#4 people who found the listing on etsy without even getting a link

[intotheelliwoods]

How does it feel to have all 30 of your keychains bought before you even went public with the listing lmao

HORRIBLE ok note to self, order more.

[resinatingbeauty]

I’ve had a lot of requests from various people at different times who are just learning how to use resin to create with and wanted some tips and tricks. I have wanted to make this post for a while, but I wanted to acquire more experience myself before giving others help. This first post is just going to go over some really basic tips and tricks and subsequent posts (if they’re found helpful) will elaborate. This is for all of you who are like me and get the least amount of benefit from watching Youtube tutorials these days because EVERYONE has one, and half the time they’re drawn out for ad revenue so an hour long video will only contain 20 mins worth of information with the kicker being you can’t even fast forward through what you know or rewind through ads to get back to where you need to be. So, for those of you who hate that like me, this text post is for you.

If you’re just starting, choosing which resin you want to purchase is intimidating. Craft stores like Michael’s and Hobby Lobby rarely offer more than one or two brands, typically over priced due to the fact that they’re labeled “art resins”.

Epoxy resin is by far the easiest to start with for beginners. It is the most forgiving, has the most consistent results, most brands use the same 1:1 ratio and the overall technique is the same. I am not affiliated with these brands/companies in any way other than I have used their products and have written reviews for several on Amazon.

Start with small packages (4oz-8oz kits / 8oz & 16oz hardener + resin). A quick Amazon search for epoxy resin will give you many results. This is one of those cases where you really don’t get what you pay for- boat, tabletop, etc. epoxy will yield the same results at more reasonable prices per fluid ounce than art resins. I recommend going with brands like FanAut, Puduo, Let’s Resin, Craft Daddy, etc. which often offer kits with gloves, craft sticks / stir sticks, measuring cups, and even additives at reasonable prices. All these items are things you’ll need to start off, so any extras are appreciated. I recommend Puduo, as it is relatively inexpensive compared to similar brands, yields consistent , crystal clear results, and has a somewhat faster curing time than other epoxy resins for the price. If none of these brands ring your bell, here are the qualifiers for a “good” epoxy resin:

Self Degassing- This is pretty much the standard expectation of epoxy resin and one of the reasons it is considered forgiving for beginners. When resin and hardener are combined, gases are trapped and form air bubbles which have a tendency to multiply as you stir your mixture and the combination heats up. But it shouldn’t be taken for granted that all epoxy resin does this, so try to look for “self degassing” in the item description / label.

Self Leveling vs. Doming : Doming resin is great for the magnified look on pendants and other flat projects, but self leveling resin is where you should be starting as doming requires the build up of surface tension to achieve. While “doming “ resin may achieve this easier than others without this feature, it is pretty irrelevant if you don’t know to dome resin in the first place.

Art Resin vs Other Epoxy: Art resins make claims of being ideal or a better choice for arts & crafts, but the reality is that you can achieve the same effects from table top or boat resins such as Mas- are just as capable of casting, coating, doming etc. as art resins especially if you’re looking to take on a larger project you will pay less and get more with these brands than smaller quantities of art resins. Make sure they are crystal clear, hard type, self degassing, and self leveling. Keep in mind that cure time relates to the size of your project and the ambient temperature of the environment, so don’t waste money on products that charge more for touting faster curing time.

What about 2 part epoxy in syringes? (Ice Resin, Gorilla Glue) Personally, these pre prepared epoxy resins are more complicated than they look. You can’t save combined resin and hardener, so once you mix the two or pop the seals to both you have to use the lot of it in one shot. Ice Resin in particular is quite expensive and doesn’t offer the clear, glossy results I expected it to when I used it, so I would avoid these if you are just starting out.

Additives & Extras- Don’t waste a lot of money at the start funding your would be creations until you have at least seen one entire project through from start to finish. I made the mistake of investing in silicone molds, glitters, additives like rhinestones, craft papers, transparency films etc before I really found my niche and what I was really using epoxy for the most. There are some great deals for 100+ piece silicone mold kits that include gloves, stir sticks, silicone measuring cups, and the like available cheaply for those looking to make smaller things like jewelry, keychains, figurines etc. the one I have just linked to even includes the epoxy for under $20. These kits are offered by Amazon and even Etsy and are a great place to start as they provide you with everything you would need to create at least one full project. They are also a great activity to do with your kids (ages 10+ would probably be ideal) as you can add pretty much anything that isn’t silicone, wax, unsealed paper, alcohol, or water based into resin, which opens up a world of possibilities!

Tips & Tricks That Will Save You $

If you’re itching for purchasing pigments to add color to your resin projects, try purchasing or reusing some old or cheap mineral eye shadows. Not sure if your eye shadow is mineral based? I’m willing to bet it is, though some colors may not look the same when mixed in resin as they do on the pallets, they will color it nonetheless, just pick a small amount up on a popsicle stick or toothpick and stir it into a small batch of resin to see how it turns out. Dollar Tree eye shadows will work just as well as expensive pigments, so consider this before investing in expensive mica pigment sets!

While silicone molds are probably the easiest and are reusable, you can also use plastic molds, carve your resin block with carpentry tools or by hand-or even make your own molds! There are simple recipes utilizing dish soap and corn starch out there, or you can use silicone or even hot glue! Flexible silicone molds won’t require a mold release, but plastic and other molds will or you may end up cutting your project out. You don’t have to purchase a mold release product for this, either- olive or vegetable oil spray on a paper towel will suffice, just remember to let your mold sit for a few hours to demoisturize.

Can’t find gloves because of COVID19 hype? Finger cots are even better than gloves as they allow for more dexterity even when they get sticky, are cheaper, and readily available in bulk online!

Pretty much anything compatible with homemade “slime” can be mixed into or embedded in resin, so there is that. However, be careful how much glitter, pigment, etc you add as you can throw off the chemical balance that allows your project to cure properly. Refer to the directions included with your specific resin kit as most will tell you what ratios must be maintained for proper curing.

Everyone that works with resin knows the arch nemesis that is the bubbles. There are times where it seems like, no matter what you do, your perfect clear cast of a dandelion goes to shit because of some stray air bubbles. There are a few tricks to avoid this from the start:

Use a separate cup to measure resin and hardener. Pour the combined mixture into a fourth cup after the first 3-4 mins of stirring (half time) scraping the sides and bottom. This helps what was on the bottom get integrated into what was mixed on top. Always make sure to pour resin first when mixing and mix slowly, scraping the sides and bottom, for the time listed on your instructions. You want your mixture to be almost water consistency, clear, fluid, with little viscosity, and no streaks visible. Allow it to sit for a few minutes to natural degas and get rid of the bubbles.

Use a torch or grill lighter to pop surface bubbles. You can also do each one individually (as the grill lighter suggestion may not always be a good idea- be careful using this on large projects and molds that may ignite) with a tooth pick. Using a blow dryer or heat gun will also help bubbles rise to the surface to be popped.

Make sure that you keep contact with the bottom of your mixing cup with your stir stick-try not to lift it too much as this can introduce air into the mixture (“whipping the resin”) this can also occur if you are stirring too quickly. If you notice a lot of bubbles, let your mixture sit for a few minutes and resume stirring at a slower pace.

Make sure you start your project at a temperature of 74 degrees +, if your bottles are cold to touch, place them in a plastic bag and let them sit in hot water to warm up. You can also roll them (slowly) on a counter top.

You know, if all else fails you could always make ocean or nautical themed projects :)

That’s all for now- let me know if this helped you or someone you know working with resin or experimenting. Feel free to comment with any questions you would like answered in my next post! I also recommend the Resin Obssesion blog- they have a lot of useful information and tutorials with photos that were really helpful for me starting out!

Xo Samantha

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, December 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across since the October report, although some may be older than that.

I am also missing a lot here, but pared it down somewhat to make more readable. The lead up to the holiday shopping season was a lot crazier than I expected 🙃

Given the time of year, please do not expect another report until January. However, I will do brief posts of important news/blog posts in the interim as needed.

There are going to be big changes to this report coming in 2020. Have any suggestions or feedback?  Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

You are going to need to add Etsy’s tax ID to customs forms on New Zealand orders as of Dec. 1. Etsy’s ID is: 122-669-18.

FTC issues huge fines for selling fake likes & followers on social media, and for posting fake reviews online. “The [likes and followers] case could pave the way for further legal action on the same grounds, using the Devumi case as precedent. Indeed, shortly after the initial finding by the NY Attorney General, Facebook announced that it was moving ahead with legal action against several providers which it had found to be dealing in fake social media engagement.”

Everyone should read this article, if only to learn what not to do: Using “priming” to convert more buyers/users is a crucial marketing tactic.”Priming works by using associations made in our subconscious, and are almost always unnoticeable to the subject.” Example: “During a study, researchers approached customers in an electronics store, who’d entered to buy a new laptop.Half of the customers were asked what their memory needs were, and the other half were asked what their processor needs were...The group who were asked about memory, bought computers with higher memory and the group who were asked about processor speed, bought computers with much higher processor speeds.”

Etsy removed the word “Bugs” from the Bugs forum, & admits they will only will be monitoring it from 9-5 Etsy time (ET) Monday to Friday. They won’t be replying, but expect “hundreds of sellers” to do that job for them, unpaid. If you have an issue, you will now need to email through the Contact page, use the new 24 hour live chat, or phone them. [Note the parts they aren’t mentioning - Support is taking over a week to reply to emails right now, live chat will only be able to help with the simplest of questions (e.g., how do I change my email address?) & it is possible to spend over an hour on hold when you phone. You could spend quite a bit of money on long distance fees, especially if you are in a country that doesn’t have its own phone number, all for something you used to be able to get for free in the forum, sometimes on the same day. This is Etsy’s definition of “major improvements”.]

Check out this proposed US legislation, which wants large internet companies [yes, Etsy fits their definition] to reveal their algorithms & offer visitors a version with no “filter bubble.” You might not like Etsy search now, but I can guarantee it would become impossible if they removed all of the algorithm factors. [This editorial is a bit over the top, but does cover some of the key questions.]

ETSY NEWS

Items have been disappearing from a small number of Etsy searches since July, & Etsy still won’t tell us what is going on. If you discover you are affected, please let me know.

There have been a few threads on Etsy sending threatening emails about shops being below Etsy’s customer service expectations, often for just a few bad feedbacks or cases, which has shocked many long time sellers (even though they have been sending them for years; it appears they have decreased the number of “problems” you need to have to get an email.) Without announcing anything, Etsy released a page of “seller service level standards” that can help explain what they are looking for, namely cases & 1-2 star reviews, as well as the exact formula they use. I started a discussion thread here, & in case Etsy deletes comments in the thread, here is the dashboard showing your score. (Some people cannot make that link work; Etsy says only shops that received a warning can see it.) My blog post is here.

I summarized the 3rd quarter report here, and Etsy summarized it here. The stock market is not happy with management at the moment, with Morgan Stanley this past week stating that they expected Etsy’s 4th quarter to be worse than originally predicted, due to state sales tax laws and Etsy’s reduction in its Google Shopping ad buying. Note Etsy removed the “priority placement” for US free shipping about a week after the 3rd Q report, without any announcement, probably due to the blowback about it reducing first page conversions. (They didn’t announce anything; it just disappeared.)

Cyber Week traffic on Etsy was more than double what they saw on the average summer day.

They did a Q & A thread on the new stats, which wasn’t particularly useful. They admitted they intentionally removed the keyword & other data prior to November 2017 because “older data periods are less comparable to current stats”. [I believe that is code for “we’re too cheap to pay for the storage; investors need their payouts.”] They did finally add YOY comparisons back in a few weeks ago.

Etsy has again changed a few category & attribute options, including more baby stuff.

They did a holiday gift shopping promotion where people could call Etsy & get suggestions for gifts on Nov. 5. All gifts shipped free, so non-free shipping shops were not included. “It could also be a case study for personalization efforts to come from the long-running handmade marketplace.”

You’ve probably already noticed that Convos are now called Messages, but here is the announcement with the details just in case.

Etsy ran an Etsy search critique thread on November 13; the thread wasn't particularly useful, as almost all the staff who do the critiques aren’t experts in search. Basically, they say to use all of your tags, avoid repeating words in tags & titles, have 3-4 short phrases in your title, use commas in your titles (”Buyer research shows that using commas instead of dashes helps titles appear more clean and readable”), offer free shipping, and use all of your photos. The big takeaway for me was - they think we all have unlimited photography budgets, models, and time to do different modelled photos for every listing (including at the beach! LOL), photos of each of our different pieces in progress, photos of us working, & photos of each type of packaging. Needless to say, none of those things are bad if you have gobs of time or the money to pay someone to do all of that. But if you are like me and are a one-person business, live in a small condo, don’t have the strength to take photos all day, don’t have an abundance of people to model when I am taking photos (i.e., people I know have real jobs & aren’t around when I work on photos), and don’t have anyone to take photos of me making things, then this is pretty laughable. I wouldn't even consider doing all of this for my 5 best selling listings, never mind all 430+. YMMV. [The repeated mentions of process photos makes me worry they will be requiring those for everyone at some point …but I am sure I am just being paranoid.] One notable error was telling someone to use “color” (the US spelling) instead of “colour” (the proper English spelling) because the shop’s language settings were US English - Etsy currently treats these both the same, so there is no issue at the moment. Are they trying to give us a hint about something?

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Introducing BERT: Google’s new technology to help organic search process natural language better. This isn’t likely a change you can optimize for, but it should help searchers get more relevant results for complicated queries. “Here is an example of Google showing a more relevant featured snippet for the query “Parking on a hill with no curb”. In the past, a query like this would confuse Google’s systems. Google said, “We placed too much importance on the word “curb” and ignored the word “no”, not understanding how critical that word was to appropriately responding to this query. So we’d return results for parking on a hill with a curb.” Moz’s Whiteborad Friday covered the basics. [warning - some bits are advanced. Just skip those if you need to.] A study said BERT still isn’t very good at understanding “not” and other negatives. The NY Times may be one of the sites that is affected.

If you were disappointed when keyword research tool Keywords Everywhere became a paid tool, a new alternative has been released. Note that Keyword Surfer is still in beta. I’m going to try it for a bit and write up a short report if I think it is worth using. (The traffic estimates are way off, as in almost 10 times too low, for the sites I have info on.)  If you try it, let me know what you think!

While we are on the topic, here’s 13 keyword research errors you don’t want to make. Short takeaways - not every high volume keyword phrase will work for your specific product, don't ignore long tail, and make sure you look at the search results for any keyword before you decide to use it.

Here’s another keyword and topic research tool that compiles questions people search along with a relationship tree so you can see how ideas are connected.

More common SEO problems with ecommerce sites.

If you code your own website, check out the new Google instructions on writing your organic search snippets. Note this is supposedly only about display & not about ranking.

Improve your Instagram traffic with 8 SEO tips for your profile and posts.

Which is better for SEO - Squarespace or WordPress? The results are likely skewed by the fact that “platforms like Wix and Squarespace tend to attract less SEO-savvy people than WordPress.” They agree with what I have been saying for a while: if you know what you're doing, Squarespace sites can rank just fine.

Excellent tips on how good SEO also helps you comply with US disability access laws.

The latest on Google updates - there was apparently one around November 7. This one may have hit affiliate websites more than other types.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article claiming Google manipulated search results to favour its interests & those of its advertisers, including eBay. [The original article is behind a paywall; the link is in that news coverage.] However, many in the SEO community - most of whom are not usually reluctant to criticize Google when they are behaving poorly - feel the article is way off base, & demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge of how Google works. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land & Search Engine Roundtable even did interviews with t WSJ staff for the article, and was amazed at how much they got wrong. “Even a basic understanding of the difference between organic listings (the free search results) and the paid listings (the ads in the search results) eluded them…[Glenn] Gabe told us that not only were his conversations with the paper off-the-record but also that he was misquoted”

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Here’s something I don’t see discussed much: using templates (& other consistent branding) in your social media, blog and website posts.

Content hubs are a very useful way to increase your search engine traffic for a core topic while providing a landing page for social media, ads etc.

Good primer here for beginning social media marketing for your business. You’ll need to do more research depending on your target market and what platform/s you choose, but it is definitely a good overview of getting started.

If you think influencer marketing is right for your business, here are 10 places you can find influencers to work with.

