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The like list: Recommendations for work and life

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I hate being sick. Over the last few days I’ve had to cancel all my plans while I slip in and out of a nagging low-grade fever. That’s why there wasn’t an Otaku Links this week.

In a rare moment of lucidity in which I sit down to write this week’s Otaku Journalist post, I don’t feel like tackling anything all that in-depth. No, let’s talk about simple, happy things. Today let me tell you about the stuff that makes my life a little easier, even when I don’t feel great.

Here’s the Otaku Journalist recommendation list, full of my favorite stuff I’ve utilized this year. Most of these are not affiliate links, which is unusual for me, but it turns out my favorite things are not products so much as services. Check them out:

Crunchyroll. Of course this fantastic streaming service gets the first shout-out of the list, because I haven’t done much for the past few days except watch One Piece. I use Crunchyroll to review airing anime, but my real guilty pleasure is watching its immense archive of super old stuff, from Super Gals! to Endless Waltz. I can’t believe Crunchyroll doesn’t pay me to recommend their service, but at $60 a year, I don’t really need them to.

One Story. I love short stories, especially those of Philip K. Dick and Flannery O’Connor, but I had a hard time finding a literary journal that I could stick with—until I found this one, which simply selects and sends you one amazing short story per month. I’ve been a member for over three years now, so I’ve spent some of my sick days re-reading some of the 50 I already have. It’s $21 for a year, but I usually renew around the holidays when it only costs $12.

Shield Security. Over the holidays, somebody in France hacked Otaku Journalist, which was inconvenient, to say the least. Then my friend (and sometimes contractor) Crimm told me about this free WordPress plugin. It allows me to use two-factor authentication with all my sites, hide and spoof my login page, and a number of other hack-proof solutions. While I still hear about hacking attempts (the plugin notifies me ASAP), none have been successful since.

Google Drive. Speaking of amazing free tools. I use this to write everything from blog posts to books and keep them all organized. I love the “suggesting” feature for when I’m editing (or being edited) and want the writer to be able to view each suggested change instead of blindly accepting it. I love the offline feature, both for helping me focus without getting distracted by Twitter and for allowing me to retain backups on my machine no matter what happens.

Poppin Softcover Notebook. There’s still no substitute for the ultimate portable writing studio—pen and paper. (Though after this many years of primarily typing, my handwriting is a cramped chicken scratch.) I do the majority of my creative writing this way, otherwise I spend too much time falling down Wikipedia holes for “research.” I used to use Moleskine notebooks, but 1) I stopped being able to find their softcover version and 2) it costs $24! This is only $9. 

Get Bullish. Jen Dziura is the kind of woman who runs a business from her cell phone while being prepped for a c-section. I find her business advice both extremely unrelatable and deeply inspiring, because if I do barely half of what Jen does, I’m still ahead of the curve. I’ve also met dozens of entrepreneurs in my city through a mutual interest in Jen’s articles, sold one of my books through her shop, and will be attending her BullCon conference in DC this year.

Bad with Money Podcast. I find the gym extremely boring. But I still want to be able to open jars by myself, so I tough it out a couple times a week with the help of some truly interesting podcasts. My favorite is Gaby Dunn’s half entertainment, half education show about money smarts and the issues with today’s financial system. Weirdly it has not only helped me become a better saver, but has helped me find cool TV shows and books to read thanks to the many entertainment industry guests Gaby has on the show.

Baggu. $10 for a friggin grocery bag? Yes, but what if I told you I bought my Baggu bags six years ago now and they still don’t need to be replaced? They’re washable, waterproof, and can be compactly folded. I keep one in my purse at all times just in case I need extra storage.

Moo cards. My Otaku Journalist business cards (front side visible here) are thick, perfectly square cardstock art. I don’t mind splurging on eye-catching cards because I usually only hand them out at anime cons and as a result have a ton left from ordering back in January 2016.

