Coffee Talk this week

It has been an exciting week, kicked off by the 2nd annual author open house at our local library. I saw some old friends and made some new ones, too. The cool thing for me was being around other like-minded people, and I got inspired to push forward with my next book (mainly because I had been talking about it since last year’s author open house. I need to get in Nike mode and just do it.) I am working on securing endorsements (so if anyone wants to send me a couple of sentences about why you like reading my stuff that would be super), cover design ideas (and yes, I have contacted a designer), and introductory copy.

My SEO class is pretty good so I decided to take another online course about ghostwriting.
There are more ghost-writing opportunities “out there” than I ever imagined. Remember my $.03 cent writing exercise – well that has been a door opener to other kinds of writing opportunities, like product copy and financial writing. I have a whole blog set up for financial writing, but have not made it public yet because while the topic interests me immensely, I have to reign myself in and be realistic.

I monetized my YouTube account. This was a rather whimsical thing to do because I don’t have a lot of content that I share (and showing ads to the people who look at the vids will probably be more annoying than not); I was actually trying to figure out something related to a project I am managing for work and didn’t want to experiment on the corporate YouTube channel. I figured out how to associate and verify my blog with my YouTube account. I am not sure why yet but the framework will be in place when I think of a good reason. I just keep thinking about that high school kid with the $60K a year income… earning additional income from writing on the side is cool, but earning passive income that has nothing to do with trading hours for dollars would be even cooler.

The main thing I wanted to mention is that I have a column that appeared on Ten to Twenty yesterday and will likely be published in my local papers this week. You can read it here. It’s about the ongoing cell phone negotiations with my kids. The issue might become more pressing as one of them put his phone through the wash the other day (it was not a passive aggressive play for a new phone, I am sure.) It is currently sitting in a bag of rice that we’re praying over from time to time.

This last bit was the main point of my post actually. Now I am two lessons behind in my SEO class so I am going to catch up with that.

Hashtag coffee, hashtag page views

One of the very interesting conversations I had with my son in the car yesterday was about this high school sophomore who makes $60K a year on YouTube with this videos. My son heard about him from one of the kid’s classmates during their golf match. I have no idea if the $60K number is actually true, but my son had looked him up the night before and confirmed he had hundreds of thousands of followers and called up a video so we could watch/listen to one of his videos. We talked about the earnings no doubt coming from advertising revenue.

I suggested to my son why doesn’t he and his brother(s) create a YouTube channel? “You recently told me you have x number of Instagram followers…

“I wouldn’t want to spam my followers, mom.”

“How would it be spamming if you’re making videos about stuff they’re interested in?”

“Ehhh, I just don’t think so.” I had already told him about the phenomenon I had experienced where more acquaintances and even strangers read my stuff than friends. Maybe he figured the effort was futile.

“Okay, well, then I guess you’ll just have to use really good key words.”

“Yeah, hashtags. Hashtag gaming, hashtag minecraft...”

"Hashtag baseball..." I added. Then I thought about how I should take my own advice. I have been meaning to take an SEO course for a while now…

My son interrupted me, “I’d need to get more followers before I start advertising, though.”

“Oh my gosh – that is exactly what I am trying to figure out for my blog – page views! I just installed google analytics!”

We talked about pop up ads and how advertising is targeted to individual user preferences. We talked about different ways of monetizing and I told him about my “Buy me a coffee” button. (I told him I’d let him know if anyone bought me a coffee – wink wink, nudge nudge. It’s on the upper right nav of my blog.) After attending curriculum night, I am guessing he is learning about some of this stuff in his Computer Science class. The teacher had all sorts of social media information and warnings posted. We talked about how awesome it would be if he and his brother(s) could leverage all the hours they have spent watching YouTube videos to do something to earn money and how, it would be pretty cool to earn money from an online business rather than having to work at McDonald’s as a teenager. However, I worked at McDonald’s and it’s actually a good way to learn about patience, tolerance, and respect, as are many jobs in food service or retail.

I repeated part of the conversation with one of my other sons, but he couldn’t see past wanting to make gaming videos and the cost of the software to do it. I thought about all the iTunes gift cards he’d squandered on “gems” but I suggested him there are plenty of other types of videos you could make – I was thinking of “Wayne’s World” and “Beavis and Butthead.” - like “Sports Talk with M and D…”

“Uh,” sarcastic tone and hand-flip-shrug, “we don’t have cable!”

“Well, maybe you could sit around and talk about Gilligan’s Island!” (This is the most recent show they’d tuned in on network television.)

“I don’t think so, Mom.”

But the whole conversation did inspire me. As my mom told me and I told my boys, “Find what you like to do and just keep putting it out there.” I am going to go sign up for that SEO class now.