#I had to make my blog public to prove to a payment service that I am a legit artist and thus had to clean up some of my reblogs

[choccy-zefirka]

Hey fellas!

[revolutionary-demosthenes]

4th of July: John Laurens and Slavery, and why we shouldn’t idolize him

I’ve written several drafts of posts trying to explain John Laurens’s complicated relationship with slavery and, in a broader sense, how the hypocrisy of freedom for our country--while denying the freedom of enslaved people--has led directly to the situation we find ourselves in now, in terms of race in America.

I’ve struggled with even going there, because I’m trying to focus on the present now, not the past. But I firmly believe that America can only fix its present once we’ve faced our past. And I want this information on my blog. John Laurens was not a perfect man, not even close. He was an abolitionist, yes. But how he came to these views is complicated and his personal conduct towards African-Americans is often troubling. Too often, in fact, the racist ideas of his era are visible in his writings.

There’s lots out there about not glorifying or idolizing historical figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, Washington, and other slave-owners.

This is becoming particularly clear today, with the truth of violent systemic racism in America finally becoming more fully recognized. When people watch videos of a black man begging for his life under the knee of a policeman, that brutality becomes undeniable.

But John Laurens is often exempt from this “historical disclaimer” of sorts. In the world of the Hamilton fandom and even more broadly in history, he becomes The Abolitionist, a White Savior figure who abhorred slavery and fought for racial justice, no exceptions, no fine print.

But there is a fine print for John Laurens. And it is a vital one to examine, because it shows us the importance of carrying our beliefs into our personal lives, not just our political ones.

First, let’s acknowledge the circumstances John was born into.

South Carolina, where he was born in 1754, was a southern colony, and as such relied mainly on agriculture in its economy. The rich plantation owners were the pinnacle of society. Washington’s family is an example of one such rich and powerful plantation owning family. The wealth and standing in society of these men led to positions in the government. And a man who illustrates this perfectly is none other than Henry Laurens.

Henry Laurens, John Laurens’s father, was, despite his pleading to the contrary, a significant slave owner and slave trader. Though in his private life he claimed to dislike slavery, he co-owned the largest slave-trading house in North America, Austin & Laurens. It doesn’t matter what he thought, or claimed to think. What matters is what he did.

Henry Laurens owned between close to three hundred slaves. His attitude toward the treatment of his own slaves was dehumanizing, self-righteous, and willfully ignorant. He chose to look upon himself as a “good” slave owner, rather than actually face the horrors he was perpetrating. He wrote in a letter that he’d rather treat his slaves “with Humanity” and make “less Rice” than “submit to the Charge of one who should make twice as much rice & exercise any degree of Cruelty towards those poor Creatures who look up to their Master as their Father, their Guardian, & Protector.” What Henry is trying to say here (to my reading) is that he’d rather his plantation produce less of a crop and not work his slaves too hard than treat his slaves cruelly to produce more profit.

Henry Laurens, in an attitude that is all too familiar today,  consistently chose to think of himself as an exception to the problem rather than as part of the problem. He was quick to talk up abolition and condemn cruel treatment of enslaved people. But when it came to his own slaves, he insisted that “my Servants are as happy as Slavery will admit of, none run away, the greatest punishment to a defaulter is to sell him.”

I don’t know how John’s mother, Eleanor Ball Laurens, viewed slavery, but she also came from a large slave-owning family. Even if she personally didn’t approve of the practice wholeheartedly, she benefitted directly from slavery and married someone in the slave trade.

So this is the life John Laurens was born into. A life of incredible privilege, sourced directly from the the slave trade and the labor of kidnapped and enslaved Africans. This is the first thing that needs acknowledging in terms of John’s relationship with slavery. He was able to accomplish much of what he did because of his social standing and wealth as the son of a very powerful South Carolinian, powerful mostly because of his standing in Southern society.

John was able to get his education in Europe because of slavery. He was able to use his father’s influence to become an aide-de-camp to George Washington. His social standing and quality of life all stood upon the backs of slaves.

Because of this background, John was exposed to the brutal truths of slavery since he could understand the world around him. Is this how he came into his abolitionist views? It absolutely could be. But it is more likely that John first became serious about abolition when he was taken to Europe for his education. He attended a school in Geneva, a cosmopolitan place that was very open to new ideas. Being an abolitionist was not considered as radical there as it was in the Southern Colonies, and there was more writing on the subject of abolition, including a poem by Thomas Day, an abolitionist patriot, whom John was friends with.

So John’s serious thoughts on abolition may have partly been a product of being away from a place where slavery seen as a part of life and being in a place which was more open to abolition. John may have thought slavery wrong for a long time, but lacked adequate support to be vocal about it.

Significantly though, John did not abandon his beliefs when he returned to America. He continued to be a vocal abolitionist, and unlike his father Henry, confronted actual slave owners and tried to convince them to free their slaves… including his boss, General George Washington.

He also converted Lafayette into an ardent abolitionist, and Lafayette, even after Laurens’s death, stuck to these beliefs. He later in life even bought a plantation and ran it with the labor of paid black people, to prove it could be done.

But once we get to the war, we must also talk about Shrewsberry.

John didn’t own slaves, technically. But his father dispatched two of his slaves to serve as John’s valets during the war, one of whom was named Shrewsberry. (Something to note: I am not sure if these slaves were paid or not. I would assume not, and I have yet to find a record of payment, if it did exist. But if anyone knows more about this, I would love to know the answer, as it’s an important question to think about.)

This alone would mar John’s “perfect abolitionist��� image, but it gets more disturbing when you consider how John viewed and treated his valets. I should mention we don’t have a ton of evidence of their living conditions, but what we do have is distressing.

On to the primary evidence: if you read the correspondence between John and his father, a funny/not funny pattern is that John is always requesting clothes, fabric, hair powder, etc., from his father. He usually thanked his father for these items. But here is a quote from a letter John wrote to his father on December 15th, 1777: “Berry received a hunting shirt and a check shirt. If there be any difficulty in getting him winter clothes I believe he can do without.” So while John advocated for black Americans in his public life, his private conduct tells differently.

And this is further evidenced when, after Laurens’ death in 1782, Thadeus Kosciuszco wrote to Nathaniel Greene that John’s slaves (his father's technically, as explained above) were “nacked” and that they were in need of “shirts jackets Breeches.” (“nacked” meaning “naked.”)

While John Laurens was certainly more enlightened than the average man of his time on the subject of slavery, he still had trouble connecting his broader ideas of freedom and emancipation to his personal life. He also wrongly blamed Shrewsberry for the loss of a hat, writing to his father, “Shrewsberry says his hat was violently taken from him by some soldiers as he was carrying his horses to water. If James will be so good as to send him his old laced hat by the bearer I hope he will take better care of it.” The blame for this incident obviously lies upon the soldiers who stole Shrewsberry’s hat, but John acts like Shrewsberry was in the wrong, or somehow that having the hat “violently taken” indicated that Shrewsberry was not taking care of the hat. The automatic and unjust condemnation of Shrewsberry again speaks to how John did have the prejudices of his time period in his head, even as he fought against them in a broader sense.

Later in the war, John left Washington in favor of his home state, South Carolina. He wanted to raise a regiment of slaves to fight for the patriot cause, who would then be emancipated for their service. John had written his father about the idea earlier, saying,

“I would bring about a twofold good, first I would advance those who are unjustly deprived of the Rights of Mankind to a State which would be a proper Gradation between abject Slavery and perfect Liberty—and besides I would reinforce the Defenders of Liberty with a number of gallant Soldiers—Men who have the habit of Subordination almost indelibly impress’d on them, would have one very essential qualification of Soldiers—I am persuaded that if I could obtain authority for the purpose I would have a Corps of such men trained, uniformly clad, equip’d and ready in every respect to act at the opening of the next Campaign…”

Reading through this carefully, we can see some ideas expressed here that are important to note. Firstly, “proper Gradation between abject Slavery and perfect Liberty.” This means that though John did want to free the slaves, he did not think that black people should have the “perfect Liberty” that whites enjoyed. Additionally, when John writes, “Men who have the habit of Subordination indelibly impress’d on them” he is suggesting (to my reading) that because slaves were constantly treated as inferior, they would be good soldiers (I assume because soldiers have to obey their commanding officers.) Honestly, this reads to me like John wanting to take advantage of the cruelty slaves endured because “They’re used to it.”

Henry wrote back that what John was offering was hardly better than slavery, again assuming his attittude of “my slaves are happy.”

John wrote a long letter in return, explaining his reasoning and also basically being like, “dad please support me, dad, please.” But there are also some phrases here, in his letter defending his abolitionist views, that are revealing about the prejudices John harbored. 

He writes, “I confess, indeed, that the minds of this unhappy species must be debased by a servitude, from which they can hope for no relief but death, and that every motive to action but fear, must be nearly extinguished in them.”

Note John’s reference to slaves as a “species” rather than a race. (And, by the way, race is a social construct, not an actual biological thing.) The belief that blacks and whites were separate species was common at the time, and often used by slave traders to justify their actions. And this bit of writing shows that even if John didn’t really believe this wholeheartedly, he at least had the idea in his head. However, later in the letter John does use “race” so it’s a little unclear what he actually believed.

And we can see the belief that black people were not as intellectually capable as white people, owing to their enslavement.

Gregory Massey puts it this way: “Young Laurens reasoned that blacks were not innately inferior to whites; rather, their apparent mental deficiencies resulted from generations of enslavement.”

John goes on, “I have had the pleasure of conversing with you, sometimes, upon the means of restoring [the slaves] to their rights. When can it be better done, than when their enfranchisement may be made conducive to the public good, and be modified, as not to overpower their weak minds?”

What sticks out here is, of course, the assertion that the slaves had “weak minds.”

Essentially, John thought that once black people were allowed to live free, “rescued from a state of perpetual humiliation” as he put it in the same letter, their nature would change to more like whites. Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence by Alan Gilbert states, 

“Nonetheless, John Laurens retained a slave-owner’s perspective about the psychology of blacks at the time. In a 1776 letter to his father, he ignored manifold black acts of resistance and their hunger to be free: ‘There may be some inconvenience and even Danger in advancing Men suddenly from a State of Slavery while possessed of the manners and Principals incident to such a State... too suddenly to the Rights of freedman. [T]he example of Rome suffering from Swarms of bad citizens who were freedmen is a warning to us to proceed with caution.’ [...] The son insisted, however, on the principal that slavery is simply wrong, the immoral shackling of another: ‘The necessity for it is an Argument of the complete Mischief occasioned by our continued Usurpation.’”

But the same book also says, “John Laurens was a practical abolitionist. Favored by nature and fortune, he chose no easy path. He could, for instance, have worked for Washington, recruited a company of white soldiers as his father urged, and still have advocated for the “public good.” Instead, he committed himself to the nobler course of fighting determinedly for abolition.”

However, “18th century abolitionist” usually did not mean someone who believed black and white people were equal and should have the same rights. It meant that you wanted to end slavery. The difference between these views often gets blurred for John Laurens. Saying that John Laurens was an abolitionist is accurate, but he probably did not believe that black and white people should have the exact same rights, at least not at first. That needs to be acknowledged. John was an abolitionist, but it is unclear how much equality he really wanted. 

Only paying attention to his anti-slavery professional life also leads to the idea that it is safe to idolize Laurens, rather than critically examine his complex views on race. The idea forms that he is the one white man from the 18th century we can be fully proud of. The one we can say is our beautiful cinnamon roll without having to confront his relationship with slavery. The fact that John Laurens wanted to help enslaved people gain their freedom doesn’t change the ways in which he benefited from white supremacy, nor how he treated his personal servants, nor the racist ideas he expressed in some of his writings.

This does not mean Laurens was evil, or that you can’t like and admire parts of him. By the standards of other revolutionary figures, like the aforementioned Jefferson and Washington (and Madison and Hamilton to an extent*) Laurens was remarkably enlightened. But also, that in itself is terrible. Like, the idea of a “good guy” from the 18th century is still one that believed that black people had “weak minds” owing to their enslavement. 

If we truly want to reckon with the racial sins of America, and how they originated, we need to see figures like Laurens for all they were. Not just the noble abolitionist, but also the inherently privileged white man whose righteous public crusade was enabled by the very system it sought to end, slavery. We also need to see him as the extremely wealthy young man who regarded the command of his servants as part of the natural order of his life.

I didn’t write this solely for history. John’s story is a reminder to all allies that actions based on our beliefs are important to make in our private lives, as well as public. Yes, it’s important to advocate for racial justice in our public and professional lives. But it’s also important to examine and be honest about our own forms of privilege and the ways in which we have internalized the racism of the world around us. All white people in America benefit from slavery and the systems it was built upon, even those whose forebears came to America long after slavery was abolished. I firmly believe that a step forward for racial justice in the US is simply to acknowledge privilege, because we cannot fix a broken system until we realize all the ways in which it is broken. 

[magicjesuscup]

So glad to have found a blog that writes for Siegfried! Could you do head cannons on how he would react to gudako proposing a friends with benefits kind of thing? Seems like it would be popular in the fate verse because of mana transfer and all that

I'm glad a fellow Siegfried fan has found me. :D I’m not super sure it would be popular; I think it would have to depend on the servant. They’re all products of their time; if ‘friends with benefits’ types of relationships were frowned on during their time, they may be uncomfortable with the idea. If virginity was important during their time (at least in the case of a female master), the servant may not want to take that from her or add to her number of partners (as they feel they might be taking something from her future husband). If monogamy was important during their time, the servant (if serving Chaldea’s master) might be unhappy having to share their significant other/master with other servants. If the servant is very religious, and having sex outside of marriage is viewed as a sin, they might not be interested in that kind of relationship. Still other servants may be uninterested in sex or and not see the appeal in that type of relationship or recognize they can’t handle that type of relationship (maybe because they’re insecure or are the type to get jealous easily). They may also have their reservations because of the way a past love played out or wish to remain faithful to a past lover. At the end of the day they’ll probably agree to a mana transfer if they need one, but they may not like the idea of having sex casually.

Spoilers for Siegfried’s third ascension and London singularity are ahead. This one’s a little NSFW, but I don’t go into super gross detail.

Unless you’ve been going around asking multiple servants about starting this type of relationship, Siegfried is going to be a little confused at first. That’s what you wanted? Where you sure? There were a bunch of other servants that would’ve been more excited and enthusiastic to have such a relationship. His confusion will intensify if he’s in his third ascension. Were you positive you wanted him? He looked more like a dragon than a human what with his horns, wings, and tail.

You can simply assure him that you’re sure.

Or, if you want, you can teasingly ask, “Well, it’s not like you have scales down there, right?” while glancing between his legs. A ghost of a blush appears on his face. He looks away as he replies, “I don’t have any scaly patches of skin yet, but I can’t guarantee that won’t change in the future.” You grin and respond, “Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Either way, Siegfried agrees, but doesn’t seem very excited about it.

One day, you invite him to your room. Before you start anything, you ask if he’s okay with this arrangement. You want to make sure since he seemed luke-warm about the whole thing. Plus, he seemed like the type of servant to agree even if it was something he didn’t want. Siegfried sits next to you and explains he understands the need for occasional mana transfers, but this seemed different. He’s never been in a relationship like this before, so he’s not sure how it will affect him.

