#before you ask google is unhelpful it just wants me to buy things or use like ezgif

[full---ofstarlight]

ok so. how DOES one make gifs.

[sanct1f1ed]

shout out to my third grade teacher telling me not to watch game grumps and inadvertently changing the course of my life forever

> be me, in the third grade

> don't know how to make my own email, use my school account to watch videos

> watch stampylonghead -> recommended & watch dantdm -> recommended & watch jacksepticeye (eventually)

> after school, teacher wants me to find something on youtube through my google account

> ohshit.jpg

> scared i'll get in trouble because jacksepticeye vids have swears in them and i was a goodytwoshoes

> act paranoid to the point of actively drawing suspicion

> teacher tells me, "it's okay, we don't care what's in your recommended. just don't watch this channel called ### #### #####"

> what did she say?

> repeats herself clearly with full diction, "The Game Grumps"

> go home and look them up because of course i do

> never the same

- cut to a few years later -

> be me, 12 years old

> let's check on the game grumps, i haven't watched them in a bit

> see they started a series for [REMOVED GAME], curious so i check out what's uploaded

> catch up to the current episode

> holy shit this game is incredible, i HAVE to know what happens next

> ask my mom to buy it on switch

> finish the game, the second one, the third one

> synapses are firing like crazy. all of the happy chemicals are in my brain

> baby's first hyperfixation

> remember old tumblr account made a year before that i never touched

> "maybe i can find other fans on there!"

> join a discord server to meet people who know the series

> "my parents said i should never use my real name on the internet... let's say my name is myles"

and here we are now.

i've come very far since then. it's been almost 5 years since that day in june, and a little after that it'll be 5 since i began transitioning. it's crazy how one little thing did so much.

i haven't kept contact with a single person from that server, or from its iterations afterwards. it was for the best. i needed to learn, to grow, and to improve myself as a human being, and even after all that growth i'm not sure talking to them would be the brightest idea. but this isn't about that, at least not right now.

any one variable could have changed EVERYTHING. my third grade teacher could have chosen not to say anything (which probably would have been wise). i could have heeded her warning and not looked them up.

what would have happened? would i be a cis girl? would i have realized i'm a system? because those two realizations ended up being related, funnily enough.

on that server, we met a system. no specifics- we don't keep contact. they didn't know they were a system at first, but they figured it out eventually. when they told us, part of it resonated with us, and we said as much. but another part of us was in denial. he believed we were making it all up. he was wrong, of course, but we held onto that guilt for a long time. we still do, in a way.

i don't think anyone still follows me from all the way back then, but if you have; you've seen a lot of this journey play out in real time. you are one of very few witnesses to what i believe to be a miracle. if it wasn't for that one sentence- that one channel- that one game- that one server- that one person. a series of coincidences, all lining up like planets in a row; like a magnifying glass, the sun, and an anthive. i've been burned on the way here, but i made it out okay. i think that's the real synthesis to all of this.

you will make it out okay. your realizations will make their way to you in funny ways. ways that seem irrelevant, or strange, or unhelpful. give them time. let them stew. the way forward will show itself when you walk down any path.

[peaches-writes]

super random prompts for today bc im feeling nostalgic~

tw // death

at 1100 years of you fulfilling your punishment as a human turned grim reaper, no one could blame you when you confess that you don’t really know yourself now if the promise you swore to chan before he died by your sword in his first life is still serious or holds meaning to you. it was a long long time ago, already muddled in your failing memories, when you swore to the joseon era prince that you would ‘find and torture him in every life he gets’ because he invaded your village and branded you as a criminal (which ultimately led to you doing the things that got you landed with your current spiritual punishment). at present, having already met different versions of him in his subsequent lives and delivering him to the afterlife each time without fail, you’re not sure anymore if you can still hold onto this promise and cause him trouble. after all, every version of him that pops up on your radar throughout the centuries never remembers what he did in his first life, let alone remember you. plus, the only time he sees you now as a grim reaper is on his death bed, when you come to fetch him and confess to causing some of the misfortunes he’s experienced in the life that he’s lived. 

so imagine your surprise when the gods inform you that chan only has one reincarnation left to spend and that he’ll spend it in the 21st century seoul, right where everything started. you’re then furthermore petrified when this version you meet not only has the ability to see and interact with ghosts by his 3rd eye but also finds the journal you unknowingly drop at his neighbor’s funeral: filled with notes on him and his previous lives as well as the confusing feelings you’ve unconsciously developed over the years. the final nail in the coffin, however, is that he’s not smug about it when he eventually finds you at the local graveyard, unlike how you expected of the chan from the joseon era. instead, he asks you all about his past lives, your punishment, and what he should expect in his next life if he has any. this time, with no means of escaping from his 3rd eye and his dangerously fast biking skills, you’re forced to confront the soul of the person you once called your enemy. 

more of the kids under the cut!

minho receives a google form link from you at the strike of midnight on your 1st anniversary as a couple, initially opening it on the assumption that it’s the survey form you previously coerced him into agreeing to answer for your senior thesis. the computer science major is then thoroughly surprised when the link opens to a red and pink-themed form titled, “y/n’s boyfriend application!” with questions ranging from, “full name so i can flames it with my name” to “rate my annoying habits from ‘i love them dw’ to ‘this is probably going to be one of the future reasons why we’ll break-up.’” he messages you first before anything else, asking you just exactly ‘what the fuck is this application for, babe?’ to which you only reply with a spam of winking emojis. actually, you only reply with winking emojis and actual winks when he decides to videocall you into answering him, leading minho to answer the form while you’re peeking over on a small browser on his laptop screen. your boyfriend mainly answers the questions lightheartedly, even reading his answers aloud to you after (”what number on the fan do i like? four, of course!” “minho, you’re a monster.”). that is until the last question which he only smiles at before spending the last five minutes of your videocall typing continuously then ending the call after submitting, preventing you from interrogating him and his sudden change in behavior. 

it’s only after the call that you see his answer to the last question (”why do you love me”), an entire eight paragraphs of him just mindlessly rambling about whatever comes at the top of his head to answer the question: ranging from his favourite and least favourite memories of you together, the things he loves about you coupled with the things he claims to not like about you (before shyly admitting towards the end that he still finds things to love about them), and an “overall there’s a lot of reasons why i love you: some i’ve mentioned, some i haven’t, some i’ve discovered, and some i will find out about in the future when we celebrate our 2nd year anniversary, 3rd, 4th, and the ones we’ll eventually forget what number they’re supposed to be because we’ll probably be married and busy with a lot of other things ;) there’s just no one definitive answer to this question, to be honest, but this is what comes at the top of my head. happy one year, baby <3″ 

when the fabric of reality that blankets seoul is reported to have been ripped at the seams, you start mysteriously losing some of your personal belongings to the parallel dimension’s version of your apartment. at first you blame it on your public enemy no. 1 and roommate, changbin, who does have a habit of borrowing things without permission and forgetting to return them. when you find a blue-haired and heavily tattooed changbin using your hair dryer in the bathroom one day (clearly looking very different from the roommate you’ve been living with for 6 months who has blonde hair and piercings only), however, only then do you realize that it’s been your roommate’s parallel version who’s been unknowingly receiving your things. what’s more surprising is him getting visibly confused at you initially throwing a fit at him when you mistook him as your real roommate, explaining to you later on that he and your parallel version are dating. you purposely avoid parallel dimension changbin for a few days in embarrassment from the latter, that is until he sits you down in the living room a week later (while your dimension’s changbin is out at his part-time job) and asks you, “so, what’s your problem with my parallel self? maybe i can help!”  

only parallel dimension changbin proves himself to be unhelpful when all he comments on your subsequent ramblings is a cheesy grin and, “your roommate’s probably in love with you. god, i can’t believe that even in your reality i’m stupid.” 

in a world where the person who doesn’t reciprocate an individual’s strong feelings instead of the other way around, hyunjin’s had his own fair share of sick days and pharmacy runs to suppress the flowers that bloom in him from admirers who fall way too deep into his charms. he’s slightly grown desensitized to it, having already memorized what to do and what to say to the people who are forced to confront and apologize to him each and every time. when it’s you who’s suddenly confessing your sudden feelings to him, promising that you’ll get over it in a month and even stay away for a while for his sake, only then does he feel a strange mix of dread, worry, and fear at the pit of his stomach. he doesn’t want you, his best friend, to ever leave his side but at the same time he can’t find it in himself to reciprocate your feelings for you to stay. for the first time, he doesn’t know what to do nor what to say to you, the daffodils suddenly feeling heavier in his lungs the more you try and distance yourself and see new people.

 jisung, unlike how the cliche trope goes, always bets everything on him missing his shot at your subdivision’s basketball court. he always says something along the lines of, “if i miss this shot, let’s go the movies!” or “if the ball falls off the rim after 5 seconds, you’ll go to the beach party with me!” despite being the star player of your high school basketball team himself. he always purposely misses for fun and gets his reward, of course, even when you remind him to shoot properly through flustered expressions and feigned huffs. this has then caused you your entire summer time and allowance, all spent glued to jisung’s hip and buying him all sorts of things from ice cream, extended time to borrow surf boards at the beach, and even a ride ticket to the travelling carnival’s ferris wheel (where he stole a kiss from you at the top like the cheesy little shit that he is). 

whenever you ask him why he bets in reverse each and every time, however, only then does his confident smirk disappears into his blush and he turns his entire face away from you; too shy to admit that you make him a little too nervous whenever it’s just you watching him shoot hoops. give him a rest, he just wants more full assurance that he’ll get to spend more time with you, as boyish as that sounds. 

you probably should’ve known better than to provoke chenle and wooyoung when you told them over the student council meeting that a marriage booth probably wouldn’t give you a lot of revenue since your school festival this year doesn’t fall on valentine’s day week. you probably should’ve expected that the first thing they’d do after the student assembly, when the festival is formally opened, is to drag you into said marriage booth—your english classroom decorated from top to bottom in cheap white cloth, plastic flowers, and an edit of your senior alumni bang chan as jesus—and put you into one of the flower crown veils they probably got at someone’s baptism, explaining that they need someone to kickstart the booth and attract more customers. but most of all, you probably should’ve expected that these two troublemaking vice president and secretary of yours wouldn’t hesitate to take this opportunity to torment you even further because suddenly you’re getting fake married to felix, your chem lab partner and long-time crush, who also has his own ‘sins’ to atone to chenle and wooyoung (something about ditching them at a party because he saw an injured cat stuck up on a tree on the way to the venue). the two of you stand in front of the “bang chan altar” for 10 minutes with han jisung in a questionable pope costume, the two of you attracting passersby who are mostly your classmates murmuring “oh my god, y/n and felix?” or “i knew it! those two are so cute together!” as the two of you are forced into exchanging cereal box rings and saying impromptu vows. 

what you didn’t expect from this experience, however, is felix suddenly confessing in his vows, clearing his throat awkwardly while sliding the purple plastic ring on your ring finger and saying, “this isn’t how i imagined it to go but we’re both here, all of our classmates are here, and you’re looking really pretty today so, uh...y/n, i just want to say that i’ve really liked you for a long time.” 

your grandmother shows you her first look of disapproval over your weaved fabrics when you start creating pieces that seem to resemble the aura of a boy. as much as you don’t want to see her disappointed, tradition still stands that you have to design your fabrics according to how you would interpret your dreams and since you turned 18, all you’ve been dreaming about is your potential soulmate. of all 7 billion in the world, you just have to be one of the rare ones with the ability to interpret your dreams on textile and have these said dreams be your soulmate bond to someone else as well. instead of arbitrary colors or shapes resembling nature like your grandmother and everyone else, you’re trying to recreate the face of a boy your age with the kindest smile you’ve ever seen and the prettiest brown eyes; instead of putting the sounds of the ocean or the chirping of birds as they would be usually heard in dreams onto colorful fabric, you’re trying to mix red, orange, and yellow dyes on threads just to try and capture seungmin’s golden voice whenever he would sing to you in your dreams. your soulmate becomes your muse, the lasting impressions he makes on you in the 3 real-time seconds of dreaming that you spend with him embedding themselves into the blanket you’ve been tasked to make for the winter. 

seungmin is more than flattered of course, finding genuine fascination in what you do and excitement to see you in person once university allows him. it’s only at the end of the year, however, right on christmas day, when he finally sees you on vacation in your town with his family—finding you at the beach party his new friend hyunjin invites him to where you dance around the bonfire with your own friends, wrapped in the blanket made of warm colors that just scream his very soul and aura. your eyes meet almost as soon as he arrives because of your soulmate pull, causing you to become flustered at realizing that you’re wearing the blanket design that’s been inspired by him, and before he knows it, kim seungmin is running to you and grabbing your arm. “hi.” he pants breathlessly, his relieved smile shining brightly against the orange glow of the fire to your side. “finally. it’s you!” 

jeongin stares at his laptop for a solid 5 minutes in complete and utter confusion before his roommate seungmin pokes him on the side of his head and asks if he passed his dream university, snapping him out of reality. it’s not that he didn’t pass the entrance exam, definitely not because he’s still feeling confident from answering it from almost 6 months ago. rather, it’s that the acceptance e-mail sent to him by the university is for a completely different name, your name out of all applicants out there—that one person he sat next to at cram school and turned down at the end of the summer. logging into his social media accounts, he sees people voicing out their concerns for similar incidents, that they’re getting acceptance or rejection e-mails of other applicants instead of their own, and posts that aim to track down who’s gotten who to remedy this. when seungmin hears this, he simply shrugs and urges jeongin to simply message you and get over it since the two of you are connected on social media anyway. but still, jeongin takes another hour to message you with a simple, “hi, i got your e-mail. should i forward it to you?” even closing his laptop in a hurry and running back into the comfort of his blanket as soon as he hears the dreadful ping of the messenger app. he knows he shouldn’t be flustered to message you, especially with something as important as your acceptance letter, but he can’t help but feel weak in the knees at the thought of having to talk to you again after almost a year because all he can think about is that he really shouldn’t have rejected you in that offer to go to the movies in the first place. 

what’s worse is that, since he sent the message over online, his thoughts can’t help but overthink your simple “really? here’s my e-mail” reply that comes not even a second after he sends his message—even more your follow-up reply of “i got yours too btw! i’ll forward it to you when you forward mine” when he doesn’t reply immediately. jeongin’s fingers uncontrollably shake as he musters up the courage to reply, face blushing red the entire time as he e-mails you your acceptance letter. all this time, considering how the two of you haven’t talked in a long time, he only thinks about one ambitious thought: “is it a bad time? to bring up that movie offer again?” 

