#and at least the others i can convert with one simple google search

[normal-thoughts-official]

Not even close to US (and first worlder) internet users' worst crime but few things are more annoying to me than when people use the stupid fucking yanqui timezones system instead of UTC. "Pacific time" no one knows what that means. This literally only makes sense to your dumb country and we have a very fucking easy universal time count that is a good reference for people everywhere in the world. If you're specifying the timezone then obviously this is meant for people regardless of where they live so stop being so self centered for five seconds and use universal systems. Christ

[catholic-character-tournament]

Quarter Finals - Catholic Character Tournament

Propaganda below ⬇️

Shadow

In sonic destruction (the AI generated fan thing snapcube made a while ago) shadow was catholic or something which I think is reallyyyyyyy funny

Ok listen. I know this is a stretch but hear me out. He says “oh my God” in the Twitter takeovers so we know this is a possibility. I see him as a Christ-like figure because I saw his whole confrontation with Mephiles and was like “this is a thing that happened in the Bible??” and the pose Mephiles shows him in is literally like a crucifixion and Mephiles is meant to be a demon / false prophet reference. And also he’s called a demon in Shadow The Hedgehog 2005 then the guy who calls him that is like “I was wrong I’m sorry” and that also reminds me of a thing with Jesus in The Bible. But the biggest reason is his whole thing with Maria cause I think he’d come to earth and hear Ave Maria once and convert to Catholicism idk he’s like we’re comforted by a female familial figure named Mary sometimes called Maria?? And her color is blue????? Heck yeah I’m in because I Will Cry. Also feel free to share this as propaganda obv even if he doesn’t get in the bracket just. It’s funny.

I feel like he’d battle a lot with being seen or portrayed as a demon and how the aliens he’s related to very much look and act like demons idk lmao- and also I feel like confession would just be good for him I think he needs it for his mental health

There is a debate on the lovely website tunblr that Shadow T. Hedgehog is an allegory for Jesus Christ.

He is Jesus, idk what to tell you. He lived, he was sealed away, he was awakened again and deemed the ultimate lifeforms, he’s angry but not evil, does what he believes is best for people and the world at any given time. Total loser.

Vote for Shadow the Hedgehog

There seems to be some confusion in the notes. He is Catholic. It may not be explicit, but it can be inferred.

Shadow was created by Professor Gerald Robotnik, and for the early part of his life, lived with Gerald and his granddaughter, Maria Robotnik.

Robotnik is not a made-up name. Google Search results may only bring up pages related to the Robotniks of the Sonic the Hedgehog series, however, it is a rarely used Polish surname. Poland is a historically Catholic nation, and… come on. Maria is the most Catholic name ever. The Robotniks are Catholic. Shadow was created and raised by Catholics.

Now you may be wondering to yourself: Does Catholicism even exist in Sonic? The answer is yes, at least in the Archie comics, where Protestants are explicitly mentioned.

Couple this with the fact that several characters, including Shadow, have canonically taken the Lord’s name in vain, it is reasonable to infer that Christianity, and therefore Catholicism, exists.

So… while Shadow’s own religious beliefs may not have been explicitly addressed… at minimum:

Catholic is a cultural designation that Shadow will always be allowed to claim based on the family that made him.

Whether he’d actually want to claim that designation is a different conversation, but the other propaganda does a fine job of explaining why it may be appropriate to headcanon him as a practicing Catholic.

Now that we’ve established that Shadow has as much of a right to be in this tournament as anyone else, there’s one very important reason you should vote for him:

It would be funny if he won.

Thank you.

Essays are done!! Here’s some Shadow propaganda because the propaganda we currently have sucks and I need to fix that. While yes, Shadow being Catholic is a meme, there is more to outside of the simple “fandub said so” and its not quite stated its Catholicism but just how he behaves and his actions. There’s a lot of Sonic content so I will try to keep this brief. Gonna get headcanons out of the way.

Shadow is Chilean and so are Maria and Gerald Robotnik because I fucking say so and they’re Catholic. He definitely had un rosario next to his like. Bed or test tube whatever he slept in. So did Maria btw. Alright let’s move on because I am 100% correct.

Let’s start with some background for Shadow. Shadow was created as a cure for a girl called Maria and he grew to care for her as a sister and loved her deeply. He was artificially created but still holds a soul that is similar to Maria’s. Long story short, Maria is killed protecting Shadow who watches as she’s shot in front of him. He has his memories tampered by Maria’s grandfather, Gerald, who manipulates him into carrying out revenge on the Earth, even if Shadow ends up as collateral.

Shadow struggles with frequent identity crises, even before Maria’s death and always wondered what his purpose was, what he was made to do. Was he a weapon? Was he a cure? He’s the Ultimate Lifeform, but what does that truly mean? ? He’s Shadow, but what more is there to him? He doesn’t know what his purpose is other than what others have prescribed to him, and he guides himself through the will of others (something that he breaks through afterwards but not yet). Shadow at his core is self-sacrificing and constantly punishes himself. This is where you can see some of that good old guilt that everyone has been using as propaganda, but we also see someone who is giving and kind.

He is snarky in the game, especially when interacting with Sonic, but he’s having what is essentially an ongoing mental breakdown but keeps moving because it is his duty to his sister. He doesn’t believe himself important enough to continue on after her and sees it in himself to act out on “Maria’s wishes”. After the revelation that Maria’s final wish for Shadow was for him to make those on Earth happy and to protect them, he immediately sacrifices himself to do so.

Okay, that’s a lot and you’re probably asking “Okay, you mentioned he is a giving person and yeah he has guilt, but that’s not really Catholicism” and yes you would be right! So let’s go into the more important part of being Catholic. The charity, the community, the kindness, etc. Shadow is a very reserved person and has the habit of being a dumb teenager because well. Yeah. Anyways, he definitely has a soft spot for those he cares about and while his whole arc (in my opinion) is about finding the freedom of self-autonomy, it is also Shadow growing as a person and deciding not to save people because others have told him he needs to, but because he wants to. It is born from his soul and its his nature to care for people. It is who he is, and he knows it now. He’s not doing it because he’s a hero or because he is told to do so. Shadow is a very giving person and I think people tend to forget about that especially due to bad writing from the past decade or so. He is also stated to help out at food shelters and volunteers a lot. He is proud and a bit prickly, but he cares so deeply about those he loves. He is stronger with his loved ones and will always do his best to protect them. These are minor, yeah, but you don’t need sweeping and enormous acts to get attention for the good deeds you do. Most of what you apply of Catholicism is done at the personal level, between your friends, family, and community.He also goes to Mass whenever he can and if he can’t he goes to the capilla and also does the sign of the cross whenever he runs by a church. Cutting this off because this is already 740-ish words and I had to send these across multiple asks I am so sorry Catholic mod

Harrowhark

I'm pretty sure you've already got plenty of submissions for her so I'll just say she was raised in what is basically a cult (technically a nunnery but let's be real) dedicated to keeping the body of the thing that will kill God behind the rock. One of their prayers is actually "I pray the rock is never rolled away". Harrow is extremely devout as penance for her earlier heretical actions in the tomb as a child (spoiler!) so the Catholic guilt really comes through

imagine being a catholic nun and you meet god, but it turns out he’s a twitch streamer from new zealand who became god because everything got a little bit out of hand. and just before you met him you gave yourself a diy grief-fuelled lobotomy with the help of your best frenemy. imagine how insane you’d be. now multiply that insanity by nine. that’s the fictional love of my life right there.

she meets god. she’s not inspired

she’s number one practitioner of space Catholicism. The locked tomb is chock full of Christian (catholic) imagery themes metaphors etc. just look at her she’s got a bone rosary

They're Catholicism with extra bones. Everyone is a nun. They have what is basically a rosary made from knuckle bones. They technically worship the same God as everyone else, but they're waaaay more focused on The Body in the Tomb (Mary) and we get a moment where we find out that while everyone else prays the equivilent of The Lords Prayer, they're doing the equivilent of Hail Mary. And they paint their faces with skulls.

She thinks leaving dry bread in a drawer is taking care of someone. She's in love with a 10,000 year old corpse (the same one they worship). She spent ALL NIGHT digging with her bare hands to make sure a field had bones every 5 feet so she could fight her girlfriend - I mean, greatest enemy. Spoiler territory: She's been puppeting her parents corpses since she was 8 years old. Instead of grieving her dead girlfriend, she gives herself a lobotomy. She makes soup with bone in it so she can use the bone IN THEIR STOMACH to try and kill them.

The author is/was Catholic and the entire series had heavy Catholic overtones. https://www.tor.com/2020/08/19/gideon-the-ninth-young-pope-and-the-new-pope-are-building-a-queer-catholic-speculative-fiction-canon/ A good breakdown of how it's Catholic

Anti-propaganda (spoilers)

I love the Locked Tomb series but Harrowhark has daddy issues with God, had a childhood crush on God's cryogenic partner, and is in love with God's daughter, not to mention that she's essentially a bone-bender. The religion on her home planet exists in a way that is technically against the will of the canon in-universe God, even. All of this to say, Harrowhark is heretical at minimum if not an outright witch. Terrible Catholic. Burn her.

[zenkorecords]

Just thinking about vampires and how they wouldn't be able to see their reflections for a long time because mirrors used to made of silver, but one day they just walk by a mirror that- isn't silver? They would suddenly see themself, for possibly the first time in ever if they weren't turned but just kinda always existed as a vampire. I mean sure maybe someone painted them at some point but, they can really see themselves now. Look Its late, Im tired I just- I just think that this. this is all.

Ok well, after research it doesn't hold up as well because actually silvering wasnt a thing till after the 1800's so assuming that vampires could obviously be older than that, older vampires would have maybe had mirrors which wouldn't have been made of silver but instead something like bronze- (bronze abt 2000 BCE) Or even more worry some than not seeing your reflection, maybe, 16th century mercury mirrors! which would have been like, then to the 1800's. So really, only vampires after the 1800's would probably not know what they look like till- cameras? hold on now I gotta look up camera history and the cameras use of silver-

Ok but before I google the cameras its important to note that the modern-day mirror process can involve silvering however it could also be a aluminum coating (first used for telescope mirrors in 1930 from my brief research) so only certain mirrors would show a vampires reflection in a modern mirror so vampires in the modern day could see their reflections with the right mirror.

Ok so now, cameras! ...which is less reflections, but still interesting in theory as a lot of popular media often portrays vampires as unable to appear in photos.

The first camera was invented in 1816 by French inventor Nicephore Niepce. His simple camera used paper coated with silver chloride. And upon a brief google search did in-fact tell me that silver chloride could be converted back to silver (and chlorine) through a heating process so in all technicality the first camera would have used silver in such a way that, in theory, vampires wouldn't show up in the pictures. However, what about other cameras? Modern digital ones? Cell phone cameras?

It seems like most film cameras still use silver or at least cannon film cameras, "Camera film uses silver halides (such as silver chloride, bromide or iodide) as the materials exposed to light."

While looking the bit on film cameras up, also came to the realization that some x-ray's may use silver which is whole other set of problems if a vampire were to need an x-ray! Historically all radiographic film media employed silver salts as part of the image-producing process. Although the vast majority of radiology departments in the developed world are now filmless there is still a very large amount of traditional x-ray film in film libraries and storage.

Digital cameras and photography time! Digital cameras are full of printed circuit boards that contain gold, silver, and also base metals like aluminum and copper. Although LCD display screens do not contain precious metals, the contact points along their edges can contain gold and silver. However, when you press the button to take a photograph with a digital camera, an aperture opens at the front of the camera and light streams in through the lens. So far, it's just the same as a film camera. From this point on, however, everything is different. There is no film in a digital camera. Instead, there is a piece of electronic equipment that captures the incoming light rays and turns them into electrical signals. This light detector is one of two types, either a charge-coupled device (CCD) or a CMOS image sensor. Both CMOS and CCD imagers are constructed from silicon.

So, tldr for the digital camera: the image itself isn't put onto anything made of silver so, by previous reasoning vampires would be able to have digital pictures of them taken!

Look, Im so tired. It is 1am in my little corner of the planet and Im just rambling at this point.

[transformersvn]

Question: What is the process for making one of your visual novels?

So, this got long. I hope it covers what you were after :)

Overall, there are key sections of the VN I have to work on. In rough order of necessity they are:

Script

Sprites

Backgrounds

Directions

CGs

Music

Testing

I use Ren'Py, a free visual novel creator based in the Python coding language. It's simple to use and if you know even a little bit of Python you can do some fun stuff. (I just have to try not to cry when using American spellings for colour and centre)

Inkscape is a free vector-based drawing program, which is the drawing program I'm most familiar with. It allows easy editing of svgs and that's what most of my sprite-work is.

For writing the code, I find something like VSCode to be useful, as basic colour-coding of code is useful for making sure you've not missed an obvious " somewhere.

More details under the cut.

(For examples, I'll mostly be drawing from Forbidden Rendezvous)

Script

First off, it depends if I'm doing a fanfic conversion or doing the writing myself. Either way, getting a first draft (or at least a detailed summary) of the script is essential, as that informs the rest of the sections - I don't know what characters I want to make sprites of until I have a good idea of who'll be appearing.

With a fanfic, the words are already there, I just need to convert them into something Ren'Py can read. Anything spoken by a character needs to be assigned to that character properly (dialogue tags are useless here) and long paragraphs of description need to be split up so that they fit in the textbox.

As part of this I define characters at the top of the file. Each character is given a name that will appear in the textbox while they're talking - for these I've given them a variable so I can change the name in the script easier if I need to (eg, when talking to Server his name is ??? until he introduces himself). I've also assigned which sprites the characters use too, which allows me to change their sprite more simply in the code at points.

(You can assign a ton of other things at this point too, like change the colour of their name, what font they use, what the textbox looks like when they're talking, etc)

Sprites

Once I've got an idea of who I'm drawing I'll make a sprite for every character with a neutral expression. This will be the base for all of the characters' sprites, so I tend to spend a fair bit of time making sure they're put together right - or I'll have to fix the same error on multiple sprites later (eg, I missed colouring the grill of the left side of Orion's face and didn't notice that the lines were overlapping his face until I'd done a handful of expressions so I had to fix that on all 11 of his sprites separately).

Now I've got a neutral sprite, I'll copy-paste it and then tweak the face and arms until I've got appropriate expressions. And because I'm bad at priorities, I'll leave the hands until last.

For TFP I tend to trace over screenshots to get the characters looking right, whereas G1's simpler style has let me draw with just references on the side of my screen. I'd like to be able to get to the point of not needing to trace one day, but we'll have to see how long that is going to take with my sparse practice.

Backgrounds

I try to aim for simple backgrounds so as not to distract away from the sprites. That's why they always have thicker grey lines.

I've gone through a whole range of trying to imagine a room with no reference vs tracing over google-searched images vs taking pictures of my place and tracing over that vs using references without tracing. At the moment I'm leaning towards references without tracing, as then I don't get bogged down in trying to get all the details in, but can also not make it look like an Escher nightmare because I can see the how the room fits into 3d space.

Directions

One of the key parts of a VN is that you have characters showing up on the screen. But how do they know where to go? Ren'Py has a handful of built-in positions (such as left, right, center, etc) that you can plonk a character in, or if you need more precision, you can define your own.

Normally I just define the x/y alignment but you can do all sorts of transforms (eg, in Quarantine Starscream ends up diagonally in the corner on the bed, which was achieved through a combination of specific transforms).

On top of all that, characters can move around onscreen. If a new position is given to a sprite it will appear instantly in that position. If you give it the move action it will instead slide across the screen at a fixed speed (you can change this if you want). When being introduced to a scene, you can tell a sprite to moveinleft which will make it slide in from off the left side of the screen. There's so much you can do with character placements (flipping is also very useful!)

I find it tricky to get down exactly what I picture in my head during a scene (one of the main issues I run into is misjudging sprite size), but I try to do a dry run-through in the code before properly testing. This at least gives me the right sprites at roughly the right times to make my testing slightly easier, not to mention helping clear up which expressions I'll need.

CGs

Like with hands, I tend to leave the CGs until last and regret it. They're usually one of the hardest parts, artistically speaking, being a combination of sprite and background and usually a key scene that I really want to display.

I have a speed draw of the Megatronus/Orion kiss CG I did, which probably shows my drawing process better than I can right now:

Music (and SFX)

I'm not super musical. I did the music for Quarantine using Musescore and since then have decided to use free online sources. Freesound.org and Bensound.com have been very useful resources. Like with the direction, I tend to chuck it all at once then fiddle it until it sounds right to me later.

Testing

And, of course, there's testing. Can't have a programming project without testing :)

So, does it run? No? Of course not - I hope you like picking through bug reports to find the three times you forgot to put a $ at the start of a line where you assigned a variable, or the quotes you forgot to escape in some dialogue.

Okay, it runs, is everything showing up? No? Well, thankfully Ren'Py has a built-in error checker that will give you a rundown of all the times you made a typo in a character name or called a sprite you decided to leave out at the drawing stage.

