#I used to have a very popular main blog that had like 5000+ followers

[smiletohru]

people liking and reblogging my screenshot posts 😭 like I know I posted them but when this blog gets any attention I’m like Wait No

[danideservedbetter]

Alright so, here’s how things are gonna work.

First off, welcome to this side blog. Since it won’t be jolly fun fandom content and will be a little more personal I decided to separate my health and writing journey from my fandom stuff, although all my fandom content will still be linked on my main blog here.

(I write Izuocha/bnha content which isn’t super popular so if you’re not here for that then yeah, I don’t blame you. But if you are I have a link to our discord and community content pinned so def check it out if you’re interested.)

Secondly, you guys will hear details about stuff relating to my health like what kinds of things affect my disorder based on the tests some doctors are ordering, how I’m trying to improve my diet and activity, and routines and goals I’m attempting for myself. I am underweight, and that’s something I’m going to be talking a bit about, so if that’s triggering following this blog might not be the best thing for you. Details under the cut.

So, what kind of disorder do I have and why did I decide to make a health journey blog? My disorder is called idiopathic hypersomnia. Basically what that means is that when my disorder is acting up (based on factors like stress especially or my generalized anxiety rearing its ugly head) I have the capacity to sleep. And sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. My longest recorded uninterrupted “sleep-attack” was 26 hours long and ever since I caught Covid in January, my body had been slowly growing weaker to the point I was starting to develop atrophy. I’ve had this ten years and my neurologist suspects inactive cells from mononucleosis I caught at 14 was the cause, because other IH patients have linked their sleeping problems to a case of mono or have had it at some point in their lives.

This disease stole many years and many things I’ve looked forward to from me. I lost friends and experiences and failed so many college classes I had to drop out.

I’ve decided I’m taking them back.

It’s not going to be easy. Just as it took ten years to convince myself that my tiredness was something I chose to give into, it took several extra years and many fights with my family to convince them that I had a real actual neurological disorder and that I need help sometimes. My parents and grandmother finally understand that I have to finish college and find a very special boss willing to work around my erratic progress on projects, but the outsiders they married are not as convinced. My grandmother’s husband kicked me out of their house because he wants to be the center of attention and doesn’t like that some days I’m so weak that I needed my grandmother’s help, and my father’s wife thinks I’m a lazy and ungrateful leech who “gets anxiety just being around” me. Both told my father I’ll never be happy so why even bother with me, but my dad is actually striving to understand his own recently-diagnosed PTSD so while we still butt heads he’s understanding that I have to take things day by day because every tiny circumstance affects my disorder.

Now, why did I decide to air all this out? Well, being open about my disorder and how it affects me has helped at least two people that I know of find out that the tiredness they experience isn’t the typical “American work force exhaustion” they were trained to believe is normal. So if I can help even one more, I’ll gladly talk about what this entails and how I deal with it day to day. Another reason is that I’m also one of those big advocates who believes talking candidly about mental health destigmatizes it and sharing ideas can help us grow as people and maybe make it a little easier to deal with.

So now that you know a little bit about me and my disorder, here are my big goals for the next three months provided my university takes pity on me and actually lets me go back.

First up: create routines to train my body to get used to living a full day fully awake. This includes waking up at the same time and going to sleep at the same time. It means getting dressed and going out and doing things, even little things— which I’ll get to in a sec.

Second: I write. I have a novel in limbo and I write fanfics. Writing is a big part of who I am and I’ve written one thing this year, which for a whole six-month stretch is upsetting and disappointing. Today is my reset. In the next 569 days I want to to finish the six stories I have in limbo (except the larger one) and finally reach my goal of posting 200k words in a single year. I wont be hard on myself if I can’t accomplish this because honestly finishing anything in the chaos of my life is going to be a miracle but. There ya go.

Third: go back to freakin college. I don’t care what it takes. Sit down with every official, every lawyer, and every professor it takes to get me back enrolled in classes in the fall.

Fourth: I have several smaller things I have to do, short term goals, stuff like that. I’m gonna create a to do list each day of small tasks I want to get done and while some of these things will be part of my daily routine I am throwing in like one or two things a day that just need to be done. My writing goal will change daily and I’ll keep y’all updated on that with every post I make.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Dani! That’s so much!! Well, a few months ago I remembered hey!! I basically have a computer in my hand, why make it hard on myself. So I downloaded certain apps to help me out. This isn’t me saying “hey go subscribe to these apps because I said so” it’s just that through a lot of trial and error I’ve come to find that these certain apps work for me and I’ve yet to come across one that has the functionality of everything I need.

Tiimo — so this is an app I found developed by people with autism for people with autism to help them develop good habits and routines. It has preset daily schedules (things like morning routines or nightly routines or work routines) and an internal alarm to let you know when to move on to the next task. I myself have extremely low-level aspergers (to the point where my doctor won’t give me an official diagnosis because I didn’t want people think that *it’s* the reason I have issues with school), so moving from task to task can be difficult sometimes and I also deal with getting distracted. This widget also appears on my home screen so I know what I have to do at a glance. You can program in weekly and daily tasks to fully customize your schedule, which is fantastic for someone like me who wants to for example rotate chores. This is hopefully going to help me get my body in the habit of adjusting to routines and transitioning from one task to another, as well as getting important things done responsibly.

Promptly Journals — I’ve been told for a while that journaling is helpful mentally to kind of recenter yourself, so a bit ago I downloaded several journal apps to add to my morning routine. Now some will prefer more creatively free journals, but I prefer this one that gives me small prompts I can do in a short amount of time that just allows me to get my thoughts down. I can even add pictures at the bottom that go with the theme! I’m scared I’ll run out of prompts eventually lol but until then this app works very well for my needs.

Stretchingexercise — Now idk if it’s from lack of sleep from my disorder, the position I sleep in when I do sleep, all the physical labor I’ve had to do in the past couple weeks, my medicine, or w h a t but I suffer from body aches like no one would believe. I know stretching is supposed to help with that, so I downloaded this app to help me do non-demanding physical activity that wakes me up in the mornings and helps relieve pain so I don’t keep having to take pain relievers. This one has different plans for things like muscle tension, back pain, warm ups— and it also gives you rudimentary weight updates (I’m underweight lololol so we’re looking to fix that) or plan updates. It’s worked really well for me so far and gives you animations and descriptions of the workouts (some taken from yoga) as well as timed breaks and a narrated guide. It’s been pretty helpful in temporary relief and if nothing else gets my blood flowing in the mornings.

Widgetsmith Step counter — in addition to the stretching thing one thing my doctor and I discussed that helps with the sedentary lifestyle is simply walking. I’ve needed so bad to relieve my stamina and reverse the atrophy, and walks have been stellar for that. Now I live in the New Orleans area so humidity and heat force me to go at the crack of Dawn, but honestly my weenie dachshund Charlie really enjoys our time out so he goes with me! The CDC recommends 10,000 steps a day which seems like a lot and it is if you don’t get out much. But this gives me an excuse to get dressed and do the hygienic thing and help Charlie be healthy too, as well as give me time for brainstorming because we walk in a truly beautiful area. I’m sure everyone installed widgetsmith with the last iOS update (Apple users anyway) and while at first the step counter was just interesting I’ve since come to rely on it! We do our 5000 in the morning, which of course is half, and I find that other things I do throughout the day typically drive the counter higher. Anything leftover can easily be accomplished by an evening walk in our neighborhood. Now the caveat is that I have to remote have my phone in my pocket because I don’t own a watch or anything fancy lol, but honestly I need to keep it on me anyway so that serves as a good reminder.

Todoist — this one is my FAVORITE. Ever since I’ve decided that I have trouble keeping track of things I need to do and small stuff I need to keep in mind and appointments, etc, I decided to find a list app. This is the one I found that absolutely helps me for everything from my list of room supplies I need to buy, to my reading list, to general tasks I have coming up I need to complete. And its widget functionality keeps it right on my Home Screen! More organized individuals can just use tiimo, but I’m definitely not one of those individuals so this app is sorely needed and appreciated.

And of course, I know building habits the first few weeks is HARD. So for days my body doesn’t respond to my alarms, I have a checklist of the key things I have to do to keep my life as functional as possible.

