 She's currently a freshman in high school. She's been a WordPress blogger for four years and writes about ventures, life lessons, her journey through school and being a teenager and her friends and family. She's recently started a YouTube channel sharing videos about her life and travels while she's not busy with homework and exploring with her family. She loves to dance and choreograph, read, write and play with the crowd her life. So without further ado, Natalie Boyd. I'm going to be a lot of fun and we kind of encourage me to get started plus it would be a way to share all the fun things that me and my family were doing. Because when we travel, we don't want to slice that but I wanted to be able to get that out. I use a lot of adjectives and I mean a lot to the point where trying to start it to sound silly and all of those sentences also had one, two, three, maybe four exclamation points but I was 10. I was 10. I thought everything was amazing and fabulous and neat and all of that. Luckily I have learned better now so it's much better. But like Margaret Atwood says if I waited for perfection I would have never started. Before I could get to where I am today I had to prove that I was serious about vlogging. So I started with three themes on request.com which was perfect for starting out and that allowed me to prove that I would stick with it and that I would actually write my posts. And then after that I moved to WordPress.org and a self-coated WordPress site. My mom told me to sign it and I got to pick out my logo, my colors and the layout of my website. Then my dad helped me build it. This was after the redesign. Those are younger pictures but I replaced them. But I have an elegant logo and my rainbow and the way out that I chose. Vlog has helped others stay positive and inspired my friends to be fun things to their families. My friends Elena and Julia for example they subscribed to my site they read my posts they commented you all have fun stuff and Elena was actually done fun things with her family based on the posts she's read on my site. Which I think is awesome. And the fact that I can touch that one person makes me inspired and helps me keep vlogging. But it was amazing. I would cry and cry and cry and I wanted to give up and I wanted to quit. It was so hard. Because vlogging is hard. And vlogging is hard and you don't know what to say. I would try and try to write something but it just wouldn't come out in some of the times. I would try to pour something and it sounded choppy and complete and it matched the tone being of my website at all. And that was really really hard and I struggled with that. Vlog is also hard when you compare yourself to other people. I compared myself to my mom Jennifer Goren because her posts were amazing and they were awesome. And I thought to myself that I would never be as good as that and I could never do that. I hated it on myself and I thought that I could never do that. Then that kind of leads to vlogging is a good part of me to criticize yourself or to say yes yourself. Because it makes you not want to do it. I thought that I was terrible and I should be doing it. Give my blog those subs. So that was really hard and that was part of the reason why I had some issues. And it's also really hard to vlog when you think your posts have to be perfect. I struggled a lot because I thought every single post would need to be the best post I've ever written. I thought it would need to be this long run out thing and that was so hard. And I have also never competing in one post because that's what I thought it would be and it was hard. And it's also hard when you feel like you never have enough time. I have had school, soccer, dance, family that I had to try and work around and I could never have time. Which is really hard because you can never vlog if you don't have the time. And let me start when you don't know the tool you use. It's hard when you really, really want to do something and you have all these ideas and you're excited but you don't know how to do it. And that's one of the hardest things. All success with people started somewhere. They didn't wake up one morning with a graphic designer and it was like 100,000 years ago. Obviously. You have to go through some rough patches. The first thing was that I kept doing it and I started and then I wanted to learn and get better at vlogging which was crucial. One of the things that I did was I started using the notes app on my phone. When we were traveling or I was at school or if there was a fun event I would dig out my phone take some cool notes really fast but things we did how I felt, bass even and then later I could come back with my notes when I was trying to write my blog post and it would practically write itself because I already had all of this information. I already had everything that I needed to write it. I struggled with comparison depression but I got over that because I realized that I am unique and so is my perspective. The part of what led to that was I figured out that my mom who I compare myself to her angle is different her audience is different and who she's trying to reach is different and I had to figure that out by myself. So I figured out that what I'm trying to do is unique to me. I was critical of my writing but I learned that I needed to be patient with myself and I needed to practice. I figured out that I needed to start logging a lot to kind of figure out how to actually do it. So I kept going and then over the years as I started I'd only gotten better I'd only gotten better I'd