Robert Niles on Violinist.com

Thank you to Violinist.com's February advertisers

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:23:06 GMT

I'd like to take a moment to thank the violin shops, retailers and music programs who are advertising on Violinist.com in February. Their financial support helps Laurie and I to keep the site running and filled with great new interviews and features. (Laurie's got three new violinist interviews she's working on writing into stories right now!)

So thank you to our returning advertisers:

As well as to our new and returning advertisers this month:

Looking for financial help for college and career? From The Top is selecting approximately 25 pre-collegiate violinists this year for $10,000 awards. Please check out the link to the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award for application details. We'd also like to thank violin maker Hans Pluhar and Eldar Speiser and the & quot;Join a String Quartet & quot; music kit for supporting the site this month.

Also, we would like to thank Shar for making a year-long commitment to supporting Violinist.com. Shar will be highlighting many different offers on Violinist.com over the next 12 months, so we hope you'll keep your eyes open for those.

We hope that you will show your appreciation for these advertisers' support of Violinist.com by considering them when you're making a decision about violin- and music-related purchases, or your violin career.

If you run a music-related business, or are an administrator at a music school, competition or camp, we invite you to consider supporting this lively community by becoming an advertiser on Violinist.com.

Thank you, again, to everyone who has helped make Violinist.com such a fun and informative community!

Thank you to Violinist.com's January advertisers

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:55:01 GMT

I'd like to thank violin shops, retailers, music schools and teachers who have helped bring you Violinist.com this month.

None of the wonderful information that you can find on Violinist.com would be here if we didn't have advertiser support for our community. So thank you to our returning advertisers for their financial support:

We'd also like to welcome three new advertisers this month:

Laurie also will be posting this week an interview with Hilary about her new album. And look for Hilary on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien on Thursday.

Students and young professionals, please give strong consideration to the Oistrakh and Indy competitions. Both are advertising their application deadlines now, and are looking for the next Augustin Hadelich (the 2006 Indy winner), a young professional ready to take the next step to international acclaim. Could that be you?

We hope that you will consider these advertisers first when you are making a decision about violin and music-related purchases, as well as your violin career - as a way of showing your appreciation for their support of Violinist.com. If you run a music-related business, or are an administrator at a music school, competition or camp, we invite you to consider supporting this lively community by becoming an advertiser on Violinist.com.

Thank you, again, to everyone who has helped make Violinist.com such a fun and informative community!

Thank you to Violinist.com's December advertisers

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:08:21 GMT

I'd like to thank violin shops, retailers, music schools and teachers who have helped bring you Violinist.com this month.

Laurie's been posting some great interviews over the past month, with more to come this month. But none of that happens without advertiser support for our community. So thank you to our returning advertisers for their financial support:

We'd also like to welcome three new advertisers this month:

Ms. Rubin's ad will appearing to readers in the Boston metropolitan area, and provides a reminder that other music teachers, as well as shops, orchestras and soloists can place ads targeted at selected metro areas via Violinist.com.

We hope that you will consider these advertisers first when you are making a decision about violin and music-related purchases, as well as your violin career - as a way of showing your appreciation for their support of Violinist.com. If you run a music-related business, or are an administrator at a music school or camp, we invite you to consider supporting this lively community by becoming an advertiser on Violinist.com.

Thank you, again, to everyone who has helped make Violinist.com such a fun and informative community!

Thank you to Violinist.com's November advertisers

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:33:56 GMT

I'd like to thank the music schools, shops and individuals who have helped bring you Violinist.com this month.

Thanks to you, our Violinist.com readers, we had another record traffic month on Violinist.com in October, with more than 130,000 unique readers visiting the site during the month. Laurie again offered some great original blog posts last month, including a one-on-one interview with Joshua Bell.

But none of that happens without advertiser support for the website, and our community. So thank you to our returning advertisers this month for their financial support:

We'd also like to welcome a new advertiser this month, Theodore Cohen, the author of the new book, & quot;Full Circle & quot;, called a & quot;marvelous journey through music, communications and family & quot; by one reviewer on Barnes & amp; Noble's website.

We hope that you will consider these advertisers first when you are making a decision about violin and music-related purchases as well as your violin career, as a way of showing your appreciation for their support of Violinist.com. If you run a music-related business, or are an administrator at a music school or camp, we invite you to consider supporting this lively community as well by becoming an advertiser on Violinist.com.

Thank you, again, to everyone who has helped make Violinist.com such a delightful and inspiring community!

New feature on Violinist.com: Violin Tips

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:58:41 GMT

Hello,

A few changes around the site:

First, the new commercial notices section has been somewhat & quot;spun off & quot; from the discussion forum, and now may be found under the & quot;For Sale & quot; link at the top of all Violinist.com pages. New notices will appear at the top of the discussion forum for 24 hours after their submission - after that, you may find the complete list of & quot;free classified ads & quot; on the For Sale page.

