In this Walking With Pete episode of Aussie English I chat to you guys about my plans to build an online paid subscription for Aussie English in order to allow me to work towards working full-time on the podcast and creating awesome products as well as all the free podcast episodes and videos for you guys!

WWP: Aussie English subscription ideas. What do you think?

Hey guys, welcome to this episode. It’s just going to be a brief one I guess. I wanted to talk to you about the e that I’ve been uploading. So, I was doing quite a bit this weekend and I got about 5 of them done I think, and [I] went through and wrote out the transcripts, put them all up online. And there were just a few different things that I wanted to chat to you about to see… to get some feedback, to see what you thought. What could I improve with regards to the layout of the episodes? What did you think of the layout of the episodes, and the episodes in general? Are they helping? Are you getting the idea? Am I explaining well enough the basic principles, I guess, of how to make these contractions and how to think of them? Because, ultimately, the most important thing for me in making these Pronunciation episodes is to produce something for you guys that is useful, that you can use to improve your English, your Australian English, whatever you want. These rules transcend Australian English and they are used by English speakers from everywhere in the world, these contraction rules and these pronunciation tips. So, definitely don’t be worried that this is “the way” we speak only in Australia. It’s used everywhere. So, yeah, at the moment I guess the basic idea is I start out by introducing the thing I’m going to be talking about in this episode, in that episode, the one that I make for a given pronunciation theme. And then I try and do that listen and repeat exercise where I just get you to solely focus on your pronunciation of the specific contracted form of the two words or three words depending on the contraction, or the several words that are getting contracted. And then after that, at the moment at least I’m trying to always incorporate some other aspect of English whether it’s a grammatical rule. For example, in the most recent episodes with contracting HAS and HAVE onto different words including, you know, the pronouns, the demonstrative pronouns, the indefinite pronouns and nouns, I’ve been trying to teach you how to use HAS GOT, HAVE GOT, as well as obviously HAS and HAVE with the PAST PARTICIPLE. So, talking about stuff that’s happened in the past. And there’s an example “that’s happened”. And so, I’m trying to be as productive as possible and tie everything in together where you can be practicing multiple things at the same time. So, not only are you practicing your pronunciation, you’re practicing how to contract these words, but then I’m also trying to include these incredibly common grammatical rules like HAS GOT, HAVE GOT, and the HAVE and HAS + PAST PARTICIPLE, and also in the coming episodes with, I think the next set of episodes that I’ve got planned for you guys is including the word WOULD and contracting that, so the conditional [tense] onto all those sorts of words. I have other kinds of small phrases and commonly used expressions that have WOULD in them potentially. So, I’m wanting to also include those, and just always give you as many different things to kind of focus on and help you improve your English as opposed to just give you random example sentences where the only thing we’re working on is the pronunciation of the contraction. So, definitely let me know what you think of that. Is it helping? Are you getting the idea? If you have any suggestions or any ideas for how I could improve these episodes then please please tell me because first and foremost I am here to serve you guys. I’m here to help you guys improve your English as best I can. So, obviously if you’ve got a better suggestion for how I can do that hit me up. Let me know what it is and I will implement that as soon as I can. Aside from that, I guess, a question that I’ve been thinking about with these episodes is the spacing between the examples when I get you to do the exercises. Are the silence gaps between the, I guess, where I get you to repeat things, whether it’s the Listen & Repeat episode… Sorry, whether it’s the Listen & Repeat exercise or the Substitution exercises. Is that space of time long enough? ‘Cause I’m always trying to work out how much time you need to think about these things. So, I have a feeling it might be a bit short at the moment, but let me know if you think otherwise or if you agree because that’s something that I can fix really easily, obviously. So, that was one more thing that I wanted to let you know, and to ask you about. And, I guess, aside from that we can probably just chat about plans for Aussie English in the future. So, I made that announcement episode recently that was a Walking With Pete episode about my plans to try and monetise, to try and get some kind of income, some kind of revenue from Aussie English. So, obviously to try and produce something for you guys worth paying for that will allow you to improve your English at an affordable rate, you know, even if it’s just a small amount of money per month that you could potentially pay. I’m trying to get a nice shot of the city here in the background for you. [You can] probably see over my head there’s Melbourne. So, yeah, I’m trying to come up with ideas for that, and the most recent idea that I had was to sort of again follow along the lines of what Français Authentique has done. And Johan from Français Authentique has what he calls I think it’s L’Academie Français Authentique. So, The French… The Authentic French Academy where he has monthly plans, lesson plans that come out that help you guys work on your French if you’re listening to that podcast and practicing or learning French. And I guess I wanted to do kind of the same thing but maybe expand on it a little bit where the basic idea would be to have a certain theme every month and probably a relatively long episode on that theme, whether it’s about characters in Australian history, whether it’s about historical events, whether it’s about Australia’s sports like AFL or cricket, anything Australia. You know, I would come up with a theme and I would write a lesson plan around that theme that would be maybe 15, 20, maybe even 30 minutes long. You’d get a transcript where you