that “the dominant focus of strategy work over the past twenty-five years has been on competition-based red ocean strategies”-i.e., finding new ways to cut costs and grow revenue by taking away market share from the competition. With this groundbreaking book, Kim and Mauborgne-both professors at France’s INSEAD, the second largest business school in the world-aim to repair that bias. Using dozens of examples-from Southwest Airlines and the Cirque du Soleil to Curves and Starbucks-they present the tools and frameworks they’ve developed specifically for the task of analyzing blue oceans.

They urge companies to “value innovation” that focuses on “utility, price, and cost positions,” to “create and capture new demand” and to “focus on the big picture, not the numbers.” And while their heavyweight analytical tools may be of real use only to serious strategy planners, their overall vision will inspire entrepreneurs of all stripes, and most of their ideas are presented in a direct, jargon-free manner. Theirs is not the typical business management book’s vague call to action; it is a precise, actionable plan for changing the way companies do business with one resounding piece of advice: swim for open waters.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Buy this book now