Setting up a network is fast and easy.  Figuring out which features make sense for you, and moving or linking to any other content you have on the web, might take a while but is something you can do in phases and complete over time.  Here’s what to do:

1. Go to Ning.com and choose a name for your network, probably just your band’s name or your name.
2. Sign up for an account — you’ll use this login for when you make changes or want to make more social networks for your other projects.
3. Describe your network, add a tagline, keywords, etc.  Make the network public so that anyone can join and they don’t need an invite.  (You wouldn’t be that snobby would you?)
4. Add the features you want into your layout.  Be sure to click on the link that shows all the features.  For now, only drag over stuff that is relevant — you can always change it later.  For example, if you don’t have any videos leave it off until you do.
5. Choose a theme and change the colors are you see fit.
6. Once it’s launched, click on the “Manage” menu item and make sure all your settings look ok, as well as offer some basic promotions like a Facebook widget.  The “Track Statistics” link will allow you to add Google Analytics to see who’s on the site.  It’s free and could give you an idea of how many people are using this network and what parts of the world they are coming from.
7. Find the “Badges & Widget” section and customize the widgets (including your music) that will be available to your fans to put on their own blogs and profiles.

What’s Next?

Start populating your pages! Add your music and videos and start a blog.  Use the RSS feature to pull in all the other things you’re doing online.

Definitely use the “Events” feature if you have any gigs coming up.  For that matter you can add “special appearances” to that calendar, like “going to be at the coffee shop reading the newspaper on Tuesday morning” and your fans can RSVP to them.  You can even put a link to more venue info or a map.

Throw in a text box and put links to your other locations on the web, like your myspace profile or your t-shirt store.  While you’re at it, why not throw in a link to an Amazon wishlist set up for your music related stuff?  Finally, allow your users to create groups within your networks so that you can get a better idea of who your fans are and what they like to do when they aren’t listening to your music.   This is a social network you know.

Now start telling your fans, friends, family, neighbors, associates, attendants, sugardaddies, and anyone else who has an internet connection, and get them to sign up.  Encourage them to invite others they know as well as put your “badges” (widgets), including your music, on their own blogs or other social networks.

Remember to keep your content fresh by writing often, putting up pictures after a show, etc.  You want your fans to keep coming back to checkfor any new stuff and keep you in the front of their brains.  What’s nice about having your own social network though is that your fans will take up the slack when you’re too hung over to blog, and add their content about you as well.

Also check out our review of Ning.com

When you make and share music you are creating a community. It may be a big audience at a show, or a small group of friends blasting your tunes in the high school parking lot. In collecting an audience you are often bringing together people who have more in common then just an appreciation for your art, like the way they dress or the other music they listen to.

The promise behind Social Networking on the web is that it allows people to parallel   what goes on in “Meatspace” in virtual form. Ning.com is a site that helps your fans    connect with each other and keep up with your artistic endeavors.

Overview

Ning makes it super simple to create and customize a brand new social network. It allows you to go beyond the simple profile that the Facebooks and MySpaces of the world allow. Your fans can even create groups within your network that are based around, for example, where they live or who their favorite band member is. A certain rapper famously used it as a tool to keep in touch with his audience and also make some extra pennies (Free Social Media Tools Unite 50 Cent Fans).

Once it’s up and running, and you have your fan base using it, you can do things like: blast out notes to everyone on the network, keep a calendar of your upcoming shows, write blogs, and upload pictures and video. Many of the features of Ning overlap with what you’re doing on other sites. This is fine because you can just pull in feeds through RSS or widgets (they have an easy way to integrate with Flickr too) and still only update content in one place.

Costs

Singing up is free and for most musicians the basics are good enough. You’ll have to put up with a not-so-easy to remember URL (your-bands-name.ning.com), some ads on the side of the page, and extra ning promotional links. For a various monthly fees you can change any of those things and clean up your network to focus on you. You can also get more storage and bandwidth if needed but you’d have to have a REALLY active networkto need it.

