I had an email in my inbox the other day “Someone Ordered Your Title on CD Baby!” I don’t sell many anymore so this got me reminiscing about how I started making money on the internet.
Back in 1998 I was in a rock band, Sticky Pistil. We were located in the remote artist community of Taos, New Mexico – it is no LA or Austin – it is very isolated with limited venues. But I realized the potential the internet had for getting exposure, on the internet it didn’t matter where I was.
So I got busy. I recorded a CD in my small home recording studio. I also invested in dreamweaver, fireworks and flash and taught myself how to make a website. I got good at making flash animations and I made the band a really cool website. I offered our songs for download on sites such as MP3.com and Amp3.com and some other popular music sites. I started chatting up a storm about the band and our cool website, I solicited music review sites and publications to write reviews on our music, I did link exchanges, I started webrings, and I did anything else I could to get more exposure and traffic. Then good things started to happen. This internet thing was amazing.
Soon after this our songs were in the top 10 on MP3.com , Amp3.com, and a few other sites. We were getting tons of downloads and our website was getting huge traffic. It was amazing actually. We also started selling our CD on the internet at sites like CD Baby and Amazon. It was great, a new frontier.
I almost lost it when Amp3.com said they were looking for a few bands to play on the emerging artist stage at Woodstock ’99. I had played big gigs before, my previous bands Sonic Bloom and Z-Groove had opened for bands like Michael Franti’s Spearhead, Fishbone, 2 Skinny J’s, etc – but Woodstock ’99, this was huge. Our CD was getting good reviews but our live show was even better so this should be a done deal for us.
We had to submit a video so we had a professional put together a slick mix of some of our live show footage. We submitted it and waited, and waited, but didn’t hear back? So I called to make sure they received the video (always follow up on opportunities like this). The girl on the phone was very sweet (and beautiful it turns out – a former Miss Texas – I met her at Woodstock), she said they did receive it, they watched it, they were familiar with it, and they were considering us, but they thought the video was too polished, too produced, too much like an MTV video. So I told her we were playing a gig that weekend and I would get a loud, live, raw, uncut video recording of the show and overnight it – no frills, no editing, just us live. I made sure she knew who I was and would make sure this new video I was sending got to the powers that be. She did and it did and they liked it.
Out of the 1000’s of bands that submitted videos we got the gig. It was pretty damn exciting. Woodstock ’99 went down in a flaming riot but we had a blast and we were taking off. We got lots of publicity, free sponsored music gear, more gig offers than we could play and all the other cool stuff that goes along with almost being a rockstar.
Our website won some awards and I started getting offers to make websites. I got a big money offer to create a new music site at Woodstock.com. I got a big money offer from some tech department at GE – they really liked what I was doing with flash – specifically the last part of this where you roll the mouse over the band members and they get up and dance: http://stickypistil.com/livetour3.html. They had not seen flash used like this before. The concept of rolling the mouse over or clicking a menu item and creating a related action became a flash standard for commercial websites.
By now our website was getting mega traffic and I was making more money on banner and sponsor ads than I was with the band. This ironic twist of fate got me started doing research on internet traffic, affiliate programs and domain names. The rest is history. This is how I started making money on the internet. Now domains are my main source of income.
