Industry Shift: What The Armada Music Label Can Teach Us About New Media Marketing
You may not know this about me (unless you follow me on Twitter where I tweet music video clips from time to time), but I’m a huge fan of the progressive and vocal trance scene. That’s dance music for the uninitiated, although the genre of dance is massive in terms of all the categories and sub-categories, which includes genres like techno and rave music, which you might be familiar with.
In the case of trance music, the leading DJ, at least in terms of a popular vote run by DJ Mag, is Armin Van Buuren. Armin has been number one for three years running and as DJs and trance producers go, he’s about as prolific and talented as they come. I’m a fan, that’s for sure.
One of the things I enjoy often late at night when I’m in the mood for music is to trawl around YouTube watching video clips of the latest and classic trance tracks. There’s an absolute library of great music in YouTube, and of course it’s all free.
Armin Van Buuren is not only the number one DJ, he is also co-founder of a music label called Armada Music. One of the very smart things I’ve noticed Armada is doing is making heavy use of YouTube as a marketing channel.
At least 50% of the tracks I listen to on YouTube come from Armada, especially if I follow a music trail going from one track to the next following the “similar video” recommendations provided by the YouTube algorithm.
Watching Armada use YouTube is interesting, because the music is free, but obviously the company makes money. I believe Armada, and labels like them, are pioneers in adopting new media, rather than fighting it. There’s a lesson in this case study for any of us who want to leverage the web for exposure of creative output, even if their is a profit motivation behind it.
The Profit Model For Music Has Changed
X-Factor Video: Gideon Reveals The $13,000 Webinar Formula
The “X-Factor” is a term Gideon and I applied to blogging, where you use multimedia and/or social media to enhance your blog’s growth.
The idea is that “standard” blogging practices may not be enough to make your blog stand out, and since it’s so easy today to make use of multimedia and social media, why not leverage these technologies to increase your traffic and blog performance.
The latest X-Factor training video was just released for free on the Become A Blogger blog, which you can go and watch right now here -
X-Factor Video: How To Make Money With Online Webinars
This video shows how Gideon recently used Webinar software to create an entire product and generate over $13,000 from literally just a few hours work. Webinars are great teaching tools, which can be recorded and distributed on your blog.
If you don’t know what a Webinar is, have no idea what software you can use to make one and how they can be turned into a product creation tool to generate a nice income as Gideon did, go watch the two videos on the Become A Blogger blog and Gideon will reveal everything to you.
Make sure you leave a comment there too, as Gideon loves to get your feedback.
Who Makes More Money – Authors, Bloggers or Internet Marketers?
I suspect after reading the headline of this article one of the first things that crossed your mind is how can I possibly distinguish the difference between an author, blogger and Internet marketer?
Nowadays most published authors have blogs, and bloggers use Internet marketing techniques and write books too. Internet marketers also publish books and use blogs, so how can we determine the difference?
In this case rather than look at the person, who can easily encompass all three of the personas we are talking about, let’s look instead at the different mediums themselves and how effective they are as money making techniques.
In other words, can you make more money publishing a book, or writing a blog or selling things online as an Internet marketer?
Why Ask This Question?
I was thinking today while reading an article – a good article – on a blog how the ideas within the content where also present in two other mediums – inside a popular print book and a course I studied, which was a recording of a live event by an Internet marketer.
The blog article was given away for free. The print book probably costs about $10 now since it’s not new, while the live event cost $10,000 to attend and the recordings I studied were at least $2,000.
The blogger in this situation was basically summarizing and filtering some information he read in the book. The author is an expert on the subject who had no doubt spent years accumulating the knowledge and experience to produce the title. The Internet marketer who ran the event had read the book too, and included the most important points, again filtered for his audience, in the live event.
Three different people, all using the same information and getting paid vastly different amounts for it. This prompted me to wonder, which person would I rather be – the blogger, the author or the Internet marketer?
Let’s Focus On The Money
Two Videos Reveal Powerful Techniques To Help You Create Info Products
Continuing with the theme of giving you advice on how to launch a membership site or information product, I direct you back to two videos I did earlier in the year, which talk about some of the most powerful techniques I’ve used to build my online business.
This information is especially valuable if you’re just starting out as a beginner asking questions like this -
- How can I figure out what people will spend money on?
- What language do my customers use to describe their problems?
- I don’t have a list or an audience yet, how can I build one?
The first video I recorded to show you a technique I used before creating my first information product that helped me understand exactly what my customers wanted and what language they used to describe the problems they faced. You can listen to me explain the technique in this video here -
Video: How To Find Out What Your Members Want Before You Launch
The second video is half a slide show where I show you some of the places I visited in 2008 during a trip around the world. The second half of this video talks about building lists and shows you a couple of examples of people who are using blogs and videos to foster relationships with an audience in preparation to launch a membership site or coaching program.
You can watch the second video here -
Slide Show: How I Made $211,969 While Traveling The World & Two Unique Case Studies
You may have seen these videos when I first published them, but don’t let that stop you watching them again, the lessons never grow old.
I’m highlighting this content now because next week is the final opening of Membership Site Mastermind for 2009.
I’m really looking forward to working with the next group of students who will actually implement the techniques talked about in the videos. Watching videos and understanding the process is great, but taking steps to actually do it is the only path to success. If you want help in that direction, my course is available from next week, or you can do it alone – as long as you do something!
How To Launch Membership Sites: Your Questions Answered
I just spent several hours reading through and replying to some of the 300 plus comments left at the original Membership Site Masterplan blog post I did back in April 2009.
Back when I first released the Masterplan I couldn’t keep up with the waves of comments coming through as I was busy preparing to open the Membership Site Mastermind coaching program.
Today as I prepared for the final 2009 opening of the coaching program next week (October 27th) I had some time to address some of the comments.
If you have any interest in launching a membership site, or creating and selling your own information product online or you just want to see what problems people face when striving to do these things (it’s very interesting market research), then have a read of the comments and my replies at this blog post -
The Membership Site Masterplan Is Now Available
A word of warning – with 300+ comments it takes a while to load the page and it has been known to crash some people’s browsers (it works for me in the latest Firefox), so give it a chance to finish loading before scrolling down to read the comments.
I’m still going through and responding to the comments now, so new replies from me are going to pop up over the next few days. You can leave your question as a comment too, and I’ll do my best to reply this week, just make sure you stay on the topic of membership ship sites and information product launches.