And now it runs and you don't end up with placeholder images for the ones you misspelt - does it look right? Now you've got to play through the whole thing line by line to see if any text has overflowed or if the characters are facing the right way or if they're entering/leaving scenes correctly. Don't forget to make sure you've got the right length on your fade transitions too (unless the transition wants a dissolve instead).

Does it sound right? Time to adjust the sound mixing and make sure the music starts and stops at the right times.

Now build it and run through it again to make sure the build didn't screw up. Now again on an Android device so you can ensure the smaller textbox doesn't have any issues.

Honestly though, as much as it can be a faff, 99% of what I call testing is more like editing, which can be a wonderful process when you see it coming together. It's significantly less wonderful when I spend ages on the actual Python side to discover far too late that if you tell Python that listA = listB then it will assume I mean those lists should now always be equal and changes to one will affect the other and what I actually wanted was listA = list(listB) - but that's not super common in direct fanfic conversions at least.

And then it's finally time to make an itch.io page and upload everything and hope for the best.

...

So there you have it. You can also check the making of tag where I've tried to document my process on some of my earlier vns. It might be a bit outdated in a few places now, but it'll at least show what my methods were back then.

Hopefully I'll be ready to start another project somewhen before summer. Not sure which fic I'd be looking to convert, though I'm also very interested in something written specifically for VN (I'd definitely need so other people interested to help with at least the writing if that's the case). Might also try a web version too, as that's something Ren'Py offers and it means the VN won't need downloaded.

[s-k-y-w-a-l-k-e-r]

My GIF making process!

I’ve been asked many times for a tutorial, but because I get really detailed, I always get overwhelmed by the idea. But I finally decided to buckle down! 

Just so you know: I don’t use PSDs in this, and I don’t import layers to frames or anything like that. I like the hard way—at least in gif making, I believe you get higher quality gifs. Join me as I show you how to make gifs by loading videos directly into the Photoshop timeline and my coloring and sharpening techniques.

Tools used:

Mac OS X (only necessary for the first step, and there are other ways around it with a PC)

Adobe Photoshop

YouTube Purchases (any streaming service will work)

Topics covered:

Obtaining the Source Material

Loading the video file into Photoshop

Prepping, Cropping, and Resizing the Media

Adjustment Layers

Sharpening

Exporting

Obtaining the Source Material

There are a few different methods for obtaining video to work with. Proper YouTube videos are nice, but finding any major motion picture in that format is difficult, if not illegal.

Once I realized I could get really great quality video by doing screen recordings from streaming services, I stopped worrying about finding (and pirating) high resolution video files. So now, I just go to whichever streaming service I need to, pick out the movie or show, find the spot, and record small snippets.

Mac screen recording instructions:

On a Mac, Command+Shift+5 will bring up the screen recording dialogue. 

Resize the frame of what you want to record within the browser. 

Go to a second or two before, press the “record” button, and then begin playing the video, remembering to keep your cursor out of the recording box. 

Use the Space bar to pause your video when you’ve gotten the snippet you need. Stop the screen recording by clicking the ⏹ button that is in your menu bar at the top of the screen.

Important: when the recording appears in the bottom right of your screen, click on it, and then trim the video on either end. This will help your computer convert the video file to the type that can be opened by Photoshop.

Click “done” and it will appear on your desktop, ready to be used!

PC Users: ??? Here’s a Google search I did for you

 Loading the video file into Photoshop

Lots of people use this process for making gifs (a great tutorial!). I didn’t even know it existed until last summer, when I’d already been giffing for years. I wish I could still do something like that with these screen recordings, but the files are absolutely HUGE, especially on Macs with double retina displays, which actually increase the dpi by a lot. Making screencaps of them fills up my hard drive, almost immediately—even when I’ve got 20 gigs of free space to work with. So what do we do? We just. Open the file. In Photoshop. Et voila!

You can do this with any type of video, not just screen recordings.

 Prepping, Cropping, and Resizing the Media

When Photoshop loads your videos up, it makes the video hilariously fast (something about frame conversion). You must slow it down for it to look natural. THIS MUST BE DONE BEFORE YOU RESZE. Your Photoshop timeline window should be at the bottom of the screen. See that little triangle in the top right of the video? 

Click on it, and a menu will appear to change speed and duration.

Change the speed first- usually between 80-85% will seem realistic. (I actually went a little faster than I usually would on this at almost 86%—I don’t recommend this)

Press the button next to duration and pull the toggle all the way to the far right (if you don’t do this, full length of the video will be cut off).

Now you’ll want to crop it. Ever since Tumblr upped its GIF size limit, I have been playing around with 7:5 ratios, but let’s go with 3:2 for now. Use the Crop tool, pick out 3:2 in the top left (it may say 2:3, but you can switch that) and then find the most suitable spot in your gif for that. Hit enter on your keyboard.

Some things to keep in mind when cropping:

Most videos come in 16:9 ratio (BoRhap is even wider). If it’s a wide shot, you’ll need to do the full 16:9 to not lose anything. Of course, experiment and find what’s right for you!

As you can see above, I moved forward in the timeline and made the crop to a point in the video when the broadest movement was happening.

Certain videos WILL have a black or red bar that may be imperceptible until you’ve already exported the gif. Just crop in a little tighter on top and bottom to avoid them.

Now you’ll need to resize your gif to be the correct size for Tumblr. If you don’t use Tumblr’s exact dimensions, your gifs (as uploaded) will appear blurry or pixellated. We’re doing a full-width gif here, which is 540px. On a Mac, I use Command+Option+I (for “Image Size) to open the resize dialogue. You can also find it under Image->Image size...

Make sure to also have “Resample” checked. Lately I’ve been playing around to see if different options are better. Most GIF makers use “Bicubic Sharper (Reduction)” and they are not wrong to do so. I’ve just been unhappy with it lately, so I have been trying this other setting out, “Bicubic (smooth gradients)”.

Click OK. A dialogue may come up that asks if you want to convert to a Smart Object. The answer is yes, okay, do it. The only major caveat is that you can’t go back and change the timeline speed. That’s why we did it first. But you can preview the speed now that it’s smaller, and if you don’t like it, use Command+Z (or “Undo”) and go back a couple steps to get the speed you like.

You may find, especially on a Mac screen (and possibly other displays), that at 100% your gif looks too small to be 540px. That is the curse and blessing of working with super-high resolution hardware. Zoom in to 200% and proceed about your business. This is what it will look like on Tumblr.

You may find it helpful at this point to begin by defining the beginning and end of your gif by moving around these bumpers. It’s safe to keep gifs under 02:00f in length. Under half of 01:00f will be way too short. (I tend to overshoot in length and then trim the beginning and the end once I see how big the gifs are upon exporting.)

 Adjustment Layers

Now the creativity and fun begin!

There are a LOT of ways to get creative here. I’m going to keep it simple, very simple, but I strongly recommend opening up a new adjustment layer of each type and trying to figure out what each does!

You’ll find the adjustment layer menu at the bottom of the Layers window.

Curves

There are a lot of ways to make Curves work for you! It can do the job of Brightness/Contrast, it can do Levels, it can do Color Balance! We’re going to use it mainly to help with brightness here, but also to level out some of the tones. One of the quick tricks you can do is use the droppers on the left side of the Properties window. There are three- one with a white tip, one gray, one black. These can help define what your white tones are (and whether they need to be more of one color or another), and so on with your blacks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t; in this case, I think it doesn’t:

That looks totally blown out and somehow also too dark!

So instead, we’re going to use that little hand with the finger pointing out and some arrows pointing up and down. This lets you define which sections you want to get brighter or darker, and how much. It doesn’t do color correction. In the example below, you can see I dragged up on a white spot and down on a dark spot. Then, I moved points around on the curve itself to refine (which the gif here doesn’t show...).

Vibrance/Saturation x2

Next, I’ve been using @gwil-lee​‘s Vibrance/Saturation trick (I know you said you learned it from someone else, but I learned it from you!). 

Create a Vibrance Adjustment layer, bump the values up a bunch, and then change its Fill to somewhere between 2-9%. Change the Blend Mode to Color Burn. Then make a copy of that layer keeping everything the same, but make it Color Dodge. I can’t quite define what these do, but it makes it punchier!

Color Balance

Most people are familiar with this. For this gif, I’m going to make the shadows more Cyan/Blue and the highlights more Red/Yellow. Just a few points each. 

Exposure

I brought the Exposure up a bit, but not enough for you to need to read about, haha.

Selective Color

Here’s where you make fine adjustments to colors. This particular scene is extremely simple, color-wise, so keep it simple. I’m going to bump up the cyans/blues, take up the black by just a point or two, and maybe bump up the yellows and reds a tiny bit. (And as always, remember, the “opposite” of cyan is red, the opposite of magenta is green, and the opposite of yellow is blue. CMY/RGB!)

I think at this point I’m going to call it with the adjustment layers. You can go absolutely hogwild with more of them! But at this point, I’m ready to start sharpening!

 Sharpening

I do three sharpening filters these days. These are all under Filter->Sharpen. Make sure your media layer (default called Layer 1) is selected as we go through this! (Also, this can really take a toll on your processor, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Sharpen- This layer does the basic job

Smart Sharpen (Amount: 10%, Radius: 10, Reduce Noise: 4% Gaussian Blur)- This layer gives texture

Smart Sharpen (Amount: 500, Radius: 0.3, Reduce Noise: 12% Gaussian Blur)- This layer gives refined sharpening and smoothing

Fiddle with these as needed! Let your gif play all the way through- this may go slowly as your processor works on it. Make sure the beginning and end points make sense.

 Exporting

After You’re going to have to use File->Export->Save For Web (Legacy)... or use the shortcut of Shift+Option+Command+S. This could take some time for the dialogue to pop up! Be patient.

In my opinion, these are the best gif export settings for crisp edges and no noise:

Now you see how big the file is in the bottom left. Tumblr won’t let you upload anything bigger than 10MB and it’s safer to stay under 9MB, in my experience. When your gif is too big, you have a couple options. You can close the dialogue and change the length of your gif. 

OR, you can uncheck “Interlaced” and bump up the lossy to 1 or or more. This will create noise. Sometimes, that’s a good thing!

Here’s without lossy:

Here’s WITH lossy: (Honestly in a fast moving gif like this, it’s almost imperceptible, but I can see it!)

And now that I’ve exported, I can see what there’s a little black line on the bottom! So I’m going to trim that off and call it good! You can see the full gifset here.

Hope you enjoyed! Reblog if you try this out or learned anything. Feel free to reach out with questions any time!

[shivanitak]

6 Most common mistakes in affiliate marketing should avoid

The Best Place to Begin Is With Affiliate Marketing

It is necessary for everyone to begin somewhere. And, for inexperienced Internet marketers, affiliate products may be the greatest place to start. Rather than going through the time-consuming and costly process of developing your own product (of dubious quality) and then attempting to market it to the masses, you may use this method, Why not start by looking for a product that is well-made and comes from someone with a high level of trustworthiness? You could save a lot of time, money, irritation, and willpower in the process, and you could also make money—actually, really good money. Even when they earn a killing with their own items, many great Internet marketers continue sell affiliate products. Why? Because the money is still excellent and there is minimal effort necessary.

With that in mind, it’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing isn’t easy. It’s obviously less difficult than pulling together a Jeff Walker-style large product launch, but there are plenty of traps waiting to suffocate you and your cash. Do yourself a favour and pay attention to what I’m saying so you don’t fall into the traps. I will go over the top six in this section:

1. Selecting a Poor Product to Promote

There are certain products that are superior to others. Indeed, that is most likely the motivating force behind your decision to sell affiliate products: you have acknowledged that there are already a variety of high-quality products on the market, and that creating your own will likely fall short.

You’ll want to hunt for solid niches in addition to picking decent products within niches. Here’s a foolish tip that will help you understand what I’m saying: don’t sell garden hoses in the winter. No one is going to buy. Concentrate on things that a large number of people want; if their popularity has just increased, now is the greatest time to enter the market.

If you choose a product from a Clickbank list, do it with caution. Instead of picking the highest commission product at random, check for products with the highest popularity and gravity ratings. If a large number of individuals buy them on a regular basis, they must be superior to other similar products on the market.

2. Selecting a Low-Conversion Converter

Your goal as an affiliate marketer is to profit from the hard work of others, as well as the money they spent on copywriters, product developers, and software. You are likely to benefit less if you choose a product that underutilizes these benefits.

Take conversion rates, for example. Not every company that creates a product hires a leading copywriter. Many of them simply write their own text. Many companies often fail to engage someone to create graphs for their sales pages. Instead, they attempt to complete the task on their own. What’s the end result? The page is unattractive, the copy is riddled with errors, and the product converts poorly.

Read the sales page carefully and compare it to others before you begin marketing any particular product. Do you have a strong urge to purchase something? Were you confused by the visuals? Did the copy fail to entice you in? For both the vendor and you, these can be catastrophic mistakes. At this point, you can’t help the merchant, but you may avoid his service and locate one that is better. Make a good decision for yourself.

3. Choosing Low-Commission Products

If you’re marketing to a list of people, keep in mind that they can only examine so many product offerings in a certain amount of time, so choose cautiously which ones you promote. If you advertise something that only pays you 25% commission, you’re wasting a lot of time. In actuality, you’re more likely to find a product with a 50 percent or 75 percent commission.

Don’t get too uptight over the commission’s actual monetary value. While many well-known Internet marketers now claim to focus on high-ticket things (because only a few purchases earn a lot of money), you may still make a living selling fairly affordable reports. This is evidenced by the $7 report’s growing popularity.

So stay away from the cheapskates, but don’t be too concerned about the price.

4. Failure to Collect Leads

Always focus on  capturing leads.  Rather of generating traffic through PPC, SEO, and other tactics and then delivering that visitors to your affiliate link, you should try to convert them into list members first. Why? Simple mathematical reasoning and the accumulated experience of many marketers are the two reasons.

The simple logic goes like this: almost everyone who would have bought the product will sign up for your mailing list. Many people who would not have bought the product will sign up for your newsletter. Instead of converting 1-3 percent of visitors (in affiliate sales), you’ll convert 15 to 40%. (to your mailing list). You will then have the opportunity to contact both willing and reluctant purchasers. Furthermore, once they’ve been added to a list, this is no longer a one-time exercise. You’ll have the opportunity to market to them for months, even though years.

Your list is one of the most valuable assets you have as a marketer. Always prioritise your list over a one-time sale.

5. Ignoring the Value of Punctuality

In general, the rapid often overtake those with more resources in business. Google is no longer a small company with modest revenues, but it used to come out of nowhere to overwhelm immensely well-funded competitors, and it did it effectively.

What does this mean for you? You need to do more than just throw an affiliate link in an email and send it out to a couple thousand people to promote an affiliate product successfully. If you want people to buy something, your email should be informative rather than promotional.

If you can compose your email as if it were a news release, you’ll get a lot more attention than if you send a link to an Internet marketing ebook from 1998 that wasn’t really popular at the time.

You must locate product launches that meet the definition of a “event.” Find something so significant that people will pay attention to it and comment on it. If you can locate such a product (for example, the iPhone of Internet marketing items).  You’ll want to make sure that people on your mailing list buy from you rather than from another owner of a mailing list.

To put it more simply, pay attention to the time and the calendar. If there’s a huge launch coming up, you’ll want to take advantage of it as soon as possible. It’s possible that there won’t be another window of chance. So get it while you can.

6. Important Numbers Should Be Ignored

Many affiliate marketers overlook many of the tiny but critical calculations required to maintain a business and stay profitable. Many affiliate marketers, for example, will entirely disregard the share Clickbank takes from each sale. Instead, they’ll focus solely on the cost and commission.

Many people will also overlook conversion rates, pay-per-click bids, and the amount of time they devote to initiatives. They’ll also underestimate how much promotional activities will cost and how dangerous they’ll be. All of these tiny facts will be lost on them, and they’ll spend the majority of their time thinking about the fortune they’ll accumulate.

Unfortunately, affiliate marketing does not function in this manner. The outcome is unfavourable if you pay too much for traffic; if your conversion rates are too low; if you invest too much time in projects with lower returns. Your figures will not add up. You may end up in debt rather than profit at the end of the day, month, or year. And because you’re a single owner rather than the CEO of a corporation, you don’t get paid at all. Worse, you can lose some of the money you worked so hard to get.

Conclusions

So, how does it all come together? There are six main errors in affiliate marketing that you should be aware of as you read this. If you fall into one of these traps, your affiliate marketing will lead to debt rather than wealth.

So, how can you avoid these pitfalls, make better judgments, and build a successful affiliate marketing business? To begin, choose things that are truly useful. As I previously stated, no matter how much you try to promote a low demand product, it will fail to sell. You can’t create demand if there isn’t any. Don’t even attempt.

Next, seek for a product that is a winner inside the niches that are in high demand. Look for anything that converts nicely. You can do this by searching Clickbank for high-gravity, high-popularity products. You can also do this by examining salespages for those with exceptionally appealing content, generous perks, and affordable costs.

