Posted by dado on July 3, 2006 at 1:58pm
So let's say I am in a band that wants to grow in terms of fan base & sales. Money is tight. Is it worth it spending the resource to have a Drupal site? What is the low hanging fruit in terms of benefit? Can any consulting firms (e.g. Dublin's) speak to how easy is it to realize ROI for laying out the cash to get coll Drupal site + other direction?
Thanks,
Dado
Comments
This is some data/evidence
This is some data/evidence that is sorely needed. We need numbers and resources for how to get Drupal sites in the hands of artists who are strapped for cash. My guess is that the more we can show and prove that having a drupal powered site actually helps a band financially, the more a band will be willing to invest up front.
Some quick numbers:
The Do-It-YourSelf method
Price: $90/year for several gigs of space, bandwidth, email, ftp etc. (example: site5.com)
Pros: very cheap, more control, lots of bang for the buck
Cons: must setup everything yourself, including installation/upgrading/security maintenance, configuration & customization, arghhh!!
Hosted Drupal solution (example: bryght.com)
Price: around $40/month = $480/year
Pros: They will host and maintain the drupal installation/upgrades/maintenance for you, as well as install modules. Very reliable.
Cons: Very expensive compared to the DIY method, locked into their maintenance cycles, can only use the modules they support.
So unfortunately there is no middle of the road. You either pay around $100 dollars and pay for the advil for your headaches, or pay 5 times(!!!) as much and burn a hole through your pocket (but have fewer headaches).
Now if only we had some numbers showing the short and long term benefits of investing in a drupal site and how it can influence a band's success, it might be easier to see which solution is a better investment...
Farsheed
A middle road
Hire someone cheap to install & configure Drupal. Theme customizations have to be DIY in both of your ways above.
depends on your budget/talent
Ok lets assume that your not a developer or at least a technical designer who can design and maintain an interesting band site... Does the thought of having to shell out anywhere from 480.00 (base bryght hosting) to 2000.00 (or more) a year on your website work for you? Then you may have a business model that will work for building a drupal based music/fan site.
The good news is that for a band or a record company making money, this is far cheaper than developing your own community management software. Your community will benefit from the innovation, creativity and enthusiasm that comes from drupal at large.
It's important to note that you will spend many many hours developing your community, so you'll also need to have a flair for this kind of networking. A talent for writing, a skill for SEO, or a desirable product to sell will help you get a leg up. If you are in short supply of any of these talents then you will have to make up for it else where.
TravisC
It's hard to measure cost-effectiveness for ANY marketing effort
And not having any statistics, and still-limited anecdotal experience, I can't give a serious ROI estimate, but I think it's worth talking about the factors that make a Drupal site more worthwhile, namely:
OK, that's just one factor. But it's an important one. Drupal enables you to give fans and, especially, trusted volunteers power to promote you, in ways that are difficult with just a self-maintained e-mail list. You can simply give friends and supporters the permissions to post to the front page of the site, to send out messages to an e-mail list, to handle the e-mail list for a particular region, or sub-set of promotion (e.g. you e-mail your fans, but a supporter can handle the work of e-mailing radio stations). It can also give a space for people who want to discuss a band, for instance if you have endlessly debatable lyrics, a place to do so.
I am not the design part of my web development collective, so I'm less likely to say that if you have a cool-looking site, people will visit it just for that reason. But it might give your current fans more incentive to forward links around, and to link to your site from their personal sites.
If you have someone who can set up the site in-house, even with minimal theming, it's probably worth $100 a year for any band that's actually making appearances and selling CDs to have a Drupal site do at least what the band could do at Yahoo Groups, but better-looking (by default) and without advertising. And you never know, a fan might offer to theme it for you and we'll have one more passionate person learning Drupal!
A middle path, as mentioned, is to have, say, my own Agaric DesignAgaric Design Collective set up a good-looking site with all the trickier bits, including an integrated forum and e-mail list, configured for you, at a cost not much more than Bryght hosting for a year but only $100 a year after that.
~ ben melançon http://bemweb.com/contact/
member, Agaric Design Collective
http://AgaricDesign.com - "Open Source Web Development"
web worker, PowerToExchange
http://PowerToExchange.com - "Of, By, and For Entrepreneurs"
person, People Who Give a Damn
http://pwgd.org/
benjamin, agaric
Check out this offering from Bryght
You may want to have a look at the standard offering at Bryght.
http://backstage.bryght.com/
I'm not connected with them in any way, but it seems they've worked out a good product that might meet your needs. They provide hosting, and have a pre-cooked solution for bands that's currently in a free beta.