only gotten better I'd only gotten better I'd only gotten better I'd only gotten better I'd only gotten better and from where I am today from back then it's a huge difference and it's much, much better. And I showed perfection but a published post is better than an unpublished post. Much, much, much better. So I would write a post maybe it would be perfect that's okay at least I still got it out plus I can always go back and edit them it didn't have to be perfect a lot of people now aren't the super long ones that I dream of having they're just some text with a couple of pictures and that's perfect for me and that works for me. If you never have enough time don't force it you have to write what you do how time all that forcing it never works and it doesn't sound good so I had to find time in my schedule around dance and family and school and homework that worked for me Luckily as a freshman I forced to take a health class very very boring extra time and I was a great student and I actually do my work so I don't I don't really have to work so my blog and pro book because we have to have one I'm logging my website and I'll write a blog post usually I can get at least one done if not more than that then all I have to do is go home edit some pictures and it's done so that's one way that I've found time in my schedule to actually be able to write my blog posts if you don't know the tools ask for help and you can learn one new thing at a time starting out my mom wrote me photoshop instructions on his post-it note and I referred to that every single time when I had to do my photos until now I practically never realized how to do it even now I still have all the tools but as I'm learning I'm asking for help and figuring it out all those pro bumps I needed to find my blogging group and I needed to be easy because if it was hard I would not do it so finding my group took a lot but it was worth it I had to figure out the length of the types of posts that worked for me we're going to be long posts short posts how many pictures in a gallery was it going to be a quote was it going to be a video luckily I found the variety that works for me and I'll write my posts based on what they're going to do if it's a quick school event I'll be able to do a couple pictures with a little bit of text if it's a long location that we did it'll be a lot more text maybe a couple galleries so it depends on what I'm doing and how much time I have didn't that help me? and also batch processing images was one of the best things that I started doing I would take a whole bunch of pictures from a whole bunch of different things put them in Photoshop and edit them all at one time that way all I'd do is write and for me that's easiest part the doing all the images it gets really boring and it's just the same thing after another and no one wants to do that so luckily all I did was write and then I could schedule a lot of newer posts and it would be perfect and kind of what I said earlier I had to find the best time to write my posts luckily I watched a lot of Netflix with my brother while he plays video games so that's what I knew a lot of it too I also scheduled my posts that over time after I have all those pictures and all those posts written I would schedule a bunch of posts over the next couple of weeks and that helped a lot and it was easy and stress-free because then I didn't have to worry about logging in forgetting to post something hit publish every once in a while so that allowed me to be stress-free over the years and logging I have learned a lot of different tips there's been a lot of things that have helped me figure out how to look such as your content formatting matters no one wants to talk to your website and read blocks and blocks and blocks black and white and boring text that's what textbooks are for and no one likes reading a textbook so what I do is I use quotes I use facts block quotes and then I use bullet lists bowls sub-headlines and those are different colors those help me write down my texts and makes it more appealing in my captioned careers I also add a lot of the quotes and facts that makes your posts a lot more interesting and it's not just what you did this is how I felt about it what you did was awesome and it's good oh, here's a cool fact or a quote that can leave people thinking I also group my images in galleries if you think about it there's one website so you picture picture one long column I don't think I don't look bad it doesn't look very nice but if I put my pictures in a mosaic like the gallery and it's really nice and it looks good on my site and that's what I like I've also learned to write great headlines this is something that I've just learned recently actually and because imagine if you're going to your Twitter or Google or another social network and you're looking for plugins on a vacation you see two headlines San Francisco or fun things to do in San Francisco is great which one sounds like a better one for you? writing great headlines and detailed headlines helps people onto your site and they get more interesting and that's a big thing to write on I also write that the more you write the easier it becomes as I've kept writing blog posts and publishing and posting it's only gotten older every time that I write I learn at least one thing which is big because practice makes not so perfect but it makes it better very forgetful person and there are numerous times where I'll post something and I'm trying to be like um what's up with this post? and I realized oh I forgot to add a picture