[idontknowiknow]

hugely irritable for no good reason but several of the no good reasons are

- phone news still: google is driving me INSANE i hate all the google apps (well i hate podcasts and i hate gmail. photos and maps and calendar and uhhh im sure there was one more that i was already using oh yeah drive. they are ok i guess) sending feedback to gmail to tell it that it sucks and doesn’t do the one (1!) thing i want an email inbox to do yes i know i have too many accounts but if i cannot look at them all at the same time i lose all of my emails and i hate your ‘primary’ bullshit you suck and are terrible.

- overwhelmed by full time work and the house constantly needing things doing and im tired and i don’t want to!!!!!!!!!!!!! but then everything is messy and i hate that also!!!!!!!

- feeling vaguely stuck in 2 video games (only one really but the sensation of being stuck in it is leaking over into the other one whenever theres a slow bit where i dont know what to do next)

- my sleeves are wet because of the laundry i was doing earlier and it’S ANNOYING

- lockdown is actually really irritating me this time. was really looking forward to several of my plans that got cancelled. the previous snap lockdown also cancelled something that was A Big Deal but it made several other things slightly more convenient so i guess i was chill that time. but now i have Had Enough!!!!!!

- had like 2 social interactions over text/email that were almost certainly entirely fine but i have convinced myself that the persons involved Do Not Like Me. this is... clearly false But

- a nursery i want to purchase several plants from gave me a very short and unhelpful email last time i sent them an enquiry, which was several months ago. but idk if it’s worth enquiring AGAIN about the same plant just in case sometimes they do have it? it’s on their stocklist after all. also even if they don’t have it they also list several other ones. the only place i did find with this one type of tree and bought a bunch from sent me sick ones which instantly died, and gave me a refund, but still now i REALLY want to purchase in person, BUT this one nursery is a reasonably long drive away and i want to be sure what they have before i go and look, but i guess i have to ring them in case they will be more helpful??? but i hate that????????? also at least 3 of the plants i want to purchase are as gifts so i need to buy them at certain times and having to add a time management component to this whole situation is just stressing me out. maybe i will have to make multiple enquiries and/or trips. ALSO as previously stated, lockdown so i cant go anyway.

- i am HUGELY HUGELY HUGELY angry about spellcheckers being constantly enabled but NOT in my actual language and thus telling me that words are wrong when theyre not. i have TURNED OFF SPELLCHECK IN FIREFOX NOW BECAUSE IM MAD and dont particularly care for punctuation in a post like this anyway BUT THE PRINCIPLE OF IT STILL PISSES ME OFF!!!!!!

- stuck in my comic, next 2 pages/scenes are both giving me strife. both in terms of art (outfits? poses?? ugh) and script (there are specific dialogue beats that i want to happen and they are. not flowing the way they should whenever i try to put them on the actual page)

- ants!!!!! i dont mind ants in general but these ones are driving me insane because they are often just. on me and also eating the cat’s food and then the cat’s food has to be in a bowl of water and that gets gross all the time and also whenever the cat has his cone on again it’s probably even more annoying for him

- i think i already whinged about it but i’m still stuck on my music app problems now that i know musicbee doesnt have a dedicated app and now i have to research .... something ............. but everyone on the forums seems too hardcore for me and i dont know what features and processes they are even talking about. and too shy to make an account and ask anything. All I Want Is To Put My Music In Multiple Genre Categories At Once And Have That Be A Functional Sorting System, And Also For My App To Not Focus Entirely Around Streaming And Artificial Intelligence.

- advertising and algorithms and data in general

- someone has not replied to my emails for like a year and i’m worried he’s dead or just doesnt want to talk to me anymore. both options are obviously bad. best case is hes busy???????????????????? also eternally haunted by every email i’ve ever failed to reply to myself, but hopefully those people are not this worried about it

- probably, all of this would chill the fuck out if i would just! take my GOT DANG meds!!!!!!!!!! but i have no idea how long it’s been since i last took my stupid tiny dose of stupid brain pills!!!!!!!!! they are right here on the desk next to me! they have been here the whole time!!!!! i sit next to them every day and Dont Take Them and then eventually get anxious and angry and bored, hmm, its a mystery why

[qqueenofhades]

hello! i have a half formed idea for a book (based off of a really shitty fic i wrote oops gonna delete that and scrap the good parts into something new) but i was wondering if you had any advice for actually writing a book? i know you've written a couple books, and your fics tend to be multiple chapters, and i can't seem to stay inspired beyond a couple chapters! thank you so much :D

Oh dear. I have done various writing advice asks in the past, but who knows what they were tagged. I suppose you could search in the stygian depths of my blog if you really wanted, and see if anything you found there was useful?

As far as advice, I feel like I’m a shitty person to ask in this department because my own process is so unhelpful. I have idea, I start writing idea, I think about idea obsessively, realise I have a problem, work problem out, eventually book is done, ta-da. I then edit and tinker with things, but the first draft is still pretty close in shape/structure to the final version. Some people write different scenes and then place them in the correct order, but I can’t think of a time I’ve really written anything out of order/non-sequentially. I feel like I can’t write a scene without having already written what comes before, and while I can change details and edit sentences and so forth, I don’t normally change major plot beats/emotional reactions/twists/etc. I also don’t outline things or make any exterior diagrams or so forth, although some people find this helpful. If you’re the kind of person who likes to map your story out on paper beforehand (or think that it might help you to stay motivated if you can see it/have a checklist), then give this a try.

Once again, I feel like I’m being stupendously unhelpful, but my advice when anyone asks how to write a book is “well, write a book then.” I tend to think in long-form projects (as evidenced by my many fics) and the nice thing about fic is that you have as much space/word count as you need to tell the story in as much detail as you want. If you’re thinking about this actually being a book, you may have to be more ruthless, but you can also use e-publishing platforms like Amazon or Smashwords and so forth, and still have it as long as you like.

On that note, you’ll have to find someone to read over your work/edit it, especially if it’s something you’re not confident in doing yourself. I proofread and edit all my own stuff, but then, I’ve been doing this for many years and am an academic and used to catching small and fussy details. Even then, it can look different when I see it on a page/read it in hard copy with a pen in hand, and I see things that I don’t see on the screen because it has gotten so very familiar to me. Asking a friend to edit your stuff can be dicey, and I don’t recommend it unless you know this is someone who can definitely make your work better and knows what to look for and will be kind about feeding it back to you. 

As someone who has sat through many ego-shredding rounds of more or less constructive criticism on many things, I can sympathise about it not being fun at all (but at least I know how to take it). You can share your stuff with someone beforehand if you want, but you don’t have to. Once you have something that is some kind of coherent draft, however, it does benefit to have a second pair of eyes on it somehow. Even if it’s a “can you read this and tell me what you think” kind of way, and again with someone who fairly represents a general reader and can give you their take on what they got out of the story, if the plot was satisfying, if the character arcs resolved, etc. I know the most terrifying thought about writing is always the thought of being Known/showing it to someone else, but really, there is no way around it in the professional creative process. Write something that you yourself want to read, but that does imply readers.

If you’re writing about sensitive subjects or things that could upset people, by all means, do your homework . Google is free and easily available, there are plenty of resources to be sure that you’re doing a good job. Obviously you do have some degree of artistic license, but that involves you doing your due diligence and understanding that people will react to it in a certain way if it hasn’t been. I am (big surprise, as an academic) a fan of research in general. I think it helps to set the scene and to evoke details and to immerse the audience in what they are supposed to be tasting/seeing/smelling/feeling/etc. The fun of well-written fiction, in my mind, is to escape to somewhere comprehensively and to know what the characters are experiencing and to be able to picture it vividly. 

That is why I tend to be a ho for detail and description in my own stuff, because I am always extremely curious about it. I always do a lot of world-building just because I like to do it, and because if you have plot points/developments/etc that might seem a little far-fetched, it’s easier for your audience to buy it if you look like you know what you’re doing and have thought of loopholes/objections/etc, and that this is taking place in a fully realised and objectively consistent universe that exists outside the basic demands of plot (and don’t change the rules to get your characters out of trouble). If you have to change the characters’ personalities/artificially put things off/your whole plot could be solved in five minutes if they talked to each other, you probably need to do a little more work. Audiences will be patient, but they will also figure things out, and if there is an obvious solution that you’re just not addressing, they’ll get frustrated. But yes.

Also: humor. I can’t read books or stories that take themselves TOO seriously. Especially if you have a lot of angst or drama or plot (as I tend to do), you need to throw in some comic relief and/or wit or other things to leaven the brew. If you can tell that the author is willing to poke fun at themselves and their own characters (we’ve all encountered that piece of media where the lead character Cannot Be Criticized By Anyone even while they’re being an idiot and is clearly a projection of the author’s egoism/how great they think they are), that is usually a hallmark of a good story and someone that knows what they’re doing, and I really do stand by that. If it’s pretentious and trying to make a Point, it’s just not that enjoyable. This is a hellworld. We need some escapism and ridiculousness with our adventures and our drama. So yes.

Good endings, basically. Don’t put your characters/readers through so much and then nope out of a satisfying resolution because Gritty Realism (think why everyone hated the final season/ending of Game of Thrones). You can, but.... again, it’s not something I personally like, and people seem tired of it in general. An ending does not have to be a Disney happy ever after, but it shouldn’t make a reader feel like a sucker for emotionally engaging with your story, and should have some kind of payoff for having done so.

(Also. Whenever possible, make it more gay. I mean, who said that.)

Anyway. Last but not least, have fun. If you’re writing something you enjoy and take pride in, that will transfer, and I always think that is worth the most.

[zigsexual]

valentine’s day (drake/liam)

note: my belated and creatively named valentine’s gift to you all that got away from me and ended up being a full fledged fic!! deepest apologies. please note that this isn’t a highschool au, it’s my DEU rendition of The Crew (maxwell, olivia, liam, drake) as wee babies when they were at their bougie ass rich kid private school prior to the events of trr. i have so many thoughts about this gang you guys....... so many thoughts. i digress.

summary: in which drake is sixteen, perturbed by the concept of love, and burdened with a fat crush on his best friend the prince of cordonia.

word count: 4200+

• • •

“Who the hell decided to commercialize Valentine’s Day, anyway?” Drake complains, making a face as they pass a group of girls hanging up strings of heart-shaped lights in the halls. “Couldn’t we have given February a useful holiday?”

“What in god’s name is a useful holiday?” Olivia says, “Would you suggest we celebrate weeding the garden instead?”

Drake rolls his eyes. “I’m just saying, it’s a colossal waste of time.”

“Speak for yourself,” Maxwell chimes in, “I’ve already got like fifteen secret admirers. At this rate, I won’t need to buy chocolate for a year.”

“You never need to buy chocolate. Your family is rich.”

“It’s the principle of it, Drake.”

Olivia turns, flashing a smirk at him. “Come on, you just hate it because no one wants to be your Valentine. It’s a hard life being an old maid, isn’t it?” She bats her eyelashes, lips set in a mocking pout. “We’ll spare a thought for you, darling.”

“Shut up,” Drake glares at her, and she barely conceals a snicker.

“She’s right though,” Maxwell says, “You can’t fully enjoy Valentine’s if you don’t have anyone to spend it with.”

Drake raises an eyebrow at him. “And who are you spending it with? Your fifteen secret admirers?”

Maxwell brightens. “Exactly! If I spend it with all of them, it’s enough people to be a party!”

“Oh, to be so simple,” Olivia sighs.

Liam is quiet at Drake’s side, content to listen to their back-and-forth as he usually does. He’s never been much of a talker, at least in the company of others. He talks to Drake, and that’s all that matters.

Olivia and Maxwell split off towards their respective classes, offering Drake a brief respite from the taunts until the next passing period. Liam glances over at him, a tentative smile on his face, and Drake catches his eye and smiles back.

“I’ll be your Valentine,” Liam says, painfully earnest.

