I'm going to carry out an experiment which you can rip off for your own uses. My aim is to get myself a heap of listeners in a short amount of time - without a great deal of work.

When I speak of 'a heap', I'm talking about a heap in comparison to what I have now - none! I'm going to promote one new song I've just uploaded on www.MP3.com.au. Why there? Because I can storm the charts much easier than the larger sites and get an ego-boost in the process. I can also hook up with relatively local listeners as I live down under.

I've stormed the charts in the past, without cheating, to great effect. I took the number one spot in the one category that I concentrated on. But this time, I'm making it harder for myself by entering a much tougher category.

Here's what I will do.

Stage one: Over the past year, I've gathered around 200 email addresses of friends and acquaintances who know me by name. I'm going to send them each an email, asking them to check out my song. I will keep it short and to the point, including a link to download the track as well as streaming it. I'll also ask them to forward the email to any friends they have who may like the music. I'll also update my web site with the news about the new song I've got, to entice any person who just happens to be randomly surfing.

Stage two: I'm also going to contact a few online radio stations. I'll head to www.live365.com and browse by my particular genre. It will make most sense to hit the top 25 stations of the genre - these will have the most listeners and likely be well run - and then do a bit of work in tracking down names and email addresses for each station. Again, it's a good idea to store them in a database as I may want them at a later date. I'll email the stations individually, giving them permission to add my song to their station playlist. And I better not forget to provide the links to my song and ask to be contacted if the song gets added to the station. Online radio stations love free content and will probably give my song a listen if I've contacted a relevant one. I'll offer to provide links back to the station if the song gets used. It should work a charm. Keep to your word on this if you choose this route.

Stage three: Contacting relevant Yahoo Groups is a good place to start. You should join the groups that have large memberships, meaning that you can hit as many people as possible with your message. Here are a few groups worth checking out:

• howtopromoteyourband
• internetrockbands
• musicnetbusiness
• unsignedbandsglobal
• unsignedbandsmp3

So, how did I go with my song? Bear in mind the charts are only updated once a week.

In the first 48 hours of promotion, my track hit the grand peak of #824. It's not a great result but the power of my approach is that, over time, a lot of listens will come in as people read their emails or hit discussions.

So how did I do in the following seven days? Find out next week.