Episode 49Sep 1, 2023· 25:50
A Solo Riff on Remote Blogging and Working Anywhere with Wifi
About this episode
I'm my own guest today for the first time in well over two years. I decided to share a solo riff on remote blogging, and working anywhere with WiFi because I know some people really want to know how I make money and can work from the road if I choose to.Do you like this kind of content? Should I do more solo episodes again just sharing my thoughts and expertise? Hit me up and tell me your thoughts! I'd love to know…
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Full transcript
00:00
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show!
00:05
What's up my Bloggy Friends?
00:24
Famous Alcicrat here and I am coming to you live from my car.
00:28
I'm pretty stoked about this because I want to talk to you guys about remote blogging.
00:34
So it may seem like a strange place to be recording a podcast episode, especially since
00:38
I am constantly telling everyone, if you're going to record a podcast, please get a professional
00:44
microphone and do it at home and all that good stuff.
00:48
But my plan is that I'm going to take this audio and put it into some sort of an AI program
00:53
to kind of eliminate the background noise so that it's a crystal clear sounding episode.
01:00
So hopefully in your ear holes it will still sound good.
01:04
That's the plan.
01:05
So hopefully it sounds good and if it doesn't I apologize but like I said I am recording
01:09
this on the road.
01:10
And the reason for that is because earlier this month, I'm recording this in August and
01:15
this is supposed to come out on September 1st, earlier this month we set out on a cross
01:21
country road trip.
01:22
The plan was to leave from our home in Kentucky to go up to New York.
01:26
I wanted to have a wonderful weekend in New York and in New Jersey because I am a K-pop
01:31
fan and Blackpink was going to be performing in New Jersey and so then the very next day
01:36
we were going to head over to New York and catch a Broadway musical.
01:41
So that's exactly what we did.
01:42
So we took off on a Wednesday and we went up north by way of Pennsylvania and Washington,
01:49
D.C.
01:50
I had never been to Washington, D.C. and I wanted to see the White House and the Capitol
01:54
and all those things.
01:55
So we went and saw all those things and we saw at Philadelphia I had a steak and cheese
02:01
because you don't call it a Philly steak and cheese when you're actually in Philadelphia.
02:04
I had a steak and cheese sandwich and then we went over to Maryland and had crabs in
02:10
Maryland and then we finally ended up in New Jersey.
02:14
So we got to see Blackpink, I'm a huge K-pop fan and we got to see Blackpink perform on
02:20
a Friday night.
02:25
And then the next day we went into New York and we got to see Wicked.
02:28
My husband has never seen Wicked.
02:30
I did see it whenever I was working with the Tampa Bay Bloggers.
02:34
I was fortunate enough to be given a ticket to watch the musical with my mother in Tampa
02:39
as part of their performing, like their tour of musicals.
02:44
And so we got to see it in Tampa but to see it live in New York there was just nothing
02:50
like it.
02:51
I mean the theater was amazing.
02:53
It was just, it was perfect.
02:56
And Blackpink in New Jersey live was everything I hoped it would be and more.
03:01
It was just a fantastic weekend.
03:02
We finished the weekend out and made our way towards Salem because I wanted to go to Salem,
03:08
Massachusetts to be where the witches were for my birthday and have dinner.
03:13
And unfortunately in the midst of getting there for my birthday a family incident occurred
03:18
and basically we had to haul back to Kentucky and it kind of thwarted our travel plans.
03:26
But nonetheless during the entire time that we were on the road, which was only about
03:30
a week even though we had planned on a 60 day road trip, on that entire plan, or excuse
03:36
me on that entire work week, it was still a work week.
03:39
Like the entire time we were traveling I was still able to work and that's what I'm so
03:43
jazzed about and why I want to talk about remote blogging.
03:47
Because the cool thing about blogging and writing for a living is that I can do it from
03:52
absolutely anywhere.
03:53
I have done it in hotels.
03:55
I have done it in hospital waiting rooms.
03:57
I have done it in Starbucks.
03:58
I've done it in McDonald's.
03:59
I've done it in so many different locations.
04:03
And I love the fact that I can work anywhere with wifi.
04:06
I love the fact that if I'm given an assignment as long as I can connect to the internet I
04:10
can do my research, write the post, and get it over to my client or onto my own website
04:16
depending on whether it's a sponsored post, an affiliate thing, or if I'm getting paid
04:21
by a client to write for their own, for their website.
04:25
And so that's what I want to talk about basically.
04:27
Remote blogging.
04:28
What is it?
04:29
How does it work?
04:30
What do you need to be able to do it?
04:32
And all those good things.
