A new year, a new spirit
Hello my WA family!
Here's my Monday muses for the first Monday of 2022.
Woke up this morning and asking myself this question. Why does it take something NEW to give us a NEW SPIRIT in life? Like a new year for instance. Well, at least for me it does!
Time is all we have, I was thinking. Every day, hours, minutes and seconds that we lose, they are time that will never be recovered. Yes, so I pondered as I sat on my bed and staring at my cat in the room. Or rather he was staring at me. So back to time. Yes, we need to use it carefully but I know it's really hard for most of us. It takes discipline and time to organise our living space, our schedule around our daily physical activities and our relationship-building with people around us - families, friends, vendors, customers and really, the list goes on.
There is so much to do to build up an affiliate marketing business! WA has kept my interest since I joined in September 2021. Yes, I get sometimes flustered because this new affiliate marketing business requires time as it is truly, just like any other businesses that I have started before! It requires time, resources and efforts. Period. Anyone who said lesser, I would doubt their integrity to tell the truth!
Approaching 2022, I had drawn up a list on how I can manage my time better. Yes, I am a to-do-list person. Always listing things everyday. I was adding two new things to my already packed list of things to do in a day! The 2 things are :-
(1) WA training(2) WA research & development.
I am not even near the marketing part yet. Probably in another month? But I have learnt that I cannot rush into them. So (1) and (2) are now part of my life and they have entered into my coveted to-do-list!
I have officially two other businesses to take care of, so they need to be looked after too. As there are many people involve in those businesses, it can get really draggy. People = Time. So you can imagine, how I am looking forward to spending more time to myself with just affiliate marketing in the coming years. Less people = More time. Such are the equations in life. Not that I don't enjoy the face to face interactions (over zoom now), but really, I am finding meetings a drag.
So, WA is officially my 3rd business! And I made it known to family members, though not to friends yet. For me, adding one more business will be sufficiently enough as I don't think I have anymore room to spare. Upon hindsight, I had squeezed recording of a podcast series into my daily to-do-list by accident towards the end of 2021.
I started a new children's podcast series (not-for-profit) for fun and relaxation on 19 Nov of 2021 (now it is in the 118th episode and I have gained listeners from at least 12 countries which I am contented with). The podcast spins off to Youtube videos that had been so therapeutic to make. I spend about half-hour to do this daily. So, this kept me motivated too. Unlike Wordpress learning, which seems to take a steeper learning curve than a podcast creation, learning Wordpress requires structure and content creation too which is why I think it takes a longer to be skillful at.
My WA website development have stalled for 2 days as there were so many celebrating to do towards the coming of the new year and reflecting on all new things learned in 2021.
So capping 2021 for me was coming across Kyle in WA then signing up to learn more about Affiliate Marketing, how to work with Wordpress, then it was learning about Cryptocurrencies & NFT, getting deft with using Canva on Mobile, Podcasting using Anchor.fm, Making better videos using Filmora and Canva (though I personally love Filmora but love how Canva has grown over the years), the two crazy guys from BlasterSuite whom I really love for their apps, motivational gurus like Tom Bilyeu,Gary Vee and so many new others! I also started a Keto lifestyle in July with Intermittent fasting and One Meal a Day which made me lose 12kg in 3 months and I completed a year long study towards a certification of something which means the world to me! Business wise, family business did better in sales than its previous years because I ran more email campaigns and started to refresh product content with YouTube videos and restarted social media marketing. So, 2021 had seen many personal achievements for me and my hubby. And I hope 2022 will be more, with WA business in tow.
Now that we are all into the new year and it's Monday, the first Monday of 2022, it is time to roll up the sleeve and get moving!
I am excited for this new year and I wish everyone the same too! It's time to break new grounds and roll with the punches!
Cheers and Happy New Year!
~Rah
Recent Comments
8
Love your outlook and energy
Congratulations on your podcast success
Tell.me more about it
How long did it take to get it off the ground?
And to acquire your first listener
What are the type of equipment needed to start up
All excited to hear your response
Hi Simone - I'm excited that you are interested to know more!
So, here is my long reply. Bear with me.
I absolutely 100 percent, just use my Samsung Note10 mobile phone to do my podcast series!
From recording, to adding the music, to creating the cover design, to writing the sypnosis for each episode and publishing it. All these, using the phone only.
