Episode 10Apr 1, 2021· 20:37
Happy Birthday Bloggy Friends Show and 10 Lessons Learned From 10 Episodes
▸ Show notes from the creator
What’s up you guys! Famous Ashley Grant here, and I’m excited to welcome you to the birthday episode of this show. Yep! My bloggy friends show is officially 1 year old today. And, of course, I HAD to release this episode on April 1 because that’s when it started...April Fool’s Day. This is also the 10th episode of the show. Join me as I share 10 lessons learned from working on 10 episodes of the Bloggy Friends Show.
More Show Notes From This Episode:
What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show notes for this and every episode of The Bloggy Friends Show. My new home base for all things Bloggy Friends can be found here: https://www.famousashleygrant.com/podcast/
Be sure to follow me on social:Facebook |Instagram |Twitter |LinkedIn
About this episode
What’s up you guys! Famous Ashley Grant here, and I’m excited to welcome you to the birthday episode of this show. Yep! My bloggy friends show is officially 1 year old today. And, of course, I HAD to release this episode on April 1 because that’s when it started...April Fool’s Day. This is also the 10th episode of the show. Join me as I share 10 lessons learned from working on 10 episodes of the Bloggy Friends Show.…
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Show notes & timestamps
00:15Happy Birthday Bloggy Friends Show!
01:32How I got here and what I'm sharing in this episode
04:33Lesson 1 - The fear is still there
05:54Lesson 2 - You have to make a plan
07:13Lesson 3 - Equipment matters
10:49Lesson 4 - Batching is critical for consistency
11:45Lesson 5 - Repurposing is awesome
12:21Lesson 6 - I want a studio
13:36Lesson 7 - This is a lot of work
14:17Lesson 8 - I want to monetize
16:29Lesson 9 - I'm glad I committed to 10
17:24Lesson 10 - I've got a lot more work to do!
Full transcript
00:02
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends Show. What's up, you guys? Famous Ashley Grant here, and I'm so excited today to welcome you to the birthday episode of this show. Yep, my Bloggy Friends Show is officially a year old today. Woo! Of course, I had to release this episode on April 1st because that's when this crazy thing started is April Fool's Day. This is also the 10th episode of the show. You know, it's kind of funny. I had these lofty goals when I first started about a year ago, and that was that I was going to release an episode every single Friday. I was going to go big or I was going to go home. And then just like the rest of the world, I was told to stay at home like a lot. And things got weird.
00:56
My business got busy. My life got hectic. And then, like any sane person would do, I decided, hey, why not uproot my life of 35 years living in Florida and move to Kentucky in the dead of winter? Because that's normal, right? Well, needless to say, as I'm sure you can guess, a lot of my goals for this show and my website and for my life in general kind of took a backseat to everything that was going on around me. And while I still have huge dreams for my podcasting future, I think I'm just going to start taking things one step at a time and not put so much pressure on myself. So in this birthday episode, what I wanted to do is kind of share 10 lessons from working on 10 podcast episodes. I don't know. 10's always been a really cool number for me. On 10 -10 -10, I started Tampa Bay Freebies, and that was like my first venture into the blogging world where I was doing something that was my own. And it
01:49
kind of took off. It did really well. and then it got attacked by hackers and that really sucked and I lost access to it. And, you know, I kind of kept going though. I kept doing some sort of blogging in some way, shape or form. And I've been doing this for goodness. 2007 is when I started doing the professional writing and 2009 is when I started blogging. 2011 is when I started going pro. And it's kind of crazy how far things have come. But the truth is, I can't believe that this is the 10th episode of this show. Like, I can't even fathom the fact that at this point, I've released 10 episodes of my bloggy friend show when it feels like just yesterday was April 1st. And yet at the same time, it also feels like that was 10 years ago. Am I alone in this coronavirus? How many people have said that March 2020 was 14 years ago whenever it's really only been a year? It's insane. But yeah, so the crazy
02:47
thing is that I have wanted to do this show or some form of the bloggy show for years. I've been talking about it since I bought the domain in October 2016. And I've been talking about that idea even longer than that. In fact, when I was working on an article for GoDaddy, I just kind of, said the phrase bloggy friends after I went to my very first blogging conference at BlogHer Chicago. And I was like, oh my goodness, I want more bloggy friends. And I kind of kept saying that, that I wanted more bloggy friends.
03:17
And so I bought the domain and then it sat dormant for a long time. And then even whenever I did start posting to it, I didn't even keep up with it regularly because, I don't know, life happens. So I announced my master plans for the website in March 2017. And then I posted 30 conference must -haves for your next blogging conference in 2018. And then I think I only posted like three times in 2019. And you can check out the post if you're interested at bloggyfriends .com.