04:34
So I hope that you will enjoy this episode.
04:37
And again, like I said, I am recording from my car so I apologize if the audio is not
04:42
as great as it has been in previous episodes.
04:45
But I thought it would just really give you guys an idea of what it's like to work from
04:50
the road.
04:51
So let's dive into it.
04:53
Okay, so let's talk about the things that you're going to need if you want to start
04:59
remote blogging like I do.
05:01
You're definitely going to need a laptop.
05:03
I do know some people try to do this on their phone, but I don't know about you.
05:06
I have way too difficult of a time trying to type an entire article on my phone.
05:12
It's much easier for me to actually have a laptop.
05:14
The only exception to this would be if you have a tablet that you have a keyboard for.
05:20
Now most people don't.
05:22
And so if that is your situation that you don't have a keyboard for a tablet, then I
05:27
would again highly recommend that you use a laptop.
05:31
Other things that you're going to need are an internet connection.
05:34
Definitely need an internet connection because if you're having to submit articles on the
05:39
road or remotely, then you have to have a way that you can actually submit them to your
05:43
clients.
05:44
Other things that I use that aren't exactly necessary but that I highly recommend is I
05:50
do have a podcasting microphone that I can bring with me.
05:54
However, in this particular case, because I am mobile right now and since I don't have
06:02
access to my podcasting microphone, I have a microphone headset that is plugged into
06:08
my phone.
06:09
So that's one way that you can still keep recording or doing if you have interviews
06:15
that you have to do or client meetings, that kind of stuff.
06:20
So I would definitely recommend having either a podcasting microphone and headphones or
06:24
a headset that has both capabilities of headphones and microphone.
06:31
Now if you are going to be doing anything where you're going to have camera meetings
06:35
or excuse me, meetings with clients on camera, then obviously another thing you're going
06:40
to need is a webcam.
06:42
Now my laptop has a webcam built in but not everybody has that.
06:46
So if you don't have a webcam on your laptop or tablet, then you should definitely consider
06:53
investing in one of those.
06:55
So those are two additional things that you may not need.
06:58
They may not be absolutely necessary but I do find that they are very helpful in the
07:02
event that you are going to have to have client meetings or interviews or if you do podcasting
07:06
like I do.
07:08
So other things that I would recommend is basically mostly software.
07:11
So for all of the writing that I do, I use Google Doc.
07:14
I know some people use Microsoft Office products or even LibreOffice.
07:22
If you don't subscribe to purchasing those kinds of materials, you can use LibreOffice
07:28
which is an open source software that basically does a lot of the word processing and Excel
07:32
style sheets.
07:34
But the reason that I use Google Docs in place of it all is because I can access it remotely.
07:39
I can access it on the cloud.
07:40
It makes it really easy to submit articles to clients.
07:43
It makes it really easy to get work updates and to do collaborative editing.
07:51
So if I submit an article to a client, they can add comments directly in and then I can
07:55
go in and make those updates quickly.
07:58
And there have been some projects that I've been working on where I have real time editing
08:02
that needs to happen where I'm collaborating with someone on screen where we're talking
08:06
about the document and so we're able to work on it together in real time.
08:10
So that's why I choose to use Google Docs but you can use whatever works best for you
08:15
in your own needs.
08:18
So yeah, those are the big things is a tablet that has a keyboard or a laptop.
08:23
You definitely want to get internet connection of some kind and you can either use Wi-Fi
08:29
that you can connect to remotely or if you don't have any way to connect to Wi-Fi remotely
08:35
that I would definitely consider getting some sort of a mobile data plan to set up a hot
08:40
spot so you can do that remotely.
08:41
Other than that, that's really the only products that I use that I need whenever I am on the
08:47
road.
08:49
Now I do use my cell phone for things like taking pictures if I need to because there
08:53
are some clients that want me to take pictures while I'm on the road and so I sometimes will
08:57
do that.
08:58
But most of the time I just use like stock photo sites like Pexels or Pixabay.
09:04
I've also used Visual Hunt and Flickr so I'll leave a full list of resources and things
09:10
like that down in the description box if you're interested in that.
09:15
But those are the main things that I need whenever I am working remotely.
09:19
In terms of podcasting, now I do do some podcasting as well and so those kinds of products that
09:24
I use or the kinds of products that I use for podcasting include but really aren't limited
09:29
to I use Cast Magic to make quick work of doing show notes.
09:36
I use Descript whenever I want to get that studio sound or I have also used the Adobe
09:43
sound.
09:44
Oh goodness, I'm blanking on it.
