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