Countdown: 1806 days left

Blog members: 15

Facebook friends: 183

# of "Likes" of Claudie Larouche's Page on Facebook: 12
Youtube video views: 213
Myspace friends: 2


Improvement since yesterday, I have not gained any Facebook friends but I also haven't lost any today! All is well! I was planning on having a very quiet evening with lots of work being done on my brand new Myspace profile, but one of my friends called and I ended up spending the evening with her, eating Lebanese food at the beach. Sometimes it's better to enjoy the sun instead of spending the evening glued on the computer.

So even though I was outside enjoying the nice weather for most of the evening, I still managed to get some work done on Myspace when I came back home. I am very pleased to announce that I improved the look and feel of my profile and I even added 2 songs for you to listen to so please dear friends, go ahead and listen to my music here and feel free to give me any comments you may have! Constructive comments are welcome too of course, I know I'm far from being perfect...

I also want to spend a few minutes to let you know a bit more details about setting up the websites www.claudielarouche.com and www.claudielarouche.ca. If you're not intested in those technical details you can stop reading this post now :)

Like I mentionned yesterday, one of my friends helped me set the websites up and if you try to access them, they will both redirect you automatically to Myspace. The reasonning is that using Myspace is much quicker and cheaper as opposed to creating my own website from scratch. And now that I bought claudielarouche.ca and claudielarouche.com, I'm sure nobody will steal them from me when I start becoming hugely famous. So it's an investment for the future :) Notice how justinbieber.com does not belong to the Justin Bieber we all know... I didn't want anything similar happen to me.

If anybody is interested in setting up a website, here is how I personally did it (actually all I did is type my credit card number when necessary, my friend did all of the work). I'm not saying this is the way everyone should do it, but it worked for me so I'm sharing the method with you. First of all we accessed the following website that enables you to buy a domain: http://www.domainsatcost.ca/

We set up my account there and following the instructions, I bought my two websites. It's good for two years, and it costed me $63 total. On the same domainsatcost website, there is a way to redirect the website you bought to another address, although the change may take a few hours (up to 24 I think) to complete successfully. I don't want to make this post too long so if you want more details about how to redirect, just send me a quick message and I'll help you the best I can. So that's it! This ended up being much simpler than I thought, and if I do want to have a really fancy website built from scratch one day, I can use these two addresses. 

Countdown: 1816 days left

Blog members: 12

Facebook friends: 182

Hello!

I'm able to sneak some time on the computer while on my vacation to keep you updated on how things are coming along. Lots to tell you today but I'll try not to make it too long!

First of all, if you guys have a project that you are working on, don't hesitate to bring it up to as many people as you can, everywhere you can. As I said earlier, you never know who's going to be able to help you. And even if they can't help you, people can still give you a little boost of confidence if they belive in what you do. And if they DON'T believe in what you do, well they'll realize how wrong they were the day you succeed!

On Saturday evening I was invited to a friend's birthday party, we had a BBQ at her place and there was a lot of people I didn't know. Some of them were members of her partner's family, a very very French Canadian family, they were teasing each other a lot and they were lots of fun to be around. Being very French Canadian myself, I got along with them very well :) They reminded me a lot of my own family which was quite nice. So at one point I did mention I was in the process of organizing a concert in Ottawa in October, and one of the ladies was really excited about it. She gave me her business card and pretty much ordered me to let her know when and where the concert would take place, she will invite her friends and family and bring all her people over to my show. That's all very exciting!

Speaking of the October concert, today I got a phone call from the University of Ottawa to confirm that the room I want to book is available on my date, so the lady simply needs to confirm with her supervisor and the room should be mine on that day. For those of you who are thinking of doing something similar, it will cost me $175 to rent the room from 6 to 11 PM, with the piano available. I will have to pay a sound technician as well, which was $25 an hour last year. So the total cost for the evening should be around $300. None of my performers will be paid. Last year there was approximately 50 people in the room and we were able to raise $586. I gave everything to a good cause so I'm not making any profit regardless, but if someone out there is reading my blog and wondering how much you can expect to make in one evening, well there are tons of variables to take into consideration but I'm giving you all the numbers just so you can have a slight idea yourself.