03:45
Anyway, all the while I have maintained a vision for this website and for this space. And I wanted it to be a place to talk about life as a blogger, spotlight people that are in the content creation industry, and kind of showcase blogging vendors. basically share all the news of the blogosphere. And the crazy thing is what held me back for so long was fear. And I said it. It plagued me. It plagued me and kept me from doing anything fun with this website and finally launching a podcast. And now that I finally have launched, guess what? I'm still scared. I still have a lot of fear around this. And even though I've posted show notes and as blog posts for the last, you know, nine episodes and 10 now, including this one, let's dive into the lessons that I have learned in this last year. And maybe you can glean something from it. And if not, well, hopefully you'll still be entertained and maybe
04:34
learn something. So let's get into it. 10 lessons learned from releasing 10 podcast episodes. And I already said the first one, and that is that the fear still exists. Every single time I sit down with this microphone and I hit record, I still get scared. I sweat bullets the whole time while I'm recording. And then I get even more scared when I hit publish and have to share it. You know, that's actually one of the bad things about being scared is that whenever you post something and then you kind of don't want to tell anyone about it, it's like you start doing all these different things and you're, you know, like, oh, you know, I was working on this assignment and this assignment. But, and by the way, I also have this podcast if you kind of want to listen to it, but I haven't really promoted it much because I'm still scared. And, you know, they say that's normal. And even Ruth Suckup from...
05:23
Live Well, Spend Less, and the Elite Blogging Academy, she wrote a book called Do It Scared. And I totally get it now. I totally get why even when you're scared, you should keep going. Because if you keep putting out something, even though you're afraid, you know, it won't change the fact that you're afraid, but you'll kind of feel a little bit better about it. And hopefully... you know create something cool and I haven't created exactly what I want yet but I'm still learning and anyone who's here on this journey with me you're kind of getting to come along in the passenger seat and we'll see what happens next the second lesson I've learned from releasing or working on 10 episodes is everyone was right about the importance of making a plan Before I recorded a single episode, I sat down and I brainstormed a very rough layout of my vision for the first like 40 episodes or so of this show. And I even sat down and I wrote out all
06:19
the people I want to interview, even my dream interviewees, like people that would probably say no and have no idea who the heck this person is, this crazy person who's calling herself famous Ashley Grant. But yet I wanted to create a list that was so insane that if I did get at least one person on that list, it would be like, wow, I've made it. Either way, I brainstormed a very rough layout of the vision. And I did this even though, in my mind, I had only committed to 10 episodes. Because whenever I first created the...
06:51
decision to go ahead and launch, even though I was still scared. I was like, all right, I'm going to just do 10. I'm just going to do 10. And doing so helped me to know exactly what I would talk about every single time I sat down to record. And even though I still have to do a lot of research and prepare for each episode, the fact that I at least had a rough idea of what the first like 40 episodes or whatever was going to be, it made me feel at least a little bit more confident to keep moving forward and do something. So number three, the equipment you have actually does matter. Believe it or not, the first four episodes that I released of this podcast, they were done with a gamer headset. And a ghostwriting client of mine who believes in me, they were nice enough to sponsor the cost of a legit podcast microphone for me.
07:37
And it was a big win -win for both myself and the client because I got a nifty podcasting microphone for the Bloggy Friends show, and he got better sounding quality on the episodes and videos that I was recording for him. And I've been doing YouTube and podcasts for this client outside of the work I'm doing on this website and this podcast for a while. And I got to tell you guys, it's been a lot of fun learning different aspects of the podcasting industry. Like I had no idea that there's so many jobs in podcasting right now. Did you know that there are? Like I didn't even know this existed. Like I got hired this year to write show notes for a podcast in the running niche. I don't know anything about running, but I've been writing a lot of stuff about running.
08:17
And I've been recording YouTube videos and then stripping the audio to release his podcast episodes for a podcast hosting company. And you can also get work doing things like producing podcasts, managing social media for podcasts, and even being the voice of a podcast for different people that run them. One of my bloggy friends, he actually recently just hired a whole bunch of freelancers to be the voice of his shows. He does all the research. He does all the lineup of the guests.
