I have been making use of the WordPress content management system to create literally all of my niche sites digital real estate portfolio. I guess it’s normal to feel overwhelmed about getting started with it. But seeing it all in action will make laugh out loud and make you say to yourself: “This is stupidly easy”. In this article, I clearly demonstrate to you how to make a website for musicians. Needless to say, that same process applies were you to create a website for a physician, an immunologist, or a clown part booking website.
Hosting companies are almost all making it quicker and easier than ever to set up a website. Even quicker & easier using the most efficient and winning CMS known as WordPress. And all the obstacles to overcome involved are:
1│ Signing up for a Hosting Account (I could advise you on which to choose best)
2│ Naming your site and see availability (I’ll advise you on what to do if your desired name for your site it’s already taken)
3│ Installing and learning WordPress
4│ Designing and strategising for profit and reputation
5│ Strategising and publishing for traffic and profits
I made my first internet deal at age 15. I was wasting my time until then. However, I gave priority to other cool activities up until the year I turned 23. That year, 2016, I was unable to find anything more exciting or fun for a living. And since then it took me whatever it took me to have it all hemmed up. Like a sewing machine. That is, get traffic, build momentum & keep it all on the up.
You may not believe it, but here below it’s all there is to it. Even those ridiculously obvious secrets I discovered and revealed to you. These will in fact skyrocket your progress and get your website to be so successful and earn you such a beautiful shining bundle. I put a lot of focus percentage to make this article so that a kid could copy & past the process described. You won’t let me down now will you?!
Anyway as I said before, the first obstacle to overcome is to Sign Up for a hosting account. I am not going to tell you what hosting I personally use and deeply trust since I started generation six figures with the websites I own and run. And that’s just because I want to leave you free to ask around. You know, to see what other fellows use and prefer. However, this it. That’s the hosting company my portfolio is solely and ever hosted and will host on for as long as I live. Have it on a new tab open but keep following along. We will come back to it. They also have a page ready to get yourself started with WordPress. And I actually would prefer you’d get there to speed up and save precious time we can use for something more important.
I remember being extremely excited when I sign up for my first Hosting Account back on Tue, Jun 14, 2016, at 6:09 PM. Yup, I got that off the activation email you’re about to receive too. So far I think that’s my #3 favorite investment I’ve ever made. And #2 would be when I got interested in music sync licensing of course. And you know well, that is if you’ve ever stumble over my now so famously known YouTube channel under the name of Music Money School, that my greatest investment. My #1 top investment I’ve ever made was the one I made on my self. Learning how music work to let music flow, live, happily in my blood so I could be the vehicle of composition that matters, not to anyone else, but me and you.
Anyway, this article is about How to Make a Website for Musicians and I am keeping that way. Start focusing now, as here come the instructions to overcome a few obstacles. And these obstacles are keeping you and have kept you in a corner under the shadow of those who have overcome them already. Time to get busy and active.
The Tech Stuff Is Weirdly Easy
When one sets up to make a website. Not just a website for musicians. Any website. Now that we all have at our disposal CMSs like WordPress and many many more. No one ever or will beat WP. One may get quite shocked to how ridiculously easy it all is. And since you’re going to be share bot only your music but also text and pictures and merchandise you will desire to share with your family, friends and fans. You would be wondering stuff like, where these files are stored and more obviously wondrous questions. Well, know that your music along with those text files and pictures are stored on a giant computer somewhere in the world. A computer always connected to the web. That’s your hosting. That’s the service you’re paying for with the tremendous hosting company I directed you before you I personally use for my company.
As for that something more important I was referring to before. That’s choosing a title for your site. That is the “Domain Name” that will also give the name to your hosting account. And a Domain Name it’s basically the .com name you choose so you can type into the search box of any internet browsers, such as Google, and find your site. And so your music, your text files, and your pictures and whatever else you’ll decide to make available to the public. Music Money School’s website is, that’s correct, Musicmoneyschool.com. You can pick up a different extension for yours. a “.net” or “.co.uk” and there are so many more extensions. But if I were you I’d follow the first rule for domain choosing and that is to pick a “.com” domain. Even if it’s hard to one that’s available or you need to change your artist name. Yup. I said even if you were to change your artist’s name. Get comfortable to play around until you find a memorable and exciting domain name to title your site. Some domains end increasing in value like you wouldn’t believe. And in fact, you may pay for no more than 12$ through your hosting service but as soon as you gain popularity as an artist and start bringing lots of traffic to it it will increase accordingly. An artist signed to a label like for example, John Lenon doesn’t own johnlenon.com. Universal Music owns it. The label owns not the artist but surely owns the artist’s name. And you know what they say: “Your soul is 3/4 your name”
You used to need to type computer code to make your website, but WordPress completely solves this. Wordpress is free software that you’ll put on your hosting account to make it incredibly simple to put pictures and articles on your website.
