Harmonica builds and hosts musician web sites at a very affordable price: a $100 setup fee, plus $100/year to host the site. As a musician myself, I know you're already updating information about yourself or your band in dozens of places -- you have a MySpace page, you have a CD Baby page, you've got photos on Flickr and videos on YouTube. Harmonica's sites are integrated with all of those services, so you can have a web site without having yet another thing to update.
The basic site includes everything a musician needs in a clean design that will not confuse or frustrate you or the visitors to your site:
- Home page
- News page or blog
- Song page, listing the songs you choose to make available, with links to lyrics and (if desired) downloads and/or streaming of either the full song or a snippet. (You create and upload the sound files, and type or copy in the lyrics.)
- Mailing list, including signup form
- Photos page
- CD page, listing your CDs for sale and linking to purchase (no commerce is performed on your site)
- Links page
- Private management area for you to update all of the above whenever you like
- A documentation page explaining how to use the site
- Email support
- Hosting
The $100 setup fee covers an initial meeting to discuss your needs for the site, the creation of the above pages, one round of design revisions, and of course any bug fixes or resolution of problems. If you want more than what's included in the basic site, let me know in advance and I'll quote you a price. Additional changes after the project is started will be billed at my hourly rate. Telephone support and hands-on training at your location are also available, at an hourly rate.
I take a strong user-oriented approach to design. I believe in simplicity and clarity that will welcome the visitors to your site and clearly lead them to listen to your music, check out your concert dates, and sign up for your mailing list. The basic site is text-based, with colors and fonts of your choosing, photos or logos that you provide, and a layout that we'll work together on. If you have existing artwork and design from an old web site, or from a CD, I can incorporate that into the design. But I generally don't recommend Flash elements, lots of graphics, splash pages, fancy navigation, or other things that will confuse your visitors. Up to a point, I will implement these things on your site if you already have them, but I won't build or design them myself and I will advise you on what I think will work and not work for your users.
When you choose Harmonica's musician web site, you are benefiting from my years of experience as a technologist, usability designer, product developer, and independent musician. I can consult with you in depth on usability, online music marketing strategies, what Web 2.0 means to musicians, and much more, at my hourly rate.
I prefer to both build and host the site. I can build a basic site for hosting elsewhere for a $250 fee, which includes loading the site onto an external hosting service as long as that service supports the necessary technologies. Support (including email support) and training or consulting would be billed as above.