How To Make Your Best (Affordable) Band Website Step-By-Step

A lot of musicians find the idea of creating a website daunting. Mostly because they still think it's difficult and they're not confident enough they can do it on their own.

While a huge amount of business and growth takes place on social media, if you don’t have a nice website to point to, you’re going to have a hard time impressing the big players (bloggers, managers, A&R reps, etc.). More importantly, you're not going to make NEARLY as many sales as you would.

A common complaint among independent musicians is that building a customized website is very expensive; a few artists have shown me quotes for more than $5000. It’s not 1997 anymore, and you don't need to spend that kind of money to get started. It is perfectly possible to create an effective website at an affordable price.

There is a global marketplace of fabulous platforms and talented designers who can help you build a beautiful site for a few hundred dollars.

Personally, I recommend doing a site yourself though! I built my site without any prior knowledge of coding. I use templates that make it super easy to set up and I have complete control over my work.

I don't have to call somebody every single time I want to add something new to my site because I'm the one who makes all the changes INSTANTLY!

A lot of artists drive themselves crazy building websites because they forget that simplicity is key. Your website exists to do two things:

Number one: Help you engage with and make new fans.

Number two: Make you money.

That’s it.

Here’s how to set yourself on the right path…

The easiest way to register your domain name and hosting is to use Hostgator. You can register a domain in almost any country through them.

Register the domain that you would like to use. I highly suggest a dot com (.com) with no slashes and underscores if possible. Hostgator will guide you through this process, and if you have any questions, their customer service is great.

TIP: Try to purchase a domain name that matches the URLs on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. This way, if someone Googles your band, they’ll easily find your website and all your social media channels.

Example: Mine is a site for Hip-Hop instrumentals simply titled www.omarimc.com

Click the image below for a discount with Hostgator!

So now we've got our website name and hosting set up, the next thing we need to do is add a content management system to our site. This is just a fancy way of saying we need to set something in place that's going to allow us to organize the items we want on our page.

If you knew how to code, you wouldn't necessarily need this, but since you most likely don't this is going to make things a wholeee lot easier.

WordPress is by far the best content management system on the market. There are some others, Wix, Squarespace, etc. But there's not nearly as many plug ins and functionality available as there is with WordPress.

In order to install WordPress, you'll need to be logged in to your Hostgator cPanel. You should have gotten an email after you signed up with your hosting and domain name. Log in to the cPanel with the credentials they gave you.

Next, go to that WordPress button at the top of the cPanel. It's super easy to set and can be done in a couple minutes.

After you go through that process you'll be emailed a username and password from WordPress.

You'll be able to log in to your site at www.yoursite.com/wp-admin

So mine would be www.omarimc.com/wp-admin. This will bring you to your dashboard that looks like this. Yours won't have all the plug ins on the left that mine has, but it will still look similar.

I go over in full detail the WordPress dashboard in my marketing course, but you can familiarize yourself with the basics before enrolling too. Then once you're ready for the advanced material, you can join.

You're almost done with the basic website set up now!

All you have to do is add a theme. A theme is a pre-made design that will make it easy to build your site.

There are a couple options you can choose

1. You can choose a free theme from the WordPress market place
2. You can buy a premium theme (More functionality and features and best for maximizing your control and revenue)

Personally, I use a premium theme called Optimize Press, here’s why:

• They look way better. No one is going to take your career seriously if they come to your site and it doesn't look professional. Free themes just don't look as good and you can't do as much with them. Your fans will know the difference.
• There isn't a single thing I can't customize. Optimize Press allows me to have complete control over my site. It's unique to my personality. I think of premium theme as investing in myself with a greater return. This theme cost as little as $97, but if I would've went with a free theme from the beginning of my site, who knows how much money I would've lost from my site not looking professional.
• You get support. Some free themes don't work with WordPress whenever they update the platform. This isn't the same with Optimize Press. There are dedicated support staffs who can answer all your questions and set you on the right path. In the end, you get what pay for!

You can click the button below you get started with Optimize Press. I watched all their tutorials on the site after purchasing to set up my music website professionally.

1. A place to buy music

Make sure people can find where to buy your music (iTunes, Amazon, etc.). Building your own storefront is always a good idea. I recommend putting some of your music up on streaming services like SoundCloud and Spotify (you can now monetize your SoundCloud streams too).

Personally, I have a widget from Beatstars with all my music listed in it. (This will be key once you learn some more marketing techniques in the Advanced Artists Academy)

2. Your tour shows or performances

We recommend using Bandsintown for this. This allows you to link your shows across different platforms.

3. Your Blog

Blogging is a great way to connect with your fans and build your brand. My music marketing blog is a key attribute of my site. Setting up a blog will surely boost your sales and get you connected with fans. There's way to much to write down about how to build a good blog, but there are video tutorials on this in the Academy as well.

4. Media/Press

Embed your best videos, put up your best press quotes, link to an interview you did with a music blog… Basically, talk yourself up. The more legit you look, the more legit people will think you are.

5. Your Contact Info

Make sure that you have your contact information with an e-mail address or a contact form so people can contact you for online publicity, booking, or just to tell you they like your music. Don’t make it hard for anyone to connect with you online.

After your site is done, make sure to keep your social media sites updated!  That means daily.  This way your whole site remains interesting and dynamic and fully updated.

Good luck, be creative, and have fun!

This is a great blueprint to get you started, but once you're ready to dig deeper and learn what emails to write to get fans to buy your music, what headlines actually get people to sign up to your email list, how to get targeted traffic to your site, and how to scale your music business, I highly recommend joining the Academy. You can click below for details.