In her article “Get Paid in 2010: Want To Increase Your Bottom Line? Focus On Your Fans!,” Ariel Hyatt is asking you to “take off your artist hat for a minute and put on your business hat,” and use a greater connection with fans as a way to increase your ability to make money.

To be more successful and make more money in the new year, Hyatt suggests you start thinking of yourself and your craft as a brand, and your fans as customers.

The key, according to Hyatt, to getting fans to buy from you, is creating a relationship with fans. “Every study on sales has proven one thing: People hate to be sold to, however people love to buy, and people always love to buy from people whom they like and who they feel they trust.”

So how do you become a person that your fans like and want to buy from?

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I occasionally get random thoughts that I want to remember, and so I write them down and then think about them later. This thought came on New Years Eve, and I sent a text to myself to remember it.

Back in the day (way back in the day), if someone had a great thought and wanted to remember it, they had to chisel it into a stone tablet (think, ten commandments), or in later years learn how to read and write, then use expensive ink and hard to obtain paper like papyrus or something.

Basically, you only wrote something down if it was *really* important, and therefore you felt that the effort and cost to memorialize the thought was justified.

These days – you can text it to yourself while at a concert. Not even a writing utensil is needed.

For music, the barrier to development used to be access to and cost of a recording studio to produce

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You are in a band because you offer something musicially to the group you are playing with. But what else do you bring to the table?

In this day and age, it isn’t enough to just play bass or just play guitar.

Having computer skills, the desire to oversee some online marketing endeavors, the ability to maintain or write code for your website, or simply the ability and desire to personally network in your local music community – these are all important additional traits that are helpful and necessary for young bands.

Every member must have a role. Below is an example based on a five member band:

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