It takes Drake a second for the words to settle in, but once they do, he can feel the color start to spread on his cheeks. “What?”

“So you can enjoy the holiday,” Liam adds, so sweet and well-meaning, just like he always is. “We can do something together. I’ve always liked Valentine’s.”

Drake’s whole face is burning, flushed all the way to the tops of his ears. He prays to god that Liam hasn’t noticed. “Oh. Yeah, we could — yeah. That’s, ah… yeah, okay. Cool.”

Liam smiles wider. “Cool.”

When Liam breaks off towards his class, Drake lingers for a moment outside the door, watching him walk in and take his seat. Liam turns to take out his books, catching Drake standing there, and lifts up his hand in a wave. Drake waves back, smiling so hard he has to bite his lip to hold it in.

---

He spends all of lunch detention (unintentional wardrobe infraction) feeling strange. It’s only him and Maxwell (intentional wardrobe infraction) in the room, as the supervisory teacher is so used to their presence that she no longer bothers to supervise. Maxwell is reading a copy of Vogue, so he’s out as a conversation partner, and Drake has been left far too long with only his thoughts and that bizarre twisty feeling in the pit of his stomach to dwell on.

He’s certain all of this has nothing to do with Liam’s offer — why would it, anyway? What’s so weird about spending Valentine’s Day alone with your best friend, just the two of you? It’s not like that would mean anything, especially not between him and Liam. They spend lots of time together, and nothing about it has ever been weird before.

Except… there was that time in the summer when they went camping. There hadn’t been anything overtly strange, not really, but they’d gone swimming in the lake together and Drake couldn’t help but notice Liam as he dried off afterwards. And then… kept noticing him, all the rest of the day and into the night, until he dreamed that Liam noticed him too.

And there had been that palace ball, the one where the two of them snuck away and Liam tried to teach him the steps to the waltz, insisting on kissing his hand just like he would any of the girls he danced it with at court. Or the night they climbed onto the roof to watch a meteor shower and accidentally fell asleep together, Drake waking up with his head nestled in the crook of Liam’s neck like it was exactly where he belonged.

He takes a deep breath and glances over to Maxwell. He’s still intently focused on his reading, lips pursed. Drake drums his fingers on the desk, the strange feeling beginning to spread to his chest.

So what if sometimes he thinks about what it might be like to kiss Liam, or hold his hand, or run his fingers through his hair — everyone thinks stuff like that about their closest friend sometimes, right? And it’s Liam, he’s just… that’s how everyone is with Liam. He’s a prince, and he’s kind and charming and handsome, and when he smiles at you sometimes it feels like you’re the only person in the whole world who matters.

And that’s… everyone feels like that, right?

“Maxwell,” Drake says, unable to keep quiet any longer, “Have you ever… wanted to kiss one of your friends?”

“No,” Maxwell answers, not even lifting his eyes from the magazine. “Have you?”

“No.” Drake says indignantly. “Why do — why would you ask me that?”

This time Maxwell hazards a glance at him, amused. “Why would you ask me that?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Is this about Liam?”

“What?” Drake panics. “No way. Of course not. Absolutely not. Why would you say that?”

Maxwell just watches him, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “What other friends do you have?”

“I have other friends,” Drake says, although for the life of him he can’t think of any.

“Other friends you want to kiss?”

“I don’t —” He struggles to find something to say, but his mind has betrayed him, and he’s floundering. “Nevermind, okay? That’s… just nevermind.”

Maxwell surveys him a few seconds longer before letting out a sigh and returning to his reading, flipping to the next page. “Honestly, Drake, you’re a lost cause.”

Drake crosses his arms, sinking back in his chair. He’s probably got a fever. The flu was going around last week, wasn’t it? Definitely a late flu. Maybe he can get a hall pass to go see the nurse or something.

---

“Uh, hey, Savannah?”

He’s lingering in her doorway, still wearing his school uniform, backpack slung over one shoulder. She looks up at him from her bed, laptop perched at her side. “What do you want?”

“I just...” He regrets the entire situation now, but he can’t back out at this point.  “I need your advice on something.”

She tilts her head, suspicious. “You never ask for my advice.”

“Well, that’s because it’s usually bad.”

“You’re off to a great start here.”

“Ugh, just let me talk, okay?” He shifts awkwardly under her gaze. “What would you... suggest... getting someone for Valentine’s Day?”

Her whole countenance shifts at his words, eyes lighting up and smile spreading across her face. She sits up straighter. “Oh my god, you have a girlfriend!”

“No, I —”

She squeals and claps her hands together, an almost manic expression of glee on her face. “You have a girlfriend!”

“It’s for a friend,” Drake says pointedly, crossing his arms and shooting her a reproachful glare. “And forget I said anything. Apparently you’re the worst person to ask.”

Savannah leans forward, resting her chin on her hands, waggling her eyebrows at him. “Nobody gets Valentine’s presents for a friend, dumbass. At least not ones that require sisterly advice. Who is she? Do I know her?”

“No, because she doesn’t exist!” Drake throws his hands up with a sigh, turning to back out of the doorway. “I told you, just forget it. Christ.”

“Wait!” Savannah hops off her bed, following after him. “Wait, I’m sorry! I wanna give you ideas, okay? I have good ones!”

He shoots her a scowl over his shoulder. “You had your moment, and you blew it.”

“Girls like flowers, and chocolate, and nail polish,” she says, still trailing behind him, listing it out on her fingers as she speaks. “Sometimes stuffed animals but only if they’re cute. Jewelry. Cookies and cupcakes and cards.”

He wants to say: And what if it’s not for a girl? But the aftermath of that question isn’t something he’s ready to deal with. He bites his tongue. “Seriously? I could’ve Googled all of that. You’re completely unhelpful.”

She rolls her eyes, hands on her hips. “Fine. What kinds of things does your ‘friend’ like?”

He pauses, thinking. “Books. Traveling, I guess. Sports. Dogs.” Municipal government, although that one’s too much of a giveaway to say out loud.

Savannah makes a face. “All of those are boring, unless you’re getting her a puppy. Which you’re definitely not.” She purses her lips, looking up at the ceiling while she thinks. “If you’d just tell me who it’s for, maybe I could actually help you.”

“No chance in hell.”

“Ugh, your loss then,” she says, rolling her eyes and turning back in the direction of her room. “Make her a scrapbook for all I care. It’s not going to be my fault when you get dumped.”

“I’m not getting dumped!” Drake calls after her, indignant. “There’s no one to dump me!”

“And there never will be!” Savannah shoots back, vanishing through the doorway and closing it behind her.

---

When the day arrives, Drake tries not to seem overtly invested when he asks Liam about his plans for the evening. Anyway, maybe he’d forgotten; maybe it had just been an offhand, spur-of-the-moment kind of thing.

“Well, what time are you dropping by?” Liam answers with a smile. “We should still get to bed at a reasonable hour, but if you’re free around dinnertime, I have a few ideas.”

“Sure,” Drake says, mirroring the smile. “We can do dinner.”

And if his heart speeds up a little at the implication — dinner, with Liam, on Valentine’s Day — then maybe that’s just the flu talking. Who cares if the nurse couldn’t find a fever yesterday? What does she know?

As soon as he gets home, he starts working on the gift he’s spent all day thinking about. He owes just a bit of the inspiration to Savannah, whose parting mockery had been more useful than she clearly intended it to be. He’s not making a scrapbook, per se, but something to pull together all the memories that bind the two of them so closely.

Drake would punch anyone who’d call him sentimental, but the truth remains that he always likes to take a piece of the moments that mean something big. A horseshoe from the ranch his mom’s family owns in Texas, the first time she let him ride one of the horses. A table topper from the first royal wedding he’d attended, making Liam laugh (the ultimate goal, as Liam had been despondent all day once Regina donned white) while he pressed a finger to his lips to keep his thievery quiet.

He rummages through his drawers now for the perfect mix of things to press onto paper for Liam. A map of their friendship, if you will, told in ticket stubs and photographs and ballpoint pen. He tries to label everything he can, not sure if Liam will remember right away when he sees: a seashell plucked from the sand of their favorite beach in Cordonia, apple seeds from their first festival together, a scrap of fabric from the tent they’d ruined the first time they got to go camping on their own. He fills the spaces between with pictures, a gradient of growth, his hair losing its sandy highlights and Liam’s baby face disappearing into cheekbones and jawlines right before their eyes.

They’d been together for so much. So much of Drake’s life had been defined by Liam, by the moments they shared, the memories they’d made together. He looks down at the collage of their past, messy as it is, and silently hopes for it to continue far into the future.

When he’s done, he takes care to roll up his creation and secure it with a rubber band, lodging it snugly in his backpack so Liam will be surprised.

With the gift out of the way, he spends several minutes staring at his closet, wondering what sort of thing to wear. Normally in these situations, he’d ask Savannah for help, but following their last conversation he’s fairly certain any advice she has to give will be locked away behind one thousand pressing questions he has no desire to answer.

Why mess with the status quo, then? He throws on a denim shirt and fishes out the black jeans Savannah had bought him last Christmas (“If you’re going to keep wearing double denim, at least make it a different color.”), pulling off the tags and crossing his fingers that she had at least a bit of good taste. They’re tighter than he would normally want them to be, and he stares himself down in the mirror for a few seconds trying to decide if it’s too much.

He remembers the last time he’d worn a suit: some formal banquet Liam had begged him to attend so there’d be someone for him to talk to. Liam had paid for it, of course — Liam always paid for everything, no matter how many times Drake tried to refuse — and he’d dragged Drake to the royal family’s tailor to make sure everything was sized correctly.

Liam, ever the picture of nobility, had been quick to lecture him on the importance of a good suit. Drake recalls the way Liam had skimmed his fingertips across the lapel, assessing the details, absently commenting, “You should have them cut it more fitted, it’ll look good on you.”

Drake sighs. Skinny jeans it is, then.

He drops by Liam’s room just a few minutes after six, stalling to make sure it doesn’t seem like he’s too eager. He wonders what Liam has planned, if they’ll stay in for the night or go out somewhere, a reservation just for two. And what about after dinner? Would they reprise their favorite rebellious activity and stargaze on the roof?

He takes a deep breath and knocks, a flittering anxiety alight in his stomach.

When the door opens, Liam is already smiling. Drake can’t help but notice that he’s wearing the Liam version of casual: a sweater over an Oxford. That alone is a definitive enough statement; there will be no going out tonight. He begins to regret the jeans.

“Hi!” Liam says brightly, heading back into the room before Drake can fully respond, clearly excited about something. As Drake follows him in, he immediately spots what it is, and his heart sinks.

Liam is talking animatedly, unaware of the way Drake’s gaze has landed forlornly on what looks to be an entire library of boring old historical tomes laid out across Liam’s bed. “I was thinking we could get a head start on our history project. I brought down a bunch of the old books we have on the medieval Cordonian rulers, so it should be really interesting! They don’t have any of these at the school library.”

“Oh,” Drake says, the weight of his backpack suddenly tremendous. “You want to… study history.”

Liam seems to sense his apprehension, looking back over his shoulder. “Or we could do something else. Your call, whatever you want to do.” He glances at the way Drake’s fingers are digging into his backpack straps. “Did you bring something?”

“No,” Drake says, a beat too quickly. “No, just school stuff. You know, so we can… do homework.”

“Great! Oh, and I almost forgot — the staff are making pizza for dinner. I figured that’s easy to eat while we work, right?” Liam crosses over to the bed. “Did you have a particular century in mind?”

Drake forces a smile. “You know what, it’s just… so hard to choose.”

“You’re right,” Liam sighs, already opening one of the books, seemingly oblivious to Drake’s complete lack of interest. “There’s really so many good ones. I’m glad we’re starting this now, otherwise I wouldn’t have enough time to pick.”

The fake smile still plastered on his face, Drake edges toward the bathroom. “Yeah, that sounds… listen, I’ll be right back.”

Liam’s attention has already shifted fully towards the history project, brow furrowed as he reaches across for another book. Drake slips inside the enormous adjoining bathroom and locks the door behind him, slumping down on the floor.

And — he’s an idiot. Of course, of course, this is what Liam had meant. This is the kind of thing they always do together when they hang out. Why should today be any different? Liam’s intention, from the very start, had been to give Drake an out, offer him an alternative to the teasing words of Maxwell and Olivia. Dinner was always pizza with them, always dressed down and casual and lounging in Liam’s room watching TV or studying or pranking one of the staff.

Drake brings a hand up to his face, rubbing the bridge of his nose. What had gotten into him lately? Is this some sort of hormonal imbalance? A second puberty? God, with his luck.

He sighs and stands up, resigned to the decision that, for now, the backpack will stay closed. He’s mildly tempted to just flush his gift down the toilet and be done with it, but there’s still a spark of hope in his chest that he can’t find the strength to smother yet. Anyway, the night’s just begun; maybe Liam has plans for them that are yet to be revealed.

---

He learns about four hours later that there are no such plans, when Liam yawns into another book and says to him, “It’s almost ten, should we call it a night?”

Drake tries to keep from looking dejected. If anything, he knows that ten is late when it comes to Liam, what with his ridiculous adherence to bedtimes, so the fact that Drake has stayed this long is at least somewhat of a kind gesture on Liam’s part. Just not the one he’s looking for.