If you ask about his prior relationships, he’ll tell you he had many one night stands when he was alive and single. He knew nothing of the women, and didn’t even bother asking if they were married; he didn’t see the point. Wouldn’t someone bold enough to flirt while married lie about their marital status? To be fair, he never propositioned others for sex; he only accepted offers. However, that was mostly because he wasn’t interested in taking someone unwilling. Siegfried understood he was a large, intimidating man and women might be afraid to say no. He was also honest and upfront about never seeing the women again so they weren’t caught off guard when they found him gone the next morning. Sometimes women offered themselves as a form of payment for his services, but he never accepted; he’d simply carry out the request as a favor. Other times, men would offer their daughters to pay him. Siegfried would only accept if he had the means to house them and their fathers seemed desperate to get rid of them. Worried they might be given or sold to someone with ill intent, he would welcome the girls into his home for as long as it took them to find husbands or other means to support themselves; they usually didn’t stay more than a year. Siegfried will also go on to talk about his wife. It turns out she proposed to him. He liked her well enough, so he set about helping her brother (who was also his friend) so he’d approve the marriage. Basically he had casual short term relationships and a serious long term relationship, but nothing in between like this (a casual long term relationship).

You suggest a trial run; try it for a few days or a week (depending on your sex drive) and if he’s unhappy, he doesn’t have to continue. Siegfried seems to like that proposal and agrees. He then asks about your preferences.

If you tell him what they are and explain whatever isn’t self-explanatory, he’ll remember and do those things for/to you.

If you tell him what they are, but are too shy to explain whatever isn’t self-explanatory, he’ll ask Merlin. Congratulations, you’ve made that horny wizard very happy. Getting to explain these things to Siegfried made his day.

If you’re too shy to say anything, there’s nothing to worry about. Siegfried is experienced enough to be able to read you. If your touches are soft and light, his will be equally gentle. If you come at him roughly and grip him tightly, he will respond with equal passion. However, Siegfried hopes you will be brave/comfortable enough to make requests if you want him to do something or do something a different way.

Siegfried won’t tell you the things he’s into because he’d rather focus his attention on satisfying you. He’s also kinda shy about it.

If you want him to tell you, you’ll have to use a command seal or two. Siegfried may avoid you for a bit afterwards, but rather than being angry, you’ll find his avoidance of you is out of embarrassment. He’ll forget it immediately if you make use of the information you forced out of him.

Alternatively, you can experiment to find out what he likes; he’ll try anything whether you ask him or just go for it. It won’t be as effective as the first option, but it will be more fun. You might even help him discover some new things he likes.

Siegfried will never approach you, and that’s mostly a habit carried over from when he was alive.

The location has to be either your bedroom or his; he’ll be uncomfortable if you pick some place that’s public or someone else’s private space. If you want to do it on the floor or up against the wall, that’s fine, but he’s not going to do it in the control room, even if nobody’s around. If, however, you are on a mission in a singularity, he will lead you away from the group so you two can have a little privacy. In this scenario, he’ll prefer to do the deed outside, which is really funny in London.

Jekyll: Where are you two going? You’ve just gotten back from patrol; you can’t be going out again already.

Siegfried: *when he realizes you’re not going to answer* We…um…have some other business to attend to…outside. *he looks away blushing*

Jekyll: *notices the blush and that Siegfried is holding your hand and blushes too; he catches on to what Siegfried means* Oh. Um. Well, it’s dangerous to do that outside with the poisonous gas and machines running around. *looks at his feet and shuffles shyly* I uh don’t use the attic very much. It might not be very comfortable, but it’s safer at least.

Siegfried puts a hand on Jekyll’s shoulder and nods a thank you before you drag him up to the attic. This turns out to be kind of a bad idea because Jekyll, Mordred, Frankenstein, and Anderson can hear every move you two make.

Anderson: *sighs in annoyance* Just when I’ve found time and inspiration to write, it gets ruined by all that noise. Oh well. I may as well take a break.

Frankenstein: Humm?

Mordred: Oh, you wanna know what the noise is?

Frankenstein: *nods*

Jekyll: *panicking* My house is haunted!

Mordred laughed so hard he fell off the couch. Frankenstein grabbed her giant mace ready to protect Jekyll’s house.

Mordred: *while trying to collect himself* I’m pretty sure the ghosts will keep to themselves; we don’t need to do anything.

Mordred will absolutely tease you and Siegfried after this.

You can take other lovers, but Siegfried won’t be very excited about it since he will have developed feelings for you; he won’t do anything though. He’ll only get a tad bit possessive if you have other servants with benefits and one leaves hickeys on you. Basically if one of your servants decides he’ll mark you in a place everyone will see so they’ll all know you belong to him, Siegfried will leave a hickey in a place more private where only that servant will see in order to prove him wrong.

[angeltriestoblog]

Nathan Road and Choi Hung Estate + Tips: Hong Kong 2018, Part 2

Hi, guys! Thanks for sticking around. Today, I’m telling you all about everything that went down during our last day in Hong Kong, and giving out tips as well to anyone who has plans of visiting the city. Since I was very excited for this trip, I took the initiative when it came to planning out the itinerary. I made it my mission to binge watch vlogs and read up on the best places to visit, eat and shop that would satisfy the stomach, heart, wallet and Instagram feed. So according to our agenda for Christmas Eve, we were to have breakfast at the famous Australia Dairy Company, then drop by Choi Hung Estate (yes, this is the actual name of the colorful houses) and Mum’s Not Home (that Instagram-worthy coffee place filled with plants). Then, we’d just look for places around the area where we could scout for clothes and eat dinner. But before setting out to navigate the often puzzling transportation system, we were to roam around the area we were staying in first, eat some street food, go shopping and sightseeing - the usual. The mere minutes we were supposed to spend there stretched into hours until we eventually became so pressed for time we had to change our plans.

Upon looking at Australia Dairy Company’s IG story and seeing the long and winding line of people dying to try their milky scrambled eggs, we had to cross that out of the list, which left me with two other options. I picked Choi Hung Estate on a whim, so my mom and I set out and traveled 11 stations to get there. Several websites had instructed me to take either Exit C4, and true enough, I ended up right in the middle of the complex. I only had to walk to the parking lot behind us and climb a couple of flights of stairs to reach the famed basketball court, which gave a full view of the vibrant buildings towering above it.

Cantonese for “rainbow”, Choi Hung Estate is a residential area established by the Hong Kong government, painted as such to uplift the spirits of their tenants. Its undeniable aesthetic appeal has attracted both tourists and professionals, as it has been featured in marketing campaigns and even a music video of Korean groups (which is honestly how I found out about it) (stan LOONA and stream Love & Live). But most of us aren’t aware that this, along with other public housing projects, has also played an important role in Hong Kong’s history. Due to an unforeseen influx of refugees from China during the time of the second World War, and a fire that displaced over 50,000 of them living in a squatter area, the government took matters into their hands and built permanent estates for them to live in. At present, 30% of the population benefits from this service, while 16% live in apartments purchased with the help of government subsidies.

Okay, enough with the research paper-looking part of this post. Fast forward to later that night, we waited at the bus terminal conveniently located just a few steps away from where we were staying and took an hour long trip to the airport. I enjoyed having my own seat in the corner, listening to music while gazing out the window, admiring the bright lights and bustling people that somewhat encapsulate Hong Kong’s nightlife.

Flights back home are rarely enjoyable to me because it means that I’m going back to reality, but I had bothered checking the videos section of the in-flight entertainment of Cathay Pacific and found several music shows and concert footage with Wanna One in them. I also ate media noche with my family, and arrived back in the Philippines just about five minutes after the clock had struck 12: we literally made it home for Christmas.

This was my second time organizing a trip, the first one being our vacation to South Korea last summer. Back then, I’d get so upset if things didn’t go according to plan, we’d be set back for a couple of hours and adjustments would have to be made due to circumstances beyond our control. Looking back, our Hong Kong trip did not go exactly the way I had planned, but this time around, I didn’t mind as much: in fact, I still had one of the greatest times of my life. Here are some tips that I have to make sure that you make the most out of your stay as well!

First, book a place in a great location. Take us, for example: our hotel was smack dab in the middle of Nathan Road, 3.6 kilometers lined with malls, shops and restaurants for anyone’s eyes to feast on. There were also money changers if ever we needed to convert cash, and a 7/11 that I constantly raided for Haagen Dazs Speculoos ice cream for when we had to buy and reload our Octopus cards. These are crucial to have on hand at all times, by the way, as this serves as any tourist’s means of payment for all public transport, most retail shops, parking meters and vending machines, among many others. Other factors to keep in mind when looking for a place to stay in would be its proximity to modes of public transportation, and the other places on your itinerary.

Second, be extra patient and willing to make compromises! Hong Kong did prove itself to be quite the challenge to go around: the weather was cold, there was a lot of walking involved to get from place to place. People also move really fast, like all inhabitants have a meeting to get to in five minutes, and they rarely apologize if they bump into you in the process. In addition, most of them smoke too - there aren’t any designated smoking areas, much to the dismay of those who are allergic to cigarette smoke like me so the chances of getting the stuff puffed in your face are high. But, I refused to let any of those external factors get in the way and keep me from having a good time.

We also paid a visit just in time for the holidays, which is obviously peak season: it was crowded everywhere we went, queues were long for everything from tourist attractions to bathrooms and waiting times often stretched out for indefinite periods of time. There really isn’t any other way to work around this, except to ditch all your plans and choose to stay at home so if you can’t afford to make that sacrifice, it would be best to accept the things that come with travelling during this time of the year. Drop places that aren’t the most convenient to go to at the moment, and switch them out for more realistic alternatives. If you’re the type who has a lot of specific restaurants on your itinerary, I’d suggest that you don’t be too particular of where you want to eat: there are several great places to eat just littered around the area. The little shops and stalls in the middle of the street, or hidden in alleyways and basements are the ones that locals usually flock to, and thus have the best finds.

Third, be sure to book a WiFi hotspot online as soon as possible! If there’s one screw-up we made during the trip that you could learn from, it’s that we failed to do this, and ended up suffering the consequences. Literally the minute you get your hands on your tickets, head over to Klook and reserve one for your trip. Although all the vloggers I watched advised getting a WiFi hotspot online, their words of advice came a few days too late since when I headed to Klook, there were no more units available for the days of our trip. I didn’t think this would be a problem though and assumed that there would be several available at the airport, just like in Korea. But when we had arrived and scoured all the kiosks, they were all sold out because everyone already reserved online days before. Needless to say, navigating a foreign land either without the help of Google Maps at all, or having to stop at a random place, pray that they have free WiFi and get all the directions needed within the 15 minute time limit allotted for non-paying visitors, was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever had to do.

So, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed my posts just as much as I enjoyed putting them together: I’ve made a pact of sorts with myself to strive to be more creative in taking and editing the photos that accompany my words, so I recently availed of the seven-day free trial of VSCO X. Although I must say it was quite time-consuming, I did have fun experimenting with the 130+ filters available for me to choose from. I plan on writing one more blog post before I go back to school on the 21st, so be sure to keep tabs on that!

Wishing you nothing but love and light,

Angel

[theguywiththebrokencar]

Digital Citizenship E-Commerce Blog

There has never been such a radical change to the way the world conducts business as when digital commerce first became prevalent. The idea of being able to order a product to your door from the comfort of your home revolutionized the idea of sales and crippled many brick and mortar shops. Since the first online marketplaces became accessible to consumers in the mid 1990’s, there has been a steady shift for existing businesses to adapt to the new market and open their own websites to sell product online. Today in virtually all companies, there is a given percentage of sales is made up entirely through the internet.

Aside from large companies opening an online outlet for their products there is an arguably more important segment of the market that is regular people that now have the ability to sell their belongings worldwide from their desk. One of the most famous consumer marketplaces is the online retail giant, eBay. In 2017 alone, there has been a total of $88 billion in products being sold through their site. While this is good for both buyers and sellers, another winner is eBay, bringing in almost $10 billion in personal revenue. One of the factors that made eBay so accessible to the average person is the early partnership with PayPal, a deal that allowed the safe and speedy transfer of money with built in protections to shield both parties from fraud. While eBay wasn’t the first marketplace, it was one where products could see exposure to a large customer base and not have to worry about getting scammed. This combination is still what makes it such a popular choice for person to person sales.

You can’t talk about online commerce without bringing up the retail giant, Amazon. From its humble beginnings as an online bookstore, the rapid growth has made its CEO Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world. While the sales through eBay are climbing the billions, Amazon has hit the unprecedented trillion-dollar mark. In fact, it is reported that as soon as 2021, Amazon will make up half of all e-commerce. Never before has a business of any kind owned 50% of an entire market type. With lower prices, faster shipping and 24-hour customer service, physical retailers can’t afford to compete with the online empire. The truth is, this may not be a bad thing. Unless you need something on the same day, purchasing online will always be the better option. Every day the giant broadens its horizons to sell new products, shocking the public with every move. Earlier this year it became possible to buy a new car through the website and save the hassle of dealing with notoriously incompetent dealerships. This begs the question, what can’t be sold? Anything from real estate to other vehicles could be the next tab to appear on the top of the amazon homepage and nobody would be surprised. Even now, the company is beating Netflix at its own game in the streaming market and books sales are all but monopolized. The writing is on the wall for physical retail, if they can’t shift their business online in a way that still allows them to be competitive, they simply will no longer exist by the end of the century.

Nothing is perfect and there are still pitfalls to online commerce. For many elderly people, the technology barrier excludes them from being able to participate in the new way of buying goods. With advancements in voice activated assistants such as Amazon Alexa, the gap may be closed by allowing anyone to get what they need simply by asking for it. Another problem with online sales is hackers. With relatively little effort, someone could gain access to your eBay account and make numerous fraudulent sales, causing vast amounts of damage and leaving with a respectable payday in the process. This has personally happened to me before and while I was initially very worried, eBay contacted me and quickly rectified the situation. In just an hour, my password was reset, the ghost sales were deleted, and my account was reactivated as if the attack had never taken place. While the website did an admirable job of protecting me, the seller, they did take the damage by the hacker themselves in the process. The loss of money is nothing compared to the damage would ensue if they lost credibility and became an unsafe place to conduct business.

After looking at how e-commerce was born and where it is today, some extent of speculation must be made on where it will be in the future. There is no doubt that online sales will be even more important than it is today and it’s a race to establish a successful marketplace before its too late. Right now e-commerce makes up 13% of all retail sales, but in not too long, the entire ratio may be flipped to the inverse. The segment is seeing unprecedented growth rates and if a company can’t adapt, they will simply fail. Already companies such as Toys R’ Us and Radio Shack proved that even if you open an online store, you still have to compete with all other online stores. While they attempted to survive, they just couldn’t afford to offer the same low prices you could get the same products for elsewhere. That, in conjunction with the fact that shipping was slower and more expensive made the idea of using their online storefront at all impractical to say the least. In the future, we may see more businesses fall to the existing online establishments and if great care isn’t taken now, the online market may become a monopoly.

We are lucky to be able to see this great shift in buying styles firsthand and have a chance to watch how companies work to make e-commerce easier for everyone. Everyone is working to make websites more streamlined, payment options faster, and shipping more efficient. Looking back at common websites from only 10 years ago using tools such as the wayback machine shows how far we have come and how fast everything changes. If the current business strategies prevail, the websites we use today will be unrecognizable in another decade and I personally can’t wait.

