Hi Freeana,

Just to clear up the confusion...  what your designer has done is totally fine.  It's a good idea to have an subscription form on your main website's blog as well, just in case new people find your website by searching your band's name, or a referral from one of your existing fans.

For everyone else, you want to drive them to the squeeze page and John does recommend that you make this a completely different domain, completely separated from your official site.

The reason for this is that a squeeze page's purpose is simply to convert visitors into subscribers.  You don't want people clicking around a bunch of stuff and burning themselves out without ever subscribing, which is why it's good practice to have a page designated with the sole goal of getting them onto your mailing list.

You asked how you would get people to the squeeze page and there are several ways.  It's important to note that you don't want to send your existing fan base to the squeeze page, just people who have never been exposed to your music, also known as "cold" traffic.

You can use articles, videos and social media sites to drive new people to your Squeeze page.  Once you feel you have a page that is converting well, then you might also look into pay-per-click advertising on Facebook and the search engines.

Once people are on your mailing list, then it's totally fine to send them to whatever piece of content you feel you would like to share, but for a first exposure you would want to send them to a free offer on a squeeze page and try to convert them into a subscriber.

I hope that clarifies things for you.

Hey Freena,

I think Steve covered the basic idea of a squeeze page. let me know if you still have questions about that. As far as bandzoogle, they are a site builder platform and while that is fine for a primary web site it doesn't give a user as much control as I would like for a squeeze page.

I have a free template I can give you along with some tutorials on how to set it up but if you feel like you are not really all that into the techy stuff, it might make sense to just hire a designer. My guy can probably do something for you for between $50 - $100 and make all your headaches go away. You just basically give him your aweber code and a little info and he can set everything up.

I'll have to make sure he has the availability but if you're interested let me know and I'll make teh connection.

Just to throw in my observation of your site, as to try and make things a bit easier for you...

Currently you have a "coming Soon" page carved out on your 'Blog' tab.  Depending on your web host, you could easily just install wordpress.org onto the blog tab.

Wordpress is amazingly easy to use for adding content.  You just have to install wordpress at http://www.freeana.com/blog and boom, you've got a blog.

The only tricky part would be getting the blog to look like the rest of your site, but it's much better to get one up first and then worry about aesthetics later.

You could also easily edit the wordpress menus to point back to your existing pages.  Not the only way to do it, but if you were looking for a solution without having to do a massive overhaul, this is the way to go.

Good luck!  Keep us in the loop. 

Steve