For a second, he almost considers asking if Liam wants to sneak up onto the roof again, but when Liam yawns a second time, his eyelids heavy, Drake relents. “Sure. Thanks for having me.”

Liam laughs. “You make it sound like you don’t live down the hall. You can come by whenever you want.”

“Just not after ten.”

Liam laughs again, a flash of levity in his tired eyes. “Maybe after ten, but only if it’s not a school night.”

Drake makes a face at him. “You’re such a giant nerd, Liam, you know that?”

“Well, that’s why I have you. To counterbalance.”

Drake slides off the bed, rolling his eyes. “Should I be offended by that?”

“You started it.”

He glances down at the ground, searching for his backpack, but Liam is two steps ahead of him and appears around the corner, holding it in his hands. “Don’t forget your stuff.”

Drake feels a tiny surge of nerves at the thought of Liam so close to his almost-gift, but he fights it back and takes the bag from Liam, slipping it over his shoulders. “Thanks.”

“Text me when you get home so I know you’re safe,” Liam says, smiling. It’s the joke he always makes, and Drake always rolls his eyes, like clockwork. It would be cute if it wasn’t so heartbreaking.  

“I expect to drop dead halfway there, but I’ll do my best.”

“Aw,” Liam tilts his head, the smile softening, “Don’t do that. I’d miss you.”

Drake’s cheeks burn, which he takes as his cue to leave. He offers Liam a halfhearted salute, walking backwards towards the door until Liam turns around, and then he does, too.

The walk back down the hall seems longer than usual, weighed down by dashed hopes and the presence of that fucking gift he’d been so stupid to prepare. He flicks on the lights in his room with a frustrated sigh, letting his backpack fall off his shoulders to the floor as he crosses towards his closet to change out of the stupid jeans.

When he passes his bed, he sees it. A flash of something silver. He pauses, head turned, brow furrowed, trying to make out what it could be. It’s nestled in against his pillows, sinking down into the comforter.

As he approaches, the object becomes clearer: a delicately wrapped package, with a tiny card slipped under the red ribbon tied across it. Drake picks it up, inspecting it curiously before flipping open the card. The inscription reads: Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, Liam.

Drake drops the gift back down on the bed, a sudden jolt running through his body and filling him with a nervous apprehension. How had Liam managed this? They’d been together the entire evening, and he would have certainly noticed if Liam had been gone longer than a few minutes; he hadn’t been that invested in the studying.

He can’t possibly open this. Not now. Not after…

Love, Liam.

Drake sits, staring down at the package while his heart speeds up. Finally, he reaches back out for it and gingerly tears at a corner of wrapping paper.

Underneath, he can see a small, flat box — nothing out of the ordinary. He pulls off the ribbon, tearing back the rest of the paper before slowly moving to open the lid.

When he sees what’s inside, his heart climbs right into his throat.

He’s almost too stunned to touch it at first, but curiosity soon gives way and he brushes his fingers gently across the cool metal, following the lines that make out his last name, inscribed at the bottom just under a long string of numbers.

He knows what it is without having to read the tiny note Liam has tucked underneath it: his dad’s badge from the King’s Guard. After he had died in the assassination attempt, the state had taken everything in as evidence. His mom had filed a few petitions to have things returned, but she’d given up shortly before she left. Drake had almost forgotten. Liam must have remembered, must have pulled some strings.

He looks up at the ceiling, willing gravity to pull back the tears brimming in his eyes. His hand folds around the badge.

Love. Liam.

He hurries back into the hallway before he even knows what he’s doing, jogging back towards Liam’s room and knocking on the door so forcefully that he can hear Liam’s footsteps speed up before he pulls it open, eyes wide. “Drake? What’s —”

“Your present,” Drake interrupts, the words coming out in a tumble, out of breath. “Liam, that was… nobody’s ever…”

“Oh,” Liam withdraws a little, a bashful smile creeping onto his face. “I was worried it might be a bit much, I just thought… well, do you like it?”

“I love it,” Drake says, unabashed. “I love you.”

He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but Liam lets the smile spread, reaching out and pulling him in for a hug. “I love you too,” he says.

Drake feels the memories of every moment he’s spent pretending not to long after Liam flood through his body like fire. Maybe… maybe Maxwell had been right, maybe Liam was the only person he wanted to kiss and maybe he didn’t have the flu and maybe —

Suddenly, Liam adds, “You’re my best friend, Drake,” and the world comes to a slow and inevitable stop.

Best friend. Right.

Drake clings to Liam just long enough to blink back his rapidly watering eyes, breathing out slowly through his mouth. When they break apart, he’s managed to plaster a smile on his face too.

It is simultaneously the best and worst Valentine’s Day he’s ever had.

“See you tomorrow, then,” he says, slightly hurried as he feels another wave of emotion begin to well up inside him. Liam nods, completely oblivious to the hurricane hiding behind Drake’s eyes.

“See you tomorrow.”

Drake walks back to his room with his hands shoved into his pockets, mind racing just as his heart slows. He’s not sure what to do with himself, what to do with all these feelings. But he at least knows what to do with the carefully crafted gift he’d never had the chance to give Liam, still sitting like a stone in his backpack.

When he’s back inside, he takes it out and looks at it, suddenly so mad at himself for thinking — well, he’s not quite sure what he’d thought. But it had been stupid. Stupid just like Valentine’s Day.

He gathers the whole thing up and walks it towards the trash can under his desk, dumping it unceremoniously among the discarded papers and wrappers and soda cans. He shoves it down with his foot, refusing to let it linger at the top, a reminder of his idiocy.

He almost considers throwing Liam’s card away with it, even crosses the room and picks it up, intentions set. But some part of him, the same part that had thought this all up in the first place, can’t let it go. He stands over his trash can, staring down at the words written in Liam’s careful cursive script, brushing his thumb across the letters. Love, Liam.

At the last minute, he tucks it into his back pocket and turns to get ready for bed.

[rourhksapocolypse]

alright, time for a tale.

A few days ago, I noticed the battery light on my dashboard blinking, complete with a Check Engine light on. A quick bit of Google-Fu later, and I'm thinknig it's the top result: A bad Alternator.

this concerned me, but i wasn't going to just go to the store and check the warning code; breaking a habit like "Go straight home" is hard to do. It's a repetitive motion where you stop thinking until after it's done without a reminder - at which point, you can't alter the habit because you've already done it, so it'll wait until tomorrow or necessity.

Add a few more days to a week. Today, I go, get gas for my empty tank, prepare to turn on the car - nothing.

No reaction whatsoever.

Car is dead in the water.

Welp.

So I wait an hour, end up helping an old lady after buying dinner and a set of jumper cables, then the old lady helps me by jumping my car. No Check Engine, full tank, but not sure if problem is gone yet.

So I go to the nearby O'Reilly's, yep, second diagnosis says bad alternator. Could buy one there, but it would have to be shipped to Colo Spgs from Denver, and it'd be $150.

Apprehensive,jpg

In the end, I don't buy the alternator there. So I wander, and with help I get some fuel system cleaner (soot build up can hurt milleage, might as well clean that up) and fresh window wipers, since I'd probably partially trashed the ones I had because I'd only replaced one and used both on ice before my heat was fixed.

Got that squared away, nice since it's the rainy season.

Get on the highway, no check engine light, but confirmed that the battery light flickering at 3 thousand rpms was still there. Almost home, turned in towards home, glance at my pphone and realize/remember: I was supposed to go to NAPA nearby. that was the plan I made with mom.

Tires will wait till tomorrow anyway.

So I turn three times, go towards napa, realize there's an O'Reillys next to NAPA and the new-ish Dairy Queen that's popped up in the last two years (rural Colorado, this is still kinda unexpected, but it's not like we don't have the space out there), so I turn into O'Reillys.

I already know that if it's not in stock like at the Colo Spgs store, they can order it from Denver, whereas NAPA was unknown. So I go in, get the alternator and an extra belt because I don't know what state mine's in and an extra isn't a bad idea anyway, proceed to stare at my alternator.

I am bad at being a Guy, because I don't have tools. How am I going to fix this?

then the other counter guy, Ivan, comes out, we talk, there's a battery / alternator tester box we try, everything checks out, then power cuts as me and mom communicate and confuse each other because I can only juggle three things at a time and there's more than three things happening. Also my phone is being unhelpful, because Phone app isn't working right.

First we think it's the starter, then she asks her friend for help and there's more communication and confusion, Ivan notices my hand job with the wiring on the battery from two years ago as he's cleaning off built up battery acid on the positive end of the battery.

Red wire is just fine. Black wire is loose and missing the tightening nut.

Cue instant problem solving.

In the end, the solution is simple: Tighten Black Wire connection and put on new nut.

When I got home, I remembered episode 1 of House M.D. At the very end, after 30 minutes of troubles, the solution is just 2 pills. Same kind of feeling of simplicity and relief as this one missing nut.

God used his plans of making me confident enough to make decisions for myself to skip out on a semi-irreversible purchase, getting other necessities, a new utility knife to replace my old belt knife (after some happy teasing drama about "that is a shiny knife I want it," "Do you even need a knife?" "No, I have plenty and lost more but it's Shiny, I want it!" did not buy that super shiny and probably sharp ten dollar knife), and a simple fix to a simple problem.

And that's my drama for today. Thanks for listening! :}

[tellcardtowrite]

stages of writing

1. Beginner

everything is scary

what is character?

development how?

exposition is scary 

i’ve read every writing advice thing i can find

how is this story only 2 thousand words?  i worked on it for five days.  it feels like a novel!  

honestly what else can you put into a story?  I’VE DONE EVERYTHING I CAN. 

please help, please tell me if anything is right

ok, if its wrong, that’s ok. we all need constructive criticism to grow.  i’ll just be crying over here, over my keyboard, but it’s ok.  thank you for your honesty.  it’s fine

2. GOD MODE

i created it and i’m going to make it fucking suffer

“moderation” for fucking losers

i made this name up by taking the first letter of every ingredient listed on the cereal i was eating when i created the character.  meet: Csobpsrynzyytrboft.  For short we call her Bunny.

why are all my characters fucking beautiful?  because i like to start with a perfect canvas before i fuck them up

Bunny is the single most powerful thing ever created ever.  she can literally control time and move mountains and heal and--

everyone is fucking everyone else

and nobody is happy

fuck you, the human condition is agony

its not real writing if you leave it feeling good about yourself

comedy is the lowest form of art

I JUST WANT TO MAKE EVERYONE CRY

i took away Bunny’s powers to teach her a fucking lesson.

meet Mott, that’s a brand name of the applesauce I was buying when I thought him up.

Mott is here to fuck you up.  Mott is older than time.  Mott is all powerful.  Mott is so powerful he makes Bunny look like a toddler.  Mott is no hero, he’s uncontrollable chaos

but Mott has a soft side too, he’s really just a gentle, misunderstood abusive ex-boyfriend who only wants everyone in the world to do exactly what he wants

oh and Mott is hilarous

setting?  fuck it

dialogue: NON STOP WIT.  ONE LINERS.  EVERYONE IS TALKING, NOBODY IS SAYING ANYTHING

“Write what you know” bitch I think not.  

“all the stories in the world have already been written” motherfucker, you’ve never read mine!

Grammar?  that’s for bitches that care.  Watch me split a fucking infinitive into splinters.  I’m here to burn this industry down.

oh ho ho you thought Mott was badass, well meet T’pmg.  It’s named after some mail on my desk and it makes Mott look like a elderly man doing a puzzle.  T’Pmg is going to literally kill everyone.  Or marry Bunny

L O V E T R I A N G L E S 

and you can take your unhelpful, jealous constructive criticism and shove it right up your ass because I’m 704% better than any published author in the history of authors.

also how about you learn how to read, reviewers?  how about you take a look again and realize that LITERALLY NOTHING has ever been this level of perfection.  lol readers are all stupid.  you have to like, literally tell them how to think.  lol.

3. Experimental

rational thought begins to return; but is immediately dismissed again

exposition really is the bane of all writers so how about instead of me telling you anything about what’s happening I’ll just go ahead and drop you literally in the middle of a war zone and you’ll just have to figure it out.  never mind even people in the middle of high stress environments think about why they are there and how to get out, this character thinks non-stop about flowers and his Mom.  good luck figuring out what the fuck this story is about

i wrote six of these scenes five years ago and the other 12 last night.  sure they don’t match in tone or story or make sense together but this is ART.

i wrote this entire novel in rhyming couplets

everyone is special, unique and useful

i have rediscovered that sometimes there is sunshine, and also that physical comedy is hard to translate into writing so instead i just decided to give my main character a pet that is actually an Octopus that ate 3/4ths of a vacuum before it got stuck.  the octopus is alive and the vacuum functions despite how this is Impossible(tm) so fuck you

Meet my protagonist his name is Pork and he is Quirky, not for any particular reason, but because I wanted him to be.  Basically he’s well-liked, rich, skilled, handsome, and destined to save mankind if he can just manage to walk in a straight line without falling over some plot hole or another.

spoiler alert: he can’t~

it was two hours after midnight i wrote this by candlelight its called stream of consciousness and flowers are beautiful i never got any flowers when i was dating but you know i really did like sending them and thats whats wrong with the world today punctuation would have been good right here but fuck periods and question marks because really punctuation is actually hold back all authors imagine what we could do if we were allowed to simply write and write and write and you know what i never did learn a single damn thing from a writing advice book because they are all aimed at getting everyone to fall into the status quo and i am FINALLY FREE

if you were ever going to write tentacle porn, this is that time.  go ahead, write your weird, physically improbable porn and enjoy it.

