The Pen Addict 84/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	84
Title:	Pen Blogging With Ed Jelley
Release Date:	December 10th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Ed Jelley
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 84
Audio File:	Audio Episode 84
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 84
Length:	7171 min <br />1.183 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Brad Dowdy: Hello and welcome to episode 84 of The Pen Addict podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and today I am joined by a double, what can only be described really, as like a double-tipped pen of some description. Because I have not one, but two pen bloggers. So I'm going to introduce our guest first, which is a peculiar thing, I don't know why I'm doing this, but welcome Ed Jelly. Thank you. Ed Jelly.com. You've basically become my co-host now and we're going to welcome that other guy.

Myke Hurley: Alright, we'll bring him in.

Brad Dowdy: Hi Brad Dowdy, how are you? Welcome to The Pen Addict podcast.

Ed Jelley: How are you sir, thanks for having me today.

Brad Dowdy: It's a pleasure. I don't know if you're familiar with this show.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, no, I've heard people talking about it on Twitter and I can't believe there's a podcast about pens that people would actually listen to. Like taking up an hour of their day. I mean, it must be like a total waste of time. But I guess I appreciate you having me on.

Guest Introduction

Ed Jelley: What have I done to the show? I don't know. Way to go. But I'm doing good. How are you sir? Yeah, I'm dandy. Thank you. Good, good, good, good. I bet you are. Ed, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate you coming on today. You got the secret message from last week. You broke the code?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, the very cryptic message about me joining you guys and I cracked it. I remembered what my name was and here I am.

Brad Dowdy: You were all over that. It was like within like a couple of hours or something. I know.

Myke Hurley: You know what? I started getting all those referrals to my website. I'm like, oh, who's talking about me? I found them.

Ed Jelley: I found the guys. Yep, yep. Well, we definitely appreciate you coming on. This is a little bit of a different episode that I wanted to get you on. I don't plan my episodes out too far in advance because things change and whatnot. But I've had a bunch of questions like in the past month or two just about pen blogging in general. And I'm a huge fan of you and your site. I thought you would be someone good to get on to talk about that. So we're going to cover that today as our main topic. But we got a little follow-up first. We'll go through that real quick if you guys don't mind.

Brad Dowdy: Sounds like a good idea to me.

Ed Jelley: All right. So one thing we've talked about in the past, Myke, I think we've kind of talked about it in passing. I don't know how much time I spent on it. But I wanted to revisit one question that we often get about what types of fountain pen inks to use. And are all fountain pen inks safe? And, you know, can I use any ink in any type of pen? And, I mean, the answer is you kind of need to do your homework a little bit. You know, I've always been of the philosophy, and it kind of comes from these links that we're going to talk about here in a moment. And that will be in the show notes. But my theory that I just kind of work off of is if a manufacturer makes pens like Pilot and also makes inks like Pilot, then that's generally a pretty safe ink that you don't really have to ask too many questions about using in your Pilot pen or any other fountain pen. You know, same thing with Pelican. Pelican makes pens. Pelican makes inks. Because the theory being that these companies are not going to manufacture inks that would be damaging to their pens. Right? So, I mean, that's kind of the working theory. A lot of people believe in that. And we've posted this ink from Richard's Pens. And I think it's actually been updated since we last spoke about it. And it's Richard Bender. And he put in this article. There's a huge caution box in the article now. And let me read part of it real quick. And then we can discuss it. It says, What's that Noodler's one that actually does destroy pens?

Brad Dowdy: It's a blue one. Yeah.

Ed Jelley: Bay State Blue. Bay State Blue. Is it Bay State? Bay State. Yeah. Bay State Blue.

Brad Dowdy: Because I've had people say to me, Oh, this is a great blue. But don't leave it in because it will destroy your pen. Don't want it. No, don't want it. It's a nice color, yes. But, yeah, I'm not up for having my pens destroyed for a nice blue color.

Ink Properties

Ed Jelley: So, what do you think about this, Ed? Just about inks in general. Then, like, kind of calling out the specific inks to be wary of.

Myke Hurley: The biggest one that comes to mind. Oh, sorry. What was that?

Ed Jelley: No, I was going to say, you just do so many ink reviews. I know you've had probably a lot of experience with some of these inks.

Myke Hurley: The only thing that, like, I really, that keeps coming up is Bay State Blue, which I had a bottle of. I traded it because I just, you know, it was whatever. It wasn't great. Get it out of the house.

Brad Dowdy: Don't have it around.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it was scary because people say, like, I dropped some on my floor and it's permanently blue and bleach won't get it out. And I hear that the pilot feeds disintegrate from it because it's so.

Brad Dowdy: What is it made of?

Myke Hurley: It's, what is it? It's very, I think it's very, it's alkaline. It's an alkaline base where it, something like, I could be completely wrong, but that's what I heard. That is very corrosive, so. It's crazy.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, there's some, there's some big words in, in Richard Bender's article here that I can't pronounce. So it talks about some of the materials that are in the.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah, those, those are words. Yeah. Yeah. I see the ones you're talking about.

Brad Dowdy: What, like, uh, the Tatusosanine or something, Quinistridone. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, yep, those.

Brad Dowdy: Those ones.

Myke Hurley: Those words. Uh, that and, um, Iron Gaul inks are the only other ones that I've heard. Don't leave them in the pen for too long. And, uh, those would be like, uh, who, oh my God, was it? Diamine Registrar's ink is an Iron Gaul ink. And, uh, Rohrer and Klingner, I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that right. Uh, Scabiosa, the purple one, is an Iron Gaul ink. And Salix, by the same brand. And, uh, the reason they say not to leave those in for too long is because they're made with an acid that you put iron into. And then it kind of does a chemical thing and bonds to the page. So they say not to leave that around for too long. Yep. And that's it. As far as other, other brands, I mean, I've never had a problem.

Myke Hurley: Ever, really. Yeah.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. I haven't had, like, any direct problems. Um, I can tell just, like, the one bottle of Private Reserve ink I have seems, for the lack of a better term, seems stronger, if you will, than a lot of other inks. It seems like it's, you know, highly dyed or pigmented. It's just like a very, I don't know, it's not thick. But, man, you can tell there's really something to this ink. And it's, if I get it on something, it's not really going to come out very well. But I tend to, like, on some of my favorite pens, like, I like a lot of Noodler's inks. They have some killer colors. And I'm not going away from Noodler's inks by any stretch of the imagination. But there's some pens I'm a little bit more hesitant to use that ink in. Um, I don't know, just out of paranoia. But I've never really had a problem. But I do perform, I guess, I have good fountain pen hygiene, if you will. I usually don't keep inks loaded up. If I'm not using them for maybe, like, two or three weeks, then they're getting cleaned out. Um, I use Roar and Clingner, the Scabiosa, and the Salix often. And I've never had a problem with those. Those actually seem pretty tame compared to some other inks. But, you know, this is just something I wanted to revisit. And, you know, I put a couple other links in the show notes just for reading purposes that you guys can check out. Just, you know, this Richard Bender is not the only one that's saying this. You know, there's another link from the pen penguin or penguin pen. Penguin pen, I guess it is. Where he basically talks about the same thing. It's like, um, what does he say?

