MattEarly.com

Seeing as I am busy redeveloping websites and such at this present time, I thought it would be a good idea to not have to think so hard about the posts I am going to be posting on here.

I’ve taken inspiration from probably the most popular (the most stolen) piece of content on my mate Ian’s website and that is the 151 Ways To Get Your Bands Name Out There.

This will be a series of “How To’s” for all (or nearly all) of the points made on the original post.

So, there may actually be 151 posts dedicated to this series. One post a week and we should be done by 2016.

(Time Capsule: Today is Tuesday, it’s sunny, and I have to go to Specsavers at 6 o’clock. Hello future Matt)

In the original post, Ian has said there is no particular order of things, so I am going to buck the trend and put an order to it. So I shall be doing it in the order that he puts them

So anyway, onto the task at hand, and to the point.

1. Use your band’s name as your URL (www.YourBandName.com)

This should be relatively easy to do, so I will walk you through the process.

1. Go to namecheckr.com and type in your desired branding (URL (YourBandName)). It will tell you if it is already in use or has been taken.
2. If it has been taken, do not fret. For instance, if TheSlickBaldRobots.com is taken, then adding “Band” or “Music” as a suffix may solve the problem.
3. Once you have found the correct branding, now its time to register the domain. Go to a preferred domain registrar (I use GoDaddy because they have good packages with hosting, which you will need, but we don’t need to cover that just yet. (if you don’t know of any use GoDaddy and I can help you as I am familiar with their user control panels)). Use the websites domain search tool and double check the name you have chosen is available, and buy it.
4. You usually get discounts for buying for longer periods, but most domains will auto-renew, if you don’t want to commit for more than one year.
5. You can also get discounts for bulk buying different domain extensions. If you are a UK band, you may also want to buy the .co.uk domain as well as the .com. (The priority though should always be the .com)

That’s it. You now have a domain name that really reflects your identity, safely in your inventory of “things that we need to do to get our name out there”.

It was relatively painless, quick and not as expensive as you might have thought.

Now you’ll be wondering why you didn’t get round to doing it before.

I will get round to what to do with the domain you’ve just purchased, and if you have any questions, get in touch with me either by leaving a comment below, or by using the details on the right.