I’m excited to announce that I have been featured in the February 2008 Issue of DJ Times! Jeff Stiles did an excellent job writing the article, and I am very honored to be included in such a popular magazine.
I scanned and uploaded the article to my website.
This coming weekend, my family and I are making our annual trip down to Yankton, SD for Riverboat Days. Basically, this is an event on held on the banks of the Missouri river complete with fireworks, food, and fun. It should be a nice little trip for us.
Originally I blacked the entire weekend out on my DJ calendar, but one of my wife’s coworkers needed a DJ for a reception at the Starlight Room in the downtown Sioux Falls Holiday Inn. So, we are coming home a little early on Saturday so that I can spin the night away! There’s a band playing until 8PM, then I am starting right after them. There might be a little bit of a traffic jam, since I will be setting up while they are tearing down, but I don’t foresee too much of a problem (famous last words!)
Below is a video of one of my latest lighting additions, the Chauvet Vue III light. This light looks great projected onto the ceiling above the dancefloor. It also represents the future of lighting - it’s all LED and has a bulb life of 100,000 hours.
Now that Summer is here, it’s pretty much weddings every weekend for me. Oddly enough, I do not have a wedding on 7/7/7 - the most popular wedding date in history, but I have one on even other Saturday in June and July. This last Saturday I had a reception at the Eagles Club in Sioux City, IA.
I enjoy DJ’ing in Sioux City, it’s only about an hour away, and it’s a pretty good market. In fact, some time ago I purchased the domain www.siouxcitydj.com just in case I would like to start focusing on that area a little more. Anyway, the reception venue was right off of the interstate, so it was an easy find. I pulled up about 4PM, and the reception was scheduled to start at 5:30PM. I had a nice easy set-up with an outside door only about 10 feet from where I was to set up.
I was set up in less than an hour, and people started to roll in. I played dinner music for awhile, and after a few tables were moved, we started the dances. It was a pretty thin crowd all night, but it was a fun time nevertheless. The reception was scheduled to end at 11:00PM, and around 10:00, I was starting to question whether or not the reception would last that long. Well, I continued to play good music, and gradually the dancefloor filled up. That last hour actually turned out to be the most active time all night. I gave out a number of business cards, so that will hopefully result in a few more Sioux City gigs. And, to add to the already wonderful night, I managed to fix a problem with my trailer taillights that I had been fighting for weeks!
This next weekend, I have another wedding in Mitchell, SD at the Holiday Inn. Mitchell is another great market for me to get my name out in, and I have already done a number of gigs there. It should be a fun reception, the bride and groom’s request list has a lot of great songs. Plus, I just got my Chauvet Vue light - so that will be a nice addition. After that, my next gig is in Madison, SD at Geno’s, which is a nice place right by Lake Madison. Last time I was there, we had some tornadoes and my truck and trailer got some hail damage. Come to think of it, it was probably this time last year! Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself!
On another note, the redesign of www.bpmdjproductions.com appears to be having a positive effect on my leads. Google picked up the site on it’s latest crawl, and it is showing up really nice in the search engine results. So nice in fact that I might be able to cancel my www.wedj.com advertising. That site has always been great to me, but there was a big change in the site, and the leads really aren’t there anymore. I need to book a few more gigs for September and October to finish filling out the year, but at the same time, I’ll be fine if I manage to stay right where I’m at.
I’m in the process of steamlining my wedding light show. Last Summer, I spent about 45 minutes each wedding setting up my lighting, and about 45 minutes setting up my sound. Then, I would spend another 15 minutes reprogramming my lights for the particular venue.
I would like to cut that setup time down to about 15 minutes. To do that, I am going to eliminate one of my light stands, leaving a single stand. On that stand, I plan on having 2 of my scanner lights, 2-3 Par Cans (for mood lighting), and a mirror ball. I will spotlight the mirror ball with a super bright Elation Pro Color 150 Watt discharge color changer.
