January 17th, 2007
IndieHQ readers, I need your help. I am looking for an easy to use HTML email generator that I can use for Suburban Home updates. Our current HTML email is built by our part-time web designer and he will soon be leaving us. I figured there must be a site or program that allows the not tech savvy individual like myself make HTML emails. Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated. Thanks.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 64 Comments
December 4th, 2006
I wanted to share with you the place we purchase nearly all of our mailing supplies from, Associated Bag Company. ASC is a one stop shop for padded envelopes, LP mailers, poster tubes, and boxes. We have been purchasing from them for years; their prices and service are pretty much unbeatable. If you are still purchasing mailing supplies from your local office depot or office max, you are paying way too much. Some of the items we purchase include:
Tyvek envelopes for shipping T-shirts
Padded envelope for shipping individual CDs
Padded envelopes for more than a couple CDs
LP mailers
Poster Tubes
White Laser Sticker Sheets
as well as some other things. They have a lot more than this, too, so if you are in need of a good place to get shipping supplies, look no further.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 1 Comment
October 5th, 2006
I received an email the other day about suggestions for programs that automate friend adding on social networking sites like Myspace. I have purposely put off writing about these types of programs, but I decided to share you my limited knowledge of these types of programs.
Ever wonder why you get 5 million friend requests from bands? Do you wonder how bands have the time to add you as a friend on top of all of the million other friends they add? I am sure some bands do this manually, but there are a ton of programs that can be purchased (i have heard of some free ones, too) that allow you to automate the process of sending friend requests, posting comments, and sending messages.
One of our bands, Love Me Destroyer, told me about the Eek Adder. (more…)
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 21 Comments
September 1st, 2006
As of late, we have been focusing a lot of our attention on releasing limited edition vinyl. I love vinyl and feel that as CD sales continue to decline, the world will always have vinyl collectors. I looked around all over the place to find a reasonably priced manufacturer that has heavy duty vinyl. I found that in Recordpressing.com. The staff is really organized and friendly and they press their records on really high quality vinyl. They can do picture discs, crazy colored vinyl, and they also take care of all of your printing needs. They pressed the Drag the River vinyl for us and will also be taking care of our pressings for the Every Time I Die vinyl box set, the Fear Before the March of Flames double vinyl, and the Gatsbys American Dream double vinyl. I can’t say enough about how happy I am to have found these guys and if you are ever looking to press vinyl, these are your guys.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 2 Comments
August 28th, 2006
Curly and Spike are a new vendor that we just started working with. Not sure how I found out about them, but they are screenprinters that can do shirts, hats, and all that kind of stuff. What stood out for me was that they can also print on “zippo style” flip lighters. I was pretty stoked so I ordered a hundred Drag the River lighters (pictured) as well as a Love Me Destroyer lighters. I needed a rush on the Drag the River lighters and for a small additional fee, they rushed the job and delivered them to Drag the River right in time for the tour that they are on now.
I figured some of you are looking for new merchandise options. I think the flip lighter could become a popular item. Drag is getting a decent response out on the road and we will soon be sending out an email letting people know we have them in our webstore. I haven’t used Curly and Spike for shirts or hats, but they get an A plus in my book for the way they handled my first order. Highly recommended! If you want to buy a sweet new lighter, click the following links:
Drag the River flip lighter
Love Me Destroyer flip lighter
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 1 Comment
August 23rd, 2006
A little while ago, I had asked readers for their Digital Camera Suggestions. I got a few really good recommendations and ended up purchasing a Casio Exilim EZ Z600. I love the camera and would recommend it to anyone that asked. I was thumbing through a Radioshack circular this morning and noticed that not only did they have a good price on my camera, but Casio is also offering a Trade In and Up promotion. The way it works is you can buy a Casio Exilm at participating retailers, look up the value of your old camera, mail in your old camera, and Casio will send you a check by mail. Curious, I decided to see the value of my old camera, an Olympus Stlye Verve 4.0 megapixel. I was surprised to see that Casio would give me $115 for my old camera on the purchase of a $229.99 camera. If you are looking for a new camera to replace your old one, I would highly look into this Trde in and Up promotion.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | No Comments
August 10th, 2006
Looking for a way to easily add and update photos on your website? I just came across a resource called Flickrshow which provides code to add to your website to easily display images from any Flickr account. Its basically a copy and paste job so its super easy to implement and it looks pretty sharp too. So if you’re a band, label, zine, etc. complaining that you can’t add photos to your website whenever you want or need to this is your answer. Setting up and using Flickr to manage your photos is really easy and can act as a good management system for displaying them on your own site. Oh, and its free too…
Flickrshow
If you’re looking for a fancier system that uses flash, is far more flexible and can integrate with iPhoto as well as Flickr check out SlideShowPro. It isn’t free, but the fee is pretty nominal for what you get and the documentation and features look to be pretty intensive.
