I’ve been thinking about what I want to do next with podcasting, and I think I’ve figured out what that is. First, a bit of background:

I first got the notion to start podcasting in late 2008, when listening to Scott Johnson’s “Extra Life Radio”. The show had 3 or more hosts, and featured discussion about a myriad of geek-oriented things. I figured it couldn’t be that difficult to recreate the show with my friends, and placed it on my “Summer Project List” (or SPL).

May came, and no podcasting took place. I knew I wanted to get it going, but it kept getting pushed aside for more pressing things. I did start blogging a lot, which has gone hand-in-hand with podcasting ever since. After much research on how exactly to do what we wanted to do, we sat down and knocked out our first 30 minute episode in the middle of June. It took around 4 hours to figure out how to set things up, and then another 2 to edit the show.

Over the next couple months we got better and better at doing Contracast. Editing went from a painstaking chore to a simple 5 minute task. Hosting was initially awful, but I found archive.org and was saved. Putting the show on iTunes felt like a major achievement back in October.

From October to March, not much changed. We recorded shows when we could all get together to do so; which was unfortunately fairly rare. We kept vowing to do the show live, but always vowed it would be the next show. In March we made two major advances on the show; creating a dedicated Twitter account for Contracast, and beginning to broadcast live.

At the time of writing the Contracast Twitter account has 485 followers. By following people who talk about podcasting, I’ve been exposing people to Contracast who otherwise wouldn’t have heard of the show. Since I started marketing the show on iTunes I’ve seen a very steady rise in iTunes downloads. The show also has gained a lot of fans, and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that we were starving for beforehand. Doing the show live has also been great; it forces us to not put it off, and lets us see how our audience reacts to the show in real-time.

We’re obviously going to continue with live broadcasting, and I will continue with the Twitter campaign. Yesterday I set up my room like a decent little studio, as it’s likely going to be the home base of the show this Summer. I set up a camera and streamed music for a few hours while getting it all configured, and that started me thinking about what exactly I’d like to do with streaming this Summer. So to stop stalling-

I’m planning a 3 hour block of live content, likely broken down into 3-5 shows, for one night a week all Summer long.

Contracast would be part of this block, as would be several other undetermined shows. A dedicated Summer movie show would be fun, as would a music show. The goal is to provide a solid block of entertainment for people to tune in to. We would very likely set things up something like how the Twit network does- basically showing off things on screen, and featuring enough of a visual experience to make watching the show worthwhile.

I’m very excited to announce these plans; almost as excited as I was to release the first episode of Contracast. I’ve had a tremendous amount of fun podcasting over the last year, and doing something like this is very appealing. However, we’re putting out content for an audience, not for us. If there is anything you want to see (and hear) about from this block of shows, let me know! Contracast has always hovered between 30 minutes and an hour, meaning there is roughly 2 hours of content to fill. I’m not concerned with the length of the shows we’ll be recording, so even if your idea will only take 1 minute, by all means, share it!

I feel almost bad for writing one of these, but in all honesty that’s dumb. After all, this is “paul-kwiatkowski.com”, not “marketing101.com”, “professionalpodcast.com”, or some other site. This is purely about what I’ve been doing, and is the kind of thing you’d be able to glean if you followed me on Twitter. So without further to do:

I Set Up My Old PC!
There’s something special about my old WinXP gaming PC. I found it under such random circumstances that I’ve always loved having it around. For those who don’t know, and that’s likely most of you- in early 2006 I happened into a venue called “GameLAN” on a quest for a specific energy drink. We were told that the place was closing, and not just for the night- for good. Noticing all of the computers I asked if they were selling them. The next morning, in the rain, my brother and I loaded a mid-tower rig with a window, a 19″ monitor that weighed at least 60 pounds, a desk chair, and accessories into my tiny car. It no longer has any use being back in Winston- as everyone has laptops now. So I brought it, its blue lights, and accessories down to Charlotte. Right now it’s on my desk, serving as something of a media PC. There’s something about having 2 computers on my desk that makes me feel like business is getting done, even if it isn’t.

I’ve Got Ideas…
I don’t see any reason not to set up a few websites and campaigns this summer. At best I’ll make a few dollars, and at worst I’ll gain experience. I brainstormed and came up with around 8 different sites that I’m thinking about working on. Most fill a certain niche, and one in particular has tremendous potential. Without giving away any specifics, I can say that it is a community review resource, providing an accessible look into an under utilized medium. I’ll need a hand with some of these sites, so if you are looking to get some experience marketing a site, write some guest articles, or get a cut of whatever profits I’m able to pull in- contact me.

I’m Learning HTML
Thanks to W3Schools It’s coming back to me. I still need to learn an absolute ton, but I’m working on it. After HTML I’m moving into CSS. But one thing at a time.

I Need a Nap…
See you later…

Taking a cue from ViperChill, I’m going to post my monthly traffic data, because I can only assume you love looking over stats as much as I do.

I installed Analytics on March 1, and it started reporting on March 2; one month ago. So without further to do, let’s begin.

