CS Update 6 – I Heart Indie Bible

Alright fellas it’s that time again – time for another blogging case study with the greatest and sexiest rock and roll blog in the history of the world: Rock Surge.

Last week was a lot of fun with my first Digg frontpage for Rock Surge going over pretty well. I learned some lessons about how Digg users act differently in the Music category than in the Technology category (which was what I had always used previously). It seems that almost all of the comments were positive and much more friendly in the Music category, probably because the people trolling that section are more like real people rather than anti-social techies – no offense.

A good week after the Digg effect and the blog is now getting about 2-300 daily uniques which is a great start in my opinion. I also have a couple dozen feed subscribers now which should act as a solid base to expand and develop the blog. The big news this week, however, is with the Indie Bible.

Indie Bible Newsletter

I applied Rock Surge for the Indie Bible and was accepted a couple of weeks ago. The Indie Bible is basically a resource book for bands to find music promoters, radio stations, and reviewers willing to take their music and give it exposure. The April newsletter for the Indie Bible was just released and Rock Surge is #2 on the listings. Not only has this sent some good targeted traffic to the blog, but it has also exposed the blog to a ton of indipendant bands wanting me to review their music. In total I’ve gotten 55 emails and have had 6 CD’s shipped to me. I’m being pretty selective of who I tell to send me CD’s since I don’t want to get an album and then not have time to review it – it loses the band money, and I really don’t want to hurt any upcoming musicians.

This is great because not only does it give me a ton of new eyeballs to the blog I have loads of fresh content to churn out over the next couple of weeks. The Indie Bible definitely gets a thumbs up from me.

Money Spent

I haven’t given an update on how much I have spent on this blog since I started, so I figure it’s time to do a little reflection:

$300 – Blog Design & Development (was actually free for me, but not everyone is a web developer)
$8 – Domain name
$30 – Web hosting (2 months)
$10 – NIN: Year Zero (I would have bought this anyway, but since I reviewed it on the site I count it as an expense)
$15 – Arctic Monkeys: Favourite Worst Album (same reason as above)

Wow so I’m already two months into this thing and I haven’t even spent $400 yet. I do have some plans that will require a bit of investment coming up soon, so don’t let that figure fool you. I plan to make full use of my $500/mo allowance, just maybe not spread out as much as I originally thought.