I’m also going to have a Chauvet Vue III for the ceiling, a little trick that I learned from www.djchat.com. I’m excited since this light has been the called THE DJ light of 2007. Here’s a pic of what it looks like:
I may even have the Vue before my Sioux City Wedding this weekend. The FedEx tracking said it should arrive today!
Over the weekend, I launched my redesign of bpmdjproductions.com. The site has a nice clean layout, and will feature video and pictures on every page. My overall goal is to make potential clients feel like they know me personally, simply by visiting the site. I also purchased another domain name bpmdj.net, and am redirecting it to bpmdjproductions.com. I’m thinking that the shorter name will be easier to remember for marketing purposes.
I am going to focus on providing regularly updated videos and pictures, and might even throw a few videos on this blog. I have a wedding reception this Saturday, so maybe I’ll have an opportunity there.
This has probably been one of my busiest Aprils ever. I performed at 5 Proms and 1 wedding reception, and have traveled to Parker, SD, Parkston, SD, Canistota, SD, Hurley, SD, Sioux Center, IA, and Sioux Falls, SD. There were a lot of late nights, and a couple double-booked weekends, but it was well worth it.
I would have to say that the best Prom was Sioux Center’s. I have never DJ’ed for that school before, and the students seemed to enjoy my performance. I think this is due in part to the fact that I am not like any other DJ in the area, I bring a lot of nightclub experience with me, and beat-mix almost every song into the next. The students were great, very courteous and full of energy.
The next night (4/28), I had an upscale wedding reception at the Downtown Holiday Inn. I took extra care when setting everything up to make sure it was nice and clean - no exposed wires. The end result was great, and the extra effort was well worth it. I had a nice new tuxedo vest and tie for myself to complete the upscale look. It was kind of a long night, I got there to setup at 3PM and did not leave until about 2AM, but I had a great time. The bride was very nice, and everyone in attendence was great as well. As the night grew later, the music started to have a little more “bump” and the hotel had complaints from 3 floors below us. I’m sure it had a lot to do with where I was setup - right next to a main wall that undoubtedly carried the vibrations well. We didn’t start receiving complaints until 11:30 or so, and I turned the volume down for the last half hour.
The worst part of the night were the elevator rides. It was very time consuming to load up my cart with equipment, roll to the elevator, wait for the elevator, and go up 10 floors to the ballroom, then unload and do it all over again. Well, at least I didn’t have to use the stairs!
I have a little break before my next reception in May (May 19th to be exact.) I’ll take advantage of that time to upgrade a couple of things with my current system. I’m planning on purchasing a new case for my turntables, mixer, and Serato interface. I might also rearrange some of my lights to improve my wedding reception light show. I’ve got a pretty busy Summer ahead of me, and my overall goal is to make my operation as efficient as possible.
Well, I decided to pull the plug on my other domain name for this blog, www.djtales.com. I downgraded the account to save a little money, so now I just own the domain, and do not have a physical site there to maintain. Although I was generating a little money with Adsense on the blog, it wasn’t enough to justify spending the time to write keyword rich content. So, I moved it over to my dj website, www.bpmdjproductions.com, and am going to treat it like a true blog. I’ll stop worrying about writing articles that will attract the most traffic (for maximum $) and will just write articles about my DJ travels. I still will maintain www.bestdjsoftware.com, another blog site about a very specific topic, DJ software, but for now, www.djtales.com is dead.
In my opinion, DJ AM is one of the best mix DJ’s out there. He is also down to earth enough to participate in the Serato Scratch Live forum. I thought I would share this recent post from him. It basically spells out what DJ’ing for money is all about. Yeah, you might personally like this and not like that, but when you hit the club, reception hall. gymnasium, or whatever, you are there to play to the crowd.