Your email subject lines can change the open rates; here are 19 tips to make them more clickable.

Instagram started testing hiding “likes” on posts in the US as of November 11th, & then announced plans to try it out globally. A study on previous tests showed that there may be some effect on influencer engagement.

Facebook has introduced its own payment system, currently in the US only, for limited situations only at the moment.

Reddit is an often overlooked social media platform to use for business but the traffic is strong, so check out these tips on asking it work for your business. [infographic]

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Pay for online ads (outside of Etsy) but don’t know what negative keywords are? Here’s how to use them with Google.

Hubspot continues their massive rush of “ultimate guides” with everything you wanted to know about Amazon ads.

Facebook now allows you to have different text in the same ads, which can be adjusted for different groups of users.

Amazon is predicted to continue cutting into Google’s online ad dominance through 2021; Google currently has 73% of money spent on online ads in the US.

If you are interested in long term brand building in your advertising, you might be interested in this article, where Adidas admits it was ignoring brand ads & pushing instant returns for too long.

Just in time for the holidays, Google Merchant Center rolled out a bunch of upgrades.

Buying TV ad time is losing popularity; it will be less than 25% of all advertising spend in just a few years, while digital spending is now over 50%.

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Facebook changed how they count page impressions.

Everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Oh, and also everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Which one do you like best? [If you have your own website or freestanding blog and are not using the Console, you probably should be reading both of those. Seriously, just set the darn thing up, then learn how to use it later.]

Also, the Console now features a speed report, and has changed how they send you messages.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Trend alert: many struggling or failed retailers sell clothing. “This sector is saturated with supply and is arguably over-stored.” … “For younger shoppers, as they choose which apparel brands do get their attention, sustainability and other cultural issues are often at the forefront.”

US sellers can now get discounted UPS rates through Shippo.

A bug is keeping suspended Amazon sellers from being reinstated.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Don’t use these common customer service lines. ...“there are studies that support the use of positive language in customer service. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do for a customer, focus on what you can do. No one likes to be told no.”

Another article on the psychology of colour; beware that some of this is a bit simplistic, as there are always exceptions.

Holiday shopping will push further into December this year, with half starting around Cyber Monday (Dec. 2). 62% of “high spenders” (over $2100 spent on the holidays) will shop on their smart phones. 25% of respondents to this survey said they already started shopping in September. It turns out most people want gift cards, among other stats. Nearly half of US shoppers are more likely to shop with companies that are socially responsible. Mobile shopping is expected to beat desktop shopping for the first time this season. And yes, most Americans expect to add to their credit card debt before January, men more than women.

US retail sales fell 0.3% in September; online sales fell the same amount.  

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Trend alert - apparently Generation Z is not big on makeup, and it is affecting large companies’ profits.

Google’s co-founders hand the parent company Alphabet over to the current CEO. They still work for Google and will focus most of their time there.

Google Webmaster spokesperson John Mueller tackles the controversial question - is a hot dog a sandwich? [humour]

[wikimakemoney]

eCommerce Marketing: 15 Proven Strategies To Grow Your eCommerce Revenue

Did you know that global eCommerce sales are expected to exceed $6.5 trillion by 2023?

From multi-billion corporations and startups to entrepreneurs and bricks and mortar stores, businesses of all shapes and forms are investing heavily in different eCommerce marketing strategies.

You know why?

Becuase of the countless benefits of eCommerce businesses, consumers are increasingly preferring them over conventional physical stores for their purchase needs.

A study by ShipBob found the major reasons why people are turning to online shopping.

Source

As a result, eCommerce is expected to account for 22% of the total global retail sales in the next 3 years.

But with so much competition, how do you make eCommerce marketing work for your business?

How do you persuade your target audience to buy from you instead of your competitors?

Is eCommerce marketing even a viable option for small businesses and startups with limited budgets?

These are some of the main questions (among several others) that I’ll answer in this detailed eCommerce marketing guide.

Make sure you read it till the end.

What Is eCommerce Marketing And Why Is it important?

eCommerce marketing is a set of different promotional strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your online store, converting it into customers, and turning customers into repeat clients and brand advocates.

It includes off-page traffic generation and brand building strategies to attract new visitors to your site as well as different on-site conversion optimization techniques to ensure that every visitor converts into a customer.

Your online store/website is the center of all your eCommerce marketing strategies. This is where all the different marketing techniques converge and help you build an audience so that you can drive sales from it (I’ll discuss this in more detail later).

Why is it important to invest in eCommerce marketing?

Because it’s not enough to just list your products online or share your product links on different forums and expect people to buy from you.

Studies show that 85% of consumers conduct thorough research before purchasing a product online.

Source

They consider different product features, compare prices, read online reviews, and view product videos and images before deciding whether to buy a product or not.

This is where eCommerce marketing comes in.

Your job as a marketer is to answer the questions of your audience on every step of the buyer’s journey by creating memorable online experiences and high-value content.

Since your prospects can’t physically touch or feel the product, you need to give them additional product information and remove any doubts they have about the quality, pricing, support, or any other aspect of your product.

And even that’s not enough.

Since most of your competitors are already selling online, you need to have a stronger connection with your prospects to stand out and persuade them to buy from you.

You can only do that with a well-planned eCommerce marketing strategy that builds trust with your prospects by addressing their core problems and objections and positioning your product as the best available option.

How To Create A Winning eCommerce Marketing Strategy?

You know it’s crucial to invest in building a comprehensive eCommerce marketing strategy.

But where do you start?

Before we dive into very specific eCommerce marketing techniques, let me quickly describe the steps you need to follow to lay a strong foundation for your eCommerce marketing strategy.

1. Understand The Purchase Behavior Of Your Audience

You can’t create a business strategy if you don’t understand your target audience.

In eCommerce, this means diving deep into the purchase behavior of your prospects and understanding the different steps they take before ultimately purchasing a product online.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution here.

Every business is different which is why you need to analyze the nature of your product and understand the purchase process of your audience.

For example, here’s the product page of one of the world’s biggest shoe brands.

Source

Anyone who has purchased running shoes online knows that you need detailed product customization and feature details to ensure you’re ordering the right shoe for yourself.

This is why this product page has two different size categories plus a video along with several images of the product.

It’s not just about the size either.

You need to see how it looks on your foot, how it feels while running, is it heavy on the foot, does it have a bouncy feel to it, etc.

The same is the case with clothing and apparel products where the customers have entirely different purchase questions than kitchen appliances, for example, where the product specs are much simpler.

It’s no surprise that footwear and apparel are among the top industries with the most product returns.

Source

In short, without understanding the purchase process of your industry, your eCommerce marketing strategy is incomplete.

How to you understand the purchase process of your prospects?

By using analytics and asking the right questions, for example.

What do my customers expect from my product? What problem are they looking to solve with it?

What’s the price bracket of my product?

How many touches are required to make the sale?

What’s the average return rate in this industry?

What information does a typical customer require before deciding to buy the product?

What’s the product shelf life? Is it perishable or long-lasting?

Do typically customers purchase multiple products in one go?

You can keep digging as much as you want.

I’m not advocating analysis paralysis here.

But you need to have a fundamental understanding of the relationship between your product and your target audience to devise a successful eCommerce marketing strategy.

We have a detailed audience research guide that shares more actionable tips on this topic.

2. Choose The Right Platform For Your eCommerce Business

What is the central platform for your eCommerce marketing strategy?

This is a crucial question you need to answer before devising you can actually start marketing your business.

Your eCommerce platform will be the center of all your marketing activities and the place where you’ll be routing traffic from all the different sources.

This is where you’ll build your brand, grow a relationship with your audience, and engage with them regularly to drive sales.

For most businesses, their eCommerce website or online store is the central platform for their marketing activities.

However, many businesses rely entirely on third-party platforms like social media pages, groups, and marketplace websites for driving sales.

For example, Etsy, a popular eCommerce platform for creative work, has more than 2.5 million active sellers on its platform.

Source

Amazon gets almost 1 million new sellers every year while Facebook is used by 90 million+ small businesses and eCommerce companies.

Most experts agree, however, that your central platform should always be under your ownership, not on rented land like Facebook or Amazon.

You can use these sites to drive traffic to your eCommerce site but don’t rely completely on third-party platforms because it puts your business at a huge existential risk.

To create an eCommerce site that you can use as the central platform for your eCommerce marketing strategy, you can use solutions like Shopify or WordPress sites with WooCommerce or other eCommerce features.

3. Identify The Preferred eCommerce Marketing Channels Of Your Audience

Another crucial question: where does your audience hang out on the internet?

You need to know this in order to target the right people with your content, advertising, and other eCommerce marketing activities.

For example, does your audience primarily use Facebook or can you find them on Instagram and interest as well?

What are the most popular publications, blogs, and forums in your industry?

What kind of marketing content does your audience engage with? Videos, podcasts, and blog posts, or more detailed content like white-papers, research reports, and surveys?

All of this is crucial information that’ll allow you to target the right people and devise an informed eCommerce marketing strategy.

4. Find The Best Payment Service For Your

The ultimate goal of all your marketing activities is to generate sales.

But that can’t happen if your audience doesn’t have access to the right payment services.

First, find out the popular payment method in your industry and target location.

For example, in most developing countries, cash on delivery (COD) is still the most popular payment mode.

In developed countries, however, modes such as PayPal, credit cards, Google Wallet, and other mobile payment services are more popular.

What’s your target audience using to pay for eCommerce purchases?

Secondly, what are the costs and timelines associated with the different payment methods?

For example, COD payments are quite cheap but can take a long time to actually reach your bank account.

PayPal or credit cards, on the other hand, deposit payments much faster but cost more.

Consider all these factors before choosing your preferred payment method because it will ultimately have an impact on your eCommerce marketing strategy as well.

5. Applying The 80/20 Rule To Your eCommerce Marketing Strategy

The Pareto Principle also knows as the 80/20 rule, applies to most aspects of your business.

It states the in most cases, 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts while the remaining 80% of your efforts produce only 20% of the results.

Source

Here are some of its practical implications.

80% of your sales will come from 20% of your products

80% of your traffic will come from 20% of your marketing efforts

80% of your engagement will be driven by 20% of your content

80% of your search traffic will come to 20% of your top pages

What does that mean?

It means you need to identify the 20% effort that’s driving your business and optimize it to increase profitability.

For example, if 80% of your sales are coming from 20% of your products, keep more stocks, run more ads, and invest more in marketing those products.

The same applies to all other aspects o your business.

There’s a lot more we can discuss in this section but let’s now move towards the more specific eCommerce marketing strategies you can use to grow your business.

eCommerce Marketing Strategies: Ways To Grow Your eCommerce Business

Once you have the fundamentals of your eCommerce marketing business in place, you need to use different marketing channels to drive traffic to your site, convert it into customers, and turn customers in to repeat customers and brand advocates.

You can broadly divide eCommerce marketing strategies into two categories – organic and paid.

Let’s learn more about them.

The Best Organic eCommerce Marketing Strategies

Organic eCommerce marketing strategies are methods that do not require you to pay in order to drive traffic.

However, it doesn’t mean they’re free.

If you’re running an established business, you’d want to hire resources to execute these strategies.

If you’re just starting out though, save money and try doing as much of this yourself as possible.

Let’s dive in.

1. Create An eCommerce SEO Strategy To Drive Search Traffic

Search engines are among the top traffic sources for eCommerce websites irrespective of their industry.

Research shows that 44% of consumers start their buying journey from a search engine query while a detailed study by SEMRush found that nearly 38% of all eCommerce traffic comes directly from search engines.

Source

In short, you need to have a well-planned eCommerce SEO strategy to drive consistent and qualified search traffic to your site.

eCommerce SEO is a very detailed topic that requires a dedicated article to cover all its aspects.

However, let me give you a quick list of SEO techniques you need to apply to your eCommerce website.

i) eCommerce Keyword Research

SEO starts with keyword research.

Unlike blogs that mostly target informational keywords (eg. “how to cook dog food”), eCommerce sites need to focus on keywords with commercial intent (eg. “buy dog food online”) where the searcher is actively looking to buy a product.

You can start your research by analyzing the top keywords your competitors are ranking for using SEMRush.

For example, here’s the list of keywords I found in the SEMrush Keyword Analysis report for Chewy.com, a leading pet food site.

Analyzing competitors will give you an idea of the kind of keywords you should target.

AnswerThePublic is another tool that will help you come up with lots of different keyword ideas for your site.

Also, explore Amazon product categories and note down any specific keywords they’ve used for your product.

For product sales pages, focus on commercial keywords with buyer intent. For blog content on your eCommerce site, target informational and broad query based keywords with higher search volumes.

ii) eCommerce Website Performance Optimization

Your eCommerce site’s performance has a direct impact on search rankings and traffic.

According to Google, every additional second your site takes to fully load results in a higher bounce rate that negatively impact your search rankings.

Source

Your website performance is based on two things – speed and user experience.

To optimize your site’s load time, check its performance using Google’s Page Insights and follow its recommendations.

User-experience largely depends on device compatibility which means your site should be built using responsive design that supports mobile devices.

This is crucial for your search rankings since mobile-friendliness is a key search ranking factor.

iii) Search Engine Friendly eCommerce Website Architecture

Website architecture refers to the overall page hierarchy of your eCommerce site and how many clicks it takes to reach the lowest level pages on your site.

Your general approach to site architecture should be to

Keep it simple and scalable

Keep all pages within three clicks from the homepage

Here’s a good example of a search engine friendly site architecture.

Source

If your site has an overly complex architecture, Google bots will find it hard to index your content, and users will also struggle to understand your product categorization.

iv) Product Schema For eCommerce Sites

Search schema is a game-changer for eCommerce sites when it comes to search CTR. There are different types of schema codes but for eCommerce sites product schema codes are the most important.

Here’s how your product pages appear in search results when the schema code is applied.

As you can see, three search results in this screenshot have the schema markup code enabled which shows product rating, reviews, and price in the SERPs.

This additional information results in more clicks on your search results. Read this step by step guide to learn how to apply schema markup to your site

v) On-Page SEO For eCommerce Sites

On-Page SEO is a detailed topic that I have previously covered on NicheHacks.

Here are the most important on-page SEO practices you need to follow

Use your target keyword in the page title and H1, H2, H3 tags on your page.

Use the target keyword in the first 100 words of your page and throughout the body content wherever relevant.

Use synonyms and terms related to your target keyword in your content

Use image alt-tags for all product images

Write detailed product descriptions and ain for at least 1000-1500 words of high-quality content on every product page.

Use internal links from your blog content to product pages.

Enable reviews and user-generated content.

vi) Link-Building For eCommerce Sites

Getting backlinks from other high authority sites in your niche is crucial for your search rankings.

It’s a detailed topic that I have covered in this link-building guide.

2. Develop An eCommerce Email Marketing Strategy To Drive Repeat Sales

Email marketing is one of the most important sales and conversion channels for eCommerce businesses.

The reason is simple.

Research shows it is much easier to sell to your existing customers as compared to acquiring new clients.

Source

Building an email list allows you to stay in touch with your customers, build credibility, and drive repeat sales from them.

On the contrary, if you don’t actively build an email list, you have no way of connecting with your prospects and measuring their relationship with your brand.

Once your email subscribers start trusting you, they also look forward to receiving your emails and promotional offers.

Source

Should you buy an email list for your eCommerce site?

Never!

Not only is it illegal to buy email lists it’s also pretty useless because there’s no relationship between you and the consumers on such lists.

The right way to grow an email list is by offering a free lead magnet on your site which your visitors can download by willingly sharing their email info.

This gives you permission to send them relevant marketing messages that are likely to result in sales.

Ideally, you should route visitors from all the different eCommerce marketing channels like social media, forums, blogs, etc. to your email list.

And once they become subscribers, make sure you keep them engaged with regular emails, share free value, and offer special discounts to drive more sales.

3. Create Brand Awareness With An eCommerce Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is the secret ingredient that can help you build a multi-million dollar eCommerce brand and leave your competitors far behind.

The idea behind content marketing is to create useful, actionable, and detailed content that answers the most burning questions of your audience.

How does it apply to eCommerce?

Research shows that 61% of consumers purchase products because of blog content.

Source

Many marketers mistakenly believe that product reviews and comparisons are the only content types eCommerce businesses should focus on.

Big mistake!