08:43
He schedules the interviews. They just show up and they do the interviews for the show and they're the voice of the show. And then another freelancer takes all that audio. They edit it. They add in the intro, the outro, and voila, they have an instant podcast. It's kind of crazy just how much just in this last year that the podcasting community has grown. It seems like it just keeps blowing up. And it's kind of funny because I remember back when blogging was still. kind of new. And people started talking about the different jobs that you could get with blogging. And it was like, what? Like, it's just a person sitting at their computer writing out their ideas. But in 2014, whenever I started ghost blogging, I was like, whoa, there really is a lot more things you can do with a blog. And it's the same track we're seeing with podcasting. And, you know, some people are talking about now, like for podcasting
09:36
is video the way of the future. Maybe, maybe not. But either way, it's kind of neat to see just how much I don't know if it's the pandemic or just the fact that people have had more time to start working on their dream podcast, but... podcasting is really blowing up. Whenever I went to podcast movement in 2019, there were still, I think, just around a million podcasts that were out. And now that number is almost 2 million.
10:02
And that's insane that, you know, it's blown up that much. There are celebrities doing it. We've got Obama has his own podcast. We've got Michelle Obama has her own podcast. And there's all kinds of exclusive podcasts that are on Spotify and things like that. And it's kind of wild to just see how it keeps you know, growing up. But anyway, that was a long -winded way to say that your equipment actually does matter. Who knew?
10:27
You can get free editing software and you can use the computer that you already have, but you really have to have a good microphone. And personally, I've been using the Blue Yeti microphone and I honestly cannot imagine going back to a gamer headset now that I've heard the difference in the audio quality. I still use a gamer headset for like listening to it, but in terms of for the actual recording of the audio. I love my blue Yeti. It's absolutely awesome. All right.
10:54
So number four, the fourth thing I have learned in working on 10 episodes is that batching is critical for consistency. And I got to say, I regret not recording all 10 episodes at once or at least five, at least five, because if I had done that and scheduled them for release, maybe then I would have been. you know, a little more consistent. Like I keep like I keep telling people that you got to be consistent. And I'm really bad about being consistent. And it's why when it came time to release my fifth episode, I actually didn't have one that week. And then a family situation took away from my time took me away from the office. And when I plan to record I couldn't make up the time, and next thing I knew, my self -designated release date came and left, and then life got weird again, and it became far too easy to just keep pushing off week to week, you know, and then all of a sudden it was month to month, and suddenly any momentum I could
11:45
have gained immediately disappeared. The fifth thing I've learned is that I do love this medium and repurposing content. It's been a lot of fun already. It's great that I can just speak and bam, I've got content. Then I transcribe my episodes and they become my blog posts. They become my social media updates and I can use the text to create short video clips too. And I've only done the blog posts so far and a couple of social media updates here and there using my own show notes. But I really like the idea of being able to sit down and research and record one thing that has the potential to yield content for multiple platforms. I think that's really cool. The sixth thing I've learned is that I really do want to build a designated podcasting and video space in my home. I will say this. I am sitting here right now at my kitchen table in my dining room.
12:38
And what I really want is an actual studio. I think that'd be really neat to have. And although I've released a handful of my one image videos of my podcast, I want to actually film myself on video for YouTube. I think that'd be a lot of fun to create different types of videos that are related to blogging and the platform. And I've learned a lot over this past year. And I know I have a better chance of getting more viewers on my episode. if they're visual and audio instead of just audio. And while it's clear that YouTube is a visual platform, many people have convinced me that one image videos were all I needed to repurpose my content from podcasts or excuse me, as a podcast on YouTube. And I see now that I would much prefer to have my face on camera so the audience can see me and hear me. And I confess this makes me go back to lesson number one, that the fear is there. And I confess this
13:29
has me so nervous, but I feel like it'll be better for the ultimate goals of my show, my show, my show and my website. Number seven, podcasting is a lot of work. Yet another thing people were right about, they kept telling me podcasting is not something you just do on a whim. It's another big reason I kept putting off recording new episodes, scheduling out several hours to write out what I want to say, record and then edit and then post. It's just like blogging.
