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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Editor’s Note: This month’s Blog Post of the Month was selected by the newest V11 contributor, Renee. Thanks Renee! Happy new year to all!

In What Are You Pretending to NOT Know? Bob Baker has a great positive message for everyone to take into the New Year- “you know way more than you give yourself credit for.”

In his article Baker points out that many times we know exactly what our problems are and how to fix them, but that we instead talk ourselves into looking the other way or believing the situation is out of our control. This article addresses a situation I often find myself in- that I am creating mental roadblocks for myself on the road to success.

I like that this article reminds me that if I give myself a little more credit and have more confidence in myself, that I already possess the skills I need to accomplish my goals.

So when you set your 2010 goals, keep in mind Bob Baker’s advice: Stop making excuses, take responsibility for your self and know that you have the skills to succeed!

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What a great event last week! Just wanted to thank SF Music Tech for putting together another productive event. As always, it was a pleasure meeting so many new folks in the industry.

And to the panelists on Getting to Popular, and especially Francis Ten of West Indian Girl, I think we did a great job of *starting* to get the discussion going. Looking forward to more….

For those that missed it, check out java.net’s notes, or listen to the video.

As for the Volume 11 website, as you may have seen, we have updated the layout to better express what Volume 11 has become – a music business news site for independent musicians (and their business partners). Dan calls this Volume 11 1.0.

In the future we will be adding some diversity to the writing, through new and guest writers. Should be educational!

Until then, have a great rest of 2009… and remember to thank all those that have helped you get to where you are!

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November’s Blog Post of the Month comes from Hypebot’s Associate Editor Kyle Bylin. The Elsewhere Musician: Making Connections in a Fragmented World highlights two key points: (1) all musicians (and especially the “successful” ones) must continuously work harder on the business side of things, and (2) the trend of shorter album cycles.

From Bylin:

Leisure time once spent doing creative things — where an artist could take time away from it all — has turned into work that ranges from learning how to market themselves online and off, answering an endless barrage of messages from fans, bloggers, and managers, and trying to keep all of their profiles, blogs, and social media tools relevant and up-to-date.

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Diversification is a business and investment term meant to broaden your offerings and mitigate risk. In your music marketing efforts, diversification will allow you to test new ideas and see what is working, and find new fans from different sources.

So, which different avenues have you tested out lately?

We all have different goals – maybe someone lives in Alaska and wants to find 15 live fans to play to in the dead of winter over the Internet. Others want to sell more albums; others want to tour; some want it all – to make a living and more out of playing music.

Ultimately for most, though, it is about connecting and finding more fans to justify the time you put into to your music. It could be fans or money or general community interest that is the payback.

However, no matter your exact goal, you should be on the lookout for some basic criteria in the services you elect to use that will provide the maximum long term benefits for your time and energy spent in signing up and learning to use such services.

….

We all want to try new products and services, and find a potentially easier path to getting new fans. Yet, we all need to push to make sure we are getting something in return for the free music we may be distributing, and a reason to think that the time we put in to learning a new platform or service will pay off.

This led me to think about what every service should have if they want to attract and add value to independent musicians.

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Baseball players young and old still field ground balls in practice, turn double plays, practice bunting, play catch – every single day. Whether they are in little league or the majors the routine of practicing fundamentals is key.

Approaching the business of music is the same. For musicians trying to make it from nothing to something, or even for those that are “something” and want to make to the next level – signed by a major label, etc. – everyone still must remember the fundamentals of marketing your music.

1. Make sure your web site is the central hub of all things about your music. First and foremost, there needs to be a central place where you can control things, and your website is it. Myspace, Facebook, etc are controlled by those companies, and you can’t build and plan around that long term.

The most important aspects of your website will be the ability to (i) collect emails and (ii) distribute your music how you want (free downloads, pay what you want, etc). You don’t have to create those features from scratch, as you can utilize services like Reverb Nation, Bandcamp or others, however everything should still start from your website with the intention of gathering your fans’ data.

Blog Gen Y Rock Stars has an extremely well thought out video blog about using your fans data strategically to better target the buyers of your music. To repeat, it all starts with getting fan emails.

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I can appreciate that it rather difficult to self-promote, especially for many artists. It seems either pushy or corporate or uncool or all of the above to talk your music up to other folks. The key, then, is to find ways to do it that somehow doesn’t come off this way and is real — is you.

Our friends at New Rock Star Philosophy recently stated: “Start with something that is unique, honest, and real.” Volume 11 also wrote about “authenticity” in online marketing this past May.

John Oszajca is a musician who has experienced a good amount of what the music industry has to offer – getting signed by labels, putting out albums with those labels, getting dropped by labels, and then being forced to do it himself. To put it more bluntly, he was forced to find some work to pay the bills, learned online marketing for other products, and then began to apply what he learned to promoting his own music.

He is now a “success” and also a self-proclaimed online marketing guru:

I asked myself, why do all of the things that I’m selling sell? The answer almost universally was that my products were selling because they solved problems.

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The hardest thing to do is go from nothing to something.

This is true in life, business, and your music career. Getting started in anything involves finding your strength, developing your innate talent and idea, honing it, and promoting it. Then repeat again and again as necessary. There is also some self-analysis involved – for things you are not good at you need to find others to help.

For music, once you feel as if you have ability to be unique or have an impact in some way, you start practicing. Practicing leads to skill development. Then you perform, and that hopefully leads to fans and some justification for your time, energy and faith.

But after you have some core fans, perhaps a somewhat loyal and consistent fanbase, and maybe made a self-published album or two, now what? It seems that many bands get stuck at this level for a long time, most forever. And there is good reason for this. After all:

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