No matter what product you’re selling, you need to create content that focuses on the problems your product solves.

For example, if you’re running an online store that sells fitness products and gym equipment, why do you think people buy from you?

What’s the need your products are fulfilling?

In most cases, people buy fitness equipment to stay healthy, fit, lose weight, look smart, appear attractive, and live a healthy life.

You can connect these needs with your product, and create useful content that people would love to read.

For example, here are a few titles any fitness blog can write about.

11 Ways To Stay Fit During Covid19 Lockdown

Sitting Is The New Smoking: How To Stay Physically Active While Working From Home

13 High Impact Five Minute Work-Outs To Boost Your Muscle Mass

Do you see the connection?

In each of those titles, you can naturally mention your products and link to your site’s product pages.

What’s the benefit of content marketing?

It not only helps you rank for high volume search queries and drives traffic to your site but also establishes your brand as an industry expert that people trust.

It allows you to attract customers who have a need but don’t know how to fulfill it.

Content marketing is a long-term investment that’ll continue to pay back for years to come.

4. Skyrocket Sales With A Pinterest eCommerce Marketing Strategy

With more than 2 billion monthly searches and 355 million monthly active users, Pinterest is one of the best social networks for eCommerce businesses.

Studies show that the majority of Pinterest users earn more than $75K per year which means they have a considerable disposable income.

But here are the most eye-opening Pinterest stats.

66% of Pinterest users buy something after seeing Pins from a brand while the average order value of a Pinterest referral is $50 (an unusually high number).

Source

So how do you take advantage of Pinterest in your eCommerce marketing strategy?

Here are a few steps you need to follow.

Create a Pinterest Business account

Enable “Rich Pins” that show additional product information with your Pins along with a call to action to visit your eCommerce store.

Create Pinterest Boards for the broad product categories your business sells

Populate each board with high-quality images, videos, infographics, and other forms of visual content.

Optimize your pins using relevant hashtags and keywords

Re-Pin content from other popular Pinterest users in your niche (and corresponding niches).

Pinterest algorithms give or exposure to fresh content in “Suggested Pins” and “Related Pins” categories. Therefore try to publish regularly on Pinterest to take advantage.

To understand Pinterest marketing in more detail, read this in-depth guide by Shopify

5. Grow Your eCommerce Business With Instagram Marketing

With more than 1 billion monthly active users, out of which 63% log in every day, Instagram is a dream platform for any eCommerce business.

Source

The visual nature of Instagram content means it’s ideal for marketing different eCommerce businesses and demonstrating how your product can help your prospects.

This is why 80% of Instagram users rely on the platform and its content when it comes to buying products online.

Source

In short, if you’re running an eCommerce business, you need to have an Instagram marketing strategy in place.

Here are a few quick tips to help you drive eCommerce sales from Instagram.

Create an Instagram Business Account.

Nail your profile bio, cover image, and profile picture. Make sure they’re engaging and communicate the core essence of your brand.

Use calls to action (CTA) and product links in your image descriptions.

Always publish high-quality images and videos on Instagram

Utilize Instagram stories to spread your message faster.

Use product links in Instagram stories to drive more sales.

Run Instagram-only promotions and exclusive offers

Use relevant hashtags with your posts to reach more people

Developing a comprehensive Instagram eCommerce marketing strategy requires a deep understanding of the platform and its audience. You can learn more about it in this massive Instagram marketing guide.

6. Use WhatsApp To Engage And Convert eCommerce Customers

WhatsApp is a platform you don’t often hear about when it comes to eCommerce marketing.

Honestly, I can’t find the reason why it is so underutilized.

With more than 2 billion monthly active users around the world and nearly 70 million users in the US, WhatsApp is one of the best ways to market your eCommerce business.

According to Statista, 53% of WhatsApp users in the US use it daily while 78% use it at least once a week.

Source

And here’s the most jaw-dropping statistic of all; WhatsApp messages have a 90%+ open rate.

Clearly, you need to have a well-planned WhatsApp eCommerce marketing strategy in place to take advantage of this amazing opportunity.

Here are a few tips to help you market your business on WhatsApp.

Create a WhatsApp Business Account.

There are a couple of ways to get WhatsApp subscribers

Ask people to share their WhatsApp number with you

Create a WhatsApp group and ask people to join it using a public URL.

You can accelerate your WhatsApp list building efforts by using the second method and getting people to join your group.

Once a user joins your group, you can see their WhatsApp number and can add them separately as a contact.

Make sure only the admins can message on your WhatsApp group to avoid spam.

Add your prospects to a WhatsApp Broadcast List. Messages from broadcast lists are delivered separately to each recipient. However, to receive messages, the recipient needs to have the sender’s WhatsApp number saved in their phones.

Share exclusive “WhatsApp only” offers on your website and encourage website visitors to join your public WhatsApp group.

Drive traffic to your site from WhatsApp by sharing product links with your subscribers.

Use WhatsApp stories to drive massive engagement and traffic.

To learn more about WhatsApp marketing, I recommend reading this detailed guide by Sumo

7. Experience Exponential eCommerce Growth With Affiliate Marketing

If you want to skyrocket the growth of your eCommerce business, partner with the affiliate marketers.

Affiliate marketing is a zero risk eCommerce marketing strategy in which you recruit affiliates to market your products and only pay them when they make a sale.

Why recruit affiliates when you can directly market your products?

Studies show that consumers prefer buying through affiliates and influencers since they consider them unbiased as compared to advertisements from brands.

Source

Since you don’t have to pay anything to your affiliates unless they make a sale, I’ve listed this eCommerce marketing strategy under organic marketing methods.

8. Maximizing ROI With eCommerce Conversion Optimization

Generating traffic to your eCommerce site is just one part of your marketing strategy.

Converting that traffic into customers and subscribers is the other (often neglected) part.

This is where eCommerce conversion optimization comes into play.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of applying different techniques to convert a higher percentage of your traffic into customers and leads.

According to research, 53% of marketers consider CRO crucial for their online marketing strategy.

Source

How do you optimize your site for conversions?

Here are a few actionable tips

Improve your site’s load speed and performance

Focus on a single Call To Action (CTA) objective for every landing page

Build trust by displaying logos of trusted brands on your site that you’ve worked with.

Leverage social proof like testimonials, reviews, and success stories to drive more sales.

Offer multiple payment options and payment plans.

Use high-quality product images and videos that clearly demonstrate the usefulness of your product.

To learn more about CRO, I recommend this in-depth guide by Backlinko

9. Recover Lost Revenue With Shopping Cart Abandonment Emails

You’ve done all the hard work in driving traffic to your site, and persuading your visitors to click the “Buy Now” button.

But the prospect still doesn’t buy the product and leaves your site without completing the purchase.

Is there anything more heartbreaking than this?

In marketing terms, it’s called cart abandonment and it is one of the biggest challenges eCommerce businesses face.

Just to give you an idea of how big a deal cart abandonment is, research shows that the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is 69.7%

Here are some of the biggest reasons why customers leave without purchasing

Source

However, you can recover a large number of abandoned cart sales with a simple follow up email.

Research shows that companies that send reminder emails to shoppers who’ve abandoned their purchase, manage to recover almost 30% of the abandoned sales.

This is a significant number that’ll help you increase profitability and lower your business losses.

You can configure abandoned cart follow up emails using my of the top email marketing solutions like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, etc.

10. Leverage Online Reviews To Attract New Customers

Online reviews are among the most important factors that drive eCommerce sales.

Research shows that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends.

Source

Every positive online review about your site increases your chances of attracting new customers.

This is why you need to actively encourage and incentivize your customers to leave positive online reviews about your products.

Offer exclusive discounts on future orders for all customers who leave online positive reviews about your business.

Ask your customers to share your product pictures on their social media profiles and tag their friends who might be interested.

Pay special attention to sites like Yelp, Amazon, Facebook, and any other sites that are popular with your target audience.

11. Offer Free Delivery To Attract Customers

Free Delivery is the magic word in eCommerce that turns unsure prospects into happy customers.

It has a psychological impact on buyers which makes them believe they’re getting a good deal.

How do you offer free shipping?

By simply adding it to your product’s cost.

Believe it or not, that’s what most eCommerce businesses do (without telling you).

12. Maximize eCommerce Sales By Showing Related Products

Amazon is the world’s best eCommerce website and there’s a lot you can learn from it.

One of Amazon’s biggest conversion drivers are the related products it shows on every product page.

The screenshot below shows three different headings on the same page under which Amazon show related products.

You can easily replicate this approach on your eCommerce website by showing other closely related products on individual product pages.

This increases the average per customer dollar value and results in a much higher ROI on your marketing efforts.

The Best Paid eCommerce Marketing Strategies

If you’re serious about growing your eCommerce business, you must invest some portion of your revenue in paid marketing techniques.

Here are some of the best paid eCommerce marketing strategies.

13. Invest In Influencer Marketing For Exponential Growth

Influcenr marketing is the hottest eCommerce marketing trend that’s gaining popularity with every passing day.

The concept is simple.

Instead of investing thosuands of dollars in mass advertising, eCommerce brands are now partnering with popular social media users and paying them for recommedning products to their followers.

And the results are comparable to any of the top marketing channels (with much lower costs).

Source

To create successful influencer marketing campaigns, you need to identify the right social media influencers who’re popular among your target audience.

Unlike affiliate marketers, influencers are usually paid a fixed price for product promotions.

If you get it right, influencer marketing can drive several times more sales than any of the other eCommerce marketing strategies we’ve discussed so far.

14. Reach Your Audience Faster Facebook Advertising

Facebook Ads are the lifeline for hundreds of thousands of eCommerce businesses around the world.

They offer advanced audience targeting features that make it very easy to show your ads to exactly the people you want.

For example, here’s a screenshot from Facebook Ad center where you can define the audience you want to target in a particular ad

Start by choosing the countries or cities you want to target in your ad campaign.

When you scroll down, you can choose the age, gender, and languages of the audience you want to target.

These options help you narrow down on your target audience instead of showing your ad to irrelevant users.

But these are still basic targeting features.

To take your ad targeting one step further, you can choose your audience based on their online behavior.

The detailed targeting features allow you to target people who like and follow certain brands on Facebook and have particular interests or hobbies.

You can also choose people by relationship status, life events like birthdays and weddings, recent purchase behavior, and a lot more.

However, you need to understand how Facebook ads work before investing money into them.

This is why I recommend reading this detailed Facebook Advertising Guide we’ve published on our blog.

15. Retarget Visitors To Drive More Sales

It’s called retargeting and it’s one of the best days to attract high-quality traffic to your site and convert it into customers.

Facebook, Google, and many other leading advertising platforms offer starting features that you can use to display your ads to people who’ve visited your site in the past.

How does it work?

You just need to install a small script to your site’s HT ML code and then start driving traffic to it.

The script tracks all the people who visit your site and then allows you to retarget them with relevant ads on Facebook and other websites.

However, it’s a technical topic that requires more study before you can actually benefit from it.

This beginner’s guide is the perfect resource to get you started.

 eCommerce Marketing – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is eCommerce?

eCommerce or Electronic Commerce refers to the buying and selling of products over the internet as well as processing payments for those products via online payment methods.

2. How do I market my eCommerce business?

The key to successful eCommerce marketing is in promoting the products your target audience needs and driving traffic to your store from channels like search engines, social media, email lists, and partnerships.

3. What is the difference between internet marketing and eCommerce?

Internet marketing is a broad terminology that covers the different techniques marketers use to promote their products and services on the internet. eCommerce is a more specific industry that relates to the buying and selling of products on the internet.

4. What are the best eCommerce marketing strategies?

The best eCommerce marketing strategies include SEO, Social Media Marketing, Google Advertising, Facebook Advertising, Influencer Marketing, and Affiliate Marketing.

5. What are the different types of eCommerce businesses?

eCommerce businesses can broadly be categorized as Business To Business (B2B) and Business To Consumer (B2C). However, Consumer To Consumer (C2C) and Consumer To Business (C2B) models can also be found in eCommerce.

6. Which is the world’s largest eCommerce company?

Amazon is the world’s largest eCommerce company with 700K+ employees around the world and annual revenues surpassing $300 billion.

7. Is it easy for newbies to start an eCommerce business?

Thanks to modern eCommerce solutions like Shopify, Woocommerce, WordPress, and many others, starting and successfully managing an eCommerce business is not very difficult even for newbies.

8. How do I collect customer payments in eCommerce?

The most popular eCommerce payment methods are Credit/Debit Cards, PayPal, Stripe, Google Wallet, and Cash On Delivery in many of the developing countries around the world.

9. What are the major benefits of eCommerce?

eCommerce has numerous benefits over conventional physical stores like 24/7 availability, much wider audience range, the ability to handle thousands of customers at once, secure payments, huge product variety, convenience, and much lower operational costs.

Are You Ready To Apply The Best eCommerce Marketing Strategies?

There’s a lot more competition in eCommerce than there was just a few years ago.

However, today’s marketers have a lot more resources at their disposal to market their businesses effectively and drive sales.

The eCommerce marketing strategies I’ve discussed in this article are perfect for all kinds of eCommerce businesses and will result in sales if you apply them the right way.

But knowing them isn’t enough

You need to take action.

You’ll make mistakes when you first apply them but you’ll learn and improve on the go.

That’s the only way you can grow your eCommerce business.

Have any questions?

Let me know in the comments seection.

The post eCommerce Marketing: 15 Proven Strategies To Grow Your eCommerce Revenue appeared first on NicheHacks.

source http://wikimakemoney.com/2020/05/28/ecommerce-marketing-15-proven-strategies-to-grow-your-ecommerce-revenue/

[daniellethamasa]

Hey all, Dani here.

Greetings! I usually like to do these monthly wrap-ups on the first of the month, but I had a couple post office delays with the delivery of my OwlCrate and a Book Loft package, so I decided I would wait one more day since the shipment tracking said I would get them both today. Thankfully they arrived a few hours ago, so I was able to put the finishing touches on the post.

April was actually a really good month on the being in home and watching shows, reading books, blogging, and playing Animal Crossing. Granted, it was also a lot more stressful in terms of going into work, and I have a feeling that it’s only going to get worse on that, as more and more people are deciding that they are tired of the restrictions of social distancing and now with mandatory wearing of masks, so they are taking their unpaid leave and just not dealing with it. Unfortunately it means those of us who are left have to work even harder, which is physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. I’m now actually finding myself wishing that the factory would just close for a week or two until the manpower struggles lessen a bit, but I don’t think that will happen. It’s immensely frustrating. I don’t want to be there with everything going on, but I can’t afford to take two weeks without pay.

But today’s supposed to be a pretty nice day, so I think Damian and I are maybe going to go to a state park that has some pretty nice and wide hiking trails, so we can get outside and walk around a bit. We’re obviously taking our masks with us too. I bought some of Etsy, getting him a Slytherin mask and me a Ravenclaw one. I ordered a couple others but those haven’t shipped yet.

As usual with my monthly wrap-up, let’s start off by checking in on my overall goals for the year.

Reading: I read 30 books in the month of April, 10 of which were manga volumes, two were re-reads, and three were novella length. Overall that takes me to 101 books read already in 2020. Still, I’d say that is a pretty good month of reading. I should probably count up how many pages that is. Okay, I did the calculations, and only counting finished books I read 8,707 pages in April…but really I’ve probably read a few hundred more if you include unfinished reads. Overall though I’m super happy with that. I successfully completed my requirements for the OWLs Magical Readathon, so all I have to do is pass the NEWTs in a couple months and I’ll be a Trader of Magical Tomes. I also participated in Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, and that was a whole lot of fun. Plus, I am currently in the middle of the Calendar Girls Springtime Whirl, going until May 11th, so I’m hoping to read a few more books at least for it–I haven’t achieved a bingo yet, but I’m really just having a good time trying to read to fulfill random prompts.

Blogging: It was the best month on my blog so far this year, and pretty close to being my best month in the history of Mousai Books, in terms of stats anyway. In terms of number of blog posts, this was definitely the best month overall…but I’m going to dial it back a little bit, because there’s no way I can keep doing like 10+ posts a week. It’s not sustainable for me right now. But I do still feel pretty good about continuing to have posts up pretty much every day. I wrote up 46 blog posts in the month of April, which is impressive, but it was also a whole lot of work. I did really enjoy the content though. I had a lot of books to talk about, and I especially enjoyed my National Library Week posts.

