Make a Nerdy Living

by Alex Langley

  What do you like most about podcasting?

  How fulfilled it makes me. I can express myself through the podcast in ways I never thought possible. I can connect with listeners—our “Family,” as we call them—in a truly sincere and direct way.

  With many nerdy projects, such as podcasts, one could conceivably continue more or less indefinitely. How do you know when it’s time to finish up a project and let it go?

  Our podcast is a bit different from other “recap-style” podcasts. For example, we have the same seasons as the shows we discuss. As for ending a podcast series altogether, we know it’s time to end when we no longer enjoy watching the show. Unfortunately, we’ve ended several podcast series before the actual television show ended, for that very reason.

  What do you find most enjoyable about doing podcasts?

  I find the interaction with our Family, aka the listeners, the most enjoyable part of podcasting. We have a thriving private Facebook group bustling with activity. I love spending time in the group chatting with people. We’ve also started in-person events we call “The Sistah Speak Family Reunion” located in several cities, where we spend time with our listeners and celebrate one another.

  How do you manage the feedback for your podcast?

  We started our podcasts reading every piece of feedback we received. Of course, at the beginning there were just a few e-mails. Now, on our most popular shows, we may receive fifty or sixty e-mails and voice mails per episode. We still take the time to read, listen to, and acknowledge the contents of each one, which does make for some long-ass podcasts. I believe this allows us to connect with our listeners in a truly organic way, and it allows them to be a part of each podcast. Having our Facebook group and Twitter feeds (as well as other social media) also allows us to receive instant feedback. We’re lucky in that our Family members are never shy about sending feedback.

  Are there any particular obstacles you feel you’ve had to overcome to get where you are?

  The main obstacle I’ve overcome was having the confidence in my abilities to learn how to podcast. Another was whether people would want to hear what I had to say. The technical side of podcasting was daunting at first, especially ten years ago. At that time, there weren’t as many resources available as there are nowadays. Having a cohost to bounce ideas off and having interesting topics to discuss made producing continuous podcast episodes a bit easier.

  CONNECT, CHILL, AND BE COOL

  Internet audiences love interaction. Interact with people through social media, offer video hangouts or chats as subscriber content, answer every not-creepy question someone submits to your Facebook inbox. Every person you interact with is more likely to come back to you in the future.

  RE-LISTEN TO YOUR EPISODES AND DO SOME BASIC EDITING BEFORE POSTING THEM ONLINE

  Dead air, static-y crackles, discussions about bathroom breaks, burps, farts, sneezes, coughs, and the bubbling of your clone vats are major turn-offs to potential listeners. Listen, edit, and excise them from your recording.

  BE SMART ABOUT LENGTH

  Most podcast episodes come in at approximately an hour (or less). Bigger, more established podcasts will often go over that amount because they’ve got an accumulated audience who can’t get enough of their content. Until you hit that point, you need to give potential fans enough to wet their whistles without going so overboard that they grow tired of a particular episode.

  FIND WAYS TO MAKE MONEY FROM THE SAME THING MORE THAN ONCE

  Any video, any article, any podcast, any work you do can likely be reused for fun, profit, and efficiency. Run a blog to support your podcast and post your episodes through your site with a paragraph or two of description/post-episode thoughts to go along with it. Or create a short vlog to go with each new episode of your podcast and create a link in the video description. You’re the one working your buns off, and you’re going to be doing a lot of that work for free, so it’s in your best interest to find ways of maximizing the profits for your efforts. Just do be mindful not to overextend the same content, as you will have fans who follow you on more than one platform and they’ll tire of seeing the same podcast episode pop up in their feed four times in rapid succession.

  MAKE A PLAN AND LEARN TO IMPROVISE

  Knowing how to improvise means knowing how to work within the flow of a conversation to create something. Many wannabe podcasters try to go au naturel in their conversations and don’t prepare. Guess what? Those conversations are rancid garbage. Create an outline for each episode covering the topics you want to hit, questions you want to ask, and stories you want told, and be ready to make changes when something interesting comes up mid-conversation. Improvisational skills help any podcast move more smoothly, whether the tone is light-hearted and fun or dead-freaking-serious.

  TALK TO YOUR GUESTS!

  When you bring on folks to talk about whatever it is that makes them noteworthy, don’t ignore them so you and your regular cohosts can talk about what-

  ever’s on your mind. Your listeners get you and your team every episode; when you’ve got a guest, it’s your job to make them shine. Not only will it make your guest feel welcome and more likely to recommend your show to other potential guests, it will also make their fans feel that their time was well-spent and add a spicy element of variety to each episode.

  TAG YOUR EPISODES

  In the iTunes story, in your RSS feed, on your site, and in the sound file of the podcast itself, tag each li’l goober of an episode with a few smart, SEO keywords to help the people who would like your show find it.

  HAVE GOOD COVER ART

  Often your cover art is the very first impression people will get of your podcast; is it something fun, inviting, and informative, or a blown-up 120-pixel JPEG of your dog with some words splattered across it? No, don’t answer. It was a rhetorical question and this is a book.