Remember, any Violinist.com member may post a free classified ad in this section - for items for sale, services available, audition notices, etc. We ask that you submit no more than one new thread to the & quot;For Sale & quot; category per week. And please do not repeat items from previous threads in the category. We also reserve the right to refuse notices that promote items and services that we consider not of interest to the Violinist.com community.

In other words, just because the service is free doesn't mean that we'll allow anyone to spam it.

Second, when we switched to the new site design last year, we didn't change the templates on older blog posts which had been published before the switch. Now, that's fixed. In addition to making those old blog entries consistent with the site's current look and navigation, the switch revives the & quot;Edit & quot; links for the authors of those old posts. So if you want to kill or change an old blog post of yours, now you may. You needn't send Laurie those requests anymore.

(If for some reason, your individual blog entries did not switch, and you do not see an edit link at the bottom of the individual post's page, please contact me and I'll switch the template.)

Finally, you might have noticed another new link in the navigation bar at the top of the page: & nbsp; & quot;Violin Tips. & quot; I've created a Violinist.com version of a popular feature we've had on Theme Park Insider for several months. It's a user-submitted list of tips, sorted by category, that all readers may vote on. Vote & quot;yes & quot; on the tips you agree with, and & quot;no & quot; on the tips you don't like or don't find helpful. Click the button at the bottom of the page to submit your own tip.

The tips with the most net & quot;yes & quot; votes rise to the top of the list. If a tip's score falls to far into negative territory, it disappears. I've created a general interest version of this same feature at TipReel.com, for anyone who is interested.

There's no discussion of tips - just a simple up or down vote. If you really, really want to discuss a tip, feel free to start a thread on the discussion forum! (You can link to individual tips by clicking the little icon at the end of each tip.) I hope you have fun with this new feature, and find some great tips, too!

Thanks, again, for reading Violinist.com.

How to get publicity on Violinist.com

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:24:07 GMT

Our mission at Violinist.com is to help our readers share their love for the violin. To that end, we encourage professional violinists, and their representatives, to become part of the Violinist.com community.

No matter your role within the violin community, you can find ways to connect better with colleagues, fans, students and customers through participation in Violinist.com - whether you are a:

Publicist representing a major artist
Soloist looking to elevate your profile
Music school or teacher
Symphony administrator
Representative of a music camp or festival
Violin shop owner
Luthier

The Violinist.com features that best serve your needs will vary by your role, of course. Here are some of the ways that individuals in any of these roles can utilize Violinist.com to spread the word about their projects, products and events:

Blog:

Any registered member of Violinist.com can create a blog on the site. You might have a blog elsewhere on the Web, but a Violinist.com blog has the advantage of being exposed to an audience of more than 6,000 unique readers every day.

Violinist.com editor Laurie Niles also selects notable blog entries to highlight on Violinist.com's front page, as well as in our weekly e-mail, which is sent to thousands of violin players, teachers and fans around the world.

Writing a blog on Violinist.com immediately engages you with our loyal and passionate audience of thousands of violinists, in a way that blogging on a personal or corporate website cannot. You are welcome to cross-post entries from your other blog to your Violinist.com blog, but do remember that the best blog entries read like personal conversations with our readers, and not like dry, voiceless press releases.

Great topics for a blog entry include:

A behind-the-scenes account of practicing, performing or recording
A notice about an upcoming audition or application deadline, along with tips for success
An essay about a favorite artistic influence, musical or not.

Discussion Forum:

The heart of Violinist.com is its discussion forum, where members hang out to ask and answer questions about the violin... and life in general. This is a great place to interact with readers on a more intimate level, to find readers with a great curiosity about the violin, and to show your service to the violin community by providing answers.

You should use a lighter hand on the discussion forum than you would in a blog entry. Here, you are not the main voice in the conversation, as you would be in your own blog entry. Don't bring up personal projects unless they relate directly to the question at hand, and then only mention the project as necessary to address the question being discussed. Humility goes a long way in any online discussion.

We offer a & quot;For Sale & quot; section within the discussion forum, where any registered member can post commercial notices, including audition notes, links to tour ticket sales and new-release download/purchase pages. Here is more information about that feature.

Calendar:

Violinist.com members maintain a Concert Calendar where they can post dates, times and locations of upcoming performances. There's also a place on that form to submit a link to a webpage where readers can purchase tickets.

Our software will automatically generate a Google Map to the concert hall address you provide (within the United States), so Violinist.com readers can get door-to-door driving or mass transit directions to the concert hall. Upcoming concert listings are linked to from the Violinist.com home page.

Listings:

Violinist.com readers also maintain directories of violin shops and festivals. You may click the links on those pages to create your own listing, if your shop or event is not listed already.

If it is, please contact Laurie Niles, who can give you editing privileges to maintain the description and other information for your listing. You will need to be a registered member of Violinist.com, so go ahead and sign up if you have not done so already.

Interviews:

Violinist.com editor Laurie Niles frequently interviews top performers and instructors in the violin world. She welcomes contact with representatives of these individuals, although she must warn that she cannot conduct every interview she is pitched. That's why we've created all these other ways for professional violinists to get publicity on Violinist.com.