Writing: Well, I wrote a lot of blog posts, though that doesn’t count on the creative writing front. I was all excited about jumping into writing my book and then the world went to crap and I can’t get in a good mind set to write, so I’ve focused my attention on reading, and more study of the craft of writing. So it’s progress, but it isn’t progress in a trackable form such as increasing word count.

Conventions: Right now we are waiting to see what’s going to happen with Gen Con in late July/early August. It is a massive convention, so we’re expecting there to at least be a ton of restrictions. Lexington Comic and Toy Con ended up being postponed again, this time to June 18-21, and then it was just announced like yesterday that the 2020 convention is being canceled. But we both really want to work with Colorworld Books again, so we’re hoping that Cincinnati Comic Expo in September will still be good to go. My friends at Colorworld Books are trying to continue with their business as a digital affair, but 99% of the profits were made from attending conventions, so this has been a struggle for them. If you want to go check out their online store, that would be great. They have metal art prints and bookmarks, geeky t-shirts, and books. Oh, and you can use ConLife30 for 30% off of all metal, or CORONACON for 10% off any shirts. Oh, and they have actually started doing Colorworld LIVE convention style events just about every week. They gather up three or four awesome voice actors, hold a livestream panel, then a VIP panel for anyone who buys some signed merch, and of course you can get shirts, metal art prints, and more with characters these actors have portrayed. It’s pretty cool.

Okay, I guess I should start with wrapping up my time with the OWLs Magical Readathon. I was going for the Trader of Magical Tomes career path, which required me to read 4 books. I ended up changing one of the books from my TBR out because it was taking me so long and I worried I wouldn’t finish it in time. But, other than that, I was successful in reading all four books, so I’m ready to continue my Magical Tome training in the NEWTs later this year.

I’m also in the middle of the Calendar Girls Springtime Whirl, which is a bingo inspired reading challenge running from April 13-May 11. Once the reading challenge is over I’ll share a post with an updated bingo board covering all the categories I completed.

All right, let’s run through everything I read in the month of April. If I have a review up, I’ll also include the link back to that post.

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare — 4.5 stars

Bonds of Brass by Emily Skrutskie — 5 stars

The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett — 4.5 stars

Manga Classics: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Po Tse — 4 stars

The Queen of Raiders by Sarah Kozloff — 5 stars

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloane — 5 stars

Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren — 4 stars

You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle — 3.5 stars

The Library Book by Susan Orlean — 5 stars

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron — 5 stars

Hickville Crossroads by Mary Karlik — 4 stars

An Affair of Poisons by Addie Thorley — 4.5 stars

Fruits Basket Collector’s Edition Volume 4 by Natsuki Takaya — 4 stars

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman — 4 stars

Steering the Craft by Ursula K Le Guin — 4 stars

Witches of Ash and Ruin by E. Latimer — 4.5 stars

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone — 5 stars

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey — 5 stars

Fairy Tail Volume 8 by Hiro Mashima — 5 stars

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin — 4 stars

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer — 4.5 stars

Fairy Tail Volume 9 by Hiro Mashima — 5 stars (review coming May 4, 2020)

Fairy Tail Volume 10 by Hiro Mashima — 5 stars (review coming May 18, 2020)

Fairy Tail Volume 11 by Hiro Mashima — 5 stars (review coming June 1, 2020)

Fairy Tail Volume 12 by Hiro Mashima — 5 stars (review coming June 15, 2020)

Fairy Tail Volume 13 by Hiro Mashima — 5 stars (review coming June 29, 2020)

Fairy Tail Volume 14 by Hiro Mashima — 5 stars (review coming July 13, 2020)

Fairy Tail Volume 15 by Hiro Mashima — 5 stars (review coming July 27, 2020)

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold — 3.5 stars

The Honey Don’t List by Christina Lauren — 4.5 stars

Whew, that was quite the list of reads for the month. Seriously I had a lot of fun reading this month and definitely found some books that are contenders for my Top Ten Reads of 2020 from April to June, so that’s great. Unless something bad happens, I have a feeling that this will be my best year of reading in a long time.

All right, next it’s time for the book haul portion of things, starting with the OwlCrate unboxing.

I think I’m really going to enjoy putting together the Moony puzzle, and the book sounds rather interesting. Clearly I enjoy having another notebook, as those are handy to have around. Same with the tote bag. And Damian really likes the wooden phases of the moon banner, so I gave that to him to add to the decorations in his man cave. I actually do like the OwlCrate version of this cover better than the original. The people are a bit closer and bigger, and the cover has this wonderfully eerie glow to it, almost as if it is bathed in moonlight, which is great. Plus those sprayed edges.

And, before I get into the rest of the books for my monthly haul, I want to talk about some other purchases I’ve made lately.

The stickers I bought off of Redbubble and they are from a dozen different artists. A few of the stickers are for Damian (and he already put them up in his man cave) and the rest are going on my art wall collage. The metal art prints are from my friends at Colorworld Books, and I love the metal art, but it is not easy to capture their beauty in a photo because of the reflection of light. Maybe I’ll think of doing a little video of them in my Instagram stories or something. I might pick up some more art this weekend. We’ll see.

As part of the bookhaul portion of today’s post, I need to do a shout out to The Book Loft of German Village in Columbus, OH. After some requests on social media, they complied and decided to offer a Malamarkus Mystery Box. You pay a single price for the box, tell them in your order comments what genres you would like, and then they fill the box with items such as books, a tote bag, bookish pins or stickers, etc for you. I have purchased two of these boxes, and it’s really fun to get a package where you have no idea what books they will select for you. The first box I ordered I gave them the genres of Epic Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, and Manga, with a couple examples of authors/series for each. I loved the selections so much that I picked up a second box, asking this time for fiction that makes me feel like I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons.

What’s really fun about both of these boxes is that they ended up having books for both Damian and myself. In the first box he got Dr. Stone because he watches the anime and wanted to try the manga, and The Starless Sea because I already owned a copy. In the second box I gave Damian The Last Wish, Heart & Shadow, and The Shadow of What Was Lost, again because I owned all of them already. What is really funny is that I had just bought and received that last one from my Barnes & Noble order a few days ago. Oh, and Damian also got the tote bag because I already have one–in that exact same color.

Okay, now for the standard bookhaul segment of the post.

Along with picking up the two books in her Dasreach Council series that I didn’t have, I also was able to buy that lovely Beauty and the Beast stained glass cloth mask from author Josette Reuel as well. We are now required to wear masks while at work, and I wanted to have a selection of cloth masks instead of relying on the disposable paper ones they are going to hand out at work. Though I’m still trying to figure out a good/easy way to be able to get a drink while also working on the factory floor, because the masks make you overheat even faster and that means you dehydrate even more.

Finally I guess it’s time to talk May TBR. I am sort of participating in Moody May, hosted by Kathy from Books and Munches and Destiny from Howling Libraries, and the whole point of Moody May is to read whatever you are in the mood for, which is perfect for mood readers who don’t like TBRs. But I’m sort of a mixed reader, because I enjoy having a somewhat planned TBR and then picking up mood reads to supplement my reading. So, I have made a rather ambitious TBR, which will probably be supplemented by shorter mood reads.

See what I mean? This stack of books is massive. Why am I doing this to myself? Honestly it’s because I seem to pick up thick fantasy reads as the weather gets warmer. I don’t even know how many pages are in these 10 books. So, yeah, I was curious and checked and those ten books are 6,276 pages.

Now that doesn’t include the fact that I’m in the middle of three or four other books that are also around 500 pages each. What can I say? I do love a good lengthy read, especially right now when my weekends are not filled with running around or playing D&D for hours and hours.

April Wrap Up and May TBR Hey all, Dani here. Greetings! I usually like to do these monthly wrap-ups on the first of the month, but I had a couple post office delays with the delivery of my OwlCrate and a Book Loft package, so I decided I would wait one more day since the shipment tracking said I would get them both today.

[anthonykrierion]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[ronijashworth]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/odn-as-a-meta-cms/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, late April 2020

I hope everyone is well, and staying safe. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown most of us off track in many areas, and for me, this blog was one of them. After a tumultuous few months, I have finally found the energy to edit this down - it is both way behind in some areas and overwhelmingly dense in others. 

The good news is that I plan on posting every week for the next little while, to provide more timely updates. That will sometimes mean more news and fewer “how-to” pieces, and some sections may be omitted some weeks. If there are topics you would find helpful during these uncertain times, please let me know. 

Hang in there, and remember to take care of yourself! We can get through this. 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

COVID-19 Pandemic: For information on how various ecommerce entities are dealing with it, see below:

Etsy has a basic seller Help article (which they do update with new developments), and a larger collection of articles that includes data on current buying trends as well as info on how to sell masks on Etsy. 

eBay has an overview page linking to seller info including price gouging rules and shipping updates, as well as buyer info on purchases. They have also opened the “Up and Running” program to help small businesses moving online for the first time. Finally, they have offered free listings to different types of sellers, and just extended that program until the end of July. 

Amazon’s daily update page on COVID-19 developments, including charitable behaviour by the company, doesn’t even include third party sellers as a party they are concerned about. They’ve taken heavy criticism for firing a union activist, improper handling of virus outbreaks at its facilities, while not doing much for merchants since the site is over capacity. They were so overwhelmed that they limited Fulfilled by Amazon orders to essential goods only in March, leaving many merchants with no income.

Etsy CEO Josh Silverman is also lobbying for government support for self employed people such as ecommerce sellers, freelancers, contract workers etc. (unlike in some countries such as Canada, most self-employed Americans aren’t eligible to pay into employment insurance plans, something Silverman is asking for.) Here’s a video clip of Silverman being interviewed on the topic on Fox. He followed up with a letter to the EU. Etsy also started the “Stand With Small” Campaign to support small businesses, but their forum thread went so poorly they had to delete most of the replies & lock it. They’ve also launched new commercials for the pandemic era

Many small businesses are still in dire straights right now. Here are lists of artist/self-employed/small business supports, including funding and services, for Canadians and Americans. Etsy has also compiled the basic government benefit info for the US, the UK, France, Germany, and Canada. If you know of any other similar or more comprehensive resource lists, please let me know! 

ETSY NEWS 

By now you have heard that the Etsy Offsite Ads that many of us were supposed to start paying for April 14 have been delayed until May 1, but I have covered the basics in the first post and the highlighted posts here. (No, they are not investing $5 million in offsite ads this month; the $5 million is the money we would have paid in fees from April 14-30!) Now that Google Shopping will have free listings in the US as of April 27, everything may be up in the air. [I will update this post and my thread with any new information as it becomes available.]

In the aftermath of the outcry over the Offsite Ad fees, Shopify is taking a page out of Zibbet’s old playbook, by emailing Etsy sellers with information on how to migrate your listings from Etsy to a Shopify website. They’ve also posted info in their forum. 

In the most recent bad publicity for the platform, Etsy dropped the ball on the mask shortage, then picked up cause (getting some very good publicity) and now many the new mask sellers who oversold are having their money held & are frustrating thousands of buyers with with either poorly-made products or no product at all - well see how much more bad publicity that will bring.. First, the public was looking for masks to protect against COVID-19 on Etsy, and found some that claimed to work. “[M]ore than 200 postings for face masks have sprung up in the past two days [on Feb. 26]...Even as sites like Facebook and Amazon have added links and resources for learning more about COVID-19, Etsy has stayed quiet on any precautionary or educational measures.” An Etsy rep said “While face masks are allowed on Etsy, we prohibit any items that make medical claims. Our team is prioritizing taking down any listings that claim to protect against coronavirus." Etsy eventually realized that this was an opportunity to make money, so they are now encouraging sellers to post masks for sale.That’s getting a lot of positive media attention. “The website is becoming a go-to destination for homemade cloth masks. Etsy says there was an average of one mask-related search on the site every two seconds in March. Last week, more than 10,000 sellers sold at least one mask apiece.” Here’s a piece on Fox news [video and text] and another video, and one on CNBC [video and text].

They are also removing or at least de-indexing (removing from search) listings that mention the virus directly, and even use words such as “medical”, including in sentences such as “this is not a medical-grade mask.” Some sleep masks have been hit as well. Many of the shops were originally back up & running within a day of getting Etsy’s attention, but Trust & Safety is reportedly now backed up two weeks or more on this issue, leaving many sellers out of search and unable to sell. 

Some of the shops that have oversold or who received multiple bad feedbacks are now posting their stories in the forum as they look for ways to get their money released. The buyers who never received their purchases are finding these threads & asking what to do.This has the potential to turn out very badly for Etsy, although for the moment, the good coverage continues. 

(Mind you, other marketplaces also have to worry about price gouging on things like hand sanitizer, so the bad media isn’t all Etsy’s - but they get mentioned in that article as well. eBay has now gone as far as banning the sale of all hand sanitizer & disinfecting wipes. Meanwhile, Mercari also encouraged sellers to make masks, but is donating 50% of the fees they collect on these sales to a first responders charity until May 31. In short, there are ways to do this without looking greedy.)

Etsy had a decent 4th quarter in 2019; here is my thread, & here is Etsy’s dumbed down take. 

They then did an early April update: while March 2020 has been difficult, it was not as bad as many of us might have thought. “...in those moments when people's mindshare is elsewhere, we tend to see a significant drop in traffic to Etsy. We experienced that suddenly and strongly beginning on March 8th. And that hit a low point in the month of March, in the third week of March, when our Consolidated GMS for the week was negative 2%. So to dimensionalize that, we were averaging 41% Consolidated GMS growth in January and February, and it went down to negative 2% in the third week of March. …  So GMS Consolidated in the fourth week of March was up 27% year-over-year, but even in that fourth week, on the Etsy standalone site, we had one day that was a negative 4% day and another day, just a few days later, that was a positive 23% day.”

Note that if you use the auto-renew feature, your items will still renew when in vacation mode. 

I now know that  “birth flower jewelry” is a thing, and Etsy is getting 69% more searches for it than last year. Here are some other Etsy jewellery trends, with some suggested search terms.  A few of the tips there, including suggested keyword phrases, are also mentioned in the Mother’s Day Guide. 

Etsy also just released an article on what people are shopping for during the pandemic. “Wedding postponements have generated increased traffic for change-the-date cards in paper and digital formats. With many celebrations, including bridal showers, now taking place online, shoppers are looking for items like festive backdrops to embellish their virtual gatherings. 7,311% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “date change”

Reverb will now be offsetting the carbon emissions from its shipping, just like Etsy. 

If you want to drive traffic to your Etsy listings from Pinterest (through your own account or by being pinned by others), Etsy has some suggestions. 

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

The pandemic is changing Google search ranking & visibility; not all of the changes are the predictable ones. For example, “fashion and apparel” went up, even though people weren’t going outside or to work as much. 

Temporarily sold out items on your website (not your Etsy shop) need to be handled properly to maintain their SEO value. Some basic tips here. 

There are things you can do to improve your chances of having sitelinks show up for your website on Google search result pages. 

We talk a lot about backlinks coming into your site, but each page (at least the non-product pages) should probably have outbound links as well. Especially if you are blogging on a topic, remember that “[i]n all forms of publishing, it’s standard practice to cite authoritative, third-party sources to reinforce the points you make.” 

Speaking of backlinks, here is how to get them & even how not to get them. 

The changes to how Google treats no-follow links started last month, and if you were using no-follow to stop Google from crawling, you need to fix that. Apparently it won’t change ranking much.

There are new guides to keyword research almost every week, but this one from Backlinko is good for both newbies & more experienced folks. (He does make the very common error of stating that long tail keywords are longer phrases, but otherwise it is great.) Good suggestions on judging difficulty: “First, search for your keyword in Google.  Then, look at the sites ranking on the first page. (Not individual pages) If the first page is made up of uber authority sites (like Wikipedia), then you might want to cross that keyword off from your list ...But if you see a handful of smaller blogs on page 1, that’s a sign that you have a shot to hit the first page too.” Seriously, you need to read this one. 

And if you still haven't conquered the Google Keyword Planner for keyword research, here are some good tips and basic set-up instructions. Bonus: it also shows you how to use the tool for Google ads. 

I’m a big fan of using keyword research/tools for marketing & product ideas, and here is a similar thought: use SEO data to inform your marketing. 