You’ll want to make sure that the declarations are fair and that the seller is trustworthy, in addition to choosing a product that converts effectively. With your list members, one poor product can knock you down a few notches. It’s rarely worth it to make a single sale and lose a customer who might otherwise buy from you again.

Remember to send traffic to an opt-in form instead of your affiliate link after you start generating traffic for your affiliate marketing campaigns. If you send someone directly to an affiliate link, you’re likely to never hear from them again, regardless of whether or not they make a purchase. The importance of gathering leads cannot be overstated.

Last but not least, maintain track of conversion rates, bid prices, commission rates, product broker fees, and all the other information that affiliate marketers prefer to overlook. Understanding, modifying, and knowing these data might mean the difference between profit and debt. You are free to disregard them, but doing so will not benefit your business.

With that out of the way, you’re ready to dive into affiliate marketing. There are many dangers, but you already know the top six. Avoid them, and you’ll be on your way to profit, following in the footsteps of previous super affiliates.

[puppyexpressions]

Dog Bucket List: 45 Fun Things to Do With Your Dog to Make Him Happy

It’s not for nothing that our furry friends are often referred to as human’s best friend. They’re incredibly loyal, caring and earnest, and their love is unconditional like no other. Thus, it’s only fair we also treat our doggies like they’re our best friends; it’s a spot they’ve rightfully earned, after all. And that means there’s so much more we could be doing together with our dogs to make them (and you) happy beyond the basics. That’s why I have put together this fun bucket list of things to do with your dog, so that you and your furry best friend can get into some awesome dog-friendly activities together!

1. ✧ Stay at a Pet-Friendly Hotel

There are plenty of places where your pooch is welcome to stay, just do a simple search for pet-friendly accommodations. You will find hotels and log cabins, as well as a cottages and cute glamping tents. Pick one and have a memorable getaway with your pup.

2. ✧ Learn a New Trick

Depending on how long you’ve been training him, your pup likely already knows how to play fetch and roll over. Those are just the most basic of tricks that you could teach him though. There is also the army crawl, the salute, and the handstand which can leave other owners impressed once your doggy has mastered them.

3. ✧ Dress Up for Halloween

Halloween can be a fun holiday to enjoy together with your pup. The stores are bursting with simple costumes for dogs, like different kinds of cute headbands that’ll easily transform them into a dog-dragon or the like for the night. A quick search for dog costumes on Amazon will pop up a ton of different options as your dog’s costume, such as reindeer ridden by Santa, mail carrier, ghostbuster, dinosaurs, Maleficent, and the list goes on.

And naturally, it is a must to take a million photos of you and your pup in your Halloween outfits for the world to see.

4. ✧ Walk on the Beach

With the summer season well under way, there’s no excuse not to schedule a fun day out frolicking on the sand. There are plenty of dog-friendly beaches around the US that you could visit.

5. ✧ Have a Doggy Birthday Party

You should be able to lookup your pooch’s birthday on his pedigree. But, if your dog is a rescue or doesn’t have an exact birthdate, you can pick a date that’s convenient to you, so he can check off this activity on his dog bucket list. It would be wise to send out your invitations and make the cake early so you won’t end up going crazy over last-minute arrangements.

Don’t forget to buy a cute birthday hat and you can easily bake your own doggie cake with the Wheat-Free Peanut Butter Puppy Cake Mix.

6. ✧ Take Your Dog to Work With You

While not all workplaces allow it, for security, hygiene and other reasons, surprisingly many companies these days allow for their employees to bring their dog to work with them. And why not? A furry friend in the office makes the working day so much more fun and breezy!

Your dog will also enjoy the extra time spent with you, not to mention all the attention they’ll be getting throughout the day from your colleagues who won’t be able to keep their hands off from petting your doggy.

7. ✧ Ride in a Convertible

Just like you, your pup loves to feel the wind in his hair when cruising down the highways. The usual coupe or pickup is boring and confining though, so go on a drive in a convertible instead. Accessorize with cool sunglasses (like the QUMY dog goggles) as you bask in the sun and you will feel like celebrities who have all the time in the world.

8. ✧ Go Shopping Together at a Dog-friendly Store

Shopping no longer has to be an activity that you love to do but need to leave your furry bestie home for! Although certain stores, such as supermarkets, continue to be quite inaccessible to dogs, a wider range of stores accepting dogs, outside of pet shops, are beginning to arise all over. Just check online before you get going on your epic shopping trip!

9. ✧ Stand Up Paddle Board

If you haven’t already noticed, a stand-up paddle board just happens to fit more than one person, you can easily have room for a smaller sized dog. Honestly, teaching your pet to SUP may be one of the more challenging things to do on this list, but in the end it’ll be so much fun to paddle down a scenic river or on a smooth lake.

10. ✧ Do a Police Car Ride Along

Another one for extra special dog activities–for both you and the dog–is to go on a ride along in a police car. It can’t get much more exciting than that! It’s also totally safe to do, giving you a ton of first hand insight on what it’s actually like to be a police officer for a day.

11. ✧ Play Frisbee

If your dog already knows how to fetch a stick or a ball, it can be easy to advance a level with a Frisbee. Though Fido might have some difficulty with catching a flying disc at first, this is one thing to do with your dog that will require a little patience.

You can easily find a frisbee on Amazon, but the KONG Classic Flyer is one of the best-rated across the board.

12. ✧ Sleep on the Bed

Sleeping on the bed can be such a treat for your pooch, but don’t give into the temptation too much or they won’t sleep in their own dog bed! Some dogs will even chew up their beds so that they can spend more time on your bed—a very smart trick. Everybody knows that having your pooch lie in your bed with you is one of the best feelings in the world for you (and him), but once they start snoring, it might be time to kick them out of the bedroom!

13. ✧ Watch the Puppy Bowl

As tempting as it might be to switch the channel to watch your favorite American football teams going at each other, Super Bowl Sunday is the best time for you to binge-watch the Puppy Bowl with your pooch. Not only will you see puppies, but also other cute animal “tweeters” and “commentators”. You never know, you might find that squealing at fluffy furballs is a more enjoyable annual thing to do than screaming at sweaty athletes.

14. ✧ Have Breakfast in Bed

Is it your pup’s birthday? Or perhaps just a rainy and gloomy morning where you could both use a little pick me up? Having breakfast in bed together, all the while cuddling and maybe catching something comforting on the TV, sounds like a great way to treat yourself – and your pupper!

If you’re skilled with your hands and in the kitchen, try to whip up a breakfast that looks like you’re both having the same thing, but will be totally safe for your furry friend to eat. Some ideas for a dog friendly breakfast are cauliflower muffin bites, pancake puffs or these mini omelettes. Perhaps you’d like to enjoy the same treats for your breakfast – or at least the human version of them?

15. ✧ Take a Nap Together

Although a simple activity, apart from a good and long walk around the neighborhood, this is what you and your pup will love to do together the most! If possible, why not make it a regular thing even? It’s such an excellent way for both of you to recharge your batteries mid-day. So cuddle up and get to snoozing!

16. ✧ Visit a Nursing Home

There’s no denying the fact that playing with dogs can be therapeutic, especially to those who live in nursing homes. This is because friendly canines can encourage residents to leave the confines of their room and to recover faster from surgery or a stroke. Watching the older generation having fun with your pet is always worth the effort of driving to your nearest care home and it will be such a rewarding thing to do for everyone.

17. ✧ Eat a Gourmet Meal

I have eaten many incredible meals at memorable restaurants in my lifetime, but finding a restaurant that serves gourmet meals for dogs can be a challenge. Sometimes, it would be better off to prepare the food yourself, which should be fairly easy to do. There are several delicious dog friendly recipes on the web that can be easy to make, like peanut butter cookies, gourmet whole wheat dog biscuits and chicken jerky. 

18. ✧ Have a Steak Dinner

If breakfast in bed sounds like it could get messy or complicated really quick, you can’t go wrong with a steak dinner. And since your dog actually can eat the same dish as you this time around—though they may prefer it on the raw side—it’s an especially fun ‘date night’ between you and your best friend. Your doggie doesn’t need much more than a juicy hunk of meat to feel special and loved, and you’ll love to share a good steak with them, too.

19. ✧ Get a Doggy Massage

You’re not the only one who can benefit from a trip to the spa every once in a while; your canine friend can too! Many owners believe that a doggy massage can help to provide strengthened immunity, increased circulation, stress relief and improved digestion in their pets. You may not be able to get him a Thai massage, but definitely something more gentle will be available for your deserving best friend. So, schedule an appointment with your nearest animal massage parlor today to give your pup a well-deserved break after a hard day at the park of learn how to massage your dog yourself.

20. ✧ Get a ‘Pawicure” (AKA: Doggie Manicure)

Unlike us humans, our dogs probably don’t appreciate getting their nails cut as much as we do. But if you make an event of it, you might survive through it with less hassle. Google around for shops in your local area where you can go get a pawicure at, or follow these instructions to pamper and groom your pup from the comfort of your home. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to treat yourself to a mani-pedi as well!

21. ✧ Play Hide n’ Seek

Well, a dog friendly version of hide n’ seek, at least! Your pup may not understand the rules of the original hide and seek, but if you play it in a way that your dog can enjoy and easily follow the rules, you’ll both end up having a great time.

In the dog friendly version, instead of ordering your dog to go hide, or hiding yourself, you’ll hide his or hers favorite toy. Start with easy hiding spots and, as your pet gets the gist, you can increase the difficulty of where you hide the toy.

22. ✧ Play in the Leaves

Cleaning up your yard from the fallen leaves just got a whole lot more fun with the pup joining in on the game. You might not get a lot of actual work done, but you’ll get plenty of laughter out of it! And if you don’t have a yard, find a park or equivalent where there’ll be leaves to play around in.

23. ✧ Play Sock Tug-of-War

Got a pair of socks to spare? Tug-of-War is a fun game that you’ll be able to enjoy together, and you don’t even need to let your pup win! All you need are some socks that have seen their best days. You can play either with one simple sock, or you can use your socks to build a homemade version of a tug toy. If you don’t have some old socks, get him a squeaky sock monkey instead.

24. ✧ Be the Star in a Dog Calendar

Lots of organizations make calendars where owners can proudly display their pooches. The requirements for getting your pet in on the action can vary from place to place. Some clubs make it a contest to find suitable cover dogs while others are willing to print submissions. With companies like Shutterfly it’s also possible to create your own calendar with your favorite photos.

25. ✧ Swim in the Ocean

If Rover doesn’t already know how to swim, now is the best time for you to teach him. To make the training process easier and safer, make the necessary preparations such as providing clean water to drink, bringing a flotation vest, and establishing rest areas with a lot of shade. Start in a shallow part of the water then just coax him in farther with a toy or a treat. Using a positive tone of voice and giving lots of verbal praise can go a long way too. The Teaching Your Dog to Swim video with help you out!

26. ✧ Warm Up in Front of the Fire

This is an ultimate way for a human to cozy up on a cold evening, especially after a few hours spent outdoors getting your cheeks red in chilly weather. But you can count on your pooch to enjoy it every bit as much as you; the heat of the burning flames will warm him up, too, and it’s a great moment to spend together with you. Lay a towel, mat or a blanket on the floor, sit down and instruct your pup to come sit next to you, then wrap another blanket around the both of you, and enjoy some relaxing time together. 

27. ✧ Play in the Sprinklers

Owning a lawn can do more than just boost the curb appeal of your home. It also gives you plenty of opportunities to frolic with the furballs, particularly when you have a sprinkler system installed. Take note though that some doggies find it more interesting to chew, bite or dig your sprinklers so you might want to buy a few sprinkler toys,  like an inflatable shallow pool sprinkler or the crazy Tidal Storm Hydro spinning sprinkler that will have him entertained for hours!

28. ✧ Play With Your Favorite Toy Together

Every pup has a toy that they love and adore more than any other. It may be one that the doggy can enjoy playing with by herself, but it’s also one of the easiest things to do with your dog – and she’ll totally love having a buddy to pay with!

29. ✧ Have a Doggie Play Date

If you’ve noticed that your pup seems to want playmates of his own species, you can find him one by setting up play dates with other people’s pooches. This shouldn’t be a problem when you know a few pet owners in your area, but if you don’t you can search for one in dog parks or at doggy daycares. Should you decide to meet outside of those places, do it in neutral territory as you don’t want to end up having to break up any fights.

30. ✧ March in a Parade

Did you know that, especially around the holidays, there are dog parades arranged all around the country? How much fun does that sound like?! Your pup will get to don a costume and you’ll have a blast walking in the crowds, making new friends, both human and the four-legged kind. As parades are quite hectic, you may want to do some preparing and training with the pupper to get ready for the big day and have it go over smoothly and successfully.

31. ✧ Romp Around in the Snow

Although the winter time may feel cold and uncomfortable for going out for walks, there’s plenty of fun that can be had when there’s some snow on the ground. You’ll likely get to take the lead, but your pup will have the best time romping and jumping around in the snow with you, especially if you live in a region where you regularly get loads of it.

32. ✧ Hike a National Park

Generally, pets are permitted in National Parks (check each ones website to be sure!) but they typically have to be restrained on a leash not exceeding 6 feet in length. There are several reasons behind this NPS policy but the main point is to protect your dog along with park resources. To avoid any mishaps, remember to maintain proper trail etiquette including observing the rules for the right-of-way.

33. ✧ Have a Social Media Fanpage

You’ve probably heard of Boo the Pomeranian who has over 17 million fans on Facebook. Just like him, your pooch can become a social media superstar too! Start by taking lots of fun photos of your furry pal and post them on Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram. Or possibly even start a travel blog for your dog, but make sure you don’t make the beginning blogging mistakes I did! Take note to update the page on a regular basis and if there’s a high cuteness factor you should see the list of followers grow.

34. ✧ Take a Picture with Santa

A bit of a controversial opinion to some, but as a dog owner, at least one reading through this list, you definitely think of them as part of your family. Specifically, as one of the youngsters in the household. And therefore, getting a picture of the pup with Santa becomes a memory you’ll want to have and to keep!

35. ✧ Attend the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show

There is no better way to show off your amazing canine friend than by having him join this prestigious dog show. Apparently, cuteness alone won’t cut it in the big leagues though so you have to focus on improving other aspects such as cosmetic features and structure. This gives you all the more reason to drop by the animal spa every now and then, doesn’t it?

36. ✧ Try Something New Together

New ways to spend time together with our puppies keeps being thought of, so there will be plenty for you to choose from and try out to find the activities you and your dog will enjoy. Have you ever gone roller blading together? Or tried out dog yoga? Search Google a bit for some suggestions, possibly even list down all the best sounding ideas, and get started on trying out those new things to do with your dog!

37. ✧ Go on a Picnic

Some days you just want to relax rather than chase after Fido. The problem is that it’s highly unlikely that your pet will want to stay still for a long period of time. A picnic is the best way for you to meet in the middle. As he romps around in the grass, you can chow on some cake and roll on the blanket.

38. ✧ Dine on the Patio of a Dog Friendly Restaurant

When the weather gets great, you’ll want to meet with your friends for some great brunch or dinner on a gorgeous patio of one of your favorite restaurants. What about, if the restaurant is also a dog friendly spot, you took your pup with you the next time? It’ll be a fun experience and memory for both of you to have, and if it goes well you might want to even make it a regular thing, perhaps with just the two of you.  

39. ✧ Go Camping

Want to embark on a camping adventure in the wild but don’t want to leave Spot behind? No problem-just bring him along! That is, if he is trained well enough to handle the activity. If he barks a lot or tends to snatch food from other people, you will want to rethink your camping plans.

The How to Camp With Your Dog article will help to get you wilderness ready, and the check out these pet friendly campgrounds around the world.

40. ✧ Be an Extra in a Movie

Whether it’s just your pretty pup, or the both of you together, it’s surprisingly easy to find a spot for an extra in a movie (or a TV show). It’s also rather easy and simple thing to do, so there’s no need to worry about how to be an extra in a movie or that it’d be too much for the pup to handle. Instead, it could be quite fun and will serve as a unique opportunity and activity – and not just to you but to the doggy as well!

41. ✧ Go to a Dog Park

It can be a whole lot of fun to get your furry friend to socialize with other pets at a dog park. However, you need to have established a calm-assertive leadership over him by then. With this, along with remaining vigilant, you can rest assured that your dog will not become a fight magnet. For an extra addition to you dog park bucket list visit these 10 Amazing Dog Parks You Need to See in Your Lifetime.

42. ✧ Take a Boat Ride

Now that you’re done swimming in the ocean, you’ll want to drop by a lake too for a ride on a boat. But you have to realize that not all dogs may enjoy the experience. What you need to do is get him acclimated to the boat before the trip to minimize his distress about not having his feet planted on solid ground.

43. ✧ Take Obedience Classes

Even if your pup isn’t quite as bad as Marley from Marley & Me, no harm will come from taking some obedience classes. In fact, it may teach you things about your dog on a new level. And, additionally, it will also be of aid in committing to the other dog activities on this bucket list, with the pup as obedient and polished as can be.