guys could do that. So, it would kind of be like an extended podcast lesson except I would also try and video it, and give you subtitles down the bottom so that you can also watch me when I speak, my mannerisms, my expressions, as I talk. And then on top of that… So, that’s the basic idea. Number 1: have the basic lesson plan, the basic theme for each month. And then, I was thinking that I would break down certain expressions and certain Like A Native collocations or things that I say in these episodes that I think you guys will profit from, that you’ll benefit from, that you could use. So, again, this would be like making my standard Expression or Like A Native episodes. And, again, I would probably do that in video form, MP3 form like a podcast but only for you guys, not released on the podcast, and a manuscript as well or a transcript so that you can read. I’d probably give you exercises to do. So, like, written exercises with answers. And then I was also thinking about doing a set of interviews every month. So, for example, every time I make a… an episode about an expression that was in the basic theme, plan, transcript, whatever you want to call it, for the month I interview people on how they would use that expression, what that expression means to them and if they can give me examples. So, like those Aussie Chinwag lessons. If you guys have been watching those on YouTube where I’ve been interviewing my family quite a bit about small expressions and Like A Native collocations and expressions, phrases, that I’ve done episodes on. I’m trying to tie everything in together. So, that’s the basic idea. I want to be able to teach you about Australia, and give you that basic plan, number 1. Number 2, I want to break down and produce several smaller Like A Native, Expression, Phrasal Verbs, whatever they are episodes of specific expressions, phrases, like a native collocations that I’ve used in the theme that you’re already practicing, in the, you know, that longer Australian thematic episode for the month. And then on top of that I want to go over those things again but in interviews with other native speakers of Australian English. So, that’s the basic idea. I would produce that kind of thing on a monthly basis and release it at the start of each month, and you would pay a small fee to subscribe to that service. So, every month you would get a pack of videos, a pack of MP3s and the transcripts that go with every single one of those episodes that would be exclusively yours as someone who’s paying for that service from Aussie English. Obviously… just swallowed a fly. Excuse me guys. Obviously, I would keep the podcast going, and I still want to be giving you all of this stuff for free. I still want to keep helping you guys, but I also want to be able to do Aussie English, ultimately, full time. I would absolutely adore being able to do this full time, being able to generate an income from this and focus on helping you guys as my full-time job. That is my ultimate goal to be honest. I’m doing my PhD, I’m going to finish my PhD, but once that’s done I wholeheartedly want to continue doing Aussie English and find a way to support myself by doing this, and monetisation seems like obviously the only way to do it. So, that is the basic idea at the moment. I would definitely appreciate, I would definitely really love for you guys to give me some feedback to let me know what you think of those ideas. And again, as always, if you have a better idea or some other suggestions… Sorry, I’ve got to check this path… for how I could better help you guys learn English, for how I could improve these products that I plan on producing and then selling, because that’s ultimately the goal, [it] is to create the best content possible for you guys, then please let me know. Please let me know in a comment. Give me some feedback. Send me a private message if you don’t want to talk about it openly on Facebook. But again, it’s all about producing the best thing that I can for you guys. So, I really have no problem at all from you giving me some feedback even if you completely disagree with me, guys, just let me know what you think. Oh! And I guess also lastly, the plan was also to have private members’ Facebook group or a group on the website where you guys would have access to me all the time, any time that I was awake obviously and online, where I could answer your specific questions, where we could have discussions about that month’s theme, about anything else, and we could work together on just your English in general. I’m all about getting you guys to work together, to foster a community on Facebook, whether it’s openly on the Facebook page as it is or whether it’s in a private group for paying costumers. I absolutely love interacting with you guys so that is also one of my main goals when putting together this service. It’s going to be working side-by-side with you guys to help you dominate and help you, you know, get really really good at your spoken English, whether it’s Australian English, American English, English English, Scottish English, Irish English, whatever you want to call it English, I am at your service and I am here to help you guys succeed in whatever it is that your goal is. So, jump on Facebook, jump on YouTube, jump on the Aussie English website. Send me an email, a message, a comment, give me some feedback. Do you disagree with me? Do you agree with me? Can I do more to help you guys? Let’s just start chatting about this stuff, because I really really want to give this a go and start making an income from it, and be there all the time to keep producing awesome Aussie English products and podcast episodes and videos for you guys. Anyway, this has been a very very long episode, and I’m walking out of the park now down this little track. [It’s] time to go home. I think my throat’s getting a bit dry from talking so much. I think I’m getting a bit too impassioned, getting a bit too excited about Aussie English and about chatting with you guys. And I need to go have dinner I think, and maybe some beers, maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, I hope you guys have a really really nice evening, nice day, nice night, whatever the time is where you guys are. It’s really nice and warm here and I’m kind of not too happy about the fact that it’s going to 38C tomorrow. So, I’m going to go home and prepare for that, I guess. Anyway, I’ll chat to you later guys. Thanks again!