When people say Google “crawls” your site, we mean with spiders. Seriously. Ok, they are actually bots, but still, they really are called spiders.

Google’s index will be entirely based on the mobile version of a website by this September. Right now, they are at 70%. If your site doesn’t work well on mobile, you have a few more months to correct that. 

Another reminder that generally, you don’t want Google to index your website’s internal search pages. 

You probably know that there are ways to optimize images on your website, called alt text, and here is a really good overview of how & why. (Note this doesn’t work for Etsy shops)

Another short video from the Google Webmaster team, this one on 301 redirects. 

The usual Google search change rumours are just odd right now.

If you feel you just don’t understand SEO, you can take one of these free online courses to learn more. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

The most popular hashtags are not always the best to use; read that & more tips on using hashtags on social media here. 

You don’t actually have to come up with blog post ideas yourself; there are multiple tools that can do it for you [infographic and text links]

An annual report on social media [text with a pdf download to your email account] finds that engagement is down on Instagram, contests & giveaways are the most popular brand posts, and “Carousels” get good attention on Instagram.

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach your customers; here’s what you need to think about as you design your campaigns, and how to get started. Every target market is different, so you should consider using A/B testing in your emails to figure out what yours responds to. 

Some interesting ideas for using Instagram Stories for market research.

Did you know you can edit your photos right within Instagram? (it starts with filters but moves to other editing)

Pinterest has a bunch of new features for retailers, including verified merchants, catalogues and ad retargeting. 60% of US women look at Pinterest at least occasionally, including 80% of mothers. But you might be surprised at what some of them are looking for: e.g., “Searches for how to ask for a raise at work are up 254%.” If you don’t know how to get more followers on Pinterest, check out this article. 

WhatsApp got caught with bad coding, allowing private groups to be indexed by Google. Don’t forget they are owned by Facebook. 

LinkedIn is testing their own version of Stories. So is Twitter. 

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Yes, there are reasons you might want to buy online ads for your business/brand name. 

If you do your own Google Ads, you will want to learn more about the new “optimization Score”.It gives you tips on parts of your Ads account you should work on to get better results. 

Also, you can find out more about how buyers behave after finding your ads through the Google Ads Attribution Report. 

If you are looking to spend money on ads, this comparison of Google Ads to Facebook/Instagram ads gives you a lot to think about. 

If Google won’t run your ads because it says they are for low-volume keywords, there are ways to fix the problem. 

While Facebook’s overall traffic is way up lately due to COVID-19, their ads are not, partially because they don’t run on some of its most popular features such as Messenger. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

If you buy your own Google Ads, make sure to link them to your Google Analytics account to get the most data. Download the pdf of instructions written by Google. 

If you have fairly advanced knowledge of Google Analytics and coded it into your own website, here are 13 mistakes you might have made. [Don’t even read that unless you have some knowledge of coding websites. I’m not joking.]

Here’s an easier Google Analytics article for websites, much of which even applies to Etsy shops. 

Here’s an easy way to use Google Analytics to track your promotions, sales and ad campaigns. Some promotional tools do this for you, but not all. 

The Google Search Console now lets you download more data. 

There is a new stats program out called Plausible, which is simpler than Google Analytics & should not slow down your site as much. For those of you who don’t want tons of data & don’t like the cookie issues with GA, Plausible makes a compelling argument for you here. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

The pandemic has helped consolidate Amazon’s position as the top ecommerce marketplace in many jurisdictions, and it is the only one that is trending upward in Google searches. As of March 24, searches for “Etsy” dropped 30%. (but I don’t think that is an indication that traffic dropped that amount - it may be less or more, depending on what percentage of buyers usually Google “Etsy”.)

Shopify launches were up 75% in the second week of April compared to the first week of March, in part due to many brick and mortar stores moving online. [While they are replacing in-person shopping, those new shops also increase our ecommerce competition - and some might stay online even once their physical locations reopen.] 

USPS is in financial trouble, and the pandemic is not helping. That affects everyone who ships to the US, not just US sellers. 

Walmart is working on a membership program similar to Amazon Prime. It may open soon, and “[p]erks could include unlimited same-day delivery on groceries and text-based shopping, the latter of which Walmart has tested through its now-defunct Jet Black shopping service. Later, prescription drug and gas discounts, and scan and go services, could be part of the program, according to Recode...Walmart has also unveiled a new third-party fulfillment service for its marketplace sellers — again a key feature of Amazon's model.”

Amazon & eBay told the US government they are working really hard to remove fakes from their platforms.  

eBay will be expanding its in-house payment system to Canada & Australia this year, making 5 countries in total, after the US, Germany and the UK. 

Shiptheory, a newer shipping integration, now includes Etsy & Squarepsace, in addition to eBay, Shopify and many others. The platform is free for users shipping only 200 orders a month, and has over a dozen carriers (not currently USPS or Canada Post, however).

If you are looking for something to do while sheltering in place, consider editing some of your product descriptions to drive more sales. If you are stuck for new ideas, it does include a template. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

While some economic indicators dropped substantially in March, things are beginning to pick up in the US in the last half of April. Shopify reported “Black Friday level” numbers for the third week of April, for example. One likely reason is the US stimulus money being spent on non-essentials. 

A decent if short overview of what makes people decide to buy things: “Shopping activates the brain’s reward centers, causing a rush of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine” and “68 percent of millennial shoppers will make a reactive purchase as a result of FOMO” (fear of missing out). 

People are more likely to buy if you offer easy (or even free) returns. Yes, I realize most of us aren’t able to offer free returns, but the thinking behind this is worth reading about, because it is one of the advantages larger companies have over businesses like ours. We all need to be aware of our disadvantages, so we can counter them. “A December 2018 survey shares how a whopping 88 percent of shoppers want the ability to return their purchases, if desired, either by taking them to a physical store or using a shipping method that’s prepaid.” Also, “...the more liberal you are with your return policy, the more confident you will likely appear about the products you sell.”

There are now around 2 billion websites in the world, & 20 million ecommerce sites (although that was pre-pandemic). Make sure you know how to get customers and how to keep them coming back. (With some links to studies.) One of their 7 points is also return policy. It’s important, folks!

When developing your marketing and advertising plans, make sure you think about your buyers’ location. For example, some things are just going to be more popular in certain areas. 

More and more shoppers are ok with buying on social media instead of marketplaces & other websites. [study by Poshmark] Another interesting takeaway: “Gen Z closets are made up of 16.5% secondhand items, the most of any generation measured, followed by Gen X (14%), millennials (12.5%) and baby boomers (9.5%).”

Meanwhile, if you want to know more about millennials, here are 34 stats and facts you may be interested in. 

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour) 

With many workplaces asking employees to stay home due to the coronavirus, we’ve been seeing a lot more pieces on how to work from home effectively. This one is pretty good. 

LinkedIn has made several of their remote working courses available for free, including time management and various electronic tools. 

Doing more video chats lately? Here’s how to look good on a webcam. 

Understandably, Google cancelled its usual collection of April Fools jokes this year. Which leads me to this article on how to market during a pandemic, and this one. 

And here’s how to keep your customers afterwards. “Temporarily shift from the “fewer sales, higher profit” mentality to helping as many consumers as you can. That means focusing on orders more than revenue. Consumers are presumably putting off big-ticket purchases during Covid-19, anyway. Thus it makes sense to embrace smaller orders from first-time buyers to enable a long-term relationship.”

[heavenwheel]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.

from Digital https://www.distilled.net/resources/odn-as-a-meta-cms/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[donnafmae]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.

from Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/odn-as-a-meta-cms/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[norqfromork]

Orkney is steeped in talent from musicians to jewellery makers, authors and artists. I’ve known Claire for several years now, and have seen her artwork grow and develop.  I own some of it and love her style.  She now has a growing business and her amazing work can be seen for sale in many places around Orkney. Here is an interview with Claire showing some of her amazing work and the story behind its beginnings.

A Kirkwall scene made with torn paper

  Hi Claire, I’ve been a huge fan of your artwork and talent ever since I met you.  How did it all begin?

Thanks Sarah, I’ve always loved art since school but I guess it properly began with Flutterbug Creations 7 years ago.

I designed a book for my son who was then 3 years old – we had been at a review meeting at the school (he had been diagnosed at 9 months old with a severe myoclonic epileptic syndrome) one of the things mentioned at the meeting was how difficult he was to engage in the nursery especially at story time so the educational psychologist suggested someone make him a book with his favourite things and at the time he loved Velcro and was obsessed with lawnmowers (sometimes he would watch the neighbours mow their lawn for hours at a time) so I took the challenge as was desperate to help him, although to be honest I think I was the last person they meant to do it because we were getting up sometimes 30+ times per night every night since he’d been born!

So with my son and 18 month old daughter in tow ‘Larry the Lawnmower’ was made – It was hand painted, had about 5 pages of thick paper stuck together and pull apart Velcro pages – he loved it!! We received help from different agencies in Orkney and they commented they couldn’t believe he was actually sitting looking at a book!

I then made a few others thinking he might look at them and also they might appeal to other children with or without difficulties and took it to a craft group, one of the people there’s husband did work for Business Gateway and she suggested I show them I now have 4 self – published books (which 6 more on file) that are in the top 4 disability websites in the UK, last year when I remarried I decided to start a fresh and closed Flutterbug Creations (although I do still have and sell the books) I reinvented myself with some new products and designs and a new name – Claire Kirkpatrick Art and have never looked back.

    Claire with her son Kyle

I’ve seen all kinds of work, I love your paper shredding portraits and it’s a real labour of love. I’ve also seen your wire pictures and place name work which are really popular.  Where do you get your ideas and inspiration from?

Honestly – anything and everything and sometimes I’m not even sure, the ideas and inspiration are just there!

A robin made of tiny paper shredding.  Look at the detail on the chest.

  I do think ideas evolve as the paper collage pictures came originally from me making wedding cards, I loved the way when you tear paper you have the soft edge and used it as ‘lines’ in my paper ‘drawings’ having done wedding cards for a year for very little money I set it to the side for a few years but returned to it 4 years ago and made my card range of farm animals and pets (I even had a go at a few portraits) and then made the Stromness and Kirkwall scenes which led me on to the wire as I’d fancied working with it for a while, the first one I did was of a tree in a heart which got me wondering if I could do a couple stood at a beach with a sunset so I drew a couple of images and made it using the paper collage as the background, I shared it on facebook and it was a big hit, this is how most ideas of mine are decided whether they work or not is by the response from my facebook friends – my real bosses haha!

The popular wire pictures

  Word pictures have been around for a while so I can’t take credit for those but I had a go at doing a ‘home’ one and then it occurred to me to do the islands of Orkney and again I showed it off on facebook, this time I was completely blown off my feet as the response was huge, I now have 40+ designs and am constantly researching and designing more, and have most recently combined the words with scenes which is I think is like the paper collage only now I use words instead of paper. They take days to do and hundreds of words which I type, position, resize and colour myself ‘not’ what is misconceived to be automatically done by software, I hope to expand this range very soon.

Just one of a huge range

  People, life experiences, scenery, colours, etc all sorts of things inspire me – the need to not fail and the desire to be good at what I do is heavily ingrained in me also being a good role model for my children and sometimes I think if people still see me going despite having a few hard times then maybe I can inspire and motivate them too.

Do you have a favourite piece or style you like create?

I love designing new products but from what I already make I really enjoy doing it all, however I do find it difficult going from one type of medium to the other. For example if Ii’m painting and have to stop to do a wire picture the transition is hard because your mindset is on the one thing, but once I start the new product I soon get into it.

With a husband and three children, how do you find the time to create? 

It can be very challenging at times and I have learned (quickly) to not do things that require a lot of concentration when the children are around! Also the housework suffers – I said to my husband shortly after our daughter was born that I could clean and look after the kids or I could work and look after the kids but I couldn’t do all 3, I also rely heavily on my husband and friends for support, have regular meltdowns and make lots of comments about being superwoman in disguise, plus have been known to put out pleas of advice from fellow working mums – lists was a top suggestion and get a cleaner – the lists I’m currently working from 4, and the cleaner started a few weeks ago (life changing!!)

Re the cleaner, I’m jealous! Where do you see your business going in the future?

I hope I’m as lucky to be doing what I’m doing currently, perhaps focusing more on the designing with folk helping me manufacture and distribute – I already have 2 casual workers that help me, but hope to have another 2 in the next year or 2 and despite the financial pressure I aim to keep it as local as I can.

What’s your favourite piece of artwork you’ve made?

I think it would have to be my paper collage ducks or Hereford calf, that was the first time I saw the paper collage-like paint brush strokes, the ducks is one original of a small few that I kept for me, I also still have my St Magnus Cathedral Wire Picture not because it’s a favourite but somehow I can’t part with it! I found it to be incredibly hard work and was completely drained towards the end!! I’ll part with it one day I’m sure.

Ducks

A first and favourite

Claire can’t part with her cathedral wire picture

  Where can people buy your work in Orkney?

I have a website currently being built which has a link to my online Etsy Shop, my facebook page also has the link to my shop too and I  have my word art in The Longship, Kirkwall, Leviathan International, Sutherland’s Chemist and WS Sinclair, Stromness also it will be in the Ayre Mills Filling Station and the 3 Northlink boats in a few weeks.

For paintings I will have them in the Tearoom in Stromness also in a few weeks time.

Do you do mail order for those outside of Orkney?

Yes, I’ve sent work all over the world – 2 favourites are Los Angeles and New York – I was keen to hand deliver those!!

(pity you couldn’t!)

I do most of my sales from Etsy … http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/clairekirkpatrickart

Would you like to share your social media links?

Thank you Sarah I’d love to…

http://www.clairekirkpatrick.co.uk

www.facebook.com/clairekirkpatrickart

That’s great, thanks so much for sharing your story with us and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Claire’s latest stunning piece

    Local Artist Claire Kirkpatrick #blog #Orkney #wordpress Orkney is steeped in talent from musicians to jewellery makers, authors and artists. I've known Claire for several years now, and have seen her artwork grow and develop.  

[antionetterparker]

Ranking the 36 best ways to make extra money on the side in 2019

Side hustle is the new side chick. Gig economy is THE buzzword lately, no doubt. Everyone wants to bring in a little extra money.

If you’re always broke, trying to pay down that debt or save some side cash and just can’t…

If you hate your job and feel like a scrub when you go to work every morning…

If you’re not feeling on your A game and smiling every time you check your bank account…

It’s time for you to start reeling in multiple streams. If you’re not part of the digital revolution, you’re gonna be left behind.

So, without further ado, here are the best ways to get that side hustle going in 2019. No BS surveys, no secret shopping for $2 checks, no guinea pigging yourself to mad scientists, just straight, legit ways to make extra money.

Be sure to check out how to make money fast, best small business ideas, and work from home jobs too.

Ranked by potential to go digital and scalability (because turning your side gig into your FT money maker is the dream), here we go…

47. Teach yoga

You can’t go anywhere without running into lululemon wearing green tea drinkers talking about their auras.

It costs a few hundo to get certified, but you can easily make that back in a day if you can fill a class with 30+ people willing to pay $10 each. The industry is way saturated though, so it’ll take time to build up the credibility and fame you need to really make a dent.

46. Odd jobs/chores

Offer to help neighbors, friends, or acquaintances with chores in exchange for some cash. Maybe check out Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, but remember to consider the safety hazards of meeting people off of a website like these.

Instead of only looking around manually for jobs, sign up for TaskRabbit. TaskRabbit lets people post all sorts of odd jobs, from grocery pickup to calling customer service on your client’s behalf. (1)

45. Driving around

Lyft drivers in big cities make a solid $377/month, and Uber drivers rake in $364/month. It’s definitely not quit your day job material, but it’s not bad for a little side money. The more you drive, the more you’ll make. (1)

Best part is you can work whenever you want for Uber and Lyft simply by clocking in on the app. Try driving during weekend nights for the surge pricing, if you can tolerate drunk people, of course.

You do have to have a car that’s less than 10 years old, and piling on the mileage every weekend will take a toll on your car’s value and longevity.

44. Sell your plasma

You can make money selling your body… as in your blood plasma. Many donation centers will pay you $20+ per visit to sit there with a needle in your arm for an hour or a bit longer. Might not be a whole lot, but you can watch Netflix while you’re in the donation chair if you want.