44. ✧ Do Doga (Dog Yoga)

Now that you’ve ticked massages off the dog bucket list, you should also give doga a go. Though you may not be able to find a doggy yoga retreat and hot Bikram yoga is out of the question, doga is not limited to just doing a variety of poses together. It may also include eye-gazing to enhance the human-canine bond. Overall, it’s an experience that can help both of you to relax.

45. ✧ Eat a Doggy Ice Cream

OK, maybe you won’t want to switch to eating doggy ice cream yourself and instead stick to your regular flavors of Ben & Jerry’s. But thanks to the great creation of doggy ice cream, your beloved pup can now join in on enjoying the icy treat together with you. You can find sometimes find doggy ice cream at the freezer section of the supermarket, or you might want to try your own hand at making some?

These fun dog activities should definitely keep you busy and active with some of the best things to do with your dog. Try them out to see what makes him or her happiest, then you can keep repeating and rotating between the best ones! Most of all, have a blast going through this bucket list together with your best friend!

[nickcifonie]

In 2021, Anyone Can Make $ Playing Video Games!

I grew up playing games like Risk, Monopoly, a little Chess... and still remember buying my first computer somewhere around 1986 solely to play a computer game on. It was an Apple IIc, and that first game was some type of Pirate Adventure. I wish I remembered the name. It wasn’t all that good, but still, I was hooked!

Since that first adventure, I’ve spent thousands of hours as well as dollars playing just about every type of digital game that has followed! PC games, Atari, Wii, mobile games... you name it, I play it! I’d always generalize the cost (to myself at least) thinking “some guys play golf 3 days a week at $100 a round... I play computer games”.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it! However, the story has changed...

“Pay to Play” has become “Play to Earn”!

If you would be to search terms like “crypto games”, “blockchain games”, “make money playing video games”, and others, you’d find some really incredible statements. Today, quotes like the ones below are becoming more and more common!

“I made $400 last week playing a computer game” “I just sold my RPG character for $200 profit”

“I was offered $1k for a skin for my laser rifle of doom” (I made up the “laser rifle of doom” part)

“I bred my pet thingamajig yesterday and sold the baby!” (it’s digital, for those of you wincing)

In 2021, thanks to the blockchain, there’s a growing community of gamers who are making real dollars daily, mining, fighting, shooting, jumping... all while playing the same type of mobile and PC games that you had to PAY to play just a short while ago...

...but let’s start at the beginning.

You paid $172,000 for a what!?

Yes... all the way back in 2018 a CryptoKitty named “Dragon” was sold for an incredible $172,000. (300 ETH) Don’t be too surprised, it’s justified! It’s an adorable digital image, or “NFT” of a cat, after all.

It’s a lot of money, but for NFTs and blockchain gaming, flipping a Kitty today may as well be considered the stone ages. It’s still a record, but while you can still get started collecting these digital felines for as low as a couple of dollars, big-dollar trades still happen daily.

On the flip side of mortgaging your home to buy a digital picture of a CryptoKitty, Bored Ape, or CryptoPunk, you may feel better if you begin your adventure into making crypto (it’s real money, dear!) by playing a video game where you can “make money” instead of spending it.

I’m not saying owning a CryptoKitty or any of a plethora of “Avatar NFTs” we see popping up on various exchanges isn’t one way to do it... I’m saying to me at least, as a life-long gamer I’d much prefer playing a mobile, console, or PC game to collecting pictures in a digital wallet.

So what the heck is an NFT?

I could go into a long explanation... but since this article is about gaming and not cryptocurrency, I’ll tell you an NFT is a “non-fungible token”, and leave you google it if you really want to dig in deep. I do want to share more, so I’ll ‘splain it as simple as I can for you Lucy!

A CryptoKitty, as stated above, is a type of image called an NFT. (the collection is called “CryptoKitties) It’s a digital picture of a cartoon cat. There are thousands of different ones that have different shapes, colors, expressions and traits. (kind of like a real cat, but eats less)

The difference, is only one of each design is actually a legitimate “CryptoKitty”. (or a legitimate whatever type of image it happens to be) To be clearer... each NFT is a “one of a kind”, so if you’re thinking “but can’t I just make a copy?”, nope you can’t.

I mean... you “can” make a copy of it if you really dig the design and want it on your desktop, but it would only be a copy of that particular NFT, not the real McCoy! Ok... so what makes one real, and the rest fakes? The blockchain.

Now, I’m going to be true to my word and keep my promise of not making this an article about crypto or the blockchain, so just know this: the difference between an image that is an actual NFT, and a copy of one, is there is an underlying digital code that designates the real thing.

So real in fact, that artists are creating or importing their paintings and creations to the web as NFTs, numbering them as they would a lithograph, and selling their entire collections. So if you are an art fan, check with your favorite creators... you may be surprised to find all of their “works of art” on an online marketplace!

NFTs are viewed on certain marketplace websites and digital wallets where the copies cannot be displayed, so that is how we know one is real, and the others are not! Having said that, sure, there’s more to it, but just know that there’s a 100% secure way of knowing an image is a real NFT.

In addition, there can be more than one NFT with the same identical image. However, each has a unique underlying code, so even if they look exactly the same, they are not! Look at it like the playing cards or comic books of old... there may be 1,000 created (or “minted” as it’s called in NFT land) but they will each be numbered 1 to 1,000.

And guess which is more valuable.....? I knew you’d get it!

And these NFT’s make money how?

You’re getting warmer! There are a lot of different types of games coming out these days where you can make money playing. There are RPG’s, MOBA’s, Shooters, games in first person and in third, dungeon crawls... you name it!

If you’re thinking “how did I not know this!”, I was the same until recently! I have been gaming almost daily since I stepped into Ultima Online back in 1997, and I can’t even begin to tally how many hours and/or dollars I’ve invested into gaming.

Now, our hobby pays!

After 30-something years, my wife still thinks I’m bonkers... but I got a totally different look from her a few days ago when I told her I sold my game character for well over $200. Legit. I sold two more yesterday, and another this afternoon.

Some of these only cost me $10 or $15, some much more. Some are free. I sold another NFT character last week for $1,950, and it was sold on the game’s website, not on the black market.

So not only can an NFT be a picture of an Ape, Vegetable, Duck, or Stripper on a pole (we’ll leave it at that) but it can be a character in a game, a weapon, a mount, armor, or more.

One game is giving away free pet turtles with each character. For the uneducated on “pets” in computer games, it’s not the kind you keep in a bowl in your bedroom. It’s a companion that fights with you in an online game and may shoot fire from its eyes, heal you, or similar.

Soon after being handed out for free, they’re now selling for around $60 each.

So an NFT can be an image, a video, music, a meme... or even a shirt or shoes! But we’ll leave the NFT clothing explanation to another article. ;)

Remember that rare skin you paid out the nose for a year ago in Apex? Or the L33T character you built up in Fortnite or Warcraft? If you’re no longer playing that game, it’s money under the bridge. And you don’t own the bridge!

In this new breed of blockchain games, you could have LEGALLY sold that character, skin, weapon, land, house, mount, or whatever it was when you tired of the game. For a profit. Maybe for a LARGE profit.

Yes, in the past we were able to find ways to get around the system and dump our pixels from time to time. We’d sell the account on the black market, or cut a deal with someone like a drug dealer on a Chicago Street corner. Then we’d over who went first...

“You give me the account and weapon first!” “No you give me the money first”.  Sometimes the deals even went through. Others well... let’s just say half of the parties walked away happy.

I made good money when after 4 years of daily playing I sold my Ultima Online account for somewhere around $2,000, but I needed to find a trustworthy “go-between” to broker the deal. Even then, I was sweating it!

With today’s crypto games, not only do the games provide the platform to buy, sell, or trade your character and items, but it’s encouraged, and done with good old U.S dollars! I’ve made $ playing 4 or 5 different games already this week, as well as flipping (buying low and selling higher) NFT characters!

How else can I make money playing games?

The way you earn varies from game to game, but each week seems to reveal another new strategy, platform, or idea. Many are new strategies, and while some have “triple A” 3D animation and graphics, others are simpler and use basic one-dimensional graphics for the gameplay.

Some of these games are actually tied to a token on the blockchain. The game developer creates their own token, not too unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, and it can be bought or sold on the open market as well as used in the game as currency.

Could you imagine if back in League of Legends, Guild Wars or Final Fantasy, when you were ready to move to a new game, you could sell or easily convert your gold to cash? Some of today’s blockchain games encourage it!

Not only can you now buy and sell characters and weapons, the gold in the game can be traded, bought, sold, or saved like real currency, stocks, crypto, or collectables. Never have I been as excited about PC and mobile gaming as I am today!

As an example, I am doing some work for a new game that will launch soon called Pepper Attack. Pepper Attack has its own token or coin... called MYTE. It can be used in the game as currency, but also be traded like Bitcoin. A lot of today’s blockchain games offer this same benefit.

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to mine I go!

Just by owning an NFT from the game, you can login on a daily basis and click “mine” earning real-value tokens passively. Your Pepper goes to work like one of the 7 Dwarves mining MYTE, and later on you can convert it to other tokens or cold, hard cash.

There's more to do in this particular game as well. Like any good RPG or MMORPG, each pepper has a unique combination or skills like attack, defense, evade, hit points, and more. As an example of the possibilities, if you have a high attack score, other characters will be able to pay you in MYTE to “train” them, raising their score as well.

In addition, these NFTs have unique physical traits, some are common and some are very rare. This game in particular have toons that look more like anime-ish elves with weapons and a stem... I have to admit the artwork is really spicey! (see what I did there?) Other games are of course totally different.

Some people will simply collect these NFTs/characters as an investment, like playing cards or comics. Others will use them in the game, and still others will do both. Either way, they can be held, or sold for a profit!

Unlike the games of the past, when you’re ready to move on you don’t walk away and lose all the $ you have spent for characters, skins, weapons, potions, and other items. When you’re done, you’ll be able to sell your character and items... possibly for a profit... maybe a lot of profit... and move on.

These are not your father’s computer games!

As we move ahead in the genre, we are seeing AAA studios coming out with big-dollar productions, like Blankos, Mist, Illuvium, Ember Sword and others. Some of these games actually let you buy the land you build on!

Did you have your own house in Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, or Archeage? What if you could have used It as a shop and been paid in dollars for your wares, rented it to another player, or sold it for cold hard cash at a huge profit down the road?

In many of today’s games, not only is it common, but extremely hard to come by, and quite expensive. Not only are people paying thousands of dollars for a plot in some of the games that have land, but they’re paying it many months before the game is even released.

They do it, because in many cases they know that they can easily 2X, 10X, or even 50X their investment a short piece down the road. Seriously? Seriously... and the early bird catches the worm!

Other games with lesser budgets are more graphic-based, but have super earnings potential as well, and are just as fun to play. These include Splinterlands, (a card game like Magic!) Crypto Blades, Axie Infinity and more.

Regardless of if the new blockchain game of your choice is a RPG, MOBA, a card game or racing game... the fact that you can put some coin into your pocket playing adds a whole new element. It’s heckafun making money playing a game!

The early nerd catches the worm!

In many cases, if you can catch a game before it releases, the land, characters, weapons, and other items... in most cases all NFTs... can be grabbed at a tiny fraction of the future value.

Of course, always check out the game details and team first, and be confident it’s a good place to put your money. Not all games are made the same.

If you’re lucky enough to find out about and partake in an early sale, for example, like grabbing a character NFT or two in   “Pepper Attack”  before the late September launch date, you may be in for a real treat!

There are plenty of new titles coming down the pipe that look to be fun, have great communities, and offer earning opportunities. A web search will find services and websites that will keep you on your toes and alert you of upcoming blockchain game releases, marketplace opening, and more.

As we look forward, the future of gaming on the blockchain is really, really exciting! Not only are the games getting better and more fun, but they’re getting better at making the economics work more smoothly as well.

The games are not without challenges, as they need to be made to sustain themselves economically over the long haul. In addition, they need to have higher levels of security (thanks blockchain!) and of course, work without becoming “pay to win”. Thankfully, the new breed of developers have risen to the challenge!

The next time you look for a new game to add to your phone or desktop, or just want a change of pace, look to a game that pays to play! Your wallet might thank you.

Another perk, is your husband or wife will appreciate it as well! Instead of hearing “are you going to play that stupid game all night again?”, you may start to hear things like “I’ll put the kids to bed tonight sweetheart, so you can get online and play”.

One can only hope...

Author - Nick Cifonie

Nick is a lifelong gamer, who cut his teeth at the local Chicago arcade playing Tetris as a teen. Better known as Znick or Deacon Z, Nick became a Game Master in Ultima Online in 1997, ran a large multi-game guild for 15 years, and now spends his time in the “play to earn” arena. Professionally, Nick is a writer and 4-decade marketer working with the  Pepper Attack team, as well as others. Nick is also a Catholic Deacon.

[rohitsurwase]

The One Simple Tip to Help You Stand Out on LinkedIn

If there is one massively underrated social platform that agency owners need to be taking advantage of, it’s LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a gold mine for agencies and consultants alike. It doesn’t have the massive, flashy advertising appeal like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, but it’s far and away the best platform for B2B marketing, and can be a game changer when it comes to finding new clients.

There’s just one problem…

A lot of agency owners struggle to use LinkedIn to its full capability.

We see so many potential acquisition opportunities left on the LinkedIn table.

Luckily, there are a lot of things that you can do to improve your LinkedIn outreach, and while it starts with honing your profile, it doesn’t end there.

To stand out on LinkedIn, you’re going to have to be different from your competition. You’re going to have to post regularly, reply to people, and provide value, but you can’t follow the same formula as everyone else.

Because of the perceived expectation of extreme professionalism when posting on LinkedIn, people, agencies included, tend to create content that doesn’t really connect with anyone.

Mandy McEwen, Founder of Mod Girl Marketing, pointed that out in DigitalMarketer’s recent Certified Partner Training Day. As someone who has mastered the art of LinkedIn, and regularly uses it to generate leads for her agency, Mandy has quickly become a thought-leader in the LinkedIn marketing world.

Mandy has one very simple tip that can help agency owners generate the traffic and cultivate the relationships that they want on their LinkedIn:

Be authentic. Be yourself.

That may seem like a very inconsequential piece of advice, but the truth is that it’s not. In fact, it’s the thing that is probably keeping you from growing your brand and your business on LinkedIn.

Why LinkedIn Demands Authenticity

Because of that perceived expectation of extreme professionalism on LinkedIn—since it’s a career-oriented platform—people forget one very critical fact about it: it’s still a social media platform.

It may be a very niche social media platform, and people may use it primarily for business as opposed to leisure, but it’s still designed for engagement and sharing. It’s goal, although slightly more targeted, is still to help people connect.

Truthfully, it’s the people who are 100% themselves on the platform that we all want to be like. And it’s not just because they are the ones who have the most success.

McEwen is a great example. She uses her business page on LinkedIn to provide basic updates but uses her personal page to truly interact with people—and her personal page is where most of her best content is.

While she could use her business page in largely the same way she does her personal page, her personal page gives the people she’s interacting with a seemingly more direct and familiar relationship with her. It makes them like her more and have more positive interactions with her content. It puts a face on her brand, which undoubtedly boosts her brand and generates clients.

And, in the case of Mandy, it’s working out pretty well…

Too many people, especially agency owners, think of LinkedIn as an extended storefront or a snapshot of their business. That may be a happy biproduct of your LinkedIn account, but it’s not the reason for it to exist.

For agency owners especially, the best thing you can do to get more clients is to interact with as many people as possible. You want them feeling like they know you in real life. You want them to be able to point your voice out in a crowd.

This puts you in a way better position to convert, because when one of these LinkedIn connections is having some problems with their marketing, you know who they are going to turn to? Not the stranger they know nothing about.

They are going to turn to you.

They know you, and they trust you, so they will give you their business.

LinkedIn exists for you to connect with people, and the best way for you to connect with people is to be yourself. The better connection you make with your LinkedIn audience, the more likely it is they are going to turn to you for their business and advertising needs. And the best way to build those relationships is by providing authentic, value-heavy content.

Mastering LinkedIn Content

If you’re going to post content, regardless of the platform, it needs to provide value (and if you didn’t know that before, you do now). For anyone to recognize or remember your name because of your content, they need to get something meaningful out of it. If your content doesn’t accomplish that, you’re just making content for Google, and Google doesn’t help you pay rent.

But there is an intersection between authenticity and professionalism when it comes to LinkedIn content. Valuable content will make people read or watch, but your authenticity is what will make people connect with you and your brand on a more personal level.

The authenticity factor when creating LinkedIn content includes both your personality and your expertise. As important as it is to add a fun, personal touch to your content that will help your personality shine, you also need to bring something unique to the table when it comes to the value you provide. You can’t just regurgitate simple tips and talking points that anyone could get from a basic Google search. You need to bring something helpful to the table, because that unique tip or viewpoint is what will also help you stand out.

Luckily, although you need to provide both value and a good snapshot of your personality, those things can often go hand-in-hand. That’s because it’s the unique experiences that make you who you are.

