With the advent of social networking profiles more and more musicians are seemingly opting to not create their own personal websites. For many, creating and maintaining hosted profiles on social networking site is not only easier, but financially more suitable.
There are no webmasters needed, no hosting costs and virtually no graphic design needs either. It is no wonder that many musicians feel that they no longer need their own websites. However, this might not be entirely true. Here are a few reasons why musicians should reconsider choosing to not have their own websites.
Personal Websites Don’t Have Any Major Restrictions
While profile pages are great, they do often times carry major restrictions. Some of these are very confining. For instance, some sites don’t allow HTML or JavaScript coding. This is in an effort to keep their self hosted sites clean of many of the malicious codes out there that one can encounter on the Internet. By making sites non-open source they can look to control a lot more easily what types of coding and content is being added to their networks.
These things are not so with your own hosted websites. There are occasionally some restrictions placed on you regarding coding options depending on your choice of hosting provider (like Hostbaby's musician hosting or Godaddy's hosting and domian registrar services) and their given plans for hosting content. For the most part nowadays, however, you as a user are free to host any non-malicious coding and content (usually with the exclusion of illegal, racist and pornographic content) that you desire to publish onto your website.
You Can Add as Much Material & Content as You Want
With your own website you can opt to publish as many websites and as much content as your heart desires depending on the disk space usage amounts you are allowed through your chosen hosting plan. You can then in more detail express to your audience just exactly who you are and what you stand for as a band and brand. This is important because you gain fans mostly by having them identify with your brand nowadays, more so than you do solely through your music.
You are Not One of Many
On popular social networking sites as a musician and even as a marketer of a product you are not alone. There are countless individuals and company entities all trying to push their products and services to the same exact consumers. When you choose to have your own website you free your band from this rat race. Though it is not always easy in the early goings to develop site traffic, in the long road it is while worth the effort.
From the moment a person enters your website all they should see is your band. Your presence is everywhere. Only your music, your videos and your photos are meticulously placed throughout your domain. There is just little excuse not to like these facts. If you don't know a lot about how to set up a site yourself their are sites on SEO (search engine optimization) and sites like The Site Wizard with its site building tutorials that make understanding this a breeze.
You Can Further Your Own Brand Easily
With your own personal band website you fully control your branding. You are free to sell whatever items you wish to and you can place almost any type of advertisements up on your domain for those items and with PayPal's secure online payment opportunities and their certified carting systems like E-Junkie offering abilities to sell downloads and tangible items, handling payments is a snap.
From here you are free to develop true connections with fans, just as easily as you can on social networking sites. You just need to be ready and willing to do the extra work necessary to succeed in the early days.
Personal Websites Can Equal Greater Success
While social networking is still a vital part of success online for bands one has to realize all of the advantages to also having your own website. Weigh the pros and cons of controlling your online content and branding opportunities fully through your own website. Then, if you feel up to the task of tackling all of the ups and downs of pursuing successful online marketing and retailing yourself, by all means, jump into the process of creating your own website.
Though not always, oftentimes musicians will tell you having you own personal band websites can equal even greater success for your band.