Make sure you meet the requirements before you try signing up. (2)

43. Babysitting

Parents will always be willing to fork over some cash to watch their child if you’re qualified. Ask your friends and acquaintances since people who know you are more likely to trust you.

Or, you can list your services on Care.com and wait for the parents to come to you. (2)

42. Dog sitting

People will pay a good $15-$20 for you to take their dog on a walk during your lunch break. If you can manage to take 10 dogs out on your lunch break, that’s $150 in your pocket.

People will pay even more money if you take care of their dogs during long periods of absence, such as when they go on vacation or travel for work.

Get on Rover.com, set up a dog walker profile, and start getting yourself some good reviews. (2)

41. Website testing

Ever been on a website that’s laggy, ugly, or terribly unintuitive? You can get businesses to pay you for telling them how crappy or good their website is that by signing up for a website testing service.

UserTesting, a leader in the website testing market, will pay you $10 for every 20-minute video test you complete. (3) $30 an hour isn’t bad for such a simple gig, and you’re doing a good deed for web surfers everywhere.

40. Movie extra

You don’t have to live in Hollywood to be a movie extra anymore. In fact, film-making hubs are exploding around the country and places like Georgia and Louisiana are taking over the movie industry thanks to tax breaks. (3)

You can make around $50-$100/day as a movie extra, and you might get to see yourself on the big screen.

39. Art Modeling

No, you don’t need to be jacked and shredded to be an art model. Some might require you getting nude, but if that makes you uncomfortable, there’re plenty of art modeling gigs that don’t require you to strip down

Sitting still (nude or not) for a few aspiring artists could earn you $20-$30 an hour. Reaching out to local art schools is your best bet for finding work, but browse online job boards too.

38. Flight searching

On Farefetch, people post flights they want and how much they’re willing to pay. If you find it for cheaper, you pocket the difference. It’s actually pocket change most of the time, but you can nag $50 or $60 for some flights. (4)

37. Essay ghostwriter

It’s a moral gray area for sure, but if you’re decently smart and willing to go full-on no shame and write essays for college kids online, you can make pretty good side money.

You might only make a few hundred per week to start, but if you can upgrade to writing history papers for rich ivy leaguers or college entrance essays for wealthy foreign kids, you can start making a few hundred per essay. (5)

36. Private lessons

Good at guitar? Former basketball player? Start giving private lessons in your skill for pay. As a nice little bonus, teaching others how to do a skill usually strengthens your own ability to perform that skill.

35. Data monkey

The money is literal nickels and dimes, but you can do it just about anywhere. Sign up for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and pick up small, quick tasks while you’re sitting on the subway, or the toilet, or in your lame office job. (6)

Nickels and dimes add up to dollars, and you could probably rake in an extra $10-$15/day if you’re really diligent about it.

34. Translation

If you happen to speak two languages fluently, you’ve got a big money making skill. Pass their exams, and websites like Gengo, OneHourTranslation, and Unbabel will pay pretty decent side dough for you to translate stuff.

Just don’t expect to rely on your Duolingo skills forever… cash in now while you still can, because artificial intelligence is literally getting better at translation by the minute. (7) (8) (9)

33. eBay flipping

Go ahead and pop some tags with $20 in your pocket. This is about that thrift shop swag.

When you find something good, nab it and then sell it for twice the price on eBay. Repeat the process at garage sales, flea markets, Craigslist, and basically wherever you can find a good deal. One guy made $30,000 in side money in one year selling crap he found at flea markets. (10)

32. Rent stuff

The sharing economy isn’t the future, it’s already taken over. 44.8 million adults used sharing economy services last year, and that number will double by 2021. (11) Get on it.

Rent your spare bedroom on Airbnb. Rent your clothes on Style Lend and Date My Wardrobe. (12) (13) Rent your car on Turo. (14) Rent your RV on RVShare. (15) Rent just about anything you have laying around on Loanables. (15)

31. College coach

There are families out there that will shell out $42k large to someone who can help their kid get into an Ivy League. (16)

But even if you’re just helping kids get into mediocre colleges, editing their college entrance essays, or guiding families through the financial aid process, this is a solid way to make extra money if you know a thing or two about college admissions.

30. Personal trainer

Do you even lift, bro? If you can, you could make about $13-$17/hour in side cash as a personal trainer at your local gym. (17)

However, if you take your personal training to the digital world, virtual personal trainers can scale up and make a lot more money. Not only can you coach clients online, but you can write workout plans and sell them to fitness hopefuls.

Training Journal says virtual coaching is the wave of the future. (18)

29. Online sales rep

If you’ve got sales chops and aren’t afraid of a few no’s, try picking up a part-time, work-from-home, commission-only sales gig.

If you end up working for a startup, prove yourself by making big sales. You might be able to negotiate yourself a little equity if you want to.

28. Proofreader

Calling the grammar police. Now you can make money off your annoying habit of correcting everyone else’s sentences.

Websites like Fiverr and Upwork make it easy to make side money by proofreading everything from high school essays and letters to corporate announcements and manuscripts from budding writers. (19) (20)

27. Transcription

It’s about as thrilling as a repair manual, but transcribing audio to text pays consistently, and you don’t need to have any skills. Transcribers can make anywhere from $12-$20/hour on websites like Transcribe Anywhere, Rev, and TranscribeMe. (21) (22) (23)

26. App developer

Back in 2011, global app downloads hit around 2.5 billion. In 2018, that number was a whopping 194 billion total downloads. (24)

How many apps do you have on your phone? If you can write code, or learn to write code, focus on mobile app development. The demand is insane.

25. E-commerce

Take those friendship bracelets you used to make for your buddies and sell them on Etsy for side money. If you’re too lazy to turn your house into a Hobby Lobby and go full-on arts and crafts, start an e-commerce site that runs completely on affiliate links and enjoy the passive income.

24. Print-on-demand T shirt business

Launching your own t shirt business can’t be any simpler thanks to print-on-demand.

All you have to do is create the design (or just buy a design from someone else), sign up for a print-on-demand service like Teespring or Merch by Amazon, and handle the marketing. The print-on-demand service creates your shirt whenever a customer orders one.

23. Flip websites

Buy a few domain names you think will be in demand, and then sell them a year later. Or even a few months. One guy netted a $58,000 profit in less than 2 months by flipping 8 different domains. (25)

22. Email marketing

How many email newsletters are you subscribed to? Do they bombard you every day with content? That’s because it makes them money.

You too can make money with email marketing, and not just as a freelance copywriter. Grab a cheap subscription from an email marketing service, start up a niche email newsletter targeting a specific audience, then send them interesting and helpful content on the daily.

Monetize your efforts by partnering with relevant companies and doing affiliate marketing. It’s like blogging, but in your inbox.

21. Podcasting

Podcasts are hot, and only getting hotter as people find ways to cram learning into their busy lives.

Pick a non-saturated niche, have some interesting stuff to talk about, acquire a microphone and recording software, and start inviting guests if it’s interview style.

When your audience grows, you can earn income through ads/sponsorships, premium episodes, live shows, and your own products.

20. Graphic design

Creatives will want to get in on this. Designing a simple logo for a medium-sized company can net you $2,000 in your spare time. Of course, you have to have a killer portfolio built up to start raking in that kind of cash.

19. Blogging

Obviously I’m into this one, mostly because it’s a great way to build your brand and get your name out there. But it’s also a good way to make extra money on the side.

Pick a specialty that’s not already totally saturated and start a niche blog. Write epic content, network, do guest posts, and build an audience. Monetize. Think affiliate links, sponsored content, and ads in the short run, sell a product or service in the long run.

You can also scale in the long run by hiring writers to help you pump out more content and keep your blog growing.

18. Investing

Investing is a solid way to accumulate passive income on the side, but it usually takes years, if not decades, to see any substantial returns.

Common advice is to invest in “growth stocks” while you’re young to take advantage of the stocks appreciating in value.

But dividend-paying stocks are also a solid investment choice. Build up enough investment in dividend-paying stocks over time, and your dividend earnings could be paying the bills.

Slow and steady can win the race.

17. Video editing

Content may be king, but video content is the future.

The market is ripe. Download some free software (Wondershare Filmora and Lightworks are good) and start learning. (28) (29)

16. Self-publish a book

Anyone can be the next Ernest Hemingway now. Platforms like Nook and Kindle let you publish whatever you want, and if it sells, they’ll give you a cut. Amazon’s Kindle pays out 70% royalties if your book is priced at $2.99 or below. (30)

Hire a ghostwriter, pump out some cheesy fiction 50 Shades of Gray style, and wait for your movie deal.

15. Online tutoring

If you’re that nerd who always wants to go to pub trivia on a Friday night, you can make decent money offering homework help and tutoring online.

Tutors.com and WyzAnt will pay you to tutor in a subject if you can pass a test proving your expertise. (31) (32) If you want something more passive, eNotes.com pays around $8 every time you write an answer to a high school kid’s study guide question on their forums. (33)

Do you have a degree/are you currently a college student? Chegg will pay you $20 an hour (and they’ll pay you each week) to tutor students from wherever you want on your own schedule. (34) You can work as much or as little as you want.

14. Dropshipping

Dropwhatting? Dropshipping is basically setting up a website with killer SEO that sells a super niche product (think baseball caps or coffee mugs) and then transferring all your customer orders to a super cheap, third party manufacturer (think China, India, etc).

They make it. They ship it. You basically just sit back and watch the orders come in.

However, thanks to Amazon, the gap on this is pretty much constantly closing. Why is someone going to buy from your site when they can get the same thing on Amazon?

It’s still viable for now, but it might not be eventually, so get in while you can.

13. Virtual assistant

Assistants are basically glorified minimum wage coffee boys…unless you do it online.

Virtual assistants work for baller internet entrepreneurs and can do anything from Pinterest management to seeking out new clients invoicing for freelancers. It pays well, especially if you have specialized skills. And it’s one of the fastest growing jobs in the digital/freelancer world. (34)

12. Travel agent

Physical travel agencies may be a thing of the past, but online, they’re thriving. Freelance travel agents can set up a once in a lifetime vacation and reserve everything for you, for free.

They make their money by skimming a commission off the top of the hotels and tours they book. When you’re booking trips for fancy execs to the Four Seasons in Paris for $600+/night, a 10% commission on a 5 night stay is $300, without tours and transportation.

11. Social media specialist

Social media advertising budgets have DOUBLED since 2014, and they’re on track to grow a whopping 26.3% this year.

Start by writing status updates for small businesses for about $1/piece through social media agencies like Emphatic and Writer Access. (35) (36) Once you’ve got it down, learn some analytics, and start marketing yourself directly to clients as a specialist.

10. Online teaching

You don’t even have to be a certified teacher, and you might be able to make more than one, thanks to the internet. Check Skillshare and Udemy if you’re looking for websites that let you create courses and charge people who take them. (37) (38)

My advice: pick something you actually have some expertise in. Teaching is one field you can’t fake… at least not if you want to hit it big.

9. Voice acting

Were you that kid in high school who was in the drama club and walked around singing musicals all the time? Put that voice to use and make some money.

Voice acting is actually something you can do online and make good money, if you have some decent sound equipment. Voices.com, VoiceBunny.com, and Voice123.com all let you make a voice actor profile and apply to freelance jobs. The average gig on Voices.com last year paid $277.32. Not bad. (39) (40) (41)

8. Instagram influencer

This is THE buzzword of 2010s. Making money on Instagram sounds like total BS, but actually, if you have 20k+ followers, companies will actually pay you decent money to post a photo of their product.

If your follower count is in the 6-figure range, you can expect checks in the thousands… for ONE photo. #lit (42)

7. Online agency subcontracting

After you establish your presence online in some freelance skill, scale that skill up by starting an online agency and subcontracting the real work.

You focus on sales. Hire freelancers from sites like Upwork and Fiverr and subcontract your work to them by sending them your client projects.

Send the finished projects back to the clients and profit.

6. Photography

If you’ve got a camera and an eye for a good shot, get snapping.

Choose a nice (high school grads, engaged couples, newborns) and stick with it. You can do commissioned photoshoots, but you can also just sell stock photos online on iStockPhoto and Shutterstock for some passive income. (43) (44)

5. Web design

Every single business on the face of the planet needs a website nowadays. Learn code online from a place like Codeacademy or Skillcrush and start designing. (45) (46)

Good web designers can charge $75/hour and some even manage to rake in $100/hour. (47)

4. Content writer

Content has been king for a while, and it’s not going anywhere. As long as businesses exist online, they’re going to need content writers to keep their blogs fresh.

Get your name out there by guest blogging, climb your way up to contributor status on Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, Forbes, etc. Offer content writing services and watch the cash flow in.

3. SEO consultant

If you’re looking for an internet gold mine, this is definitely one of them. Just look at the uptick in searches on “how to seo”.

A lot of fakers out there though, so get some practice in. Here are the basics: keyword research, blogging, link building. Go.

2. Facebook ads

Looking for a side gig with 3+ million potential clients? Learn how to run a solid Facebook ads campaign and you can take your pick. (49)

Good social media marketing is huge right now, digital marketing specialists even argue that Facebook ads are more effective than Google ads in many ways. (50)

1. Local lead generation

100% real talk, this is one of those side gig unicorns that can easily become a full-time income on a half-time work schedule. But like anything that leads to long-term success and not just 15 minutes fame, you have to put in the work in the beginning.

That being said, providing leads to local businesses is the most consistent way to generate a good amount of income on the side (we’re talking 4-figure checks…to start).

Why? First of all, the market cannot be saturated. What you’re doing is local, so you can replicate it in thousands of different towns and hundreds of industries. The combinations are endless.

Plus, when you provide this service in Springfield, Illinois, competition is cut down to you v. the balding schoolteacher who decided to take a crack at SEO during his summer vacation instead of you v. the entire internet.

The paychecks for one batch of leads are probably more than you’re making in a month at your current wet rag of a day job. There is literally nothing more valuable to local businesses than leads to paying customers. Tell a business owner you’ve got a stack of them and watch his pupils turn into dollar signs.

Don’t believe me? Your loss. Sorry not sorry.

via https://mlmcompanies.org/ranking-the-36-best-ways-to-make-extra-money-on-the-side-in-2019/

[mlmcompanies]

Side hustle is the new side chick. Gig economy is THE buzzword lately, no doubt. Everyone wants to bring in a little extra money.

If you’re always broke, trying to pay down that debt or save some side cash and just can’t…

If you hate your job and feel like a scrub when you go to work every morning…

If you’re not feeling on your A game and smiling every time you check your bank account…

It’s time for you to start reeling in multiple streams. If you’re not part of the digital revolution, you’re gonna be left behind.

So, without further ado, here are the best ways to get that side hustle going in 2019. No BS surveys, no secret shopping for $2 checks, no guinea pigging yourself to mad scientists, just straight, legit ways to make extra money.

Be sure to check out how to make money fast, best small business ideas, and work from home jobs too.

Ranked by potential to go digital and scalability (because turning your side gig into your FT money maker is the dream), here we go…

47. Teach yoga

You can’t go anywhere without running into lululemon wearing green tea drinkers talking about their auras.

It costs a few hundo to get certified, but you can easily make that back in a day if you can fill a class with 30+ people willing to pay $10 each. The industry is way saturated though, so it’ll take time to build up the credibility and fame you need to really make a dent.

46. Odd jobs/chores

Offer to help neighbors, friends, or acquaintances with chores in exchange for some cash. Maybe check out Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, but remember to consider the safety hazards of meeting people off of a website like these.

Instead of only looking around manually for jobs, sign up for TaskRabbit. TaskRabbit lets people post all sorts of odd jobs, from grocery pickup to calling customer service on your client’s behalf. (1)

45. Driving around

Lyft drivers in big cities make a solid $377/month, and Uber drivers rake in $364/month. It’s definitely not quit your day job material, but it’s not bad for a little side money. The more you drive, the more you’ll make. (1)

Best part is you can work whenever you want for Uber and Lyft simply by clocking in on the app. Try driving during weekend nights for the surge pricing, if you can tolerate drunk people, of course.

You do have to have a car that’s less than 10 years old, and piling on the mileage every weekend will take a toll on your car’s value and longevity.

44. Sell your plasma

You can make money selling your body… as in your blood plasma. Many donation centers will pay you $20+ per visit to sit there with a needle in your arm for an hour or a bit longer. Might not be a whole lot, but you can watch Netflix while you’re in the donation chair if you want.

