Issue #173
Taking my business on the road
Today, I thought I would take a temporary break from our ongoing series on SEO and your blog traffic. See, today is the day that my family and I are leaving Florida in our motorhome and heading westward.
Now, I have no intention of making The Daily a travel blog, or posting travel stuff on the BMA. That’d be weird. 🙂 However, as you can imagine, I am going to be taking my online business on the road for the next several weeks. And, I also intend to video blog as much as I can. So, from that angle, parts of this are certainly of potential interest to you guys. 🙂
First off, if you don’t know, I have a side hobby blog on this stuff. It is called RV Family Travel. This blog is purely just for fun right now. I don’t make any money with it (yet). So, with a blog like that, I am going to be trying to video blog our trip.
A couple years ago, I did daily video blogs of our summer trip up into New England and eastern Canada. It was a lot of fun. But, this year, I’m bringing some newer stuff:
- A newer iPhone (with better cameras)
- A Zhiyun iPhone gimbal (for being able to walk around with the phone camera and not have the shakes)
- A DJI Mavik Pro drone (this thing is going to be fun)
- A small GoPro
- Our DSLR Canon camera (the same one I sometimes use for the BMA)
Obviously, it is never the equipment which makes the video. It is skill… and time. It takes WAY more time to produce a decent video than it does to watch it. Last year, I simply did iPhone videos and whipped them up in iMovie and left it at that. This year, I’m going to try to do better than that.
That’s the INTENTION. And, no doubt, I’ll be making some videos. How often? We shall see.
In terms of taking the BMA on the road, well that’s the great thing about running an online business. All I need is a wireless connection and a laptop. My primary computer is a laptop anyway. And we have unlimited bandwidth on our iPhones. So, I should be able to work from most everyplace we’ll be.
Of course, I won’t be working all the time. That’s not the point of the trip. So, I have a list (made awhile ago) of the minimum things that need to be done to keep things moving along. Also, I have a to-do list of the production items I intend to do while we’re away. I’m purposely not overloading that list. Plus, I’m making each thing quite specific so that I can accomplish it in a finite amount of time.
I don’t expect to have many full days of work. For the most part, I’ll be keeping things moving here using an hour or two here and there, likely in the mornings or evenings. We’ll be doin’ stuff during the day, then I’ll be working on the business and editing videos with the rest.
I’ve got a desk space in the rear of the motorhome. Plus, I can work outside on a picnic table or something.
One of the biggest constraints doing this kind of thing is often solid wifi. My iPhone will do the job in most places, but there are areas where the signal isn’t great. Campground wifi is notoriously spotty. Sometimes you have great connection… other times nothing.
For this reason, videos can take awhile to upload. I certainly won’t be doing any live streaming for the Lab. In fact, I’m going to be doing “office hours” for the LAB in an entirely different manner I call the “traveling office hours”. Members will submit questions, I’ll pre-record an answer, then upload it. This way I can be accessible to my members just the same, but without the difficulties of live streaming.
The great thing about an online business is that it is highly adaptable.
So, where are we heading?
You can see the full itinerary on this post:
Our Agenda For Our Summer Trip 2018
Videos will go on that site and on social media as we go. I will link to them up in the intro area of the Daily, but this isn’t BMA material so it won’t be posted at the Academy. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, by all means, follow along. 🙂
The Daily will continue as normal. There may be some skipped days due to schedule or wifi issues. But, I’ll be writing my Dailies from campgrounds, likely over my fresh cup of morning joe. 🙂
See ya tomorrow.
– David