So that’s that on that. I’m going to try to keep writing updates and my daily goals in a post in the morning, and reblog what I accomplished in the evening. It’s gonna be tough. But I’m thinking if I can start small I’ll be able to build my stamina enough to return to college and be successful when I do. I hope that anyone watching this journey draws some kind of meaning or inspiration from it. And you guys can even follow along if y’all want! Especially for writers or people trying to get healthier. I can’t promise what works for me will work for you (and honestly I expect things to change especially if I get accepted into college again) but hey, I figure it’s worth a shot.

I hope you guys enjoy watching this journey, if nothing else I hope it’s entertaining. And maybe it’ll be successful. I do know that I’m just gonna try for it, and hope it works out.

First daily update to follow

Xoxo

Dani

[ex-sjw-resource]

Tumblr - The Social Media Platform Everyone Used Incorrectly, and How This Has Impacted Mental Health World Wide

A bit of a clickbait-y title, but one that is completely true, and an article we should have written long ago.

Tumblr is a form of tumblog. 

Tumblr did not invent this form of blogging, called tumblogging, a form of short, multimedia blog posts. Twitter is a form of tumblog, as is Wordpress. It is generally a public, more casual form of blogging than previous formats such as livejournal and dreamwidth.

Tumblogging, however, was popularized by Tumblr, whose name is obviously inspired by the original term. Tumblr’s company set out to create a platform where an artist’s original content could easily be shared and spread. The entire website’s design and code ethics are primarily built to help spread someone’s content far and wide, much farther than was previously possible on the internet. It worked by promoting your content to others who might like it, allowing you to tag it for finding in a search engine, and for your fans to easily share it with others. All without the trouble of having to save images to your hard drive and repost elsewhere. This was like something never before seen on the internet -- effortless boosting of your work.

And Tumblr still functions, and sets out to function, for this sole purpose. Tumblr’s design ethics have always been focused on promoting artwork and artists. It’s login screen shows artwork from promoted artists, the dashboard is suggesting new artists you might like, and there’s no privacy features to speak of. I mean, why would there be? This isn’t facebook.

But, if you are like any other user, you know that tumblr isn’t just use to promote artists. If you were like our mods, you long used tumblr as a sort of personal -- yet public -- diary. Even like an instant messaging platform. And if you’ve been here a while, you remember how much of a struggle it was -- and still is, to get the tumblr staff to acknowledge how people Actually use the website. We had to use extension, and still do, in order to make the website bend to our will -- to make it function how *we* wanted it to function.

But Tumblr was never meant to function how we wanted it to function. 

Discourse. We’ve all seen it, and unless your mutuals are the ones making the discourse, then the posts you’ve seen on your dashboard have likely piled on tens of thousands of notes in the span of a few days. That’s exactly what the platform was meant to do -- boost posts.

But no one in the tumblr staff expected it to be a weapon of political war.

If you have an opinion, and you post it on tumblr, how much it’s seen by other people is directly correlated to how many followers you have to begin with. Even tagging it doesn’t really help. Post an opinion that is as well planned and thought out as one with 10k notes? If you only have 5 followers, it doesn’t matter. Your words are essentially meaningless without the sheer numbers required to get it airborne.

So on this platform, no matter your opinion, if you have the follower-base, you will be heard. That’s what this platform is for.

Or, say, you make a post. A deeply, personal post. On a sideblog with 2 followers. And someone manages to find this blog... and reblogs a post to their blog with 5000 followers... one you meticulously tagged #do not reblog.

It’s now being seen by 5k+ people. All at once. No matter if their followers think it was messed up that they reblogged you. They’ve seen it. There’s no unseeing your personal, private post. Even if that person apologizes for reblogging it and deletes the reblog. But there is no undoing that reblog. People have seen it. It will always be seen.

There is no true privacy features on tumblr to speak of. Nothing to the depths and levels of livejournal, and now even twitter has far more robust privacy features than tumblr. An yet... Tumblr’s users expect privacy, because they expect the entire world to be good just for them, to respect their privacy... and if they don’t, it’s not the fault of the person who posted these things on a website built from the ground up for the publication of content, not the opposite.

And this has had dire consequences.

While of course there are many adults using tumblr, adults who have had the experience of the internet before tumblr -- a time when privacy was something we acknowledged was personal responsibility, and there were websites with intensive privacy features such as livejournal if we wished to speak privately -- we must keep in mind that many of tumblr’s users, are in fact *not* adults. People who have grown up where tumblr was their first major social media site. Even people who their first friends were made on tumblr.

People whose entire worldly experience of socializing is a website where there is no true privacy. People who have never known that there is any alternative.

And I feel this is where a lot of anti-sjw discourse or ex-sjw discourse falls flat. Many people, most of these being adults, do not stop to think what of an astounding impact this website and its blogging format is having on young minds still forming. They chide them for being stupid and not knowing better -- but how could they know any better?

How could they know any better when their introduction to the world’s social stage was a website where no one can expect true privacy, and not only that, users actively deny it to each other?

I’ve seen popular blogs reblog posts from private blogs without their permission because they, in their minds, thought they were doing the right thing. That because this post contained something they disagreed with, they were allowed to go against their morals for the greater good.

Tumblr’s youth have built a surveillance culture.

A culture where trespassing into other’s personal space is deemed as holy and pure because of some other reason they could have possibly just made up. And many children here don’t know that there is any other alternative.

Back when facebook was new, it was heavily criticized for the increasing information it demanded from its users. Personal information that you would not give to a stranger on the street. And back then, people laughed it off. Of course facebook wouldn’t go very far, demanding such personal information from its users. People were smarter than that... right?

Fast forward half a decade later. I’m remaking my facebook account, because one day I accidentally logged out, and when I tried to log back in, facebook decided to permanently lock my account unless I coughed up my social security number so they can prove I was a real person.

My social security number. One of the most vital and personal pieces of information I have. To a website, who demanded it so I could continue to speak to my family members online, because facebook had become the only place I could easily contact them. And when I told my family about this, they had just shrugged and said facebook had done the same to them, and they just complied.

Extreme? Yes.

But at least facebook doesn’t demand a list of every single one of my mental illness diagnoses, my genetic racial makeup, my sexuality and gender identity, my opinions... in order to feel safe from other users while using its website.

Tumblr’s youth expects you to carry a detailed form of ID to even be allowed to form an opinion on specific topics.  Tumblr’s youth tells you that privacy is of utmost importance -- unless you say something that upsets them. Then you’re free game.

Most of this could have been avoided if Tumblr had had privacy features built in from the get go.

But most of this could also have been avoided if people had realized the Tumblr staff’s main goal with the website from the beginning.

[techyblogger]

I wasted $19 and 40+ hours on Wealthy Affiliate so you don’t have to... https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/d6khuh/i_wasted_19_and_40_hours_on_wealthy_affiliate_so/

I’m going to provide a full written account of my impressions of Wealthy Affiliate in this post. I also put together a 14-minute YouTube video about it which I’ll link to at the end. Hopefully this will save some people significant time and money, because right now WA is making crazy profit peddling very ineffective training, and I'm not okay with that.

Last December I decided to go "all in" on SEO and affiliate marketing. I’ve been earning a full-time living online since 2010 but mostly as a freelance web designer.

Things have been going well lately:

In July I earned a total of $1,728 from various affiliate programs

In August I earned $2,261

A few weeks back I decided to take things to the next level and started signing up for a bunch of affiliate marketing courses.

The biggest and most popular is one called Wealthy Affiliate.

It’s been around since 2005 and has more than 1.5 million members.

By my calculations, about 5000 new people sign up for a free account there every week, and about 600 of those upgrade to a “premium” account.

(Yes, that means the course generates a TON of revenue. More on this later.)

I signed up for a premium account myself and spent more than 40 hours going through all the training materials.

Now I don’t consider myself an expert affiliate marketer by any means, but I believe I know enough already to recognize bad training when I see it.

And Wealthy Affiliate is really bad training.

To the point where it probably reduces your chances of affiliate marketing success.

I believe there are 7 main reasons for this:

1. OUTDATED TRAINING

I went through all 120 lessons in the core WA training.

Most of the videos I’ve seen in there date from 2015-2016. Some date from as early as 2012.

Much of the text accompanying those videos clearly hasn’t been updated for years either (despite what the “last updated” dates say).

This wouldn’t be an issue... except we’re talking about affiliate marketing here!