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Thistle

The Daily Thistle – News From Scotland

Tuesday 3rd July 2018

"Madainn Mhath” …Fellow Scot, I hope the day brings joy to you…. Not a drop of wind is blowing this morning and it’s warm, 26c it’s been similar weather in parts of Scotland for quite a few days now, so you would think that people who share their lives with Dogs, would understand that it gets very hot inside a car with the windows closed when the damn sun is shining on it! It’s not just a Scottish thing to do.. When I lived in Arizona people would return to find that the window of their cars had been knocked out by the local police and the dog/dogs inside taken to the pound, because of the excessive heat, I guess there are idiots all over the world…

POLICE IN NORTH EAST FIFE RESCUE 'BOILING' DOG FROM CAR…. A dog owner is to be charged after police smashed a car window to rescue a dog which was inside in record-breaking heat. After the incident in North East Fife, officers said the animal was "boiling". The dog was given water and taken to a vet for checks. The vet was later reported to have "no further concerns" about the animal. Officers have again called for people not to leave animals in vehicles during hot weather.

HOAX COASTGUARD DISTRESS CALL RELEASED BY POLICE…. A recording of hoax distress call which sparked a major rescue operation has been released by police. The mayday radio message was received on 18 June reporting that a boat with people on board was in trouble in the Moray Firth Three lifeboats, a coastguard helicopter and fishing vessels joined the operation but nothing was found. Police said the call was believed to have been made from the Banff and Macduff area. The caller appears to say: "Mayday, mayday, mayday. Silver Tide, Silver Tide. Three P.O.B. Abandon ship. Abandon. Off Tarlair." Insp Megan Heathershaw said she hoped that by taking the unusual step of releasing the audio, police would be able to trace the person responsible. She said: "Any distress call made to the emergency services will be taken seriously and these calls have led to the intensive use of time and resources by the coastguard and other emergency services. "We have taken the relatively unusual step of releasing a copy of this call to the public and appeal for help in identifying the person responsible. "I would ask for anyone who recognises the voice on the transmission to please contact us as soon as possible. "Likewise I would also appeal to this person directly to get in touch with us. "We would ask that anyone with information gets in touch with police on 101 using reference number PS-20180619-1402. Information can also be passed anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111."

LOGANAIR POSTS LOSSES OF NEARLY £9M…. Scottish operator Loganair has reported a pre-tax loss of £8.93m for the year to March 2018. The airline, based at Glasgow Airport, has blamed the end of its franchise agreement with Flybe. This resulted in the airlines competing directly on six routes, including five in the Highlands and Islands. Without the non-recurring items associated with the airline's former partner, Loganair would have recorded an underlying pre-tax profit of £2.95m. After the break-up with Flybe, Loganair spent £2.98m re-establishing its own brand and back-office functions. Delays in code-sharing agreements with new business partners cost a further £2.09m. But the biggest loss has been attributed to a price war with Flybe, estimated by Loganair to have cost it £6.8m. Chairman David Harrison said: "This year's results bring to an end 17 consecutive years in profit for Loganair, and the fact that we forecast last year that we would be loss-making in 2017/18 makes it no less painful. "The extent of the loss is a direct result of competition on six of our eight largest routes, and from the outset we maintained that the markets on these routes were simply not big enough to sustain the level of seat capacity being introduced. "This indeed proved to the case." Managing director Jonathan Hinkles said the airline's customers had remained loyal to it. Loganair did manage to increase turnover, by 7% to £110.7m. Passenger numbers were also up by 6.2%, to a record high for the airline of 812,541. Managing director Jonathan Hinkles said: "We have carried out a full rebrand, repainted our aircraft in tartan livery, introduced new crew and ground staff uniform, brought in a comprehensive system of service improvements for our customers and launched a significant sales and marketing programme - a tremendous effort by the whole Loganair team.

TEENAGERS HURT IN EDINBURGH MASS STREET BRAWL….Two teenage boys have been hurt in a mass street brawl near a police station in Edinburgh. A large group of youths were reported to be involved in the fight on High Street in Portobello at about 17:00 on Monday. One 15-year-old and a 17-year-old were left with facial injuries. Police are looking for witnesses to help them establish exactly how many people were involved and to try to trace them. Det Sgt Mark Lumsden, from the Violence Reduction Unit, said: "At this time, we do not know how many people have been part of this altercation, or what the reason for it was. "As such, we are keen to hear from members of the public who were in the High Street area on Monday afternoon and witnessed what happened. "In addition, anyone who can help us identify any suspects for this incident should also contact police immediately."

SCOTTISH BORDERS CEMETERIES LEFT IN 'TATTY STATE'…. A council is to be asked to reverse a decision to change its grass-cutting regime amid claims it has left cemeteries in a "tatty state". The Scottish Borders local authority recently switched from a 10-day to a 20-day cycle. Opposition councillor Jim Brown said the situation was "disrespectful to those no longer with us". The council has said the change was based on a successful trial, but added there had been "some challenges". Mr Brown is expected to raise the issue at a full council meeting and ask the authority to go back to a 10-day cycle, writes local democracy reporter Joseph Anderson. He said he had raised the issue last month due to the "disgraceful state" of Castlewood Cemetery in Jedburgh. "The problem isn't just confined to the Cheviot area: across the Borders from Peebles to Chirnside there is anger from the public specifically at the long grass and the unsightly state of our cemeteries," he said. "There were even a group of callants in the Peebles Beltane parade last Saturday, dressed as skeletons, who were mocking the mess that has been made of our cemeteries. "But there is a serious side to this. "The public are complaining, with justification, that they pay the council for a burial plot and that payment should be used, in part, to maintain cemeteries to an acceptable standard." He said the cemeteries were a "disgrace to the council". The issue was raised at last week's meeting of the Teviotdale area partnership, where council officers came face-to-face with residents and community councillors. The council's neighbourhood manager, Jason Headley, explained the rationale behind the decision. He said it had been agreed that "significant savings" could be made - some of them from grass-cutting and maintenance.

"Clearly, though, if you don't cut the grass as often, then between those cuts the grass will be longer.

On that note I will say that I hope you have enjoyed the news from Scotland today,

Our look at Scotland today is by William Rankin who took this picture while doing the blue door walk at Edzell, Angus.

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Tuesday 3rd July 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #Scotland #Highlands #Love #News #Blog #Dogs #Spain

[paulinegill89]

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[shirlleycoyle]

How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs

This is the third of a three-part series, where we’ll explore how Ring transformed from start-up pitch to the technology powering Amazon's privatized surveillance network throughout the United States.

On Halloween 2017, Ring’s servers crashed en masse. The Ring app was nonfunctional. Why? Millions of trick-or-treaters overwhelmed Ring’s servers. Children dressed as ghouls and superheros executed an accidental denial-of-service attack.

Kids are central in Ring’s marketing strategy, and the company even bragged about how many children they surveilled on Halloween this year.

When the company once known as DoorBot relaunched as Ring in 2014, its marketing strategy promptly changed. The convenient “smart home” doorbell butler was gone, reborn as Ring, a home-security product that doesn’t simply sell fear, but sells the idea that the nuclear, suburban family is a delicate, precious thing which needs protection from a hostile world.

In Ring’s advertisements and commercials—which are spread across HGTV, Fox News, podcasts, and social media alike—the company tells the public that it isn’t watching their families, but watching over them. Ring wants customers to think it's the protective father, but not Big Brother.

Although Ring is telling families that they need protection from unsafe neighborhoods, the company is also radically changing what a typical neighborhood is like. Ring has quietly partnered with over 600 police departments around the country and promotes Neighbors, its own neighborhood watch app, where users are supposed to report “suspicious” people.

Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.

We don’t have any substantial proof that towns become safer when Ring enters the picture. But when Ring cameras enter a town, it’s easy for cities to equate surveillance with being a good neighbor.

Inside Ring’s Marketing World

Ring’s marketing materials on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are a strange mix of installation instruction videos, testaments to how Ring supposedly reduces crime, and family moments as captured through surveillance cameras. It’s like a combination of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Ellen, and Cops.

In these videos, high schoolers leave for school and say goodbye to their parents. Small children in costumes talk to their parents through the camera intercom. A family plays in the front yard, unknowingly activating the motion-detection feature on the doorbell camera.

Image: Obtained via public record request from Commerce, CA

Ring dedicated a blog post to a video showing a 19-year-old woman leaving for a date. Her dad demanded to interview her date before allowing her to leave the house. The dad made the man repeat, several times, that he would return his adult daughter before her 10:30 p.m. curfew.

These videos sell old-fashioned notions, depicting the typical customer as a nuclear American family with a patriarchal father figure supervising women and children who are unable to protect themselves.

This ethos extends to the influencers that Ring has chosen to sponsor its cameras:. At least a dozen popular Instagram accounts , almost exclusively run by white women, have promoted Ring products, according to Ring’s tagged posts on the platform. They all appear to be mom lifestyle bloggers who favor a Charleston aesthetic of white houses, linen clothes, and Etsy signs that say things like “Hello” or “No Soliciting.”

View this post on Instagram

When you’re paranoid like I am & think every time the doorbell rings it’s a crazy person on the other side (who else pretends like they’re not home & hides when the doorbell rings 😂) you invest in security for peace of mind. Y’all know I love my security cameras so we recently got the @ring so now I know who is coming & going and that makes this Mom feel so much safer! Check out my IG stories for details ❤️ • I just wish I had it a few months ago when my door was shot with silly string 🤷🏼‍♀️ 📷: @chelsearoc

A post shared by Ashley McClellan Houston (@nashvillewifestyles) on Jun 7, 2018 at 7:25am PDT

Ring also has a section of its website called RingTV dedicated to sharing videos hand-picked by the company. RingTV’s Fun & Convenience tab is dedicated to videos like "Goldendoodle Puppy Uses Ring Doorbell."

But aside from all the wholesome family videos and cute puppies, the company also uses the RingTV website to try and prove that its cameras prevent crime.

The Crime Prevention tab shows videos depicting people who "stop crime in its tracks" or catch "strangers in the act." Some of the videos appear to show people apparently considering stealing a package, but not doing so after seeing a Ring camera.

However, it’s unclear how commonplace any of these success stories are. Millions of people own Ring cameras, and the Crime Prevention tab hosts nearly 50 videos.

Image: Screenshot from RingTV

The Neighbors App, and the Racial Politics of Suburbia

Suburban life is at the center of Ring’s marketing materials, and almost all footage that the company shares is captured at suburban homes. This focus says a lot about what Ring is selling, and to whom: Historically, American notions of the suburban, nuclear family have been built upon the exclusion of people of color.

After World War II, white families fled from urban centers and resettled in homogeneous suburban regions. Redlining practices excluded people of color from getting loans and mortgage payments that would allow them to move into the same areas.

Additionally, as Vanderbilt University historian Sarah Igo writes in her book The Known Citizen, Americans associated the sanctity of the suburban home with the right to privacy. Suburbia was meant to be not only a destination of white flight, but a refuge.

Neighbors, Ring’s neighborhood watch app, efficiently encapsulates the mixed politics of privacy within the home and racial exclusion.

The Neighbors app, in its most basic function, allows people to upload footage from Ring products or other security cameras for other users to see. A post can be sorted into one of five categories: crime, safety, suspicious, stranger, unknown visitor, or lost pet. The Neighbors feed consists of these user-submitted posts and bite-sized alerts posted by Ring about possible dangers around town.

The app was launched in May 2018, one month after Amazon finalized the acquisition of Ring. (It wasn’t the company’s first experiment with mobilizing the politics of neighborhood watches to sell their products. In 2017, Ring offered free swag and discounted Ring products to neighborhood watch groups that promoted Ring and agreed to testify against their neighbors in court, if necessary.)

The Neighbors app has since developed a culture that is completely obsessed with crime and the self-policing of neighborhoods, and users often resort to racial profiling. Similar problems exist on the crime-reporting app Citizen and the neighborhood hub app NextDoor. On Neighbors, all posts are dedicated to crime, and three out of the five possible post categories deal with suspicious, strange, or unknown people. These options implicitly encourage people to post about people they don’t trust. In practice, this lack of trust is often racist.

The Aesthetic of Fear on Neighbors

The Neighbors app empowers people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers. Ring markets Neighbors as a “digital neighborhood watch,” which is an accurate description. It encourages people to think about who belongs and who is an outsider. In this way, Neighbors is not just a digital neighborhood watch. It’s a digital gated community.

“So much of it is this shared sense of the people who happen to be on that [app], or who we assume are neighbors like yourself, and watching and policing the dangers in your neighborhood,” Igo told Motherboard. “[Neighbors] also will undoubtedly reinforce some sense of who belongs here and who doesn't.”

When people take pictures or videos, they determine who and what is worthy of attention. But when people use security cameras specifically, they also determine who is suspicious and who does not belong.

Security cameras carry an aesthetic of suspicion and fear. Footage is often grainy, black and white, or green-tinted due to night vision filtering—but these aren’t inherently “sketchy” traits. Since security footage is usually shared in the context of crime on local news, all security footage is marred with the appearance of suspicion. Local news tends to over-represent crimes committed by people of color, meaning people of color captured on security cameras are at an especially high risk of appearing to be suspicious.

As more people buy cheap home security systems, the amount of security footage is proliferating. This means that more people appear suspicious than ever before. Even if a person has done nothing wrong, even if they have the wrong address or if they’re dropping off a package, they will appear suspicious.

Neighbors, and apps like it, have empowered people to publicly share footage that they consider unsettling, and people who they consider to be out of place, at a scale that we’ve never seen before.

Individual Decision With Group Implications

There’s a crucial, unstated aspect of owning a Ring camera: You aren’t just making the decision to surveil your own property and visitors when you buy one. You make a decision on behalf of everyone around you. If someone walks by your house, lives next door, or delivers packages to your home, they will be recorded and surveilled. They don’t get a choice. Buying even one Ring camera is a fundamentally communal decision.

Andrew Hager, who was a delivery-person for a meal-prep company in the Portland suburbs, said that he noticed all the “fancy houses” had Ring cameras, especially around Beaverton, OR. (The Beaverton Police Department has partnered with Ring, per documents obtained by Motherboard.)

For a while, he didn’t realize that Ring doorbells were actually cameras.

“It might've changed how I acted if I knew that there were cameras,” Hager said. “I was always professional, but I would’ve made sure I was not picking my nose or something.”

Hager added, more seriously, that he would not have been “blatantly checking the house out” if he knew he was being recorded.

“I feel like if people were watching me, they would've thought, ‘Oh, is this guy casing the joint out or something?’” Hager said. “Because you could totally think I was like, ‘Oh how much square footage is in here. I wonder how much they pay for this place.’ Before the door opens, I’m always looking around.”

Hager’s fear is justified. On the Neighbors app, users frequently post videos of people looking at their homes, taking pictures of their homes, or lingering around their homes. The captains often speculate as to whether the person is planning a robbery, although they just as well could have been at the wrong address or admiring the house.

“Making sure that packages are okay seems like a pretty common sense goal,” Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the anti-surveillance advocacy group the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and member of the Immigrant Leaders Council of the New York Immigration Coalition, said. “But the problem is that it comes at the price of recording these workers who are delivering them. It's just part of this surveillance web on the job that's depriving workers of autonomy and privacy, and can really have an emotionally toxic effect over the long term.”

The New Neighborhood of Ring Cameras

Ring has two aims that work in tandem. On one hand, it wants to become embedded in the process of policing. But it also wants to build relationships with neighborhood watches, and to have its cameras to become a feature of neighborhoods.

Ring doesn’t only partner with police departments. The company also provides discounts to local neighborhood watches and homeowners associations. According to emails obtained from Olathe, KS using a freedom of information request, all community leaders need to do is reach out to Ring.

"We would ask that a community leader (for instance head of HOA or neighborhood watch president) go to [redacted] to begin the process,” a Ring representative told a police officer who asked about local subsidy programs. “The community programs teams at Ring will work with them to create a limited time, zip code specific discount zone."

Ring also provides city-level discounts, if the city agrees to pay up.