Considering the bulk of my traffic came from a linkbait map of the internet, those don’t look so bad! 1.41 pages per visit on average is a little stunted by outliers, but on the whole people did stick around a little.

The site was just born, so I’m not concerned with new visits. The bounce rate is higher than I would like however; due primarily to people clicking over to look at my map and either closing the site, or clicking the link to higher resolution. Time on site is low, due to the map.

These figures aren’t entirely correct. Direct traffic isn’t always direct. I didn’t have 900 people typing my address into their browsers. Some links just register as direct, and some don’t. It’s a mystery. So of those search terms, the biggest were:

More than half “Paul Kwiatkowski”, though several variations of “geocaching marketing” came in. As for the “Paul Kwiatkowski” searches, most of them stayed fairly long, longer than the average by a while. They also clicked over to many pages, leading me to believe that at least a few of these searches were specifically looking for me. Great!

That’s the most popular content for the month. Both the top and the bottom are the same thing- my map. I went back and changed the permalink after most of the traffic was gone. The second highest hit was the link out to my Flickr account, which I would mind, but it’s not a bad place for people to be leaving my site for. After all, that site links back to me!

Thanks Reddit! Those 911 direct hits were also coming, in part, from Reddit. Basically, my map got big-ish on Reddit (I can’t imagine if it had the upvotes of some other content), then UnrealityMag wrote about it, then Tumblr bloggers passed it around 200 times. They created some great backlinks! Reddit traffic grows and dies extremely rapidly, but I still get a couple hits a day from UnrealityMag. The last source is an aggregate web content blog, and my post was merely a text link.

It’s a sign of where my hits are coming from that more than 77% of browsers used were Chrome and Firefox.

And that’s that!

March has come to an end, and that means it’s time for another check up with my 2010 internet resolutions. So without further to do, here goes:

1. Produce 40 episodes of Contracast. Up to now we’ve done 8 episodes. Basically 1 every 10 days. Not quite as good as I want, but still, it’s something. The shows are also much higher quality now than when we began, owing to more work before recording. In March we released 3 episodes; Strategery, God of Contracast, and Master Deoderizer.

2. Create 40 unique photoshop pieces. Knocked out 4 this month: coat of arms without characters, coat of arms with characters, city at night, and a map of the internet. I also created a business card, but they’re in the mail right now, and I’ll take pictures when they arrive.

3. Write at least 8 articles a month. On this site I wrote 7, but I wrote more elsewhere.
•A Proposal for a New Grading System and Course Structure
•Why the iPad Won’t Save Print Media
•Using Physical Media to Tell Customers About Your Digital Ventures
•How to Market Your Business Online for Free
•Setting up a GeoCaching Marketing Campaign
•Parents, Teens, and Facebook
•5 Reasons I Never Joined MySpace

4. Tweet better. Getting there! May have self-promoted a bit much this month, but posting links is better than posting thoughts, right?

5. Write 5 Instructables. Still just the one. I turned out a how-to last month, but didn’t make it into an instructable.

6. Use Google Wave. Yeah… It’s collecting digital dust.

7. Use Google Voice. I used it once in March. It’s not something I’ll use all the time for a while, but it is handy to give out over email when you don’t want to give away your permanent number.

8. Comment more often. Still not as much as I’d like, though I’m getting there. For those not sure why this is on the list; commenting on other blogs is a good way to drive traffic and build followers.

9. Start a new, focused blog. Working on it. In conjunction with my brother, we’re going to be launching a site (and ebook) focusing on getting started with personal branding. Should be fun.

10. Reconnect with Facebook. If I originally was 100% connected with Facebook, then drifted down to 20% connected; I’d say I’m at around 60% right now! Twitter is just my preferred network. Unfortunately, that’s like saying I like salt and vinegar chips (I do), a scant few people are in the same boat with me, but the vast majority of people won’t even try them.

So on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give myself a 9 for March. I put out a lot content; and though the quality is for you to decide, I’m happy with it. Especially the length on some of the articles. Looking back at my early blog posts, I considered 300-500 words a decent size. Now I’m regularly crossing past 1000 words, and some of this months articles were closer to 2000 than 1000.

I can’t see writing another before the month is out, anyway. February really is a short month. I’m not going to write a full round-up of how I’m doing with my own projects, because in short, it’s not as good as January. However, I’ve still kept busy! I’m now a contributing editor for SciFi and Gadgets, and I’ve authored several things over at the Alter Imaging blog. My 5 Minutes Of Interesting show has proven challenging, because the way I do it now defeats the purpose of doing the show. It’s supposed to be a quickly prepared, quickly edited, quickly posted affair, and as of now, it takes way too long for me to do those things. Oh, I forgot- my internet was out for 5 days. That’s going to be my scapegoat for less content in February. Back on topic though, we only released two episodes of Contracast this month, but the two we put out were vastly superior to the ones preceding them. I recorded three episodes of Alternation for Alter Imaging, so in total, that makes 7 or 8 podcasts, or 1 every 3 days. Better than I thought.