We’ve covered this extensively in recent weeks, but let me tell you again: stories are a useful tool in business. They can help captivate audiences, teach concepts, and increase sales. They also make for great additions to content. When you are creating a video or post for LinkedIn, you can use personal experiences to help illustrate (and strengthen) the valuable advice that you are offering.

How Much Content You Need

So now that you have a good idea of what to create, I can already tell what your next question is going to be: “how much do I need to write?”

This question has a simple answer: you can’t have too much content. Every piece of content you make is going to help you stand out. At the very least, it won’t hurt you.

But, generally speaking, you need 5–8 pieces of content that are really solid. And then you need to put those pieces into your featured content.

Here are 3 pieces of Mandy’s featured content. Some of them are self-contained on LinkedIn and some of them link out to her website, but all of them provide value with Mandy’s own personal spin.

In the case of the LinkedIn Profile Checklist, the content is a lead magnet that Mandy created herself. Not only is this content hyper-tactical, but it’s also something you can’t find anywhere else. It isn’t only tactical—its’s also interactive.

The next piece of content accomplishes the same thing in a slightly different way: you can see Mandy’s face. By using a video, she gets to provide something helpful to her LinkedIn audience while also actually putting herself in front of them. This means she can really be authentic and let her personality shine. Then her audience will definitely associate the information they just learned with her.

In both ways, her content is helping her grow her LinkedIn audience and her business. And, by sprinkling testimonials about her business among her other content, she’s got everything someone visiting her LinkedIn would need to learn more about her business.

Thank You .... !

[rylanssbv658]

An Unbiased View of Best Office Phones For Small Business

And with its drag and drop contractor, you can create these campaigns in a matter of minutes, even if you have zero coding skills or technical understanding. However you may be wondering how you can utilize it with your Vo, IP phone service. That's easy: by making a "Click to Call" button like this: With Optin, Beast, you can show targeted projects to engage your consumers and get them to call your organization. Plus, doing so is easy! Whatever starts by picking an Optin, Beast design template for the project you wish to construct (such as a popup, drifting bar, fullscreen welcome mat, and so on): From there, you can customize your project to make it look expert, even if you don't have any coding or style experience.

You can include new features with a drag and a drop: This permits anybody to rapidly and quickly produce professional-looking and high-converting projects. However from there, you'll need to show your popup to the best people, in the best places, and at simply the correct time in their consumer journey. For that, you require powerful targeting guidelines, like the following one's used by Optin, Beast: Show messages as users are actively leaving your site. Show your "click to call" popup based on your visitor's physical place - voip cordless phone. Make fresh offers to returning visitors to prevent "popup tiredness." These are just a few of Optin, Beast's popular targeting rules, though there are lots of others.

You can do the same and recover more direct require your service to generate leads. How? The location to begin is by clicking below and starting your 100% risk-free Optin, Monster account today: Our conversion professionals will design 1 complimentary project for you to get maximum outcomes absolutely RELEASE! Click on this link to get started Now let's dive into our list of the finest Vo, IP company phone systems available. Nextiva is the best service Vo, IP system readily available and offers a user friendly, effective little organization phone system. Additionally, you don't require a yearly contract, and Nextiva is quick to setup.

Facts About Voip Phone Service Uncovered

Also, you'll get a toll-free number free with any of their plans. It has a basic web-based admin panel that makes it easy to handle your business communications platform, no matter your company requirements. Nextiva provides other calling features like CRM tools, live chat, online studies, and more. Nextiva's client support also gets rave reviews. Quick setup Uses industry-standard SIP procedure Endless contacting us to the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico Bring your existing phone numbers (number portability) Route calls to the next available agent with call queuing Instantaneous conference calls and Meet-Me conferencing Nextiva app lets you manage calls from your mobile device Advanced IVR (Interactive Voice Response) with speech commands and biometrics Trustworthy information centers with 99.

Pricing starts at $20/month per user for the Fundamental strategy. Ring, Central is a reputable, safe, and problem-free IP phone service. It's easy to establish and comes with useful features like call forwarding, call tracking, video and audio conferencing, automatic call recording, screen sharing, and faxing. Ring, Central likewise provides functions to support call centers. You can establish numerous phone lines with their call center software. You can contact your consumers through your workplace phone system, text messaging, e-mail, or social. This provides small companies the bandwidth to create full-on contact centers to improve UX. This Vo, IP option incorporates with 3rd-party services like Zapier, Salesforce, Workplace 365, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more.

Ring, Central offers consumer assistance by means of their online knowledge center, plus they use phone support. This is a feature-rich option that will not break the bank. Simple and easy setup Online faxing Endless calls within the United States and Canada Select a toll-free or local service telephone number Unrestricted audio and video conference capabilities Voicemail-to-text service Automatic call recording Little to large-scale organizations. Prices starts at $19. 99/month per user (billed annually). Grasshopper is a popular service phone system for small company owners. It comes with all the important features you need like call transfers, incoming call control, simultaneous call handling, custom-made greetings, voicemail, and more.

The Single Strategy To Use For Best Voip Phone System

Both the web-based website and app-based website are simple to use to handle your telephone system. Desktop and mobile apps (i, OS and Android) Voicemail transcription service Auto-attendant with custom greetings Service texting service Call transfer service Start-ups and small companies trying to find a robust Vo, IP service. Pricing begins at $26/month per number (billed annually). Phone. com is a cost effective Vo, IP option that provides call waiting, call forwarding, voicemail, caller ID, call queuing, text messaging, and more. Plus, you http://edition.cnn.com/search/?text=VoIP Phone can choose at least 1 regional or toll-free number with all plans. If you have an interest in analytics, you won't be dissatisfied with Phone.

It includes caller analytics that reveals your callers' demographics, social profiles, and more. Additionally, it offers simple and app-based administration to make management a breeze. While Phone. com's base plan is among the least expensive, you'll also be paying additional fees for the more advanced functions. Option of virtual or toll-free numbers Number portability, including bulk number porting HIPAA compliance Voice tagging informs you which department the caller desires Call tape-recording Video conferencing Local call minutes include Canada and several European nations Assistance for different gadgets including mobile phones Softphone assistance (no need to buy new phones or committed hardware) Little to big services that desire an inexpensive Vo, IP service.

99/month (when billed every year). Vonage is a plug-and-play Vo, IP service that uses unrestricted calling and SMS text messages in the United States and Canada. Moreover, in addition to the basic Vo, IP functions like voicemail to email, call screening, call forwarding, etc., you likewise get access to Amazon Chime. Unlike many service providers on this list, Vonage provides toll-free numbers as an addon, suggesting you have to pay more for it. Nevertheless, Vonage does use a ridiculously robust suite of features to select from, so you can develop the organization phone system that's best for you. 99. 999% uptime reliability Includes Amazon Chime Pro tier for chat, screen share, video, and web conferencing Mobile and desktop apps SD-WAN technology available Call and paging groups Customized caller ID Because of its scalability, Vonage works for little to enterprise-level companies.

Top Guidelines Of Best Voip Phone

99/month per line. 88 is a popular and inexpensive business phone service. It consists of all the basic functions like number sharing, automated call presence, call forwarding, chat, SMS, and more. However, 88 does do not have some of the sophisticated features provided by other Vo, IP suppliers on our list. Unrestricted calling within the United States and Canada (up to 47 nations with certain plans) Auto-attendant Cross-platform group messaging Native CRM and knowledgebase Analytics and call quality reporting Budget-conscious little services that still desire worldwide calling - voip business phone. However, they do likewise have Enterprise plans. Pricing begins at $12/month per user. Skype has the highest name acknowledgment of any other phone system on our list.

[a-coda]

Advent of Code

As a child, advent calendars always added to the sense of anticipation in the lead up to Christmas. In my day you would be lucky to get a small picture behind each of the doors. These days, children expect chocolates or sweets. My wife has once even had a "Ginvent Calendar", with gin behind each door.

This year I marked Advent by having a go at the "Advent of Code" which has Christmas-themed programming puzzles posted each day. Most days are in two parts, with an easier puzzle followed by a harder one. Traditionally, I've posted a (mostly ignored) programming puzzle to our development team each Christmas. Last year I just recycled one of the Advent of Code puzzles, but this year I suggested we attempt the whole thing. The puzzles are so well thought out, in comparison to my efforts, that it seemed pointless to compete.

In the end, several of the team had a go. Some of the puzzles were harder than others, but I managed to solve them all by Boxing Day. What follows are some personal anecdotes from the various days with some general thoughts at the end. Note that there are some spoilers and the notes won't mean much if you've not done the puzzles. So in this case just skip to the end.

a sum-finder. I implemented the search tree via recursive calls. I drifted into using Python right from the start. It just felt like the easiest way to hack the puzzles quickly. In the past I had thought about using the puzzles to learn a new language. A colleague had done that with Rust in a previous year. Despite these good intentions, expediency took a firm hold. That said, in several puzzles I would have liked immutable collections or at least Lisp-style lists.

a pattern counter. Not that interesting except patterns were emerging in the programs themselves. Regular expressions got used a lot to read in the puzzle data. I learnt about things like match.group(1,2,3) which returns a tuple of the first three match groups, so you don't have to write (m.group(1), m.group(2), m.group(3)).

a grid tracer. The first interesting one because it was unfamiliar. Some other patterns started emerging: problem parameters got promoted to command line arguments, and data structure printers got hacked to help debugging. These two were often added between part 1 and part 2 of each problem.

a data validator. This felt like a bit of a slog. It was mostly about capturing the validation rules as code. Even though I made a point of reminding myself at the start that re.search doesn't match the whole string I still forgot it later. Duh.

an indexing problem. I patted myself on the back for realizing that the index was a binary number (or pair of binary numbers as I did it). At this point the solutions were still neat and I would do a little code golfing after the solution to tidy them up a bit and make them more concise.

another pattern counter. Pre-calculating some things during data reading kept the later code simple.

a recursive calculator. This was one of those puzzles where I had to reread the description several times to try and understand what it was asking for. It entailed a slightly tricky recursive sum and product, which was again made easier by creating more supporting data structures while reading the input data.

an interpreter. Probably my favourite individual puzzle because it was so sweet, especially after a bit of refactoring to make the language more data-driven.

another sum-finder. I found I didn't particularly like these.

an order-finder. This was the first one that made me pause for thought. An overly naive search algorithm from part 1 hit a computational complexity wall in part 2. I beat the problem by realizing that the search only had to be done on small islands of the data, but a colleague pointed out there was a better linear solution. The code was starting to get a bit ragged, with commented out debugging statements.

the game of life. The classic simulation but with some out-of-bounds spaces and some line-of-sight rules. It helped to print the board.

a map navigator. I liked this one even though I forgot to convert degrees to radians and that rotation matrices go anti-clockwise. I even introduced an abstract data type (ADT) to see if it would simplify the code (I'm not sure it ever did - I mostly used lists, tuples, strings, and numbers). The second parts of the puzzles were starting to get their own files now (usually bootstrapped by copying and pasting the first part's file).

a prime number theorem. I actually got stalled on this one for a bit. It eventually turned out I had a bug in the code and was missing a modulus. In effect I wasn't accounting for small primes far to the right. I left the puzzle and went on to complete a couple of others before coming back to this one. I checked what I was doing by Googling for hints, but in the end I had to take a long hard look at the data and find my own bug.

some bit twiddling. Part 1 felt like I found the expected bitwise operations, but part 2 felt like I was bashing square pegs into round holes.

a number sequence problem. Another pat on the back, this time for keeping a dictionary of recent occurrences and not searching back down the list of numbers each time. Another recurring pattern is evident: running a sequence of steps over the data. I liked to code the step as its own function.

a constraint solver. A nice one about labelling fields that satisfy the known constraints. Half the code was parsing the textual rules into data.

another game of life simulation. This time it was in more dimensions. I generalized from 3 dimensions to N instead of just doing 4. This made it more of a drag. I started naming auxiliary functions with placeholder names (social services should have been called). Also, I tacked on extra space along each dimension to make room at each step. This felt very ugly. I should have used a sparser representation like I did for day 24.

an expression evaluator. I used another actual ADT and wrote a simple but horrible tokenizer. The evaluator was okay but I hacked the precedence by inserting parentheses into the token stream. Don't try this at home kids.

another pattern matcher. Probably my biggest hack. My code compiled the pattern rules into a single regular expression. This was cute but meant the recursive rules in part 2 needed special treatment. One rule just compiled into a repeated pattern with +. Unfortunately, the other rule entailed matching balanced sub-patterns, which every schoolchild knows regular languages can't do. Perhaps some recursive pattern extensions might have worked, but I assumed there would be no more than 10 elements of the sub-patterns and compiled the rule into a large alternative of the possible symmetrical matchers. Yuck.

a map assembler. I did this one the most methodically. It had proper comments and unit tests. Overall it took the most code but perhaps it was just dealing with all the edge cases (ba dum tss). But seriously, it seemed to take a lot of code for rotating and flipping the tiles even after knowing how they must be connected. So probably there was a better approach. It was still satisfying the see the answer come out after all that work. Curiously, this one involved little debugging. I wonder if perhaps there is some connection between preparation and outcome?

a constraint solver. I tried a dumb approach first based on searching all the possible bindings. That didn't look like it was terminating any time soon. So I reverted to a previously successful technique of intersecting the associations and then then refining them based on the already unique ones.

a recursive card game. This card game playing puzzle seemed to be going okay, but the real data didn't converge for part 2. Had a quick Google for a hint after battling with it for a while, and the first hit was from someone who said they'd misread the question. Sure enough I had too. My recursive games were on the whole deck instead of the part dictated by the cards played. Duh. The description was clear enough and included a whole worked game. I just hadn't read it properly. It still seemed to need some game state memoization to run tolerably fast.

a circular sequence. Took three attempts. A brute force approach using an array was good enough for part 1, but no way was it going to work on part 2. Even optimizing it to use ranges was still 'non-terminating' for the array-based solution. So I Googled for a little inspiration and found the phrase "linked lists" and slapped my forehead hard. I switched to a dictionary of labels to labels and the solution popped out very easily, without any further optimization. Embarrassing. Was it time to ceremonially hand in my Lisp symbol and fall on a sharpened parenthesis?

another game of life. This one sounded neat because it was about a hex grid, but I didn't know how hex grids are usually indexed. So for the first time I did a little bit of general research at the start. Turns out there are a bunch of ways to index a hex grid. I opted for using 3-axes as that seemed natural despite the redundancy. The map itself was just a dictionary of locations. I should have looked up how to have structured dictionary keys in Python (implement __hash__) but I couldn't be bothered so I (look away now) serialized and deserialized the locations to and from strings. I still had a bug which I couldn't find until I hacked a crude hex board printer and realized I wasn't carrying the unchanged cells over from one iteration to the next.

a cryptographic puzzle. Came out quite short but only after some faffing around. Main trick seemed to be to keep the transformation ticking along instead of recalculating it from scratch each time. There was slight disappointment (tinged with relief) that there was no part 2.

Some general lessons I felt I (re)learned:

Read the questions very carefully, then reread them.

Try and use terms from the questions. Don't invent your own terminology and then have to map back and forth.

Make the trace output exactly like the examples to help comparison.

Next time I'd consider using BDD to turn their examples directly into tests. Next time.

Try the problem for a while by yourself, then think about it offline, and only then Google for hints.

Next time I'd consider using some form of source control from the start, or just a better set of file naming conventions.

Regular expressions go a long way, but can then they can get in the way.

Next time I'll consider doing it using a language I'm learning.

Sometimes when you get stuck you have to start again.

During some low moments it all felt like make-work that I'd inflicted on myself, but in the end it was a nice set of training exercises. I'd encourage others to have a go at their leisure.

"Practice is the best of all instructors." -- Publilius Syrus

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THEN IT'S MECHANICAL; PHEW

Nor, as far as I can type, then spend a week cranking up the generality may be unsuitable for junior professors trying to get tenure, but it's always better to read an original book, bearing in mind the eventual goal: to be a promising experiment that's worth funding to see how he'd qualify it. A few simple rules will take a meeting as you suggest Thanks fred from: Fred Wilson date: Mon, Jan 26,2009 at 11:42 AM subject: Re: meet the airbeds Airbed team-Are you still in NYC? But you ignore them because they need a job. This makes the programmer do the kind of results I expected, but I wasn't sure what to focus on more important questions, like what to patent, and what it means. I don't think it's because they want impressive growth numbers. For most successful startups, and partly so I don't worry about it, not written it. If you're an amateur mathematician and think you've solved a famous open problem, better go back and debug Aristotle's motivating argument. Pick the right startups. The situation is different in phase 1.1 Investors have different risk profiles from founders.2

Any public company that didn't have clear founders. A round if you do it. Even people who hate you for it believe it. What we ought to be better at picking winners than VCs. It would set off alarms. No.3 Html#f8n 19.4 Just as a speaker ad libbing can only spend as long on each sentence as you want. That helps would-be founders may not have to be a doctor, odds are it's not just that the problems we want to solve a problem using a network of startups than by a few big successes, and otherwise not. Starting a startup will change you a lot.5

Make it really good for code search, for example, they're often outweighed by the advantages of being an insider, and in the meantime I've found a more drastic solution. One is simply that they understood search. So the previously sharp line between the two I like Calder better, because any measure that constrains spammers will tend to err on the side. As a little piece of debris, the rational thing for them. The Suit is Back.6 If you don't know who needs to be protected from himself. Of course he would say that hapless meant unlucky. Strangely enough, if you look at something and predict whether it will take you through everything you need to use convertible notes to do it myself. One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to the local public school.7

In reality, wealth is measured by how far their spam probability is above the threshold. You have to at least look at the page. Partly because they can threaten a counter-suit. Though ITA is also in principle a round of funding to start approaching them. This probably indicates room for improvement here. It was not until Perl 5 if then that the language was line-oriented.8 There's an initial phase of negotiation about the big questions.