09:48
I've used the Adobe Sound Enhance, the free AI that they have that removes all the background
09:55
noise and all the stuff that you don't want to be hearing whenever you're trying to listen
09:59
to a podcast.
10:00
I also have used that and other stuff I've used for podcasting is Audacity which I have
10:05
downloaded to my laptop.
10:09
Other products, honestly that's really it now that I'm thinking about it because I use
10:13
RSS.com as my podcast host and they also provide all of my transcripts to me for free and so
10:22
that's really all the products I use.
10:23
I don't really use anything other than that.
10:25
So those are the products that you need if you want to start doing podcasting and blogging
10:32
remotely.
10:33
Other stuff you may want to consider investing in if you haven't already is cloud storage.
10:39
Now I know that if you are a Google user you can get 15 gigabytes of data for free if you
10:47
have a Gmail account but you can also pay additional fees to get even more storage.
10:53
So those are the Reader's Digest versions of the things that I strongly recommend having
10:57
if you are podcasting and blogging on the go.
11:01
Next let's get into how I get my clients.
11:07
That is a common question I get pretty regularly.
11:11
People ask me this all the time especially if they're newly fired or newly looking for
11:17
a new thing to do.
11:18
They're trying to start the side hustle of beginning to be a writer, that kind of thing.
11:22
I get this question all the time, well how do you find people that want to hire you?
11:26
The reality is that when I began I was working for newspapers and magazines before blogging
11:32
and so what I started doing is I literally reached out to every person that I found that
11:38
was in newspapers and magazines and asked them if I could write for them.
11:43
The reality of that though is that these days that won't work.
11:47
If you do a cold pitch all you're going to do is annoy somebody.
11:50
It's not like the old days where you could call someone up on the phone and say hey I
11:55
saw you write cool stuff and I want to write for you too.
11:58
Unfortunately it just doesn't work like that anymore.
12:01
So these days what I do when I'm looking for clients is I start looking for their content.
12:06
I start looking for the kind of content that I want to write.
12:08
I will really go through all the different websites that I normally engage with and I
12:14
start actually engaging with the writers.
12:16
I will repost the stuff that they're writing about.
12:20
I will comment on it with actually good comments.
12:23
So what's a good comment?
12:24
A good comment is something more than a little sentence that says hey this was a great post.
12:30
Instead I will say what I liked about the post, what I enjoyed reading, why I think
12:36
it was so good and I give like a thoughtful response rather than just a two sentence hey
12:43
this was cool you should write more.
12:46
Because the truth is if you start putting those kinds of comments on people's websites
12:51
they can tell that you don't really care that you're not actually engaging with the content.
12:56
Even if you did read the whole thing if you write something so simple like a great stuff
13:02
or great content or your website should be seen more people don't believe that you're
13:07
an authentic commenter.
13:10
So you want to really start engaging with the content and I would say you need to be
13:14
regularly engaging with people.
13:17
I'd honestly I feel like you know that whole thing where you have to see someone seven
13:21
times before they want to buy from you.
13:23
I would say you need to be engaging with them for a couple of weeks maybe even a month.
13:28
Engage with them on Twitter engage with them or excuse me not Twitter X now RIP Twitter.
13:33
You need to engage with them on LinkedIn engage with them on social media from and engage
13:37
with them on Facebook engage with them on Instagram all the things and yes I know it's
13:43
going to take time.
13:48
It's going to take time and I mean that's the unfortunate truth about it is if you're
13:51
trying to get quick money it's not always going to be as easy especially if you want
13:57
specific things that you're writing for.
13:59
So while you can go on to a website like Fiverr or Upwork and start you know doing the pitches
14:05
and doing all those things if you're trying to get the type of writing content that you
14:10
really really are jazzed about I would honestly say that it's better to start engaging with
14:16
websites directly because not only do you show that you really care about the person
14:21
who's writing this stuff or the website owner that is putting this kind of content online
14:27
you'll probably get higher rates.