This industry evolves FAST! What worked in 2016 isn’t nearly as effective today.

To give but one example, there are 10 consecutive lessons in the core training devoted to Bing and Yahoo PPC.

Those lessons come BEFORE any training on Google PPC, with the justification that “Yahoo and Bing still get around 33% of search traffic online.”

No, they don’t.

As per statcounter.com, Google has held a ~90% market share since as far back as 2009.

No affiliate marketer in their right mind would focus on Bing and Yahoo ahead of Google nowadays.

(Furthermore, the core training in WA seems to get more outdated the deeper you go. Only the free training appears any way recent. A skeptic might say that’s to convince free members to upgrade to a paid account. And once they do, screw em!)

2. OUTDATED CREDIBILITY

Your guide for all the core training is Kyle Loudon, one of the owners of WA.

Kyle reveals 3 of his affiliate sites throughout the training.

I checked them all on Ahrefs last month. The numbers do not look good in 2019.

Here’s the “best” one: [image]

As you can see, that site has been in free fall since 2017. Kyle was adding content up until March 2018, long after the free fall had begun. Now the site receives only 54 visitors from Google each month.

The other main trainer in WA is a guy named Jay Neill. He does the weekly live training webinars for premium members.

The main site he points to as evidence of his affiliate marketing prowess looks like this in Ahrefs: [image]

Not huge numbers, by any means.

And yet, incredibly, Jay claims to be earning $300 PER DAY from that site: [image] + [image]

For proof of his earnings, he offers a single Amazon earnings screenshot from a 3-day stretch way back in February 2016: [image]

I messaged Jay within Wealthy Affiliate and asked him for more recent earnings proof. Here’s a screenshot of our entire conversation: [image]

As you can see, he wasn’t very happy with my inquiries 😕

My last message to him was August 22nd... and no response since.

Given all that, it seems clear to me that both Kyle and Jay have had some success with affiliate marketing in the past, but there’s no evidence that either of them have earned much money that way since 2016.

(Well, Jay surely earns a small fortune as an affiliate for WA, but I don’t think that should count.)

And yet these are the two main people teaching you how to be a successful affiliate marketer in the most popular affiliate marketing course in the world!

Which wouldn’t be such a big deal... if students of WA were actually getting good results from the program.

But if they are, I’m not seeing it.

There’s a blog post on the WA website, written by a well-known affiliate of WA, that purports to list proof and examples of successful WA students in 2019: [image]

I went through the 50+ examples listed and found only 9 reporting what I would consider to be great results.

Perhaps it’s just me, but if the Wealthy Affiliate training is truly still effective these days, I would expect to see a lot more than 9 students having great results over the past several months.

Especially when 600+ people join the premium WA training every single week.

3. MISLEADING CLAIMS

I’ll limit myself to just three examples here.

“It is going to take less than 30 seconds to get a fully operational, profit ready Wordpress website up and running online.”

What you get in 30 seconds is actually a bare-bones WordPress installation, which most web hosts offer with a single click nowadays.

“Wealthy Affiliate members have always noticed notable "boosts" in rankings and traffic with every Google update.”

Within WA, it’s not hard to find members reporting otherwise: [image] + [image] + [image]

“With what we have already given you, you could easily scale a campaign to make over $1 MILLION per year...in fact, if you put your effort into just one of these target audiences, you could likely make that with just one.”

That’s from a training lesson about how to pick an audience to market Wealthy Affiliate to, so you can earn affiliate commissions. (60% of the core training is devoted to teaching members how to refer other people to WA.)

And yes, they really did say “easily” 🙄

4. BAD ADVICE

Limiting myself to three examples here, too.

“There is NO SUCH THING as choosing the wrong niche.”

This point is hammered home many times throughout the training.

And yet, many WA members seem to end up choosing the wrong niche: [image]

Funny that.

List the price in your Amazon reviews

A Wealthy Affiliate member noted this bad advice back in May: [image]

When I checked a couple of weeks ago – more than 4 months AFTER that member’s blog post – the training still hadn’t been updated.

Which means new premium members are still being taught to list prices in their Amazon reviews, and risk getting banned by Amazon as a result.

Manually backup your WordPress site every week

Yup, they really advise this in the core WA training: [image]

Despite the fact that there are free WordPress plugins you can use to automate your website backups, and there have been for years.

5. MISSING CRUCIAL INFO

Going through all 120 core training lessons in WA, I noticed that there was no – or in some cases, grossly insufficient – training on the following topics:

Nofollow

Building backlinks

Affiliate disclosures

Google Adsense

Alternatives to Google Adsense

Caching

Updating content

External linking to authority sites

Citing sources

Outsourcing content

Schema markup

Featured snippets

Video (no training in OEC series)

YouTube SEO

Alternatives to Jaaxy

Which sources of traffic are best and why

Email marketing

Instagram

WordPress page builders

To be clear: most of these topics are addressed – with varying levels of proficiency – within Wealthy Affiliate.

The issue is that they are not addressed within the core WA training material!

So while many of them are crucial to affiliate marketing success, you might never know about them as a member of WA.

6. POORLY ORGANIZED

Within the core WA training, lessons often appear scattered, disjointed, and repetitive.

I get the distinct impression that the entire course was not planned out in advance, but rather pieced together haphazardly over the years.

For example:

It’s not until the 46th lesson of the “Online Entrepreneur Certification” that you receive instructions on how to plan out an article before you start writing it. Which wouldn’t be so bad, if you hadn’t already been advised to write 20+ articles throughout the previous 45 lessons!

In Level 3, Lesson 7 of the OEC you’re advised to set up a Google Adsense account. Then, in the very next lesson, you’re told that actually Google Adsense is a waste of time and you should focus your efforts on affiliate marketing instead.

Level 4, Lesson 9 of the “Affiliate Bootcamp” is about creating your own videos. Five lessons later, the same topic is covered again as if for the first time.

7. BROKEN RANKING SYSTEM

I’ve been amazed at how much time and effort some WA members seem to devote to writing comments and blog posts that add very little value to the community.

For example, I received 18 welcome messages from other members when I upgraded to Premium, the majority of which seemed very generic, as if copied and pasted from a template.

And I’ve seen countless more comments throughout WA that felt like a complete waste of time.

Someone might post a question, for example, and get a response like this:

“I don’t know the answer but hopefully someone else does! Good luck!”

This baffled me for a while, but then I learned about the Wealthy Affiliate ranking system.

If you’re not familiar, all WA members are ranked according to their contributions to the WA community, and the top 25 are referred to as “Ambassadors.”

There’s even a leaderboard: [image]

This explains why you see so many people posting so many generic messages and comments within WA: everyone’s trying to improve their ranking!

But here’s the thing:

It’s entirely possible to achieve a high ranking in Wealthy Affiliate... and still suck at affiliate marketing!

I’ve gone through the leaderboard and found several examples of folks ranking in the top 50 while simultaneously reporting that they’re struggling to earn money from affiliate sites they’ve been working on for years!

This is nothing short of madness.

Presumably the WA ranking system was intended to get more members contributing thoughtful content and helpful comments.

But mostly it just serves as a distraction.

Many folks seem to be so caught up in improving their WA ranking that they’re devoting little time to building successful affiliate sites.

...

To summarize, the 7 big problems I see with Wealthy Affiliate are:

Outdated Training

Outdated Credibility

Misleading Claims

Bad Advice

Missing Crucial Info

Poorly Organized

Broken Ranking System

All of these issues are especially inexcusable for 2 reasons.

FIRST

I think it’s safe to say that Wealthy Affiliate is the most popular affiliate marketing course in the world.

More than 1.5 million members to date. And by my calculations – based on numbers I’ve seen inside WA – another 750 or so sign up for a free account every single day.

That’s a lot of people who rely on the WA training to build a successful online business.

And I’m sorry, but I believe that training is failing those people miserably.

SECOND

About 90 of those 750 daily new members eventually upgrade to Premium.

By my calculations – again, all based on numbers I’ve seen inside WA – each paying member is worth about $300.

Multiply 90 x 300 x 365 and you get $9,855,000.

That’s approximately how much revenue WA is now generating per year.

(Probably an underestimation, actually.)

Granted, WA surely has some big expenses – their hosting costs must be astronomical, for one thing.

But unless my calculations are way off, there should still be plenty of money available to hire a small team of professionals to resolve all the issues outlined above.

