All About Mike Ippersiel

Hey, thanks for visiting this page!

I wrote this bio for one reason, for you to learn a little more about me and why I started up the Indie Band Alliance.

While I’m not overly comfortable about talking about myself, I want you to get to know me so that I’m no longer a stranger. I don’t know about you, but the emails that I look forward to are from the people who I feel I know personally.

Who wants to read an email from a complete stranger right?

Let’s not kid ourselves, we both know that there’s a ton of information online, but information alone won’t help you succeed as an independent musician.

There’s so much info out there that it’s easy to get overwhelmed!

Not only do you need solid information, you need to get it from a reliable source…

…Ideally, from someone that you both know and trust!

I’ve been on plenty of different email lists over the years, and I often unsubscribe from many because I didn’t trust what they were telling me.

Even if their information was solid (much of the time it wasn’t) it didn’t seem like they cared about the reader or wanted to reveal anything about themselves.

So I’m letting my guard down and giving you a sneak peek into my life so that you can get a sense for who I am and why I want to help out other musicians with all that I’ve learned about creating a solid income as an independent musician by using the internet.

I don’t want to just be another random name in your inbox, and I wouldn’t be sitting here right now typing these words if I didn’t believe that I have outstanding tips, resources and strategies that could re-ignite or jump-start your music career.

I’m going to do my best to get you to read my tips and most importantly, get you to…

…Put Them To Use!

Okay, so here’s the cole-notes version of my life leading up to now:

Hard-Rockin’ Musician Hangs Up His Bass Guitar
for 6 Years to Study Internet Marketing
In The Hopes Of Earning Enough Money
to Resurrect His Music Career.

I didn’t find my way to music until about the age of 15, oddly enough a year or two earlier – music was my most hated subject at school (true, it was vocal music but still) and I’d only started really listening heavily to music (Guns N Roses and Metallica if you really want to know) around 14 years of age.

A good friend and my brother started playing guitar and drums and they needed a bass player so that they could be a ‘real’ band. Even though my inclination would have been to play guitar – they swayed me to their side; after blowing my entire savings on a cheap used Precison bass copy – I became a bassist.

Music became a huge part of my life and identity afterwards.

Our little band stayed together throughout our high school years. We parted ways for one year when I went off to college to become a print journalist (long story short – I thought writing about music would be a good backup plan if the music thing didn’t work out).

In my second year, my brother enrolled at the same college and my friend ended up moving within a 30 minute drive – the band was back together.

Aside from another break that lasted six to ten months, the band remained a weekly occurrence right up until I was 31 years old.

We had written our own music, recorded a few CDs, performed in two countries, opened for bands like Helix, Nazareth, April Wine and the Killer Dwarfs and the ride was over.

The reason?

I just couldn’t afford to do it anymore.

In 2006 my second son was born and I could no longer ignore that my music career was going nowhere fast.

I had too many responsibilities to my young family (not to mention a mortgage) that I had to switch things up. I never quit the band, but aside from a single gig ‘reunion’ in 2007 and a handful of practices, the band has pretty much remained in a coma ever since.

From Bad To Worse

Not only did I give up the band, within a year I also ended up giving up my weekends when I took a second job to keep the family afloat while my wife stayed home with our youngest child.

For about four months I worked seven days a week and the ability to make music of any kind was pretty much impossible.

While I wasn’t happy about the way things were, I also knew that I was the only one to blame for where I was.

Perhaps if I had hustled a little bit more and found a way to earn money with music I wouldn’t be where I was?

I refused to allow myself to be a victim of the circumstance that I was in.

After spending most of my adult life turning my nose up to the pursuit of money, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to bring music back into my life until I could solve the problem of earning more money.

If I had more money I reasoned, I could give up my weekend job and get back to making music again. I knew that there had to be a way to get out of the hole that I was in…

Enter the Internet

My wife kicked things off by handing me a book from the library about online businesses, and from there I sought out all the information I could about making money online.

I had messed with selling things on Ebay, so I wasn’t a complete stranger to some of the ideas – but once I discovered internet marketing everything seemed to make sense.

I switched over to researching on the internet and learned as much as I could about search engine optimization and blogging. I ended up launching two websites – one of these being www.indiebandalliance.com and learned about earning money a little bit at a time online.

I felt like I was coming full circle in a way because I had been the webmaster for my band’s website for years.

I was elated to discover WordPress and became really intrigued with the potential to earn money while being away from the computer and even while being asleep!

Career Change

Fast forward about a year; my studying and research pays off by allowing me to leave my warehouse job for a well established internet publishing company as a web content creator.

I earn more while working less hours and most importantly, am in an environment where I can soak up even more information about creating content and marketing online.

The only drawback is that I still wasn’t making quite enough to quit my weekend job yet.

It’s been a little less than six years, and I’ve worked in digital marketing for different companies and I’ve learned a lot. While I launched the IBA slightly in 2007, I realized that I’ve been playing it too safe and the time is right to share what I know to help out others.

It might sound silly, but there’s times where I wake up in the middle of the night with something that I just have to share with other musicians.

It’s time for me to apply what I’ve learned and make significant change for the better of myself and the musicians out there that need to know how to market their band online.

I discovered Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 true fan post and it was like the light bulb went off in my mind. I ended up writing the 1,000 Fan Formula a few days later and knew that I had to get it out there and share it with as many musicians as possible.

What’s next? Success or Failure?

So how does this story end? Will I fall flat on my face or will I finally turn things around, help out a ton of musicians and come out of retirement with my music career?

Stick around and join me on the journey. I promise that the best is yet to come; I plan to pack lots of value into everything I do so that you can benefit from what I’ve learned over the last three years without having to give up your music like I did.

Thank you for subscribing and I hope you’ll be part of the next chapter in my life while learning the best way to earn a living with your music. The 1,000 Fan Formula is just the beginning – stick around to see what else I have up my sleeve.