14:30
You'll probably be able to actually get a person an actual contact that you can engage
14:36
with that you can communicate with because here's the thing a lot of people don't really
14:41
talk about this very much they just talk about well if you go on Fiverr and you go on Upwork
14:44
you make you can make money and yes that is true but the both of those websites although
14:50
I have used both of them and I do admit that both of them are awesome to be able to quickly
14:55
start hitting the round running and getting clips both of those sites take a big commission
15:00
from you for example Fiverr I think still takes 20% of whatever you make and Upwork
15:06
they take 20% until you reach a certain amount of money with each client so I will say that
15:12
I'm at the point now where one of my clients is still on Upwork and I am still making really
15:16
decent money with them but you know it's important to think about how much money you're going
15:22
to be enjoying at the end of the day and that's why I do like working with clients directly
15:27
when I can so that's kind of what I would say is if you're trying to do it quickly and
15:32
you don't care about the content that you're writing sure go for all of those freelance
15:36
websites and bust your hump and write as much as you can get as many clips as you can all
15:41
that good stuff but I kind of feel like the the better approach is to actually engage
15:46
with someone and read their content get get used to talking with them engaging with them
15:52
and trying to form relationships because that's the big thing that keeps coming up every time
15:56
I talk to different website owners is that they want to actually build relationships
16:00
with the people that they are working with and so most of the clients that I have nowadays
16:04
are people that I have been working with for a long time or they were referred or I was
16:10
referred to them from a client that I've been working with and so yes I do recognize that
16:15
that's you know something that over time you'll have to just start doing is building a network
16:21
and not everybody can do that right out the gate and it did take me a long time I'm not
16:25
going to say to you that I was making full-time income right away it took me a really long
16:29
time to build up to the level of clients that I have now where I can comfortably earn an
16:35
income and you know pay my bills so there was a lot of times where I had to take side
16:40
hustles I had to take side gigs I had to do some writing that I didn't want to some writing
16:45
that I was really grateful was ghostwriting because I didn't want anyone to know that
16:48
it was mine in the first place but all the while I was continuing to put things on my
16:53
own website continuing to reach out to people continuing to try to build my network and
16:58
that's something that if you really are serious about doing remote blogging you're going to
17:02
have to start doing so that's that's kind of the Reader's Digest version of let me take
17:08
that back that's the long-winded answer to how I find my clients and I will leave some
17:13
I'll leave some stuff in the show notes some resources about how to find clients if you're
17:19
looking for them and there's definitely some people that you should follow if you're trying
17:23
to become a remote blogger yourself for example some of the people that I follow that I absolutely
17:28
love is Alexander Fasulo she's known as the Fiverr Millionaire she's also known as the
17:33
Freelance Fairy she has some amazing content that you can get for free about how to be
17:37
a freelance writer that works from anywhere create and go is another amazing resource
17:43
that you can find all kinds of stuff about how to be a blogger and I will say this I
17:47
know that a lot of people they want to start immediately like buying all these courses
17:52
and doing all these things but try to consume as much free content as you can first because
17:58
the whole point of trying to make money in remote blog is that you want to actually make
18:02
money not be spending money and I don't want you to get into the cycle that many people
18:07
that I see get into which is what I like to call procrastinal learning I learned I learned
18:12
that that phrase from Denise Duffield Thomas I talk about her a lot I absolutely love this
18:18
woman she's my money mentor I'm in her money boot camp I read all her books I love this
18:22
woman so much so she talks about it procrastinating and procrastinating learning where instead
18:27
of doing the things that you need to do that actually move the needle in your business
18:31
you waste a bunch of time learning stuff or planning stuff instead of actually doing the
18:37
things you need to do so I'll leave in the show notes some more people that you should
18:41
be following if you want to learn how they go about doing it because I know that I'm
18:45
not just the only person who is looking for clients or has built up a network obviously
18:51
there's there's hundreds of thousands of us across the United States but the people
18:55
that I really admire and then I think that you should follow I will leave in the show
18:59
notes so the next thing I want to get into is challenges that I had while trying to remote
19:07
work remote blog and I'm sure that you can already guess that the number one thing is
19:11
when the internet goes out that is the absolute worst thing that happens because when you
19:16
can't get online you can't do your work and so I always try to give myself buffers anywhere
19:21
that I can for example if someone gives me an assignment I try to instill a three three
19:27
business day rule where they have to give me three full business days to write the piece
19:33
and the reason that I do that is because if I am on the road or if anything is going on
19:37
in my life or if I already have a very full queue I don't want people to think they can
19:42
get instant access to me or that they can get instant writing done from me I do offer
19:47
rush fees if there's you know extenuating circumstances where someone really needs to
19:52
get something immediately but for the most part the reason I give myself that three day
19:57
window is because you never know what's going to be going on so that's that's a big challenge