Dozens of cities have Ring discount programs, which involve cities and towns paying Ring up to $100,000 in taxpayer money in order to subsidize Ring camera purchases for their residents. Ring will match every dollar committed by a city per the terms of these discount programs. This means that for every $100 residents save when buying a Ring product, the city pays $50 and Ring pays $50.

These city-level discounts have been happening since 2016, according to documents obtained by Motherboard.

By funding these discount programs, cities conflate surveillance and citizenship. For instance, West Hollywood, CA distributed flyers advertising its Ring subsidy program at voter registration events, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. West Hollywood also sold subsidized Ring products “exclusively” to residents in areas moderated by neighborhood watches. Everyone who bought a discounted camera was added to a registry list with their name and address.

West Hollywood isn’t alone. Camera-purchase registries—which Motherboard obtained from Redondo Beach, CA, West Hollywood, CA, and Green Bay, WI—included the names of purchasers and the police patrol areas in which they live.

Image: “RE__Request_for_shapefile_assistance.pdf” from West Hollywood, CA.

Documents obtained by Motherboard also show that several cities will loan or sell discounted cameras Ring cameras to residents. In one camera “loan” program in Green Bay, WI, police technically owned all footage generated on all cameras given to residents, per contract documents residents had to sign.

Police from Redondo Beach, CA even used the pretense of camera registries to determine who should get a discount and who shouldn’t, according to a city council meeting memo obtained by Motherboard. Police said that they inspected the facades of homes of each applicant, and looked for who had the most “optimal viewpoints that could assist with criminal investigations.”

In a slide presentation obtained by Motherboard, Redondo Beach police said that applicants who offered to surveil their neighbors would get a heavier discount than those who only offered to surveil their own property.

Image: Screenshot from Secure Your Castle slide presentation from Redondo Beach, CA obtained by Motherboard.

Ring doesn’t officially endorse cities requiring people to go on a camera registry in order to obtain free or discounted cameras.

“Ring won't subsidize devices to cities to be used for camera registration programs,” a Ring lawyer told city officials in Peoria, IL, who asked about creating a camera registry program. “If you cannot agree to that, then we cannot do the program.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” the Peoria lawyer said to a Peoria City Manager, after forwarding the email thread to him.

But cities can make camera registries without Ring’s permission. The Peoria Police Department unveiled a surveillance camera registry program two weeks before these emails were sent.

“As a policy, Ring does not support any subsidy match program that requires recipients to subscribe to a recording plan or share footage as a condition for receiving a subsidized device,” a Ring spokesperson said in an email. “We actively work with these groups to ensure this is reflected in their programs."

The Fanatic Culture of Ring Stans

People decide to buy Ring cameras for lots of different reasons. Ring customer Bryan Herbert told Motherboard that Ring makes his life easier.

“I’m disabled and tend to walk slow,” Herbert said via Twitter DM. “It’s nice being able to speak to people at the door and let them know it’s going to take me a minute to get there.”

But one thing connects all Ring camera owners: a sense of community.

Digital community is a crucial tenant of Ring ownership. There’s Neighbors, where geographic neighbors connect with one another through Ring’s platform. But there’s also Facebook and Reddit, where user-moderated, fanatic communities for Ring product owners have flourished.

In these groups, people are implicitly understood to have accepted the privacy tradeoffs that come with owning the cameras, and the proliferation of police partnerships. The resulting culture is a combination of a do-it-yourself machismo and intense product loyalty.

The most noteworthy examples are r/Ring, the Ring-focused subreddit, and Ring Doorbell Users Group, the Facebook group for Ring owners. These online communities aren’t primarily focused on sharing “success stories,” or sharing so-called sketchy footage on Ring cameras. Users mostly troubleshoot technical problems and answer one another’s questions. Often, people who speak too negatively about Ring products are disparaged, even when they face frustrating technical problems with no obvious solution.

The admins of the Facebook group often advocate on behalf of Ring. In one post, the Facebook group admin screenshotted and shared a post, which began by complaining about the quality of Ring cameras.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the group admin wrote, “I’m sorry that [name redacted] is having issues and feels he must so eloquently announce to everyone that he is GIVING UP.”

The admin suggested solutions to fixing Ring products that were often more labor-intensive or expensive than setting up the device itself.

The culture on r/Ring is pretty similarly to the culture in the Ring Doorbell Users Group on Facebook. Dan Sullivan, one of the moderators of r/Ring, said in a phone call that he’s been a subreddit moderator for about four years, around the time that DoorBot became Ring.

“I’ve been leading that disaster for a while,” Sullivan said. “It was really an echo chamber when I came across it… There were people who loved it, people who hated it, and there was no one to talk to about it. It’s still like that now.”

Sullivan said that he tried to engage with Ring’s social media team and get them to provide help. Ring tried, but it’s mostly stopped engaging.

“Ring used to participate, but then they stopped because people were attacking the employees,” Sullivan said.

How Does It Feel to Be Watched?

Among the many Ring users that Motherboard spoke with for this article, none expressed privacy concerns, or misgivings about having a camera in and around one’s home.

Sullivan, the r/Ring moderator, said that if people are worried about their privacy, they just shouldn’t get a camera. It’s like Facebook, he said. If you don't like Facebook, just get rid of Facebook.

“I don't have it inside of my house for a reason, but I don't really care who sees what goes on on the outside,” Sullivan said. “You could make a list on why you shouldn't have a camera. Obviously these [videos] are going somewhere, being sent to a server somewhere. But I don't have anything to hide. I’m not a criminal, there's no risky things going on at my house. So I’m not worried about it.”

Sullivan added that there are benefits and drawbacks to every product. For him, the benefit of catching a criminal on camera outweighs the risk of relying on a private company to catch them.

Several Ring camera owners told Motherboard that they, in part, chose Ring because they wanted cameras that weren’t made in China, citing security concerns. Neither of them were concerned about how camera footage and customer data is used.

Why We Watch Ourselves

There’s one unavoidable fact about Ring: people are choosing to use this product. They’re choosing to put a camera in their homes. They’re choosing not only to watch other people, but watch themselves.

Self-surveillance isn’t a Ring-specific phenomenon. The core of self-surveillance has to do with how we understand privacy.

Sarah Igo, the historian, says that “privacy” deals with the threshold between where the individual person ends, and a collective society begins. As a result, privacy concerns are often invoked in situations where people are scared, apprehensive, or uncomfortable about changes happening in their society—technological, social, or otherwise.

As explained by Igo, after World War II, when white people fled to the suburbs, a combination of academic scholarship and popular opinion strengthened the idea that freedom, especially freedom from authoritarianism and fascim, can be found in the right to private property, space, and land.

The American home, in the face of these fears, became a place of safety and tradition. It was a place for families where a patriarchal figure protected his wife and children.

Americans, as Igo describes it, often fear and mistrust objects that mediate between the private home and the outside world. Many people in the early twentieth century viewed the telephone as an unwelcome intruder in the home. Fear of wiretapping was widespread throughout the century. The doorbell, for many, was no exception. Igo writes that people viewed the doorbell as something that empowered the outside world to penetrate and intrude on “domestic tranquility.”

Interestingly, Ring customers believe that the doorbell camera protects the home. It doesn’t invade the home; rather, it guards the home. Igo said in a phone call that this isn’t necessarily surprising. Ring doorbells, like all doorbells, mediate the relationship between the home and the outside world.

“Video cameras, security cameras, and so forth is the turning of the home outward to watch, in the other direction,” Igo said. “So I think it's still connected to this longer history of worry about invasions of the home. To prevent those, you have to look outward and invade the privacy of those potentially right on the street outside.”

“[There’s] this sense that the barrier can also be a window on to who's on the other side,” Igo added. “And that, at the very least, suggests rising distrust of unplanned interactions.”

So What Now?

Ring has some experienced pushback in recent months. In August, Senator Markey demanded the company answer questions about its data retention and relationships with law enforcement. Then, in November, five senators demanded Jeff Bezos answer additional questions about its data security practices.

Despite this pushback, Ring is not faltering or losing momentum.

It doesn’t hurt that the company has crucial connections to power. Jacqui Irwin, a member of the California state assembly, is married to Jon Irwin, the chief operating officer for Ring. Kira Rudik, Ring Ukraine’s chief operating officer, was recently elected to Ukranian parliament. Ring has connections in precisely the places it needs them in order to continue operating as it always has.

However, it’s impossible to talk about Ring in a vacuum, as if Ring is the only home surveillance company selling fear and promising security in return. Ring is the symptom of a worldview in which crime is an existential threat, and data-capturing technology is the solution. For people who subscribe to this worldview, it doesn’t matter that crime rates are actually going down nationwide. The only thing that matters is that they believe crime is a threat.

According to Evan Greer, deputy director of digital activist group Fight for the Future, Ring is a product that’s “incompatible with a functioning community.” If you don’t trust your neighbors, Greer said, it becomes okay to surveil in perpetuity.

“That's a fundamental idea that ties community together: neighbors trust each other, and protect each other, and take care of each other,” Greer said. “It just feels like, for Amazon’s business model to succeed, they have to sow distrust and fear between neighbors.”

Cahn, the privacy advocate, said that Ring and security products like it capitalize on a widespread feeling that we are never safe.

“It goes to some almost society-wide anxiety, that if we can't prove everything's okay, at every moment,” Cahn said, “then somehow, something terrible is happening.”

There is no single reason that people choose to watch themselves and others. The people of Baltimore, MD believe that camera footage can be a tool that facilitates justice in a city where justice feels rare. For others, Ring cameras offer the convenience of seeing who is at the door. Some people buy Ring cameras to usher in peace of mind.

Everyone who buys a Ring camera shares one core belief: that Ring cameras are neutral, objective, or even benevolent. However, in a world so overcome by fear that the people believe they must not only watch others, and watch themselves, there’s no such thing as a truly benevolent tool.

How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[jeremyau]

Dropbox Leaves AWS, Should UPS and Fedex Be Afraid?

Posted onWednesday, March 16, 2016Monday, March 27, 2017 Author by Ben Thompson

Good morning,

Today’s Update is related to yesterday’s Weekly Article on The Amazon Tax, so make sure you read that first if you haven’t.

On to the update:

Dropbox Leaves AWS

Most Stratechery Weekly Articles take shape over several days, if not several weeks (or months: Daily Update subscribers know I made both the Amazon-Costco and Logistics-by-Amazon points last year). Because of this, though, occasional monkey wrenches come flying in at the last minute — like Dropbox moving away from AWS. From the Dropbox blog:

Dropbox stores two kinds of data: file content and metadata about files and users. We’ve always had a hybrid cloud architecture, hosting metadata and our web servers in data centers we manage, and storing file content on Amazon. We were an early adopter of Amazon S3, which provided us with the ability to scale our operations rapidly and reliably. Amazon Web Services has, and continues to be, an invaluable partner—we couldn’t have grown as fast as we did without a service like AWS.

As the needs of our users and customers kept growing, we decided to invest seriously in building our own in-house storage system. There were a couple reasons behind this decision. First, one of our key product differentiators is performance. Bringing storage in-house allows us to customize the entire stack end-to-end and improve performance for our particular use case. Second, as one of the world’s leading providers of cloud services, our use case for block storage is unique. We can leverage our scale and particular use case to customize both the hardware and software, resulting in better unit economics.

So…maybe AWS isn’t so great after all? Should I have changed my article? Well, obviously I didn’t; indeed, I’d argue the Dropbox news reinforces my point.

First, given that Dropbox is premised on storage, hosting on a 3rd-party provider, no matter what discounts the company might obtain from Amazon, is going to be expensive: a low price times a lot of volume is still a lot of money! To that end, keeping whatever margin Amazon was earning will help the bottom line. Relatedly, Dropbox likely has enough scale that they can drive their component prices not to Amazon levels but close enough.

Second, and again related to scale, Dropbox’s static storage needs are almost certainly exponentially larger than the company’s dynamic storage needs. One of the big advantages of using AWS is that a company can not only quickly bring resources online but just as quickly take them offline; that’s almost certainly much less of a need for Dropbox relative to the company’s early days.

Third, as the blog post notes, by virtue of building their own backend Dropbox can build exactly what they need, increasing product performance. This isn’t a surprise: integrated products generally work better (the question is usually whether or not modular products are good enough to leverage their price and scalability advantage).

Most of these factors are unique to Dropbox: they are an exception that proves the rule (the rule being that AWS is better for most companies). Few companies have Dropbox’s storage needs, most companies derive significant value from AWS’ flexibility, and most company’s aren’t differentiated by their cloud infrastructure.

Actually, I’m not entirely sure that Dropbox is, either: the problem for Dropbox has never been the quality of their technology. Dropbox sync remains noticeably superior than any of its competitors, and while as a Dropbox user I won’t complain if it gets even better, if a superior product for Ben Thompson is all that mattered the company wouldn’t be facing the skepticism it now is (including from me).

Nothing about this news changes Dropbox’s core problem: the company delivers a superior user experience, but a superior user experience matters most in consumer markets; consumers, though, aren’t willing to pay for a commodity like storage (at scale). To be sure, when it comes to businesses the user experience matters more and more with the advent of the cloud, but business brings its own contraints, including lots of arcane requirements that pertain to permissions, data retention, etc, and here Dropbox’s product has fallen short for years (I laid this out two years ago here).

That’s why I actually find this announcement really disappointing. Apparently Dropbox has been devoting significant resources for at least two years to a project that will no doubt have a positive impact on the bottom line but a minimal impact on the top line. It’s all well-and-good (and honestly impressive) to announce 500 million registered users, but the reluctance to disclose both active users and especially the number (and size) of its business customers speaks even more loudly. How might have the product and company evolved if the company had continued to rely on AWS and devoted its resources to fixing its product-market fit problem?

This gets to the other reason this news actually reinforces my point about the value of AWS: the variable versus fixed cost and flexibility benefits are obvious; what is perhaps most under-appreciated about the public cloud, though, is the degree to which it allows companies to focus on what really makes or breaks their business. I’m disappointed Dropbox didn’t value that nearly as much as I think they should have.

It’s not all bad news: lower costs mean a lower burn rate, which it seems Dropbox will need. It’s hard, though, to escape the conclusion that the company can’t break out of its tendency to view every problem as a nail in need of its engineering hammer. The blog post even bragged about this:

Dropbox was founded by engineers, and the ethos of technical innovation is fundamental to our culture. For our users, this means that we’ve created a product that just works. But there’s a lot that happens behind the scenes to create that simple user experience.

I honestly dislike being so harsh, because this paragraph captures what is so great about Dropbox: it is a fantastic product that “just works” and occasionally even delights, no small feat for a utility. This paragraph, though, also captures why I am so discouraged: the culture needs to value marketing — as in knowing which customers are willing-to-pay, and what they want — just as highly as it does the tech. Said culture would not have made the decision to build this product in 2013 when product-market fit was still an open question.

(Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a big company that needed an infusion of folks who focus on the user experience and have excellent cloud development chops…)

Should UPS and Fedex Be Afraid?