Ed Jelley: Da-da-da.

Ed Jelley: This is good. Podcast. Um, it says, please, please note the use of private reserve or Noodler's inks will void the penguin warranty. I cannot be responsible for pens in which those inks have been used. So, you know, um, people that have, are having to actually work on these pens like, um, Richard Bender and other people will actually turn down working on pens that have been, you know, exposed to these types of inks. So, you know, I, this isn't like sounding the alarm or anything. It's just more of a heads up to use, uh, you know, um, you know, clean out your, clean out your fountain pens, you know, with regularity. You know, understand what you're putting in the fountain pen, um, and, you know, what the materials are in your pen and how things are going to react to it. And keep an eye on it. You know, just don't ink up a pen and let it sit there for a month and you're not going to have any problems. I mean, I really haven't had any problems with, uh, Noodler's or, or any other inks causing real legitimate damage to any of my pens so far. So, knock on wood, we'll keep it that way. But, you know, keep, uh, keep tabs on, on how you're cleaning and maintaining your pens, I guess, is the best way to put it.

Brad Dowdy: I just have no desire, um, to, to use one of these sort of inks if, if that's the sort of damage it can have. I would just prefer to not worry about it personally.

Ed Jelley: I'm with you on that. But, I mean, then there's a, like, I'm going to be hard pressed to, um, get rid of Noodler's Apache Sunset. Like, I love that ink. That's one of my favorite ink. Um, but I am, I will admit that I'm a little bit wary. Like, at some pens, I don't put that in. You know, I don't know why it's, it's like a mental thing. But I'm going to keep using it. And, you know, Noodler's 54th Massachusetts. It's, I think, Ed, you're, you're a fan of that one. I know you, you like some Noodler's inks, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm, I'm doodling with 54th Massachusetts right now, actually. And, uh, Bad Blue Heron is one of my favorite shading dark blues. Um, I have their blue-black. I have, I don't know, I have a bunch of them. And I've tried even more. And I've never, I've had a problem with a few of them, actually. One of them, uh, Rome Burning, that kind of weird gold color that when you wash it away, it turns blue. Did stain, uh, one of my pens. Okay. But I don't know how long I left it in there for. And I never tried bleaching it out because I didn't really care. But the, the rule of thumb is pretty much just watch, watch your stuff. Be careful. Read a review. Let somebody else spend the money and make the mistake before you do. Um, you know, it's, it's occupational hazard, I guess.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. And that's a good point. Like, there's probably, there's hardly an ink out there that hasn't been reviewed by someone somewhere. You know, either on a blog or a fountain pen network. You can go read about, you know, do a, do a quick search, you know, before you buy. See what type of experience other people have had with the inks. And, you know, so, so, um, you know, work a little differently than others with their pens. So, yeah, that's a good point.

Brad Dowdy: So, a couple of times, uh, Brad mentioned the show notes for this week's episode. Well, you can find those over at 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 84.

Ed Jelley: Great. Now, our, uh, our friend Keegan from One Star Leather, he sent me a link this week. Um, and it actually wasn't about, um, his leather goods. He's actually done some reviews on YouTube, some YouTube video reviews. And last week, we were talking about some of the different papers that we use. Um, and Keegan sent out a review where he reviews the, um, Morriman, Morriman paper, the Kiyokuto FOB Coop notebook that we talked about last week, and, um, the Apica notebook. So, I just wanted to highlight that, that there's some video reviews of the paper that we talked about last week. And, Ed, he talked about, um, the Kiyokuto, the one that you're using for your reviews right now. Yeah. Have you had, um, much bleeding problems with them? Because he was actually saying there's some, some good bleed, um, going on with some of his fountain pen inks. And, and I haven't had the chance to test that yet. But, uh, I plan on doing that soon because I really like the looks of that notebook.

Myke Hurley: See, I pretty much use that as my ink review notebook right now. And there is a little bit of bleed through. Mm-hmm. But I find that the balance of the, uh, absorbent to slick ratio of the paper is actually preferable to me. Like, uh, I don't have an issue because I'm not really using the back of the pages because I'm using it, you know, to photograph and for the website. But, um, I, if you're using, like, a broader nib or, like, sketching and you're doing multiple passes over the same area, there might be a little bit of a problem with, uh, bleeding. But, um, the reason I use it for my ink reviews is because I like the size of it and, uh, that the paper will absorb the ink, but it doesn't, you know, take forever to dry, like with Rodia, where you could sit there for 20 minutes and still have a wet page in front of you, you know?

Ed Jelley: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And, you know, you're not, not smudging it or anything like that. So, I, I'm really anxious to give this a try. I've had this notebook sitting here for, I don't know, months and I haven't put one line of ink on it yet. So, I'm going to, I'm going to start getting, getting into that. And, um, so yeah, check out, check out Keegan's reviews. It's a good, it's a good 10 minute long video where he goes over a few different papers and, uh, shows some, uh, some good shots there. And one other, one other thing before we get into our main topic, um, our friends at Draplin Design, uh, Mr. Aaron Draplin has released a, as he calls it, way limited edition field notes. It's a, uh, Draplin Design Company, field notes, factory floor memo book. Um, it's an edition of 1500. They're selling it straight through draplin.com. Um, what do you think about this, Myke?

DVC Pins

Brad Dowdy: I bought some. I think they're absolutely stunning.

Ed Jelley: I think this is about the best color I've seen in a long time. Yeah. I like the, uh, the, what is it? An aqua exterior and, uh, acid green. Jade is the color.

Myke Hurley: It's sort of jades. Sort of jades. Acid green.

Ed Jelley: Sort of jade. I'm down with the acid green. And I love the little, uh, the little DVC logos on the, on the inside, um, of the, for the front cover. So, um, yeah. So hopefully people who want this have realized it and gone ahead and ordered some. I've ordered some. Myke's ordered some. But, um, yeah, the link will be in the show notes for you guys to, to check this out. Cause this is a really good looking edition. One, one difference is it's a blank pages, um, as opposed to grids or lines or dots or anything like that. So, um, same dimension, same, same size, same look, but, um, totally killer color in, uh, my opinion. So this, uh, yeah, this one, this will be one I'll be clamoring for. Make a stock edition like this color. So.

Brad Dowdy: Only 1500 of them though. So you've got to get on it if you want it.

