I am sure you heard someone say the phrase: “I have a lot on my plate right now.”
Well today after looking at my personal blog and realizing that I have done what I tell my clients to never do, which is neglect or blog. I thought it would be the perfect time to tell you what’s been keeping me busy.
What’s on my plate?
- Managing Wonderful Life’s online brand – A few months ago I told you out a website I made for them, well now I am also handling there online presence. This is a lot of work since it entails keeping the blog updated, interacting with Facebook and Twitter, and keep up with customer service via email. It takes up a large chunk of my plate at the moment.
- Updating my various blogs – Even though this blog was neglected doesn’t mean that my other blogs were. Trying to keep my Bacon, iPhone gaming, and Startup blogs with fresh with content is a lot of work.
- Managing my own online brand – With keeping my sites updated it also means I have to keep my online presence for each site updated too.
- Freelancing – This takes priority over my personal projects so when you see one of my blog start to post less frequently its probably because I have an exciting new project.
- Event Planning – This time of year I put my event planners hat on and plan the biggest bacon event in Pittsburgh called Bacon Bash. It takes a lot of work to put on a great event. Every year it gets a little easier.
There’s always room for more bacon.
I am always getting better at what I do so I can eventually start to add new things to my plate all the time. For ensample I now have keeping my social networks updated down to science so I could add managing Wonderful Life brand to my plate without overcrowding it. The same can go for updating and writing blog content too.
So don’t read this post and think, “Wow this guy is so busy how could he do anything more.” I can always find time to work on freelance projects. Plus I am always getting more efficient the more project I take on and complete.
by Jason Mosley on April 20, 2010
in Projects
Wonderful Life Clothing (WL) is a brand co-founded by a long time friend of mine, Matt Gondek. He is known for creating some of the coolest band shirts. If you in to new hardcore music, chances are you own or have seen a shirt design by him. So when he asked me to design his new clothing brands website I gladly took the job.
It was a chance for me to take my design skills and style in a new direction. Since this was a hip clothing brand I would have to use colors and design elements that fit in with the artist featured on the site. I had to step out of my comfort zone for this one.
I usually design very clean and simple websites that use safe colors. The reason I do this is I usually design blogs which want to reach a wide audience. This means you want to keep things simple, so you don’t scare anyone off with hot pink text on a black background.
With the help of Matt and Brain (the other 1/2 of the brand) I felt that I really created something they and their customers can enjoy visiting. Since WL has a younger audience I was able to get away with using bright vivid colors in the layout. This allowed me to have a lot of fun with my treatment of page titles and the navigation on the site.
I really enjoyed working with these guys, and I plan to continue to improve their site as their needs for the website evolve. Things I could see adding in the future are ecommerce tools so they can sell shirts from the site directly, maybe a better way to organize the band/artist interviews once they get a few more under their belt, and eventually add some dynamic content on the sidebar.
Check out there new site and let me know what you think about it (design wise). Also be sure to check out their store and buy a few shirts. I really enjoy the different styles of each artist they used.
I am writing this post for two reasons:
- I want to show that just because you have a reading “disability” (I am using quotes because I don’t think Dyslexia is a big deal, it just means you have to do things differently then everyone else) doesn’t mean you should limit yourself.
- I don’t see or hear a lot of positive things about Dyslexia and I want to fix that.
Being a Dyslexic blogger does have its challenges since reading and spelling are not my strong points but having it is the reason I excel at it. It’s call the Dyslexic Advantage, a phrase coin by two doctors that study dyslexic children, and it describes the cognitive advantages dyslexic people have. These advantages are in tasks and occupations that require creative problem solving and big picture thinking. Dyslexics also have more drive and motivation to succeed since they have been challenged at every step of their life.
I know this to be true since anytime someone tells me I can’t do something, because I am Dyslexic, I must prove them wrong, like writing. I always enjoyed doing it but more than once in my life was told that I should just give up on it. They told me that people would never be able to read anything written by someone with poor grammar and bed spelling and no editor would take the time to help me.
