Action plan - niche music blog

What's up BHW?

I've been lurking for a while and have decided to make an account. I'm in the process of launching a new blog aimed towards the music sector (over-saturated, I know). However, I have identified a gap which needs to be filled in the market - that is a website/blog which works towards presenting its readers with new music from artists they most likely have never heard before, most blogs only mention well known artists and this is why they are often repetitive.

I am in the process of identifying artists to present the readers with for the initial launch of the blog. Once established, I hope to launch a good PR campaign through the use of forums, social media etc. to drive traffic to the site and hopefully the content will cause a lot of the viewers to stay.

I will change the domain dependent on success but after site launch what would be a suitable action plan to follow?

- How often should I post on the blog?
- Should I incorporate a forum?
- What sort of network should I go to in order to generate healthy income? (Should I target the music sector only?)
- PPC? Affiliate? what would suit best.

I only get about 10 views daily due to twitter at the moment which isn't terrible due to the sites inactivity but I need ways of improving it for the future.

At the moment, the majority of the site is on private but I'll update you guys once it has fully been launched. Any advice will be appreciated, this is my first venture and I intend to use this in order to fund a potentially huge tech startup and maybe create a brand out of this.

Advice from experienced bloggers will be appreciated greatly!!!

- How often should I post on the blog? - Atleast once a week.
- Should I incorporate a forum? - Obviously with popular forum like this.
- What sort of network should I go to in order to generate healthy income? (Should I target the music sector only?) - Yes.
- PPC? Affiliate? what would suit best. - PPC.

Hi,

I am interested in possibly working with you? I can't send PMS at the moment, but if you can possibly point me in a way to contact you, I would love to discuss some ideas. - I myself run a rock music blog and we have been slowly growing to around 2k visitors per month, not much granted, but we're getting there. We have made some awesome contacts in the industry and also promote the less known bands as well as established artists. We have been lucky and had interviews with artists such as Bonafide, Train, Bullet for my valentine, Phil Collen (Def Leppard), Charlotte Wessels from Delain, Defiler, Papa Roach and a few more.

We tend to post around 3-4 articles per week at the moment, I would say a minimum of two a week to begin with to try keep things fresh.

We use Amazon Affiliate, Itunes and Adsense - But we're looking into other methods and possibly selling ads to others through ourselves. We're just trying to increase our exposure to be able to do so.

We use social media to help drive traffic along with SEO, we use some of the following:
Myspace
Pinterest
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Stumbleupon

We also post our reviews to fan websites of the artists to get their opinions to start some discussion and also traffic to the website.

Best of luck and feel free to get in contact.

Thanks for the advice people. I'd like to work with you and we can help eachother gain some traffic.

The website is my username plus the wordpress add on by the way

Has anybody else got tips? What areas should I target to get traffic? Also any advice on what PPC people to go to?

Thanks, should I run with adsense or something else?

Try to grow your website by capturing visitor's info (either through social media accounts/pages, or through email).

If you can get a ~5% conversion rate on an email opt-in sitewide that means 5% of your traffic can be constantly recalled through email marketing (or social media) every month.

EDIT: I would worry about monetizing later. 10 UV per day isn't going to make you any money (at least from "music" niche social media traffic). No offense meant, just IMO.

Ok thanks man, I may make people who wish to comment on posts input their emails and go from there.

good luck to you , man

You need to move to self hosted. A wordpress.com site looks unprofessional and is unstable, not to mention limited in several important ways. Just spend a few bucks on hostgator and namecheap to set it all up yourself. After that work on building traffic, make sure your site has plenty of content, make a few high quality backlinks and have an active social media presence.

Thanks, do you think i should buy a domain? Or just host the website somewhere else?

as for building traffic I have a twitter for the site with 185 followers, but no other paths

I think both, hostgator's basic plan is only $4 a month and you can sometimes buy .com domains for $1 at godaddy with coupons.

You need to grow that twitter account. Use addmefast and perhaps some of the high quality fiverr gigs to increase your followers and more favourites/retweets. Just keep active on it.

Ok thanks for the tips, got the account to 210 atm, will look into domains etc.

Good luck on your blog. Posting 2-3 times per day should be good for a blog. I wouldn't make a forum unless you have a large community.

Regular basis posting at a regular interval is best.
Incorporation with popular forum is a great idea.
Music,fashion,event management related network
PPC

It is good to hear that you find a gap and trying to bridge it, fine here are the answer of your question.
1) There is no magic number, but it is advisable to do it frequently.
2) Yes it is always a good idea to incorporate with popular forum, so you can have more viewers.
3) You can focus on Music as well as entertainment.
4) Yes, PPC

Thanks for the advice !! Launching the site in a few weeks, bit tied up at the moment