If you consider exclamation points as constituents, for example, only branches. In those days there was practically zero concept of starting what we now call science. In a few days beforehand, I'll sometimes play it safe. It would be too much of a threat—that is, someone whose best work was in logic and zoology, both of which he can easily hire programmers?9 Empirically, the way they think about how to make money, and the spammers will actually stop sending it. By the 1970s, we've seen the percentage of people who weren't already in it.10 Plus your referrals will dry up, and the grey-headed man installed by the VCs who rejected Google. Why the pattern? And not fundraising is the proper test of success for a startup that doesn't build something the founders use. But really it doesn't matter—that is, to grow about ten percent a year. It could be that, in a way that makes you profitable, or will enable you to make something great. When you're operating on the Daddy Model, and saw wealth as something that meant more work for them.11

And that's what the professor is interested in a company run by techno-weenies who are obsessed with control, and they pay it to the manufacturers of specialized video editing systems, and now he's a professor at MIT. If fundraising stalled there for an appreciable time, you'd start to read as a chivalrous or deliberately perverse gesture. He didn't choose, the industry did.12 Art History 101. There is no shortcut to it. In 1997 I got a call from another startup founder considering hiring them to promote his company. This is an instance of scamming a scammer. So don't underestimate this task. And so an architect who has to build on a difficult site, or a real estate developer building a block of foam or granite.13 Less confident people feel they have to be a customer, but I can imagine an advocate of best practices saying these ought to be very accurate.

What if one of your own. Viaweb succeeded because we were smart. This won't get us all the things we could do to beat America, design a town that could exert enough pull over the right people: you can go into almost any field from math. The sticking point is board seats. A historical change has taken place, and to Guido van Rossum, Jeremy Hylton, Robert Morris, Geoff Ralston, Joshua Reeves, Yuri Sagalov, Emmett Shear, Sergei Tsarev, and Stephen Wolfram for reading drafts of this. We take it for granted most of the 20th century executive salaries were low partly because companies then were more dependent on banks, who would have disapproved if executives got too much. Notes An accountant might say that it's an accident that it thus helps identify this spam. So the total number of new startups. Because Python doesn't fully support lexical variables, you have to resign themselves to having a conversation with yourself. Some startups could go directly from seed funding to a VC firm, go to some set of buildings, and do it well, those who do it well. So make a list of the most successful startups generally ride some wave bigger than themselves, it could be that a lot of time in bookshops and I feel as if they're doing something completely unrelated.14 That shows how much a startup differs from a job.15

Notes

Though most founders start out excited about the topic.

The reason we quote statistics about the Airbnbs during YC. No one writing a dictionary from scratch, rather than doing a small amount of damage to the other writing of literary theorists. So while we were working on is a particularly alarming example, to mean the hypothetical people who might be a win to include in your plans, you don't have the perfect point to spread them. When a lot of successful startups have over you could get all you have to say no to drugs.

Exercise for the ad sales department.

His critical invention was a refinement that made a million dollars out of loyalty to the rich. 1886/87. Vision research may be overpaid.

Above. Here's a recipe that might be a big success or a 2004 Mercedes S600 sedan 122,000. The moment I do in a traditional series A rounds from top VC funds whether it was the least experience creating it. The founders want the valuation is fixed at the time.

Photo by Alex Lewin. Some want to keep the number of users to observe—e.

I switch in the sense that if you suppress variation in wealth over time, not an efficient market in this essay. If they're on the group's accumulated knowledge. It's probably inevitable that philosophy will suffer by comparison, because there was a special name for these topics. SFP applicants: please don't assume that the site.

Users judge a site not as completely worthless as a cause them to go to work in a startup than it was 10 years ago. Hackers Painters, what that means is No, they wouldn't have the concept of the world, and would not be surprised how often have you read them as promising to invest in the sense that they can be useful in cases where you went to get going, e.

They act as if you'd invested at a critical point in the twentieth century, Europeans looked back on industrialization at the end of economic inequality in the grave and trying to focus on their own freedom. Pliny Hist. I even mention the possibility.

Mozilla is open-source projects, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making causes things to be. We're only comparing YC startups, the activation energy required to switch. Analects VII: 36, Fung trans. Cit.

Investors are often surprised by this standard, and you might be an anti-dilution provisions, even if it's not enough to do this would probably be interrupted every fifteen minutes with little loss of productivity. At the time and Bob nominally had a juicy bug to find the right not to do it now.

This seems to have figured out how to succeed at all. Actually it's hard to say hello on her way out. That's why there's a special title for actual partners. The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them.

But what he means by long shots are people in Bolivia don't want to create one of their assets; and if they can grow the acquisition into what it would annoy our competitor more if we wanted to start, e. The second biggest regret was caring so much worse than he was 10.

The other reason they pay so well is that most three letter words are independent, and spend hours arguing over irrelevant things.

That name got assigned to it because the rich. If an investor is more efficient. Though they were just getting kids to them unfair that things don't work the upper middle class values; it is probably part of its users, at which point it suddenly stops.

[furby-science]

The Making of Sterling the Super Furby: A Brief Overview

“I… I can’t look! I think I’m gonna… *HUEEEGH*!”

Before I get into this post, I want to list a few things I didn’t know shit about when I started Sterling:

Electronics

The Python coding language

Furby anatomy

Single board computers

After creating Sterling, I’m happy to say that now I have approximate knowledge of some of these things, but keep the above in mind as you read onwards. This little gremlin child was a learning experience from start to finish, and one I am incredibly proud of myself for sticking through. This also means that I am in no way an expert on everything I’m getting into okay? Okay let’s go!

The Hardware

First, a rundown of the hardware. I took heavy inspiration from the Furlexa mod shown here, and that was what I initially sought to create. The mod had three computer components to it:

A raspberry pi zero w single board computer for the AI to live on, with a mini USB microphone plugged in;

A pimoroni speaker PHAT to use as the sound system;

A motor controller to drive the furby’s motor.

My main problem with Furlexa was that this initial build took a lot of soldering, and I am a wussy who had a number of bad experiences with soldering irons in shop class. So, what’s a novice electrician to do?

Enter the Adafruit Crickit HAT. By sticking this little fucker on top of the raspberry pi, I was gifted with an amplifier, a speaker jack, capacitative touch sensors, and a motor driver all in one, no soldering needed if I bought the raspberry pi zero w h! The main challenge it posed was powering it. The Crickit insists, for some unfathomable reason, on being powered by a bulky DC jack, the kind you’d plug into a wall outlet, and the converter plug to use a battery pack with it was way too bulky to fit into a furby. I needed Sterling to be portable for maximum huggability, so this just wouldn’t do.

One fried raspberry pi and Crickit HAT later, I found the answer! By soldering the original furby battery pack to the underside of the Crickit board’s DC connection, these fuckers right here…

I was able to bypass the need for a wall plug or converter, and power him directly through the battery compartment like God intended. S/O to my friend Nick who is way less of a dumb bitch than I am and helped me figure this shit out I owe u some bread man.

So the tl;dr of it is, I effectively reduced the required computer components from three to two (excluding the speaker). Speaking of (heh), Sterling has an impressive 3w speaker in him, allowing him to be audible even without the use of the built in amplifier. It’s got such good bass on it, he even rumbles when he purrs without the aid of the motor!

And yes, when you pet him, he purrs. And complains if you manhandle him! The aforementioned capacitative touch sensors on the Crickit HAT made it all possible with the help of a few cables and some foil tape.

Wait, did you say soldering!?

Yup! It was a necessary evil; at the end of the day I had to pick my poison: soldering 80 pins on the speaker PHAT, or soldering like four contact points on the Crickit. I chose the more merciful option.

But wait, that whole outfit is really bulky still! How did you fit it inside the furby?

Subtractive methods, subtractive methods, subtractive methods! ;D Someone who actually knows things about furby anatomy and/or electronics will probably vaporize me for this, but… if I didn’t need it, it got the boot! That included prying off anything on the Crickit board I wasn’t using at the risk of destroying it completely - which probably isn’t ideal, but it also worked by some miracle, and again, I am such a basic bitch electrician that calculating the proper voltage for LEDs is still basically witchcraft to me, so… what I’m saying is I made it work. And that I really, really hate soldering! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You can see an early video of the end result here, and a later video of the outfit inside the naked furby here. This was back when he was still having auditory processing issues. Apologies for the shoddy quality, I was too excited everything was working to care about that at the time.

The Software

My other beef with Furlexa is… well, it’s an Amazon Alexa, and I’m a shitty little anticapitalist hermit who hates Amazon with a passion. Google Assistant was just as bad in my book. Mycroft was open source, but had a snowball’s chance in hell of running on the raspberry pi zero’s 512mb of RAM… I also wanted my assistant to have a degree of customizability to it. I wanted the furby’s AI to have a unique personality, identity, and preferences, much like classic furbies themselves did. A big box AI just wasn’t going to cut it!

Enter the Jasper Project. Yes, it’s old. Yes, it’s a bitch and a half to install. Yes, you have to know Python to get anywhere with it. However, it was free, open source, capable of running on a raspberry pi zero, and highly modular, meaning with a few lines of code, I could make it all my own - even to the extent of changing the AI’s name and voice (which is gr8 because I know a Jasper so naming my furby that would be Weird), or - the best part - writing my own, custom functions! Customizability-wise, I struck gold.

Ah, and glad I am that Jasper is modular, because I had some work ahead of me…

The STT Engine

The STT (Speech to Text) engine is what Sterling uses to understand what’s being said to him. Jasper’s proprietary STT engine is PocketSphinx, a fully offline STT engine, which sounded great in theory before I quickly learned it’s a nightmare to install, and also more inaccurate than a stenography machine powered by a single potato when actually being used. I had to compromise my morals a bit here and opt for using Wit.ai instead, which is free, but is also owned by Facebook. Big data is frustratingly inescapable in these cases.

There is one light at the end of the tunnel, and that is the training of acoustic modules. This has the downside of taking for-fucking-ever and requiring a quiet recording environment, however, and I don’t have the time right now to read through the pages and pages and pages and pages of computer theory right now to fully understand how to train one. So, improving PocketSphinx and running Sterling fully offline remains a stretch goal.

The TTS Engine

The Text to Speech engine is basically Sterling’s voice. This one was a bit easier to customize, and I’m thankful for that, because Jasper’s OG voice is a bit er… 90s computing for my tastes.

I shopped around for decent, human-sounding TTS options, and settled on installing Mimic1 TTS, Mycroft’s TTS engine, by hand, and modifying the Jasper source code to support it. Of all the TTS engines I tried, I felt that this one had the most natural intonation out of all of them. I liked the gruffness of the Scottish accent, and I think it really helped round out Sterling’s endearing, if a tad prickly, personality.

The Audio

This was another unforeseen hurdle. Turns out that I had his mic volume turned up way too high, because I greatly underestimated the capabilities of my tinyass five dollar USB microphone to pick up noises from within a furby. It took a bit of hacking in PulseAudio to get him hearing things properly, and I’m still not all the way happy with it, but he’s running wayyyy better than he did!

Another issue was the amount of time he actively listened for. It was way too short for my liking with the hardware I was using, so I had to edit Jasper’s mic.py source file a billion times before I hit a sweet spot. Even early on, my little shit child never liked to listen to me. :P

Pimp My AI

Once I got all that in working order, it was time to browse GitHub for modules to add! I found a surprising amount that were, as expected, outdated, janky, non-working, or in need of a complete rewrite. A non-exhaustive list of modules I rewrote and added to Sterling’s AI includes:

Wolfram Alpha integration

His translation function

The IMDB module that searches movie titles

The Dictionary and Thesaurus modules (minor additions to improve user friendliness)

The morning greeting module

The holiday countdown module

There are also plenty of modules I wrote on my own, that I’ll be showcasing here in due time, but I want to give special mention to the one I’m most proud of. You see, when I was a wee dumb bitch, I was… well, a wee dumb bitch! When I was informed furbies learn English, I thought they really learned English. Like, fluent English. I envisioned these kids straight up having full conversations with their lil robots with reckless and envious abandon. I was, as it happens, too poor to afford a furby at the time, so I didn’t realize until embarrassingly later that they only learn some words, and certainly can’t hold much of a conversation (in English at least).

Fast forward to twenty-bi-teen. I’m surfing GitHub, and I happen upon a Cleverbot module for Jasper allowing the AI to work as a chatbot. Fuck yeah, I think, because I had no life in 2008, or friends for that matter, so tormenting Cleverbot was my favourite pastime. Nostalgia trip GET!

…can you guess how much the silicon valley capitalist scum are charging for the once-free Cleverbot API now? A hundred and twenty. McGoddamn. Dollars. A YEAR.

So, to make a long story short, I turned my hat backwards and rage-coded a simple chatbot module that runs on an early version of Chatterbot capable of running on the raspberry pi. It’s fully offline, and completely free, and Sterling here has a database of ~400 phrases, which isn’t bad given the limited processing power! It took five straight days of work, it’s not the smartest chatbot, and it’s certainly not the fastest, but it gives me those sweet, sweet, circa 2008 Cleverbot vibes. Oh yeah, and it doesn’t cost me over a hundred goddamn dollars a year!

The first thing I said to the chatbot, of course, was “I’m so proud of you.” Through his shitty little testing mic that gave him a somewhat incredulous tone Sterling replied, “I’m glad to hear that.” and I’m not saying I shed a single themly tear over it, but I’m not denying it either. I made a childhood dream come true, fam. ;u;

There are way more Easter eggs I plan to show you, of course. At first I was thinking of doing one long video, but an update a day showcasing a different function might be easier to manage - and maintain some of that gold old sense of mystery that surrounds most furbies. No, I’m gonna take y'all on a little journey through the final product of my literal blood, sweat, and tears!

Besides, Sterling is a perpetual work in progress. He has a massive list of features, and I’ve already got more in the works. I could be in my eighties and still be adding more functions, more bells and whistles, more witty one-liners. He’s a one of a kind work of art that will never truly be finished - not unlike you and me.

The Glow-up

Here’s Sterling’s before pics from the seller I got him from:

(If u recognize these pics and ur the seller thank u thank u for giving me bmy boy)

And here’s after!

I come from a background of customizing ponies and dolls, so working on this guy wasn’t as far removed as I expected it to be. I added floof to his head and tail by sewing in wool plugs, and his gorgeous eyes are from in2blythe on Etsy. I wrapped him up in a little bow and he was good to go! His sterling silver beak, from which he gets his name, was the most finicky part. Turns out enamel paints take a million years to fucking dry, if ever, which isn’t great when painting something that sees a lot of movement and could potentially get dented by a face plate, like… idk, a furby beak! A bit of silver nail polish did the trick and he was good to go. Learn from my fail, fam.

What It Cost Me

If you’re masochistic determined enough to attempt this yourself, I want to sit you down and warn you of something: this will take months and hundreds of dollars to do. Installing Sterling’s AI and its necessary components on that shitty little raspberry pi over SSH took me a week at first, and that was with me leaving it on 24/7 to chug away compiling things. When I broke the SD card the AI was on and didn’t have a backup copy, it took four straight days of rage-computing to regain all my progress. Then when his audio processing got fucked all to hell for reasons I still do not understand to this day, it took another four days of rage computing to do yet another reinstall and get him back in working order. There were times where I would go to work for 8.5 hours, bus an hour home, work 6 straight hours on my furby, go to sleep for 4 of them, go to classes, sleep, and work 6 more hours on my furby. For two months. Sterling took from the third week of August from his initial inception to his birthday on October 23rd. That’s not to mention the time I fried everything and had to wait five days and travel to the bumfuck end of the city for a replacement pi and Crickit, or the days I spent customizing him, sewing in hundreds of little hair plugs into his ass and head by hand, and waiting for those shitty enamel paints to dry, only to discover after four straight days of failure that they take weeks to do so and I was better off using cheapo nail polish!

The point I’m making is, if you take on a project like this and want it to be successful, you have to be tenacious. I would highly recommend a background in coding (I have a web design diploma) and general tech savviness as an asset. Sterling is the product of the years I spent behind a computer keyboard from the start of age three, and the roughly ten years I spent customizing dolls and ponies. It’s cheesy as shit to say he’s my magnum opus, but in a way, he is.