I believe ANY mobile phone will work! It's really simple. I took one of the children story book as content. So, I really don't have to think of content except to quote the author's name and publisher and getting the audience to go support her by buying her book online! I don't get commission out of doing this, mind you. It's my first podcast attempt, so the journey has been a learning journey as an intention before I start a professinal podcast. So far, I have spent zero dollars on getting my podcast out.
One episode is just about 3 to 4 minutes long. And I usually spent about 5-10 mins to get one episode out. Mostly it is 5 minutes from recording to publishing if i have my episode design covers prepared in advance and downloaded already on my phone's photo gallery. I rarely repeat an episode unless it is a major blunder made while doing the recording. So, I"m not bothered with my cat mewing next to me or the sound coming off from turning the pages. I even recorded a few episodes while waiting for my hubby in the car. I wanted to make it as authentic. And most important, I wanted to spend as little time on this activity as I have other businesses to look after.
You can download the Anchor app which is a podcast app and then start recording on your phone. After recording, you have the option to add background music, then update the episode details and hit publish. There is a design cover that you can do if you want to and you can use Canva for that. I did the design on my mobile phone as Canva is so user friendly these days. Anchor and Spotify are like brother and sister. When you record on the Anchor app on your phone and publish your episode, it will automatically publish to Spotify. There is an RSS feed link from the Anchor app also. So, I also add these links to google podcast, apple podcast and I think a few other podcast platforms. So whenever I publish my podcast from anchor, it broadcast to the other platforms too.
Initially, I started to inform friends of my podcast and ask them to listen and share with other friends with children between age of 7 onwards. I pass to them the Spotify link as most people that I know uses Spotify. I also created youtube videos by combining 12 episodes into one video.I added the cover photos from each episode and also moving animation using Filmora effects. The number of views from my YouTube video is really pathetic. I have not put in place the tricks to push up the video to first page of Google. I know it can be done but I learned it only after I have uploaded the 3 videos so it was a bit too late. But my 4th video, I will likely put in the keywords and see if the magic will happen. I thought if I put my podcast on YouTube I will get international listeners. But I think which works best is to send the RSS links to as many other podcast platforms.
Last analytics checked on Anchor, showed I have 67% of listeners from Spotify, 18% on Anchor, 8% on Apple Podcast and 6% on others. 92% are female listeners and listeners are in the order of 88% from Singapore, 7% Belgium followed by US, Iraq, India, Thailand, Pakistan, Tunisia, Belarus, UK and Barbados. But really the number of listeners are small, only slightly close to 600 listeners have started listening and I have 32 followers only.
When I had reached my 110th episode, my husband gifted me on our wedding anniversary last week with an Audio-Technica cardioid condenser microphone! I thought that was funny because I was expecting a diamond ring!
Anyway, I appreciated him very much for doing this. I doubt he listens to my podcast but he knew I was just busy doing podcast for children, (and maybe adults too who think they are children).
Hubby wanted to support my activity, so he will do whatever to keep his wife happy and not hassle him too much by asking to go out for a walk. I tried using the condenser mic, connecting it to my mobile phone cos I prefer to use Anchor on App rather than its desktop version as I find that it is really slow using Anchor's podcast app on their website!
So, you can use microphone to do your recording but mobile phone technology is so advanced now that I find little difference between using my mobile phone for recording and the professional cardioid condenser microphone! I don't know, is it my ears? Because there is just so little difference between the two. I did not dare to confess to dear hubby of the little difference.
I hope these satisfy your curiosity a bit on how I do my podcast Simone!
Wow!
So much to read through
Thank.you so much
I will definitely get back to you
I'm.im the middle of a challenge
You can read all about it here I cannot believe I'M doing this again but it is truly POSITIVE! I have so many other questions
This is so exciting
Oh! Ok I will read about your challenge in your blog.. no worries...life is so full of challenges. Simone, just like getting into WA, I did not think much about it but I just dived right in. I may fail, God knows and it's ok. Ot is already proving difficult for me until I tell myself, this WA is a business by itself and I start to treat it as such. At least I have tried even if I fail. Same thing with the podcast, I didn't plan for it nor am I a listener of other podcasts. I just decided to do it one day. Keep in touch!
Xoxo
~Rah
See more comments
Wow, Rah! You are getting a lot of things done, my friend!
Happy 2022!
Jeff
Tks Jeff! I am exhausted just to see the list I wrote! What! I will try to slow down this year..haha
No, not at all, Rah! Keep going! 😎👍