Once again I am quite happy with how things are turning out, sounds like I will be having a live performance in Ottawa in October which I'm really looking forward to! If everything goes according to plan, the event should take place on October 22nd at the Freiman Hall, University of Ottawa at 8 o'clock. But of course I will give you all the details again once everything is 100% confirmed.

Countdown: 1822 days left

Blog members: 10
Facebook friends: 173

Today I decided to increase my blog's popularity by posting the link for it on Facebook groups I belong to. I'm trying to share my music with the world, but there are so many things that need to be done that it's hard to tell whether I'm starting with the right steps or whether I'm acting like a chicken without its head, running in random directions... I know I should create a MySpace profile, play more guitar, learn new songs, write lyrics, practice piano, write in my blog, send messages, but I don't know what to do first...

The idea behind putting up an announcement on the groups I belong to was that if I am a member of these Facebook groups, that means I have a common interest with the other members, that means there may be some people there who would be interested in my blog! For example, on the group page of the Songwriter Association of Canada, I wrote:

"Hello, I just thought I would share my new blog with you, it might be of interest to someone in this group. I am a singer-songwriter whose goal is to become famous in 1825 days! Check it out at www.claudielarouche.blogspot.c​om"

I left approximately the same message in three or four other places. After about 5 minutes I started getting some feedback (amazing how quick people are on the keyboard!) First of all an acquaintance of mine who wasn't my Facebook friend before (Chrisy) spotted my announcement and sent me a message to say that she has many contacts in the music business in Ottawa. She said she was willing to help if I need it, how nice! Here's my advice of the day for everyone: always keep a good relationship with everyone who crosses your path, because you never know who is going to turn out to be a key person to help you reach your goals!

A few minutes after Chrisy's message I got another one, someone replied to my announcement on the Songwriter Association of Canada saying:

"Why not focus on writing great songs? Fame is not the reward, nor should it be the motivator."

Oops, sounds like not everyone agrees with my methods of self-advertisement :) Well to make a long story short, we exchanged a few messages, she became my Facebook friend, and she sent me the link to her MySpace. Check it out guys she has an absolutely amazing voice! I especially loved the first and the last song. By the way I'll be sharing other artist's links when I find good ones, I really want to help other emerging artists get known!

And finally as I was writing this post, I made another new Facebook friend because of the announcements I left earlier (hello Laboni!)

I think we can say that today was another very successful day, thank you everyone for your ongoing support! And now I'm going to send a little message to Chrisy, I hope she will be able to help me! :)

Countdown: 1824 days left

Blog members: 7

I was so excited this morning! My blog had 4 members when I woke up, thumbs up for Facebook! We're at 7 now, awesome! So I would like to welcome the new members, and I also have a special mention for Maxime Paquet, my very first blog subscriber. You're the best!

So Maxime being an amazing friend, he actually forwarded the link of my blog to his friends, and one of them pointed out that I should create an artist page on Facebook, which I could link to my blog. I thought that was a very good idea, so I spent a few hours at Starbucks tonight creating my artist page. I also took some time to write up a biography with my friend's help, I'm so happy with it, sounds super professional :)

Claudie Larouche was born in Jonquière, Québec, where she spent all her youth. Following in her father's footsteps, she picked up the guitar at age 17 and started writing her own songs early on. She has participated in several contests and open mic nights, winning second place at the regional contest "Université en Spectacle" in Chicoutimi, Québec, in 2008. Claudie is constantly looking for opportunities to perform, whether it is at local BBQs, for a group of friends or for a good cause. Among other things, she organized, in December 2011, a fundraising event in which she and several of her friends performed, raising close to $600 for Ten Oaks Projects, a non-profit organization whose goal is to help children and youth from LGBTQ communities. Now living in Ottawa since 2008, Claudie is slowly building her fan base in the country's capital region, performing in coffee shops and at local events.

 

So all this time spent on doing not that much after all... It's going to take lots more effort than I thought to expand my presence on the web and become famous!