If you haven’t got one, why the hell not? You can buy a domain from Active24.co.uk for about £5 a year, a little more if you want some hosting space. And that’s all you’ll need to spend, in any case, this is not money spent. This is money invested. Set up a paypal sales account, sell two CDs through your website rather than someone else’s shop and you’re in profit.

There are a lot of different ways to go about creating content for your website – sites like Wix.com and WordPress.com offer simple solutions and templates for building content rich, good looking websites very easily. Shop around for a platform that offers you the features you’re looking for. You don’t need to be a graphic designer, there are skins up there for you to choose from. You don’t need to be particularly computer literate, there are guides to walk you through putting a site up on your domain, and you can post on forums for help, or call up your hosting company for tech assistance if you’re totally stuck.

There is no reason you can’t have a fully working site built and running over a weekend, and no excuse for trying to promote a band without one. A little initial effort will pay you back, and soon.

With reference to the maintaining a mailing list, your own site is an ideal place to put a google form to get information from your fans when they visit you. If you’re really slick you can even put one into a Sprout widget, and combine it with your band’s music, videos and pictures.