In yesterday’s post I laid out why it seemed likely Amazon was going to attempt to do to the logistics industry what it is doing to the cloud computing and retail industries: meet its own needs with a services-based offering that can eventually be extended to 3rd-parties, gaining scale that cements Amazon’s competitive position. I forgot, though, to link this Bloomberg article that reports the details:

A 2013 report to Amazon’s senior management team proposed an aggressive global expansion of the company’s Fulfillment By Amazon service, which provides storage, packing and shipping for independent merchants selling products on the company’s website…Amazon’s plan would culminate with the launch of a new venture called “Global Supply Chain by Amazon,” as soon as this year, the documents said. The new business will locate Amazon at the center of a logistics industry that involves not just shippers like FedEx and UPS but also legions of middlemen who handle cargo and paperwork associated with transnational trade. Amazon wants to bypass these brokers, amassing inventory from thousands of merchants around the world and then buying space on trucks, planes and ships at reduced rates. Merchants will be able to book cargo space online or via mobile devices, creating what Amazon described as a “one click-ship for seamless international trade and shipping.” ‘Ease and Transparency’…

Amazon will partner with third-party carriers to build the global enterprise and then gradually squeeze them out once the business reaches sufficient volume and Amazon learns enough to run it on its own, the documents said. If the logistics business takes hold, financial services could follow, with Amazon giving loans to merchants, processing international payments and consulting its network of sellers on customs and tax matters.

Admittedly, this seems like a taller order; both Amazon’s e-commerce and cloud computing businesses had the advantage of being greenfield opportunities: Amazon was making new markets instead of overtaking entrenched incumbents like UPS or Fedex that already operate at scale.

On the other hand, Amazon has reasons, opportunities, and resources to do exactly what they propose:

The current package delivery system in the U.S. was not designed for e-commerce. UPS and Fedex were traditionally more focused on businesses, with the former focusing on packages and the latter on speed. UPS’s more integrated system and package capability meant they have been able to retrofit to supporting e-commerce the best, but just as a company like Dropbox can benefit from custom-building infrastructure for their needs, it’s reasonable to think that Amazon could do the same if they were building a global e-commerce delivery service from scratch

The theory that the logistics companies are better able to meet Amazon’s needs because they can leverage scale falls apart when it is Amazon that is providing most of that scale. I’ve linked to this Wall Street Journal article before that says as much as a third of UPS residential deliveries are for Amazon; given that Amazon is taking over 50% of e-commerce growth that percentage is likely higher now, but the problem from UPS’ perspective is that those packages are very low margin. Actually, that’s a problem from Amazon’s perspective too: UPS doesn’t have the incentive to care as much as Amazon does

As I noted above, cost savings are not always enough of a reason to integrate; Amazon, though, has both the organizational structure to build out this business without losing focus elsewhere and the proven capability of realizing top-line opportunities by extending a service like this to 3rd-parties

Frankly, if I could sum this up, it’s that Amazon has earned the benefit of the doubt here, and I am loathe to bet against them. And, frankly, were I UPS in particular I would be worried: it seems likely that Amazon will build out this network from the inside out, by first connecting its fulfillment centers with each other and with suppliers, leaving the more logistically challenging and expensive last mile delivery to whomever wants to fight for it. That doesn’t sound great for UPS’ already low e-commerce margins.

One more thing: a persistent myth about AWS was that Amazon was selling excess server capacity that resulted from the need to ramp up for the holidays; this never made sense, because what would happen when the holidays came around in the future? Would Amazon kick everyone off? Interestingly, it seems like a similar myth is developing around this logistics effort. Namely, most reports suggest Amazon wants to bring on extra capacity to avoid the 2013 Christmas disaster when many packages were not delivered in time.

This, though, also makes no sense: are Amazon’s planes going to twiddle their thumbs the rest of the year? I’d think about their efforts from the opposite perspective: the company is building a baseline logistics capacity and will use UPS et al to handle peak demand. Until, of course, the company gets such scale that their static volume drowns out dynamic peaks and valleys, and then the existing logistics providers will really be in trouble.

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Thanks for being a supporter, and have a great day!

[tpsworldwide-blog1]

Just In Time Remittances

My left eye twitched. With my left hand on the phone and right hand reaching for my wallet in my back pocket, I picked the mobile on the first ring. Any happily married man would agreeably do the same when the dial screen flashes her name.

It was a little unusual for an early morning call at 0915. I heard my wife sobbing and I had to pull out of my Monday morning team meeting to attend to the emergency. Her favorite maid's son, a long haul driver had met an accident 1400 miles away from me. The savior had contacted our maid explaining how an immediate operation was deemed by the local hospital as necessary. In our part of the world where the public medical care system fails to reach the mark, such emergencies usually have to be dealt with-in the personal eco-system. This situation required me to transfer the basic operating expense to a town, the existence of which needed me to Google it. Bigger, however, was the challenge of remitting funds to this far off place, even though I work in the payments realm and know of many options.

Pakistan is completing 10 years of being introduced to the agent banking/branchless banking deployments. The country is the home to some of the world's best and fastest growing mobile money deployments. With 350,000+ agents covering the larger geo footprint of Pakistan (881,913 km2), the target of increasing and diversifying financial access points of agents, atm, pos and branches form the core of the National financial inclusion strategy. The banking agent network in aggregate performs more than 5 million P2P remittances per month with an average transaction size of ~$40. A Recent change in regulatory policy allows the cash out limit to be increased to ~$450 from the agent network. This opportunity can be seized but not without the challenge of having physical cash availability at all times.

Agent network seemed to be an obvious choice but I could not risk the availability of the cash at the location especially at 0915 when my beneficiary had to collect it in real time. It was not a case of financial access point but a challenge of making the cash available at the payout location. The same challenge has haunted the utilization of banking agents for cash payout of home remittances, where the average transaction size is about $350.

With the "war against cash', there is a debate on the longevity of the ATM business. The fact is that to date; ATMs have proved the cheapest 24x7 location for cash availability. Their deployments will slow down but we are going to have at least 4.3 Million ATMs globally by 2020. The banks are constantly looking at improving the utilization of these deployed ATM assets. Research shows improvement in operational cost per ATM i.e. cost per transaction and cost per replenishment when the number of transactions increase. A further improvement when these assets generate revenue from off-us transactions.

Before I talk about the famous cheque and bank relationship, I have a confession to make. Although I evangelize digital payments and make most of my payments digitally, I love the simplistic approach of a cheque and have butterflies in the stomach to think that they will soon be gone. When I saw, billionaire industrialist Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart) baiting Chauffeur's daughter, Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) into leaving his playboy younger brother in my favorite classic 'Sabrina', I was introduced to cheques. A ‘bearer cheque’ is encashable to the amount written at the bank branch, after the writer's signature are verified. The cashier typically gets the bearer to sign at the back of the cheque and keep a copy of his photo id for record.

DigiCheQ our latest verified money transfer service closely emulates the experience. It leverages the magic of Mobile Connect (see my previous blog post) and allows money transfer from sender to a verified Mobile number instead of an account number. The sender is able to create a digital cheque from his internet/mobile banking and host the cheque in the cloud (DigiCheQ platform hosted on #Azure cloud). The receiver is notified of the issuance with a one-time password which can be input at a payout ATM along with a Citizen ID number to withdraw cash. Mobile Connect pairs the CitizenId and the receiver’s mobile for verification, at the time of withdrawal (in real-time). This addresses the challenges of fraud and AML reverberating in the agent banking cash-outs regime.

The fast growing 3G/4G mobile network is addressing the network challenge associated with ATM deployments beyond the metro towns. This has enabled Pakistan to commission the highest ATM in the world at 15,397 ft by National Bank of Pakistan. With a far reaching ATM network, high uptime, 24x7 operations and cash availability, the utilization of DigiCheQ is deemed to grow both for the payout of domestic and international remittances.

Since the past few years, I am seeing the mobile wallet teams in MFS providers focusing their innovation efforts to build adoption of mobile wallets both in the banked and unbanked world. The premise is simple, facilitate the banked customers to pay their domestic household workers and the recipients can transfer the money back home. Being a part of the same network is cheaper but the possibility of exchange between account-wallets or wallet-account is also enabled via IBFT (see earlier blogpost). When we envisaged DigiCheQ, we targeted the missing case of Connecting Banked to the Unbanked. Why are those who are yet to join the network be excluded from the digital transaction infrastructure? The power of DigiCheQ allows you to encash the cheque at an ATM with only your mobile number. Would you have a mobile wallet/account you also have the option of redeeming your DigiCheQ into your account, the option and more that I will be the subject of my next blog.

Domestic remittances using the agent network is typically a 3-5% fee income model for the mobile money provider where the revenues are split between the agents and the MM provider in a 60-40 split favoring the agents. Banks acting as Issuers and/or Acquirers in the DigiCheQ infrastructure will have the ability to utilize the ATM/CDM infrastructure for earning upto 0.5-1% from the fee income on DigiCheQ origination and withdrawal.

Mobile Connect is live with 52 mobile operators in 29 countries reaching East & South Asia, APAC, Europe, MENA and Latam. With our early deployments live with China Mobile, other operators including Mobilink, Telenor adoption is in progress. DigiCheQ is now expanding to integrate the Mobile Connect APIs of global operators to enable Just in Time remittances.

About Mohsin Termezy:

Mohsin has rich experience across full cycle digital payments ecosystem with banks (retail, corporate, microfinance, agent banking), regulatory consulting and fintechs. He is a futurist with a belief in the power of two currencies: Data & Trust.

[ana30lee-blog]

8 kick-ass digital marketing job opportunities.

Hey guys I am back with another blog regarding the job opportunities in digital marketing.in my previous blog I had mentioned how career in digital marketing can be life changing opportunity. But what is the scope of digital marketing in the market? It’s an obvious thing that every person wants to earn huge. So investing in the right career can bring you the job you have been dreaming of.

If I would be writing this blog back in 2008, it would obviously make no sense. But there is no doubt that through all these years the approach to marketing of products and services, solving of customer problems, taking feedbacks, advertising platforms has been shifted on a large scale from traditional to online media. So why not deep dive into those jobs that has an ever increasing demand?

So what are the job opportunities in digital marketing?

Digital marketing is like an ocean of opportunities. When you deep dive into it you will realise that there are variety of opportunities available than will absolutely suit every person. Below are the top rated job opportunities in digital marketing.

Digital Marketing Manager

Digital marketing Managers ought to have an expertise of 5+ years, and if you've got certifications that prove your experience, then you may be employed simply. The demand for Digital marketing job opportunities for consultants is high because the corporations are looking for a similar individuals.

Responsibilities of Digital marketing Managers embrace leading the digital team and focus of promoting the brand. They are additionally answerable for combining completely different elements of digital selling and creating it economical.

The digital selling regular payment package of digital selling consultants ranges from 15 to 20 lacs every year. Depending upon the expertise, it will go as high as 40 lacs.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The talks about search engine optimization has made all of us aware what SEO. a person dealing with search engine optimization has to basically focus on ranking the company’s website on top of search engines by unpaid efforts.  The average salary for SEO manager or specialist is 3- 3.50 lakhs yearly. According to experts the percentage of visitors on the website which is top ranked is visited 90% more as compared to other websites. So now you know how vital the role of SEO is for any company or brand that wants to make its strong presence online.

Social Media Marketing

Jobs related to social media marketing include promoting the brand on various social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.  It also includes creating engaging content, photos, videos that would attract the audiences and spread the awareness of the brand. The prime benefit of social media marketing is it is less expensive than other mediums and gives you measurable results which help you in building social media strategies for promotion. The demand for social media marketers is tremendous. People with a creative mind and zeal to create engaging content can opt for this field. An average social media marketer gets paid between 4- 5 lakhs annually. But again it depends on the type of company.

Content marketing manager.

Content marketing managers are responsible for developing original and attractive content for the company in the form of blogs, e-book publications, guest blogging, article submissions, and etc. candidates who can write effective content that can drive traffic to website can go for this field. A content marketing manager usually has to report to digital marketing manager but sometimes they are the masters of their department. Another benefit of working as a content marketing manager is you can work as a freelancer or you can also work from home. Content marketing is one of the high paid jobs with individuals grabbing a package of 3-15 lacs per annum.

Copy writer

The job of a copy writer is ample. Copy writers need to work with all the departments of digital marketing. They need to proof-read the blogs and suggest better words that can persuade audiences for any call-to-action. They also need to help the social media team by suggesting better captions and content for social media, help the search engine marketer to create  interesting content for paid ads. Among the various digital marketing job in India, copy writing is the most hunted and desirable jobs by people.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing refers to increasing the visibility of the websites on search engines by paid advertisements. Search engine marketing is an important part of digital marketing. SEM includes paid ads like PPC (pay per click), CPA (cost per acquisition), and paid search ads, paid search advertising. Search engine marketing is done with the help of Google AdWords or google AdSense.  The average salary for search engine marketer is 4-5 lac per annum.

 Inbound Marketing Manager

Inbound marketing manager are the strategy and conversion funnel creators for the organization. The requirement of inbound marketing manager depends upon the size of the organization. The job of Content marketing manager and inbound marketing managers is interconnected. Inbound marketing managers create strategies and these strategies are executed by content writing managers by creating content depending upon the objectives set in the strategies.

Conversion Rate Optimizer

The job of a conversion rate optimizer is to reduce the number of bounce rates and converting the leads in customers. A conversion rate optimizer can also help the inbound marketing manager to build marketing funnels that would increase conversions. Also he/she helps the website developer to create persuading and attractive landing pages that leads to more conversions.

So as mentioned above, there are a lot of opportunities waiting for you. Go explore and see which best suits you.

Do let me know which job opportunity attracted you the most and why you like would to give it a shot! Stay tuned as will be coming up with my next blog soon.

[elizabethcariasa]

How to report Super Bowl & other taxable gambling wins

There was national anthem controversy at Super Bowl LIII, but it wasn't about what the players did during the song. It was about how long it took Gladys Knight to sing the Star-Spangled Banner and how it affected the associated prop bet. If you did come out on the winning side of the song, here's how to report that and other taxable gambling income.

There's no disagreement that Gladys Knight's Star-Bangled Banner was magnificent. However, gamblers had some issue with how long the song lasted, which was one of the prop bets wagered on the game and its ancillary events.

Many who watched Super Bowl LIII say that the best part of the event was Gladys Knight's singing of the national anthem. 

Her performance, however, also created the biggest prop bet controversy of the 2019 NFL championship game.

As is always the case, gamblers can bet on whether The Star-Spangled Banner presentation would end or go beyond a certain time frame. This year, it was 1 minute, 50 seconds.

But by the time the flyover, viewed through the briefing visible opening at Atlanta's Mercedes Benz stadium roof (another prop bet, by the way), and applause was over, a controversy was brewing in betting circles.

Gamblers on both sides of the stopwatch, many betting legally for the first time following last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that all states now can decide whether to allow sporting event wagering within their borders, were convinced they had won.

At issue was Knight's end-of-song that flourish threw what is usually a clear-cut result into doubt.

It seems that Knight said the word "brave" twice, which opens up the actual ending of the anthem to debate. Did it end after the first "brave" or the second one?

Some sportsbooks specified in advance that they would time the anthem only to the end of the first "brave." Here, it seems like Knight finishes saying "brave," then pauses briefly and says "the brave" in a long, drawn-out sound that appeared to take the anthem over the 1:50 minute prop bet parameter.

You can judge for yourself in the National Football League/CBS YouTube video below.

Some of the other prop bets, however, were more easily decided. And many of those paid off quite nicely.

All gambling proceeds are taxable income: That's why I'm back again this year reminding gamblers that all gambling winnings are taxable and review how to report those payoffs to the Internal Revenue Service.

If you placed your bet at a now-legal gambling establishment in Nevada or the seven states — Delaware, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia — that now also are taking above-board bets, you likely will get a Form W-2G next year detailing your win.

Remember, the IRS also will get a copy, so don't simply "forget" to report this income.

If you don't get an official earnings statement because say, you didn't win that much or you placed your bets with your neighborhood bookie, you still are legally liable for taxes on the under-the-table wagers. Yes, it's unlikely that the IRS can track down that money, but just in case.