  SUBMIT TO PODCAST DIRECTORIES AND AGGREGATORS

  Podcast Alley, Podcast Pickle, and PodcastDirectory.com are a few of the sites and services you can use to help disseminate your podcast to the ’net for free.

  POST PULL QUOTES AND SOUND BITES FOR EASY REPOSTING

  Find a quote from your episodes that you consider attention-grabbing, whether it’s a good joke, an intelligent musing, or something wildly out of context. Build an image containing that quote and post it online; when others see it, they’ll be more likely to comment/repost what you’ve done, increasing audience reach and visibility. You can also do the same thing with quick sound bites of your episode’s audio, but know that sound bites don’t tend to have as high an absorption rate since it takes more time to listen to them than it does to read a quick quote.

  AS ALWAYS, ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO SHARE, SUBSCRIBE, AND RATE YOUR WORK

  I know, it’s tiring to always ask your audience to share/subscribe/rate/like your work, but social media engagement is a key element to any nerdy career. So suck it up, buttercup, and do it!

  An easy way to get quick iTunes reviews is to create a nice, clean URL like YourPodcast’sName.com/Review and have the URL redirect to your iTunes review page, then plug that sucker at the end of every single episode.

  MONETIZE SMARTLY

  Podcasters have a somewhat easier time monetizing their content, as there’s an audience expectation that some advertising will have to occur to keep the lights on. Sponsored ad breaks before/during/after your show work well; once you’re a bit more established and can impress potential sponsors with your numbers, sell slots of time wherein you advertise for them.

  Generally speaking, it’s much better for you to be the one doing the advertising, as you can add a bit of your own personal flair to the proceed-

  ings and the audience will respond better to someone from your team than from a stranger advertising at them. With that in mind, only advertise products and services you believe in; don’t promote anything you feel is suspicious, immoral, or unethical.

  Crowdfunded subscription platforms like Patreon lend themselves to podcastin
g. Offering ad-free downloads to those who pay for your podcast, either as one-time purchases or through small membership fees, is a good way to get additional income at little cost to yourself. If your podcast works as a live performance, do it live and charge for tickets. You can also just flat-out ask for donations, especially early on when it’s understood that you’re building your brand.

  You can use your podcast to increase your revenue through other services you provide, advertising your YouTube channel, blog, web design service, side gig as a monster hunter, etc.

  Once you’re very established, you might consider selling masterclasses in podcasting to teach newcomers how to improve their shows, offering to listen to and critique their work in order to better them. This can fall into a bit of a murky area, as there are a number of unscrupulous people on the Internet who offer such services while providing very little in the way of useful feedback. I would recommend you only do this if you are extremely experienced and confident in your ability to help others get their podcasts to the same level as yours.

  Podcasting isn’t for everyone. There are those of us who prefer the quiet and solitude of visual work, who enjoy being alone for long stretches of time, who would rather create breathtaking imagery than living soundscapes. I speak of the paint-spattered beast, the one with the hand gnarled into a claw holding a tablet pen—the digital artist.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ART AND COMICS

  Fine artists have a professional tradition stretching back to the dawn of human civilization. As with all things, however, the Internet has changed the ways in which artists operate. Today’s artists don’t have to sit around waiting for someone to discover their work or suffer through the endless parade of art shows and auctions and art battles where artists paint to summon massive devil-beasts that fight for the amusement of the elite bourgeoisie. Thanks to the power of social media and crowdfunding, it’s never been easier for aspiring artists to draw what they love and get it into the hands of people who love it too.

  TYPES OF NERDY ARTISTES*

  Art is an infinite, intangible, undefinable concept. What makes something art? Is it intent? Execution? Audience reaction? Pretentious people have argued about this for centuries. In our case, it’s a lot easier to define what we’re talking about since we’re focusing on nerdy art—any art with a geeky, scholarly, pop-culture-y flair.

  There are two primary types of nerdy, professional artists we’ll be discussing here. The first is the WEBCOMIC ARTIST, someone who uses the Internet as the platform for their sequential art. Webcomics are the hieroglyphics of the Internet, providing an early means of expression and notoriety in the earliest days of the ’net.

  Most comics tend to lean toward the nerdier side of things, and webcomics even more so. Most of the longest-running comics are about nerds or nerdy topics—when webcomics really began taking off in the late ’90s and early 2000s, you couldn’t click through two pages without tripping over someone’s comic of two guys on a couch playing video games.

  Webcomics are a difficult road, as they require high levels of planning and dedication, with the GoLion’s share of the work falling on the artist (or writer/artist, as the case often is). The format offers a high degree of freedom for delivering personal stories, thoughts, and jokes; it’s the modern, digital evolution of yesterday’s print comics, political comics, and cutting-edge underground comix.