The Billfold. This is my favorite regular read. Since becoming a freelancer I’ve not only become comfortable talking about money, but honestly started to enjoy it. I love the voyeuristic pleasure of learning about how other freelancers do money. Mostly I was lured over when Nicole Dieker, the geeky writer and musician behind Hello The Future, became an editor for this site. Actually, I have my first freelance article for them going up tomorrow—about my trip to Japan!

TSA Pre. I went to Anime Boston with my friend Andrew this year. As I zipped through TSA Pre, he had to take off his belt and his shoes and eventually get a pat down like a common criminal. Don’t get me wrong—security theater is stupid and I’m old enough to remember what flying was like before 2001. But sometimes you get tired of protesting the system and just want to get to your gate before literally everyone else. This was especially easy for me to get around to because my closest airport is walking distance, but I imagine eventually everyone will have TSA Pre and it won’t be any more convenient than anything else.

Quickbooks Self-Employed. I used to manage my finances entirely through Google Sheets, which meant I had to manually type in everything I spent, saved, and earned. Every time I’d fall behind or forget something, I’d have an accounting error that would be a huge headache at the end of the month or, worse, at tax time. For $5 a month, Q S-E connects with my bank, my credit card, PayPal, and everything else so I only have to check every month if I want! (I still check near daily because old habits die hard, but it hardly needs any input from me.)

Let’s Freckle. I hate tracking time and I hate invoicing, so this is a problem I’m happy to throw money at. I turn on my timer and get to work, pausing only to switch which client I’m working for—and just hit “stop” when I’m ready to log hours. When it’s the end of the month, I can send each client an invoice of all the hours I’ve logged, which is automatically generated for me. Before Let’s Freckle, I was so bad at time tracking I’m sure I undercharged all my clients because I despised the process and was too scared to check if I’d made an error in my favor.

Spearmint Altoids. OK, this last one’s an affiliate link. When you are with me and I offer you an Altoid, it is not because your breath stinks. It’s because I assume everyone likes these as much as I do. I usually have two tins in my purse at any time, and buy them in bulk (the way drugstores do) at least twice a year. They calm my stomach, they relieve my anxiety, they do everything except make my breath smell any better. (Except temporarily? Gum is way better for breath freshening.) I really hope I feel better soon because just the idea of one of these makes my sore throat burn, and I really miss getting my fix. Better than some vices, right?

This is a sick woman’s happy post. Please contribute by posting things that make YOU happy in the comments. Let me know if we have any favorites in common, too!

Top image via this post. Really just used it because it had Altoids in it.

On failure and knowing when to quit (P.S. Asuna is free now)

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Late last year, I decided to give myself a bit of a digital makeover. I left my last part-time web design gig with revamped WordPress skills, and even as I ditched the job I still wanted to make WordPress design and development a part of my career.

I added a Web Design section to Otaku Journalist. I created a portfolio site to showcase some of my previous work. And, most time-consumingly, in order to prove that I knew what I was talking about, I built my own WordPress theme from scratch.

It’s been five months, and I have to say, business is slow. I do have several recurring web clients, but not because I advertised my availability online—I got them all through work connections. Every now and then somebody fills out my “get a quote” form, but after pricing out a potential contract in the three figures, I never hear from them again.

It’s easy to ignore the web business failure, because I’m still getting web clients, just not the way I planned. As for the theme, Asuna, I’ve sold exactly one copy.

That stings because I spent more than 20 hours building Asuna to be absolutely perfect. If you check out the demo, you can see I gave it 13 points of customization out of the box, while your average WordPress theme only has one or two.

However, if before putting in that 20 hours I had taken one hour to do a little research, I would have noticed a couple major hints this wasn’t going to sell:

  • Most anime bloggers who use WordPress have a free theme, not a paid one.
  • Heck, most bloggers in general don’t pay for themes, since so many are free.
  • Not as many people like Asuna from Sword Art Online as I previously thought.

Long story short, enough is enough. Starting today, you can get Asuna for free.

Get it for free already!