I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED TO KNOW THAT YOU WERE THIS HOT FOR TENTACLES, RANDOM READER, BUT LETS TALK ABOUT YOUR KINK FOR LIKE 30 MINUTES A DAY BECAUSE WE CAN.

4. the rut

what is the point?

this is stupid

i don’t need this in my life

i’ll just day dream about my favorite characters and that’s all i need

words on paper?  that’s so bleh

blech

yuck

and exposition?  still sucks.  so i’ll be over here building an overly complicated, but beautiful detailed world in which to place my precious characters and they’ll be safe there.

nobody leaves reviews on my stuff so why do i bother

5. The Professional

actually, Timothy, if you don’t follow the 9,872,203,293 rules of writing outlined in this comprehensive About Writing Advice Manual that I found in the back of the library than you can’t consider yourself an Author.

that’s what I am, an Author.

a writer is what you call someone how is just doing it for fun.  I’m not doing this for fun, Timothy, I’m here to get Published.  I’m here to get on the New York Times bestseller list.  i’m here to polarize the writing industry with my hard-hitting, insightful novel about the perils of life in these modern times

so, TIM-BO, if you don’t want to follow the rules, if you don’t want to appreciate the work that goes into being an A U T H O R, if you aren’t willing to literally sell your soul to the DEVIL then you shouldn’t be in this writing group.

this writing group is for AUTHORS, TIMBO

and fanfiction?  not writing

children’s books?  not writing

YA Novels?  not writing?

i would literally wipe my ass with all of those.  because they’re shit.

lol, why can’t readers understand anything?  lol.  LEAVE ME NOTES.  

6.  Parent of Six 

yeah I had a story I think

look under the couch?  no not that couch, the other one.  

i mean you can’t escape exposition.  imagine the first day of school, now imagine it without all the teachers passing out a syllabus and telling you about themselves and how you have to turn your homework in on time.  you can’t.  imagine getting hired to a job but nobody tells you where to clock in or what to do so you’re just wearing the smock and wandering the aisles trying to look like you should get paid maybe.

the trick to writing is waiting as long as possible to get started.  that’s the secret.  there’s no other secret.  I tried everything, just put it off until you can’t put it off another minute

yeah this is Bunny.  she used to be a super powerful magical girl but now she’s just trying to figure out how to make potions and doing her best.

i used to write tentacle porn, you know?  i used to be wild.

now i’m up at 2 am googling what time period used cauldrons and wore pointed hats because my alternate-earth story needs to make sense 

i was going to give Bunny a love interest but now I think i’m going to give her a love adversary, as in this asshole won’t leave her alone while she’s trying to get shit done.

seriously Mott.  Bunny doesn’t love you.  she’s in a semi-committed relationship with her best girl friend Tippy.

I should probably make these names make more sense.  honestly fuck it

i wrote six thousand words yesterday but i had taken cold medicine so about four thousand of those words aren’t any recognizable language

thank you for reading.  i’d happily explain my every exact thought on writing if you asked.  seriously.

[freelancerace]

Hello guys I’m Ace. Today you’re going to learn exactly how to find the best keywords for your business.

When I first got started with SEO. My approach to keyword research was A total mess back then. I’d fire up the latest and greatest keyword, research tool and start typing in a bunch of random keywords.

So, what’s wrong with this approach?

My competitors were doing the exact same thing! No wonder most of the keywords I found were insanely competitive. Now, over the years, I developed a keyword research blueprint that works. Well, specifically, this blueprint for beginners will help you uncover keywords. That your competition doesn’t know about.

So let’s dive right in with step number one of this process. Which is to identify your customer persona. This is a step that most people skip and it hurts them.

What is identifying your customer persona actually mean?

Let me explain with an example: what if my site sells SEO training products. To small and medium-sized businesses. Most people in my position would open up a keyword research tool. And type in things like SEO, training and SEO courses into the tool.

What’s the problem with this approach?

First off, like I mentioned before. Your competition is doing the exact same thing. Which means you’re going to run into the exact same set of keywords as your competitors. But more important than that. This approach ignores a very important fact about your customer. The fact of the matter is, your customer spends 99.9 percent of their time online, not searching for what you sell.

In other words, if you only target your customer when they search for the exact thing you sell. You’re missing out on hundreds of other opportunities to get in front of them.

For example, in my case. I noticed that most of my customers were SEO agencies. So I went to forums and online communities where SEO agency owners tended to hang out that way.

I could see what my target cost would search for when he wasn’t searching for SEO training. I discovered that there are dozens of keywords that my target customer typed into Google. That were related to my products, but had nothing to do with SEO training. Keywords like, On-Page SEO, list building, how to get more traffic and SEO tools.

If I target these keywords. I could get my business in front of thousands of my target customers every single day. When my target customer is ready to buy, I’m the first person that comes to mind. That’s the power of doing keyword research. Based on your customer persona.

All you need to do for this step. Is say my customer is X.

For example. If you want an online flower shop. You might say my customer is a bride, getting ready for her upcoming wedding. How it was easy right now that you’ve identified your customer persona. It’s time to find topics that your customer is interested in.

Which leads us to step two in my keyword, research blueprint. Which is to find topics that your customers care about.

So how do you find these topics? Go to where your target customer hangs out online. Then look for serious topics that they tend to discuss.

That’s it!

For example, in my case. My customers tend to hang out at marketing focused communities like inbound dot org. In your case, your target customer may hang out in places like. Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, industry, blogs and niche forums. Once you’ve identified where your target customer hangs out. It’s time to keep an eye out for topics that are important to them.

For example, in my case. I notice that link building. Was one of the most popular topics in the online communities, that my audience spent time on. So I wrote down link building as a topic. I then kept digging until I found at least five topics. That our customers talked about in online communities. Now that you have at least five topics. It’s time to drill down into finding keywords.

My four favorite tactics are finding untapped keywords. That your competition doesn’t know about.

First, we have Google Suggest to use this strategy. Head over to Google and type your topic into the search field, but don’t press Enter. Instead, take a look at the queue words that google suggest for you. These are usually awesome. Longtail keywords that you can go after.

Pro Tip: try putting a few spaces before your keyword. This will show you a completely different set of keyword, ideas.

Next up we have Quora dot com. Quora is a massive community of people that ask and answer questions on every topic under the sun. All you need to do is search for your topic in Cora and see which keywords tend to show up.

The next tactic for finding keywords is to use Reddit. Like Quora, Reddit is a massive community of people that discuss every topics. From pets to politics. You can use Reddit for keyword research as well. Head over to Reddit and search for your topic. When you find a thread on your topic. Keep an eye out for words and phrases that tend to come up again and again. These make awesome keyword, ideas.

Next up, we have Google’s Search. To use this feature, simply type your topic into Google Search. Then scroll to the bottom of the results. Google then shows you other searches that are related to the keyword you just put in. These are usually excellent, longtail keywords that you can target with your content.

Finally, we have Wikipedia. What other site has in-depth articles for topics like. Dog walking, the lingerie football league and yes. The five-second rule to use Wikipedia for keywords research. Head over to Wikipedia and type in your topic. Then take a look at the other entries that that article links to.

These are usually closely related topics and even potential keywords themselves. Also make sure to check out the table of contents for that entry. Again, these are usually keywords that are closely tied to your topic. Now, do you have a list of potential keywords? It’s time to choose the best from your list.

How?

By analyzing each keywords commercial intent. One of the first websites I ever built. Shot to the top of google for my target keyword. And because that keyword, got a ton ff search volume. That single ranking helped that site generate over 10,000 unique visitors per month. All good right? Wrong! Even though that keyword got to ton of searches. The people that search for that keyword were flat broke. Which made monetizing that traffic impossible. Sorry dude I’m broke! That’s why today I pay very close attention to a keyword’s commercial intent.

Commercial intent means – how likely someone searching for a given keyword is to buy from you.

Here’s how to find out if your keyword has a high commercial intent or not.

First, head over to the Google Keyword planner. Type in one of your potential keywords. Then take a look at the suggested bid column. This shows you how much advertisers are spending in Adwords for a single click from this keyword. Obviously, the higher the suggested bid. The more valuable that keyword is another simple way to size.

A commercial intent is to see how many AdWords ads appear. When you search for your keyword in Google. If you search for your keyword and see lots of AdWords ads. It means that people are chomping at the bit to bring those searchers to their site.

Ok now it’s time for our last step, which is to look at each keyword’s search volume.

Back in the day, Google would show you exact search volume numbers in the Google Keyword planner. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed today unless you’re running active, AdWords campaigns. They show you an extremely unhelpful search volume range. So how can you see how many people search for your keywords? There are two freemium tools that get the job done.

The first is SEMrush. To find a keyword’s search volume. Type the keyword in to SEMrush. They’ll show you how many searches that keyword gets every month. You can also use kW finder dot com. Just pop your keyword into the tool and you’ll see the exact amount of searches that it gets every month.

Now before we decide on a keyword. I recommend one last bonus step. Now this step is completely optional. But in my experience it helps you find the absolute best keywords for your business. That step is, to look at your keyword’s growth in Google Trends.

For example. Let’s say that you found two keywords. That have similar search volume and commercial intent. You don’t know which one to pick. But when you look at Google Trends. You notice that one keyword is growing in popularity and the other is dropping like a stone. Obviously, you’d want to go with the keyword that’s growing a couple of years ago.

This step saved my butt. I was debating whether to target one of two keywords. Google Keyword tool or Google Keyword Planner. You see, Google had renamed the Google Keyword tool. To the Google Keyword planner. But the keyword, Google Keyword tool. Still got 20 times more searches than Google Keyword planner. So I almost pulled the trigger on Google Keyword tool.

That is until I looked at Google Trends. That’s when I noticed that searches for the Google Keyword planner were skyrocketing. While searches for the Google Keyword tool were steadily dropping. I decided to go with the Google Keyword planner and it was a good move. I now rank in the top five for that keyword and it’s a keyword. That’s growing in popularity every day.

Ok, so that’s it!

There is to my steps to the keyword research blueprint for beginners. If you follow the blueprint. You should have a handful of excellent keywords that you can use. Once you have those. It’s a matter of creating landing pages and content optimize around those terms.

If you liked this article make sure to subscribe to my blog. Also, if you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with subscribers. Sign up for the newsletter it’s free. Now, I want to turn it over to you which steps from this article was new to you, or maybe you try them all already? If so, you probably have a favorite technique that works well for you either way. Let me know by leaving a quick comment.

Hello guys I'm Ace. Today you're going to learn exactly how to find the best keywords for your business.

[poursomesugaronu2]

A Cup of Diamond Eyes (Chapter 1)

((Dan and Phil are real people, and by no right, claim that this is how they act or react to any given situation. As for the adoption process, my google searches were unhelpful.))

Six months later

"Luciano, wake up and come downstairs!" The voice of Mrs Pach could be heard from the outside of his door, accompanied by a few taps.

It would be another set of parents today, right? Another pair that would skip him over. They always want a child. A young child. He was... Twelve now. Was it the 6th? He'd have to ask.

He moved from his bed, pulling on his clothing and brushing his hair carefully. Did his outfit match? He wouldn't have a clue. He grabbed his white cane before making his way downstairs and towards the dining room for breakfast. The chorus of 'Happy Birthday' confirmed to him what day it was. He smiled a little and took his usual seat near the end of the table.

"Luci, we have a special breakfast for you," Mrs Pach said, setting a bowl in front of him and guiding his hand to the spoon. He frowned a little at the way she was helping. She wasn't sure how to deal with a blind child, but he could feel his way to the bowl just fine. He gave her a little nudge of disapproval, wanting her to leave him alone. He hadn't said grace yet. That annoyed him. She took the hint and Luciano settled to his bowl after muttering grace to himself. It was fruit loops instead of their usual rice bubbles, he knew that. It wasn't the best orphanage when it came to budget but he knew that there would be a cake later in the day. He hoped they remembered the simple danger of chocolate to him.

"Luci-Luci!" A little girl called out, running over to him. He smiled. His friend Ally did his hair every morning, as he didn't really know how. She pulled the usual brush from her pocket and began to brush his long locks.

"Have I ever told you how much I love your hair?" She cooed as her fingers pulled his hair into braided pigtails.

"Every day." Luciano's hair was indeed impressive. He had refused haircuts, and that had caused his hair to grow and grow and grow. He had a lot of split ends, yes, but it did reach down past his waist. His albinism had caused its shade of pure white, something the girls were in awe over. He didn't get it, being unable to see it, but he just let them do what they liked with it.

The albinism caused his skin tone too, nearly as white as his hair. He could see it if he pulled his hand very close to his eyes. He could see blocks of grey. It was like somebody had turned a camera to the blurriest setting. With the colourblindness, the grey came with the blindness. At least he knew a million and a half different shades of grey.