Ed Jelley: Well, I know there's at least only 1495 left. So.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Did you buy five of them? Yeah, I did. I should have bought five. I bought three.

Ed Jelley: We don't have a podcast about pins because we're normal, Myke.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's true.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. So.

Pen Blogging

Ed Jelley: All right. Well, let's, let's get into the, to the nuts and bolts here today. Um, like I said, a little bit different, different topic and, um, we'll, uh, we'll let Myke, uh, pay some bills here real quick. And then, uh, Ed and I are going to get into it, uh, about, uh, pin blogging.

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Ed Jelley: All right, Ed. Let's get into this pen blogging topic that I've been asked a lot about. And we'll kind of see where it takes us. I've got some questions from people that they've wanted answered and some things like that. But let's start at the beginning and with you. And I'm a big fan of your blog and your style of blogging and how you do lots of different things. So that's why I wanted to have you on. But just kind of give us a refresher of how you started your blog and really probably more why you started edjelly.com and doing pen and paper and ink reviews.

Myke Hurley: Oh, boy. Honestly, it kind of started out of just more than anything. It was just kind of something to do. I started, you know, I'm kind of a chronic doodler. I recently moved. So I was going through all my notebooks and pens and stuff. And, like, looking back at, like, my notes from college, it's, like, 90% like here's doodling and then 5% notes. And I'm like, this needs to be more focused. And if I'm already spending all this time doodling, I might as well put it to good use. So if you actually look at my site, the first review I did was on a Rodia dot pad that I did at school. And the photograph is from my phone on one of the tables in the school cafe. So it kind of, after I did a few of those, I'm like, this is not something that is up to my personal standards. And I kind of just started collecting my things. I'm like, I could review this. I could do this. Let me, all right, we'll do this. And then you kind of just work out, like, a formula and just get chugging, I guess, until you find something that evolves into what you want. So really it started, like, it was just, you know what, this is something I want to do and I'll give it a shot. Just like anything, really.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, yeah. Now, how do, tell me a little bit of, like, you said you started kind of gathering up some pins and some things you can review. And tell me a little bit about, like, how you decide to review a product or, you know, kind of what that review process is like. Do you have a bunch of pins, like, set aside or ink set aside, like, queued up to review? Kind of tell me how you set everything up on the back end. This is kind of like the inside baseball version of pin blogging, you know, take us behind the scenes.

Myke Hurley: Well, at first it was like, let me just review everything I have. That was the goal. It was like, I don't want to go ahead and spend a ton of money real fast on stuff to review. So let me take my collection now, kind of spread it out a bit. And that was kind of the way, I thought that was the best way to do it, both from a financial standpoint, because everybody knows, probably most of the people listening know how expensive pens and associated goods can get so fast. Just so expensive, so fast. And I started out with, you know, reviewing the things I had and kind of built up a little base of reviews. And basically I'd have, all right, I'm going to, you know, I'm just going to do this pen this week. And, you know, it started off like whatever ink was in there, just here's a pen review. And then I ordered ink samples. I still do all the time. And that was pretty much the way to get a bunch of inks in my hand without buying full bottles and committing. So between the resources out there, I know Anderson pens and Goulet pens both have a pretty good amount of samples that you can buy. And they're cheap. You don't have to commit to a whole bottle. Load up a pen, get an ink review done. And then if you don't like it, flush it out. And if you do, just, you know, write it out until it's empty. But pretty much it was just, it started off with, let me do what I have. And then kind of branch out from there. As my collection grows, also my review base is going to grow.

Ed Jelley: Now, when you were starting, like, I don't recall. How long has your blog been out there? How long has it, Jellybean.com been around?

Myke Hurley: In its current incarnation, a year and two months.

Ed Jelley: Okay. So back in the beginning when you were starting it, did you just say, just kind of go full bore saying, you know, I'm going to buy a domain name. And, you know, I'm going to, you know, choose a blogging platform to work off of. How did you kind of decide the tools you're going to work with from a blogging perspective? Did you bounce over? Did you try a few different website styles and designs and platforms? And how did all that work out?

Myke Hurley: The domain itself I had for actually a while before I started the website. It was one of those things where it's like, buy your name, domain name, before someone else does. It'll come back to bite you because that's what everyone always said. So I did. And I had it. I'm like, ah, I can't really think of anything pen related that I like enough to go out and buy a domain for. And I have this one here already paid for. So I kind of just fell into that. And then, honestly, I think that might have been a little bit of kind of a mistake. Probably wasn't the best idea to put it in my name.

Myke Hurley: But, you know what, it ended up, it's still there. It works. I'm okay with it. But maybe a bit of advice would be just try not to use your name because if you want it for something else, then you have it kind of locked into this pen site. Not that I want to use it for anything else right now. Just in general, like, it doesn't really, I don't know, it doesn't really help one way or the other.

Ed Jelley: I kind of thought about that at first when I first started mine. Not that I was going to use my own name, but that I guess when I started out blogging, I guess I wanted to just keep that anonymity. Am I saying that right?

Ed Jelley: Anonymity. Anonymity. Aluminium.

Brad Dowdy: Anonymity.

Ed Jelley: Anonymity. Yeah, so I didn't want to necessarily put my name on it, but that's changed over the years. And actually, I've never really thought twice about edjelly.com being anything else but a pen blog. But I guess your point is well taken that, well, down the line, if you want to use that for something else, you're kind of stuck into the blogging thing. But I think actually for the pen blog, it actually works out fine. But I guess that's probably just because I'm used to it at this point.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm not complaining now, but if you're starting off, maybe think about it real hard. Are you going to want to commit your name to this for however long?

Ed Jelley: Yeah.

Ed Jelley: You can go. I'm sorry. I do think buying a domain is important. If there's one thing you spend money on to start a blog, you can start on a platform for free, WordPress or Tumblr or Blogger or any of these that don't charge. And you can repoint your domain name. I'd spend the $10 on a domain name if you're not going to spend anything else. That seems to be easier. I started mine on a blogger blog. I had, I think, penaddict or thepenaddict.blogspot.com. And, you know, that's just a pain to move, you know, a year down the line when I decided to purchase penaddict.com and, you know, have to mess with all that. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Plus, people can't find you. It's difficult for people to find you.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. Yeah. So that's one thing I would recommend. And, you know, I don't think you should spend a lot of money up front, but I do think you should just go ahead and pony up for the domain name. Just buy it for a year. See if it sticks. You know, if it's not, you're out $10. You know, you can change the platform easily, but the domain name, I think, is a good thing to have.