SlideShowPro
Written by Sean Klassen | 6 Comments
August 8th, 2006
I have been working with the folks at 29 cent posters for the past couple of years and I can’t say enough great things about the work they do. They offer some of the best prices in the poster biz. The stock of paper they print their posters on are so much better than other poster printers. They don’t need films as they print straight from digital files. And to top it all off, they have great turnaround times. If you are looking for someone to print your 11 x 17 posters, 29 cent posters are your people.
The 29 cent poster price is for 1,000 full color posters, but the price goes down and further down with the more posters you print or if you do black and white posters. Consider them the next time you make posters and if you haven’t made posters for your band yet, what are you waiting for? Posters are an indie band’s top marketing tool.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 2 Comments
July 17th, 2006
I just came across a company called Big Cartel today that looks to offer easy to create and sharp looking online shopping carts for small bands, labels, etc. They offer a free version which lets you sell up to five items and two monthly plans that offer a lot more features.
Check out Big Cartel
Here’s some more info from their site:
“Until now, shopping cart services have been designed for people trying to be the next Internet Superstore. Thousands of useless features, shitty designs, impossible to use - assuming you were even able to get it setup in the first place. Ugh… no thanks.
Because of this, people with simpler needs like bands, designers and crafters turned to PayPal Buy Now buttons. While much easier to use, these also have their downside. You need to do all the code yourself, maintaining your store is tedious and time consuming and the shopping process is clunky by going back and forth with PayPal.
Big Cartel provides a simple solution to this problem. Our stores are beautifully designed, have only the features you’ll actually use, and best of all, they only take a few minutes to setup. Even faster then a Buy Now button!”
Sweet idea guys. If anyone has used this service, tell us about it in the comments.
Written by Sean Klassen | 1 Comment
July 6th, 2006
Through the few websites we maintain, Suburban Home, Superfantastic Clothing, IndieHQ, and Labelfeeds, we have used a number of web hosts. We have had a number horror stories, issues with bandwith, and mail server issues. I could seriously write a book about the many issues we have had, but instead of doing that, i would like to point you in the direction of a web host who is truly remarkable. The company is called Dreamhost. I was first referred to them by our good buddies at Greyflight. I set up an account when setting up Labelfeeds and we were blown away by the amount of bandwith/storage space and the many options they provide.
I recommended Dreamhost to Jordan from Pastepunk when he asked us to host the mp3 files for the Fairlanes “Welcome to Nowhere” stream he put on his site. He was running into bandwith issues so I told him about Dreamhost. I sent him a link to their site and he was surprised at how much they offered for such a low price. He recently switched and said it has been going well. Jordan? If you care to comment, that would be great!
Even the least expensive Dreamhost package offers you more than you could imagine with 20 GB of storage and 1 TB (a Terabyte is equal to 1024 Gigabytes!!). They also offer one-click installs for Wordpress (what we use at IndieHQ), E-commerce solutions like Zen Cart, Web Calendars, and so much more. You can host an unlimited number of domains and for signing up, you get to register 1 domain name for free. I can go on and on, but trust me when I say that I have used a number of webhosts and Dreamhost has my full endorsement. Dreamhost also offers you 97 days to try their hosting and if you are unhappy, they will give you a full refund.
We have even become an affiliate so if you sign up through hosted banners or through links on IndieHQ, dreamhost will give us a kickback. Bands, stop using myspace as your only option for a website. Labels, it is time to step up your web hosting so you can offer tons of mp3s and streams. What are you waiting for?
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 4 Comments
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