But for whatever reason, that’s not happening.

…

To wrap this up:

By many accounts, WA was once a great place to learn affiliate marketing.

Unfortunately, in 2019, that’s no longer the case.

Nowadays the only people getting wealthy from Wealthy Affiliate are:

a) the owners

and

b) affiliates like Jay Neill who write ridiculously biased and misleading reviews of WA so people will click on their referral links.

If your goal is to learn SEO and/or affiliate marketing, please do steer clear Wealthy Affiliate.

At best, their training is unhelpful.

At worst, it will actually reduce your chances of success.

...

Here’s my 14-minute video critique of Wealthy Affiliate, featuring Robert De Niro and an awesome little monkey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQvqUcoUFyE

If you have any questions about WA, I'll be floating in the comments.

submitted by /u/ndoherty13 [link] [comments] September 20, 2019 at 02:48AM

[ciathyzareposts]

Intermission: Med Systems Marathon – 1980 Rundown

by Will Moczarski

Introduction

According to issue 017 of “Compute! Magazine” (Oct. 1981), “MED SYSTEMS has been publishing and distributing software worldwide since 1979”. If my research is correct, Med Systems Software started developing and publishing games for the TRS-80 (and subsequently the Commodore PET and the Apple ][) more or less at the same time. In 1980, they not only released Rat’s Revenge, Deathmaze 5000, Labyrinth  and Reality Ends but also ten more games and applications. Having reviewed the four available adventure games in previous “Missed Classics” playthroughs, I will dedicate this post to a short rundown of the games that don’t really fit the “Adventure Gamer” template, as Med Systems appears to have been a consistently interesting company.

Multiple attempts to contact William F. “Mike” Denman, jr., who apparently was one of the company’s two lead programmers as well as its president, sadly all but failed. I’ve tried several e-mail addresses and social media platforms, but alas, I never even received a reply. The other main protagonist of the company’s early years was Frank Corr, jr., whom I didn’t even find a trace of online. Most of the early games are still available in some form – several of the manuals can also be found in web archives. Many of the games don’t have in-game credits, so there’s basically no telling who wrote the games without surviving manuals. Sadly, three of the adventure games released in 1980 (or even before?) appear to be lost altogether, but more on that below. Through my research I came up with the following timeline of Med Systems games and applications released in 1980:

I am unable to derive the name of the ‘16K Manager’ from its ad. Also, Samurai, Starlord, Reality Ends and Bureaucracy may have been released much earlier as the September ad talks about them being available for other computers as well now. As I didn’t find an earlier ad, this is pure speculation, though. Otherwise, the timeline seems likely: The initial focus on educational games makes sense. I also know that Ghost’s Gallery is basically a variation of the earlier The Playful Professor. Moreover, it makes sense that the text adventures were released before the event of the 3-D continuum games.

When breaking the “16K barrier” was cutting-edge

From 1981, there seems to have been a change. Med Systems also published games by authors who were neither Corr nor Denman – including the late Jyym Pearson of Adventure International fame, as well as Simon Smith and the late Ken Kalish. The company seems to have left behind adventure games in 1983 when they focused on other genres. Their second line of products appear to have been educational games for children and adults alike – some of them might even shed some light on the fact that they apparently meant to start out as Med(ical) Systems. But even without the medical educational game that is The Human Adventure (William F. Denman jr., 1980), many of the games appear to deal with mental illness or popular depictions of “asylums”. This goes for their most popular game, Asylum (1981) which even warranted a sequel (1982), as well as The Institute (1981). The earlier 3-D adventures I’ve already played through also allude to their fiction actually representing a state of mental disorder, and in Reality Ends no less than the dissolution of reality itself is at stake. Med Systems were thus innovative as a (technical) pioneer of 3-D adventure games that fused the genres of the maze game and the text adventure – most successfully in the Asylum games. Also, they were among the earliest companies to tackle mental illness in a computer game – even without resorting to the convenient ‘amnesia’ plot.

With Denman pulling the ‘Crowther’ on me, I can only resort to speculation when trying to piece together the company history of Med Systems. I will try to sort the games chronologically best I can but many facts are still confusing me. Some dates are unclear (was The Farvar Legacy released in 1981 or was it 1983? What is the order of the games released in a given year?) and some games are lost. This is the reason why I’d like to put out a rather unusual…

Request for Assistance: Lost Games – Bureaucracy, Samurai, Starlord (presumably 1980)

Okay, let’s get Starlord out of the way first. I’ve found a listing of Med Systems’ early adventures in the September 1980 edition of “Kilobaud”, including the three mentioned titles as well as Reality Ends, but as I’ve found no further information about that game – as opposed to Bureaucracy and Samurai both of which show up in the 1981 Med Systems catalog available online. Before I found the Kilobaud article I thought that the name may well be a mix-up with Peter Hildebrandt’s Star Trap, published by Med Systems in 1981. I’ve found Star Trap but if anyone was able to elaborate on the existence of Starlord, I’d be more than happy to listen!

I really want to play these!!

Bureaucracy and Samurai are two more tough nuts to crack. Both were apparently released for the TRS-80 (models I and III) as well as the Apple II/e. Other than the 1981 Med Systems catalog (and the ad pictured above), there appears to be no trace of them online. Sure, research is hindered by the 1987 Infocom adventure of the same name (Bureaucracy) and the word samurai also pops up in some other game titles but it’s astonishing how little impact these two games seem to have had. So if anyone can enlighten me about these two games (or even find a copy) I will be very happy about it. I’d just love to present the whole history of Med Systems adventure games and these gaps are not exactly improving my sleep.

Sounds very neat, doesn’t it?

The same goes for Med Systems staff – if somebody knows somebody who’d be willing to talk (Frank Corr maybe?), I’d be more than happy to be able to conduct an interview. I’m well aware that all of these inquiries are very niche but you never know, right?

Marathon Recap: Games I’ve Played So Far – Rat’s Revenge, Deathmaze 5000, Labyrinth, Reality Ends

More speculation ahead! It’s very difficult to reconstruct the timeframe of the Med Systems catalog but Rat’s Revenge seems to have predated Deathmaze 5000 which appears to have predated Labyrinth. Reality Ends may have been an earlier game than at least Deathmaze 5000 and Labyrinth. Deathmaze 5000 and Labyrinth make up the first half of Med Systems’ “Continuum Series”, the other two games being Asylum and Asylum II. Continuum games are 3-D maze adventure games. According to vol. 7 no. 1 of “Creative Computer Magazine” (January 1981) they were all written in machine language, making them exceptionally fast. With every game, the programmers added more adventure game elements, with Labyrinth boasting more puzzles than Deathmaze 5000 and the Asylum games having much more of a plot. William F. Denman jr. was involved in three of the five games (starting with Labyrinth), and he even did the second Asylum game on his own. The engine may well be Frank Corr jr.’s, though, as he (presumably) programmed Rat’s Revenge before the two of them collaborated on Deathmaze 5000, Labyrinth and Asylum.

Denman was the lead programmer on some other games, too. I presume – although without a manual, that’s difficult to say – that he was also behind Reality Ends. The terse writing style is certainly similar and the game also calls the player a dolt if she doesn’t handle the interface properly – like Deathmaze 5000 and Labyrinth do. This may also mean that Reality Ends could have been written by Frank Corr, jr., but Denman appears to have been behind a substantial chunk of the games released in 1980.

There is also a little mystery surrounding a game called Deathmaze 2000. Is this a port or a predecessor? I’ll say a little more about this one below.

Finally, all three games I’ve played through for this blog use literature as a pretext. Deathmaze 5000 relies on the player’s intimate knowledge of Beowulf (and either the bible or the Byrds) whereas Labyrinth lifts its monster from the legend surrounding the labyrinth of Knossos (the minotaur). The minotaur also appears in Reality Ends and the city of Knossos reappears in a Med Systems adventure called The City of Knossos. The hints at ancient literature appear to be another bit of corporate identity along with the aforementioned focus on mental illness. Reality Ends, and I have to thank two anonymous commenters for this as I wasn’t aware of the fact at all, seems to base its whole storyworld on the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. Quite a different role model compared to Beowulf or Plutarch but hey, whatever floats your code (sorry).