I’m actually excited about this because it’ll mean more people than me are trying and testing my theme. Plus, since I’m a professional and you don’t have to worry about it being buggy or broken, I’ll at least be able to feel pride in my well done work helping people out.

More than that, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I was trying so hard for so long to make it happen, trying out different price points and advertising. Now I can give up and expend my energy elsewhere.

Additionally, Asuna has helped me find a clearer answer to the question, “What is valuable?” Just because I spent hours agonizing over it didn’t make Asuna a valuable product. On the flipside, just because writing is easy and fun for me doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. This is why I even monetize projects I do for enjoyment.

Asuna was a failed project long before I decided, this week, to quit promoting it. So when in a project’s lifespan do you decide to give up? As soon as it starts to become more trouble than it’s worth. Asuna was a ton of work up front, and then nothing but minor maintenance and updates since then, so I was able to push it to the back burner in terms of time investments. Really, it’s the mental and emotional investment I freed myself from when I decided to start giving it away.

If Asuna had succeeded, I wanted it to be the first in a series of WordPress themes I design from scratch. Maybe I’ll still make another (I’ve got a design concept based on Holo from Spice & Wolf waiting in the wings) but it won’t be as a part of my business. I’ve closed the book on this attempt so I can free myself up to try new projects. Sure, they might be failures, too, but what if they aren’t? The only way I’ll know for sure is if I try.

Lead photo by Markus Spiske.

On passion projects and working for free

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I’ve launched a lot of new products and businesses over the years. But Anime Origin Stories is the first new endeavor I’d characterize as a passion project.

Normally when I start something, I think, “OK, how am I going to fund this?” When I wrote Build Your Anime Blog, for example, I priced the book and limited my time working on it so that once it came out, my royalties would amount to a decent hourly wage.

I didn’t do any of this for Anime Origin Stories, because I didn’t think it would be very big. (Usually I survey my audience and test if business ideas are viable, but not this time.) I impulsively decided anime fandom needed an archival project, and that I, with my master’s in journalism, was going to be the one to make it happen!

But I was wrong about interest. Anime Origin Stories turned out to be very big! I’ve gotten more than 105 responses and counting now. And because I write custom follow-up questions to each participant, I’m not very fast at getting through them.

Over the weekend, I managed to plow through 30+ surveys and write follow-up questions, and it’s only because on Saturday, I hardly did anything else! I’d say that overall, the time I’ve spent making the site, coming up with questions, and posting stories totals more than 20 hours. I’m putting as much time and effort into it as one of my paid gigs.

I’m not saying this to make you feel bad for me. Not only did I choose to invest my time in this way, but I’m having a blast doing it. Everyone’s stories are so intensely personal and yet entirely relatable—it’s almost like we all have a hobby in common or something.

Still, it’s the opposite of what I normally do. In the past, I’ve turned my hobbies—writing, watching anime, building Gunpla, even lighting candles, into revenue streams. For Anime Origin Stories, I’ve turned interviewing, a thing I usually do for money, into an unpaid pastime.

First, let me tell you why I normally monetize everything I’m interested in. My secret is that I want to minimize the time I spend working and maximize the time I spend actually living life. I figure if I can turn the things that give me joy into income, I won’t have to work as much.

I realize this doesn’t work for everyone. Upon hearing this, some people tell me that turning their hobbies into jobs would make it so they could never enjoy their hobbies again. But I am obviously not one of those people. I know I need money to live, and I know I have a finite amount of time alive, so I got creative with where that money is coming from.

Like many people who have not studied economics in the slightest, I dream of the day everyone gets a universal basic income. I fantasize about the things people would create just for the sake of it, not because they have a paycheck on the line. Until that day comes, (or more likely, doesn’t), I’d say money is the largest motivator I have to get up and do things. But—it’s not the only reason I do stuff, and Anime Origin Stories is proof of that.

Still, work is work, whether you get paid or not, and I’d rather get paid. Considering how much of my time it’s taking, I will be including affiliate links on Anime Origin Stories soon, most likely in the sidebar. I’ll also be working on a paid ebook that compiles the first 100 interviews—plus some original research by me about each decade—for sale later this year.