If you're worried the IRS will report your illegal betting, don't be. That's not the prime job of Uncle Sam's tax collector. He doesn't care if you get your money via criminal enterprises, be it shady gambling or some other nefarious scheme. He just wants his due portion of the taxable income. Remember the most notorious tax scofflaw, Al Capone.

However, I know all the readers of the ol' blog are very honest taxpayers. For all y'all Super Bowl and other bet winners, here's how to let the IRS know about your taxable luck.

Look for the tax statements: As mentioned earlier, the new legal gambling spots in more parts of the country will make the IRS' job easier in tracking winnings.

If you win at a casino, race track or other legitimate gambling venue, depending on the game of chance and amount you win, you will get a Form W-2G from the betting parlor detailing your winnings.

Sometimes the amounts won trigger the new, slightly lower withholding rate of 24 percent when the lucky gambler is paid. In other instances, a gambling establishment simply will ask winners for a tax ID (the individual's Social Security number) for tax-reporting purposes.

With or without withholding, if you get a W-2G, be sure to include the amount on the form on your tax return. The IRS will get a copy of this form, too, so if you don't report it, tax agents will come asking.

Use the new Schedule 1: If you're a casual gambler (like me!), with a trip now and then to Las Vegas, Atlantic City or your nearest casino, you should report the annual total of all your gambling winnings, with and without W-2Gs, on line 21 of the new Form 1040 Schedule 1.

This amount used to go directly on the long Form 1040, but the many tax law changes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) prompted the IRS to redesign that form.

The new, and only, Form 1040 is condensed. But the IRS still is looking for the information it used to get on the old longer form. To get that, it has moved a lot of 1040 lines to a variety of schedules that will be filed along with the new shorter tax return.

For reporting 2018 tax year gambling income, you'll enter the amount of your winning wagers as additional income on line 6 of the new Form 1040, with details entered on, yes, line 21, Other income that now appears on the new Schedule 1 you'll send in as an attachment to your federal return.

The amount of prizes or awards, either the cash you received or the value of merchandise won, also goes here.

Take advantage of your losses: And yes, while the TCJA did do away with or dramatically alter many deductions that used to be claimed by itemizers on Schedule A, the option to deduct your gambling losses remains.

These losses you enter on the "Other Miscellaneous Deductions" section of the new Schedule A will help offset your taxable winnings.

Wait, you say. Didn't the new tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that took effect on Jan. 1 and, as just noted, also led to the revising of Form 1040, do away with that itemizing option?

You're thinking of the "Job Expenses and Certain Miscellaneous Deductions" section of Schedule A. That was eliminated.

But the "Other Miscellaneous Deductions" segment survived. And just like it was under the pre-TCJA, these "other" deductions are not subject to the 2 percent of adjusted gross income threshold in order to be claimed.

Note, however, that your bad betting luck only goes so far. You can only use your gambling losses to offset, perhaps zero out, your winnings. You cannot use them to produce an income loss on your return.

Gambling records are key: To make sure you get the most from those bad bets, keep good records. 

You generally can prove your winnings and losses through official documentation like the previously mentioned W-2G or Form 5754, Statement by Person(s) Receiving Gambling Winnings.

Other gambling winnings and losses can be verified by wagering tickets, canceled checks, substitute checks, credit records, bank and ATM withdrawals and statements of actual winnings or payment slips provided to you by the gambling establishment.

The IRS also suggests keeping your own documentation in the form of a diary. I'm not talking about a journal where you note, "Dear Diary, the slot machines at Kay's Kasino suck, as in sucked up all my paycheck!" (although that might be cathartic if you're on a losing streak).

Rather, keep a log of your losses and winnings. You can find more record keeping details based on the type of gambling you prefer (Keno, Bingo, poker, horse racing, etc.) in IRS Publication 529.

The IRS doesn't want to see your gambling records when you file your return. The agency has enough to sort through already. But if an IRS examiner sees something suspicious, your complete gambling journal and accompany records will help you show how you cut your $10,000 in winning Super Bowl bets to zero.

Tax timing: Finally, remember that your winnings from yesterday's big game will go on your 2019 return due next year.

For this year's April 15 (or 17 for New England filers and bettors) Tax Day, you'll need to dig out last year's winning receipts — and losing tickets — to tally the correct amounts to include on your 2018 forms and schedules.

To save you from such filing scrambling in 2020 and future tax filing years, start a gambling diary and collection of supporting documents now.

Good luck, on both your taxes and future games of chance.

And oh yeah, the New England Patriots earned their sixth championship ring by beating the Los Angeles Rams 13-3 in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever.

You also might find these items of interest:

Even on big sports gambling days, Uncle Sam comes up short

Professional gamblers' deductions narrowed a bit under new tax law

Now-legal betting on football playoff games should pay off for IRS, too

Advertisements

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[christophergill8]

How to report Super Bowl & other taxable gambling wins

There was national anthem controversy at Super Bowl LIII, but it wasn't about what the players did during the song. It was about how long it took Gladys Knight to sing the Star-Spangled Banner and how it affected the associated prop bet. If you did come out on the winning side of the song, here's how to report that and other taxable gambling income.

There's no disagreement that Gladys Knight's Star-Bangled Banner was magnificent. However, gamblers had some issue with how long the song lasted, which was one of the prop bets wagered on the game and its ancillary events.

Many who watched Super Bowl LIII say that the best part of the event was Gladys Knight's singing of the national anthem. 

Her performance, however, also created the biggest prop bet controversy of the 2019 NFL championship game.

As is always the case, gamblers can bet on whether The Star-Spangled Banner presentation would end or go beyond a certain time frame. This year, it was 1 minute, 50 seconds.

But by the time the flyover, viewed through the briefing visible opening at Atlanta's Mercedes Benz stadium roof (another prop bet, by the way), and applause was over, a controversy was brewing in betting circles.

Gamblers on both sides of the stopwatch, many betting legally for the first time following last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that all states now can decide whether to allow sporting event wagering within their borders, were convinced they had won.

At issue was Knight's end-of-song that flourish threw what is usually a clear-cut result into doubt.

It seems that Knight said the word "brave" twice, which opens up the actual ending of the anthem to debate. Did it end after the first "brave" or the second one?

Some sportsbooks specified in advance that they would time the anthem only to the end of the first "brave." Here, it seems like Knight finishes saying "brave," then pauses briefly and says "the brave" in a long, drawn-out sound that appeared to take the anthem over the 1:50 minute prop bet parameter.

You can judge for yourself in the National Football League/CBS YouTube video below.

Some of the other prop bets, however, were more easily decided. And many of those paid off quite nicely.

All gambling proceeds are taxable income: That's why I'm back again this year reminding gamblers that all gambling winnings are taxable and review how to report those payoffs to the Internal Revenue Service.

If you placed your bet at a now-legal gambling establishment in Nevada or the seven states — Delaware, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia — that now also are taking above-board bets, you likely will get a Form W-2G next year detailing your win.

Remember, the IRS also will get a copy, so don't simply "forget" to report this income.

If you don't get an official earnings statement because say, you didn't win that much or you placed your bets with your neighborhood bookie, you still are legally liable for taxes on the under-the-table wagers. Yes, it's unlikely that the IRS can track down that money, but just in case.

If you're worried the IRS will report your illegal betting, don't be. That's not the prime job of Uncle Sam's tax collector. He doesn't care if you get your money via criminal enterprises, be it shady gambling or some other nefarious scheme. He just wants his due portion of the taxable income. Remember the most notorious tax scofflaw, Al Capone.

However, I know all the readers of the ol' blog are very honest taxpayers. For all y'all Super Bowl and other bet winners, here's how to let the IRS know about your taxable luck.

Look for the tax statements: As mentioned earlier, the new legal gambling spots in more parts of the country will make the IRS' job easier in tracking winnings.

If you win at a casino, race track or other legitimate gambling venue, depending on the game of chance and amount you win, you will get a Form W-2G from the betting parlor detailing your winnings.

Sometimes the amounts won trigger the new, slightly lower withholding rate of 24 percent when the lucky gambler is paid. In other instances, a gambling establishment simply will ask winners for a tax ID (the individual's Social Security number) for tax-reporting purposes.

With or without withholding, if you get a W-2G, be sure to include the amount on the form on your tax return. The IRS will get a copy of this form, too, so if you don't report it, tax agents will come asking.

Use the new Schedule 1: If you're a casual gambler (like me!), with a trip now and then to Las Vegas, Atlantic City or your nearest casino, you should report the annual total of all your gambling winnings, with and without W-2Gs, on line 21 of the new Form 1040 Schedule 1.

This amount used to go directly on the long Form 1040, but the many tax law changes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) prompted the IRS to redesign that form.

The new, and only, Form 1040 is condensed. But the IRS still is looking for the information it used to get on the old longer form. To get that, it has moved a lot of 1040 lines to a variety of schedules that will be filed along with the new shorter tax return.

For reporting 2018 tax year gambling income, you'll enter the amount of your winning wagers as additional income on line 6 of the new Form 1040, with details entered on, yes, line 21, Other income that now appears on the new Schedule 1 you'll send in as an attachment to your federal return.

The amount of prizes or awards, either the cash you received or the value of merchandise won, also goes here.

Take advantage of your losses: And yes, while the TCJA did do away with or dramatically alter many deductions that used to be claimed by itemizers on Schedule A, the option to deduct your gambling losses remains.

These losses you enter on the "Other Miscellaneous Deductions" section of the new Schedule A will help offset your taxable winnings.

Wait, you say. Didn't the new tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that took effect on Jan. 1 and, as just noted, also led to the revising of Form 1040, do away with that itemizing option?

You're thinking of the "Job Expenses and Certain Miscellaneous Deductions" section of Schedule A. That was eliminated.

But the "Other Miscellaneous Deductions" segment survived. And just like it was under the pre-TCJA, these "other" deductions are not subject to the 2 percent of adjusted gross income threshold in order to be claimed.

Note, however, that your bad betting luck only goes so far. You can only use your gambling losses to offset, perhaps zero out, your winnings. You cannot use them to produce an income loss on your return.

Gambling records are key: To make sure you get the most from those bad bets, keep good records. 

You generally can prove your winnings and losses through official documentation like the previously mentioned W-2G or Form 5754, Statement by Person(s) Receiving Gambling Winnings.

Other gambling winnings and losses can be verified by wagering tickets, canceled checks, substitute checks, credit records, bank and ATM withdrawals and statements of actual winnings or payment slips provided to you by the gambling establishment.

The IRS also suggests keeping your own documentation in the form of a diary. I'm not talking about a journal where you note, "Dear Diary, the slot machines at Kay's Kasino suck, as in sucked up all my paycheck!" (although that might be cathartic if you're on a losing streak).

Rather, keep a log of your losses and winnings. You can find more record keeping details based on the type of gambling you prefer (Keno, Bingo, poker, horse racing, etc.) in IRS Publication 529.

The IRS doesn't want to see your gambling records when you file your return. The agency has enough to sort through already. But if an IRS examiner sees something suspicious, your complete gambling journal and accompany records will help you show how you cut your $10,000 in winning Super Bowl bets to zero.

Tax timing: Finally, remember that your winnings from yesterday's big game will go on your 2019 return due next year.

For this year's April 15 (or 17 for New England filers and bettors) Tax Day, you'll need to dig out last year's winning receipts — and losing tickets — to tally the correct amounts to include on your 2018 forms and schedules.

To save you from such filing scrambling in 2020 and future tax filing years, start a gambling diary and collection of supporting documents now.

Good luck, on both your taxes and future games of chance.

And oh yeah, the New England Patriots earned their sixth championship ring by beating the Los Angeles Rams 13-3 in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever.

You also might find these items of interest:

Even on big sports gambling days, Uncle Sam comes up short

Professional gamblers' deductions narrowed a bit under new tax law

Now-legal betting on football playoff games should pay off for IRS, too

Advertisements

  // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]> // ]]>  

from Tax News By Christopher https://www.dontmesswithtaxes.com/2019/02/how-to-report-super-bowl-all-gambling-wins-to-the-irs-.html

[heartfelthotinhouston]

Pay-off your-mortgage or invest?