You may have heard of free blogging platforms like blogger, Tumblr, etc. These solutions aren’t adequate for any serious website project. Using the WordPress software on Bluehost, you’ll be able to endlessly customize your site, add powerful functionality with a few clicks, and you’ll OWN your site and have total control of it.
Not to mention, free blogging platforms don’t have any tech support like you’ll get with Bluehost. I’ve called Bluehost at midnight when I messed up my site and they had me back up within 5 minutes. Awesome!
How to Make a Website for Musicians – The 6 Deadly Easy to Overcome Mini Obstacles
Obstacle 1│Secure Your Hosting Account
The first thing you will do is to create your account. Click this link to get the special discount and start your Bluehost account in another tab. Then you can come back to this article in this tab to follow the tutorial to get you started.
The first obstacle that is keeping you from having your own website platform is the lack of a hosting account. Through which you claim the Domain Name you settle to title your site. Now, the hosting I use allows first time hosting purchasers, fellas like yourself, to grab an available domain free of charge. Available domains aren’t expensive, they usually range between 12$ to 25$. But hey, a nickel saved is a nickel earned. When you ready to overcome this first obstacle visit the hosting service we’ve been talking so far. And yes the almost 67% discount you get it’s my doing.
Since you’re minutes away to click the big beautiful GET PLAN orange button. Click the one under the BEST SELLER GrowBig section of the page. You can figure out why to get the GrowBig just make way more sense than getting the lower one. The GoGeek gives you stuff you don’t need now nor never. It’s just fancier and for the ones than just want more mostly for the sake of it.
Obstacle 2│Settle for a Domain
Right On the next screen, you’ll need to input a domain name to register along with your account. This is the .com name of your website (and I do recommend choosing a .com name and not a .net or anything else). As I mentioned before.
You are going to feel a sense of doubt or even frustration at this point as you’ll likely find that all of the short and easy names are taken. My advise, once again, is to just have fun with words. Flexible enough to even change your artist name if you need to. It’s easy to get a new domain later for less than a tenner as they say in England and add it to your account just in case. Don’t let this obstacles take away from you precious time. And if your artist name is John Miller and jonmiller.com is taken go for jonmillermusic.com and if that’s taken to go for musicbyjonmiller.com and if that’s taken too go for jonmillerofficial.com and if that’s taken too go for jonmillertimes.com and if that’s taken too go for jonmillerchanges.com and if that’s taken too go for jonmillerby.com and if that’s taken too go for jonmillerrtopic.com. Do you want me to continue!? If you’re in doubt get in touch with me and I may advice you.
Modifying word to the start or end will do the trick. Here are some modifiers in my time of troubles I refer back to:
- The, One, A, i, My, etc.
- Central, HQ, Roundtable, Hub, Space, Zone, etc.
- Site/Blog
- Extra, Plus, More, Bonus, etc.
- Prince/Princess or King/Queen
- Tips, Inspiration, Ideas, Design, etc.
- Boss, Guru, Expert, Wizard, Genius, Genie, Champ, etc.
Again, the purpose of obstacles is to take away beauty and fun out of the process. You ca overtake that by following my sincere and ever working method. “iPad” sounded really weird and it still does. But now iPads are part of our conscious wight!?
Obstacle 3│Watch our for up-sells while fishing up registration
On the next page you’ll be prompt a variety of options. These are amazing add-on services from SiteGround. Suggestion: you can actually keep them all checked. They are really useful. But cheer up because you will more than FINE just without them. You don’t need these additional services.
Go ahead. Just uncheck all these boxes and thank ahead SiteGround. Just food for thoughts to keep aware for later.
Obstacle 4│Get set up and ready to install WordPress
I strongly feel you will never need to know what WordPress is unless you end up teaching someone else How to Make a Website for Musicians. But it just a software you install on your hosting.
WordPress is software that gets installed on your hosting (the computer that makes your website available to users). For example, WordPress makes it so you can just press an upload button and attach a picture to your post instead of writing out HTML code to attach that picture. It makes writing on your site fast and easy.
On most hosts, installing WordPress is a pain that involves downloading and uploading files, creating databases, and using an FTP client. On Bluehost, it will do all that for you and walk you through the process automatically.