Myke Hurley: I also feel like people take you more seriously if you have a .com or a .net. It's not like, you know, not that there's anything wrong with having a edgeelly.tumblr.com. It's just, I think it looks nicer if you drop out the, you know, the Tumblr or the blog spot. It just, it looks more professional and it is a good $12 to spend.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. And like Myke said, it's easier to share, easier for people to remember. You don't have to say, you know, remember to put, you know, the blog spot in there or whatever in the address. So, yeah, that's a good point. And, you know, another thing you mentioned already that I wholeheartedly agree with, and this is where a lot of people get hung up in the emails that I get, review what you have already. You know, that's how I started mine. You know, I just took, you know, all these pens I had from, you know, Staples or Office Max or Office Depot and all these different papers that I had collected over the years and these various pens and, you know, just started reviewing them. You know, reviewed what I had. Then I kind of figured out, okay, what do I want to do next? And then I spent a little bit of money, you know, picking up some new items to acquire. But a lot of the emails I get are, you know, how do I get pens to review? And that's kind of the wrong way to approach it.

Ed Jelley: You know, so start with what you have. Go from there. Kind of build a base from that. You know, see if you like it for one. You know, see if other people like it, you know, for two. You know, if your style is a good fit and things like that. So I think that's a very, very good point, especially in the beginning. Now, one of the things you do that I'm very jealous of, and I'm jealous of a lot of people's photography.

Ed Jelley: Tell me about your photography setup. That's one thing that's been, you know, regardless of your initial few posts, that's one thing that's been pretty consistent over the years. You pretty much nailed the photography for as long as I can remember. I just really like how you shoot your reviews. So tell me a little bit about your setup, and let me see what I can learn from this.

Myke Hurley: My setup is definitely less than traditional. I have a Micro Four Thirds camera. I don't use a DSLR. The difference is the Micro Four Thirds is in a smaller platform. It's more portable. It's not a big thing. There's no giant lens on it. It's basically kind of the step in between point-and-shoot camera and a fully-featured DSLR. And pretty much using that, you just play with it. Don't just sit inside and take pictures of pens. It really helps to go out and understand how a camera works, and then you can get it to do what you want.

Myke Hurley: Play with lighting.

Myke Hurley: Just pretty much learn the basics of photography, and then you can really start applying it to pen blogging or whatever you want to blog about. But really, it helped me immensely to learn the basics of photography and then apply those principles to the blog. But I have my camera, and a lot of my reviews, I use natural light. So I'd usually just set up most of them. You know that brown background I use with all the lines on it? It's a bathroom tile. It was $5. It's a $5 bathroom tile that I put on a speaker stand and shove up against the window and just wait for some nice light to come in. That's really it. That's all you need. You don't have to spend money on this huge rig and this huge setup. But I really enjoy using that for photography. Also, I'm lucky enough, at my job, I have this full 5000K lighting, white, seamless background that I do use. But I don't find it any better. I use it for photographing things for my job. I didn't buy it specifically for pen blogging. It's just one of those things that it's nice to have there, but it's totally not necessary.

Myke Hurley: And once I take the photos, I use Aperture 3. I know people just take straight from the camera and upload. But those little straightening adjustments, the crops, they all make a huge difference in terms of how a picture ends up looking at the end of the day.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, so it's kind of interesting that pen and paper blogging is kind of a visual medium. It's like you have to show as much as you tell about, you know, I think all the best blogs have some of the best pictures and show, you know, various, you know, angles of the pen, how the pen writes, how the ink performs on the page, you know, what the paper looks like, what the paper, how the paper properties handle inks and stuff like that. It's a surprisingly visual thing. And I think, you know, having good photography is always something I've been challenged with. It's just not something I've taken the time to fully embrace. And it's not a, you know, a second nature type of thing for me. So, but I think it's still probably one of the most important things because it's going to draw the people in. And you don't have to have, like you're saying, you don't have to have a big setup at all. You know, probably these days, you know, with the advances in phone cameras, I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of phone cameras that can just work and make these crystal clear pictures. But, you know, have at least a little bit of a nice, you know, nice photographic setup. And it just really makes your blog kind of pop and kind of stand out from the crowd a little bit, if you will, if you're trying to get noticed in the realm of pen blogging.

Myke Hurley: Like I said, it doesn't have to be crazy expensive. I think I have an older model of my camera. It's an Olympus Pen EP3. And you can get that now since the new one came out for like a couple hundred bucks. Or even check eBay. You know, there's nothing wrong with, if you want to bump it up from like a cell phone or from a point and shoot, you know, buy something used. There's nothing that says there's anything wrong with that. And just do some research on learning how to use it properly. And you can get some crazy results with a bathroom tile and light from the window.

Ed Jelley: That's awesome. Now, how often are you posting on your blog? I mean, it seems to be at least a couple times a week. Do you try to keep a fixed schedule or how do you work through your blog schedule?

Myke Hurley: I find I kind of go and like, I'll just like, I'll bang out like ten reviews like written. And then I'll photograph them all. And then I'm like, oh, I'm overwhelmed. Let me, I'll post one now. When I get around to it, I'll post another one. I usually try and get like three posts a week. And pretty much I'll just get a bunch of them done in a row. And then worry about getting them all typed up and formatted after the fact. But usually I try and do three weeks. Sometimes it's more. Sometimes it's less. It really depends on, you know, if I'm busy or not really.

Ed Jelley: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: But, you know, I do place a priority. Like I don't want to let a week go by without a post. Because you don't want people to, you know, you want to keep traffic coming in. You don't want to let people forget about you.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. How much time do you think you spend every week on edjelly.com, do you think?

Myke Hurley: Um, well, I'm constantly lurking it from my phone just because, I don't know, I find analytics to be incredibly fascinating. I like that. I use WordPress, by the way. I don't know if he touched on that. Yes. That's my preferred platform is WordPress. And their built-in analytics are just crazy. Like I like, I can see where all my views are coming from. I can see what country they're coming from, my top posts for the day, who's clicking on what, where my referrals are coming from. And it's just like that's something that I check just as often as I check Twitter just because I think it's fun.

Search Engine Optimization

Ed Jelley: Now, that's probably, I don't know, that may be the second most frequent question I get is how do you get more exposure? How do you get more traffic? How do you get more views coming in there? Is there anything that you do or that you've learned over the years that has driven traffic to your site or gotten you more exposure? Or do you have anything to say on that topic?