It was a Saturday, so there was simply the set meals. It was the common day for couples to come in and see children. There had only been two Saturday's over Luciano's six months when couples hadn't come in. He went to the recreation room for his age group. The five to ten-year-olds had one room, then the ten to thirteen-year-olds, then the teenagers. The orphanage didn't accept those under five, as there were simply not enough staff.

Luciano was in the corner of the room, playing his saxophone with a mute in. While his old one had been ruined in his accident, he had acquired a cheap one from the nurse who had taken care of him. It had been a leaving gift. He found it harder to play blind, but it kept him happy. He was never sure what he was playing. Not completely. With the mute in, he just heard a soft sound that gave him some indication. It was the only thing that he generally enjoyed doing anymore.

After an hour or so, his mouth was sore, so he sat down, letting the instrument rest in his lap. He could hear the children go quiet, which indicated to him that there was a set of parents. They stood up immediately and Luciano joined them, as they were meant to do when parents arrived. He used his stick to find his spot amongst the children, looking down, as he knew that nobody would want to adopt a blind child. Skipped over every time. It was always the special kids. He stood next to Ally, holding her hand tight. She had autism. He knew that he couldn't just gently hold her hand, as she might have sensory overload. If he could, he wanted to avoid upsetting her.

She held his hand just as tight. His saxophone was still hanging from his neck.

He could hear the speaking, but couldn't make out the words properly. He was shocked when his name was called and he was told to come over. He used his cane, making his way over carefully and standing in front of the pair, along with Mrs Pach.

"Luciano, will you come with us? These lovely people are considering adopting you."

Luciano swallowed, nodding. He took Mrs Pach's hand, allowing her to lead him to the office along with his possible future parents. He sat down on the couch, staring at the ground.

"Luciano, this is Daniel Howell and Phillip Lester. Dan, Phil, this is Luciano, though I believe he prefers Luci." Mrs Pach introduced them. Huh, he wasn't aware that English speakers used Daniel as a female name too, he thought that wasn't a thing here. Intriguing.

Luciano simply nodded at this.

"How old are you, Luci?" One of them asked, his slightly Northern accent masked by the typical London one. Luciano knew his accents, he could pick out the twang of the Machester area.

"Twelve," Luciano said softly, swallowing. His own Italian accent was clear.

"It's his birthday today actually!" Mrs Pach said, "This could be like a birthday present."

"Is it really? Well, how about we give you a birthday present," A different voice said. They were both surprisingly masculine voices if he was honest. There was nothing wrong with that. Some women were manly... His own mother had quite a deep voice. He shivered at the thought of her. The second voice had been more feminine, so he assumed that it was the one to be his new mother. Daniel.

After realising that he had spent far too long analyzing their voices, he swallowed and nodded, raising his head to look at the figures once again. "Sure..." He said quietly.

"Hold out your hands," Daniel-until-proven-otherwise said. After Luciano did so, he felt a soft fur touch his hands.

His eyes widened and he carefully felt the item. "A stuffie?" He asked. He had touched Ally's before.

"A lion stuffy, the best kind!" Phil-until-proven-otherwise said, his excitement clear.

"Th-Thank you," He hadn't be allowed to have toys with his own family, this was his first one... He held it close to his chest.

"Aw, no need to thank us. It was Dan's idea to buy something on the way here, and it had to be a cute little lion. It matches you too... Since you're cute... Like a potato! Potatoes are cute!" Now-confirmed-Phil said.

"Phil, stop," Dan said, sounding certainly disappointed, but they both laughed, and Luciano joined them.

He could feel the blush coming over his cheeks at the mention of him being cute.

"These two wanted a child who needed a little more help, and they picked you!" Mrs Pach said, he could almost feel her sickly smile. He had never liked her that much.

Luciano glared at her for a moment, "That's okay..." He finally said, relaxing and pulling the lion tighter to his chest. "When do we leave?" He asked. Would they be like his parents were? Or would they be like all the others kids' parents? The parents he had dreamed of having... A mama and papa who loved him... That wasn't what they said in England though, was it? He shook his head. He wouldn't want to call someone the title that reminded him of his family... Mummy and Daddy it was... All the other children spoke of having mummies and daddies. That had to be what they called them here.

"Oh, sorry... I... Was thinking," Luciano said softly, once he realised that he hadn't heard the answer to his question. "I'm really sorry..."

"Hey, don't worry about! I was just saying that we can fill out the paperwork now, and if you pack your stuff up, we can go after that..." Phil spoke, trailing off as if it was an unasked question.

"Yes, you can. Your background checks and assessments were successful. Do you want me to help you find your things, Luci?" Mrs Pach asked.

Luciano glared at her, "I'm blind, not useless." He said, a little harsher than he intended. "I mean... I'll be alright." He said, standing and moving towards the door, able to see the blurry shape. He used the cane to make his way to the bedroom, where he recognised the shape of a person on the bed. "Ally?" He guessed, cocking his head.

"Yeah, it's me," She said quietly.

Luciano sat next to her, and she clung to his arm tightly. "You're leaving me, aren't you?" She asked, her voice a little shaky. He felt her face press into his shoulder.

"Yeah... Yeah, I'm being adopted..." He murmured.

"I'll miss you, Luci-Luci..." She muttered into his shoulder, and he could hear her sniffles.

"Don't cry, Ally... Don't cry over me... I'm just starting a new chapter of life, and you will be starting your own soon..."

He felt her arms wrap around him tightly, hearing her sobbing into his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Maybe in a different life, he would have been arranged to marry her... That'd be nice.

"Will I ever see you again?" Her voice could be heard against his chest, muffled by his shirt.

"I can... I can ask my new parents if they can bring me here... I'll see you... I won't go if I'm never seeing you again. You're my best friend."

Ally nodded, "Let me help you pack your things at least."

Luciano nodded slowly, moving to grab the small backpack he owned. He didn't have much. A few sets of clothes, his stick, and his crutches. He didn't always use them, but he had to when his leg began to hurt. There was silence between them then, comfortable silence. Luciano soon had his backpack on his back, his crutches leaning against the bed along with his stick. He was hugging Ally close to him, and they stayed together quietly.

"Luciano, it's time to go!" Mrs Pach called out, knocking on the door before coming in. Luciano swallowed, standing up. He hugged Ally once more before making his way out with Mrs Pach, not ever being one to really say goodbye.

He didn't even realise that there were tears in his eyes until he heard Phil ask if he was okay.

"He was just saying goodbye to a friend, nothing too major," Mrs Pach said simply.

Luciano just nodded and moved towards where Phil's voice had come from, head down. He ended up bumping into one of their legs. "Sorry..." He muttered.

He felt a hand run through his hair, and he couldn't help but smile. "Don't worry about it. Come on, we have gummy bears in the car!" It seemed to him that Phil was more talkative, so he just nodded. He felt his hand being taken, leaving his other hand to hold his stick, which he used for the orphanage steps.

He let one of them take his bag, to (he assumed) put it in the car. The other opened the car, and the voice confirmed it to be Dan. "Come on, Luci... You can hop right on in."

Luciano smiled at that, "Thanks... Mummy."

The was a moment of pause, followed by an awkward cough as Luciano felt around, getting in the car. Would Dan hurt him like his own mother had? He wouldn't, would he? Would he be beaten for calling him mummy? He swallowed hard, taking in deep breaths.

"Here you are, Luci," Phil spoke, from where the driver's seat was. So he knew that Dan was in front of him, and Phil was diagonal. He reached forward finding the bag that he was offering. "Gummy bears. Make sure you eat them two at a time so that they can die with a friend."

Luciano laughed, but he could hear a smack, "Phil! That's a terrible first impression for our child!"

He swallowed. That sounded painful. "D-Don't hit daddy..." Luciano muttered under his breath, carefully eating two gummy bears.

He could hear muttering between them, but couldn't make out the words. He knew they'd heard him. Bad idea. Was he going to be yelled at? Hurt? What would happen to him?

"I'm not hurt, Luci, don't worry... Dan didn't hurt me, I promise. It was just a little smack at my joke. Dan would never hurt me or you." Had Mrs Pach told them about his background? She must have. He knew that Phil wouldn't have brought it up otherwise.

Luciano finally just nodded, curling up and slowly eating the gummy bears, two at a time.

Maybe things would be okay.

[efosa123]

Advanced Keyword Research Tutorial (5-Step Blueprint) in this video I'm going to show you my proven five-step keyword research blueprint this is the same blueprint I've used to help grow my site to over a hundred and fifty thousand unique visitors per month i'm brian dean the founder of backlinko the place where marketers turn for high rankings and more traffic and today you're going to learn exactly how to find the best keywords for your business keep watching when i first got started with SEO my approach the keyword research was a total mess back then I'd fire up the latest and greatest keyword research tool and start typing in a bunch of random keywords so what's wrong with this approach my competitors were doing the exact same thing no wonder most of the keywords I found were insanely competitive now over the years I developed a keyword research blueprint that works really well specifically this blueprint will help you uncover keywords that your competition doesn't know about so let's dive right in with step number one of this process which is to identify your customer persona this is a step that most people skip and it hurts them Wow what was that so what is identifying your customer persona actually mean let me explain with an example my site sells SEO training products to small and medium-sized businesses most people in my position would open up a keyword research tool and type in things like SEO training and SEO courses into the tool what's the problem with this approach first off like I mentioned before your competition is doing the exact same thing which means you're going to run into the exact same set of keywords as your competitors but more important than that this approach ignores a very important fact about your customer is that fact is this your customer spends 99.9 percent of their time online not searching for what you sell in other words if you only target your customer when they search for the exact thing you sell you're missing out on hundreds of other opportunities to get in front of them for example in my case I noticed that most of my customers were SEO agencies so I went to forums and online communities where SEO agency owners tended to hang out that way I could see what my target cost I search for when he wasn't searching for SEO training and I discovered that there are dozens of keywords that my target customer typed into Google that were related to my products but had nothing to do with SEO training keywords like on-page SEO list building how to get more traffic and SEO tools and because I target these keywords I get my business in front of thousands of my target customers every single day and when my target customer is ready to buy I'm the first person that comes to mind that's the power of doing keyword research based on your customer persona and all you need to do for this step is say my customer is X for example if you want an online flower shop you might say my customer is a bride getting ready for her upcoming wedding how it was easy right now that you've identified your customer persona it's time to find topics that your customer is interested in which leads us to the next step in my keyword research blueprint which is to find topics that your customers care about so how do you find these topics it's simple go to where your target customer hangs out online then look for topics that they tend to discuss seriously that's it for example in my case my customers tend to hang out at marketing focused communities like inbound org in growth hackers calm in your case your target customer may hang out in places like Pinterest Reddit YouTube industry blogs and niche forums once you've identified where your target customer hangs out it's time to keep an eye out for topics that are important to them for example in my case I notice that link building was one of the most popular topics in the online communities that my audience spent time on so I wrote down link building as a topic and it kept digging until I found at least five topics that might our customers talked about in online communities now that you have at least five topics it's time to drill down into finding keywords here my four favorite tactics are finding untapped keywords that your competition doesn't know about first we have Google Suggest to use this strategy just head over to google and type your topic into the search field but don't press Enter instead take a look at the queue words that google suggest for you these are usually awesome longtail keywords that you can go after as a quick pro tip try putting a few spaces before your keyword this will show you a completely different set of keyword ideas next up we have Quora com Korra is a massive community of people that ask and answer questions on every topic Under the Sun all you need to do is search for your topic in Cora and see which keywords tend to show up or next tactic for finding keywords is to use reddit let Cora reddit is a massive community of people that discuss every topic Under the Sun from pets to politics to use writer for keyword research simply head over to Reddit in search for your topic when you find a thread on your topic keep an eye out for words and phrases that tend to come up again and again these make awesome keyword ideas next up we have Google's searches related to feature to use this feature simply type your topic into Google then scroll to the bottom of the results Google then show you other searches that are related to the keyword you just put in these are usually excellent longtail keywords that you can target with your content finally we have Wikipedia what other site has in-depth articles for topics like mall walking the lingerie football league and yes the five-second rule to use Wikipedia for keyword research just head over to Wikipedia and type in your topic then take a look at the other entries that that article links to these are usually closely related topics and even potential keywords themselves also make sure to check out the table of contents for that entry again these are usually keywords that are closely tied to your topic now do you have a list of potential keywords it's time to choose the best from your list how by analyzing each keywords commercial intent one of the first websites I ever built shot to the top of google for my target keyword and because that keyword good a ton of search volume that single ranking helped that site generate over 60,000 unique visitors per month all good right wrong even though that key we're going to ton of searches the people that search for that keyword were flat broke which made monetizing that traffic impossible sorry dude I'm broke that's why today I pay very close attention to a keywords commercial intent commercial intent simply means how likely someone searching for a given keyword is to buy from you here's how to find out if your keyword has a high commercial intent or not first head over to the Google Keyword planner and type in one of your potential keywords then take a look at the suggested bid column this shows you how much advertisers are spending in Adwords for a single click from this keyword obviously the higher the suggested bid the more valuable that keyword is another simple way to size a commercial intent is to see how many AdWords ads appear when you search for your keyword in Google if you search for your keyword and see lots of AdWords ads it means that people are chomping at the bit to bring those searchers to their site ok now it's time for our last step which is to look at each keywords search volume back in the day Google would show you exact search volume numbers in the Google Keyword planner unfortunately that ship has sailed today unless you're running active AdWords campaigns they show you an extremely unhelpful search volume range so how can you see how many people search for your keywords there are two freemium tools that get the job done the first is SEM rush calm to find a keyword search volume simply type the keyword in to SEM rush and they'll show you how many searches that keyword gets every month simple you can also use kW finder calm again just pop your keyword into the tool and you'll see the exact amount of searches that it gets every month now before we decide on a keyword I recommend one last bonus step now this step is completely optional but in my experience it helps you find the absolute best keywords for your business and that step is to look at your keywords growth in Google Trends for example let's say that you found two keywords that have similar search volume and commercial intent and you don't know which one to pick but when you look at Google Trends you notice that one keyword is growing in popularity and the other is dropping like a stone obviously you'd want to go with the keyword that's growing a couple of years ago this step saved my butt I was debating whether to target one of two keywords Google Keyword tool or Google Keyword planner you see Google had recently renamed the Google Keyword tool the Google Keyword planner but the keyword Google Keyword tool still got 20 times more searches than Google Keyword planner so I almost pulled the trigger on Google Keyword tool that is until I looked at Google Trends that's when I noticed that searches for the Google Keyword planner were skyrocketing while searches for the Google Keyword tool were steadily dropping so I decided to go with the Google Keyword planner and it was a good move I now rank in the top five for that keyword and it's a keyword that's growing in popularity every day ok so that's all there is to my five-step keyword research blueprint if you follow the blueprint you should have a handful of excellent keywords that you can use and once you have those it's a matter of creating landing pages and content optimize around those terms if you liked this video make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel right now it's easy just click on the subscribe button right here also if you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with subscribers head over to backlinko comm and sign up for the newsletter it's free now I want to turn it over to you which steps from this video was new to you or maybe you try them all already if so you probably have a favorite technique that works well for you either way let me know by leaving a quick comment right now okay let's do it I should just need to do that if oh man I can't this is a tough one good I gonna move around more in-depth ok dunsky 12 more words