to a picture or oh I forgot to replace some of my placeholder content really bad and so remember how to do those things and they also help you remember some of the tools that I don't use every day and those help me a lot and improve my blogging experience you also have to remember to not be afraid to be yourself you have to make your blog post your own or it's not your blog I learned to embody myself in my blog post so my blog and the design is colorful and it's upbeat it's happy and that's kind of what I write that's kind of what I can and I make my posts my own add your adjectives not like what I'm not like what I did when I was 10 that's better fun stuff that you want because that makes it a lot more fun the right photos for the space you have on your website there are a few times when I come back from vacation and I'm looking for my featured image which is a good horizontal and all of my photos would be vertical and I can't pop it down you're going to have just eyes and people and so what I like to remember when I'm on vacation or I'm out of doing something I feel that I need to get a good horizontal image for my featured image I need some vertical ones to mix up like galleries and all of my photos can't be selfies as attractive as you think your face might be people don't want to see close pictures of your face sorry so I learned to take I learned to take the right photos of the social platforms that your audience uses none of my friends or readers are going to be using this image in Facebook on Instagram and Twitter and use YouTube because that's what my friends use and that's what the people that I care about seeing my posts also use and that's what I do a lot when I come back from my website and that allows me to get my site out there to the people that I care about one quote that I loved to remember is this one by one I'm calling it is to sit down to write what you thought about and not to think about what you shall write I love that quote mainly because I'll do a fun thing I'll be at school it'll be something cool I'm like oh my gosh you'll be right about that and I'll sit down to write about it but if I sit down and say alright time to log in and I'm thinking like oh I did that thing like three months ago I don't really remember it it's a lot harder to write about it so I learned to write when I have some things or my notes will help me a lot when I come back to write on a road trip to Death Valley National Park over Thanksgiving break I started vlogging this was a huge step for me and I started using YouTube a new platform I can conquer this has been very stressful for me and I'm not going to lie I get very very self-conscious when we're out on a trail there's a whole bunch of people I'm like oh I can do a video this is not going to work because you're videos you almost you have to be over animated and you have to be and you have to be hard when there's a whole bunch of strangers it's hard because you don't want people to think like oh my god what is she doing what's happening it's weird I get really uncomfortable and I'm still learning how to vlog so you know let's do it right now we're doing it right now and I'll show you which I don't work on I'll show you I'll show you make sure I would have better I'm going to say wait make sure you do it otherwise it's going to look weird I'm going to vlog and find my group I'm in my session right now and here's everyone who's listening say wait what say wait what but it'll take me long time to follow my words then I mess up but seeing but seeing the end product is awesome and then I can take those videos I put them on YouTube and I can invent them into my site which gives a little bit of I can actually do something like that in front of a whole bunch of strangers three of you or stop it now out of those people how many would actually post that on the internet for the entire world to see couple of you couple of you couple of you not many people though right there's a couple of you yeah you're out of mine that's awesome me too me too it's hard for me it's hard but I've gotten there and I'm going to find my blog group just like I've found my blog group because I'm doing it for the same reason sharing all the fun things that I do and that's why I like it and if working on my blog for YouTube is fun I'll blog more often so I need tools to make blogging WordPress easy and I use a lot of different things I like to use Camera Plus and because it gives me the ability to use the macro lens which mixes up my calories and I can use it for photo editing I can mix the colors and the tones and that and I can use the masks I also use iMV for my video editing I'm going to be a really really really easy to put videos together put audio and stuff and I can save it on there right to my photos but I need to put it on really easy for me that's why I like it I also like I said earlier use the mix app I love, love, love using that when I'm in school or on vacation because I can come back to it I've been using the Voice of the Most app last summer on my eighth grade show when we're on all these different tours I can't type fast enough for how they talk and so I'll just record the whole thing I'll just record the tour so then later when I'm trying to blog about it I can listen to it go back and I can find those awesome quotes or those awesome facts I can use them in my blog post so that helps me a lot just like my other stuff I also obviously use YouTube it's a great platform and a lot of my friends use it it makes it really easy to put stuff on my website I really like