Thread: Is it possible to make it on your own?

If I were a prospective employer I would like to see some more professional looking shots of you in motion on the site.

Oy vey! This promoting takes a lot of time and work, huh? I wish it were enough to be a great dancer and performer! Working on that is much more fun. :) I need to get started on some of these suggestions.

Thank you all for your help, and many more suggestions are welcome! :)

Any opinions on domain names?

bellydancewitheva.com
evaamarbellydance.com

the first one is kinda catchy.

oh, but if you are not teaching or plan to teach in the near future, maybe
bellydancebyava.com?

Gotraqs.
I made it on my own when I moved to Boulder 13 years ago.
Some of the stuff I did and did not do:

What I DID NOT DO:

go behind other dancers backs
undercut

What I did do:

I started my own bellygram business, with ads, website, etc. I was told by certain dancers in town that that caused resentment, because.........
are you ready?
NO ONE ELSE DID IT!!!!!
Well, I replied, "I didn't stop anyone"

I went to local restaurant, which was LUCKILY owned by an american woman, who did the scheduling herself, and auditioned, and got the job.

I tried to get into other restaurants that were scheduled by dancers, and I had no luck.

So, I was fortunate in that there was a market at the time for a bellygram business in Boulder, and there was a restaurant owned by an American businesswoman, whom I am still good friends with - even though the restaurant closed last new years after 26 years in business to make way for million dollar condos.

I like bellydancewitheva

you want to be careful in picking a domain name that it doesnt read out into something you don't want it to.

I picked boulder bellygrams, and after two years I began to really hate the name bellygrams, but I was already stuck with it, because it was known.

So make sure it's something you can live with for a while.

You could also see about hooking up w/ a company that does belly-grams in/near your location. Maybe get listed/signed up w/ local talen agencies and DJ services. Something else to consider is dancing for (cheap or free) at COMMUNITY EVENTS like art walks, join Chamber of Commerce and offer to dance for one of the meetings.
Also, how bout signing up for Gigmasters or PartyPop?

Point is, once you get seen and then known - if you are in fact a good dancer, then you'll get more jobs/opportunities/etc.

I would advise keeping the domain name as short as possible, because you'll be spelling it out over the phone an infinite number of times during your career. Also, long URLs make it a pain to design flyers and business card

In my experience... The less letters, the better. I've done it both ways, and even if each word in the URL is simple english that is easy to spell, people still get confused -- I'd suggest no more than 2 words in the domain name.

I think everyone's given excellent advice. Definitely get a professional photo shoot and domain - when you want to be professional, everything must be at that professional level. I just secured safiyahdances.com - it's fairly short and the only thing I should have to spell is my name. I thought about safiyahraqs but realized I'd have to spell everything (like Lotus said). do a domain search and see what comes up. I don't like evaamarbellydance though because I just don't like the two a's lining up. Could be me though...