Make sure you meet the requirements before you try signing up. (2)

43. Babysitting

Parents will always be willing to fork over some cash to watch their child if you’re qualified. Ask your friends and acquaintances since people who know you are more likely to trust you.

Or, you can list your services on Care.com and wait for the parents to come to you. (2)

42. Dog sitting

People will pay a good $15-$20 for you to take their dog on a walk during your lunch break. If you can manage to take 10 dogs out on your lunch break, that’s $150 in your pocket.

People will pay even more money if you take care of their dogs during long periods of absence, such as when they go on vacation or travel for work.

Get on Rover.com, set up a dog walker profile, and start getting yourself some good reviews. (2)

41. Website testing

Ever been on a website that’s laggy, ugly, or terribly unintuitive? You can get businesses to pay you for telling them how crappy or good their website is that by signing up for a website testing service.

UserTesting, a leader in the website testing market, will pay you $10 for every 20-minute video test you complete. (3) $30 an hour isn’t bad for such a simple gig, and you’re doing a good deed for web surfers everywhere.

40. Movie extra

You don’t have to live in Hollywood to be a movie extra anymore. In fact, film-making hubs are exploding around the country and places like Georgia and Louisiana are taking over the movie industry thanks to tax breaks. (3)

You can make around $50-$100/day as a movie extra, and you might get to see yourself on the big screen.

39. Art Modeling

No, you don’t need to be jacked and shredded to be an art model. Some might require you getting nude, but if that makes you uncomfortable, there’re plenty of art modeling gigs that don’t require you to strip down

Sitting still (nude or not) for a few aspiring artists could earn you $20-$30 an hour. Reaching out to local art schools is your best bet for finding work, but browse online job boards too.

38. Flight searching

On Farefetch, people post flights they want and how much they’re willing to pay. If you find it for cheaper, you pocket the difference. It’s actually pocket change most of the time, but you can nag $50 or $60 for some flights. (4)

37. Essay ghostwriter

It’s a moral gray area for sure, but if you’re decently smart and willing to go full-on no shame and write essays for college kids online, you can make pretty good side money.

You might only make a few hundred per week to start, but if you can upgrade to writing history papers for rich ivy leaguers or college entrance essays for wealthy foreign kids, you can start making a few hundred per essay. (5)

36. Private lessons

Good at guitar? Former basketball player? Start giving private lessons in your skill for pay. As a nice little bonus, teaching others how to do a skill usually strengthens your own ability to perform that skill.

35. Data monkey

The money is literal nickels and dimes, but you can do it just about anywhere. Sign up for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and pick up small, quick tasks while you’re sitting on the subway, or the toilet, or in your lame office job. (6)

Nickels and dimes add up to dollars, and you could probably rake in an extra $10-$15/day if you’re really diligent about it.

34. Translation

If you happen to speak two languages fluently, you’ve got a big money making skill. Pass their exams, and websites like Gengo, OneHourTranslation, and Unbabel will pay pretty decent side dough for you to translate stuff.

Just don’t expect to rely on your Duolingo skills forever… cash in now while you still can, because artificial intelligence is literally getting better at translation by the minute. (7) (8) (9)

33. eBay flipping

Go ahead and pop some tags with $20 in your pocket. This is about that thrift shop swag.

When you find something good, nab it and then sell it for twice the price on eBay. Repeat the process at garage sales, flea markets, Craigslist, and basically wherever you can find a good deal. One guy made $30,000 in side money in one year selling crap he found at flea markets. (10)

32. Rent stuff

The sharing economy isn’t the future, it’s already taken over. 44.8 million adults used sharing economy services last year, and that number will double by 2021. (11) Get on it.

Rent your spare bedroom on Airbnb. Rent your clothes on Style Lend and Date My Wardrobe. (12) (13) Rent your car on Turo. (14) Rent your RV on RVShare. (15) Rent just about anything you have laying around on Loanables. (15)

31. College coach

There are families out there that will shell out $42k large to someone who can help their kid get into an Ivy League. (16)

But even if you’re just helping kids get into mediocre colleges, editing their college entrance essays, or guiding families through the financial aid process, this is a solid way to make extra money if you know a thing or two about college admissions.

30. Personal trainer

Do you even lift, bro? If you can, you could make about $13-$17/hour in side cash as a personal trainer at your local gym. (17)

However, if you take your personal training to the digital world, virtual personal trainers can scale up and make a lot more money. Not only can you coach clients online, but you can write workout plans and sell them to fitness hopefuls.

Training Journal says virtual coaching is the wave of the future. (18)

29. Online sales rep

If you’ve got sales chops and aren’t afraid of a few no’s, try picking up a part-time, work-from-home, commission-only sales gig.

If you end up working for a startup, prove yourself by making big sales. You might be able to negotiate yourself a little equity if you want to.

28. Proofreader

Calling the grammar police. Now you can make money off your annoying habit of correcting everyone else’s sentences.

Websites like Fiverr and Upwork make it easy to make side money by proofreading everything from high school essays and letters to corporate announcements and manuscripts from budding writers. (19) (20)

27. Transcription

It’s about as thrilling as a repair manual, but transcribing audio to text pays consistently, and you don’t need to have any skills. Transcribers can make anywhere from $12-$20/hour on websites like Transcribe Anywhere, Rev, and TranscribeMe. (21) (22) (23)

26. App developer

Back in 2011, global app downloads hit around 2.5 billion. In 2018, that number was a whopping 194 billion total downloads. (24)

How many apps do you have on your phone? If you can write code, or learn to write code, focus on mobile app development. The demand is insane.

25. E-commerce

Take those friendship bracelets you used to make for your buddies and sell them on Etsy for side money. If you’re too lazy to turn your house into a Hobby Lobby and go full-on arts and crafts, start an e-commerce site that runs completely on affiliate links and enjoy the passive income.

24. Print-on-demand T shirt business

Launching your own t shirt business can’t be any simpler thanks to print-on-demand.

All you have to do is create the design (or just buy a design from someone else), sign up for a print-on-demand service like Teespring or Merch by Amazon, and handle the marketing. The print-on-demand service creates your shirt whenever a customer orders one.

23. Flip websites

Buy a few domain names you think will be in demand, and then sell them a year later. Or even a few months. One guy netted a $58,000 profit in less than 2 months by flipping 8 different domains. (25)

22. Email marketing

How many email newsletters are you subscribed to? Do they bombard you every day with content? That’s because it makes them money.

You too can make money with email marketing, and not just as a freelance copywriter. Grab a cheap subscription from an email marketing service, start up a niche email newsletter targeting a specific audience, then send them interesting and helpful content on the daily.

Monetize your efforts by partnering with relevant companies and doing affiliate marketing. It’s like blogging, but in your inbox.

21. Podcasting

Podcasts are hot, and only getting hotter as people find ways to cram learning into their busy lives.

Pick a non-saturated niche, have some interesting stuff to talk about, acquire a microphone and recording software, and start inviting guests if it’s interview style.

When your audience grows, you can earn income through ads/sponsorships, premium episodes, live shows, and your own products.

20. Graphic design

Creatives will want to get in on this. Designing a simple logo for a medium-sized company can net you $2,000 in your spare time. Of course, you have to have a killer portfolio built up to start raking in that kind of cash.

19. Blogging

Obviously I’m into this one, mostly because it’s a great way to build your brand and get your name out there. But it’s also a good way to make extra money on the side.

Pick a specialty that’s not already totally saturated and start a niche blog. Write epic content, network, do guest posts, and build an audience. Monetize. Think affiliate links, sponsored content, and ads in the short run, sell a product or service in the long run.

You can also scale in the long run by hiring writers to help you pump out more content and keep your blog growing.

18. Investing

Investing is a solid way to accumulate passive income on the side, but it usually takes years, if not decades, to see any substantial returns.

Common advice is to invest in “growth stocks” while you’re young to take advantage of the stocks appreciating in value.

But dividend-paying stocks are also a solid investment choice. Build up enough investment in dividend-paying stocks over time, and your dividend earnings could be paying the bills.

Slow and steady can win the race.

17. Video editing

Content may be king, but video content is the future.

The market is ripe. Download some free software (Wondershare Filmora and Lightworks are good) and start learning. (28) (29)

16. Self-publish a book

Anyone can be the next Ernest Hemingway now. Platforms like Nook and Kindle let you publish whatever you want, and if it sells, they’ll give you a cut. Amazon’s Kindle pays out 70% royalties if your book is priced at $2.99 or below. (30)

Hire a ghostwriter, pump out some cheesy fiction 50 Shades of Gray style, and wait for your movie deal.

15. Online tutoring

If you’re that nerd who always wants to go to pub trivia on a Friday night, you can make decent money offering homework help and tutoring online.

Tutors.com and WyzAnt will pay you to tutor in a subject if you can pass a test proving your expertise. (31) (32) If you want something more passive, eNotes.com pays around $8 every time you write an answer to a high school kid’s study guide question on their forums. (33)

Do you have a degree/are you currently a college student? Chegg will pay you $20 an hour (and they’ll pay you each week) to tutor students from wherever you want on your own schedule. (34) You can work as much or as little as you want.

14. Dropshipping

Dropwhatting? Dropshipping is basically setting up a website with killer SEO that sells a super niche product (think baseball caps or coffee mugs) and then transferring all your customer orders to a super cheap, third party manufacturer (think China, India, etc).

They make it. They ship it. You basically just sit back and watch the orders come in.

However, thanks to Amazon, the gap on this is pretty much constantly closing. Why is someone going to buy from your site when they can get the same thing on Amazon?

It’s still viable for now, but it might not be eventually, so get in while you can.

13. Virtual assistant

Assistants are basically glorified minimum wage coffee boys…unless you do it online.

Virtual assistants work for baller internet entrepreneurs and can do anything from Pinterest management to seeking out new clients invoicing for freelancers. It pays well, especially if you have specialized skills. And it’s one of the fastest growing jobs in the digital/freelancer world. (34)

12. Travel agent

Physical travel agencies may be a thing of the past, but online, they’re thriving. Freelance travel agents can set up a once in a lifetime vacation and reserve everything for you, for free.

They make their money by skimming a commission off the top of the hotels and tours they book. When you’re booking trips for fancy execs to the Four Seasons in Paris for $600+/night, a 10% commission on a 5 night stay is $300, without tours and transportation.

11. Social media specialist

Social media advertising budgets have DOUBLED since 2014, and they’re on track to grow a whopping 26.3% this year.

Start by writing status updates for small businesses for about $1/piece through social media agencies like Emphatic and Writer Access. (35) (36) Once you’ve got it down, learn some analytics, and start marketing yourself directly to clients as a specialist.

10. Online teaching

You don’t even have to be a certified teacher, and you might be able to make more than one, thanks to the internet. Check Skillshare and Udemy if you’re looking for websites that let you create courses and charge people who take them. (37) (38)

My advice: pick something you actually have some expertise in. Teaching is one field you can’t fake… at least not if you want to hit it big.

9. Voice acting

Were you that kid in high school who was in the drama club and walked around singing musicals all the time? Put that voice to use and make some money.

Voice acting is actually something you can do online and make good money, if you have some decent sound equipment. Voices.com, VoiceBunny.com, and Voice123.com all let you make a voice actor profile and apply to freelance jobs. The average gig on Voices.com last year paid $277.32. Not bad. (39) (40) (41)

8. Instagram influencer

This is THE buzzword of 2010s. Making money on Instagram sounds like total BS, but actually, if you have 20k+ followers, companies will actually pay you decent money to post a photo of their product.

If your follower count is in the 6-figure range, you can expect checks in the thousands… for ONE photo. #lit (42)

7. Online agency subcontracting

After you establish your presence online in some freelance skill, scale that skill up by starting an online agency and subcontracting the real work.

You focus on sales. Hire freelancers from sites like Upwork and Fiverr and subcontract your work to them by sending them your client projects.

Send the finished projects back to the clients and profit.

6. Photography

If you’ve got a camera and an eye for a good shot, get snapping.

Choose a nice (high school grads, engaged couples, newborns) and stick with it. You can do commissioned photoshoots, but you can also just sell stock photos online on iStockPhoto and Shutterstock for some passive income. (43) (44)

5. Web design

Every single business on the face of the planet needs a website nowadays. Learn code online from a place like Codeacademy or Skillcrush and start designing. (45) (46)

Good web designers can charge $75/hour and some even manage to rake in $100/hour. (47)

4. Content writer

Content has been king for a while, and it’s not going anywhere. As long as businesses exist online, they’re going to need content writers to keep their blogs fresh.

Get your name out there by guest blogging, climb your way up to contributor status on Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, Forbes, etc. Offer content writing services and watch the cash flow in.

3. SEO consultant

If you’re looking for an internet gold mine, this is definitely one of them. Just look at the uptick in searches on “how to seo”.

A lot of fakers out there though, so get some practice in. Here are the basics: keyword research, blogging, link building. Go.

2. Facebook ads

Looking for a side gig with 3+ million potential clients? Learn how to run a solid Facebook ads campaign and you can take your pick. (49)

Good social media marketing is huge right now, digital marketing specialists even argue that Facebook ads are more effective than Google ads in many ways. (50)

1. Local lead generation

100% real talk, this is one of those side gig unicorns that can easily become a full-time income on a half-time work schedule. But like anything that leads to long-term success and not just 15 minutes fame, you have to put in the work in the beginning.

That being said, providing leads to local businesses is the most consistent way to generate a good amount of income on the side (we’re talking 4-figure checks…to start).

Why? First of all, the market cannot be saturated. What you’re doing is local, so you can replicate it in thousands of different towns and hundreds of industries. The combinations are endless.

Plus, when you provide this service in Springfield, Illinois, competition is cut down to you v. the balding schoolteacher who decided to take a crack at SEO during his summer vacation instead of you v. the entire internet.

The paychecks for one batch of leads are probably more than you’re making in a month at your current wet rag of a day job. There is literally nothing more valuable to local businesses than leads to paying customers. Tell a business owner you’ve got a stack of them and watch his pupils turn into dollar signs.

Don’t believe me? Your loss. Sorry not sorry.

[kennethherrerablog]

29 Totally Flexible Ways to Make Money in College Without Dropping Classes

Working through college is one way to reduce the amount of debt you’ll have after graduation. You know, make some money now and take out fewer student loans. Big. Win.

But finding a job with decent pay that’ll allow you to schedule shifts around your classes and extracurriculars can be harder to find than a healthy taco bar. And maybe you’re not too keen on flipping burgers at your local fast-food joint.

Well… have you thought about ditching the demanding work schedule and finding flexible work instead? You’ve got options, after all.

29 Ways to Make Money in College — Without a Fast Food Gig

From part-time jobs to apps and websites that let you make money online from your dorm or apartment, you have plenty of options that won’t cut into your study time.  

1. Get Rewarded for Your Good Grades

Don’t have a lot of spare time outside of studying?

Check with the dean of your college or university to see if your school offers incentives for getting good grades. Some actually offer cash bonuses to college students who maintain a good GPA.

2. Drive With Uber and Lyft

Need a fun, flexible way to earn money while also meeting lots of new people?

Try driving with Lyft!

Demand for ride-sharing has been growing like crazy, and it shows no signs of slowing down. To be eligible, you’ll need to be at least 21 years old with a year of driving experience, pass a background check and own a car made in 2007 or later. You can drive days, nights or weekends — it’s up to you!

Because it’s simple to switch between apps, many Lyft drivers also sign up with Uber.

As a partner driver with Uber, you’re an independent contractor. You create your own schedule and work as much or as little as you want.

If you want to give Uber a try here are a few of the things to keep in mind: You must be at least 21 years old, have at least one year of licensed driving experience in the U.S. (three years if you are under 23 years old), have a valid US driver’s license and pass a background check.

Finally, your car must be a four-door, seat at least four passengers (excluding the driver), be registered in-state and be covered by insurance.

And if you aren’t sure which is better for you? Here’s our guide to Lyft versus Uber.

3. Share Your Opinions

No, you won’t make a ton of money doing online surveys, but you also won’t have to spend a lot of time or effort. Heck, you won’t even have to leave your dorm room.

One survey site we love is MyPoints. It rewards you in gift cards for taking polls and answering surveys. It’s a great way to pass time while you wait in long lines at the dining hall. You’ll earn a $5 bonus when you complete your first five surveys.