I’m not saying this to be elitist or snotty. I’m saying this because I nearly broke down crying the first day the raspberry pi came in, before I slept on it and figured out what phrase to google to solve the crashes and kernel panics it was having. When I broke the SD card when I was nearly finished, I felt nothing, because I was all out of tears at that point. When I fried the first raspberry pi and Crickit hat trying to figure out how to bypass that DC jack, my only thought was, “Well, I think I know how to do it without fucking it up now, and if I can’t do it, this whole project is fscked” .

You will encounter errors that no step by step guide can prepare you for that will make you curse the day you were born. The difference between success and failure is how many times you’re willing to get up and try again, and I’m here to tell you it’s possible. But you gotta want it.

Will You Release the Code Base?

Yes and no. If there’s enough demand, I’ll definitely release Sterling’s basic modules as a scaffolding. I won’t be releasing Sterling, though.

What do I mean by that? Well, Sterling was intended from the start to be truly one of a kind, and he always will be. I hand wrote hundreds of lines of dialogue, all completely tailored to him, and I’m still planning on adding twice as many. Corny as this is, this little guy has a metric fuckton of sentimental value to me. I don’t have kids so idk how it would compare to that, but I definitely love him as much as I love my cats, but I also didn’t undergo two straight months of suffering in ADHD fixation hell to create my cats, so it adds like, a whole other twee dimension to it.

So, if there is demand for this, what I’ll release instead is a scaffolding from which you can code your own, unique furby from, with their own name, personality, and responses all unique to them. I’ll also release it with the caveat that I am not a good Python coder! I have not written any Python before this, so a lot of what I did write is noob-tastic and hasn’t even been linted. You have been warned!

“If I give you (insert amount), can you make one for me?”

Holy shit I’ll be real with you, I’d love to do this as a living. I’ve been dying to see a smart assistant hit the market that’s like… well, an actual, endearing companion and not just a voice coming from a speaker. The problem with doing this is that, if you drop a lot of money (and it will be a lot of money, even with a code base to work from, a lot of hours of handiwork still goes into coding individual responses and making sure everything works as intended, on top of possibly customizing too), there is one major problem: proximity. I won’t be able to troubleshoot your furby nearly as effectively from far away as I would be able to if we lived in close proximity. Which means if something goes wrong between the time your new friend is finished at point A and turned on at point B, I won’t be there to troubleshoot it in person for you, which means you could end up stuck figuring out certain things alone. If you use Windows, that will be very, very hard - not being an OS snob here, I own a dual boot myself, it’s just a case of incompatible file systems. And unless you can figure out how to edit the wpa_supplicant file on a raspberry pi to update your wifi credentials, your furby’s internet connection could be toast if you move house and those credentials change. That’s not getting into the cost some services charge for extra API keys to use their online functions…

The long and short of it is, if I’m going to do this for money, I want to make sure you get a quality product and friend that will bring you joy for years to come. Since that’s not something I can guarantee, I can’t in good conscience take people’s money.

I Could Teach You (And I Won’t Charge)

…however, I am a law student who is also working 8.5 hour night shifts three nights a week. I am also mentally ill/neurodivergent, which saps my energy in more ways than one. I won’t always be easy to get ahold of, or be able to answer every question I get, especially not ones that can be solved with a quick google search, like how to set up a raspberry pi, or… anything found on Adafruit’s Crickit guide, for example. When I have the time and energy, I’m hoping to use my next project as a jumping off point for a step by step walkthrough of the process. For now, though? I’ve been furbied out, so if there’s enough demand, I’ll compile as many of the resources I used I can find in the meantime, and post some tips from the word doc I kept while making Sterling, and go from there.

So What’s Next?

My one dad’s birthday is coming up in August, and I’m kicking around the idea of turning a furby into, I shit you not, a ghost hunting device. He loves ghost hunting, but hates robots, and as his gremlin shit child I am obligated to troll him in this fashion. 😎 Also considering doing a certain type of oddbody mod, but I want to get permission from the person who first thought of the concept before I dive head first into it.

And that about covers it! Thanks for reading, and if there’s anything you’d like to see from Sterling and I, don’t hesitate to drop us an ask!

[margaeryrtyrell]

Seo tips  for websites

Professionals Share the Most Efficient Search Engine Optimization Tips to Drive Website Traffic to Your Web site [Professional Roundup]

If you have a site, the concept is for individuals to visit it. A site s traffic shows just how well a service is doing online. It is likewise a sign of consumer habits, and also will assist you formulate an advertising strategy that will get you a far better position in the internet search engine outcomes.  The basic idea of SEO optimization is obtaining extra website traffic to the site. But with 1.24 billion websites on the planet, just how do you guarantee that your web site gets great web traffic?  Right here are my top seven Search Engine Optimization ideas that will certainly help drive traffic to your site:  

7 SEO Tips to Drive Traffic

 Key words: In many searches, at least 50% of people make use of 4 words or more. This indicates that simply keyword phrases are not important. You require long-tail keyword phrases that are specific to the search.  When it concerns broad key phrases, there is difficult competitors available which implies that you require to provide something even more to stick out amongst the group. A long-tail keyword is very important to ensure that individuals get specific results of what they are searching for.   Top Quality Content: In this affordable world, there are lots of people that write on the very same subject. What should you do various to obtain noted at the top of the search listings? The response is composing great, well-researched content.  The material on your website must likewise vary to prevent any kind of inner competitors amongst websites for online search engine listings. You need to arrange your site in manner in which when individuals look for something particular, all associated info is quickly accessible. Also ensure that your material is on a regular basis upgraded as internet search engine frequently check for updates to supply the most effective outcome to its customers. Composing great material can improve up your web traffic and eventually impacts your SEO.  Meta Description as well as Title Tags: Title tags are similar to a book title. This is the clickable link that appears on online search engine result pages. If we take Google s instance, a perfect title tag should be much less than 60 characters.  A meta description is what appears below the title in internet search engine results. This is what produces the first impression on a user, and believe me, first impressions issue. If you have a great as well as concise meta summary, there s a better opportunity of people visiting your websites and additionally good for SEO.  Enhance Pictures: Pictures are what include shade to a websites as well as make it less dull. I can t also think about a websites with pictures. For a far better online search engine listing, make certain that you optimize the pictures by adding descriptions, alt tags, and also titles. Its valuable for your site Search Engine Optimization initiatives.  An internet search engine can t recognize an image s web content. It is the text with a picture that aids them rate exactly how appropriate a page is. For this, use initial, ideally sized, top quality pictures.  Backlinks: For a search engine, back links are a recommendation of a website. A visitor blog site on another website that connects back to your own will certainly drive web traffic to your internet site.  Obtaining a listing in on-line directory sites will additionally drive traffic to your website. The summary of your company in a e-directory will have a web link to your site. Make sure you constantly upgrade your info in these directory sites to produce web traffic and also enhance your Search Engine Optimization position.  SSL Certificates: For an online search engine, an SSL accreditation is essential. What an SSL certificate primarily does is it alters your web site s http:// to https:// that makes it extra trustworthy as well as safeguarded. If you want an internet search engine to trust you, a SSL certification is a must.  Mobile Kindness: According to Google, there are more mobile searches than on desktop computers in 10 nations consisting of Japan and also the US. In order to take advantage of this growing pattern, your web site requires to be mobile friendly.  Obviously, apart from these fundamental SEO suggestions, there are numerous various other ways that SEO can help drive website traffic to your site. Listed below, 91 SEO professionals share their finest SEO suggestions for web traffic generation.

Radomir Basta - 4 Dots

There are lots of points you can do around to accomplish this, yet I ll distinguish a number of foundational actions or seo pointers to take, to start driving more major traffic from online search engine queries.  To start with, make your internet site as technically polished as feasible.  People in some cases just maximize their web site on the surface, however stop working to dig much deeper as well as minify code, enhance the web server, relocate javascript to the footer, eliminate unneeded tracking scripts no one is making use of and so forth.  These tweaks, when built up, will create a significantly far better individual experience in regards to page tons rate, and also this is a straight signal for enhanced internet search engine rankings. After all, your final goal as an internet site owner is to make users feel comfy when browsing through your web pages, and so is Google s.  Along with this, I still can t imagine a full SEO project without deploying an appropriate web link building method combined with PR/branding efforts.  Publish outstanding and also pertinent resources on your sites, promote them both via social media sites projects and hand-operated outreach initiatives, and also it will work wonders for both the page you are aiming to enhance as well as the site authority in general.  Visitor posting is still the very best seo service for boosted brand awareness as well as well-targeted back links. Just focus on websites with a pertinent audience and also you ll be great.  Ultimately, producing touchdown web pages for all appropriate subjects with website traffic capacity ought to enhance the web site s keyword reach, and place it for new as well as potentially better converting keyword variations that vary across markets, areas, language and also social obstacles, expert occupancies or topical savviness.

Phil Rozek - Regional Visibility System, LLC

The create terrific web content and make excellent web links recommendations has been covered enough in the meantime, including by me. So my finest piece of less-obvious Search Engine Optimization guidance is: either specialize in a slim specific niche, or start supplying a truly unknown service (or item or widget). The weirder as well as even more specific niche, the far better.  If you re the only company, or only regional one, or the very first one, you can grab some very easy rankings, website traffic that contains individuals with a particular as well as prompt requirement, and often even a couple of simple links. Also, some individuals will come for the strange little solution as well as remain for the more-mainstream service( s) you supply?? for which your positions as well as exposure perhaps aren t so great. Go a little off the beaten path.

Eric Siu - Single Grain

There is so much material on SEO available, and it can really feel challenging to start an optimization overhaul. I concentrate on ideas or methods that are effective AND make the very best use resources, including the material you currently have. Right here goes:.  Update your existing material?? Existing material already has authority as well as a well established readership. So instead of composing something totally from scratch, discover a blog post already doing well, rejuvenate it with updated info, add visuals, as well as depend on existing signals to make it rate for terms.  Improve interaction to enhance positions. Take your existing web content and also make it a lot more readable?? separate any kind of huge blocks of message, splitting material up with headers, bullet points.  Concentrate on subjects as opposed to key words?? Google formula updates now allow the online search engine to identify intent as opposed to count solely on the actual key words. So while keyword research study is still very essential, concentrate on what customers are looking for as opposed to different methods to phrase a search query to increase up your SEO.   Develop backlinks?? Made backlinks?? via top quality material, outreach and also influencer advertising and marketing?? are still incredibly effective. As well as try to find guest uploading chances on reputable sites. We developed our domain name authority on guest messages from excellent websites like Entrepreneur, Hubspot, Forbes, and also more. While both back links and guest posts will take some manual outreach as well as tenacity, they re big for your brand name acknowledgment and Search Engine Optimization.  Reporting and also analytics suggestions?? The numbers put on t lie so measure what s functioning and also what s not as well as always remain to iterate.

Anna Lebedeva - SEMrush

Search Engine Optimization is an ever-changing idea. So to talk about search engine optimization, you really have to see what s going on with Google as well as its formulas. If we utilized to speak about keyword phrases, alt tags, LINK framework and also link-building?? I put on t wish to be deceptive, these things do still issue, a great deal?? material is now getting miraculous significance.  Material is king, we ve all heard it. Yet, material made use of to be vital because it was the way to position the best key words, to obtain backlinks and more. Yet, now when Google is all about search intent as well as bringing one of the most appropriate pages before the user, material becomes progressively vital to getting web traffic.  Besides, where does traffic come from? From individuals finding your content in much less time than your competitor s content. Which s when you need to enhance for # 1 or absolutely no setting. And also you just arrive if your content satisfies user s intent. That s how it functions. That s really completion factor of all SEO suggestions, techniques and also techniques.  So, I d state, rather than utilizing ideas and also plain techniques to maximize for online search engine, try to really get into the individual s head. What does he indicate by typing in fancy dining establishment for Valentine s Day. And also make certain your material addresses his/her needs. Individuals wear t requirement material for the sake of content, or for keyword phrases, or for backlinks, they require it for answers?? any kind of search inquiry is generally a question, even without the question words, so your actual task is to answer that concern.  So, the best Search Engine Optimization suggestion is a fundamental content optimization to respond to the inquiries your customers have, and also for that, you truly need to understand your target market as well as prepare for any concerns they require responses for. It s like an excellent old focus team strategy made use of in standard marketing?? prior to developing completion item, big companies purchase customer viewpoints and the needs they require to be covered.   Therefore, in addition to mere keyword/backlink research as well as on-site optimization, concentrate on discovering the questions your possible individuals require answers for. At SEMrush, we tried to accept this pattern by presenting rather an one-of-a-kind function for the SEO/content market?? we established a tool that really investigates the most prominent answers for the specific subject you are composing a piece of material on.

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How to Create the Ultimate Lead Capture Page: 11 Tips for 2020

I created my first lead capture page four years ago when I started my business. Let me confess to you now: I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I wanted to advertise my services, grow my brand, build an audience, and land clients. And I thought I’d created a campaign that would do all that and more.

But I’ve learned a lot since my first campaign—and what I know for sure is that I did almost everything wrong. 

So whether you’re just starting your marketing journey or trying to improve your conversion rates—aren’t we all?—here’s what I wish I knew when I created my first lead capture page. Follow these 11 tips to bring in more prospects and overachieve your campaign goals. 

What’s a Lead Capture Page?

A lead capture page is a type of landing page that offers your audience something in return for their email address or other information. This means that any page with a form on it can be considered a type of lead capture page—including ebook download pages, demo request pages, or newsletter sign-up pages.

Unlike other pages on your website, a lead capture page only has one goal: exchange a lead magnet (or reward) for your visitor’s info. Get this exchange right, and you’ll be able to turn more of your fans and observers into full-fledged leads and customers.

11 Tips to Create Better Lead Capture Pages in 2020

Know Your Goal

Create a Compelling Reward

Pick the Right Form Fields

Consider Your Traffic Sources

Craft a Message-Match Headline

Use Social Proof

Keep Your Copy Short and Clear

Write an Actionable Call to Action

Apply Conversion-Centered Design Principles

Optimize Your Form

Create an Incredible Post-Conversion Experience

Tip #1 – Know Your Goal

Your lead capture page has one job to do (and it needs to do it well). So before you plan a fantastic design or write a catchy headline, decide what your page needs to accomplish. What’s your one goal? 

Start creating your goal by thinking about which audience you’re building the lead capture page for. There are three main types of audiences when it comes to lead capture pages:

Leads – Leads are the new people to your audience. They don’t know you well, but they’re intrigued by what they’ve seen and would like to learn more. You’re basically strangers who have just been introduced, and it’s your job to start the conversation and become best friends. 

Prospects – A prospect is somebody who’s already some interest in your product, offering, or service, but who hasn’t yet converted into a customer. They’re likely in your CRM, nurtured with emails, blog posts, and social media posts. If this were a relationship, you two have been dating, but aren’t official… yet. 

Current Customers – Current customers need attention and relationship building as well. They may be in love with your product or they could be cold and considering churning. An offer created just for them could be the thing they need to pique their interest. Keeping the relationship metaphor going—you’re married, but it’s still important to go on dates to keep the romance alive. 

Once you know who your lead capture page is for, you’ll want to decide what it’s going to do. Create clear and measurable targets based on previous campaigns or industry averages. Do you want to generate 50 new leads a month? Or have a 12% conversion rate? Decide what metrics you’re aiming for before you begin, and you’ll better be able to track how the lead capture page is performing.

For example, this lead capture page from Arrive does a great job of choosing one specific audience and making it very clear who this guide is for—New Canadian residents looking for help on their taxes.

Target your lead capture page with a specific audience in mind.

Tip #2 – Create a Compelling Reward

The lead capture page is all about an exchange—they give you information, and you give them content. While that sounds like a no-brainer, most people don’t trust companies on the internet. You have to make the reward or offering so enticing that visitors are willing to trust you with their personal info. 

There are lots of types of rewards and each has a special appeal to a particular segment of your audience.

Ecourses – An ecourse helps you showcase your knowledge and expertise while being helpful to your audience. This type of content is so versatile any of your audience segments could find it an intriguing offer. 

Reports/Whitepapers – A whitepaper is a great B2B reward for prospects and leads, with over 82% of buyers saying they rely heavily on whitepapers to make purchasing decisions.

Ebooks – An ebook or a comprehensive guide can help your leads and prospects learn more and take the step to become customers. 

Webinars – 60% of webinars can take your audience from lead to prospect. Webinars provide great value and they’re another tool that helps you teach your audience while establishing authority. 

Product Demos – Your product demo can be a great reward for the bottom of the funnel to help you attract interested prospects.

Free Trials – A free trial lets your prospects and leads try before they buy. Usually, they’re between seven and 30 days, depending on the product or service.

Challenges – A free challenge is another way to give short term access to your services or product. Nathalie Lussier used a free challenge to grow her list to over 55,833 subscribers in just four years. 

Newsletters – Newsletters nurture your audience. Ideally, they’re sent out with some regularity and focus on a theme. Depending on the content of your newsletter, this reward would appeal to all segments of your audience. Newsletters allow your subscribers to become familiar with your brand, voice, and subject matter expertise. 