Start by logging in to your new Bluehost account. Click the blue “log in” button.
Obstacle 5│Access your website’s WordPress dashboard
Obstacle 6│Get set up and ready to master WordPress
The One Amazingly Easy Way To Get Traffic To Your Website
Now that you have a WordPress website up and running, you will of course want to get traffic to it. LOTS of traffic!
Getting people to your site and learning to monetize it are in-depth topics. In fact, I have a very popular program called Project 24 where I work with you and teach you everything I’ve learned about how to get traffic and earn money from your site.
But here are the most important things you can do to get traffic.
- Write long articles. It may seem like you’d want to write short, quick posts that quickly give someone an answer to a question they googled. However, that doesn’t work. After writing thousands of blog posts over the years, I looked at my stats and guess what? The 40 posts that get the most traffic are ALL over 3,000 words long. Over and over again, I see that the top Google search results are long, meaty, extremely helpful posts.
- Write fewer opinion or “human interest” stories, and write more posts that directly answer questions that people would google. Instead of writing posts like “Why Photoshopping photos is cheating”, write posts like “How to Do Skin Smoothing in Photoshop.” Answer people’s questions and you’ll get traffic. This site isn’t about YOU, it’s about YOUR READERS.
- Don’t quit too soon. It’s perfectly normal when I start a new blog to get <50 pageviews per month for the first 6-8 months. Google takes a LONG time to test your site out and see if it belongs in the higher search engine rankings. Then, about 8-12 months after you write your post, it starts taking off on Google. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see any progress in your first 6 months. It happens to me too, and I’ve been doing this for years.
How to Monetize a Website for Musicians
10 Ways Artists Grow Authority With Their Newly Launched Website
Now that you know How to Make a Website for Musicians and have your own beautifully live. Let’s go through the top 10 ways you can get your site efficiently real to bring in tens of thousands of fresh new visitors per month.
#1 Setting up permalinks
WordPress automatically creates a unique URL (web address) every time you create a new page or post. But this automatically generate URL, also known as permalink, it’s not random. WordPress creates it following your website’s files hierarchy. This URL won’t make any sense but to you. As if.
Leave WordPress to set a default permalink every time you create a new page or post and you’ll get a permalink that looks but gobbledygook. Example: yoursite.com/archive/?p=107 or even worst.
Google sees it as not appealing and it may penalize your site if too many of these permalinks are generated. You want to get something like the permalink of this article. It’s beautiful, clear and on point. Google loves as much as me and my hard core habitual readers do.
It’s breezy easy to set this up. On to the WordPress dashboard for your site, go left side menu then hover on “Settings”. At drop down menu appears for settings, click on “Permalinks.” Then pick a new template for your permalinks. Artists and almost everyone else I know in the internet industry set it to the one called “Post Name”.
#2 Back up the site
Accidents happen. That’s why hard-wired into us there is one thing called anticipation. Assume the worst happen rather than not intelligently hope for good fortune. Back up your site. So if your site breaks or you lose previously published content you are able to revert it back to previous state.
If you use a good host, like the one I’ve been using for the past 15 years, your site will get backed up for you. And if you run into problems, just live-chat them up and they’ll get your site back up and running in minutes. They’ve done it for me not many times because in 15years I’ve never ran into these annoying problems and you won’t too. Still though, it’s a good idea to save a separate backup at least occasionally. For the anticipation thing I said before. There are many good backup plugins you can use for this matter. My #1 favorite goes by the name ManageWP. It costs about $1 per site per month and manages your full backup, plus a bunch of other cool stuff. That’s awesome and cheap too.
#3 Installing tremendously useful plug ins
Knowing how to make a website for musicians would a half empty knowledge if we wouldn’t talk about so called plugins. Little adding features pieces of code in the form of software, some free some paid, you find, instal & activate. Now that you have WP installed by navigating to plug ins you see some already installed & active. Most of these you can delete.
Let me walk you through.
On the left side menu, go “Plugins” then “Installed Plugins”. Here, check the box next to each plugin then, use the drop down saying “Bulk Actions”, and choose “Delete”. Confirm so now all those installed by default plug ins are out f your way.
Next, go top to click “Add New”. Here search the following plugins.
- Shortpixel – This resizes your images. It’s #1 for making your site pages load wisdomly fast.
- Shortlinks by Pretty Links – This tracks your links. It’s #1 for that matter. It’s by Blair Williams (the free version works beautifully)
- Amazon Affiliate Link Globalizer – This converts your links to your affiliate ones. It’s by Attila Gyoerkoes, Markus Goetz (Woboq) and it’s so great.