As far as articles go, my article about Twitter and businesses got a lot of buzz, and made writing a follow-up painful. My writing is all over the place as far as topics go, and writing a review or a simple ‘weekend update’ seemed like bad ideas. Obviously, I’ve gotten over that “how can I possibly write a follow-up” feeling, but it was a pretty weird feeling to have. Given the viral nature of content on the web, it really was silly to think that I had to top that piece.

I’ve written three articles over at my influences blog, beginning to chronicle the things that made me into me. It’s way too early to tell, but depending on how it goes, I might end up putting the articles together into a book of some sort, and giving it to the people I talk about, as something of a gift. On the topic of books; I’m working on a story as well. To not spoil anything, I’ll say that its a post-apocalyptic western. Feel free to imagine there are people riding dinosaurs, just don’t be disappointed when that’s not included in the story.

Here’s a preview of a new piece I’m working on in Photoshop. Normally I would wait until it’s done, but I’m in Winston this weekend, and I forgot to bring my tablet, so I need to do something with the image. When it’s all done I’ll link to it, so if it looks like something you might want for a new background, stay tuned.

Finally, if you have anything to say about my work, by all means, comment or contact me! I’m always willing to take criticism, though praise is not only welcome, but preferred. Have a great day!

I wrote this article at the end of December, time for a look over the list:

Accomplished: Not a thing. Of course, my 10 resolutions aren’t set up to be accomplished overnight, but over the year.

In Progress: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10
1: Contracast Episodes: 3/40. At this rate, we’ll produce 36 episodes this year. If we pick up the pace a little and release just 1 more episode per month every other month that will be 42 episodes.

2: Photoshop Pieces: 5/40. While not everything I create is what I would consider portfolio quality, I have turned out 5 pieces over the last month, and at least 4 will be done in the next week.

3: Articles: January=Check. My goal is 8 articles a month. What do I consider an article? An entry longer than one paragraph that deals with one topic, or communicates a series of ideas. I don’t consider podcast postings, reviews, and quick notes articles. January meets my goal.

4: Better Tweets: Going well. Linking my articles has already worked out pretty well.

10: Reconnect with Facebook: Eh. Started this one. I used Facebook chat the other day- but still not feeling the site. Probably has something to do with everyone changing their pictures to celebrities and claiming they “look just like Angelina Jolie!” (newsflash- you don’t.)

Not Started:5, 6, 7, 8, 9
5: Instructables: None written. I’m about to write an article about how to create a quality Twitter background, that will be 2010’s first Instructable.

6: Use Google Wave: Yeah… Here’s hoping Wave takes off, because as it stands I have no reason to use it.

7: Use Google Voice: Well… I’ve used it to send text messages from my iPod, but thats hardly using it to the fullest potential.

8: Comment More Often: I’m just not the biggest commenter.

9: Start a Focused Blog: Nothing Yet. Although I did start 5 Minutes of Interesting.

Evaluation:
B+

So I forgot my keys earlier today. Mike came over and I left with him to go get a tv. While the trouble getting the tv is another story all by itself, all you need to know is we got it safely, and I remembered along the way that I had left my keys on my bed. Upon returning to the apartment, I went to knock on the door and discovered that my roommates weren’t in, and that I very well might be locked out. Luckily enough, our glass sliding door had been left unlocked, and I was able to get in. Unfortunately, thanks to several years of dorm life, I have a habit of locking every room I walk out of- and I was really hoping that I hadn’t done the same this time. Surprise! My door was locked.

The first method of door opening we tried was the venerated “credit card system”, in which you attempt to open the door by forcing the bolt open with a flexible plastic card. Although some people have tremendous success with this system, I can’t say that I’ve ever been able to open a door with it. This time was no exception. After 15 minutes of trying, I gave the handyman a call, and like every other time I’ve called the guy, my call went straight to his machine… We then tried knives, and other such things, to both pick the lock, and force it open, to no avail. I found a coat hanger in the laundry room, which I was able to bend in to an assortment of MacGyver’d shapes, but nothing I tried worked.

I had been playing Uncharted 2 at Walmart while the tv was purchased, and the idea popped in to my head (thanks video game critical thinking) try the window! My window is right next to the door, although the door has wood floor outside it, and my window features a 15 foot drop instead. Yay. I gave the glass a push- and wonderfully enough, it pushed open. My blinds were down, but I was lucky enough to be on the side with the open/close strings, and so I pulled them up from the outside. Carefully climbing up on to the deck railing, I was able to put one foot on the window sill, and reach inside and grab the wall. Thankfully, my Splinter Cell window entering move ended with me landing on my bed, and not the rocks below.

My keys were on my bed, where I had left them, and I was able to unlock my room and consider the entire ordeal ended. I think I’ll try the window faster next time.

For now- here’s this link. I’m adding a Flickr gadget to this blog, so my creations should soon be cycling through. I omitted lots of repeat pieces, sub-par work, etc. Now I just need to add some.

Flickr Photoshop Album