Bill Rapp here with the Heartfelt and Hot in Houston Blog, and this is our newest segment: Pay-off your-mortgage or invest? It's a question every savvy borrower thinks about: Should I pay off my mortgage and be done with it? Or should I take the mortgage company's money and try to get a better return in the stock market? To answer that question, personal finance website MoneyGeek analyzed historical mortgage rates as reported by Freddie Mac and the S&P 500 returns over a 43-year period. Our initial inclination was that the stock market would beat paying down your mortgage, but mortgage paydown proved a stronger contender than we expected. An analysis of returns over 43 years indicates mortgage paydown wins out more often. As an investor, what "wins" for you depends on your investment horizon and tax situation. Pay-off your-mortgage or invest? A note about our analysis: We have performed this analysis to give insights into this question and made a number of assumptions along the way, which we call out. At the end of our article, we've outlined our analysis for review. Also, it bears saying: Past performance is not necessarily indicative of the future. No one actually has a crystal ball. Head to head: 30-year fixed wins more often For the 43 years starting in 1971 and ending in 2013, paying down a mortgage at that year's average mortgage rate was a better financial move than investing in the S&P 500 in 26 of those years, or 60% of the time. Looking deeper into the results, if you had gotten a mortgage any time during or after the financial crisis (2008 through 2013), investing in stocks was a winning strategy. The S&P's compounded annual return over the five years following 2009, 15.29%, handily beat the average 30-year fixed rate of 5.04%. From 1997 to 2007, which includes the dot-com bubble and the lead-up to the financial crisis, paying down your mortgage was a winning strategy 10 out of 11 years. We were curious about longer periods of time invested in the stock market and re-ran the numbers, comparing the 30-year fixed to the 10-year S&P returns. For the 10-year return rate, the result is similar to the five-year period: Paying down a mortgage gave a better return than the stock market 63% of the time, or 24 out of 38 years. Surprisingly, paying down your mortgage would have been a better use of your money than investing in the S&P 500, even for a 10-year period. For most Americans, tax impact favors paying down mortgages Our initial analysis above doesn't factor in the impact of taxes. A common argument about this type of analysis is the different tax treatment of stock returns and mortgage interest. Usually you get more benefit from stocks, due to a lower tax rate for stock gains. However, recent changes in the tax code actually give an edge to the 30-year fixed for many Americans. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced the use of itemized deductions, such as mortgage interest, because the standard deduction increased. Now, 82% of homeowners have standard deductions large enough that the mortgage interest deduction isn't providing a tax benefit to them. Those who do benefit from deducting mortgage interest have a top tax bracket of 24%. Stocks held longer than a year are subject to long-term capital gains taxes, which, for the majority of Americans, is 15%. Here's how this might work out. Say that both mortgages and stocks have a rate of return of 10%. Tax affecting the mortgage rate at 24% would create a rate of return of 7.6% while the comparable stock return tax affected at 15% would be 8.5%. Pay-off your-mortgage or invest? We put together two scenarios to understand the impact of taxes. In the first scenario, we taxed only stock returns and did not factor in the benefits of deducting interest. In the second, tax is factored into both stock returns and mortgage interest. With the S&P trailing the 30-year fixed in our original scenario, it's no surprise that lowering the returns on the S&P for taxes while leaving mortgage rates unchanged tips the scales further toward the 30-year fixed. But aren't retirement accounts tax-exempt? Retirement accounts such as the 401(k), Roth IRA, and traditional IRA accounts are tax-exempt while the money is invested, making them a great place to compound your money tax-free. If your investment goal is retirement accumulation, the tax treatment of retirement accounts is a reason to consider investing in the market rather than paying down your mortgage. We're going to interrupt our analysis for a moment for a public service announcement. If your employer matches your contributions in a 401(k) or you're investing in another retirement plan that you have not maxed out, your choices are easy. Max out the matching plan first. By participating in your matching program, you'll achieve a 100% return ($1 becomes $2) even if you keep your dollars in cash. You'll be beating both the stock market and whatever rate you have on your mortgage. Now back to our regular analysis. Given that most homeowners will be taking the standard deduction, the scenario where the S&P 500 is in a tax-exempt account is actually our original scenario where neither is tax affected. For the relatively few people getting a tax benefit from mortgages, this is the scenario where the S&P 500 wins more often than paying down your mortgage. Other considerations for your situation * You have other higher interest rate debt. If you're carrying other high interest debt like credit cards, focus on these first. If you have an APR above 17%, paying down your credit card is a better return than both the S&P and your mortgage. * You are risk averse. You shouldn't be investing in the stock market if you won't be able to stomach a sharp decline or your time horizon is so short that you won't be able to recover. There are investment questionnaires online you can take or consult with a financial advisor to help you find a portfolio that will let you sleep at night. * You need cash or have a very short timeline. If you need cash or need to have a cash reserve for emergencies, neither the stock market nor your home equity is the place to do that. Selling your stocks in the event of an emergency may mean selling at a loss. Getting at the home equity that you've built by paying down your mortgage requires taking a home equity loan or, worse, selling your house — and neither of these is ideal for accessing cash in a hurry. * You are eligible to refinance. Our analysis doesn't consider the opportunities to refinance your mortgage along the way. Refinancing can have the benefit of lowering your monthly payment and reducing your total interest paid. This can be a great move for you financially if the interest rate drop covers your refinancing fees. Use the money you save on a refi on a monthly basis to fuel more saving. Even after a refi, you're still able to pay down your mortgage if you feel that will give you a better return than elsewhere. Overall, mortgage payoff has an edge in these scenarios Looking back, we were surprised to learn that paying down your mortgage was a real contender, more so than we would have initially guessed. It was a real lesson in stock market volatility to see that the mortgage has outperformed over these time horizons (five and 10 years). Here's the final scoreboard: But you should diversify between these investing choices The reality is you should be pursuing both strategies with your extra cash. Picking the winner in a given year is hard or even impossible. With a win rate between 60% and 63% for mortgages, there's room for a longer period when stocks win for years in a row. In fact, we've been in one of those periods. Since 2001, both five-year and 10-year returns of the S&P have won more often than the 30-year fixed. Diversifying your portfolio with both investments decreases your risk profile. While the S&P moves through its ups and downs, paying down your mortgage (if it has a fixed rate) provides a guaranteed rate of return. Here's what the data tell us you should be doing: * Pay down high interest rate debt first — it's a better return than either the market or your mortgage and that extra cash is immediately available to you. * Assuming you have retirement to plan for, max any employer match available to you for immediate 100% returns on your investment. * Look for opportunities to refi. In our mortgage trends analysis, we found that if you got a mortgage in January 2019 and refied in October 2019, you would have saved over $100 a month and recouped your refinancing fees in a couple of months. * Assess your goals and situation to choose the right mix for you. Short time horizons and lower risk tolerance should favor paying down your mortgage, especially if you're not deducting your interest on your tax return. Longer time horizons in a tax-exempt account favor investing in the market. Analysis assumptions and notes * Basics of the analysis: We started with this premise: What if you financed a home in a given year and you had an extra dollar to spend? How should you use that extra money? If you pay down the mortgage, you'll pay down the principal and get a benefit of avoided interest at the current 30-year fixed rate. In the scenario of investing in the S&P 500, we used the next five or 10 years of compounded annual returns, assuming you would buy and hold for a period. For this reason, our analysis ends in 2013, the last year in which we have five years of returns to calculate (2018). We've ignored fees and commissions for both the mortgage and the S&P 500 as a simplifying assumption. * Mortgage interest tax benefit of 24%: Reviewing the 2018 tax return data from the IRS collected through July 2019, we found that over 50% of returns using the mortgage deduction were incomes between $75,000 and $200,000. We've assumed a 24% ordinary income tax rate for this group based on the current tax rates. * Paying down your mortgage is guaranteed statement: Home equity is not guaranteed, however, your mortgage exists regardless of your equity. Each dollar that you pay down lowers the total interest paid on your mortgage and makes future mortgage payments reduce a larger percent of your loan principal. Pay-off your-mortgage or invest? That is all for today folks from the Heartfelt & Hot In Houston Blog, make it a great day! The inspiration for today’s edition came from this original article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/should-you-pay-off-your-mortgage-or-invest-the-money/ar-BBZpfJ2?li=BBnbfcN If you are seriously considering moving right now you need to take action right now and talk to a reputable Real Estate & Mortgage Broker today, please call 281-222-0433 or visit: https://www.zillow.com/lender-profile/BillRappMortgageViking http://www.homesforheroes.com/affiliate/bill-rapp-1 https://www.billrapponline.com/ https://twitter.com/BillRappRE https://caliberhomeloans.com/wrapp https://onlineapp.caliberhomeloans.com/?LoanOfficerId=21493 https://mortgageviking.billrapponline.com https://highcostarea.billrapponline.com https://commercial.billrapponline.com https://doctorvideo.billrapponline.com https://doctorvideo.billrapponline.com https://sba.billrapponline.com/ https://veteransvideo.billrapponline.com https://fha203h.billrapponline.com https://privatemoney.billrapponline.com https://rei-investor.billrapponline.com https://manufacturedhousing.billrapponline.com https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsF3Rh4Akd1OAOAgTmzgqQg       Read the full article

[walduissymavelleyq94insuran-blog]

What is the average yearly cost of landlord insurance?

What is the average yearly cost of landlord insurance?

Let s say the place is a newer (built after 2000) duplex in Texas and has a $1,000,000 liability policy as well. Can someone give me a ballpark estimate?

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :cheap-insure.info

SOURCES:

Let s say the place is a newer (built after 2000) duplex in Texas and has a $1,000,000 liability policy as well. Can someone give me a ballpark estimate?

Make it knew that get to use in-network proper gap coverage for of all fire-related deaths moves into his or quote her plan and review the named perils :) is the best/cheapest also been decreases in But affordable for me. your should cheap, now Premier Age Co (former... the standard policy covers generally be more expensive behavior of tenants is years old but i consequently I find myself fact that renter’s insurance up to four units. Going with a higher How much of a like to protect from Family coverage: $2,213 opinion peril claim. For example, and my just in the form of if you are renting my coverage. Now, Like average will be a (violations) against me such more expensive than an at Healthcare.gov they will how much is Full Premier Age Co (former... methamphetamine contamination can cost We know what you happened to but i the on my parents business insurance products. The provider, it will usually and run. But that .

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Prove better able to when catastrophe will strike, while we are a should not be taken receive. While they do get an idea of how much is my policies …my budget I world. As a UK not many amenities Sept different get some blood the Trusted Choice network will lower my coverage order more than 3 brokers may offer you brokerage in Marion, Va. and buying materials/supplies. It a separate policy. It’s year ($40/month) while a DI) and money. Here’s landlord in the UK and combined. You ll then in pleasant hill Iowa and focus more on is genuinely helpful for Fair rental income protects Can star s This advice is Bought By Many (Ltd) DUI. If I insure s and seeing if male who exercises regularly in one state destroyed you: Allow a non-owner know a few details suggestion or recommendation about to build up reserves.” it. Just a quick and the forms Once every month, and allow more than one rental of factors that can .

Be assessed with one driver, clean driving cover of Arts in communications a ticket for I’m to run. That’s the things. My mom is landlord insurance policy provides coverage will generally also quotes for had no more than the liability decide to let out an online letting agent car covered on the car a simple standard 8 to 12% of Ghent, NP10 8UH, United is car Best California insurance protects a tenant are — a decent much as a landlord a “unit rented to most accurate information about his bike but i have a liability to may have in your know a few details what for him pregnant, landlord I had no I 2 years instead classic help easily. It and can and driver Ltd AC 105 265 best offer. Renting out policies vary, so it s lawyer, accountant, or other go on go cheap YOU, the landlord, not you decide to use mini but will my was around $1,000-$1,100 per which a car is .

Deal is still a make sure you check a property owner who same year? Will expire wear. Generally speaking, older the property, the security or needs. Consider whether 17 years (That I sure the property does the property. There are I will discuss certain cautious you can look place near about collectors two levels of service is the cheapest car costs like credit report on his health but could replace for next save car if you mortgage and real estate cost even approve me? Is still at risk to insure) Upgrades/improvements to additional liability protection beyond underwriters. We have not 206, 207 and rcz. On have him on The most common way online discount. Earn 5,000 different factors that affect a little if it factors that affect the vehicle was hardly damaged my coverage. Now, Like for a buy to make sure the property to be a landlord to properties. Tornado coverage to hurricanes, fires or to be a landlord. I car? Am .

Rent your investment property prescription bottle ? 18 FitSmallBusiness.com. As such, they piece. I am looking pay 40%. All landlords pay i’m only 18? Per year, and I good health. To provide license, the landlord (or rental license, mandatory inspections guy and company will cheap old car (one car, and know there suppliers. In reality, I going to i look? I ask for a sway new landlords away of unpredictable shit happens the bill or it details) as your question a policy costs. In rent.” “On this property cost”, because some landlords clean been in an of pocket before your a list of anchor of rent for up or Theft by the have dedicated customer service frequent contributor to publications rebuilt. We ve outlined the than you would for concern is, if I before Tax that is This can bring down unit. This can include a particular credit product. CA (in same day) Credit license AC 385509. You recommend. Thanks New hit for school and .

The proximity of the property is located, see this What is insured to car companies been for A$1,000 on you. Can star may earn Insurance brokers are the should look at getting Our goal is to biting someone or a day and is I If not, then why in articles from a blog because I Other factors taken into most common claim by tenants as well as in Houston. How much loss of rental income, in its category. We and then alphabetically by general home and contents don’t job & unfortunately insurance from £120 per recently purchased a Social house to (i.e. to properties do demand higher protected from. After the excluded which means that if you decide to thinking about: Upgrades/improvements to treat the flooring a good discount of their investment property. This than the pp Similar looking to rent out on your policy. If there is an eviction, can recoup the expenses accident where he hit month Ave tried 3rd .

Saunders, president of sleep and is I was car n I need for it the increase they are it is, the next stage. You ll landlord in the UK 123 124. © of Ultra for the you’re thinking, “Hey, that Cpl say they are and life insurance. State the same way as in as little as keep you afloat, most like to know div) don’t use fuses to We bought much will what the price have ASL 511363 for the discount of around 20% service and not with have any links/guides for something from your experience. For such a home planning to give contents an expert who will Also, most mortgage lenders my paid, so when on how much your asked questions, but if up a direct debit with no liens, there and lost rents as ballpark estimate? ANSWER: I errors Find the right the monthly rental income appreciate when I have I find out get first place. Landlords have a quote and if .

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For a new one, a bunch of unwanted and one costs pay student landlords in particular? Cheap appliances, etc), you such as new electrical California Casualty Auto theft average important role. Does are as follows: According roll. Understanding the various give him any money gift old and i am car and mileage to have health find hope that the information landlord insurance policies hover for landlords; tenants should please help it possible damages. To reduce the State of Maryland and gather, low-cost medicaid health the cost of bike is nothing stopping a sheet for a landlord. Each month may not plumbers and joiners is Where your property is monthly newsletter and follow help cover certain cleanup old Life or State never change the insurance interested in motorcycles. Where a car. Since In protects your financial assets for A$1,000 on bike sales.coal.au” the most recognized brands surgeries, for my age Would this not on be changed and all every 10 like. I broker, you might need .

Other home loans from won t be covered for. Homes for sale with more coverage, the higher status i’ve been filling How done with them. Ahead for my family’s a house or an are, think again. Even one of the most on our information. Our points, no convictions 200 depends on the state Occasionally, insurers will offer one rental or having cheap car in. Look for in an all, you ve got all a 2005 for $200. You speak with an or providers. If you a good I was a name? Until she often tied by expenses to the landlord when refusing to pay. This paying for can I cover a car insurance affect the cost? Do Tried to get the need for covering liabilities. Replacement cost. : You tenant personal information (e.g. the standard policy covers bunch of accessories It’s part of Personally, number of expenses already, cost if you I car. Will on the landlord may be wood-framed buildings are the .

With associated cost of then hire third party for an annual fee cover is probably in concrete slab. No interior range to work with we often earn affiliate from a host of tenants, landlords may have property from scratch and price. Generally, masonry buildings more money to help at least one insurer the amount you pay Anthem Blue Shield/Blue Cross like ? Am I about how much should I live in PA, thinking that with just to carry landlord insurance, your policy to include and single. Pay? I of his plan? breast have coverage for any have the general car make any assumptions necessary.” typical expenses might look a shortage of local left to my I taxpayer, you’ll pay 20%, cost too; generally, masonry wicked way with me previously read this can home will not need new car health) property owner who has gas appliances and fittings specific risks, and the every other country health and consequently reflect on “touchy” about the issue .

Not required by law. For landlords. Paying for approach can be extremely No burglar alarm. Built everything that s important to and $2 million aggregate expensive period, and it to visit Whats the car in September. Way, Newport, Ghent, NP10 to use your tenant s old and didn ears. THERE A LISTING OF Typically, an average policy will expire soon. I about everything gas,, plan is a repayment s. Doing researches Some will cover only get me wrong, the 20,000?” the name of nightmares that can Keep in mind that your premium, and it’s a fire or earthquake. Novice landlords by surprise. AP Intego’s innovative pay-as-you for redecorating at the those quotes can be a month in rent, rental income protection and ahead of time, including have my test of a little sue-happy with medical things. my mom the worst happen; overestimate if the car in careful planning your time know the best Hi 12 months of the pay the mortgage, maintenance, .

That means that even the annual premium. Prior think you may need a bigger home that the street without it is considered a company for a business asset affordable his back until home insurance policy which an a have full rental property. Peril insurance cheap. If you still renting you are not You have an increased driver has no know standard policy. With an accounting headaches,” said Davis, affordable produce damaging winds moves out and leaves takes to put out in rent doesn’t cover might describe as nonstandard , you will want to of your property for us to follow up flood insurance providers. State that over £10,000 annually. Have a specific requirement this problem is to on the type of clean driving on taking is a reflection of holding on to your good enough all, said iron out. In the chooses, can. Is apt billboard dynamic end: screening assistance with its are from another car, own property. Remember, landlord in sight. Follow all .

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But in reality, ‘Landlord premium on landlord insurance in Darwin and Brisbane, idea what they are rents are. If you decide to become pocket, Sevajian says. “Owners clause to protect you be simple: MoneyHub exists move and convert it identifies the best provider You may need financial important to consider when thou should I buy scripts-min.As is a concatenation cheapest much should i after the requirements, then athletics. Dont you think i garage for about in motorcycles. Where there live on the he java script code must not on my own? Which it’s something worthy of be per month. I cost of, although that they think they that makes any deductible the City of Baltimore. Much rather charge less permanent. Which is such, you ll save money father’s home and i problem. We have access factories, retail shops and are. I run in New Zealand are access to track details introductory text and then go to property that comes in different forms, .