13:58
It's a lot of time and it's a lot of energy and it all, you know, goes into something that you may or may not get paid for. And I'm working a lot more with my husband now in my business and we're discussing plans for things like, you know, outsourcing and batching. and coming up with better systems and processes. But for now, like I said earlier, we're taking things one step at a time. Number eight, I want to monetize my efforts. All right, this goes back to lesson number seven. This is a lot of work. And I don't know about you, but if I'm going to put a lot of effort into something, I don't want it to just be a hobby unless I'm, you know. Like, okay, crafting. I love crafting and I don't want to necessarily monetize that. But something like this that's supposed to be part of my business, I want to figure out how I can make this into something that's a successful venture that I can keep doing and keep working on, but actually
14:48
monetize it. I'm not quite sure what I mean by this yet. Like, I don't know how I would monetize it. But in order for it to make sense to keep producing episodes, I've got to find some sort of a monetization plan to put in place. I'm journaling and I'm dreaming and planning what the best steps for me will be to take. But who knows? I might just plan or I might just pull all the current content down at some point and start all over again. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. But I know that I need to make a certain amount of money in my business for podcasting to make sense in my overall plans. In fact, I know several of my blogging friends have completely stopped podcasting for that very reason. They couldn't figure out how to make it make sense in terms of ROI in their businesses. start. Other people are doubling down on podcasting simply because they're figuring out how to use it to
15:36
make more money. One of my bloggy friends, he's doing something that I think is pretty brilliant. He's using every podcast he produces as his means to find new clients. So what he'll do is he only interviews CEOs. Like that's his big shtick is he interviews CEOs. So he goes and he finds a way to get in touch with the CEOs of all these big companies that he wants to work with. And by coming to them with a... I interview you instead of a cold pitch, it gives him a foot in the door to possibly get another client out of it, which I think is kind of cool. And this could just mean turning this podcast into an experimental research lab for coming up with better blog content.
16:15
Or it could be a lead generator for my own day job as a ghost blogger. I figure at this point anything's possible and I'm not rolling anything out, but I'm just going to try to figure out how I can monetize my podcasting journey as I go along. Number nine. I'm glad I committed to 10 so I would just launch already. So the fear held me back for years. I've said that a couple times now. And committing to just 10 episodes felt a lot less scary than saying, oh, I'm going to be a lifelong podcaster. In my mind, I thought of it as an experiment and it calmed the fears just enough to get started. And I accepted that I might hate the first 10 episodes and that if they sucked, I could just move on knowing it was simply an experiment. So what I would encourage you to do is if you're thinking about starting your own pod, podcast, commit to a small number.
17:03
Like one of the things that I would recommend is if you're going to go with a podcast host that's free or at least free for your first episode, just commit to one. Just try one. Now that's not to say that you should go out and buy a bunch of equipment if you're only going to release one episode, but just give it a try and see what you think about it. And if you like it, keep going. And if not, well, it only costs you a little bit of time. Number 10 and the most important crazy lesson that I have learned in working on these 10 episodes is I've got a lot more work to do to make my visions for my business and my life a reality. I've got a lot more work cut out for myself. And like I said, I'm journaling.
17:38
I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming about the future and trying to figure out where I want to go from here. So I'm publicly committing to 10 more episodes right now because if I don't do it, I won't do it. Though I've not moved as fast as I want to, I can see the potential here for something great. And you know those moments where you kind of feel like you've been working towards something? I'm in that space right now, and I'm really not sure where all this is taking me, but I'm hopeful and I'm excited for the future, wherever it's going. So there you have it. That is my... The big 10 lessons that I have learned from working on 10 episodes of the Bloggy Friends show. I can't believe that it's already been a full year.
18:17
It's been a whirlwind of a year. I mean, not just for me, but for everyone. And I've learned a lot. And I know I've got a lot more to learn. And I'm grateful to everyone who has said kind things about the show. The feedback I've been given, even though I haven't released that many episodes, I really appreciate all the comments, the messages. It's all been so special to me. And I love how amazing. the podcasting community is. And I'm also grateful to places like rss.com podcasting for the content they share about how to start a podcast. I highly recommend their blog if you're looking for some solid podcasting advice. And if you need a podcasting host, I've personally been a subscriber of theirs for a year now, and I can't say enough great things about them. And they're one of the people that you can actually start your podcast for free.
19:00
You can release your first episode completely free without even giving them your credit card information. And then after you release your first episode, if you do want to release a second one, then it's only like $99 a year after that. Or if you're a student or a teacher with a .edu email address, you can actually get half off of those fees. And RSS also has plans for nonprofit organizations. Now, they aren't paying me to say any of this, but in full disclosure, no FCC violations here. I am a brand ambassador for them. And I love that their mission is to give every podcaster a voice. And I love working with them. And I think they're the best option for anyone who's thinking about starting a podcast.
19:35
Okay, so that was a lot. But I look forward to releasing even more episodes and coming up with more ideas and sharing more of what I'm learning here with you. In the meantime, you can always find me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more as Famous Ashley Grant. And I am a LinkedIn open networker. So if you want to add me there, I'd be happy to have more bloggy friends on my miscellaneous platforms. So let's be bloggy friends.
19:58
I would love to connect with you. Until the next episode, may your page views be high and your bounce rate be low.