You can read the first three playthroughs here: Rat’s Revenge [part of the Deathmaze 5000 posts: [P1] Deathmaze 5000: [P1] [P2] [P3] [P4] Labyrinth: [P1] [P2] [P3] Reality Ends: [P1] [P2]

Skipped Game 1 – The Playful Professor (1980)

The Playful Professor is an educational game written and designed by William F. Denman, jr. It was released in 1980 for the TRS-80 (models I and III) and described by the company as “a mathematics learning aid that provides tutoring in integer mathematics, as well as fractions, for the four basic operations. Demonstrated solutions are completed step by step in a black board format easily understood by grade school children. Problems are presented in a game format that places the pupil in a sixty room mansion. To win, the player must catch the ghost with the key, then get to the front door before the ghost (or other player) recaptures the key. Movement is based on problem solving. Doors open and close randomly. The player’s turn is skipped if he gets temporarily sealed in a room.”

Unfortunately, although there have been countless magazine ads for The Playful Professor, the game does not seem to have survived online. At least, I couldn’t come up with a working version, so if you should come across one, I’d be more than happy to play it. When Screenplay took over Med Systems around 1983 or 1984 (a story for another time), they re-released the game in a revamped version for the Atari 8-bit family and the Commodore 64 as Playful Professor: Math Tutor in 1984. Steven Baumrucker ported William Denman’s game, and it seems like Mr. Denman commented on it personally when “Highretrogamelord” posted a sample on YouTube.

This means I will play the game once we get to 1984 in our marathon – the original version by William Denman, sadly, is not available right now.

Skipped Game 2 – The Human Adventure (1980)

The Human Adventure is another educational game by William Denman, apparently aimed at medical students, potentially hinting at the original direction his company was meant to take. In a way, The Human Adventure is even an adventure game, albeit an unusual one. It was released for the TRS-80 as well as the Apple II.

And So It Begins

The story goes that you are a miniaturized scientist inside a vessel injected into a person’s bloodstream. Inside, you use a simple text parser to move through the body in six different directions: front, back, right, left, head, feet. In an original review by Russ Williams of The Space Gamer (vol. 47, January 1982), the reviewer stated that he “learned more about human anatomy from this game than [he] did in [his] biology class!” Indeed, many of the descriptions are rather cryptic to the non-medical eye.

My Excel Map, Upper Part

The story appears to have been inspired by the 1966 Richard Fleischer film Fantastic Voyage which has a very similar plot premise. According to the manual, “[o]nly movement in the direction of the blood flow is legal. Access to all major organs is possible by making the correct decisions.” In general, there are three available game modes: exploration mode (ideal for mapping), game mode, and attention mode (whatever that may be). In the game mode, the patient has cancer, and there are two afflicted sites (initially). The hull of the player’s craft collects antibodies while moving around. After a while, she can attempt to heal the afflicted sites by destroying the disease with lasers.

Good job, Bones! Scotty – I think we’re done here.

The playing experience is enhanced greatly by mapping the gameworld from the outset; as the game mode is rather complicated and involves avoiding white cell attacks and “[p]eriodic electrification of the hull to burn off these proteins”, it’s a good way of getting a feel for the lay of the land.

In the beginning, you can choose between travelling through either a male or a female body. Both bodies look exactly the same except for their size and their nether regions, and you start out in a different location each time. You are addressed as if you were in a text adventure: “YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT CORONARY ARTERY. ACCESSIBLE OPENINGS: FEET. COMMAND?” Below is a picture of the human body with a small dot in the middle. The small dot is you.

The process of mapping The Human Adventure took longer than expected because the gameworld consists of a whopping 158 locations most of which are twisty little arteries/veins that look (almost) exactly alike. Most of these bloodstreams take you to all of the important organs and sites of the body – due to its educational realism, you travel through the lungs and the atrium over and over again, and short-cuts or even simple branches are few and far between. I have to say, though, that although mapping is a bit of a chore I did learn a lot of things about the human anatomy. It’s also a nice way to get acquainted with the gameworld before trying out a challenge.

Give me a break here, I’m one of the good guys!

When I start the actual game, I can choose between three levels of difficulty. The EASY mode is pretty difficult as it is. The game mode also introduces some more mechanics: typing REPORT shows me a turn counter as well as the location of the two initial sites of infection, e.g. LIVER, PANCREAS. Typing ELE(CTRIFY) electrifies the hull of my ship which is necessary every few turns to not bump into hostile white blood cells over and over again. If I do get attacked by white blood cells or happen to reach an infected site, I can LAS(ER) them to get rid of them. There’s a 100% chance of me eliminating them but both make me lose my energy more quickly. In the beginning, my energy is up to 100% but I lose a little energy (one to two percent) with every move. To REC(HARGE), I have to travel all the way to the brain. INT(ERFERON) makes me use an “interferon charge” but I can’t figure out what that does as the answer is always “Ok…nothing happens”.

He’s dead, Jim.

After some failed attempts, I get the hang of The Human Adventure. Two strategies are required to win: First, you have to electrify the hull every five turns or so to avoid getting swamped by white blood cells. Second, you need to move up to the brain after having vaporized one of the two infections in order to recharge your energy. It’s all a lot of fun, and the other two levels of difficulty (moderate and hard) are pleasantly challenging. I also find out what the interferon charges are for: If you choose one of the two harder modes, the patient has cancer. This makes the disease spread pretty quickly and you’ll have to visit at least three infected sites to succeed. Lasers don’t vaporize the cancer – but interferon charges destroy it.

It’s all in a day’s work at St. Eligius

Although The Human Adventure is 95% mapping and 5% playing, it’s a pretty enjoyable game.

Skipped Game 3 – Money Master (1980)

Money Master is apparently another maze game “designed to tutor the young child in the use of money.” This one appears to be lost, too, so I can’t really tell whether it’s more of an application or more of a game. The game apparently has the player move through a maze where she encounters different objects and creatures. Whenever this happens, she has to perform a transaction – collect tolls, give the right amount of change etc. The mazes are randomly generated and there are two dozen creatures and objects to be found within.

Skipped Game 4 – Ghost’s Gallery (1980)

Ghost’s Gallery is a variation of The Playful Professor without the math. According to the Med Systems catalog, it boasts enhanced graphics and features compared to its predecessor of the same year. The goal is to capture the ghost with the key and get to the front door quickly in order to escape the haunted mansion. It offers a single-player mode as well as a two-player mode. At first I thought it was heavily influenced by that other famous maze game with ghosts, but Pac-Man was released in North America in October 1980 while The Playful Professor was probably released around February and Ghost’s Gallery came out in May 1980 at the latest.

Ghost’s Gallery is a pretty fast and very simple game. The ghost holding the key is marked with a K, and you have a fixed number of moves before the layout of the maze changes unpredictably. If you find a good position to wait, you can press D to end your move. The moment you manage to touch the ghost with the key, you sort of become the ghost (marked with the K). Now your job is to get to the exit at the bottom of the screen as quickly as possible, because the hunter has become the hunted. It’s all over very fast. There’s another option: By pressing S you can search for a secret passage which sometimes gets you out of a jam.

I ain’t afraid of no ghost.

I can imagine the two-player mode to be quite good, as it’s not really that much fun to steal from the computer-controlled ghost and then run from it, still it may be very nice to chase after one another in front of the same screen. I can also imagine The Playful Professor adding some challenge by letting the (young) player solve some math problems in between. A game of Ghost’s Gallery is over pretty quickly, and although it’s certainly a major programming feat in 1980 to create such a relatively smooth, fast and approachable game for the TRS-80, its single-player mode did not entertain me for too long.

1980s Kids <3 Ghost’s Gallery

I never actually lost, so I don’t even know what the fail state is. The won message suggests that it’s possible to fail but I didn’t find out how which goes to show just how easy the game is.

It’s pretty neat that you can name your character!

Skipped Application 1 – Athletic Index (1980)

The first Med Systems product I was able to find a magazine ad for is an application called Athletic Index. Although the program can not be found online, it appears to be an encyclopedia containing facts about the Olympic Games. Apparently, the Athletic Index was already discontinued in 1981 as it’s not featured in the spring 1981 catalog anymore.