Myke Hurley: Well, what helps is really doing some research on search engine optimization, also known as SEO. It doesn't sound like much, but every image that goes into WordPress, there's something called alt text. And that is what the search engines tend to look at when they get results. So the number one thing to increase traffic that I think should be done, even if you don't want to reach out to anybody, you don't feel comfortable writing emails, you don't want to put yourself out there yet, make sure all your posts are properly search engine optimized. I did some research about it, and then within a week, I saw a ton more traffic just from renaming my images.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, that's cool. That's something I don't work on enough, and I don't have a huge focus on that. But I think I've seen the search terms over the years, how they're written into. I don't write necessarily optimized, but I can tell just from looking at the analytics how that actually works. Something I'll write on a whim has ended up being a huge search term on my site, but it wasn't necessarily done purposefully.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Another thing, reach out to people. Comment on other blogs. Get your name out there. Post on forums. Post on forums. Even clicking on a fountain pen hashtag on Instagram or Twitter and following a bunch of people. At least it'll ring them an email or an alert that says, pen blog is now following you on Twitter. And then they'll say, oh, I could either let me go check that out, or they could ignore it, just like anything else. But a big part of it is putting yourself out there.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, I think that's one of my biggest tips is just having some type of social media presence. You don't have to go crazy on it, and you don't have to be on every site everywhere. But have a Twitter account and join the conversation that other people are having. And once you start blogging and you start getting some feedback, make sure you engage with those readers through social media or through the comment section on your blog. And things like that. Just being really open with readers that reach out to you and responsive to them. And then joining the conversation just around other general topics like we might be having on Twitter or some people might have on Facebook. Things like that. And it just kind of, I don't know, it just kind of spreads things around a little bit to kind of get your name out there. I've found that that's been, just being really responsive to the readers I think has been kind of a good, kind of a slow growth type of thing. But that's been a very, very good thing over the long haul that I've done.

Myke Hurley: I agree. Definitely agree with you there. I make it a point to answer every single one of my comments. Like, within, try to get to them within a day of them being posted. Just because it's the nice thing to do. You know, if people are taking the time out of their day to go out of their way and comment on your post, the least you can do is even a, hey, thanks for reading. I appreciate the kind words. That's much more than other people, you know. Some other people don't even do that. And there's nothing wrong with not doing that, you know. But when you're starting out and, you know, you're not seeing a crazy volume of comments, it's definitely nice to be able to say, hey, thank you. You know, I appreciate it. So you kind of put a face to, you know, these posts that just keep popping up.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, that person will come back and, you know, hopefully they'll spread it around with, you know, on Twitter and bring in some other friends with them and things like that. So I think that's only a good thing. You know, you've got to be, you know, just, you know, writing a post and, you know, setting it off into the world is only half the battle. That's for sure. You know, you've got to do a lot more, you know, if you really want to gain traffic and things like that, you know, following up after the fact on those type of things. So now let's, I want to talk about, this is the big behind the scenes topic, as I think a lot of people want to know, is how people like you and myself work with different retailers and vendors, different pen manufacturers, paper companies, you know, online retailers. Behind the scenes, you know, I don't know about you, but I get, you know, a pretty decent amount of emails, maybe not every week, but, you know, they're pretty frequent. How do you decide on who you're going to work with as far as, you know, people offer us a lot of products for review? That's just a thing that's kind of built up over time. You know, that obviously wasn't the case when I started. And, you know, I don't know about you when you started it, it just takes some time to build that audience. Then the retailers and manufacturers start noticing you, you know, your name pops up a lot with their products and things like that. And all of a sudden, hey, you're getting emails. How about you review this? Or how about you give this away? And how to, tell me a little bit about working with some of the people that you work with.

Myke Hurley: Well, honestly, I've reached out a lot to manufacturers. In addition to recently, I've been getting like a pretty big influx of companies contacting me, which is like really satisfying. That kind of reinforces like what I'm doing is like getting noticed by the companies that I'm buying from, which is like a great feeling. But I also, I will write letters to them saying, hey, this is what I do. It would be cool if, you know, can I check something out if you'd be willing to or, you know, or not. My main thing, though, is to treat everybody as professionally as possible.

Myke Hurley: When somebody contacts you and they want to give you something, you know, treat it like it's a business transaction. Even though, you know, you might not be seeing money from it necessarily. But my main piece of advice is just be as professional as possible. And most of the time, you know, if a company has contacted me, it's like, hey, this is so-and-so from Levenger. We want you to check out one of our pens. And then, you know, that's pretty much it. And then, of course, you know, I give them the thank you. I would be more than happy to. And then some companies say, yeah, I want a link in the post. Some companies say, here, we just want to send this to you. And it's very nonchalant. So it really, it's all over the place. But mostly, I think it's just kind of be professional. And don't let them think, like, hey, why would I give this guy something? I shouldn't have done that.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. I don't want to put you on the spot. But do you ever turn anyone down?

Myke Hurley: Honestly, I think there are a few items that I've gotten. And then kind of, like, not as a, like, I've gotten something like this is not what I expected. I got a notebook from a company. I'm not going to name it. But it was just really not good. And I just kind of put it to the side. And that was it. Like, it sounded like it was going to be a good thing initially. I didn't want to, you know, I don't want to turn anybody down because it's cool. You know, free stuff is great. But once I got it, you know, I emailed them and said, listen, like, this really wasn't what I thought it would be. And they said, yeah, I've been having issues with quality control. And that was kind of, I left it at that.

Ed Jelley: Okay. Well, that's good that you actually reached back out to them and gave them some insight, you know, on why you actually weren't going to review the product.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you know, I feel bad if it's a new company, like, you don't want to slam them if they're still working kinks out. But then again, there's, like, balancing it. Like, the people that read your blog that may go out and buy this product, do they have the right to know? Or it's, hey, this person was nice enough to reach out and give you something to review, but there was a problem with it. So, you know, like, it's this weird balance of kind of, am I doing a disservice to the people? Or, you know, this guy just happened to give me a bum product and now, like, I'm going to slam it to my readers. It's kind of a weird balance of morals, I guess.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, and I think that's one of the, that is one of the hardest things to balance is when you're getting, you know, an item for free or, you know, just trying to, you know, how to relay to the readers that, you know, that your review is going to be completely honest. You know, it's unbiased. It doesn't matter that you got it for free. You know, I think that's one of the biggest things that I focus on is if someone sends me a product, you know, I tell them up front that, you know, just because you send me a product doesn't mean that I'm going to fawn all over it and, you know, say it's the greatest thing ever. I mean, I tell them, I say all the time, if, you know, if the product's not any good, I'm going to say it's not any good. And, you know, that's just the way it's going to be. I'm up front, you know, with anyone I work with and, you know, I think that just builds a good trust with the readers too that you have the kind of this place that you're coming from where you're being honest with the products and your readers kind of trust you to know that you're doing a good job regardless of how you came about the certain products.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I mean, I agree. Definitely. Like, I've gotten things where, you know, I post at the end, like, yeah, this was given to me by so-and-so, but my opinion is totally my own. And, you know, I don't feel guilty or bad when there's something about the product I didn't like, you know?

Ed Jelley: Yeah, totally.

