Pastor Irina also shared her testimony and took us on a musical trip to Russia.  I can't wait to visit with our mission team in January!

Amazing Grace (In Russian)

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After church on Saturday night there was a Missions event and the presentations were about the church’s involvement in missions, testimonies from members of the most recent trip to Kenya, and the past trips to Russia. I was excited to hear about what was going on and that there were firm plans to return to Kenya and Russia.

I have always thought that Russia would be a cool place to go. I have the support of my family, so I am going to Russia in January. As you might expect, that is a pretty expensive trip so what I am going to do is find a couple of strategic ways to monetize the blog and podcast. I assure you that it will not be gawdy, overwhelming, or over the top. I am searching for ways to monetize and still fit in with this brand. After the trip, I’ll just take that money and support a ministry.

I will be sure to let you know more about the Russia trip as I get more details, but for now, I just wanted to let you know that if you see an ad or a post that doesn’t necessarily fit in with the rest of my blog, you will know what is going on and why its there.

Thanks so much for your support!

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I must admit that there are a couple of things that I am struggling with in regards to blogging.

When I look at the blogs of other participants I realize that although I know quite a bit about the web, when I see some of the expertise of other participants I tend to feel like what I am blogging about is quite a bit different and that I don't have the "smarts" that most of the other bloggers have.

While I am a pretty technical person, I just don't seem to be able to gather enough logical thoughts to write a technical blog post. Also, I'm just not so sure what to blog about music that some of the other music blogs are not already doing.

Blogging, podcasting, or really anything online costs money. So far the associated costs to running this blog and podcast has been out of my pocket. I don't mind one bit because I see this as a ministry and a labour of love. However, it would be nice to be able to recover some of the cost to pay for expenses. Most importantly though, I don't want to alienate my audience in the name of making a buck.

There you have it. 3 things I am struggling with. I would love to hear your feedback and what you think about my struggles.

1. Do I really have enough knowledge to contribute?
2. Is what I blog about even relevant, and will people get anything from my posts?
3. When, if ever is it OK to monetize>

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This year’s Stanley Cup Finals this year are between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers. The goalies in this series are Anti Niemi for Chicago and Michael Leighton for Philadelphia. Both of these guys have been incredible in this series making some incredible stops.

I am a die hard Washington Capitals fan, but since the Caps are out of it, I am pulling for the Blackhawks. They have always been my second favorite team, and besides, they have not won the cup since 1961. Besides, being a Caps fan it would just be wrong to pull for the Flyers. As I write this Game 6 is going into overtime, it just doesn’t get better than this! Go HAWKS!

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In this series of posts I tried to share with you a little about where I have been and now its time to talk a little about where I am going. I decided to walk away from radio and start podcasting for a couple of reasons.

• Listeners don’t need to be tied to a radio or computer to hear the show
• Podcasts reach a worldwide audience, while radio only reaches a local audience
• Listeners have a variety of ways to listen to the show

While I was doing the radio show, I noticed that the listener numbers I could track were somewhat stagnant, and on a slight decline. In the beginning, I didn’t produce the podcasts consistently and had a somewhat nominal amount of subscribers. I noticed that when I started producing more consistently, the subscribers started to increase by 300% over last year and had a reach of over 18 countries around the world. In May 2010, my listeners totally blessed me by accounting for over 1/3 of the total amount of downloads since I started podcasting.

I must say that my decision was not totally based on the numbers. I prayed about it and I totally believe that podcasting is the path that I am being led down, and I am so excited about what the future holds..

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During the run of the radio show I was very fortunate to interview guests on the show. As a music show, I had alot of different artists on the show, but I did one series of interviews that I really enjoyed doing, the 40 Day Fast.

The 40 Day Fast was a series of posts where a blogger would fast for 1 day and blog about a ministry of their choosing. It was fascinating to talk with people like P.D. Ross and how a simple t shirt can make such a powerful statement and make a positive change in the world. Another favorite from that series was Kat, a stay at home Mom who had the inspiration to start the 40 Day Fast and it was interesting to learn about the inspiration for the series, as well as her thoughts on blogging, family, and privacy.

Tomorrow’s post concludes the series, and I will be talking about why I am leaving radio in favor of podcasting.

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One of my favorite thing about doing radio was being “in the know” about all of the new music before it hits the streets. I was very eager to learn and I made some connections at the record labels and was thrilled to be able to get the latest singles for free. I was also able to connect with lots of radio programmers on a couple of list serves and was able to find out lots of different ways to improve the show.

I am going to talk more about this in tomorrow’s post, but I was able to use some of my radio connections and research to secure interviews with some of today’s top artists. I remember my first interview with the band Farewell June. They were going to be in concert nearby and I talked with their radio promoter Shannon Becker and we got an interview scheduled. Man, I was so nervous! Being my first time interviewing an artist, I took lots of time in prep and I know I sounded really nervous, in fact I was so nervous that I stuck to my outline and didn’t ask any follow up questions. All in all it was a great experience.

Tomorrow I will talk more about some of the interviews I had on the show..

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OK, I knew this was going to happen eventually, I just didn’t expect that it would happen in the first week. I missed a day in the 30 Day Blog Challenge. This, my friends, this is what I struggle with the most when it comes to blogging, and to some extent podcasting. These are things I really enjoy doing, but I sometimes struggle to find the time to do them consistently when life gets in the way.

I work a full time job, I am married to the most wonderful woman in the world and together we have a great daughter and I want to spend as much time with them as I can, plus we have a house and a yard that seems to always need work somewhere. I know that there are other bloggers out there that have jobs and families, but never miss a scheduled post. How do they do it?

If you have read my previous posts about my plans to podcast Monday – Friday. I am struggling with this as well because once I start promoting this in the fall, I need to keep it going, so I have developed a gameplan for how I am going to tackle this from a podcasting perspective.

Since most of the podcasts are music based, I am going to take a page from the tv playbook and record a week’s worth of music shows in one setting and I will have them scheduled to post on the appropriate day. For the other content, I will have to work that out somehow. I have read about people doing that with their blogs, but I’m not sure about how that would work.

Maybe that is the answer. What do you do to maintain a consistent publishing schedule?

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