While money can certainly taint a project, I don’t think it does by default. I don’t think Gunpla 101 is less genuine or speaks less to my belief that “Gunpla is for everyone” because it also happens to link to the tools I use and kits I build. I don’t think, had I launched the site with zero affiliate links, people would say, “Wow, Lauren is so noble and self-sacrificing.” I don’t think anyone is saying that about Anime Origin Stories now.

If you’re in the same boat, and your hobby has turned into as much work as a second job, don’t worry about being judged for adding a monetization factor. When my friends launch projects that include paid products or Patreon, I’m thrilled to support them. I’d be even more excited if, thanks to support like mine, they could do their thing full time.

And finally, thanks for helping to make Anime Origin Stories a success to the point that it compels me to write a post like this.

Your audience doesn’t think you suck

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I couldn’t believe my ears at Anime Boston when people were raving about a Winter 2017 show called Kemono Friends. But a few weeks later, I’m the one recommending it!

Kemono Friends looks downright awful. And it gets worse from there, according to this Tokyosaurus YouTube video about its production:

  • The anime was created to promote a cell phone game which was already canceled before the anime began airing.
  • Only ten people (not counting voice actors) worked on the anime, including the director and producers.
  • It cut a lot of corners. In the earlier episodes, the wheels on the bus the characters ride around in don’t turn. Also, the majority of the characters are girls with animal characteristics—and they have both animals ears AND human ears.

But despite all that? People friggin’ loved it.

With a simple “hero’s journey” plot that shows instead of tells, and plenty of relatable characters with easily-digestible storylines, it’s a simple, sweet show. Accompanied by an undercurrent of bizarre mystery, it stood out as a mold-breaking show partially because of its risky cheapness.

This is a certainly low-budget and undeniably flawed, but unabashedly adored show. It reminded me of an illustration I’ve seen going around Tumblr about two cakes:

I was thinking about this after doing a collaboration video with Crunchyroll last Monday. My video isn’t perfect—I flubbed my lines and misstated at least one fact. Plus, there are already a lot of way better videos out there by people more talented than I am. I feel stupid admitting this now, but for the day after the video came out I did not spend my time celebrating this great opportunity to work with one of my favorite companies, or feeling good about sharing one of my favorite hobbies, Gunpla building, with a much wider audience than usual.

Instead, I felt that time feeling like crap. I kept thinking that I could have done a better job if I had redone the video. I kept thinking somebody else entirely could have done it better than me.

Of course, that’s not how the audience reacted! Just like Kemono Friends fans were happy to watch a quirky new anime and the audience in the cake comic was excited to chow down, people were happy to find another Gunpla fan, and sent me all sorts of praise. I got email from people who said it inspired them to make their own Gunpla, or even their own Gunpla videos.

Even if I wasn’t 100% confident about it, I know the world is a better place because I got over myself and made something. The world is a better place with more cakes in it. We assume other people look at us through the same harsh lens through which we view ourselves, every fault magnified. But I assure you you’re being way harder on yourself than anyone else would be.

To make your audience happy, you don’t need to be the most talented person. You don’t need to invest tons of cash into a project to make it watchable. You need an idea that you believe in and the enthusiasm to power through and put it out into the world.

You might think you suck, but your audience doesn’t. If even a show as cheap and weird as Kemono Friends could find a massive audience, who is to say your idea is too “out there” to succeed? If you have an idea you’re so passionate about that you can convince your audience to be passionate about it, too, it doesn’t matter how you get it out there as long as you do.

Lead image via Kemono Friends.

How to build an email opt-in course for your blog

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Last Monday, I released a new e-course, The Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000.

The main reason I put out this guide was because I think it’s extremely helpful, and I want to give my loyal readers helpful stuff for free. But I also have an (ah ha!) ulterior motive here, and that’s to grow my mailing list. My mailing list is the best tool I have to keep in touch with you. And unlike with social media, it’s a quiet place where I can be more personal with my readers.