Then there’s also the reader favorite Swagbucks, which offers a wide variety of ways to make money beyond taking surveys. Plus, you get a $5 bonus when you sign up and earn 2,500 SB within your first 60 days.

If you’re looking to make a bit of money in those free minutes between classes, it doesn’t get much easier than this.

4. Be a Human Guinea Pig

From medical tests to market research, being a test subject can be an interesting, educational and — above all — lucrative way to spend your time.

Some tests, like clinical trials, may be more taxing and require a greater time commitment. But they just might pay a pretty penny; we’ve seen as much as $600 for some studies.

But other opportunities, like market research, may just take a couple hours of your afternoon, and you’ll earn free samples and some extra cash.

Here are a few resources to help you get started:

Use AcurianHealth to find clinical research studies.

Sign up for text alerts from Just Another Lab Rat to find the latest research opportunities.

Find studies by searching the Clinical Trials database.

Keep an eye out on campus for opportunities at your university, too. These are usually quick gigs that could yield $10 to $20 for less than an hour’s work.

5. Buy and Resell Textbooks

When you were in high school, you had no idea how much money textbooks cost, did you? Ouch. You know you can earn a little cash back for selling your textbooks at the end of the semester.

But you can go beyond that — and actually start profiting from textbook sales.

Instead of relying on your own collection, buy textbooks online from sites like eBay and resell them on a site like BookScouter.

Before you shop, you can look up a book’s ISBN on BookScouter and find out how much it’s worth. That way you’ll only buy books you know you can sell for more than what you pay.

Profit margins aren’t huge on textbook reselling, but if you can average $5 per book and sell five per day, you could earn $750 each month. That’s a solid side hustle!

6. Turn Saving Money Into a Team Sport

If you’re a fan of friendly competition, start recruiting team members to join you on Ibotta, a free app that’ll grant you cash back on just about everything. Yeah, if you’re 21, you can even earn cash back from the bar.

If you’re not yet an Ibotta member, go ahead and sign up. Once you claim your first offer, you’ll earn a $10 bonus.

Then start building your team. You can refer friends and earn a $5 bonus. The more team members you have, the more shopping bonuses you’ll likely accrue. Can you say passive income? Plus, Ibotta ranks your earnings against your friends, which turns saving money into a friendly competition.

Just think how much you can earn if you get your whole dorm or sorority involved!

7. Sell Your Old Cell Phone

You know that old cell phone you have sitting in your junk drawer or perhaps your bedside table? It’s time to give it up and pocket some cash.

Gazelle is an online trade-in site that makes the process super easy.

Enter your device’s information, and Gazelle will give you a trade-in estimate. For qualifying devices, it’ll even send you a free box for shipping.

If you need money more quickly, see if an affiliated kiosk is located in your area. You’ll be able to get an estimate on your device, and if you agree to sell, you’ll immediately get cash.

8. Become a Tutor

Are you looking for on-campus jobs? Have you ever considered becoming a tutor?

Look for programs through your university or specific departments where you could get paid to work with other students.

For more flexibility, consider becoming an online tutor. Through a platform like Wyzant, you can browse tutoring jobs and set your own rates.

9. Get Refunds on Your Online Orders

It turns out deleting your emails could be costing you money. Intrigued?

One of our secret weapons is called Paribus — a tool that gets you money back for your online purchases. It’s free to sign up, and once you do, it will scan your email for any receipts. If it discovers you’ve purchased something from one of its monitored retailers, it will track the item’s price and help you get a refund when there’s a price drop.

Plus, if your guaranteed shipment shows up late, Paribus will help you get compensated.

Disclosure: Paribus compensates us when you sign up using the links we provide.

10. Find Money You Didn’t Know Was Yours

State treasuries throughout the U.S. have more than $43 billion in unclaimed funds, according to The New York Times. Just sitting around! Waiting for you to come play lost and found.

Check for your unclaimed money with the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. Click your state on the map, and it’ll redirect you to your state’s appropriate search site. (Beware: There are several look-a-like sites out there. Be sure you’re searching legitimate ones.)

Penny Hoarder reader Kelli Howell heeded our advice, performed a quick search and found unclaimed money in her husband’s name.

“As I was scrolling through, I saw his name and his middle initial,” she says. She asked him to confirm his old Florida address; he grew up in Tampa. Sure enough, Mark Howell was entitled to $56 from a “matured insurance policy.”

Not bad for an unexpected check, right?

11. Become a Virtual Employee

If you want more steady work and income still offering the flexibility you need to get to class and rest after pulling all-nighters, look online.

Not sure where to start your search for a remote gig? Turn to ZipRecruiter. Click here, and it’ll send you to a list of geo-tailored work-from-home job openings.

Because you don’t yet have a degree and aren’t seeking full-time employment, we suggest looking into these jobs:

Virtual recruiter: Put your networking skills to use and connect employees or freelancers to the right jobs. You’ll do things like post available jobs, screen resumes, conduct preliminary interviews and negotiate salaries.

Virtual assistant: Are you super organized? Get paid to help a busy professional stay on track. You can use the organization and communication skills you’ve developed to help out with data entry, social media management, website maintenance, research and customer service needs.

Transcriber: Know how to type speedy fast? Transcribing requires little to no prior experience and offers flexible hours and workloads. The work can be demanding, but the pay is a pretty good selling point: about $15 to $25 per hour for general transcription, and more if you specialize in a legal or medical field.

12. Advertise Your Skills as a Freelancer

Freelancing is a wonderful, flexible way to make money on the side. You set your own rates and your hours. It also can be a great way to gain experience and connect with potential employers before you even graduate.

Whether you’re a graphic designer, a writer, an editor or a computer programmer, you can find virtual gigs through platforms like Upwork, Fiverr and other freelance websites.

13. Sell Crafting Supplies on Etsy

Maybe you love crafting, but you simply don’t have the time to knit scarves, quilt blankets or cross-stitch sassy sayings to sell. Well, here’s some good news: You can make money simply selling craft kits and supplies.

Look for supplies, kits and patterns at thrift stores and garage sales. Find good deals, and resell these items to crafters on Etsy. Take note from Janet Berry-Johnson who was able to make an extra $200 a month by selling supplies on Etsy.

14. Get Paid for Completing Small Tasks on Amazon

Have you heard of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk?

Create an account, and start performing “human intelligence tasks.” These tasks range from answering surveys to transcribing interviews to creating spreadsheets. You can pick and choose what you want to do.

Penny Hoarder contributor Michael Naab shared that he made an average of $500 a month through Mechanical Turk.

15. Hang out With Dogs or Cats

If you’re looking for a flexible, independent way to earn money — and you love hanging out with dogs — Rover might be your perfect gig.

The online network connects dog walkers and sitters to local dog owners through its 4.9-star-rated app, so you don’t have to staple flyers on every utility pole across town.

Rover says sitters can earn as much as $1,000 a month.

Rover dog-sitter requirements vary by location. In general, you must:

Be 18 years or older.

Pass a background check.

Have access to the Rover app (iOS or Android).

Here’s how it works: You’ll create an online sitter profile where you’ll answer questions about your experience with puppers and your schedule availability.

You can choose to offer a variety of services, including dog walking, overnight boarding at your home or theirs, and daycare. Boarding is the app’s most popular service, so offering it can get you more gigs. You set your own rates. (Rover keeps a small percentage as a service fee.)

Dog owners will reach out to you. Accept which gigs you want, then start snugglin’ pups. As soon as you complete a service, you’ll be paid within two days.

16. Braid Horse Manes

Are your friends always asking you to do their hair? Put it in a French braid or a fancy knot?

Well, you can get paid to put your skills to use — on horses.

Kat Tretina worked on weekends braiding horse manes for shows. She had zero experience and invested an initial $20 for a supply kit. Then started banking $1,000 a month.

You’ll find some small shows in the fall and winter months, but spring and summer are the most popular.

And because the work happens almost exclusively on the weekends, you should have no problem fitting it around your class schedule.

17. Help Your Neighbors With Odd Jobs — the Modern Way

Odd jobs and side gigs are an awesome way to earn extra money without committing to a full-time job or fixed schedule.

Sure, you could always find work the old-fashioned way — have your parents ask their friends if they need help with anything. But modern technology and our infatuation with the sharing economy have made gigs a much more effective way of earning a living.

Use an app like TaskRabbit to connect with people in your area who need help with cleaning, assembling furniture or installing a new faucet.

If you’re not as handy around the house, you can use Instacart or Postmates to deliver groceries and takeout orders to people who don’t have time, resources or ability to do it on their own.

18. Pick up House-Sitting Gigs

If you’re not keen on babysitting or pet sitting, why not house sit? It could be a great way to escape your shared dorm room while also making some extra money.

There are tons of websites out there that’ll help you find the perfect gig. Check out a few of these house-sitting marketplaces.

19. Get Paid to Exercise

Bottom line: HealthyWage will literally pay you for losing weight.

Not only are you getting more healthy, you’re also making some money. How’s that for motivation?

Here’s how it works:

Read our full HealthyWage review, and sign up.

Define a goal weight and the amount of time you’ll give yourself to achieve it.

Place a bet on yourself ranging from $20 to $500 a month.

Depending on how much you have to lose, how long you give yourself to do it and how much money you put on the table, you could win up to $10,000!

Wondering if it can really work? We talked to one woman, Teresa Suarez, who lost 68 pounds — and made over $2,400.

20. Be on Your Favorite TV Game Show

Do you watch “Jeopardy!” or “Wheel of Fortune” every evening and feel like you’d crush the contestants?

You can be part of these shows more easily than you might think, and it can be a cool way to boost your budget.

To get started, read our full guide to becoming a game show contestant for details on joining “Jeopardy!,” “Wheel of Fortune,” “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, “The Price is Right” and more.

21. Claim Class-Action Settlements

Class-action lawsuits are a simple way to make some extra money on the side.

Heck, you’re probably already part of a class-action suit you don’t even know about. They come up more often than you might realize.

We share open settlements here when we hear about them, so keep an eye out.

To file a claim, you’ll usually just have to fill out an online form. Some settlements also require proof of purchase of a relevant product or service.

How much you get depends on how many claimants are part of the case settlement and the amount of the settlement. You could get anything from free tuna to a check for $5,000 from California hotels.

22. Deliver Packages for Amazon Flex

You know when you order a package through Amazon and receive it the same day? It’s not magic — it’s your friendly Amazon Flex delivery partner.

As an Amazon Flex delivery partner, you’ll deliver goods to consumers via Amazon.com, Prime Now, AmazonFresh and Amazon Restaurants.

Amazon Flex says you can make $18 to $25 an hour as a Flex associate, though that’ll depend on how much you’re able to deliver. It processes payments on Tuesdays and Fridays through direct deposit, so you should see your money on Wednesdays, Saturdays or both.

One of the biggest perks of this part-time gig is that you get to set your own schedule, using the Flex app to claim delivery blocks (or shifts) you want to work. You’re an independent contractor, though, so you’ll be responsible for expenses, including gas, parking and tolls.

To qualify, you’ll need a phone with the Flex app and a car. If you’re delivering Prime Now orders, any car will suffice; however, if you’re delivering for Amazon.com, you’ll need a four-door midsize sedan or larger. In some areas, bikes are acceptable.

The program recruits in various areas across the country based on need. If you don’t find your city on the list when you go to sign up, you can always join the waitlist.

23. Play Free Scratch-offs for a Chance to Win Real Money

You know that feeling when you find a $20 bill hiding in the pocket of those jeans you wore last week? Yeah, that’s the feeling of a lucky day. The Lucky Day app is just like that.

You could win up to $10,000 playing digital scratch-off tickets or even a whopping $100,000 in the daily lotto. You’ll also have a lot of chances to win gift cards to cool places like Amazon, Walmart, Dunkin and Target.

It’s all free to play, with no in-app purchases. The company has already awarded more than $3 million in prizes to winners since 2014.

No, it’s not guaranteed money, but it’s a fun way to pass the time when you’re just sitting around and, who knows, you could hit a big one!

24. Sell Your Instagram-Worthy Pictures

If you have a smartphone and a photographic eye, making money may have just gotten a lot easier. Oh – you’ll also need access to marketable scenery.

An app called Foap lets you turn your smartphone photos into cash.

Here’s how it works:

Download the free app and create an account.

Take a quality photo and upload it to Foap’s marketplace.

Someone buys the license to your photo for $10. You make $5.

If your photo sells 20 times, you make $5 each time and end up with $100 in your pocket — all for about five minutes of work. Pretty cool, right?

25. Serve as a Mock Juror From Your Laptop

Who isn’t obsessed with with true-crime podcasts these days? “My Favorite Murder,” anyone?

If you want an insider look at what happens when a case hits the courtroom, you can serve as an online mock juror through a site like eJury.

As a mock juror, you’ll review evidence including documents, videos and photos. The fate of the mock-innocent, or mock-guilty, could be in your hands. The goal? Help the lawyers prepare for the real thing.

You can earn $5 to $10 per case.

26. Sell Your Clutter and Make Some Cash

Living that minimalist lifestyle is all the rage right now, so why not use this mentality to your advantage?

Start taking a good hard look at your belongings. What do you actually need? What can you make money from?

Clothes: If you have clothes you haven’t worn in the last year, why do you hang onto them? Try selling them to folks in your area through an online marketplace like Letgo. It takes about five minutes to create your account and list an item, and it’s free.

Technology: About your overcrowded entertainment center… Consider selling these items to Decluttr. It’ll buy your old CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, video games and even cell phones and tablets. Shipping is free, and Decluttr pays you within 24 hours of retrieval.

Books: Bookshelf collecting dust? We love books as much as the next person, but see whether your treasures are worth anything by listing them on Amazon. With Amazon Trade-In, you can trade in your used textbooks, plus other items, like electronics, in exchange for an Amazon gift card.

Ready, set, purge.

27. Get Your Nanny on

Whether you want to look after school-aged kids on Saturday nights or help tired parents after school, you can find opportunities to use your child care experience to earn cash.

Look within your circle of friends and acquaintances first, as parents are more likely to trust someone they know. Ask friends if they know anyone else who could use a few hours to themselves, whether it’s to grocery shop or simply to head to the gym.

You can also let parents find you through Care.com. Rates on the platform will vary by city, but the average rate for babysitters in 2017 was $16.20 an hour, according to Care.com’s 2018 Cost of Care Survey.

28. Invest in Real Estate (Even as a College Student)

Want to try real-estate investing without playing landlord? We found a company that helps you do just that.

Oh, and you don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars, either. You can get started with a minimum investment of just $500. A company called Fundrise does all the heavy lifting for you.

Through the Fundrise Starter Portfolio, your money will be split into two portfolios that support private real estate around the United States.

This isn’t an obscure investment, though. You can see exactly which properties are included in your portfolios — like a set of townhomes in Snoqualmie, Washington, or an apartment building in Charlotte, North Carolina.

You can earn money through quarterly dividend payments and potential appreciation in the value of your shares, just like a stock. Cash flow typically comes from interest payments and property income (e.g. rent).

(But remember: Investments come with risk. While Fundrise has paid distributions every quarter since 2014, dividend and principal payments are never guaranteed.)

You’ll pay a 0.85% annual asset management fee and a 0.15% annual investment advisory fee.

29. Cash in on Your Smartphone Addiction

Let’s be real: That phone habit is hard to break. So you might as well make some money while you’re scrolling instead of totally waste your time.

Download AppKarma, a free rewards app that lets you earn cash and gift cards when you try out gaming apps and watch videos.

Android users can download the AppKarma app directly through the Google Play Store.

iPhone users: AppKarma is not in the app store, but you can use it from your mobile browser. Click on the link from your iOS device to access the AppKarma web app. Complete the first offer (and earn 100 points!) to get started.

Bonus: Penny Hoarders will get 500 extra points when you sign up, plus you’ll get an email shortly after signing up with a special promo code worth another 750 bonus points.

You can exchange your Karma Points for gift cards to Amazon, PayPal, iTunes, Target, Starbucks and Walmart, among other retailers.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

29 Totally Flexible Ways to Make Money in College Without Dropping Classes published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[dillenwaeraa]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.

from Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/odn-as-a-meta-cms/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[davidrsmithlove]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.