If you’re going to go it alone – or at least try to – in establishing yourself with a blog and various other social media accoutrements, here are some things that can save you some sanity.

Podcasts: Yes. You create the audio recording. You can use GarageBand for that. It works great. You might want a different mic. All of that is discussed in this post. However, unless you bleed through your eyes, you may not discover that you need to burn a feed and submit the feed to Apple. How do you do that? My suggestion is to run to Feedburner. It works. Oh. And you’ll also need to upload your audio file somewhere. You can upload it to your WordPress site, but you have to upgrade it first. You’ll find that info when you click on Media and look closely at all the stuff you ignore when uploading images.

Huge Files: Here’s hoping you will, one day soon, have need for a way to get a huge file (containing your manuscript and images) to your editor in digital form. The way I do this is to use YouSendIt. Technically, they take your file up to their ftp and then email a link to the recipient and that person then downloads it from the ftp – but nobody needs to know or understand that. You just upload your file and message and – voila! The work is done and you have a record of it. Most times you can do this for free. You may need bells and whistles that will cost you extra.

Image Converters: Your image file is not what your software wants it to be. What to do? You can’t just change the extension – believe me. I’ve tried it. But you can use a free online file converter. Two I’ve used with good results are Zamzar and Online-Convert. Upload your file. Tell them what you want. It’s done.

Happy Writing!