I’m gonna show you something real quick.
That’s the Google Analytics data for Two Story Melody since January of 2017 (shortly after the site launched). You can click here to blow it up a little bit.
Here’s what I think is crazy (in a sad kind of way): For most of the first year, virtually nobody read anything that I wrote.
Like, there are months I had 40 page views (thanks, Mom). I spent hours on this, week after week and month after month, interviewing artists and writing about music. And almost nobody cared. But I just kept at it, mostly because I thought it was fun.
Then, basically by accident, I had a couple of posts start ranking in Google.
You can see the little up-ramp in February of 2018, over a year after I first launched the site. I remember looking at my analytics and being like, “Wow, 600 people checked out the site this month… that’s insane.”
If I’m being honest, things got a lot easier after that.
For the first year, I literally solicited people for interviews. But as traffic grew, more people started reaching out for coverage. Then I got on SubmitHub and coverage requests started to bury me. Then we started to get an influx of people who wanted to write for the blog.
Growth kind of built on itself. Now, things are kind of rolling.
We get hundreds of coverage requests on a weekly basis. We had our best-ever traffic month in January.
I don’t say any of this to brag. It’d be a super lame brag, anyway. I know Atwood Magazine gets three times the traffic that I get, for example, and they’re only a mid-tier blog. There are tons of music blogs with traffic levels that make mine look sad.
I’m sharing that dumb graph for two reasons:
1) I want to point out that consistency is the key to building an audience and that consistency, by its nature, takes time.
You can create a community for your music. But you have to stick to a platform and you have to consistently create art. You can’t put out an EP every three years and expect it to reach people. You can’t post once a month on Instagram and expect to build a fanbase.
Make stuff you like, because in the beginning, you’re only doing it for yourself. If you stick with it for long enough, you’ll probably get to do it for other people.
2) I think this is the year that Two Story Media becomes a real business, and I want your help with that.
As I’ve mentioned in previous emails, I think that educational products can be scammy, but I also know firsthand that they can be really helpful. One of my goals for this year is to offer a helpful online course.
Can you take this survey and let me know what kind of course would be the most helpful for you?
Promise it’s quick; it’s literally three questions and they’re multiple choice, so you don’t even have to take the trouble to type something in.
1. What topics would be helpful to cover?
2. What format would you like the most?
3. What would you be willing to pay?
I’d love to get your thoughts. I think building this business will let me serve artists more effectively than ever.
I also think it’s pretty fun.
Thanks your help, and have a stellar week.
