Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 110721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
She had finger foods to make for the tea party later.
On her way to the kitchen, she purposely didn’t peek into the living room to see if Stone was awake or asleep. Once there, she pulled out all the ingredients she had purchased yesterday, along with the kitchen equipment she had moved in to fill his mostly empty kitchen cabinets. Important items she’d need to keep making a living.
Once she had everything set out in an organized fashion, along with a written copy of the ladies’ requested menu, she decided this morning’s prep would be a great time to test out doing videos. Especially since the kids were still in bed and weren’t expected to wake up for at least another half an hour.
She could get a lot done in thirty minutes if she wasn’t interrupted.
Yesterday, she had set up a dedicated YouTube channel for this new endeavor, but now she needed content and subscribers. Actually, a shitload of subscribers so her videos could be monetized. She planned to start out on the popular free video site and see how comfortable she was in front of a camera, plus how successful her videos were before switching over to a virtual teaching site. One that would cost her money and eat into her earnings.
After setting up her cell phone, she adjusted it until everything important was included in the shot.
Then she took a deep breath to settle her nerves, despite the fact that, one, it was really early in the morning and her intended audience might be sleeping, and two, she had zero subscribers. That meant the number of watchers might be small, if she even had any at all.
For now, that could be a good thing. This way if she screwed up, less people would witness it. And technically, if it was embarrassingly bad, she could delete it.
She was okay with public speaking, but not great. The only reason she was half decent was due to the classes she’d been teaching in Camp Hill for the past few years. Only, those classes were usually made up of a dozen or less people.
If this new venture took off, she could potentially be teaching thousands. Her stomach churned at that thought.
You can do this, Taryn! Just pretend no one’s watching and you’re in the kitchen alone doing what you love…cooking.
This could turn out to be easy money if she put out the right content. She even spent a couple of hours watching other cooking videos last night before attempting to sleep. She made notes on what she liked, what she wanted to avoid, and which videos seemed to draw a larger audience.
It also gave her ideas on the type of content she wanted to make to fill her YouTube channel. She wanted to provide helpful cooking techniques that were real and tested, unlike all the videos all over social media that were only made for shock value or even outrage.
Some of those actually made her want to puke.
Worse, some videos weren’t even real, they were created with artificial intelligence. After seeing that, she vowed she would hand make everything. Nothing would be fake.
She also wanted to come off as genuine and down-to-Earth and not superficial like some of the other social influencers she’d come across.
Unlike some of the videos she came across, if she screwed up, she would explain her mistake and how to fix it. Not just edit it out.
Taryn shook her head at her crazy fantasy of possibly being the next Julia Child and, before hitting the record button, downed the rest of the coffee in her mug. Caffeine was sorely needed since her ass was already dragging from the lack of sleep. Maybe she’d take a quick nap once the kids were off to school, Stone was off to do whatever the hell he did, and before heading over to the ladies’ monthly tea.
Those ladies alone could be wearisome. But they were regular paying customers and tended to tip well, despite her telling them that tips were unnecessary.
“Okay, you can do this,” she whispered. “Nobody will be watching. It’s good practice.”
Giving herself a nod, she pushed the button to go live and began her demo. After briefly introducing herself, she explained slowly and clearly everything as she did it and the reasons why. As the minutes ticked by, she occasionally glanced at the number of watchers and tried not to show her shock.
Or her panic.
Holy shit! She already had fifty subscribers and over seventy-five people watching!
Don’t hyperventilate.
Be professional. Don’t rush. Be thorough. Slip in a few tasteful jokes. Keep it fun. Nobody wants a stiff, awkward robot.
What she wasn’t expecting was the real-time comments. No surprise, some were downright rude. Asking her to take off her top. Telling her that her techniques were wrong. Even adding puking emojis because of the recipe she was making.