All of the above services are provided free of charge to anyone who registers on Violinist.com. However, publishing and maintaining this valuable community service is not free. That is why Violinist.com offers a variety of sponsorship packages.

Advertise:

Your financial support of Violinist.com, through the purchase of advertising, allows us to continue serving the global violin community, as well as to provide all of the above services, free of charge to all members. Without advertisers, this community could not survive.

Violinist.com is a family business, owned and operated by Laurie and Robert Niles, of Pasadena, Calif. We don't have any corporate parent or overhead to support, so even a small sponsorship (from $200 up to $1000 a month) goes a long way toward helping us keep the site running as well as providing outstanding original reporting, interviews and coverage of the violin world. Please see our advertising page for a list of packages, as well as research data on Violinist.com's readers. You also can contact me - via robert [at] violinist.com - for more information, or to place an order. Thank you for your consideration.

Violinist.com readership survey: We need your help

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:31:29 GMT

Laurie and I need your help on this one, so I hope that you will give us a moment here.

Tomorrow, we'll be starting our annual reader survey on Violinist.com. We'll be selecting readers at random and inviting them to complete a short, 12-question survey about themselves and their use of the site.

The survey shouldn't take more than a few minutes to complete, and will help Laurie immensely in planning what will be on the site in the future, as well as in presenting the site to potential advertisers.

To further ~~entice~~ bribe you to fill out the survey, we will give away a $50 iTunes gift card to one survey participant, chosen at random. (You do not need to be a registered Violinist.com member to get the survey invitation, or to win the gift card.)

If you are chosen to participate in the survey, you will see a link at the top of the each Violinist.com page, which will remain until you fill out the survey or the survey period ends, in one week. Don't worry, if you get the link, you won't miss seeing it.

The system will chose whether you get the survey the first time you visit the site after tomorrow afternoon, so how much you click around the site will not affect you whether you get the survey link or not. To help us keep the survey sample random, I'm asking you not to forward the survey to other readers, either.

We need an accurate readership survey in order to describe the site to violin-related business that consider advertising with us. Ad revenue is what keeps this site alive and open for the wonderful community of readers here on Violinist.com. So, please, if you see the invitation to complete the survey, do!

Thank you for reading Violinist.com.

Happy New Year from Pasadena

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:19:45 GMT

Laurie asked me to post some pictures from my Rose Parade photo blog & nbsp;over on ThemeParkInsider.com:

& nbsp;

Happy New Year from Pasadena!

A look at the changes on Violinist.com

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:37:49 GMT

Hi folks,

I wanted to tell you about the new design here on Violinist.com. This is the result of many conversations Laurie and I have had about the direction of the site, her desire to improve its look, as well as our desire to provide a better experience for our readers.

First, the look. In addition to a larger logo, the site now has a fixed width for its content area, which will allow us better control of the site's design. We've increased the size of the top navigation bar and put a right-rail navigation on all pages. & nbsp;The content of that right-side column will vary depending upon what section you are reading on the site. & nbsp;

On the discussion board, you will notice the links to the discussion categories on the right side of each page, as well as the button to submit a new discussion thread.

On the blog pages, you will find links to the most recently submitted blog entries on the site.

Laurie and I wanted to find a way to give a longer & quot;shelf life & quot; to best blog entries submitted to V.com, so we decided to restructure the blog home page so that posts she selects will be shown in the main (center) section of the page. All other posts will be linked in the right column. Laurie will continue to read all those posts, selecting the best for inclusion in the main rail, and on the home page. (She will be blogging soon about what she's looking for in deciding which blog posts to promote to these positions.)

We've built new search forms on the Luthiers and Directory pages, and consolidated content from other sections of the site onto those pages, as well. Please, take a look.

The big change that participants on the site will notice is the next & quot;rich text & quot; editor for submitting discussion threads and comments, as well as blogs. This editor allows you to bold, italicize and hyperlink text in submissions without having to know the HTML code to do those things. It also creates a double-line break automatically, so you don't have to hit & quot;Return & quot; twice after each paragraph.

I am still tweaking several things on the site, including image upload on blogs, audio/video clip uploads for members' profile pages and the template for Laurie's weekly e-mail. (You can subscribe to that using the form at the top left of the page.) So... bear with me as I fix those up in the next day or two.

I'm sure that there's other stuff that's changed, which I have forgotten to mention. I'll address those in the comments. But, mostly, I want to thank you all for reading Violinist.com.

Introducing our guide to violin strings

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 21:11:03 GMT

Our wonderful intern, Caeli Smith, has posted a new wiki to our Violin Help section:

The Violinist.com Guide to Choosing Violin Strings

Wondering which strings are the correct ones for your violin? Sorta, kinda happy with your strings, but wondering if there's something better out there? Caeli's guide will orient you to the possibilities and set you on your way to making the best choice.

And, as with all our help articles, it is a wiki, meaning that registered Violinist.com readers can log in and make additions to the page.