it I also use WordSwipe a little bit mainly for my social media I'm promoting my site WordSwipe has a lot of different fonts and text layouts where you can put quotes over your images or they have some images for you to pick from but it's easy to use and I love it also my blog would not function without Photoshop my sizes for all my images are all different my images on my homepage my featured image my gallery which is all the sizes and so I have to go in the resize them in Photoshop that is about the only thing I know how to do in Photoshop and there's a lot more you can use I'm trying to learn but that's the only tip that I know how to do but it helps me with my blog friends use the white label version of LVP 101 they're training videos to help your wordless clients when I want to do a WordPress then maybe watch me too they helped they helped and helped me learn WordPress dashboard helped me learn how to use it I use Jetpack for a lot of different things and it's very, very useful on my website it's a plugin you can use and I use it for my blog subscriptions subscribe to comments I use it for my tile museum galleries and the carousel dealer plus a whole lot of different things I can't actually remember because it does so much for my site it has lots of different modules my dad uses like the pro-tech modules for security and the modern module just sends him an email at my site at a low-down which is really, really helpful and it helps my blog be even better I also use the WVP Instagram widget which is one of my favorites it's on the sidebar of my site and it shows your most recent nine photos and it also says a follow me on Instagram link which I'm really like because that promotes my main social feed where I'm going to be promoting my website which is awesome I also use simple page ordering on my site in the WordPress dashboard because you can drag and drop the pages to the order that you want them in and me and my parents like to keep that in the order that they show up in navigation and it's easy and it's awesome to use obviously use Google obviously I have to use that I find facts from Google if I forget some things I can look it up it's great plus it's also a major search engine that I have compared to Oxford Press so I can make them available and more people can subscribe them and see them obviously over the years I've learned a lot of different things I'm still learning I'm still figuring things out I do not know everything yet I'm just SEOing stalls but I haven't really been using it for these last four years I've just been writing blog posts writing blog posts published I haven't really done any of the behind the scenes work to actually make them appear when people search things up I haven't really done any of that I haven't figured it out yet but I'm learning how to figure it out as parents help me learn more how to optimize my blog posts and YouTube videos until recently I didn't know if headline and title were two different things to blog posts probably a lot of people go but that's okay because I'm learning and figuring it out I'm going to write better descriptions better titles better headlines which helps spreading everything I love to remember the quote 99.9% of bloggers are not awesome on day one for awesomeness you get a accumulation of value they create over time this quote kind of encompasses my blogging journey it kind of says I was not awesome on day one I was not awesome but these past four years I've been learning I've been gaining experience I'm accumulating almost knowledge and skill so I am getting there and I know as I keep blogging I continue to do it I will only get better and so will you thank you again I am Natalie Bourne and I am awesome yesterday's video and so do you send people typically off of your blog site to YouTube or do you have everything embedded on your site and do you feel like the static pictures will be less and less over time there will be more video on your site I use so the way that I use YouTube YouTube makes it really really easy because I can take the link the share link and I just paste it right to my website right to my post and it shows up just like that and when people visit my site they can click the play button and then the video plays right there on the post but as I keep continuing to do video for more things I will definitely be using it a lot more on my site what is the link to YouTube online that you can keep around in your videos my videos at the maximum are a couple of minutes I think my longest one is around four and a half or five because when we're out I was doing a quick 15 to 30 second clip really fast I'm kind of like hey this is what we're doing and that gives it easy and kind of it's less stressful for me because I don't have to worry about taking this long video and I don't mess up so my videos won't be very long but it's awesome it's what I like and it's usually good for people too because if you see like a 30 minute video you're like oh I want to watch that whole thing but I have like my short videos which is awesome it does everything I need so it's great for me and I got like oh yeah I still have a lot of fun with it I just kind of in that moment you know I know like yeah I don't even like my family wants me to do it I'm okay to be more gay and to be better and I ain't stressful for me but as I'm getting better and I'm doing them more it just depends on how many people are there and what day it is how many days we have and it's still a lot of fun yeah that helps that helps yeah so your video you have a YouTube