Otaku Links: I saw it on Tumblr

Otaku Links

I was worried the cherry blossoms in Episode 12 of Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju were the only ones I’d see this year, after a frost hit the already-blooming DC blossoms! Fortunately that wasn’t the case, but I’ll miss this weekend’s peak in exchange for Boston’s snowy weather.

Today you can find my blog posts on the Anime Boston blog. But if you’d like some variety, I’ve prepared the usual Otaku Links:

Screenshot via this tumblr full of Rakugo images. 

Break up the routine

Uncategorized

Later this week I’ll be on a plane to Anime Boston, the same con I’ve been staffing since 2011. I’ve missed it only twice—to get married, and to go to Japan.

I’m really good at sticking with things, if I do say so myself. I’ve known I wanted to be a writer and web developer since I was 11. I regularly hang out with the same group of friends I met in ninth grade, in the same metropolitan area I grew up in. And of course, I’ve been writing in this blog every week for the past seven years.

Perhaps I’m a little bit allergic to change.

So it wasn’t exactly planned in advance that my previous week would be totally different. Here are three brand new experiences I had last week:

Started a web development blog.

Because a new blog is exactly what I need, right?

I’ve been having trouble converting new clients with my web design sales page, so I thought maybe a personal touch was needed. That makes it sound like I put a lot of time into planning it, but it was really spur of the moment—I have an available domain name, a good theme (that I built myself, actually), and didn’t I just write in my earning course that the best way to get found on Google search is to pack a site with 10,000 words of useful content?

Now I’m having second thoughts like, “How often should I update this thing?” but it’s rare for me to do first and think about it later. It was a welcome change.

Got rejected from a job I tried my hardest on.

The thing about freelance writing is that you’re constantly interviewing for the next gig. I’m always pitching to editors, sending query letters and writing samples, all for the chance at some paying work later on.

This opportunity was especially important to me, but I’m not going to give you any details other than that, for obvious reasons. What I can share is the feeling of confidence I had when I turned in my writing samples. I thought I’d nailed the pitch! It’s embarrassing to admit it now, but I was so certain I was going to get this job that I preemptively made a folder in Google Drive for it, like I have for each of my ongoing gigs to store my assignments in.

I don’t feel dumb now because I didn’t get the job—I don’t get jobs all the time. We freelance writers have to remind ourselves it could be about a million different reasons that have nothing to do with our skills. I feel dumb because I celebrated too early, and after a decade at this I should know that no matter how good I get at writing, I won’t be every editor’s cup of tea.

Got a massage at a Korean spa while completely naked.

The evening I got the rejection letter, I still wasn’t quite over it. So I took up an invitation that I wouldn’t have usually accepted: a friend asked if I wanted to go to Spa World with her the following morning for some spur-of-the-moment stress relief. Normally I don’t take off on a weekday without a lot of planning, but she couldn’t have known how on board I was!

Spa World is a local curiosity. While fully nude spas that serve excellent Korean food are probably more common in, say, South Korea, here it’s the only one of its kind. After an hour or so in the “bade pool” to get over our awkwardness and culture shock, we signed up for massages that were much more vigorous—and personal—than either of us expected. We came back from the massage area with raw pink skin and the haunted look that always characterizes a minorly-traumatic experience that is sure to become a great story at parties with a little time. After that, it was time to don the spa’s orange jumpsuits and hang out in the co-ed area, which included gemstone-studded saunas (to remove toxins, obviously), and some of the best curry rice and taro bubble tea of our lives.

It was a weird week, to put it lightly. And it wasn’t all good. But I find that for somebody like me, whose job relies so heavily on creative juices, new experiences are absolutely vital.

Last year, I wrote about why it’s important to stop thinking and start doing. And yes, getting started is important on the stuff you’ve already planned to do is important. But so is experiencing new things that you didn’t exactly plan. Taking risks breaks up the monotony. Even if things don’t work out for me in the end, I can take pride in leaving my comfort zone. It jostles me just enough that returning to my day-to-day work feels comforting and welcome.

If you’re feeling stuck, take a break from chipping away at the project that’s stressing you out and try something risky, weird, but most importantly, new to you. It just might help.

Photo by Sarah Ackerman.

Otaku Links: I miss Japan

Otaku Links

  • Oldtaku alert: do you remember the ’90s? To be more specific, did you go to an anime convention in the ’90s? Jared wants to hear from you for a project about anime convention history. You can email him here.
  • Haruki Murakami’s metaphysics of food. These days I just read Murakami novels to fantasize that I’m in Japan. Same reason I read Parade by Shuichi Yoshida. Atmospheric novels about Tokyo in which nothing much happens are my jam. (HT Zoë).
  • The 10 Best Onsen Resort Towns In Japan. Visiting a ryokan was one of my most memorable Japan experiences, and I didn’t even go to one of these.
  • Anne of Chic Pixel explains how she edits Instagram photos and nerdy flatlays. I love her Instagram, which shows off her impeccably organized, artfully arranged geek memorabilia.
  • I don’t know much about sakuga, the term for especially well-considered movements or even entire scenes in animation. Here’s a post by Josh Dunham about the sakuga of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid episode 8 that is clear even to beginners like me.
  • Why You Should Import Now. Apparently it’s a good time (and good dollar to yen rate) for getting your favorite stuff straight from Japan. Also, read to find out how Trump might make it more costly to import from Japan in the future.
  • If you’re curious about this “Gundam” thing I’m always going on about, get on Crunchyroll—they just licensed Gundam Build Fighters, Gundam 00, and Gundam Wing. No, Crunchyroll doesn’t pay me to say stuff like this, but I wouldn’t say no.

Photo via Happy Peng

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

Careers, Writing

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.

Otaku Links: Trans-Am Mode

Otaku Links

  • I’m openly envious of my Forbes colleague Ollie for living such a cool life. Recently, he sat down to chat with Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino like it was nothing, and they discussed his works from 1979 to 2017.
  • Kixkillradio creates breathtaking miniature settings for her many Nenderoid figures to play in. I was mesmerized by this sped-up video in which she creates a miniature sushi house with real working lights!
  • Who wants an anime studio tour? Sakugabooru takes us through Kyoto Animation’s surprisingly large number of studios and buildings.
  • Here’s an English version of the Anime Industry Report 2016, via r/anime. Some highlights: the US is the biggest overseas market for anime, online streaming distribution is growing a ton, and the genre with the biggest potential for overseas growth just might be “adult animation.”
  • Funimation decided to market yaoi anime Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi by inviting fans of yaoi and BL to tag their experiences with the hashtag #fujoshilife. Funimation’s own staff led the charge, but the movement quickly fizzled out when people got offended. But how offensive was it? Over at Anime Feminist, Amelia launched a discussion about this complicated issue.
  • I talk a lot about Get Bullish, the organization through which I’ve met most of my DC entrepreneur friends and through which I sell my affiliate earning guide. In this resource-packed blog post, my friend Eva explains what it’s done for her.

Screenshot via Gundam 00, just added in HD to Crunchyroll. I’m watching it now!