- Beth's Musings
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When it became clear to me that I might be able to make a business out of my Medium hobby, I literally had no idea where to start.
Here is a hub for the information I wish I had a few months ago.
Table of Contents
Branding
I didn’t mean to start “PKM Beth” as a brand, but I did, and it works nicely. I kind of wish I’d just used my full name but I didn’t feel comfortable with that at the time.
My advice is to choose what is comfortable to you and what you can see yourself using long term because I believe our space is very community focused, and it’s easier for people to find you long term if you keep the same name.
To design my terrible logo, I used Canva. But I invested in my brand as soon as I could and paid someone on fiver to design my new branding. He did a great job and was so kind.
My avatar was illustrated by Catherine on Fiver too, and she even changed the background colour for me (no charge) when I changed my brand colours!
Domain Names
I bought “pkmbeth” from ionos which is pretty cheap and the support is good. The support needs to be good for someone who really doesn’t understand what TXT/DNS or literally any other technical word means.
My email is through them too which was tricky to set up in an email app.
I wish I’d started a Google Workspace account and just paid the bill. But I had no idea I was headed in the direction so never mind.
I have a couple of other domains too for projects I hope to start one day, and they’re all through ionos for ease.
Tech
I have an M2 Macbook Pro 2023 16GB RAM, 256GB Storage. For writing and life, this is excellent, for videos and whatnot, I’d upgrade to 512GB if possible. I upgraded from a Macbook Pro 2020 8GB and it’s like night and day. Spend as much as you can on tech, as hopefully it will last. I couldn’t justify another £200 at the time for more storage but I regret that.
I have an iPhone 14 128GB. Fine for everything but iCloud photos are 100GB alone which is annoying to manage.
I film on my iPhone back camera with an Elgato Wave 3 Microphone*. To do so, I need to connect my iPhone to the microphone which I do via this attachment*.
My camera sits on this tripod*, thanks to this attachment*, on this desk*. I am more than happy with all of these items, particularly the desk! I love how it has a shelf (good for the tripod), and drawers (helps reduce clutter).
Content Creation
Videos
Video content is edited on Capcut Pro Desktop* (£7.99 per month), but I used iMovie before. Capcut is 100% worth it.
If I’m screen-sharing, I’ll be filming on Screenstudio which is good but the editing experience can be annoying. I tend to get the automatic zooms (arguably Screenstudio’s USP) done first, and then export to Capcut and do the more intricate edits. It’s a great tool and very easy to customise and use, it’s just the editing experience that can be improved for someone who makes as many mistakes when talking as me!
If I need to do demo videos though (loads in the Capacities discord), I use Loom because I can easily share links and reuse them a lot.
Images
I use Shottr (on the top tier) for most screenshots which I love, unless I need a fancy background, in which case I use Xnapper. You can buy that through Setapp* though, which is a great set up.
I have also made mockups on shots.so which is incredible!
I have also used Gifox through Setapp to make a couple of Gifs but it’s not so intuitive to use. I’d rather use Screenstudio and export as Gif.
Written content
Currently, I write my articles in Notion on my PKM Beth home-page, where I have a linked view of my Content database.
I publish all my content to Medium and then the same, non-paywalled version to Beehiiv which is where my website and newsletter are.
It’s incredibly expensive for a small business like mine, but it’s a delight to use and more simple than my previous websites, who are increasing in price anyway.
Before Beehiiv I used Wix (dreadful), Framer (too complex) and Typedream (hard to make look nice for someone with no design skills). I feel Beehiiv is just right for me, and I really love using it.
Graphics
I switch between Canva Pro and Figma (free). I’m still no good at design no matter what the tool!
Business Ops
Sounds a lot fanicer than it is, but essentially I run my business through Notion just as I do the rest of my life. I do this because of the formulas, the databases, the linked views and the integrations.
I bought two templates to help me with this, and I just spent a couple of days merging them with my existing set ups. The Freelancer one is excellent.
Much like my personal side, I have one home page where I do pretty much everything, and then lots of databases “underneath” it. It’s pretty streamlined but I’m at the “I don’t know what I don’t know stage” right now, so that will change.
Time
I use Google Calendar. Meetings are booked via cal.com.
I’m currently using Akiflow for my task management whilst I wait for Routine* to get labels, which is a really important part of my workflows at the moment.
Online store
I sell my consulting hours and Notion template on Lemonsqueezy.
Easy set up, customisable, looks good, does all the complex tax things for me. I way prefer its vibe to Gumroad.
Mindset
This might seem odd to include, but I’m no pro at anything here. I just have to keep practising. I try to do one thing better each time I do something.
That sounds like I have a list of 365 things to improve and in one year I’ll be perfect. That isn’t what I mean.
It’s just that you see tips, tricks and inspiration constantly and I try to put one of these things into practice each time I do something new.
I know I’ll cringe at my instagram feed in a year, and I already cringe at some old screenshots, but it’s all part of the journey!
I’ll keep adding to this as I think of things, but let me know if I forget something in the meantime!
Links marked * are affiliate links. They cost you no more to use but it helps me keep making free content!