Well thankfully there are a few nice editors out there and a few 1000 readers that can stand reading posts written by me.
My advantage was I wanted to succeed so I stuck with it. Sure I sometimes write unreadable posts because of never learning proper spelling and grammar. But it’s because I can clearly see the big picture I don’t let that stop me.
I just saw it as a miner set back and started to teach myself those skills buy using my favorite method, the just do it and see what happens method. I do this because my failures just make it easier for me to win the next time I try something. The more I write the faster I learn ways to get better at it. I can’t learn from a book or being lecture too, but I can learn buy just doing it and getting instant feedback, thanks to the internet via comments.
I guess what I am trying to say is, instead of saying “I can’t write and blogging is out of my reach”. I said, “I just going to do it and force myself to learn how to get better at it”.
I hear a lot of people without Dyslexia say they can’t write or they suck at it. I know that to be false, if you like writing and you want to write, then you can be great at it. You just need to do and keep at it. I am no award winning writer but it’s because I write prolifically that I am somewhat okay at it.
Just think what someone could do it they were not dyslexic and they used the same mentality I have. They could be the next bestselling author. But maybe its because they don’t have the Dyslexic Advantage and can’t see their hidden potential.
by Jason Mosley on March 25, 2010
in Opinions
And because of this we lost one of the best internet radio stations, Woxy.com.
Today Woxy.com had to close its doors to do the fact that company that owned them couldn’t find sponsors or advertisers to make the station profitable. You can read the whole story at Cincinnati.com so I will not bore you with all the details. The story of Woxy is really interesting; I just wish it had a happier ending.
Why It Happened
I think the reason Woxy had to close its doors was not because of bad management or poor content. It was because the advertising world is still stuck on old media and display ads. It wasn’t till just recently that display advertising took off. But that just covers one part of online media, blogs. This does nothing for podcasts, videocasts, and streaming radio stations like Woxy.
Many popular podcasts are struggling because advertisers are trying to use display adverting to sell to their audiences. This doesn’t work and there missing a huge opportunity. A podcast has a captive audience that is not only listing, but chose to take the time to download what there listen to. This is powerful stuff.
You would think the ad world would eat this up. They could get their message heard by people that will not change the channel to something else. Also since most podcasts cover a niche, you can hand pick who hears your message. It seems like a no brainer.
The same goes for streaming internet radio stations and videocasts. They too give the same opportunity to the ad world to reach an audience they can’t reach with boring display advertising.
Why Change is Hard
I am not some big advertising genus so I am sure I am not the only person that realizes this. I think the reason the ad world is stuck on only using display advertising is because it’s so easy to track. Every impression, click, or sale can be neatly track in any analytics software. Showing you how effect your campaigns are. The ad world loves crunching numbers.
The thing about advertising on podcasts, streaming radio, and other forms of media is they are harder to track. Yes you can see how big the audience is, but it’s hard to track what action they take on your campaign.
The ad world hates risks and not having numbers to crunch.
What Can Be Done
Sadly as content creators this nothing we can really do. We just have to keep creating killer content and hope the old advertising world catches up to us. It took a while for them to figure out how to advertise on blogs so it’s going to be the same with podcasts and streams. I just hope we don’t lose anymore internet super stars while we wait.
More and more podcasts and streams are starting to find advertisers let help this is a growing trend.
by Jason Mosley on November 9, 2009
in Projects
Over the past few years “Pagewaiter” has transformed many times. It started out as the name of my web hosting and design business. Then after the web hosting market got to competitive it trued in to a rarely updated portfolio site. It remained that way with versus designs for most of its life.
After getting a few speaking gigs to talk about blogging, and a few more design jobs. I decided to dust off my old Pagewaiter domain. I needed a place to share my ideas and show off my work. That way when I am talking to a class or a client I have something to refer them too. I used to just give people a list of websites I have done, but that seemed old fashion and out of touch.
Pagewaiter will be the online hub for all things Jason Mosley on the internet. My creations, designs, and services will be housed here. Will this be the final evolution for Pagewaiter? Probably not but we will just have to wait and see.