Skipped Application 2 – The Basic Bartender (1980)

The Basic Bartender was written by William Denman and appears to be another kind of encyclopedia. Med Systems advertised it as a “very specialized data mini-system” containing information on 102 mixed beverages. It’s possible to edit this database “as memory conditions allow”. The user can either search for a recipe, browse by categories or take a look at the complete list of available drinks. The mixing instructions are detailed and sometimes contain information about the recommended glass and garnish recommendations. I assume that it’s called The Basic Bartender because it was written in BASIC but of course I cannot prove that as this one’s also lost.

Skipped Gimmick – Adam’s Apple (1980)

In their spring 1981 catalog, Med Systems also had a 48 piece 3-D jigsaw puzzle resembling an apple on offer. If anything, it’s a good example how much they loved their wordplay: According to their description, “Adam’s Apple” was “seemingly designed just for Apple owners” and “a challenge to the core.”

Final Conundrum – Deathmaze 2000 (1980)

Deathmaze 2000 had me going in circles for some time as it appeared on the “Giant List of Classic Game Programmers” (Link: https://dadgum.com/giantlist/) which is sort of comprehensive if not really all-encompassing but nevertheless regularly updated and appears to be correct most of the time. In the 2019 version, the “game” is no longer listed but looking at the 2001 list turns up the title “Deathmaze 2000” written by William Denman for the Apple ][ which is probably just a harmless typo and nothing else.

Well, this is it for now. Med Systems sure is an obscure company these days but back in the day they were sort of a major player (by 1980 to 1983 standards) littering all the major TRS-80 magazines with a plethora of ads. Many dealers advertised that they had Med Systems games in stock, so there certainly must have been some demand, and especially the Continuum games have grown to be true cult classics in some retrogaming (or just nostalgic) circles.

I’d like to conclude my write-up with the company’s own words, namely a mission statement from the December 1980 issue of Kilobaud:

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/intermission-med-systems-marathon-1980-rundown/

[tradeshowguy]

How I Self-Published Two Tradeshow Marketing Books

“Write a book!” they said, so I did. Two, in fact. Here’s the short version of how it unfolded.

As a kid I thought the best job ever was to be a Beatle. The second-best job would be a comic book artist. But the third-best job? Being an author. A novelist! Reading those great science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and other I dreamed of creating a life in the stars (on paper). I tried my hand at a number of stories but was never satisfied. So with my love of music I gravitated to a job that was more fun: being a radio announcer.

After 26+ years of radio, I arrived in the tradeshow world. I wanted to do something to differentiate myself that involved ,y love of writing and creativity (which I never really gave up). Hence, I blogged. Quite a bit, in fact. This blog, the TradeshowGuy Blog, published its first article in November of 2008. Ten years!

Along the way I published a pretty popular e-book called “101 Rules of Tradeshow Marketing” which was downloaded over 5000 times (I obsessed about the stats back then – I don’t obsess on stats any more).

The First Book

But a real book? One that you could hold in your hand and give away or sell? That seemed like a big challenge. My thought was to write a book to use as a heavy business card that thudded when it hit someone’s desk. To differentiate myself from others. To be, well, an author!

In 2010 I started. And fizzled. Tried again a year or two later. That fizzled as well. Long-term focus on this goal was difficult with lots of distractions.

But in early 2015 I started again with renewed focus determination, and was not willing to take no for an answer. After about six months I came up with a first draft. I reached out to Mel White at Classic Exhibits, who has been very supportive of me and my business over the years. He offered to go over the manuscript and offer his comments. This was critical to keeping the project moving forward.

In the meantime, I’d been reviewing a number of self-publishing platforms and kept seeing and hearing about CreateSpace, which was by then an arm of Amazon. It seemed easy-peasy to be able to submit a manuscript in almost any shape and by choosing a specific package you could have yet another editor or two or three do their magic. CreateSpace also handles the registration of an ISBN number, and since they are owned by Amazon, the seamlessness of having your book appear on Amazon for sale as both a print-on-demand paperback or Kindle download. CreateSpace also wrote marketing copy based on your outline.

Based mostly on budget, I picked one of their mid-range packages which meant they would have two editors look at it. One would do “line editing,” which is where a professional editor helps “strengthen your manuscript’s content with one round of feedback and connections to structure, plot, characterization, dialogue, and tone from a reader’s point of view.” Then a copyeditor goes over the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb, picking it apart grammatically and with an eye to classic punctuation and editing standards: “includes an average of 10-15 typographical, spelling, and punctuation revisions per page that your readers will notice – but your word-processing software won’t.”

The whole process of editing was eye-opening, and a learning experience. I disagreed with a few of the suggestions made but kept most of what the pros advised. I figured the best thing was to humbly submit to the process and do what was necessary to make the manuscript better.

Something I really wanted in the book to break up the big blocks of text was a series of cute black and white line drawings that supported and enhances the “fun and educational” feel of the book I was going for. I looked first on Fiverr.com but didn’t find any style of drawing that I liked that much. Eventually I landed at Thumbtack.com, asked for some examples and ended up choosing an artist named Jesse Stark. His drawings were exactly what I had envisioned, and his price was reasonable and fair.

Now for the cover. Not being a graphic designer, but wanting to at least give it a try, I mocked up a handful of potential covers. I didn’t really like any of them (did I mention I’m not trained in graphic design?), and asked Jesse if he would be interested in doing a cover. He was, and after some discussion, came back with a mockup. I wasn’t crazy about it, and thought it needed a photo of a tradeshow floor that showed dozens of booths from a high vantage point. I finally tracked down a photo I had taken at Expo East in the early 2000s from that angle, and had him use that to complete the cover. (Side note: Jesse also designed the TradeshowGuy silhouette that I use in the company logo).

As you might imagine, the hardest thing to do when assembling all of the pieces of a book project is what to name the damn book? I rejected a handful, but only debated a few over the nearly year-long project:

Deconstructing Tradeshows: 14 Steps to Tradeshow Mastery

Create a KickA$$ Tradeshow Experience: 14 Steps to Tradeshow Success

There were a couple of others that were floated, but those two got serious consideration. Eventually, though the book was titled Tradeshow Success: 14 Proven Steps to Take Your Tradeshow Marketing to the Next Level. You’ve got to settle on something sometime, right?

The book made it to Amazon on late October 2015, and I officially launched it the next month with a video series, a flurry of press releases and some giveaways. My view on publishing a book, though, wasn’t to sell as many copies as I could. It was to have something that no other tradeshow project manager had: a book.

The book was mentioned in some local business publications, and I’ve showed it off at networking meetings (who else has their own book?!), but the most notable mention came when Exhibitor Magazine published a multi-page article on the book and me. As one LinkedIn colleague said, “It doesn’t get any better than that!” So true.

The Second Book

Time passes. After the initial excitement of having a book to promote and giveaway fades, thoughts turn to what to do as a follow-up. It’s been said that one of the best ways to sell and promote your first book is to write a second book. But what would that second book be when I felt I put all I knew into the first book. And I knew I wanted a second book to follow up the first one.

It took a while, but I came to settle on the idea of taking the dozens and dozens of list blog posts I’d written for the blog. It took some time assembling all of the posts – many covered similar topics and had to be combined and edited – but once that was accomplished, I reached out to Mel again for help.

This book didn’t write itself, but since the content had already been created it was a matter of grouping the lists into specific topics was the main task. And of course I wanted the same illustrator so I emailed Jesse to see if he was interested. He said yes, so we moved forward.

The second book, still untitled, was a lower budgeted affair. I enlisted Mel again, and he also had his English professor wife, Mary Christine Delea, do through it once. Once their two edits were done, I uploaded to CreateSpace, agreed on the more modest single line edit requested before going to print.

Now…what to title the book of lists? I had a couple of lists that referenced zombies, and one that referenced superheroes, so I played around with them for awhile:

Quirky Interactive Activities, Exhibiting Zombies, and Tradeshow Superheroes: A By-The-Numbers Guide on How to Take Advantage of the Most Effective Marketing Vehicle the World Has Ever Seen (I think this won a record of some sort for longest proposed title!)

Exhibiting Zombies, Tradeshow Superheroes and Quirky In-Booth Activities:

A List Manual on How to Take Advantage of the Most Effective Marketing Vehicle the World Has Ever Seen

Exhibiting Zombies, Tradeshow Superheroes and Delighted Visitors:

Exhibiting Zombies, Tradeshow Superheroes and Elated Customers:

Exhibiting Zombies, Tradeshow Superheroes and Delighted Customers: etc…

After some back and forth, it came down to Tradeshow Superheroes and Exhibiting Zombies: 66 Lists Making the Most of Your Tradeshow Marketing.