#4 Installing a Great Theme
Guaranteed be that look is everything in life. Pss. That’s total Bull***t. But see your site has to look the way you as artist like to look. Unfortunately or fortunately for that matter, I don’t know what’s your genre, what type of music you’re blessed to create. However, if you’re a blues musician, first of all I am a fan already, you would want to make your site look like other blu musicians’ website. That all make all the sense in the world
A WordPress theme is nothing but the framework that define your site look. But the theme determines the layout, fonts, and functionalities as well.
Now, I dare you to be jealous, but now as we speak, I earn exactly $7,568 per month. I am a musician yeah but I am capitalist first, I buy stuff for cheaper then what they worth, not to sell them but to stick with them because they keep putting more money in my pocket. I buy assets at cheap prices. What you’re creating is what I buy. Digital Real Estate assets also known as Websites.
What’s my point?
My point is that all the sites I build bottom up and that got me to reap what I reap. Never used premium themes. Never. Now, if I get a deal and it uses a premium theme. Ok. But that wouldn’t make any difference. Mostly, are people with low energy that use premium theme. It’s a way to avoid work on the site and stuff. I like hard stuff and I use free themes. Besides look harder and harder and you find free themes that should be premium.
Now, I am not going to advise you my favourite free theme. Not because I don’t want more composition or whatever. It’s because you know why. The whole point here is not the theme is that people I want to associate with, you, have brains to think for their own. If I advise you then you follow and I basically limit you and your beautiful creative mind. I don’t want that. I wouldn’t want they’d do it to me.
Before you choose one, explore the demos. Make sure that at least one demo looks how you want your site to look. One big mistake that people make is that they choose a theme, install it, and then try to make their site look a way that their theme wasn’t designed for.
All I would say is that because here we’re concerning in how to make a website for musicians you would prefer a page builder based theme. Click here to see a great list, actually you know what, I let you also the freedom to bump into something I am not even aware of as I rite. Type into google “allintitle: free page builder wordpress”
I would get
This theme: Click
This PageBuilder: Click
And you’ll be set to play around and make your site amazingly beautiful.
#5 Keep your music & content great
As do it all yourself artist. I deeply assume you are. Keep making great music while getting building a business on it. You’ll be faced by daily transition. And you may nor ready for it. Get used to it.
Somewhere above or below. I am writing this puzzle wise. I said you should make music to help and entertain at the same time. First to help yourself overcome either a struggle or a problem. Then to help your fan overcome a struggle or a problem. All by being entertaining somehow. Without making a fool out of yourself.
However, it’s great practice to take this into account. Now to you know how to make a website for musicians you should know how to Search Engine Optimise your site. SEO it’s a whole art. To sum up. Users of the internet search for stuff. On your site you post stuff searched in a way search Engines prefer. If you do so Search Engines, such Google, will more likely freely promote the best SEOd piece of content.
If you’re a musician you probably have gif of gab. Put it to use not only to write great hooks and great stories. But to write post and article just for SEO perpose.
Here’s how it works.
Spotify needs artist to publish songs on their platform. So they created artist.spotify.com. They give piece of advice to artist. They usually write articles to solve a problem they know artist face. Those piece of article aren’t abstract built. No they SEOed on point. And that piece of content come on top of google #1 search page.
These prices of information aren’t short. at least 1500 words long. I shoot for an average of more like 2,000 with the occasional 3,500-4,000 word post. Like this one.
Of this sound off to you. It’s normal. If it sounds interesting great. But don’t get things mixed up. You must keep 3 different schedule appointments. 1. Tech, to keep your site updated and everything, 2. Marketing, to keep your site relevant on Search Engines and 3. Music, to keep your music great a truthful just the way it should alway be until you’re alive. It’s all a muscle and the more consistent you keep the better transitioning between these 3 stages will feel.
#6 Optimising images for SEO
Pictures are an important part of a website. Especially for a website presenting an artist to the whole world. However, a lot of artists make the mistake of uploading full-resolution images on their sites. If your picture files are too big, too large this happens. Your whole site’s web pages will load deadly slow. You don’t want that. Search Engines don’t like that. Nobody else does that.
Common practice will be to resize your images. Wether be your hits’ covers. Or images you add to your articles. You should be able to get familiar with Photoshop pretty quickly. Incidentally, you may also find easier and more practical using he free website ResizeImage.net
Scale full-width photos down to 900 pixels wide. While small photos and featured images down to 350 pixels wide.
That’s this plug I’ve been using in the past that still great. It’s called Shortpixel. Click there and check it out.