Myke Hurley: Like, so if you get something offered to you for review, don't feel obliged for any reason to give it this glowing review. If something was wrong with it, you know, it's better to be honest. And that could, in the long run, be better for both the company and for the people who are reading your blog possibly making a purchase decision on something.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, 100% agree. Now, one thing you said, and I'm the – I think I'm actually in the minority on this is, you know, especially when starting your blog, reaching out to vendors and asking for products and writing letters, you know, saying, you know, I'm writing this blog and here's some examples. I don't know that I've ever done that. I mean, I could probably be proven wrong back over the years, but I don't recall that I ever reached out. I guess that's just not – yeah, I guess that's not my personality to like –

Brad Dowdy: That's fine for Brad, right?

Ed Jelley: Yeah, it's just not my personality to reach out. I don't know. But I think that's – like I said, I think I'm in the minority on that. I think most people that are getting started in blogs, I think it's totally fine to reach out to companies and say, hey, you know, this is what I'm doing. Here's some examples of what I've done. If there's anything, you know, that – any products you think might be a good fit, let me know and we'll see about reviewing them. I mean, I think people should absolutely do that. I just don't recall if I have ever done that. So now that I'm thinking about it and you said that, so –

Myke Hurley: Well, it doesn't hurt. That's how I got hooked up with Kaweco. I reached out to them. That's awesome. They're a company that's not from the country. They're located overseas. Why would they know that – you know, why would they know about a pen blog that is otherwise off their radar? And, you know, I reached out and said if there's anything that, you know, anything that I could do to check out some product, that would be great. Here's my website. Here's what I do. And they were more than receptive. And since then, they definitely embraced sending out products to blogs. It's not a coincidence that, well, you, Myke over at ClickyPost, Aziza at Gourmet Pens, everybody got this mysterious box from, you know, Kaweco. And that's something that, like, you know, it just happened. Like, they kind of embraced the pen blogosphere, if you will.

Ed Jelley: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And sent out, you know, a ton of product to pen bloggers to review. And, you know, I reached out to them. I don't know order of operations. I don't know who got in touch with who. But, like, it never hurts. The worst they could do is say no or not respond.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, so I'll thank you for that because, yeah. I was wondering how all this came about. And I was like, yeah, why does Kaweco want to send me all these products? Yeah, that's great. I'll absolutely take them on because I'm a huge fan. But, yeah, that's cool. It's been fun to see over the past, really, I would say really just the past year, seeing how all these vendors are kind of getting involved into this realm. I mean, it didn't really used to be that way. You know, you used to have some, like in the podcast world, you know, Squarespace is, you know, a huge, huge sponsor for all the podcasts. And they kind of keep the, some people joke about it, but it's serious. I mean, they kind of keep the industry going to a certain degree. And, you know, back, you know, years ago, it was kind of just jet pins, then maybe, you know, a few other smaller places here and there where, you know, working with bloggers and getting things to review and things like that. And these days, it's every time you turn around, you know, my inbox has, you know, all kinds of messages from all kinds of places wanting to do pen and paper reviews. I actually, I actually turn a lot of things down. I think a lot of it for me is just time. Like, I don't want to take someone's product that they're nice enough to offer me and sit on it for three months. And so I'm honest with them up front that, you know, I will be glad to review your product. I'm just not the quickest, quickest to review. So, you know, if you're okay with that, yeah, I would love to take a look. But I actually turn, you know, a lot of offers down just for that. So, I don't know. It's kind of how each of us ends up working with, you know, our own blog, how much time we have to spend on it, how much time we can commit per week to doing it. How much time do you think you spend a week just, like, working on your blog, you know, pictures? It takes a long time for me.

Myke Hurley: It really does. Like, it kind of just creeps up. Like, you know, you don't think about, like, it'll really start for me where, like, I'll have a bunch of pens loaded up with inks I want to review. So, like, I'll take the time, probably, like, 20, 25 minutes to, like, write out the physical ink review. And that's the first step. Then I have to go and photograph it, which, you know, if I have five reviews, that's, like, at least an hour of getting everything right. Then there's, you know, importing everything, all the pictures onto my computer, sorting out the bad ones, editing them, uploading them to WordPress, typing out what I wrote in my review. It's at least an hour a post. And that's for an ink review. Like, a pen review, I kind of go more in depth. And that's, like, maybe an hour and a half to two hours, if not more. Plus, all the time you have to spend with the product kind of getting to know it. It's not, there's just a lot of extraneous time that you don't even think of because it's, you know, so spread out. For me, at least.

Ed Jelley: That's, yep, that's, no, that's how it is to me, too. I kind of, I do work in batches like you. You know, like, if I'll, I'll, I'll have time set aside, you know, when I can get to it that, you know, will allow me to do three or four reviews in one shot and kind of get the framework for a post done for a lot of them. I mean, you know, get the pictures made, you know, if not edited at the time. And then just that way I kind of have this backlog built up where I can post them. So, but it takes, it takes an enormous amount of time. I don't think people realize sometimes, you know, if I say I spend 10 hours a week on the blog, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it, it really is. I mean, when you're factoring in all the other things like, you know, answering comments, you know, you know, Twitter, social media stuff, doing all kinds of other things. And, but it's fun. I mean, it's certainly not a complaint. It's just that, you know, you got to figure out that, you know, what's important, you know, for your blog. And, you know, how much time you can commit to it to, to continue that growth. And, you know, we were talking about a while back just on posting frequency. It doesn't matter how often you post, but I do think you, you do have to have some form of consistency. Even if you're only posted once a week, you know, if you vanish for a month, people are going to vanish right along with you.

Quality Over Quantity

Myke Hurley: Definitely. Another thing I wrote down in my notes was that I'm kind of a firm believer in quality over quantity.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. There's no doubt.

Myke Hurley: Take, take your time, plan it out, get, get like a format or a loose format and just spend the time on doing one quality post. Like personally, I'd rather read through a pen review or an ink review that like, you can really tell the person's taken some time to plan this out. It's not just like, let me throw some ink at the page, get a photograph real quick. And I have a post volume of like, you know, 10 a week. Like I'd rather personally take the time and read through three reviews that you can tell they were carefully done. Not like, here you go. Like I'm cranking these things out. But if you happen to be working very fast and you're just the greatest blogger in the world and you can get everything done fast, by all means. But really, I think if you're just, if you're starting out or thinking of starting out, definitely go the quality route over the quantity route.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, I agree with that. Totally. I would rather see that. I actually don't, you know, we're all time constrained these days. I would actually have a preference to see like one solid, well thought out post a week than three posts a day that I'm just going to glaze over. You know, I'm just going to end up going blind by the end of the week. You know, just not being able to handle it anymore. I mean, that's a personal thing with me, you know, just in how much time I have to spend to read other blogs and things like that. But that's kind of how I would put it, you know, with the quality over quantity thing. Now, this is one topic I want to, I might have more to say than you because I do it, I tend to do it a little bit more than you. But giveaways on your blog, what's your thought around doing giveaways and do you have any concerns about doing giveaways? Anything you've done in the past that hasn't worked? Anything you're going to change in the future? Or tell me just kind of your general thoughts about doing giveaways on your blog.