For publicity, I did a little, including sending out copies of books to tradeshow publications and press releases to local business publications. I also spent a very modest amount of money on a Twitter book-promotion platform that promised tens of thousands of views of promotional tweets. Modest: less than a hundred bucks. Nothing came of it. Again, the point was to have another book to give to prospects to differentiate myself, and if a few copies sell, well, great!

Interestingly enough, sales have picked up in the past few months with no further promotion. Maybe having both books out there and easily found on Amazon is working!

If you have an idea for a book, should you self-publish, or should you pursue the traditional route through a publishing house? Both have their pros and cons, but to me having complete control over the look and feel of the books and getting a much higher royalty rate made sense for my approach. Yes, the distribution at this point is ONLY online, but to me that’s sufficient. I didn’t write to sell a trainload of books, I wrote to differentiate myself from other exhibit houses and project managers. And to that end, I feel I’ve succeeded.

Now my main thing is making sure that potential clients have a copy of one or both books. That, and thinking about what I might write for a third book in the next couple of years.

Got any ideas?

The post How I Self-Published Two Tradeshow Marketing Books appeared first on Tradeshow Guy Blog.

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[automationgeeks]

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At some point get and extra income on my blog that my be great I am not counting on it, Therefore if I could.

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I especially like you DON'T need to know it all.

All you need is a decent following or readers that trust you to start making a few sales.

Selling your favourite product or service on something you REALLY know is another great way to earn money fast with your blog. For example, you are losing it big time, if you should build it and have consider that they will come. Consequently, awesome post man, You nailed it all.) That's just fact! Did you hear of something like that before? I doubt if they will.

Your all worked up man haha I agree, it gets old when people come to blogging and ask me how they can make good income with their blogs yet they have 2 posts on it.

Yes there're many ways to earn money online.

You should find what fits you. To you face long hard road of building awareness, without it. I'm sure you heard about this. I had a couple of favorites until I read last one Someone Is All Ready Doing It.

It's much easier to compete in a niche that's already proven to work well for others.

You just tell it like it's.

I learned hard way that competition is good, as someone who entered a very small niche market years ago. Usually, great post John Paul! So, I always like your blog but I reckon so that's a bit of your best work yet. And that's lamest reason for not starting a business that I've ever heard. Oftentimes many people are fooled that getting their blog to 1st position on page one will drive HUGE traffic to their blogs, the thing is so that's not tocase. To enjoy big traffic from Google you'd better be on page one for MANY keywords not only one. Hard work is what it will for sure take and love how you helped folks see the myths of blogging. For instance, another great post and keeping it real as usual which is one of my favorite things about you!!! For instance, striving to write fresh new content for one blog on a reg basis is hard enough, never mind making an attempt to do that with 5 -10 or more blogs.

Yea if blogging was as easy as putting up ads and making money so we should all be rich.

That is great that you are finding your voice.

STRONG community first, and active community on your blog way before you push any products. Both you and I know what a harsh reality awaits them. I see a lot more people deluded by prospect of easy and huge income from blogging or online ventures. Thats what we need, more people to dispell myths and shout bullshit where necessary! Keeping your day job as you grow your blog will let your grow your blog with less pressure to achieve goals. Therefore, if you quit your job and wanted to make a living off your blog. You see, indeed your intro caught me once again.

Especially last part that you have to stay commited, success never happens over night. Excellent post John. I think another MUST for bloggers is networking and crosspromotion. Really important Whether not is up to debate but I believe that networking with other bloggers and building a readership beyond your personal graph is really,, or they knew that was what they have been doing at totime. Most successful blogs were able to create bridge points across different social graphs. Quitting your for any longer being that you've started blogging ain't a wise thing to do. Of course thanks very much for sharing. You must be certain your blog is bringing nice income before taking that bold step! Your same statement about making little with a couple of products VS a lot with one product can hold true for blogs as well.

Here's why micro niche's are becoming more popular and there're so most of them. Having 1020 microsites with $ 100 earnings every is $ 1000- $ 2000 and is easier to achieve than attempting to invest in a single site to reach those goals, it's far easier to earn $ 100 per month from one site than So it's to earn $ 1000 a month from one site. What are some blogging Lies you have heard? Tags. Hey John, all valid points. I think That's a fact, it's good that someone is finally showing things way they really are. Yea, I believe if poeople look for to make an extra 100 $ a month so they can do that pretty fast, 6 months or so. Yes, that's right! For you, I'm almost sure I say do some basic learning of blogging and WordPress hereafter just get to work.

Whenever learning things I felt I needed before I started my blog, m a little compulsive haha, I'm quite sure I could of started sooner but I wanted to be ready, To be honest I spent about 2 months just reading blogs.

An online business can move in different directions we just have to seize those chances when they come and roll with it.

Congratulations on your Social Media Manger clients and being in a position to take them on. It's a decent lesson for us all. Everyone should be rich, if it was this easy. Great point John, and I also agree with Pawel. Needless to say, a number of people have notion that setting up a blog with a bunch of ads and driving some traffic to their site will make them rich. Notice, micro niche blogs are becomign harder to do well with sicne Google new focus on quality.

Starting a blog is pretty easy and cheap.

Add to that Guest Posting, basic Search Engine Optimisation, Article Marketing and those are just a few ways to drive traffic to your new blog at no cost.

Now with social media, you can build a nice following of readers at no cost. You can get setup with a free blog and a $ 10 domain and your up and running. Basically, I think And so it's critical for people to find their passion, most certainly if you care a lot about your subject somebody else will So work that it will take to give it your all is like a marriage, and society has already proven that you may lose more than you win. Known I think it's possible that gonna be successful while others would not. With that said, your post has added more substance to this mad blog world, it's an ideal place to start.

Blogs are awesome for so many reason, people need to start for those reasons not merely for money since money wont come for awhile.

What I will say is you have to like blogging, you have to like all things that go with blogging for you to be successful for ages long time.

While learning to do all that is what actually was hard, as soon as you get all that clicking gether therefore a blogging income will come pretty fast. I especially like last part. For example, that one shouldn't be afraid to 'reinvent' wheel and try out things that others have done before you. Fact, if your talking about a full income from blogging so your looking at hard work for AT LEAST a year before you will see anything good. This is where it starts getting interesting. Mom was right.

There're many way you can make a blogging income. You just need to find what fits you and your blog. Basically the past 5 months I was getting clients hiring me to be their Social Media Manager. Because of what I was doing on my blog and social proof, they reached out to me, I'm almost sure I never planned to offer this service and I never even had it on my blog. For example. I am learning and working to make second income online. Let me tell you something. Love to have life balance and build my own side business in niche marketing, I'm consumed by my busy job. John, so it's an outstanding about all tolies.

Plenty of people wanna profit blogging in this down economy.

There's no get rich quick and free lunch.

Indeed, it should take time and hard work. Not, hell they both continue to learn today. You think John Chow or Darren Rowse knew everything about blogging before they started, right? Every successful blogger started at the initial stage. Anyways, you have to go with what you know and learn rest as you go.on job training. The reality is you are better to put out 5 -10 smaller products around one big product that way if your goal is to make $ 5000 a month, it going to be easier to make $ 500 to $ 1000 per product so it will be to make full $ 5000 from one product.

Making money from blogging takes time and lots of effort, much more than what you usually give to your employer and it may take years how many burger places we have in town, I reckon about They do compete for customers but all offer different experiences. Blogging is identical thing. I know it's funny you mentioned to burger joint. Content that is discused is fine to write here and there sinc eno one has your view point as well as like you said, its not new to you but it can be to your readers. Blogging is just one from many points of earning money online Either another,, or way. Also, try other way, if not. Furthermore, for people who succeed, job well done to them. Accordingly the point is to be authentic, form a strong relationship with your readers, and eventually money will come.

Lets not forget that now we're all interconnected in a global scale, that allows us to reach even a broader audience.

Competition is good, and there're so many people to reach out to one blogger could never do it all.