20:02
that I would highly recommend you you set boundaries for so it's kind of like my solution
20:06
to said challenge another challenge that has come up is where the client doesn't want to
20:13
give me the information about what exactly it is they're looking for and the solution
20:17
to that is really just you've got to communicate you've got to tell them you know hey if you
20:22
want me to write this piece and you want me to write it well we need to talk about it
20:26
we need to talk about exactly what it is you want how you want me to do it give me the
20:30
keywords you're looking for give me the resources that you want me to use as my research that
20:35
kind of thing so it's really all about communicating other things that have gone wrong but and
20:41
this is usually when I'm not writing on Google Docs and I say that because that's really
20:45
the only time that that it has happened this is when I'm not using Google Docs when I'm
20:50
using word on my laptop I have actually had entire articles completely disappear now granted
20:57
I know that that can be mitigated by hitting save often but let's face it when you're on
21:02
a roll and you're excited about what you're writing it is far too easy to forget to hit
21:07
the save button and that's the other reason I love writing on Google Docs is that auto
21:11
saves as I'm writing so that's another reason I would just say like if you want to be a
21:16
writer please for the love of all things holy use Google Docs or some kind of an online
21:23
word processing program that is automatically saving as you're writing because there's nothing
21:27
worse than writing an amazing article only to forget to save it accidentally close it
21:32
and then you've lost it all or your computer shuts down and you can't get it back I mean
21:37
I know there's auto save and things like that but it does happen and it has happened to
21:41
me and I don't want it to happen to you another thing that's happened and I it goes back to
21:47
making sure you're communicating with your clients is you have to find out what time
21:52
zone they're in so if you think you have until midnight Eastern Standard Time to submit something
21:58
but they were expecting it you know some other time like let's say they're in India and they're
22:03
12 hours ahead of you or whatever you need to know what time zone they're in so that's
22:07
another thing just about communicating because I actually do have some clients that are in
22:11
other countries and so if I don't know what time they're expecting to either meet with
22:15
me on zoom to discuss stuff or they don't know or we don't have a firm grasp on what
22:21
we were both thinking in terms of when I'm going to submit something it can cause them
22:25
conflict and the last thing you want is to piss a client off because of the fact that
22:29
you guys didn't have your ducks in a row so that's just some of the challenges and solutions
22:34
and I'm sure there's more that I'm not thinking of so what I'd like you to do is if you have
22:38
some questions about remote blogging and I didn't address them in this in this episode
22:44
please tweet me at Ashley is famous or find me on Instagram or Facebook I'm at famous
22:50
Ashley Grant on both of those and if you have questions about you know anything related
22:55
to remote blogging I would love to answer them because I get I get a kick out of helping
22:59
people and and I want to help people in any way that I can and I'm sure that there's a
23:03
lot that's going to come to me as soon as I'm finished recording and so as that happens
23:07
I will add some stuff to the show notes all my show notes are going to be available at
23:12
famous Ashley Grant calm back flush podcast and you'll look for the bloggy friend show
23:17
on that link and just find the episode all about remote blogging and you can find everything
23:22
that you possibly want to know that I'm going to be sharing and updating as time goes on
23:27
so I hope this was helpful I know it was a little bit meals and it's a little awkward
23:32
that it was you know being done remotely but I was trying to be authentic and show you
23:36
guys you know all about what really goes on in my life so I really hope you found this
23:43
helpful and if you did please feel free to share with friends and if you didn't give
23:48
me give me a tweet tell me why tell me what I missed tell me what you'd want to hear
23:52
and I really hope that more of you consider looking for remote positions and things that
23:57
you can do because the the truth is nobody should be loyal to any company they should
24:02
only be loyal to themselves because if I've learned anything from being laid off from
24:07
different positions over the years it's that a company will fire you faster than a heart
24:12
attack so they don't care about you they care about their bottom lines and it's sad but
24:18
it's true but we have to keep that in mind and I just hope that more people will start
24:23
you know choosing themselves in fact that's a book that I'm going to leave in the show
24:27
notes choose yourself by James Altucher it's one of the big reasons that I decided that
24:31
I wanted to work for myself and have clients so that I have to be fired like eight times
24:36
before I lose all my income completely another book that I'm going to leave in the show notes
24:40
is the Suitcase Entrepreneur by Natalie Sisson it's a fantastic book that I highly recommend
24:46
it's kind of what got me jazzed about the idea of working from anywhere with Wi-Fi and
24:51
finally the books I will also leave in the show notes are Get Rich Lucky Bitch and Chill
24:57
preneur by Denise Duffield Thomas it's great if you want to learn about mindset in business
25:02
and learn the more chill way to prosper so I really enjoyed this episode I hope you did
25:08
too and I look forward to the next one and I will talk to you guys real soon.
25:12
Well my bloggy friends I hope you enjoyed all the insights our guests had to share with
25:16
you to get the show notes for this and all episodes go over to famousashleygrant.com
25:21
backslash podcast and until next time may your page fees be high and your balance right
25:26
below.
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