Happy New Year!

And wow what a year it has been. The site has undergone heavy building within the past 3 months and the only place is (hopefully) up now. I have also made some of the pages much easier to navigate, especially the free loops page.

Recently I have received an email stating their misery of the last year. The writer was stating that people should get onto the Internet bandwagon and make their fortune, and this email then goes on to slate the friends who have not done this.

Unfortunately what the writer didnt tell is of course:

1. you need time and effort to make something of your site business (even if you are not selling anything or offering free stuff, call it a business now and it makes you work at it that bit more, it even makes you proud, see how you go). Some people also have a home life, and go out with friends etc, making Internet building much harder.

2. you must like what you do, it really really helps, because if you don't updates will be non-existant and the feel of the site will be too clinical.

3. If you read too many of the above emails (we have all seen them, we have all seen the internet sites that are just one huge sales pitch) then when you dont make anything in the first month your esteem and your drive will take a huge blow.

The new years little message?

Because of the wrong emails and sales sites that were and still are banded around, you automatically think that as soon as you latch onto the Internet, BANG, big money arrives. Sadly not straight away. Don't rush to build your site and dont be too eager to make cash and traffic. They will all come in time, they will, trust me on this.

Tip 1: There are plenty of directories out there where you can place your site and some of the engines do search them. www.zeal.com and www.dmoz.com are two big free ones (Zeal is very strange, you have to pass a silly test before you can ask for your site to be reviewed). Both are free but that also means that there is a huge queue to get in and also they don't allow in just anyone, only non-commercial sites. So what do you do?

When you have 20 pages of good content on your internet site and have no ads, affiliate links, google ads etc then you ask to be reviewed. Then leave them. Add more to your site and build up more and more content. Dont add money links to your site yet. It may take months for them to get back to you (depends on the popularity of your topic).

Tip 2: If you dont get accepted by Zeal or Dmoz or dont reall want the hastle of waiting around, don't worry, apply to directory sites of similar content, and general sites of non-competing content. You may have to pay for a good directory listing, like in JoeAnt (paying states to the engines that you mean business, and the quality of the link increases). However, think before you add your link to Yahoo directory, at $299 and no guarantee of being accepted you have to ask is it worth it? I haven't applied and dont intent to, $299 can be used elsewhere if I had it :) Also once your site becomes a hit, would these directories leave you out, I doubt it.

So what for this year with the site? Well I can let you into the few projects that I am working on, one was supposed to come out before the end of 2005, but has overrun. The following are up for implementation:

1. How to make money from your music site. The best ideas and software. An add on to the exisiting page but this goes past Clickbank.

2. A new sequencer. Builds upon Fasttracker (so that knowledge is greatly needed) and offers really cool manipulation of sounds, is the next stage before "pro sequencers" such as Cakwalk and Reason...oh yeah and its free. I haven't stopped playing with it (hence the overrun..ahmmm).

3. New advertising and marketing resource- a whole section dedicated to radio.

Right, that will keep me busy for a while.

Hope you have a great New Year

Regards, Dominic WebSite owner: Make your own dance and techno songs.com