rhythma - sean michael imler

Music for the heart, mind, and spirit...

Rhythma Blog

Rhythma - Sean Michael Imler - Home
rhythma - sean michael imler

Music for the heart, mind, and spirit...


Rhythma Blog

Archive for February, 2010

Music Success in Nine Weeks: Week 7Thursday, February 4th, 2010


This week’s chapter is about growing your email list. Last week we created it and now Ariel has some great tips for adding names too it. She recommends that you reach out to your friends and family. This was the first thing that I did when I started my email list 6 years ago. My approach was to just add them with a simple unsubscribe link in the email which should always be present and tell them that they can opt out should they choose to. Make sure that you craft your subject line well. I use Sean Michael Imler AKA Rhythma Newsletter. If you don’t do this, chances are that they’ll delete the email as spam since it likely will not be coming from an address they already have in their address book. That being said, also request that they add the return address to their address book so that their ISP won’t flag you as spam.

Another recommendation is to create a folder especially for potential inclusions to your email list. I really like this idea because I’m always getting email from people but never really think of them as email list candidates. When you sell CDs or downloads from CDBaby, they capture the email address of the buyer, so that’s another source for your email list which is a great source because they’ve already expressed interest in your music. Never just add them without their consent though.

The item that I’ve recently put into action is offering a free download if a visitor at my web site signs up on my email list. It took me a little while to build this and tho I would’ve liked to do it with a uniquely encrypted password, that was more effort than I wanted to put into it so I opted to send the url to the user in the confirmation email. I can’t say that I’ve gotten any bites on this yet but my page views haven’t gone up THAT much since I’ve been working on this book’s plan.

And on that point, something you should absolutely do is to get Google Analytics going on your site so that you can track page visits. It’s really easy to hook up and it will tell you if you’re plans are fruitful. To be honest, I think that Ariel should put this in her book, maybe near the front of the book. This should go in a section about “measuring success” because you need a way to track that what you’ve done is actually producing success by comparing it to what you already have.

There are a couple of other recommendations that she’s suggested like starting a text message list and trading email lists with another band. I think the former might work if you have an audience that’s on the go and relies on their phones a lot. This won’t work if your audience is still in the 90’s. Someone told me about 2 years ago that texting was the new email list. I personally haven’t seen that but I am on a couple friend’s text message lists and I’m not crazy about getting them. I kinda want to use my texting for conversations, not announcements. A site that gives tools for collecting numbers for texting lists is BroadTexter. I should be hooking this up this week so that I’m not criticizing without actual experience.

The trading of lists I’ve always found a little weird because email is already so impacted with spam and other business promotion communications that I haven’t wanted to try getting email addresses that way. I like the opt-in approach but maybe the right opportunity hasn’t presented itself, and maybe I haven’t been looking at myself as a business. These are things I should cogitate on.

The gem here is actually scheduling time to do email list promotion and not waiting for people to find your list. This is something I’m working into my schedule. I’m not sure how email lists rank against Twitter, Facebook and MySpace work but I’d be curious to hear about other people’s experiences with these other networks and their successes with them by comparison. Could it be the email lists are too last decade?

Sliding in BedThursday, February 4th, 2010


I was laying in the water bed that I had as a kid when I lived with my mother. I was curled up and very comfortable when my body started being pulled to the foot of the bed. It was like I was sliding because my posture wasn’t really changing, just my location. I felt a presence in the room like I wasn’t alone and whatever was there with me was powerful. When I finally stopped moving, I looked down at my feet and they seemed incredibly close too me. Then, a woman was there, standing at the side of the bed. She was in her late 30’s/early 40’s and was dressed in weekend night attire like she was going out. She had on a green blouse and black pants and wore a lot of silver jewelry. She started talking to me about something but I couldn’t recall what it was, but I flat out asked her if she was there for my highest good. I guess she wasn’t because right after I asked her that, she vanished, leaving her clothes rumpled up on the floor. I swung my legs over the side and stood up and kicked at them to make sure that there really was nothing left of her.

Escaping the MafiaTuesday, February 2nd, 2010


I was holed up in an apartment that belonged to a Mafia boss. His daughter was hiding me because the Mafia boss and a lot of others were looking for me. His apartment was the last place he’d looked so I was in the back in his daughter’s bedroom. I could hear men out in the streets shouting and I was pretty nervous. I knew I couldn’t stay there and needed to get out but wasn’t sure how. The ceiling of the room was about 12ft. high and at it’s apex was a small window that I was considering climbing up the edges of the wall to get to. I heard someone come into the house and realized I didn’t have much time. I was getting ready to climb when I looked to my left and noticed a small hallway where the washer and dryer were, and at the end of the hallway was a small window that led to the backyard. It was covered by a screen, and tho I didn’t want anyone to know that I’d gone thru this window, I cut a slice in the screen at the edge near the frame, and stealthily slid thru the opening and escaped out the backyard, up a small hill. I knew that I was going to be able to escape and I wouldn’t be found.

The Crashing HelicopterMonday, February 1st, 2010


I was on a large helicopter with a group of people. It was nighttime and there was some sort of system malfunction. The pilot was the only person who knew how to hold the helicopter together long enough so that the passengers could parachute up and jump before it went down. He crawled to the back where he was rewiring and literally holding parts together and keeping connections alive and it seemed certain that he was going to go down with the ship. I was the last passenger and it seemed so heroic and noble to keep the helicopter airborne while the passengers escaped, even if it meant that the pilot would die, that I couldn’t just leave him behind; I wanted him to survive but didn’t know what to do but I didn’t jump with the rest of the passengers. Instead, I crawled to the cockpit chair on the left. The ground was approaching really fast and just as we were going to hit, a voice in my head told me to grab the joystick and yank it to the right, right now. I followed this instruction and just as the body of the helicopter was about to hit the ground, the blades struck first, causing the body to shift upward and alleviate sudden impact that would otherwise have crushed the body. We essentially escaped without a scratch and the pilot was so very grateful for hanging on with him.


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