Name of your website?Rap Beats
Your name?
Ray
Your Location (city, etc)
Philadelphia
Please give us a short summary of your website?
20DollarBeats.com offers hip hop music that is created just for rappers. We provide an affordable way to break into the hip hop music world and get some A&R exposure. Browse our quality hip hop music beats today or download some free beats to get started.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I wanted to see if I can take the site and make it number 1 on google for 5 search phrases. I played drums for 10 years and was interested in making rap beats and the whole mastering process. The other goals were to offer quality beats at affordable prices for up and coming artists. Studio time can get very expensive and most artists starting out cannot afford quality studio time. 20DollarBeats.com bridges the gap for these people and give them a chance to make their own cd's.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
My first site was in 2000. I launched a multimedia site called RJ Interactive. I am a 15yr seasoned web designer and that was my first company. I was laid off from a crappy corporate company so I went on my own. It's been a bumpy ride and very difficult but over time it's worked out to my advantage. My company has now shown a profit every year and never a loss. 20Dollarbeats.com is just another example of the success that can be achieved if your mind is set to do it.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I wanted the word "beats" in the domain name and I wanted to undercut my competitors. So I said $20 is a fair price per track since most other sites (that are decent quality) were selling them for $30-$50 each. 20Dollarbeats.com was then born. It took me 9 months to really start showing traffic (organically). I used google adwords for 4-5 months to send people to the site. It cost me a pretty penny, but it created enough traffic to create a buzz about the site. Now my organic traffic is much higher and I am in the top 3 spots for over 20 keywords.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We offer the same or better quality beats for less. We also offer custom production and free beats as well. Our free beats section is hit the most, and we offer even more free beats when they join our mailing list. We have definitely received allot of referrals from the mailing list. It was a good investment. Our beats are very unique as well. We usually do not llisten to other beats sistes or copy sounds that are already out. We try very hard to come up with creative new ideas and sounds.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
My eventual goal is to be #1 and get 4-5 thousand hit per day. We would like to have more custom beats made for artists and get our music on air or on TV. We already have numerous tracks getting radio play over in the UK and in Canada. In the US, we have a few things in play right now that will get us to the point of radio exposure. Once that happens, I will have to come up with another goal since I have made all the other ones happen.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
I have been very happy with the success of the site. I get many compliments on the site and the music. I recently gave the entire site a new improved face lift and upgraded the server for faster downloads. It's been a painful process but the outcome was very positive. Sales are up and traffic has increased.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Since I myself, have multimedia experience and created the site in house, the cost to make the site was minimal. The advertising costs were the only costs involved to launch the site (besides the hosting).
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes, the site is fully automated. After you purchase a beat, you are sent to a page to download you music right away. I setup most of the custom code to help make the purchase as easy as possible. My only job really is to make new beats every week and maintain my position on google.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Well, Google adwords was costly but I expected that. What I didn't expect was our crappy hosting company (ipowerweb) to update their control panel. Please, do not use Ipower for your hosting. They are horrible. Not only did they affect my sales, when they moved the site, they did not move the 1.5 gigabytes of music located in numerous directories of my site. They told me to to re-upload all my files manually. I moved the site the next day figuring, I have to re-upload everything again, why not on a new server that deserves the money. It's been great so far.
What has been your biggest challenge?
My biggest challenge was to get to the number one spot for "rap beat". I worked on the SEO for the site for many months and it paid off. Anothe challenge was to automate the site. I wanted it to be easy, secure, and fast.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Giving away free beats was good. It helped people hear what we can do. That made them come back for the "better" ones for sale. Another thing was Google Adwords. If adwords was not around, we would have never got the traffic to start up. Now people advertise on our site. Funny how things turn out.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
None. Everything was pretty much as expected. if I was to think of one thing, I would say getting the time needed to make more beats and tracks seems to be harder and harder. I spend allot of time doing SEO or web design, I have little time to create more beats for the site, which is more important.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
It's been live mow for 1 and 1/2 years. I will continue to keep it going forever or at least until it stops making money.
What is your website address?
Rap Beats
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