There're many bloggers that earn a blogging income doing quite similar thing and So there're just fine, as far as blogging. YAY! What I was really doing best in order to say is that it's an ideal post. Furthermore, it's only repetitive to me. As a result, after that, I believe two things. Essentially, my content had been discussed before but I have alternative perspective and spin. My readers may not know about bloggers that are bigger than for ages being that I target different markets. You should take this seriously. Everyday, I'm pretty sure I worry that my content is repetitive.

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic 64: Labyrinth (1980)

by Will Moczarski

Introduction

A belated ho ho ho to you all! It‘s time to resume my Med Systems Software marathon that already brought us the goodness that was Deathmaze 5000. We‘re still in territory uncharted by Moby Games (their Med Systems list starts with The Institute which is two adventure games away) and still in the early days of the company. According to the copyright stamp on a manual I found online, Labyrinth seems to have come out in 1980 as the second game of the so-called Continuum Series. Like its predecessor it was written by Frank Corr, jr. and William F. Denman, jr. Labyrinth uses almost the same graphics as Deathmaze 5000 and the premise is very similar, too. We‘ll see if this is just more of the same or if Labyrinth is a genuinely different game.

One thing I‘d neglected to mention in my post about Deathmaze 5000 is the improbable popularity of the Continuum games in TRS-nostalgic circles. They even got namechecked in Mark J.P. Wolf‘s seminal video game history The Video Game Explosion, stressing their importance as predecessors of 3-D games such as first-person shooters (I‘ll get back to that when talking about Phantom Slayer in another post which is the company‘s sort-of proto-FPS). I hadn‘t had any knowledge of this before doing the research for Labyrinth so I was in for quite a surprise. Some users in the comments section of the trs-80.org website seem to be crazy about Deathmaze 5000, as is reflected in some of these quotes: ″Awesome! I looooved that game on the Apple″, ″Absolutely loved them [the Continuum games]!″, ″I loved this game.″ and so on. Most of the other commenters admit that they got stuck in the calculator room or at the very end, confirming my impression that those puzzles were really unfair. Labyrinth doesn‘t seem to be quite as popular, not having provoked one single comment. I have refrained from reading the main article as it may contain spoilers but looking at (or rather for) the comments section I inadvertently read the final paragraph: ″In my opinion, Labyrinth is an excellent follow-up to Deathmaze 5000. It is a more challenging adventure, with more logical puzzles, and one of the best examples of a TRS-80 adventure game.″ More challenging? Really? I‘m sure I‘ll be in for a bumpy ride now…

No, not that Labyrinth, although it‘s definitely another missed classic (Screenshot from Wikipedia)

The premise of the two games is as similar as their graphics. Labyrinth was also marketed as a ″full scale 3-D adventure″ and the rules are roughly the same – you need to find torches and food every once in a while and the parser has not changed either. Once again, there are objects in boxes found throughout the labyrinth and according to the in-game manual ″pits are not always deadly″ so they appear to serve as links between the different levels of the labyrinth just like they did in the deathmaze. Jack Goblin, the author of a 2013 article about the 3-D maze adventures by Med Systems over at Wikinut, describes Labyrinth as ″both more classical and more unorthodox. You were in the Minotaur’s famous maze and had to kill it before it killed you. However, time, space, and dimensions didn’t always follow conventional rules and you had to stay on your toes, figuratively speaking, to figure out where you were at any given time.″

So what‘s new, exactly? Well, for starters: ″There is a fog and a magic darkness in certain areas of the maze.″ Oh right, that‘s probably what Jack Goblin is referring to, and I just know that is going to be a major pain! Also, the goal is sort of reversed. Instead of escaping from the deathmaze, I have to enter the multi-level labyrinth and find a minotaur in order to kill it. Minotaur, huh. Deathmaze 5000 made a point of not telling me the name of the monster and then expecting me to guess it at the last second of the game – it was Grendel and I‘d never have come up with that if I hadn‘t stumble across the game‘s supposed connection to Beowulf during my prior research. At least Labyrinth doesn‘t seem to play guess-the-monster with me, and a minotaur actually belongs in a Labyrinth, too. According to ancient Minoan mythology, the famous labyrinth of Knossos on the Isle of Crete was designed by Daedalus and his son Icarus (the one who‘d fly a tad too close to the sun later). The money man behind the building was King Minos, explaining the monster‘s name, Minotauros – or Minos‘s bull. The Minotaur was located at the center of the labyrinth and there is a whole heroic tale about a young man named Theseus who eventually did away with the beast – a deed that became a staple of ancient Greek art and was retold and referenced in several different ways by lots of ancient writers of Greece and the Roman Empire (Catull, Ovid, Plutarch to name just a few).

So that‘s the context of Labyrinth, apparently: Another mythical opponent, another hide-and-seek game in the vain of Hunt the Wumpus. And Labyrinth appears to be a little bigger than Deathmaze 5000, sporting 550 locations. I assume that this means there will be five levels made up of 11 by 10 locations, maybe, instead of the 10 by 10 levels of the deathmaze. I will have to challenge the warning contained in the manual: ″Be patient. You will not solve Labyrinth during the first week. Or the first month. Make maps. And above all, BE CAREFUL!″ You better watch me solve it in under a month…hopefully.

Yes, THAT Labyrinth. Cover page of the manual I found online. (What‘s not online these days? Correct answer: nothing.)

Entering the Labyrinth

Modern (Awkward) Theseus Diary #1: Who wants to slay a minotaur? I‘m not sure what I‘ve signed up for this time but it seems that it‘s fairly straightforward: enter the maze, kill the bad guy. What has the minotaur ever done, you ask? Well, it guards the labyrinth, for starters. And…yeah, you‘re right but it‘s the rules of the game! What game? The labyrinth game. Everybody knows that…right?

Ah, feels like home. Sort of. To the masochist.

When I enter the titular labyrinth, a familiar feeling sweeps over me. The game looks exactly like Deathmaze 5000, they don‘t seem to have altered anything at all concerning the interface (easiest PISSED rating ever!). I decide to start mapping right away and explore as much as possible before tackling any puzzles I may come across, least they‘d be hindering my progress to the other levels. It‘s already after a few steps that I discover that Labyrinth is indeed more challenging in a multitude of ways. Firstly, the fog: If you take a wrong turn, you have to start over because ″the fog is too thick to see″. There appears to be no way out of the fog (or through it, for that matter) and there is no way of knowing where there may be fog. A corridor that looks perfectly normal suddenly turns into a grey nightmare of being stuck – maybe I will find an item to deal with this later but so far this is a major obstacle. Secondly, there are pits that drop me in a closed-off environment I cannot get back from. I find a sword in one of them but without a way out it‘s of no use to me. Maybe this is the final location and I have to lure the minotaur there at some point? However, places like this one pose another challenge as they also make me start over at the beginning, effectively dead-ending me. Thirdly, and most annoyingly by far, after a while my map doesn‘t make sense anymore. At first I think that this is due to me being unfocussed as the twisty little passages all start to look alike after a while but as my second and third attempt to map a section southeast of my starting position are also doomed to fail, I realize – and verify it by way of item-dropping – that I‘m in for some Wizardry-style goodness: there are teleporters in the labyrinth, sending me off to who-knows-where without any word of warning. Had I not played Deathmaze 5000 previously, I would probably not make the assumption that the second labyrinth will be built in a similar way, but having completed the previous game (and Rat‘s Revenge, for what it‘s worth) I can come up with a hypothesis about the extent of each level (I try 11 by 10) and that seems to indicate that the first teleporter is located in one of the corners, southeast from where I start the game looking north. Other things I discover include a trap of moving walls that kill me right away, Star Wars style – just like in Deathmaze 5000. I stumble across a book with the word PTOOII in it. Saying it out loud takes me to the aforementioned closed-off area with the sword, xyzzy style. Another encounter that feels like an Adventure reference is an ″ugly little man″ who utters his displeasure with me by attacking me right away. So far it seems that there won‘t be too many new stories to tell about the labyrinth after having blogged through Deathmaze 5000, thus I assume that my playing time will greatly surpass the number of posts compared to the average factor established by other games. In other words: This will most likely be a two-post affair although I‘ve already spent 1.5 hours getting nowhere fast. At least I‘m not stuck in any way and will just keep on mapping for now, but the labyrinth is a huge and unforgiving place – king Minos would be so proud.

THIS is my opponent? You serious? (Screenshot from Wikipedia)

Session time: 1.5 hours Total time: 1.5 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-64-labyrinth-1980/