“Here.. Since some of you seem to think I am a good DJ I will give you my formula. Since I stuck to this my WORK career went up and up.
part 1 - Girls…
There you have it. That’s it. Girls rule. I like girls for many reasons hahaha But the bottom line is they are VITAL to a dancefloor… Unless your at Rage (gay club in LA)
What, are you gonna play onyx, big daddy kane and have a sword fight? Its almost 2007. In LA at least (and I think most everywhere) girls in their 20s make up nightlife. They don’t know that shit. Old school hip hop to them is Biggie. I was playing Special Ed and a girl walked up and asked “Hey, are you gonna play any hip hop?” To entertain myself I said “Like what?” She said “Ummmm I dunno like some J lo or Puffy” THIS IS WHERE WERE AT PEOPLE! And this happens AT WORK!! I am WORKING for a promoter who PAYS me to make people LIKE THAT CHICK HAPPY AND DANCE. So that’s my job. If I wanna play my music I do it at my own club or at home. So, I focus on the girls. Now THIS is where the being a GOOD DJ kicks in.. For ME, I could play Fergie for her or J Lo. And I know she would be thrilled. I also know the radio and every top 40 club plays those songs. But I chose MADONNA.. Why? Cause I LIKE MADONNA! And I know SHE knows it. And I know she will still dance. Now I did my job AND made the promoter and myself happy.
part 2 - Majority
This is actually part 1.2 BUT majority rules. HOPEFULLY you don’t have a sword fight on the dancefloor (all dudes) and the door guy is letting in 1 guy for every 2 girls. If that is the case its allllll part 1. But its all about the genre. You wanna make the MORORITY of people there happy. I used to throw on a record I have never played and then sit and COUNT how many people came on the dancefloor (PAUSE) and how many left. I would then gauge my next song based off the genre of that record. I just want the majority of the floor dancing, not leaving or sitting down. You make the place go NUTS and dance and scream, you ask for a raise. There you have it.
Bottom line I am a DJ. I said this before and will say it again. I am no “GREAT DJ” I am just a DJ. A REALLY lucky and blessed one at that. I use Serato to the fullest I can. Does that make me a fake DJ? Not to me. I dug for years, I scratched (sounding like shit) till I had calluses on my fingers. I paid my dues and worked HARD for where I am. No page 6 LIE will ever take that away. So keep talkin, keep hatin and I will keep jumping outta bed at 6am to try a mix I just thought of that will hopefully bring joy to a dancefloor and make my friends go “AWWWWWWWWW SHIT!!!!!” That is my job and I love it.
“Starve the ego - Feed the soul” - DJ AM “
I have always had an interest in the World Wide Web. I have been designing websites since high-school and until now, have focused most of my efforts on my DJ company’s site, www.bpmdjproductions.com. Over the last year, I have been learning more and more about SEO or “search engine optimization.” Basically, this means making your website Google (or Yahoo or other search engine) friendly. I think I have succeeded in doing this with www.bpmdjproductions.com. In fact, when you search for “dj Sioux Falls” I am #1, and am listed above all of the national DJ directory sites like www.wedj.com, www.gigmasters.com, and www.discjockeys.com.
Now, I am becoming more and more interested in the domain game, buying and eventually selling web domain names. In my opinion, this is the valuable “real estate” of the future. I have purchased this one, www.djtales.com, as well as www.omahadj.com, www.siouxcitydj.com, and my two most recent ones www.numarkvirtualvinyl.com, and www.finalscratch3.com. The last two are upcoming digital DJ products that should receive a lot of hype. And, since the domain name often is a big factor in google rankings (for example: when you search for “dj tales”, www.djtales.com is the #1 search result) I should receive a fair amount of traffic from those searching for these two products. In order to monetize the sites, I will use a combination of Google adsense and Amazon Affiliate links.
So, we shall see what kind of traffic I will actually get. So far I have made .10, but I am going to give the sites 6 months to pay for themselves. If they do not generate enough revenue to cover their cost, then I will probably pull the plug.
I’m very excited to see what happens, it would be so cool to actually make some money with this hobby of mine!
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