channel of your own and so nothing is really embedded into your blog post or your website you have a keyword on YouTube and just link it over when you paste the link into the into WordPress in the text in the video just kind of shows up because I had an individual editor I want to actually know how it looks like in the text editor but the way that I put the link is in there and it shows up on the post so people don't have a professional website she doesn't send people to YouTube she sends people to her site yeah do you use a plug in for you? I do not yep are you teaching any of your classmates or even any of your students about what you're doing? I haven't I haven't really my friends visit my posts visit my website and somehow find it and they're like oh my gosh that's so cool how do you do that when it's like that that's so cool I wish I could do that too I don't know how to be interested in it but not really do you use a content editor or do you use who do you have? I offer I'm trying to work more tools right now yeah so you can you know Q&A on that yeah a gentleman over there mentioned about teaching your fellow students and teaching them about what you do do you consider your target audience like your peers or other families? I would I think my friends are my target audience because that's a way a lot of my friends don't use social media because they just don't like their different don't let them use it I've also seen kind of seen what I'm doing what I'm up to which is really nice for me and I write my posts they're me so I don't write like an adult I write like me I'm working on it though it definitely sounds a lot better now but yes I think my target audience would be my friends the reason I ask that is because like your peers are usually like you know your age group is really into other social media like Snapchat yeah or they're just on YouTube all the time which is great like that you're doing YouTube and you reach out to your peers so what made you think about starting a blog my blog was a way that I could share what I was doing in a way that made me feel comfortable writing has always been one of my favorite passions in school and I've always loved language arts and so my blog was a way I could write and kind of show what I've been doing and it's a fun way for me to kind of have a hobby of something do you have any being a freshman in high school do you have any security or any kind of constraints that you are concerned about putting your life out there normal predictions do you monetize your YouTube videos? no I don't just kind of share it same thing with my blog how many viewers do you think you have what's your audience like now do you have any do you think that do you think it's just your friends or do you think there's maybe like hundreds or thousands of people out on my looking at it maybe do you have any did you ever look at the stats or the numbers? we have stats I don't know what they mean other friends I would think that a lot is Greg too which is awesome so I know that they read it but I don't know do you have any long term plans or do you ever think about what you know do you want to do this for a living maybe or what are your thoughts on that in the future I really really enjoy walking and I love love love doing it and I think that I could do it I definitely want to continue my blog for as long as I go because I love it I don't know yet if I'll make something out of it I might but I like having the option of doing it yeah have you inspired any of your friends to start a blog or a YouTube channel? my friend Marisol actually started a blog recently because she saw my she was like wow that's so cool I really like that well that was photography did you guys do want to talk with me? yeah I did I wanted to sure and so she just kind of started one recently I don't know what she uses for it but I know that she has started it yeah I'll take the link do you post? I usually post either definitely like every week probably or sometimes when I have a lot I'll do twice a week office at the end of the week kind of like early like a Tuesday or a Friday and then people do like a Wednesday and a Sunday so I'll break it up like that but pretty often yeah now I was looking at your blog and it's terrific I mean it looks like you travel along with your family and you're getting out into the world do you find that there's now a relationship between you and your blog and wanting to see more places has in other words the act of blogging further your interest in traveling with your family and yes seeing more places yeah it really really ties I love I love my blog I love having on my stuff on it and that just makes me want to go to more places and I'd love I'd love to keep exploring and I want to go so many more places I'm gonna put it on my blog and it makes me a lot more fun and it's definitely inspired me to do that it's definitely inspired me to do that it's definitely inspired me to do that I don't know. Yeah. Question, you mentioned your checklist. What things did they assume would put on your checklist? Oh, yeah. My checklist, I put some things, or reminders, how to use Photoshop. Some of them will be like, don't forget to do a picture image, or don't forget to do a description, or don't forget to set the right date for scheduling, or make sure you go back and reread it so there's no mistakes. It'll be simple stuff like that. They'll sometimes all overlook and forget to do. So the checklists help me remember those kinds of things. Awesome, thank you so much. Thank you so much. You're welcome.