Myke Hurley: I'm for it. It's great when a company will give you something to give away or if there's something in your personal collection that's in relatively good shape that you just don't want anymore. It's a great way to draw traffic. There's a lot of blogs that do, you know, giveaway roundup posts. And even, you know, just the fact that you're giving something away brings in so many people. And it gets them to interact. You know, you can do the you have to comment to enter thing, which is great because now it's getting people familiar with your site. And then they're going to keep checking back to see when you announced a winner. And overall, I think it's a great way to get some traffic going. And it is scary, though, because this is something that you're offering for free. And, you know, people might feel like, you know, hey, why won't you do international? I get kind of sketched out by that personally because I I just don't want to deal with international shipping and tracking because I've heard, you know, horror stories. Even, you know, on eBay, just buying things for myself where it's coming from overseas. And like it's like just throwing something blindly into the dark. That's how I feel. You know. I just get a little sketched out by international giveaways. But, you know, it is very possible. And I really think it is a good way to get your stuff out there.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, I actually I almost wish I could do more just because I like giving back to the community that's kind of, you know, helped, you know, that keeps coming and visiting my site. You know, I would like to do more. I just don't want to overlook. I'm wary about overdoing anything, not just giveaways, but overdoing any particular thing. But I think it is a great way to draw traffic. Like it's a good way to to kind of get that exposure because, like you said, you're usually getting, you know, people come back multiple times. And, you know, if you start giving cool stuff away or working with other vendors, you know, that that's a great way to do it. And in the beginning, you know, I didn't have that many. And, you know, sometimes I just I just pony up for myself because I just wanted to give back because I don't I don't run. And it kind of I think you're generally the same way. I don't run necessarily a for profit blog. I mean, oh, no, I'm not close. Yeah. You know, I'm not I'm I'm out. The reason I do my blog is just is to one because it's fun and to to share information. And, you know, I'm not going to run like all kinds of crazy ads and, you know, just, you know, cover up the page with ads and links to ads and all that stuff. I mean, sure, some of it, you know, is is fine in small doses. But, you know, most of it, you know, I'm putting right back into any anything I get. I'm putting right back into the site. And, you know, I want to give that back to to the people, too. So the giveaways, I do I try to keep them really simple. You know, I don't want to put the read the reader through making making, you know, jump through hoops to to enter a giveaway or things like that. I think one of the I think, you know, very rarely do I have a giveaway like I did today where I will ask the reader to do something additional than just leave a comment. You know, I I don't want them to like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, come back here, you know, post it, you know, post that you did all these things, you know, stand on one foot, pat your head, rub your belly, chew gum at the same time, you know.

Myke Hurley: And I try to make it. You know, just drive to me to pick it up and verify they're a real person.

Ed Jelley: And that's right. Right. And actually, if and actually a vendors want me to do all that stuff, I'll turn them down just because I don't want to put that burden on the readers. You know, like I said, you know, I do have a one today. I think, you know, in small doses, it's fine. But every giveaway or something, I'm not going to ask them to do all these crazy things like today. You know, I'm working with Huckberry and I've I've worked with them for years and they're a great company and I enjoy them. So in this case, you know, I feel it's fair to ask. You know, I do ask the readers to enter this giveaway. They have to sign up with Huckberry. But, you know, next week, I'm not going to ask them to do something again. And next week, I'm not going to ask them to do something different and jump through all these hoops. You know, I think you kind of build up these credits over time with readers, you know, providing them information and hopefully a good learning experience and a good reading experience at your blog. And every time you ask them to do something, you're kind of spending those credits. Well, I don't want to spend, you know, I try not to spend the reader's time and to do wasteful things like doing all that, doing all these extraneous things for giveaways and things like that. So that's just kind of my philosophy on that.

Myke Hurley: I definitely agree with you there, too. Like, I'm just looking back. Like, I just searched giveaway on my site because I kind of forgot. Like, I did a few ink sample packages, like something fun. Like, here's a small Rodia notebook and like 10 vials of ink or six vials of ink or something. And it was just like a, you know, whatever. It's fun. It's not at a huge cost to me. And it's something where, you know, people are interested and it gets them involved.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. And the thing is, you know, this whole pen blogging thing, I think one of the reasons why it's such a fun thing to do and a lot of people do it because it's actually a pretty low barrier to entry for products to review, right? You can, I mean, all of us have a $2 pen sitting on our desk and a pad of paper, you know. And if you're kind of a pen junkie like us, you have more than that stuff laying around. And, you know, just pick up those things. Start writing about it if you think you have something interesting to say and go for it. I mean, I don't think anyone should hesitate to start a blog. You know, hopefully there's, you know, we have a, hopefully they've gleaned a little bit of information just from kind of how we do things through this conversation.

Myke Hurley: And, of course, like I've had people email me for advice or questions. Like, I'm always open to, you know, if anybody has a question, just go to the contact page on my site. And I'll help you out. You know, there's nothing stopping me, you know, there's nothing stopping you from emailing me. And I'd be glad to help. It's one of those things where, you know, I have no problem giving back. I'm happy to do it. And reach out. That's just big, you know. Just write an email. I don't know what I'm doing. Can you check this out? Can you give me some pointers? Gladly. You know, like nobody's scary, you know.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, that's the greatest thing about this community. It's not. It's very open and helpful. And everyone wants to kind of help each other out type of situation. So it's anyone who's writing a pen blog, I imagine, is similar to us. And they'll be glad to help you out. I know I certainly will. And you will. And, Myke, how's your pen blog coming? Did you start one while we were having this conversation?

Brad Dowdy: I think I might. Sounds like fun.

Ed Jelley: Yeah. Do you have any questions? Anything come up in this conversation, Myke, that you wanted to point out or have any comment on or write any notes on? Or you're all good.

Brad Dowdy: When it comes to things like maybe the more technical things that you need to ask your readership, how do you think about doing that? Like if you want to tell people to subscribe by RSS or whatever, do you think about those things differently? Or do you think maybe I'll just make an email newsletter or something like that, something that's more – the barrier to entry is a little bit lower?

Ed Jelley: Oh, I think the barrier – I try to make the barrier to entry even lower than that. I mean, I just try to make it as super simple as possible. Like when I changed – when I moved to Squarespace, I don't know, a year and a half ago. I don't even know how long. It's been a while. And changed the RSS feed. I had several posts saying, here's how you change. The RSS feed's changing. Here's what you need to do. I guess it was when I was moving away from FeedBurner. I made several blog posts just detailing, trying to help the readers out, saying, look, this is going away. This is why it's going away. Here's how you can change so you can continue getting the RSS feed.