One thing to consider — once you have a good amount of traffic — is signing up to “Control the Ads”. It’s $20 a month but will allow you to run your own ads (e.g. Google AdSense) and potentially make money. How cool would that be?

Final Thoughts

The focus on having your own social network is getting your fans to interact with each other in the context of your music. Ning accomplishes this to an extent and hopefully will continue to provide features to bring the site beyond being a glorified profile on another social network. Right now there isn’t a whole lot for your fans to do past posting to forums, creating groups, and checking out other fans. Allowing users to share their own pics of your shows or blog about your music without having to use the forums would be nice.

Regardless, it is an easy way to make a website for your music with a lot of functionality and the social aspect can just be a bonus — or if it really catches on a great way to really expand your audience.

Check out BrokeDownVan’s social network at brokedownvan.ning.com It took about 10 minutes to set up, which you can tell by the ugliness of it.

Also check out our blog on setting up a social network with Ning.com.

As it gets harder and harder to tour for a small act, with gas prices and lodging and every other thing you need to go on tour costing all kinds of money, people are finding alternative ways to go on tour. People use myspace and facebook to connect with their fans and crash at peoples’ places. A few years ago, the band that I was playing in booked small tours where we rented a van and booked some bigger shows that paid some money, and then used that money to stay in motels and peoples’ houses. The amount of telephone planning and mapping and logistics took a good chunk of time and energy. One of the things that I’ve recently discovered, and maybe because I’m not as computer literate as my partner Craig, is using Google Maps to map and plan tours. You can create a customized map to mark each place you’ll be staying and gigs you’ll be playing and you can share it with anyone. You can create a map and have all of your band mates have access to it. You can post it somewhere (I think) and have your fan base take a look and suggest places of interest or offer places to stay. It’s a small tool, but I think that it is useful in the organizing phase of the tour, because god knows on tour, you’d probably be too drunk and high to figure it all out on paper.

Google Maps Video Tutorial – Click Here!

It’s pretty cool to drop a locator on a gig, and then see the whole thing planned out. Pretty satisfying.

Overview

Bigcartel bills itself as providing “Simple Stores for DIY Rockstars” and they do a good job at providing the basics of an Ecommerce store. When you’re ready to start selling your CDs, T-shirts, or other merchandise to your fans, you can simply sign up, create your own store, and start raking in the cash. In addition to bands, they also specialize in stores for record labels, and clothing companies.

What you’re really signing up for is an easy to use product catalog and shopping cart. It’s something that will guide your fans through your inventory (albums, songs, merch) to find what they want to buy, allow them to add or delete it from a shopping cart, and checkout. It’s up to you to do the fulfillment part of the process which includes packaging the product, shipping it, and making sure your fan is happy… including handling returns.

Once all your products are set up, and the site has been customized to include your colors, logo, etc, you’ll need to create a PayPal account. This will allow your fans to use credit/debit cards, or their own PayPal account, to put money in your pocket.

Costs

The basic account is free but you can only sell 5 things and there are some limits on how much you can tailor the site to your needs. For about $10 a month you can up it to 25 products, customize your site more (including your own domain), and use discount codes. For about $20 a month you can have 100 products and more customization.

What’s really nice about the site is that they won’t be taking a cut of what you sell. PayPal however does take a portion of the money that flows through their system, usually somewhere around 3% of the cost plus $.30 for each item. It’s not a bad price for the ability to accept credit cards, but because there is that transaction fee of thirty cents you’ll want to avoid selling really cheap items.

Final thoughts

Bigcartel is somewhat limited in that you can only customize certain parts of your site but that’s also what makes it more focused and easy to get started. The main draw-back is that they don’t have specific support for selling digital products (like your MP3s) but they’re working on it. To get around this limitation one band decided to take orders for digital versions of their songs, and then send an email to the fan with the MP3s as attachments. A little crude but it gets the job done.

All in all, this is a good service that can help an artist get paid for his or her work.