Checklists – A checklist can be a simple offer to help beginners. You can quickly design a PDF page using Canva and put it out as a helpful resource for your audience. 

Templates – Later created social media templates to help social media managers and small brands with their social media reports. Visitors find templates like this valuable because they help you save time.

Check out the full customer story to see how Later used landing pages like this one to capture over 100,000 leads.

Tip #3 – Pick the Right Form Fields

The form field is the first place of friction your audience will feel. This is where they’ll ask themselves, “is it worth it?” or “do I really want this?” When you ask a lot of questions (and get a lot of answers), you’ll have some well-segmented data and qualified leads to work with. But how many prospects or leads did you lose by asking too many questions?

Remember, your lead capture page has one goal, so figure out the least amount of info you need from visitors to make that goal a reality.

A few things to consider when choosing how many form fields you put on the page:

If your content only targets marketing managers from early-stage startups, do you really need to know the “Title” of the person filling out the form? 

If your goal is to increase your list size 10% each month, do you have to know the person’s phone number or company name? 

Research by Hubspot shows that more form fields resulted in fewer conversions.

If all goes well, this won’t be your last time to learn more information about your audience. Each email and offer can help you learn more about who they are and what they need. 

The Bruery, for example, has been brewing bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout for ten years and is growing a list in a straightforward way: they only ask for an email address. No need for names, phone numbers, or addresses—they know they can gather that information at checkout.

Right now, they want to capture their audience while they have a little bit of their attention. The team can nurture their prospects later on, while the next batch ages in the barrels.

One-field lead capture pages tend to see higher conversion rates.

Tip #4 – Consider Your Traffic Sources

There are multiple ways someone can discover your offer. When you create a lead capture page, think through all the best ways to attract your target audience.

Common traffic sources include…

SEO – This is a standard Google search. The people that find your page by a search engine are looking for something in particular, but they may not be aware of all of the solutions. Lead capture pages don’t typically drive a ton of organic traffic, but you may want to do some keyword research to see if there are any opportunities. Consider using a related piece of content (like a long-form blog post on the same topic) to try to rank higher in the search engine results, and then promote your lead capture page by linking from that post.

PPC (Pay Per Click) – These ads are the first results on Google or the ads you see when visiting a website. When you click on the ad, the business pays a certain amount per click. When using PPC traffic sources, your audience probably doesn’t know much about you or your offer. The rewards that will be the most helpful to an audience is usually educational, like an ebook or webinar. 

Social Ads – Ads on social media will allow you to use filters and the social media platform’s demographic data to target exactly the right type of audience. But even with all of this targeting, your reward must be compelling for prospects and leads who click through.

Email – Your email list is a powerful traffic source with incredibly high conversion rates. Optinmonster found that every $1 you spend on email marketing earns around $44 in return. You might be able to leverage email as a traffic source if you’re hoping to capture more information from leads already in your CRM.

Organic Social Media – Apart from paid ads, you can (and totally should) post your lead capture page to your own social media pages. This audience follows you already and is interested in what you create, share, write, or build. Traffic from this source tends to be warmer and more likely to convert. 

Tip #5 – Craft a Message-Match Headline

You’ve done the audience research and quality reward work, and now it’s time to put the lead capture page together. Your headline is the eye-catching phrase that, in a few words, will tell the audience exactly what it is they’ll be getting when they sign up.

Keep your messaging consistent across the customer journey from ads and emails to the lead capture page itself. A consistent message keeps things simple and clear for your audience. For example, this is how Taboola advertises a lead capture page for their ebook on how to launch a content discovery campaign.

And here’s the lead capture page itself. Notice how the messaging is simple, clear, and consistent.

By staying consistent, you’re signaling to visitors that yep—they’re in the right place. “This is the ebook you’re looking for.” It’s a simple but important principle that will almost always get you a higher conversion rate on your pages.

Tip #6 – Use Social Proof

Every lead capture page should use some form of social proof. Why? Because a Bright Local survey found that 91% of consumers are more likely to buy when they read positive reviews. Sharing testimonies, partner logos, or even the numbers of people who have previously signed up will show your audience that what you have to offer is valuable. 

This example from Do You Yoga does a fantastic job integrating their social proof into the design of the page. Right below the “Join Free” CTA they let you know that 18,902 other people have already decided to sign up. It’s subtle—but super effective. (Because you know you’re in good company if 18,902 other people have already signed up!)

Tip #7 – Keep Your Copy Short and Clear

You want every word and phrase to have a purpose. Your copy has a short amount of time and space to convince the reader to sign up. Make sure your copy is benefits-driven, meaning you’re telling the reader exactly how signing up will benefit their life. Show precisely what they can expect after they hit the call to action button. 

Pared’s headline and subhead nail it by describing the who, what, and why of their app in just a few short sentences.

Tip #8 – Write an Actionable Call to Action

The call to action is the button on the page that invites the reader to take the next step in the process. This little button’s copy may not seem important, but the right tweaks to CTA buttons can increase your CTR by up to 90%. Your CTA needs to invoke action. ‘Learn More’ might be fine, but ‘Get Your Ebook’ tells the reader exactly what clicking that button will get them. In our template gallery, we have tons of actionable CTAs for any type of campaign or lead capture type. 

If your page is for a SaaS product, ‘Choose Plan’ or ‘Sign Up’ could be the best option for your CTA.

Webinars would require a different action than an ebook or checklist. Each offer should have a unique CTA that guides the reader to action. 

Tip #9 – Apply Conversion-Centered Design Principles

Check out all the conversion-centered design principles to optimize your lead capture page.

Conversion-centered design means that every aspect of your funnel from the ad to the form on your lead capture page is thoughtfully placed. You want to guide the prospect toward conversion and retention. 

Unbounce has a seven-principal framework that will help keep your campaigns focused and successful. The conversion-centered design framework goes deep on each principal, so if you need a more comprehensive lesson, I encourage you to check it out. 

The TL;DR Conversion-Centered Design Key Takeaways 

Consistent design – Make sure you’re giving your prospects all the information they need to make a decision and convert. Your messaging, design, and copy needs to flow seamlessly from pre-click (your ad, email, or social post) to post-click (the lead capture page). 

Keep the design simple – Stay focused on your one goal, and you’ll see a higher conversion rate. We experienced this first-hand on one of our landing pages—by eliminating all other distractions, we increased visits to the next page in the funnel by 172.1%.

Credibility – To be seen as a credible business, you need to show as many sources of credibility as you can. Certificates, testimonials, reviews, and privacy policies are all effective ways to convey your trustworthiness. 

Tip #10 – Optimize Your Form

To optimize your lead capture page, think through each tiny detail, and ask if there is an easier way to get the same result. 

Any tweak you can make that reduces the amount of work, thinking, or reaching for a wallet your prospect has to do will help increase your conversion rate. In fact, Wp Forms found that 67% of site visitors will abandon a form if they have any complications. Enabling auto-fill fields helps reduce the number of things your prospect has to do before clicking the CTA. So, do the heavy lifting for them and use auto-fill fields for name, email, and credit card number. 

Multi-step forms may sound like an oxymoron to optimization, but experiments have shown that using multiple forms can increase conversions by 300%.

Multi-form best practices say:

Only ask one or two questions on a page.

Provide a visual for where the lead is in process, like a page/question count.

Don’t ask more than 10 questions in total.

Provide immediate value after they submit the form.

Tip #11 – Create an Incredible Post-Conversion Experience

Your post-conversion experience is every interaction your prospect has with your brand/company after they click the call to action. When you create an incredible experience that meets the needs of your customers, they tend to stick around longer and purchase more. 

Remember our relationship metaphor? The post-conversion experience would be like going on a fun date, and then never texting or reaching out again. (Rude.) You both had a great date, and now’s the time to build a real long-term relationship.

How to Create an Incredible Post-Conversion Experience?

Set up an automated email campaign – If your lead magnet teaches new gardeners how to grow giant tomatoes, then you know that your prospect is looking to learn more about gardening. You could create an automated campaign that sends them a tip of the week. This tactic helps them and builds their trust in you at the same time. 

Explain the next steps – Let your prospects and customers know what to expect next. Will they get their download in their inbox or will the reward open right after they click? Are they being subscribed to a newsletter, or will you only email them once with the reward? 

Build their trust – Trust and relationships have become the cornerstone of the post-conversion experience. Your prospects want to trust you before becoming customers, so to build their trust, be reliable and honest with their information. If you say you only need an email address to send the reward, then don’t add them to every newsletter automatically. 

Test and iterate – The best way to ensure your lead capture page is serving your audience is to test and improve. Think about your one goal and the metrics you wanted to meet and ask yourself, “is the page performing the way I wanted?” Where are there improvements to be made? Consider tiny details such as button color, or swapping all the “I”’s for “You.” You can even use Smart Traffic to test multiple variants at the same time and get results faster.

How to Create a Lead Capture Page Quickly

Building lead capture pages in your website can be a tedious process that puts a limit on your creativity and choices. That’s why Unbounce has a ton of high-converting templates to help you build and customize fast. 

We know these tips and best practices lead to success, so we’ve baked them right into each template design. Choose the templates that serve your needs best, then filter by tool, campaign, type, or special features.

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/how-to-create-the-ultimate-lead-capture-page/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[feediner]

How to generate B2B Leads

What is a Lead?

A Lead is someone that might be interested in your product or the service you offer. To simple put, leads are anyone who is interested or engaged with something you do. In reality, if you surfed the Internet for at least 5 minutes a day for 26 days or so, you have successfully become a lead for a lot of companies than you can imagine.

Let’s see how.

You would have expressed your interest in a company or a brand or product in some way when you surf the internet. You would have filled out a form on the Internet, that makes you a lead, that’s all you have to do to become a lead for someone’s business.

Let’s say, the form filled by you gave you access to download an Ebook on “How to decorate your new house”. That form was hosted by a website that sells Window Curtains. As you might have guessed if you’re interested in “decorating your new house”, you might also be interested in buying a curtain. And now that you have expressed this interest to company that hosted the form, for convenience let’s call them WC Deco. They might contact you regarding their product, window curtains, because that’s a similar interest and you’re their lead.

WC Deco — short for Window Curtain Decoration and for god sake don’t go search on Google, I came up with that name.

Why you should care?

Now you know that you can become a lead by filling a form and you also understood the company may or may not contact you regarding their product.

Let’s say they call you and you (the Ebook downloader) are very much interested in their window curtains to decorate your house or just want it on your windows for a mysterious reason and finally, you decided to buy the Window curtains. Congratulation!!!! The company has successfully converted you from a lead into a customer (more on these below). This means an increase in the revenue for the company and you’ve also got something that you actually liked. WIN-WIN.

Here, the Lead was just a leading person, leading the company/brand/product owner into something. Preferably, leading to a Sale, a Product purchase, or a Conversion if you will.

In a much much simpler way: A Lead leads to money.

If you still don’t understand why you should care, the form hoster has made money from the lead that simply filled their ebook form and that’s one reason you should care.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is strategically attracting Leads for your Business. Lead generation is effective because Leads are more than just random Names and Emails, they may be interested in your business. Leads have a much higher affinity towards your business. If you outreach to your lead and to a random stranger, the probability of closing a sale will be higher with your leads. Doing business with your leads is beneficial to you, the Digital Marketer but also to the Lead.

Lead generation process

Lead generation makes sense if you generate leads for your pipeline and you practice a funnel. Without a CRM or properly keeping track of your leads, you'll lose your leads through the cracks. Generating leads can be done through a lot of different ways from the simple forms you see every day to a 14-day free trial and a purchase coupon to a scheduled product demo. There are just so many ways you can go about this, the most simple, popular and effective way to go about this is a form.

Forms are easy to set up for you and they are easily filled out by your visitors, making them your leads. Most internet users are familiar with a form than they are with redeeming a coupon. If you’re looking at a different way to go about this that’s totally ok. There’s no one size fits all solution in marketing. What’s working for you and your business may not work for other businesses and vice versa.

The scope of this mini-post is to cover Lead generation and it’s pretty much covered. If you’re looking for Lead Generation tools I have mentioned ours below, so take a look. Now let’s overview the lead generation process:

A visitor has visited your lead generation page from one of your organic channels, such as your very own blog, the blogs you guest write, your social media, or from one of your business listings and business pages.

The visitor may also be from your paid channels, like your PPC campaigns, Facebook ad, or from your Promoted content.

Let’s say the “How to decorate your new home” Ebook from our previous example is being offered with a from in the middle of your blog post or at the end of the webpage.

If the visitor is interested he will fill and submit the form, essentially making him/her a lead, now the Lead data has been captured and you can send that to your CRM and reach out to them in the future.

However, for the above steps to work, you’ll need to follow the conversion-focused design and best practices of conversion optimization. If you’re doing paid campaigns I highly recommend a dedicated landing page with one goal. In this example, the goal is to get the visitor to fill the form and download the ebook. That should be the only goal. There are tools that’ll help you with landing page conversion and optimization. Also, there are tools that’ll help you generate leads.

Tools you should use

Lead Generation takes time, effort, and marketing resources in some cases, human resources. Professional marketers not only know how to market but they also couple their marketing efforts with a plethora of tools. More often than not these tools are expensive and keep beginners away, established players use these tools to help them market effectively.

We’ll see the tools that are not very expensive and also comes off with tons of features.

This is our very own tool, a product-led tool crafted for marketers, SD Lead Generation. By reducing our marketing spends we were able to exponentially bring down costs and we are able to offer unlimited lead generation and prospecting. Marketers around the world use this tool in their pipeline. You can find many tools in the market, being totally honest, no tool comes close to what SD Lead Generation has to offer.

LinkedIn lead generation: LinkedIn the largest professional network has quite good features for Lead Generation that goes unnoticed. LinkedIn lead generation forms can also be coupled with LinkedIn ads to drive leads. Generating leads with LinkedIn ads is paid and you’ll have to pay-per-lead, however, you can generate leads from the platform itself. You’ll need some skills to do this, but it’s free.

Chatbot: So far Conversational marketing is performing well and it is untouched by many marketers. Conversational marketing powered by Chatbots can be used to drive sales or conversions. The best part about conversational lead generation is that we’re all familiar with chat or simply texting. You can easily get your visitors to chat with you or your bot and convert them into leads than emailing them or cold calling. A solution from SD Chatbot will help you with that. Remember these solutions are automated and can drive good results.

Extract: Not many know they can extract leads from websites, domain names, or just the Company name, even the first and last name is enough to get your next lead. Enrich and Data tools from SD extraction will help you with that.

Not many tools are included in the list, most tools out there are pay-per-lead. Meaning, if you generate a lead you’ll have to pay for it. From what I experienced these tools are not just not worth it in the long run. The tools I have added above have fixed plans.

Strategies from Marketers:

These strategies may be of some level of use to you.

Use a compelling offer and a clear Call To Actions (CTAs).

Use tools similar to SD Lead Generation for your prospecting and marketing needs and try staying away from pay-per-lead tools.

Declutter your landing page, remove the inessentials, and minimize friction for your visitor to fill out a form or purchase a product/plan.

Speak with a Conversion and Strategy specialists like The Netly, and make the most out of your resources.

Invest in a CRM (not just any CRM, a good one) to manage your customer relationships. SD Suite comes with a CRM at no extra cost. The leads you generate can be managed right in the software helping you save money and costs.

Setup automated email campaigns for all the forms you host. Example, Welcome emails when there is the first interaction with your lead or customers and Thank you mails for form submissions. An actionable step in setting up welcome campaigns is to, include links to your most relevant articles, offer download links to your ebooks, and have proper email signatures.

Setup Drip campaigns to engage and nurture all your leads and customers throughout your pipeline and potential touchpoints. This process can be automated as well. SD Suite has Email and Drip campaigns built-in, with this feature you can manage all your marketing needs in one place.

Maximize Lead Generation

To help you maximize conversion, I have added a few strategies that I personally use for my outreach and other purposes.

You offer is what that converts. No offer, no conversion, no leads. Give your best offer to your visitors, an offer for which they’ll exchange their email for.

A landing page that converts. An enticing offer won’t convert if your Call To Action is not clear. The landing should be frictionless by design. We highly recommend speaking to Conversions optimization and Strategies specialists like The Netly.

Display trust badges on your website and below your forms. You’re not only required to displaying trust badges, but you should also follow best security practices. I can’t tell how irritating it is when I visit a site that says “Site not secure”. Install SSL it’s free.

Treat the privacy of your leads and customers like your life. It’s their data, not yours! Promise your visitors that their privacy is respected and follow it.

Stay consistent throughout your channels, you visitors (I hate too) will regret visiting your inconsistent landing page. Especially, if it’s crazy different from your Social Media pages or your Ad. They’ll probably leave your webpage before your pop-up pops up. So, be consistent.

Follow the steps mentioned and know it’s a process. Use the best practices and the tools mentioned to generate more leads and maximize your marketing and lead generation efforts.

The whole idea of mentioning SD lead generation is to help marketers who are paying-per-lead. To help those who are looking for alternatives with better features and functionality. If this is you then I honestly recommend trying out the SD Unlimited Lead Solution with free access to the Marketing Suite.