[amrutservices]

Why High Quality Content Matters More than Keywords for SEO

Attention content creators: Google reads everything you write! Well, not “reads” in the literal sense, but its algorithms are now sophisticated enough to pick up on unnatural language and poor formatting—both of which send strong negative signals that hurt your ability to rank.

In fact, Google’s approach to ranking has gotten so sophisticated that they’ve learned that content quality matters more to search users than the presence of any particular keyword phrase. As a result, you may find a No. 1 search result that doesn’t contain an exact match keyword anywhere in the body.

We’re serious! In an exhaustive study of 600,000 keyword phrases, 18 percent of the domains that ranked position 20 or higher didn’t have the keyword in the text at all. Instead, these sites had a few things in common: website visits, user behavior signals and the number of links to the content all influenced Google to rank them near the top. All of these signals tell Google one thing: people seem to like this content.

In addition to these behavior-based markers of content quality, Google and other search engines actively sift through content to see signals of quality within the text itself.

After all, Google’s main objective isn’t getting your website traffic; it’s giving people good search results.

Thankfully, the company’s own guidelines are fairly specific and helpful. We’ll point you towards the exact markers of “high quality” Google is looking for.

What Are the Red Flags for Poor Content Quality?

Google’s guidelines for content quality are pretty thorough. This is likely because it’s hard to put into words exactly what makes something “good” or “high quality.” It takes a lot of nuance!

On the other hand, you can fairly quickly point out factors that immediately signal poor quality.

It’s like baking cake. There are a million different types of cakes out there and as many ways to prepare them. Flour, sugar, eggs and milk may be your raw ingredients, but you can make thousands of different types of delicious cakes. Also, “the right cake to bake” differs according to the context and circumstances. You can have a moist cake that’s yummy, or you could have a more solid cake that still does the trick.

But you can’t put sand in your cake. That’s a no-no. And it’s an automatic recipe for an inedible cake.

Similarly, Google highlights some markers of poor quality that instantly flag a page as having content not worth ranking:

Spamming keywords, especially if they’re irrelevant

Creating content that’s mostly copies of existing content

Typos, bad spelling, grammar errors

Sentences or paragraphs that never seem to end

Content that has little to no formatting, leaving just a dense chunk of text

Going crazy with links that aren’t relevant to the content at hand

Dropping lists of keywords somewhere in your page, especially if you’re hiding them with text color choices

Content that is excessively thin, especially for pages like blogs that promise substance

There are also a number of ways to get instantly deindexed by Google that go beyond content quality. Since that’s something you likely want to avoid, they’re well worth reviewing!

Google’s SEO Guide Considers Content Quality, Navigation Ease More Important Than Keyword Use

If you go and take a look at Google’s SEO starter guide, you’ll find that suggestions for how to use keywords properly don’t come up until around halfway through. Before that point, they take a moment to repeat four times that you shouldn’t overuse keywords or stuff them into your technical SEO elements.

Once they do mention keywords, they simply advise that you tailor your keyword strategy to your audience. For instance, people who watch soccer regularly might expect “FIFA” or “football” to be in the content they read, while casual users may expect more generic terms like “soccer playoffs.”

Immediately after that, they go back into quality. “Avoid writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes,” they suggest, as well as “awkward or poorly written content.”

To truly hammer the point home, Google spends far more time writing about ease of navigation and quality of life improvements for website visitors. Based on how the information is organized, Google cares more about your site map than your keyword usage when deciding rank.

“The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want,” explains the search giant. “It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important.”

All of this information can be summed up thusly: search engines aren’t dumb. They know the things that make life easier for their users and content better to read in general. They pay far more attention to these elements than how you use keywords.

In fact, with voice search on the rise, search engines have had to get smarter than ever about interpreting keyword intent and finding semantically related terms. That way, someone searching for “best places to eat near me” can pull up a list of “top-rated restaurants” without having to first sift through unhelpful results that contain exact keyword matches.

5 Tips for Writing Higher Quality Content

So now you’ve heard what definitely not to do when creating content, with only a hint of what so-called “high quality content” looks like.

To steer you in the right direction, here are a few general tips that can boost the quality of all content.

“Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.”

This rule comes directly from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. It’s actually the very first thing they say under “Basic Principles.”

The search giant even suggests you ask yourself “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” when making a decision on how your website operates. Those questions definitely apply when writing new content.

So foremost, determine an audience need based on a keyword search, and write to answer that need. The better able you are to satisfy someone’s search intent, the better behavior signals your site receives, and the more likely you are to rank.

If you’re at a loss for how to connect a keyword to user needs, do a little research. Plug in the keyword yourself, and try to find questions related to it.

Or, if the keyword is directly related to an “I want to purchase something or research a purchase” intent, take notes on the content that ranks highest. Chances are good that the page offers excellent examples of site organization, layout clarity and overall usability in addition to some solid text content.

Edit Your Writing, and Push Yourself to Improve 

Like good cake, good writing is definitely in the eye of the beholder. But at the same time, you wouldn’t bank on your cake getting top votes if all you did was use a box mix.

In other words, if you want to write better, you’re going to have to learn from others. We suggest reading publisher sites related to your industry that get high traffic, and cover topics similar to what you want on your blog.

Some general guidelines for improving your writing include:

Use less “being” and “linking” verbs in favor of strong action verbs. If you find yourself writing words like “is, was, are and be,” go back and see if you can identify the true subject of the sentence and what it’s doing.

Structure your writing like you would an outline. Tell people what they’re going to learn from your post as soon as possible, and then delve into each smaller point one at a time until you’re finished.

Write casually but not unprofessionally. Aim for a “friendly, conversational tone with a clear purpose—somewhere between the voice you use when talking to your buds and that you’d use if you were a robot,” suggests Search Engine Land’s paraphrasing of Google’s own Developer Documentation Style Guide.

Edit your writing! Far too many people don’t go back and reread. Watch out for sentence and paragraph transitions that could make people have trouble following your logic. Ask people for their opinion on how readable everything is. If they have a complaint, see if you can break the excerpt down into its most simple parts and reconstruct it.

Read, Read, Read and Read Some More

Reading teaches you how words and sentences form ideas. We take a lot of this stuff for granted, but it’s quite complex. Fortunately, others have mastered it and can teach you techniques to add to your repertoire.

Pay Attention to Your Audience’s Behavior Signals

What content pages get the most views? Which ones get the best responses or the most engagement in comments or on social media? Where do people tend to spend the most time?

Look to your own Google Analytics data, and try to identify patterns. People tell you what they like without ever having to say a word.

If You’re Struggling to Write Good Content, Go Back to the Basics

You may feel hesitant about writing on simple topics, such as “The Beginner’s Guide to SEO” or something like “Why People Buy Things,” but these are actually great topics. Yes, they’ve been done to death, but they help people learn.

Also, you might put things in a certain way that makes an extremely deep or complex subject click for your audience.

Above all else, articles like these teach you the fundamentals of writing for your audience. You learn how to break big concepts down to their bare components and communicate complex ideas with clarity.

Next to reading, writing down the basics is the best way to teach yourself how to craft better content.

Stop Obsessing Over Keywords and Start Writing Better

The writing’s on the wall: Google and online audiences are sick of bad content, keyword stuffing and deceptive practices aimed to help websites rank but that make readers miserable. 

Put content quality factors like readability, grammar and topic organization as a higher priority than keyword use. People will know what you’re talking about, even if you don’t use an exact keyword match—and now search engines will too.

from Amrut Services https://amrutservices.com/why-high-quality-content-matters-more-than-keywords-for-seo/

[contractor-media]

Why High Quality Content Matters More than Keywords for SEO

Attention content creators: Google reads everything you write! Well, not “reads” in the literal sense, but its algorithms are now sophisticated enough to pick up on unnatural language and poor formatting—both of which send strong negative signals that hurt your ability to rank.

In fact, Google’s approach to ranking has gotten so sophisticated that they’ve learned that content quality matters more to search users than the presence of any particular keyword phrase. As a result, you may find a No. 1 search result that doesn’t contain an exact match keyword anywhere in the body.

We’re serious! In an exhaustive study of 600,000 keyword phrases, 18 percent of the domains that ranked position 20 or higher didn’t have the keyword in the text at all. Instead, these sites had a few things in common: website visits, user behavior signals and the number of links to the content all influenced Google to rank them near the top. All of these signals tell Google one thing: people seem to like this content.

In addition to these behavior-based markers of content quality, Google and other search engines actively sift through content to see signals of quality within the text itself.

After all, Google’s main objective isn’t getting your website traffic; it’s giving people good search results.

Thankfully, the company’s own guidelines are fairly specific and helpful. We’ll point you towards the exact markers of “high quality” Google is looking for.

What Are the Red Flags for Poor Content Quality?

Google’s guidelines for content quality are pretty thorough. This is likely because it’s hard to put into words exactly what makes something “good” or “high quality.” It takes a lot of nuance!

On the other hand, you can fairly quickly point out factors that immediately signal poor quality.

It’s like baking cake. There are a million different types of cakes out there and as many ways to prepare them. Flour, sugar, eggs and milk may be your raw ingredients, but you can make thousands of different types of delicious cakes. Also, “the right cake to bake” differs according to the context and circumstances. You can have a moist cake that’s yummy, or you could have a more solid cake that still does the trick.

But you can’t put sand in your cake. That’s a no-no. And it’s an automatic recipe for an inedible cake.

Similarly, Google highlights some markers of poor quality that instantly flag a page as having content not worth ranking:

Spamming keywords, especially if they’re irrelevant

Creating content that’s mostly copies of existing content

Typos, bad spelling, grammar errors

Sentences or paragraphs that never seem to end

Content that has little to no formatting, leaving just a dense chunk of text

Going crazy with links that aren’t relevant to the content at hand

Dropping lists of keywords somewhere in your page, especially if you’re hiding them with text color choices

Content that is excessively thin, especially for pages like blogs that promise substance

There are also a number of ways to get instantly deindexed by Google that go beyond content quality. Since that’s something you likely want to avoid, they’re well worth reviewing!

Google’s SEO Guide Considers Content Quality, Navigation Ease More Important Than Keyword Use

If you go and take a look at Google’s SEO starter guide, you’ll find that suggestions for how to use keywords properly don’t come up until around halfway through. Before that point, they take a moment to repeat four times that you shouldn’t overuse keywords or stuff them into your technical SEO elements.

Once they do mention keywords, they simply advise that you tailor your keyword strategy to your audience. For instance, people who watch soccer regularly might expect “FIFA” or “football” to be in the content they read, while casual users may expect more generic terms like “soccer playoffs.”

Immediately after that, they go back into quality. “Avoid writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes,” they suggest, as well as “awkward or poorly written content.”

To truly hammer the point home, Google spends far more time writing about ease of navigation and quality of life improvements for website visitors. Based on how the information is organized, Google cares more about your site map than your keyword usage when deciding rank.

“The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want,” explains the search giant. “It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important.”

All of this information can be summed up thusly: search engines aren’t dumb. They know the things that make life easier for their users and content better to read in general. They pay far more attention to these elements than how you use keywords.

In fact, with voice search on the rise, search engines have had to get smarter than ever about interpreting keyword intent and finding semantically related terms. That way, someone searching for “best places to eat near me” can pull up a list of “top-rated restaurants” without having to first sift through unhelpful results that contain exact keyword matches.