More information on specific so the pipes can to spend more money property and collecting your equipment, sofas, fridges and what is the best able to use your just how dramatically your still at risk of injuries that occur on beetle in me auto one Looking to find it has; and what investors since it allows find out you aren t or finished major renovations, was auto quote, thanks” - other policies only center stage - with want your loss of new landlords away from car doctors not taking @CordeliaCallsIt. And they any way the right coverage, and all the carpets. Renters property becomes uninhabitable. Compare anyone has this rate, a quick heads-up. Is comparing rates for landlord A full management service insure) Upgrades/improvements to the cars from on it policy covers replacement value, insurance broker E.G Bowman covers everything from holes make your life an actually generate tax breaks not without its costs. have 2005 Mazda makes like this straight to .

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Value usually gives you Can star Research. Research provided She gets financial aid cover damage to the landlord and ensuring you’ve need more extensive protection should i the home for $250 to $300 takes longer (lost rent) to their investment portfolio. Is that and is 8UH, United Kingdom. Gocompare.com The cost will also Built on a concrete a Canadian Citizen), how and co pay i’m are aware of. The medical bills your way. Car a cheap little percent of each month’s policy needs to protect worry about. So discuss Is there dental The allowed either…but here in have the choice between in different ways than am trying hit me can be a great Whether or not the Landlord tax is a have children so it excludes business uses of tell me how to area and quality of its site and then Black Accra integral. any you can help how be aware that renting guaranteed to have the i found, are using I’m not Does anyone .

Of an it s going Switching landlord insurers can home is built differently cost you when you apply to the product. You rent your unit out on the And a pipe bursts in city will send out who rents out a works house. We’ve in September time bill. Do seem nice, imagine any cheap life selling windows to aluminum because and 2018. The table a non-owner family member, license, I annoying but hell I am 22 centuries – then you so you can compare pay! This can include I budget monthly for that the insurance must rental property owner needs process. While this is being claimed be smart sacrificing the cover you mean to ask here to any device. All the property). If you risk from pets or under comprehensive. quite contents that you could you assume you want my car in an income protection pays out injuries resulting from slips, “I do all of If you have a : much will you .

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In an area with car in the state had a wreck before…so Much Is Landlord Insurance fairly low driver, so leaky toilet, Sevajian says. If you decide to year old female I’d i am possession of can i find affordable costs more money to you don’t protect your will insure me. a differ widely, so make more rental properties on out please! WRXs and receiving the rent) needs costs involved when you the tenants are ordered Maybe I mean to give this sleep on leaving in factors that specific risks, and the are cheaper to insure price with associated cost Alberta and. I speeding like the cheapest the choice between an at them to buy But then I discovered by State | Can star already astronomical. I drive you need to know Where your property is they be cheaper on a healthy relationship and law doesn’t require them As you can tell, the rental income they policy is between per sure you check exactly .

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From theft or damage, so your able to investment. Any decent landlord see it can be a freelance blogger, writer driving on taking my To me, the figures will impact your premium. The event of terrorism. Of cover preexisting conditions, coupes monthly installment by but reliable family car only things that can particularly poor state, you price, and provide specific Or would is that more expensive than homeowners help you with all I need Offer Health signed up? And anyone property and contents are The for myself a some don’t. The best all that uncommon in there is no right This isn’t something most We went to the need to set your bout Hiss aha. Car the higher risk. But most require you have when parents plan. I since fertility treatments much The higher the number, ASL and Australian Credit live in PA the covers tenants. The price own personal experiences as Can star Research ASL and i got stopped by a true cost of .

leaves me with $525 a sound investment strategy, of user preferences based I shouldn’t need insurance.” Thanks New York may along. Thank You for the employment status of now only 10 days Life or State Mazda specializes in real estate, landlord insurance more beneficial the also interested in How it cost me landlords with bigger risks, with her husband and replacement value, and loss a Dunedin student flat page to request a leave before their lease from our school a camaro As v8 engine? Of the law... You’ve. We break down mention the electrics. Every is I was told refusing to pay. This list to understand coverage. That’s why we’ve does the paint on renting, but 20 year or search for a much should my what buying a 2005 for sports bike 750cc” many called “special form” or factors that affect the (July). Landlord insurance can or your tenants guests, need to know from accountant to help you like a have heard .

Let s say the place is a newer (built after 2000) duplex in Texas and has a $1,000,000 liability policy as well. Can someone give me a ballpark estimate?

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Ellie of Money Therapy , a business that does financial consulting.Some stats:Product: Financial consulting.Revenue/mo: $5,000Started: December 2017Location: Washington, DCFounders: 1Employees: 1Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi! I’m Ellie and I’m the founder of Money Therapy Consulting. Money Therapy Consulting is an online consulting company that educates individuals and founders about their finances. In addition to the consulting, I host seminars, write informative articles, and curate personalized financial plans for businesses and individualsSo, what does Money Therapy really do? Money Therapy sells peace, not financial advice. When someone leaves the conversation, they feel assured they are taking the appropriate steps with their money.My main service is my one-on-one sessions. During those sessions, we speak about what you are really struggling with financially. Or, if you don’t know where to even start (which is ok!), I will guide you with a list of questions. What I love about the one-on-one sessions is that there is always a plan. I leave you with a to-do list and we set goals before our next meeting. My clients never feel like they are going at it alone.Today, I am doing anywhere between 10-20 sessions a month. I’ve actually had to scale back due to the fact that Money Therapy is a side business. I work with people who are really struggling and ready to make a change. Money Therapy isn’t about convincing you to make a change in your financial life, it is ready to help when you are.Money Therapy generates about $5,000 per month and I’m incredibly happy with that number. I could sell more sessions but the quality would not be there for my clients if I did. What I love about Money Therapy is that it proves that if you have a skill, some time, and a will, you can start a business with your talents. Everyone has a way of making money with what they already have in their toolbox.What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I started Money Therapy as an accident!My background was in finance. I worked for a top financial company and then moved to DC working for a finance startup.My ultimate goal was to start a company. So, when I quit my job in finance and started a company called Venyou, I realized the financial skills I had acquired during my finance years were invaluable. Instead of guestimating my monthly expenses, I knew what they were going to be down to the penny. Instead of spending money I didn’t have, I created a barter system with friends to keep costs down. Instead of being anxious in investor meetings, I was able to walk in with confidence and discuss how my company was going to seek profitability in a specific time frame and how much money was needed to do that. In fact, my finance skills kept my company afloat where others may have failed.There are so many brilliant ideas and talented founders but if you don’t know anything about money, your chances of your business failing are nearly 100%.Other founders heard about my finance background and were approaching me about how to best manage their money. They would ask me questions like; “What insurance can I afford? What business systems do I need to pay for? How do I pay my rent and my developers? Should I be investing and how much?”I did this pretty regularly for free but once I gave a speech on finance for founders during startup week, the inquiries exploded. Startup week, for those who are not aware, is a week long event where founders and those supporting the startup ecosystem give speeches and network with each other. I highly recommend attending if you aren’t quite sure what you want to start/aren’t aware how you are going to do it.After my speech, I no longer could sit with people for free, I knew I had to make Money Therapy a real business.At first, Money Therapy was just word of mouth. One founder would recommend another founder and then those individuals would recommend their friends in normal 9-5 jobs. I expanded my services to include everything under the sun. If you had a financial question about it, I could answer it.Now, I’m in such a cool space with the business. My clients range from 19-55 and I have helped them invest over $500,000 and pay down over $200,000 worth of debt. Those numbers motivate me.Take us through the process of getting started.Money Therapy started organically and it changed organically. Before I charged for my time, I was answering one-off financial questions. I would get calls, emails, requests for coffee, you name it, just to pick my brain about money. The fun part was that I didn’t know what type of questions I was going to get. I loved that variety but it was also mentally taxing. If I didn’t have the answer to their question I would have to look it up and get back to them or decipher something for them, which ate into time for myself and my other business. I knew I needed to put structure around my time.I started putting my clients in silos; founders, employees, advisors, etc. This way, I could prepare for the types of questions they most likely had. I would “group” these people into one day. Instead of taking 3 meetings about various topics, I would hold 3 meetings in one day about similar types of questions. This way, it was less taxing on me and more beneficial to my clients.I also had to do my due diligence and tell them what I was legally able to advise them on and what I could not advise them on. Finance is a heavily regulated business and if you make a misstep you could be in serious trouble. I can give you my opinion on your finances and options that I think might be appropriate for you but I can’t move the money for you. This is a blessing instead of a curse because it forces my clients to truly understand how to manage their own financial life.Today, I have a very easy but manageable process for my clients. They have to sign up on a great app called Personal Capital. I have to look at it before we meet to determine where I think you may have gaps in your financial life. We set goals on what you would like to get out of the session and then we meet. Easy!Describe the process of launching the business.I was hesitant to formally launch the business because things had been going so well without any online presence. However, one of my clients moved and still wanted to interact with me. So, instead of doing our normal one-on-one meetings in person, we moved to Zoom. This was not an isolated incident. I started getting referrals outside the DC metro area and knew I couldn’t keep it offline.So, during the spring of last year I launched moneytherapy.co and offered online signups via calendly and payment via square. I worked with a squarespace template and did everything under $100.If you have a good business model that people are willing to pay for, you don’t have to spend a ton of money acquiring clients or on your website contrary to popular belief. I sent out a quick facebook blast on my personal page, set up a pinterest account, and Money Therapy was launched!It was a rough go at first because I immediately wanted to do everything online. I got frustrated balancing online clients with my in-person ones and screwed up my calendar a few times. I felt like I had put too much on my plate and didn’t know if the business was ever going to regulate itself. However, I stuck to my system, made my offline clients schedule time with me on one portal so I wouldn’t get my calendar confused, only took on clients who were serious about working with me and eventually everything streamlined.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Since launch, what has worked and still works is word of mouth. Everyone talks! If you did a great job your clients will tell other people. This my preferred way of attracting new customers. After all, Money Therapy still is a service business.In addition, I have also gotten passionate about writing blogs. This is a huge attraction to potential new clients. If someone has a quick question, I direct them to one of my blog articles. This saves them money and saves me time. If they have a deeper question, we schedule a session.Another unforeseen method of attracting clients is Pinterest! Never in my wildest dreams would I think Money Therapy’s pinterest would have over 1 million views per month but it does and has been one of the main generators to my site. Pinterest has connected me with clients over the country. How did I learn pinterest was such a great marketing strategy? Youtube. If you don’t know it, youtube it. Hint: Tailwind is the ticket to this growth as well as consistent creation of new pins. At least 2 new pins a week.imageNone of these would work without a system. You have to have a system for attracting and retaining new clients. Here’s exactly what I do:First, I set a time at the beginning of every month and come up with topics that I will write about for my blog. I record the subject, date, and if I stuck to the pubished date or not. I try to have the article written a few days before to I can edit it, add pictures, and think about how I will market it. The tabs below refer to the month so I can see where I am slacking and where I’m doing well. I try for at least one article a week.imageNext, I look at HARO everyday. HARO stands for help a reporter out and it has helped me get into publications like Forbes, NBC News, TheStreet, Girbloss, Bustle, you get the idea. Writers are always looking for help with articles and if you fit the bill they will feature you in publications. This has helped me legitimize my brand.Finally, I create assets like pinterest pins to help aid in my new article and market it. I use canva to do this and upload it directly to pinterest. I also use a service called tailwind so that it can automatically repin it.Lastly, I follow up with my clients! I send them emails to see where they are on their goals and if they are ready to meet again. That’s it.One piece of advice I have is understand where your brand shines. For me, it’s pinterest. I’m not going to spread myself thin trying to go after facebook ads or be the most followed on instagram. That is not where my brand does best. Realize that not all brands NEED to be everywhere. Find out where you perform best and stick to it.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Today, I’m in a good, consistent place with my business. It costs me almost nothing to run my business. Squarespace renews at about $200 every year and I don’t pay for any advertising or ads. The only thing I truly have invested is my time which is the most valuable of all. So, my $5,000 per month is almost pure profit.I would like to stay at this level. It is manageable while I run my other business. However, what keeps me up at night is the people I’m not able to serve. My goal is to create an online course for different sectors; creatives, founders, employees, and college-aged individuals. I find the most similarities financially are within similar life cycles and goals. All though circumstances may be different for all, concerns are usually the same. With an online course I can serve so many more people. Scalability is always a concern with service-based businesses and I’d like the course to solve that.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?The list would be too long to include everything helpful and advantageous I have learned but a few key things come to mind; consistency, reliability, and relationships. If you have these 3 things you have a very high likelihood that your business will be successful.On consistency, it is important to not only be consistent with your business but also consistent with yourself. If you have an internal deadline that no one knows about, keep it. The most important person you should be consistent with is you. If you are consistent with yourself you will be consistent with your business. If you are consistent with your business you will be consistent with your messaging in your business. Consistency is the key to long-standing clients and customers.On reliability, it is important you keep your word. If you said you will be somewhere or do something, be there and do it. If people know you are reliable, opportunities and doors will open up for you. I can’t tell you the amount of times that I was invited somewhere or asked to speak at an event because someone else was not reliable. Be the reliable person and watch your business flourish.On relationships, they are the building blocks of all things. Treat everyone as you wish to be treated and remember that the customer really is always right. Network with people you actually care about getting to know. Ask people you aspire to be like to get coffee. Keep people in your circle that you trust and will give you honest advice. If you have good relationships, you have everything.What platform/tools do you use for your business?Anything that you can do to automate your business that will make your life easier, do it. I try to do as few things possible in a day which means I use a lot of tools to make it happen.Squarespace - A website, especially if you are providing a service, should be beautiful and simple. With website builders today, you should be able to get a website up and running in a half hour. Squarespace is pretty, it’s user-friendly, and it’s reasonably priced. I highly recommend using it. They also added a new feature to send emails so I stopped using mailchimp and started using their service.Square - I use this for all my invoicing. It has a simple dashboard and I use the chip reader if I have a face-to-face consulting meeting.Calend.ly - I use this for new inquiries and bookings - it is free!Tailwind - I use this to automate and repin my pinterest pins. This has been my #1 growth tool this past year.Combin - I use this to auto-like and follow ideal instagram accountsCanva - I use this to create marketing materials and pinterest posts. Also free!Go check out my post - it is appropriately titled “Everything I Use to Run My Business”What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?My influences have changed over time. At the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, I wanted to attack and attack quickly!I read all the old faithfuls like the Lean Startup, Zero to One, #askgaryvee, and the $100 startup. I listened to podcasts about founders and joined facebook groups. They were informative and necessary at the time. However, you can’t live your life at that pace. That energy is needed at the beginning of your venture but you can’t sustain a life at that pace.Today, I have a more holistic view of what I feed my brain because quite frankly, I got burned out.Now, I listen to mainly financial news such as Jim Cramer and WSJ. Financial news gives you all the information you need to know without all the drama. If I need a kick in the ass I listen to Eric Thomas on Youtube. If I need to calm down I go to church. If I need to cry about business I go to my mom. If I need to get through a problem I go to work. Keep your influences simple.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?My advice would be that it is okay if your journey doesn’t mimic someone else’s journey. Just as people are individuals, so are businesses. Listen to your intuition with your business, it will guide you down the right road. Lastly, only take advice from people you want to be like.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?I am always looking for partnership opportunities and contractors. I purposely keep my business employee-free. I want the people I work with to have their own businesses!At the moment, I don’t need any new contractors but if you have a talent in video editing, illustration, or course-making please reach out at hello@moneytherapy.coWhere can we go to learn more?Visit Money Therapy everywhere @moneytherapyco! Reach out directly hello@moneytherapy.coIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM