Billy Darnells Blog

Hello everyone!

Well let me start out by saying CD sales have improved and thats a mighty good thing!

We are already ahead of the goal we set for this month and with a few days left things might get even better. I can’t speak strongly enough on the importance of sales. Not only are they a measuring tool as to how well the music is accepted, but more importantly they allow me to keep getting CDs out there to dj’s around the world that help us to introduce the product into more markets. Keep in mind current sales are under $100.00, then consider, to send out a package of the 2 cds to radio stations and dj’s outside of the continental USA cost about $16 to $18 dollars a package! I have mailed out at least 20 packages so far and that is a far cry from the several thousand copies we need to get out there. To ship 2 cd’s to just 1,000 dj’s world wide would cost over $16,000.oo! Now you might be thinking,  wow,  you got to sell a lot of CDs just to break even, and you would be right. It has caused me to re-evaluate the approach for exposure and marketing. One answer is compilation CDs that are put together by promoters where they put 10 or 15 artists on a CD and send them out to a thousand or so radio stations and dj’s around the world. It is much more cost efficient, and effective in saturating a market. So I just contracted with a promoter to put 2 songs from my CDs on a compilation CD that is going out to 1400 dj’s in october, and I will be looking for more promotions of this type. However there are still certain dj’s and markets we will be concentrating on getting out those two CD packages to. Right now we are working on the Australian market. When we finish that we will be working on some of the other small countries that have large country music popularity. You can talk about being a fan all you want, but if you don’t buy an artists CDs, and you dont help support his music, he wont be there very long for you to be a fan of. If you really enjoy the songs and the music we do, please , purchase some of it. We need your help to keep going.          

Ok, enough on the importance of sales. If you have looked around the web site lately you probably have noticed a few changes. For one there is now a photo section. These photos are from a shoot we did a couple of weeks ago, and we plan to use them to let fans pick a picture they would like to have persoanlly autographed if they choose to do so. We are currently evaluating the cost involved in this process, and we should have them available within the next two or three weeks.

We have also added a Supporters page where you can find information on radio stations and other venues that have agreed to play or promote, my music. We thought this would be a good thing from several standpoints. First it lets you the fan know where they can hear my music, and secondly, it helps push traffic to those sites that support it. It also allows us to communicate with the fans the various ways we have made to allow them to show their support.

 We also moved the blog link, and the printable order form link, up to the main menu in the hopes it would be easier for people to locate.

This coming week we will start to look into press releases and using ezines to drive traffic to the website. There is alot to be done yet to help keep the momentum rolling our way.

Last week I did a live radio interview, that went out to the web, with Radio Dj Bobby Lynn. It went really well, was a lot of fun, and more importantly it created several new fans.

This Saturday at 6PM est time I will be opening a room at paltak for a meet and greet with what I hope will be many of my fans on there. The purpose will also to be to organize a street team for the web for the fans to get involved and help with promotion, and that will be a very big help if we can pull it off.

All in all things are still progressing very well. The sales are starting to come around, the fan base is growing in leaps and bounds, radio dj’s are willing and even motivated to play the CDs, and promoters are asking for me to get involved in their projects. If this was a wall street report The market would up 200 points!!! lol, but it isnt so I have to get back to work.

Thanks to everyone that has supported me this far, the fans, the Dj’s, the internet radio people, all of you are what keeps me going. I still believe the new CD release, “15 Years Later” is  gonna be a hit, and will help catapult us into the next CD, which is in the planning stage, and I guarantee you it will be even better than “15 Years Later”.

Until next time may the good lord bless you, and dont forget to get your copy of the cd’s…lol ( www.cdfreedom.com/billydarnell )

Your Friend,

Billy Darnell

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 1:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.