Indie Band Survival Guide Blog

A strong writing voice that is the same across your website, web presences, and press materials is part of building your brand. Click here to learn how to create an official writing voice.

Elance is a site that lets you post jobs and hire online help from freelancers in many fields.

Simply write up the kind of help that you need, this process takes no more that one minute. Most posts receive responses within a few hours, sometimes minutes. You can find people to help you with web design, marketing, writing, legal questions, and more. The site also helps you track progress and communicate with your workers. You can even schedule online payments upon completion of certain tasks.

If you give Elance a try, we want to know if you found help for band projects. Leave a comment and a site rating here.

Check out some of the newest links now available on the Indie Guide:

Elance: outsource creative, legal, website, and business work to freelancers

DeviantArt: online artist community where you can find original art

MacIdol.com: community and music hosting for Mac user musicians

Slacker: personalized streaming radio

Threadless: crowdsourced T-shirt designs

There are many resources out there with loops and sounds that you can to enhance your music for free. Click here to learn how to find free MIDI loops and sounds.

Properly encoded and tagged MP3 files are easily playable and give listeners all the information they need about you. Click here to learn how to create MP3s so your fans will always find you.

Tunerooms is a musician community that allows you to collaborate with others online.

Create an account and then upload the songs and tracks you are writing. Each song will get its own “room” that is like a chat room. Other users can join the room and add their ideas, sounds, vocals, whatever! When it is to your liking, you can export the final product from your room and you now have a brand new song. You maintain all of the rights to your work and can distribute it anyway you want.

If you give Tunerooms a try, we want to hear about your collaboration experiences. Leave a comment and a site rating here.

If you need logos or web design help, try DesignContest and let artists compete to be your designer.

First start a contest and describe what you need and then set your price. The only rule is that your price must be at least $250. You will get anywhere from 30-200 responses from freelance artists and you get to choose the winner. You will own the full rights to the new art and can use it however you want, and you will get a full refund if you are not satisfied with the submissions.

If you give DesignContest a try, we want to know if it helped you get affordable custom art. Leave a comment and a site rating here.

Check out the latest links we’ve added to the Indie Guide this week. This update is all about art and graphic design sites:

DesignContest: freelancers compete to make the best logo for you; you pick the winner

GeniusRocket: browse, pay for, and secure rights for creative designs

crowdSPRING: name your price for custom logo and graphic design

LogoTournament: describe your needs and let designers duke it out to create the best graphics

99designs: logo and website designs with over 170,000 freelance artists registered

You may captivate your audience at a live show, but you need to bring them to your website to hear more music and find information on upcoming shows. Click here to learn how to bring people to your website after shows.

Writing blog entries keeps your fans up to date on all of your latest projects and can give them a more personal look into your music and life. Click here to learn how to start a blog as a musician.