Today marks 60 days since the official launch of The Writer’s Technology Companion. In a lot of ways, the site has exceeded my goals. I had hoped to have 100 subscribers by the 90-day mark; I have at least 250, on some days creeping closer to 300! I had expected more visitors than subscribers, but […]
One thing that can really “punch up” the sound of your podcast is a soundtrack. However, don’t start flipping through your CDs just yet! Commercial music can be very, VERY expensive to license for podcast use — if the labels will deal with you at all. Using music from your own collection without a license can get […]
If you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably ready to get started podcasting. But what should you talk about?
A lot of fiction authors read their own work, either a short story or poem per episode, or a chapter of a longer work. There’s even a website, PodioBooks, devoted solely to author readings of their novels in […]
Once you’ve recorded a show, you need to upload it somewhere on the Internet. You could upload it to your own site, but if your show is at all popular you’ll soon find yourself paying additional bandwidth charges — most personal and small business hosting packages charge after a gigabyte or two of traffic, and audio and […]
In order to do a podcast, you need some way to record yourself. You can make a perfectly good podcast by plugging a microphone or telephone headset into a computer’s mic jack or USB port and recording it using free software like Audacity, an open source multi-track recorder. Some people even use their mp3 player’s […]
Readers of The Writer’s Technology Companion might be interested in a post I wrote for Problogger, called Write Reviews That Add Value and Solve Readers’ Problems. If you’re not already familiar with Problogger, it’s the go-to site for people who blog for pay and offers tons of great advice about both the writing aspects and […]
The people I envied the most in college were the kids who got to work at the college radio station. Staying up all night broadcasting their favorite tunes and talking with their audience, however small, seems so unbearably neat. I wanted to join them, but I could never find the time to take the required […]
Whatever the focus and goals of your site, take some time to create at least a few resource posts. Also called “flagship posts” and “pillar posts”, resource posts are entries in your blog that act as resources for your readers — the kind of stuff they’ll bookmark, email to friends, post to digg and del.icio.us, and generally […]
There are tons of sites online that offer free e-books to get you “hooked” so they can sell you their “Make Money Fast” program. While some of the material is ok, most of it is little more than a come-on. These e-books offer real, useful information to help you to either write more, write better, […]
I just posted my Twitter story, which I’ve decided to call Death of a Mockingbird, for reasons that are all too obvious once you read the story (which has no mockingbirds in it!).
The story is my entry in Copyblogger’s Twitter story contest, which I wrote about (along with a brief introduction to Twitter yesterday.
Update:One of […]