Ed Jelley: And I just try to make it super simple. I don't know if that's answering your question or not.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I just wonder if maybe you need to consider that more than if you wrote a tech news blog.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I see your point. Yeah, because I actually get emails about how do I sign up or how can I get your feed or things like that. So every now and then – I haven't done one recently. And gosh, I forget the name of the title of the post. I would do a post called howtoyusepenaddict.com. And then I would go through things like that just as a reminder to people. Here's how you subscribe to the RSS feed. And different – here's my account on Twitter. Here's how you can contact me. So once in a blue moon, I will put those posts on just on the main page for readers because, yeah, they're not as technical as someone that's reading a tech blog or something like that. So, yeah, that's a good point. And one comment that I'll make. I'm a stickler about RSS feeds.

Myke Hurley: I know where this is going. I am guilty of getting an email from Brad about this.

RSS Feeds

Ed Jelley: Please don't truncate your RSS feeds.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, don't do it.

Ed Jelley: You're not doing anyone a favor by doing that. Your page views that you think you're gaining by doing that, you're really not. You're really turning off the readers by truncating RSS feeds. It's an anti-reader mechanism, I believe. And, yeah, Ed's gotten one of my – that's one thing I'm not – you know, I'm –

Myke Hurley: It wasn't by any means offensive. Actually, I had no idea it was doing that. One of the defaults must have – like it must have been defaulted to truncate the feed, which if anybody doesn't know what that means, basically if you're using an RSS reader, it will only post like one picture and like a little blurb and give you the click here to go to whatever.com to read the rest of the post. Yep. And my site was doing that without me even knowing it. And I myself am a big RSS feed reader. I cried, I think, when Google Reader got shut down. It was a horrible day for me. But, you know, that's where I get all my information. And if you're not giving me the whole post, the chances that I'm going to click on it are slim to none. So give the reader what they want without making it a hassle for them. Right.

Ed Jelley: And it's funny that – that's the one thing that I'll actually do – that I do comment to – you know, I will send an email to someone saying, hey, you know, what do you think about, you know, not truncating your RSS feed? And it's funny you say that about you didn't even know what happened. That's usually the answer I get. It's like, oh, I didn't even know it was like that. Yeah, I will definitely fix that because that bothers me too. I didn't know it was coming out like that.

Brad Dowdy: That's just what everyone tells you, Brad. They're scared of you. Everyone's scared of you. Oh, I didn't know that was happening.

Myke Hurley: I got the email up right here. Please don't be an RSS feed truncator exclamation point.

Brad Dowdy: And they go, sorry, Don Dowdy. How do we make this up?

Ed Jelley: I've actually had – I can think of one that told me, sorry, this is how I'm doing it. I want people to come to the site. And I was like, well, you're kind of missing the point. It's just not how it should be. But whatever. People can do what they want to do, and that's fine. But at least I have a strong opinion on that. And I think you're actually doing yourself a disservice if you're doing that purposefully.

Myke Hurley: So my opinion. That's another thing. If you're starting out, check your RSS settings. Check your reader settings. And make a decision if you want that on or off. And then go check because sometimes it's defaulted to do that. So then you'll get an email from Brad telling you you should do this. And you change it in fear. I'm such a jerk.

Brad Dowdy: You're just making the internet better one blog at a time.

Ed Jelley: That's right. That's right. All right. Well, anything else, Mr. Jelly? Any other tips, tricks, ideas, comments? I think you want to.

Myke Hurley: Just go for it. You don't have to go crazy buying stuff at all. Take what you have. Review it. And if you hate it, you can just stop. But there shouldn't be anything stopping you in the first place from at least giving it a shot if it's something you think you'd be interested in. Because you never know where it can go. I mean, I didn't think when I sat down and started it that I would be podcasting about it a year later. I didn't think companies would want to send me things. It's fun to see it evolve and grow. And when you see your views go from literally three in a month to many, many times that, it's like a fun, rewarding thing. And it's a great community to be a part of.

Ed Jelley: Yep. And I agree with that wholeheartedly. Just go for it. I'm a big fan of just going for it. And don't get discouraged in the beginning. It's going to take months and months, if not years, to kind of get to find your audience and kind of get to where you think you ought to be. Just because you start putting out a couple posts and no one's coming, don't freak out over that. And that's not why you should be doing it anyway. You should be doing it because it's something you enjoy doing. You want to share information. You want to gather information. You want to learn more about products and why you like them and why you dislike them. And help other people discover those things too. So that should be at the forefront of why you're doing this is because you get a real enjoyment out of doing it and sharing with other people. And you do that and everything else will come along with it.

Brad Dowdy: Amen to that.

Ed Jelley: All right. Well, I think that's a wrap, Mr. Hurley.

Brad Dowdy: I will just add, you know, people should go to Squarespace and start off their blog there. That's right. And then if they're happy, use Tally Hur 12 and get money off if they want to sign up with Squarespace. I have to say that, you know. Just paying them bills.

Ed Jelley: I'm good with that.

Brad Dowdy: Mr. Jelly, thank you for joining us. Why don't you tell people where they can go to keep in touch with you?

Myke Hurley: You can find me on the internet in many places. It's www.edjelly.com. That's E-D-J-E-L-L-E-Y.com.

Myke Hurley: At Ed Jelly on Instagram. And if you go to the site, you'll find all the various social media outlets. So the website's a good place to start. And thank you guys again for having me back. Always a pleasure.

Ed Jelley: Absolutely. We'll do it again for sure.

Brad Dowdy: Brad, where can people find you?

Pen Addict Podcast

Ed Jelley: You can find me on Twitter at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. You can send me an email. If you go to penaddict.com, there's a contact link on the top bar. That's a great way to send me a greater than 140-character message. And yeah, I'm on app.net at Dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y.

Brad Dowdy: I am iMike, I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter. I'm at iMike. And look out for my upcoming pen blog. Yes. Because, you know, that's where the money's at. Yeah. I want to thank everyone. Go on, Seth.

Ed Jelley: I was just going to say, me and Ed make it rain off of our pen blogging activities. Really? You don't even know. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Rain in Kaweka. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Pen Addict Podcast. Me and Brad will be back next week, won't we? Yes. We will. We need to talk about the week after, though, of course.

Ed Jelley: We do. We'll have a changed-up schedule Christmas week, but we'll let everyone know. There will be an episode.

Ed Jelley: Yes.

Brad Dowdy: I think we're doing it on the 23rd, aren't we? I think.

Ed Jelley: Yeah, we're going to shoot for Monday, the 23rd, the week of Christmas. But we will finalize that and let everyone know the schedule.

Brad Dowdy: Sounds good. All right. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you, guys. And we'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Bye. Oh, say goodbye, Ed.

Myke Hurley: Oh, bye. Bye.