Am considering switching to facebook and dropping my website. Anyone doing this successfully? What are the in's and out's. Or not worth it?

Here is my website in it's current form:

www.scottlmusic.com

Contrary to what I have seen some post here I have never had to send out mailers or to go in person to get a gig at senior venues (except once when my wife was a resident in that nursing home and I just happened to be there). Almost all of my work came about with a simple phone call and knowing what to say to get work. There have been a few that I sent my website to with almost 100% success rate.

Any input appreciated.

Scott

I think FB is the platform. Seems everyone is on it all day. I have a website too: solojim.com and pretty much ignore it. I kept my domain, but a lot of calls and a few video demos work best for me. With that, some are so lazy or uninterested, they don't even bother watching. I always try to get a cold call in on a way to a gig and that is received well. I did that last week and they gave me their party for $225!

It's always the same - more in the kettle, better the results.

Good luck Scott

What a timely topic! This year I decided to discontinue my groups website, as it seems FB, Instagram, and YouTube are sufficient. Just the other day, I got an inquiry from a booking agency that was interested in booking us for a very well-paying corporate gig.
The agent seemed to really want a website for us. I’m not sure why, but suppose it appears more professional to have one?

After that, oddly enough, our FB was hacked. We can’t even log in. This is very frustrating because it took us a long time to build up the followers and the content which we put on Facebook. I’m not sure how to resolve this issue, but at least we still have Instagram, YouTube.

Perhaps I’ll reconsider a website again, just to have a more stable platform.

I got off Facebook several months ago, mainly because of scammers and hackers that seem to be prevalent on that site.

While I had a website for more than a decade, I never booked a single job directly from the site. Nearly all my bookings were made by beating the streets, putting out attractive promo packets, mailing out pens and calendars to existing and prospective customers, followup telephone calls, and finally meeting them in person. This technique was very, very effective for me, though it required a lot of in depth research and pounding the streets. Usually, when I met the client in person, I gave them a beautiful, appointment, wall calendar then sat down with them and filled in some dates. More often than not, I booked a job with each once a month, which I followed up with a confirmation letter and contract they signed and mailed a copy back to me in a stamped, pre-addressed envelope. The returned contracts were then placed in a special manila folder expressly for that client, and also scanned into my PC database for contacts and clients.

Most years, I booked 400 to 450 jobs a year, which included 3 on New Year's Eve. Two of the NYE jobs were daytime at assisted living centers close to home and were just two hours each. They paid the regular rate of $125 per hour, and usually gave me an extra $50 for a tip. The late night job was at an upscale retirement community, about 200 ppl in the audience, I played from 9 p.m. till 12:30 a.m., was paid very well (I do not wish to divulge the amount.) and was booked at that location 3 years in advance.

I really do not think that Facebook, Twitter and other similar sites are a good media to work with, and you can readily get hacked. Why some clients insisted on seeing your website is beyond me, but a website is very easy to create, inexpensive to maintain, and I guess, some clients believe it make you more professional.

Good luck with whatever media you chose to use, and I sincerely hope it proves to be as beneficial as the method I utilized.

Gary

It’s Facebook’s terrible lack of security I’d think twice about, hacking, cloning, getting locked out… none of that should happen to a professional website. If the business you’re expecting to generate is significant, I wouldn’t touch Facebook with a barge pole other than to duplicate whatever is on your website with regard to demos and live clips, along with a URL to direct interested parties to your website.

Belt AND braces!