  Should you desire to become a webcomic artist, you’ll first need to plan what type of comic you intend to create, beyond limitations like character, genre, or setting. Broadly speaking, webcomics fall into three categories:

  One-off gag comics eschew continuity and character in favor of making the joke that needs made at any given time.

  Examples: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, XKCD, Chainsawsuit

  LOOSE CONTINUITY COMICS often feature the same characters or places without worrying too much about the specifics. Penny Arcade’s Gabe and Tycho have both died countless times, yet they’re still around in all their puffy-haired glory. Webcomics with a loose continuity reach a happy medium between freedom to express and continuity of ideas.

  Examples: Penny Arcade, Whomp!, the brilliant and oh-so-NSFW Oglaf

  CONTINUOUS STORY COMICS are the sort of comics that require planning from their creators—it’s tough trying to plot out character and story arcs without knowing where you’ll be five or more years down the road. Still, this devotion to structure brings with it an ever-more-devoted fanbase. Fans know and appreciate when you put in the extra time it takes to make a webcomic with a continuous story, so you’ll have an easier time drawing in a larger fanbase.

  Examples: Questionable Content, Gunnerkrigg Court, Paranormal Activity, Megatokyo

  An oddity of making a webcomic, however, is that sticking with the same comic means those early, eyesore pages are going to linger around forever and will be a click of the “First Page” button away for every visitor to your site. If you’re posting through a social network, that’s not as likely to be an issue since the format’s different, but most comics found through social media platforms are of the insular-gag variety, not an ongoing story, so there’s no need for people to read from the beginning because there’s no continuity to worry about.

  WHEN TO MURDER THE MONSTER FOR GOOD

  One issue faced by nearly every creative working on the same project for a long time is fatigue. There’s a reason Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes—he was sick of writing about him. Odds are good that even if you become monstrously successful, you’ll grow sick of writing and drawing the same thing. So what do you do when your success has left you feeling stagnant? When do you murder the monster your work has become? There are a few options:

  Finish your series the moment you feel that itch, and go out with a big, dignified bang. Leave your fans satisfied, wanting more, and eager for your next project.

  Write and draw side projects that don’t pay the bills but leave you creatively fulfilled.

  Take long breaks. This is risky because you will lose some audience every time you go on hiatus.

  Collaborate. Work with other people to help reinvigorate your creativity.

  Reboot the sucker and start anew.

  Drag things out soullessly, unhappily making money at something you don’t find fulfilling.

  Abandon your work with nary a word, telling your friends that you intend to get back to it someday while knowing deep in your heart that you never will. This is the option chosen by most content creators.

  The second type of nerdy artist is the FAN ARTIST, someone who focuses their work on cleverly reimagining and reproducing recognizable icons. These are the artists who spend their days drawing gender-swapped Super Mario Bros., or Japanese Wall Scroll versions of Ghostbusters, or steampunk Batman, or regular ol’ pictures of pop culture characters drawn in the artist’s unique style. Fan art is the place many nerdy artists get their start, and many find the field so fun and interesting that they spend most of their time there, letting their style grow while they find meaningful, beautiful ways to represent their favorite characters.

  It should be mentioned that making money from fan art is treated as a bit of a gray area, legally speaking. At any fan convention, you’ll see countless artists selling fan art of pop culture characters, but few, if any, have the legal permission to do so. Most big companies aren’t interested in cracking down on artists making a few bucks off of their IPs (intellectual property), as it’s not worth their time and money, plus it makes them look really petty. So if you’re selling art of licensed characters, then you’ll probably be fine; it’s once you start, say, doing large-scale production of unlicensed characters, like T-shirts with the Wonder Woman logo on them, that you will run into trouble.

  STARTING POINT: NERDY ART*

  If you’ve decided to go into the field of nerdy art, odds are good that you’ve already got a decent idea of the sort of tools you’ll need—things like:

  Tablet with digital pen: Wacom ta
blets come highly recommended. Regardless of what tablet you pick up, you’ll want to fidget with the sensitivity quite a bit until it feels right; this will take fine-tuning from you.

  Programs: Adobe Photoshop is the gold standard for many digital artists, but it comes at a serious price tag. Adobe Illustrator is solid, but it isn’t essential. There are numerous free art and comics programs you might want to consider, such as Manga Studio, Artweaver, Inkscape®, and Krita. These programs vary in terms of versatility and richness of design; some of the products you’ll make with free programs will look like they were made with free programs.

  While image scanners are definitely helpful tools, they aren’t as crucial as they used to be. If your work is mostly digital, you don’t really have to worry about translating physical work into digital, because it’s already done.

  A decent computer: Photoshop and other art programs can be serious memory hogs. For your digital work, you’re going to want to have a computer strong enough to handle the many layers and brushes of your work and the obsessively frequent saving you should be doing because things can crash at any moment. Computer speed can be an issue with Photoshop, as files can often be so large your computer slows to a painfully slow speeds, We’re talking zombie-missing-its-lower-torso-and-feeling-kind-of-drowsy kind of crawl.