#7 Signing up for Amazon Associates & many more
The greatest monetization method for your newly published website should be selling your music. That’s out of question right?!. The second would be streaming. But say you get one on your site from a post on IG or whatever, you would send one to, say, Spotify right!?. Spotify pays nickels not to say – pays you Bull***t. Check this article about Spotify and streaming commission rates when you’re ready to understand how much a new up coming hearty inspired artist can expect for steaming commissions.
I am going to stop here and avoid mentioning all the rest of monetization methods you could implement on your site to get a full living out of it. And reveal you that one great way artists make money from their WordPress sites. It’s a little thing called Affiliation.
The first one Affiliate Program that comes to mind is Amazon Associates. Just google “Amazon Associates” and sign up. It’s free and they do CAN reject you. However since you followed this How to Make a Website for artists that guide you through the process and still guiding you trough it as we speak. And that you now have a LIVE WordPress site launched and everything. The WON’T reject you. Before you apply to it make sure that you site is clear about who you are and it’s abut. Clicking here will gat you to Amazon Associates in a millisecond.
When you’re signed up, you’ll get a tracking ID. Copy that tracking ID. Then go to your site and click “Amazon Affiliate Link Globalizer” . Click on “Settings”. Paste your tracking ID into the box next to Amazon.com. At this point, the plugin will automatically add your tracking ID to any links on your website to Amazon. From that point on, you’ll earn money from whatever is purchased through your link. Pretty awesome.
#8 Blocking spammers
Hopefully you did as I advised you to. If so, you now have Spam Honypot beautifully installed. That plug is king. It really does catch a lot of spam comments bolts and hackers get to comment on your site. Still it won’t catch everything.
What you do added to that would be this. Go “Settings” and “Discussion” on your WordPress dashboard. Then “Before a Comment Appears” to check both boxes. That way you’re able to take a look at all comments before they show live on your newly published website.
In addition to both Spam Honypoy and Manual Settings go “Comment Backlist”. Type word you identify from previous spammy comments. List one word per line. Add vulgar words. I add several prescription medications that started appearing in a lot of spam comments on my sites as well as.
Yup. Just by following these #3 methods you anticipate or overcome the obstacles that hackers and spammer present us with. Never allow your nature to go mad at the hacker. hackers are part of it all. Let yourself being mad at YOU for taking precautions. The buck stops with you.
#9 Being authentic and helpful with interesting produced content
The best way to be authentic is very simple. You are born one of a kind. I mean it. Think about it. Who else has your name, born the day and the exact time, with your facial features – I could go on and on – you were. No-one. No f***ing one. Just by knowing that and keeping conscious about it will work to make you be authentic from now on.
That’s really important to build a strong bond with new people discovering your website, you and your music. Have your music & your website for that matter being a reflection of all that’s within you. And that right there would be the best way to be helpful.
Write music and articles that answer your own problems to start out with. As you grow as an artist and as a fellow you’ll find enjoyment in answering your fans’ questions. Once at that stage your fans will bag you to buy a t-shirt with your name on. The will beg you for selling them autographed stickers. They will bag you for selling them a picture of you.
It all starts with being helpful to yourself to then move on to being helpful to them. With that authenticity you naturally inherited the day you came to life. Having learned How to Make a Website for Musicians and having actually created your own will make you really proud of yourself.
#10 Setting hard -to-guess log in password
WordPress websites don’t get hacked not as they used to. We’ve come along way on that regard too. These hackers basically run algorithms with the intent to find out admin passwords for WordPress. My sites get hackers attempt all the time. But I was never hacked once. That’s not luck. It’s just that I set hard, really hard to guess passwords for each of my sites. So, be sure you use a unique passwords for your newly launched site.
The Time Has Come
Launching a website you made yourself for you & your music it’s hugely exciting. Almost everyone in the universe has access to a computer and now that you made you & your music available on a website. You’re allowing literally everyone in the universe to access to YOU and your music.
98% of artists out on the market delay making their own website. Once they do make it they don’t know where to start. So they end up delegating someone else to do it. That’s very sad frankly. Because once you lose sight and control of your website this is what you’re loosing. The heart of your music endeavor. Your fans.
I hope this how to make a website for musicians guide of mine actually got you started your own. And that now you have your own platform where to send and engage with your friend. While keeping total control. Finally, keep at it as well as up with it. As you witnessed, making a website for musicians requires neither a lot of money nor high degree web development skills. But on the internet, things are always on the up and you could hit rock bottom just as quickly if you skip both your daily content publishing & weekly updates.