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www.ckubinski.com
 Cassandra Kubinski has been singing since she first performed "Somewhere Out There" at the age of 3 in her hometown of Enfield, CT. Since then she’s been performing in theater, film and television and has most recently been following her original love – making music. Her first CD, Hiding Underneath, was released in 2005 and her sophomore album is due to come next month. She’s also been touring all over New England and as far a Germany.
Kubinski didn’t just win a television competition or talent show to make it big, however. She moved to NYC after graduating from Florida State University to become a singer and songwriter and is hoping to get a record deal. Until then, she’ll remain knee-deep in marketing efforts to get her music out to her fans and to increase her fan base. One of her best tools thus far has been the great success of her website. "In the past six months, the number of visitors to my site has doubled," Kubinski explains. "That’s a whole lot of people who are downloading song samples, viewing pictures and reading my blog." She says that both her heavy touring schedule and the fact that she promotes her website at every show have been the driving forces to bring more traffic to her site. "I also use MySpace and other online presences to link people to my site," she says.
Overall, most people like that her website is very visual. It includes a lot of pictures and information to help her connect with her fans on a personal basis. "Some artists have gorgeous, high-tech websites that are great, but it all comes down to whether or not the artist is talented." She’s added features to her site to let her fans experience her music right from their computer. They can listen to clips of songs from her CD. "People from the business can listen to my music right there. It speaks so much louder than pictures, bios and quotes. It’s the number one contributing factor to why my website is a success," she says. "Plus, if I meet someone I can just give them a card directing them to my website to listen to my music. If they like the music they can purchase a CD right there."
Kubinski also explains, "[The website] has been absolutely instrumental in helping me move more of my CD Hiding Underneath." She does sell about 10% of her CD’s through her website, but the website has helped promote her music in more than just sales. The website and its exposure have helped her get her music and an artist page placed at www.singingfish.com and AOL Music Now. (Singingfish is a search engine that houses free media – it only indexes multimedia formats – and covers music, movies, sports, finance, television and radio. AOL Music Now is a site where consumers can download songs and videos.) "If I hadn’t had the website, I wouldn’t have made my international debut in Germany," says Kubinski. She explains that a German promoter ran across her website, listened to her song samples online and contacted her through her website to set up a show. "He paid for the whole trip over there. The show was a massive success."
Kubinski does use some great features to enhance her business. People who want to book a show with her can go on the link for "Booking Info" and send her an email with shows they want to book with her. They fill in the date, location and ideas for the show. From there, Kubinski can contact them and work out the details. "In the past six months, I’ve had around 10 booking requests through the site. Some are requests for me to play festivals; some are requests for me to send information to managers and some are just people requesting that I play in their city."
The website has also been great for her to be able to sell tickets to her shows."I’ve set up ticket sale links to Pay Pal," she says. This has given her an increase in sales, but even better, it’s made it easier for her to handle her ticket sales. "Now, I don’t have to deliver tickets to people; I can get the order and ‘snail mail’ the tickets the same day." Previous to her PayPal link, online orders were complicated and required people to send her a check and then she would send out the tickets. "I love being able to take credit cards and set up my ticket sales online. I’ll be doing it again for a big show in January."
Another reason her website is successful is because it helps her fans connect with her. "Fans come to shows and request songs and know the lyrics because they’ve gone to the website and downloaded them." She doesn’t include the lyrics with her CD’s so she knows this is where they’ve found them. She can also keep them up-to-date by being able to go in and make changes to her website whenever she wants to such as updating her show schedule. "It’s great because I can do it when I’m thinking about it and it’s really easy to add links to the websites for the clubs and the other artists I’m performing with," she says.
Her fans also really like her journal and blogs and the ability to email her through her website. "It’s a fun way to communicate," Kubinski says. She says that she likes these types of features on her site because it gives the site a piece of her personality and helps them like "her" not just her music. "Essentially, I’m a small business, so it makes a huge difference when the consumer actually likes me. I like to stay accessible to people who have questions or comments," she says. "I even had a request from a dad who heard my song on the radio and remembered my name. His daughter wanted to use my song for a dance competition and he was able to easily find my site and send me an email for the clearance to use the song."
So far, the website has been a great success for Kubinski. However, she’s not stopping there. "I’m looking forward to offering t-shirts, mugs and other promotional items through the website in the future," she explains. Once her new record comes out in November, she wants to change the look of her site and add merchandise to keep everything consistent with the look of her new CD. "I think it’s a great way to keep people 'involved' and active on my site. If they’ve bought the CD and want to keep coming back to the site it could get boring. Adding new merchandise and new information will give them a reason to keep coming back!"
BECOME A FEATURED IPOWER SUCCESS STORY! We will feature a new online business in every issue of The IPOWER Informer, and we plan to pick the site from the email requests we receive from our customers. Are you interested in having your site featured as an IPOWER Success Story? If so, please send us an email at pr@ipower.com
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