If you have a blog, you’ve probably considered growing your mailing list, too. Let me tell you that an opt-in incentive is the best way to do that. It’s free, but it still involves effort on your readers’ part: they need to agree to sign up for your mailing list. The result is you have a built-in audience who is willing to meet you halfway in exchange for your authority on a particular topic.

Here’s how I picked a topic, built a course, and automated it for my blog.

Survey your audience

My story really begins back in 2016. Otaku Journalist is more than seven years old now, and I know the audience now wants different things than it did back then, just like I like to write about different stuff than I did then. So I conducted a survey.

Eighty people replied, out of an estimated 400 daily readers. What I found was that readers who are engaged enough to do my surveys when I put them out are most interested in two types of content: my personal fandom experiences, and geek career advice. That told me that the most effective way to communicate would be using examples from my own life. It was around then that I started formulating The Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000. I originally was going to call it How I Earned My First $1000 On Otaku Journalist, but I eventually decided that was too specific. These are techniques I think will work on a variety of blogs, not just mine.

Write the darn course

Then, I put off actually writing the course for almost a year. “Growing my mailing list” is not as high up on my list of motivators as “making actual money.” So it wasn’t until two weeks ago, when I had an unexpected lull in my workload, that I sat down to tackle this.

The survey gave me a blueprint for the outline (five chapters each with a section on my own experiences, followed by a section on how to emulate them) so it was a matter of filling in the blanks. I wrote the bulk of the work on International Women’s Day, because I didn’t feel bad devoting most of that day to a personal project. For the remainder of the week, I devoted my post-dinner work hour to finishing up.

The resulting course is about 5,500 words and includes a bunch of screenshots, photos, and links to outside resources. It’s a little long for an e-course. My first course, the Niche Reviewer Crash Course, was only 3,000 words and has inspired over 1,000 mailing list sign-ups.

Set up automation

I can’t think of anything more irritating or inconvenient than to have to send the Niche Reviewer Crash Course, which consists of seven parts, manually to 1,000+ subscribers. That’s why I use Mailchimp’s free automation software.

First I signed into my free Mailchimp account and clicked the Automation tab. Here’s my Automation page, which has two active course series going.

First, I clicked the “Add Automation” button in the upper right-hand corner. I selected an Education → Course Series setup. Here, I clicked on a brand new one to show you how this works. By default, it starts sending as soon as somebody signs up for your list.

Only, I have two courses, and I wanted to give my readers a choice. So I made use of Mailchimp’s free List Groups tool. I set up two new groups, each named after one of the courses. Now, on my subscription page, you can select one (or both) courses in order to receive the e-course of your choice.

So you’ll see at the top of The Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000 automation, the trigger for receiving the first email is “immediately after subscribers join the grouping” of the same name. That keeps me from spamming this course to people who didn’t ask for it, while also showing me exactly how many subscribers joined to get access to this particular course.

I fed the course from the Google Doc into a seven-part email series, adding in links and photos as I went. At the end, I attached a PDF to the final email with a Google Analytics event listener in the link—now I’ll see how many people actually clicked and downloaded that PDF. In other words, the modifications I made are designed to tune me in with what readers want.

Build the odds and ends

All set? Not quite. There were still a few things I had to do:

  • Add a new sign-up banner to the main Otaku Journalist page.
  • Write the wording for the course page.
  • Write a newsletter sending the course to existing subscribers.
  • Write the blog post announcing the new course.
  • Made a Facebook post, a tweet, and other small social things.

Finally, I finished all that, and activated the course automation on my Mailchimp dashboard early on Monday morning. I started getting subscribers right away, so it was worth it!

Setting up an ecourse definitely takes research and time. But the biggest plus in my opinion is that all the tools you use to launch it are free, so I don’t feel bad about giving it away. I hope this post inspires you to create an opt-in course of your own! Definitely let me know if it did, and I promise I’ll be among your first subscribers.