Reply To: Strange Business Model
Hey Jon;
I stayed up way too late last night reading all of the blog posts back to the very beginning. The content is so good and it really sends the message that you are a gifted musician who really values his fans and who is an interesting 'net personality (and that's not me being a cheerleader, I'm being honest).
BNL recently went back to being independent (and before the flamethrowers emerge, I know it's not quite the same thing – they have a ton of support from Nettwerk), but their website has a lot of the same features that you provide here, including direct downloads. TMBG does the same thing.
It might be time, now that things are gaining momentum, for your site to look less like a blog and more like a promotional piece to showcase how multi-faceted you are. And to entice people to buy more stuff (oooh, shiny!). I think that as consumers we want to know that our money is going where we want it – to the artist and to the making of more good music.
If you were to take the pictures and music from your myspace page and the merch from your CafePress (I think you can embed that stuff in your site) and combine it with your JoCo page, you would be more of a "one-stop" shop. A news feed for what everyone else is saying about you would be good too. It's easier for me to Google you to see what the most recent articles and interviews are than to dig through all of the previous posts for the Quick Links (incidentally, I loved the QuickStop interview). You'll also have a beter gauge of how many people are interested in you and what you do.
I also think a lot of the promotional items suggested in another thread bear some consideration – and be sure that all of them hype the website.
Obviously, your self-deprecation and self-promotion demons will have to duke it out, but isn't that what you're selling tickets to, anyway? Just as obviously, we like to watch.
Liza