5 Tips for Writing Higher Quality Content

So now you’ve heard what definitely not to do when creating content, with only a hint of what so-called “high quality content” looks like.

To steer you in the right direction, here are a few general tips that can boost the quality of all content.

“Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.”

This rule comes directly from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. It’s actually the very first thing they say under “Basic Principles.”

The search giant even suggests you ask yourself “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?” when making a decision on how your website operates. Those questions definitely apply when writing new content.

So foremost, determine an audience need based on a keyword search, and write to answer that need. The better able you are to satisfy someone’s search intent, the better behaviour signals your site receives, and the more likely you are to rank.

If you’re at a loss for how to connect a keyword to user needs, do a little research. Plug in the keyword yourself, and try to find questions related to it.

Or, if the keyword is directly related to an “I want to purchase something or research a purchase” intent, take notes on the content that ranks highest. Chances are good that the page offers excellent examples of site organization, layout clarity and overall usability in addition to some solid text content.

Edit Your Writing, and Push Yourself to Improve

Like good cake, good writing is definitely in the eye of the beholder. But at the same time, you wouldn’t bank on your cake getting top votes if all you did was use a box mix.

In other words, if you want to write better, you’re going to have to learn from others. We suggest reading publisher sites related to your industry that get high traffic, and cover topics similar to what you want on your blog.

Some general guidelines for improving your writing include:

Use less “being” and “linking” verbs in favor of strong action verbs. If you find yourself writing words like “is, was, are and be,” go back and see if you can identify the true subject of the sentence and what it’s doing.

Structure your writing like you would an outline. Tell people what they’re going to learn from your post as soon as possible, and then delve into each smaller point one at a time until you’re finished.

Write casually but not unprofessionally. Aim for a “friendly, conversational tone with a clear purpose—somewhere between the voice you use when talking to your buds and that you’d use if you were a robot,” suggests Search Engine Land’s paraphrasing of Google’s own Developer Documentation Style Guide.

Edit your writing! Far too many people don’t go back and reread. Watch out for sentence and paragraph transitions that could make people have trouble following your logic. Ask people for their opinion on how readable everything is. If they have a complaint, see if you can break the excerpt down into its most simple parts and reconstruct it.

Read, Read, Read and Read Some More

Reading teaches you how words and sentences form ideas. We take a lot of this stuff for granted, but it’s quite complex. Fortunately, others have mastered it and can teach you techniques to add to your repertoire.

Pay Attention to Your Audience’s Behavior Signals

What content pages get the most views? Which ones get the best responses or the most engagement in comments or on social media? Where do people tend to spend the most time?

Look to your own Google Analytics data, and try to identify patterns. People tell you what they like without ever having to say a word.

If You’re Struggling to Write Good Content, Go Back to the Basics

You may feel hesitant about writing on simple topics, such as “The Beginner’s Guide to SEO” or something like “Why People Buy Things,” but these are actually great topics. Yes, they’ve been done to death, but they help people learn.

Also, you might put things in a certain way that makes an extremely deep or complex subject click for your audience.

Above all else, articles like these teach you the fundamentals of writing for your audience. You learn how to break big concepts down to their bare components and communicate complex ideas with clarity.

Next to reading, writing down the basics is the best way to teach yourself how to craft better content.

Stop Obsessing Over Keywords and Start Writing Better

The writing’s on the wall: Google and online audiences are sick of bad content, keyword stuffing and deceptive practices aimed to help websites rank but that make readers miserable.

Put content quality factors like readability, grammar and topic organization as a higher priority than keyword use as part of your SEO strategy. People will know what you’re talking about, even if you don’t use an exact keyword match—and now search engines will too.

Why High Quality Content Matters More than Keywords for SEO republished from the Contractor Marketing blog by Contractor Media

[sizzlingcrusadebouquetfan-blog]

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"car home insurance quotes online

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BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://freeautoinsurance.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

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Whats the average cost of insurance for a 21 year old female?

Is this car insurance company good?

http://www.4youngdrivers.co.uk/ I got a very reasonable quote of 1,500 a year from that website whereas everywhere else the minimum I could find is 4,700 to insure my dad's bmw 325i under my name ( he bought a new 5 series). But the downside to this is that the excess fee to any claim is 3,000. Either way it is cheaper than most insurance companies so what do you think of the company? because Iv never heard of it before and it does sound a bit fishy. In case it helps...im 24 and have been driving a gsxr750 for 2 years until last november during the snow I was involved in a horrifying crash which ended up my bike being written off.""

Are BMW more expensive to insure?

Specifically a White 2006 BMW 325i. I'm 21, never had any traffic violations, had my license since I was 17. I'm looking to get rid of my old 1994 Crappy Mustang, and getting a White 06 3 Series BMW. Will my insurance be expensive? Additional Details: I plan on financing, which means it will require me to get full coverage.""

How much would insurance be for a 125cc motorbike in the UK? Just a ball park figure.?

How much would insurance be for a 125cc motorbike in the UK? Just a ball park figure.?

Where do I look for health insurance after Heart Surgery? Dropped by current provider..?

After having a valve replaced last fall my insurance opted not to renew my policy. I am 63 and currently have a short term policy that only can be renewed once and then I am out of luck. Where can I look for coverage? I'd take something even if it excluded my prior condition even though I am now much healtier than I was before the surgery.

Anybody know the cheapest way to get car insurance?

Im 18/ female and this will be my first car , first time driving...prices are soo high it's hard to get cheap insurance at my age being a new driver. Does anyone know a loophole or just a way to get it real cheap?""

Need information on affordable senior health insurance?

I need information on affordable senior health insurance policies. Im leaning toward a private insurance company, like this one- http://seniorhealthinsurance-fl.com/ (if possible) in the Florida area. Thanks!""

Inestment in Gold or Life insurance ?

it is better to invest in gold or invest in life insurance / same amount

""How much do i have to pay to cancel my auto insurance, if the vehicle is parked?""

My vehicle is currently parked and has parking insurance, this vehicle has been parked for over a week now, but i currently found some cheaper insurance and i would like to cancel my insurance, how much will it cost me to cancel it.""

car home insurance quotes online

car home insurance quotes online

I have a question about my insurance for...?

ok i am 16 years old...17 in September and i am wanting a motorcycle sometime before i go to college...i have farm bureau insurance and i've not had a wreck before...so what would my insurance cost me to be driving a motorcycle at the age of 17 with no wrecks or tickets or anything?

Can fleet insurance be cheaper than insuring 2 vehicles?

My boyfriend and I got in a debate about this. I will be graduating college in a few months and told him that I wanted to purchase a pickup sometime within the year, but wanted to ...show more""

What will an insurance company offer to settle for a possible neck injury?

I was rear-ended by another car. I reported to the insurance company of the person who hit me that my neck was a little sore. They offered me $700 to sign a release form without me even asking. I told the claims adjuster I needed to think about it. Short of getting a lawyer, what could I expect to be offered? I am sure insurance companys have a set amount that they will pay to get me to sign the release form. Anyone know about how much that would be?""

Purchasing insurance to cover maternity leave in California?

Is there any sort of insurance you can buy in California so you can get approximately your regular wages during your unpaid maternity leave? I've heard that state disability doesn't pay too much. And how long can you take off? Some women say they've gotten 3 months off but I don't know what I need to do to get that, and still have approximately my regular income coming in. I'm not pregnant yet, so I could buy something without having a pre-existing condition. Thanks!""

I have a question about my insurance for...?

ok i am 16 years old...17 in September and i am wanting a motorcycle sometime before i go to college...i have farm bureau insurance and i've not had a wreck before...so what would my insurance cost me to be driving a motorcycle at the age of 17 with no wrecks or tickets or anything?

CAR INSURANCE!? LIBERITY MUTUAL?

ok so my parents haveLibertyy Mutualinsurancee covering their house, life, car insurance and some other things as a package throughlibertyy mutual. Anyways, I took driving school classes and passed. Its supposed to lower myinsurancee.I'mm turning 17 in October and my permit says i can get mylicensee on september 19. ( i got it late and in az you have to wait 6 months) Is there a way thatLibertyy mutual can insure me? I heard from one of there reps that they wont insure a new driver unless they've had theirlicensee for 6 months. Please help Also if i got a truck could i just insure it under my parents name even though they already have cars? or is it one car per person?""

Where can I find results of auto crashes and speeding tickets by age and the average price one pays for auto..

insurance by age.

How much would it cost to insure my scooter?

I'm looking for a fairly inexpensive way to get around So I found a 49 cc Honda Ruckus moped/scooter that I'm looking to buy and insure (because of mandatory insurance laws in Florida) How much would it cost to insure it if I'm looking for the lowest available plan for be in the confides of Florida law. I keep it inside my house at night. and BOTH if I HAVE HAD a learners permit for a year and DON'T and just got a license I'm 18 and want to see if the savings will be worth waiting a year to drive the thing.

Where can I buy health insurance?

I'm an self-employed worker. Need some health insurance because you never know when I'll get injured.

Anyone know of affordable dental insurance for western Ky? ?

i need to have dental work done, but no insurance.""

Im 16 and just had my second wreck!? what will insurance do?

I just had my second wreck today and both of them have been my fault! Im 16 and my first wreck was last year in late November. Will insurance just raise my rate, drop me, or offer high risk insurance?? have any options on how to get low insurance if i do need to get another insurer?""

Do I really need insurance for a motorcycle in California?

Do i need insurance to ride a motorcycle in california? To get a license for motorcycles? please help!

Should I insure my house for what i would sell it for??why or why not?

This is my first home and not my last. I have a mortgage of 90k, the house is appraised for 125k.If my house were to burn down i would not rebuild it. Would an insurance policy of 125k sound about right? 90kish to pay back the loan and my equity of 35kish.Plus now I own an empty building lot that I can sell ? I know some money will be withheld for demolishing etc.... I m trying to save some money on my current insurance policy that is a replacement value 227k. Should I change my coverage to the price i would sell it for 125k?""

How much is motorcycle insurance in michigan?

I know it is hard to get an exact quote without knowing all the information, but I just need a range. I am looking at a 196cc 5 speed dirtbike that has been made street legal, and just need ~3 months of insurance. Would this be in the $100-200 range? Higher? Lower?""

Compare Auto Insurance Quotes With Local Agents?

I know there are many different sites where I can compare auto insurance quotes. I am wondering if there are any sites that have local agents available on them? My local agent just retired and I am looking around for new coverage, I just don't want to call everyone in the phone book you know.""

Quad bike insurance help?

Im lookin into getting a quad bike possibly but have searched to get an insurance quote online but no one seems to want to help me ive got a full car and full bike liscence but just wanna get a quote to see what im dealing with can any help or advise many thanks

How much would the Insurance go up for a sports exhaust. 10 POINTS?

Hi at the moment my boss pays my insurance on his business fleet as I work in his office in the week, therefore I have a business car (ford feista) I asked him as he's my uncle can I get sports exhaust for it if I pay for it and the additional cost Of the insurance every year IF it goes up. I'm 18 he pays 1200 for the year and I think that goes to about 600 this year.. As he's got 5 business cars on the same fleet. How much extra will it cost me?""

Health insurance question for California.?

I am sixteen and my mother is low income. Is there a state program for health insurance in California?

Do insurance companies go by residence address or by mailing adress?

I live in the city, but I have an upstate house to which I want to register my car to so I can get cheaper insurance. What should be changed?""

""Confused about car insurance...stacked, unstacked??

i am looking up car insurance quotes online and for Uninsured Motorists Bodily Injury Option there is a stacked option and a unstacked option. Does anyone know what this means? What the diff is? This is for PA

Car insurance without a driving license?

I know there are insurance companies in california that sell car insurances without requiring a driving license. does anybody know some of these companies and what is the average price of this kind of insurances? thanks

Health Insurance: How Much Will COBRA cost me?

I'm not one who likes working for others, and I'm getting enrolled in my company's health insurance. It's only for me, and they'll wind up deducting like $160 per month from my paycheck. I'm looking to leave as soon as I can, but if I choose to maintain the insurance through COBRA, will it be close to around the $160 or is it likely to be much higher, like $300 or more? Is there any way I can find out at this time?""

Im 15 planning on getting license when 18 need know how much insurance will cost?

ok i am 15 and parents told me i can get my license if i can afford insurance i just need to know how much it will cost when im 18 cause i need 2 years driving experience before i can get my license.. how can i find this out.i havent gotten my perrmit yet plan on getting it on my b-day when my parents leave me alone..my little 16th b-day present to me

What happens if I forgot to show proof of car insurance in Minnesota?

I got pulled over in my car a year ago for an unrelated issue. But I did not have proof of insurance even though I did have insurance at the time. The officer told me to show the proof of insurance later and I will be fine. So, later I mailed a copy of my insurance to the citation place but got a letter back that I needed to show up in person. I put this aside to take care of later, but forgot about it and just remembered it a few days ago because it came up in a conversation somehow. It has been a year now and I am really scared about getting a misdemeanor. I am otherwise a good person who always pays my fines. Am I going to be arrested for this? I haven't heard from them since the letter I received a year ago which I cannot find any more, and I have also moved since then. If I go and tell them it was an honest mistake will they go easy on me?""

Is a 2000 Mustang GT expensive to insure?

I'm 16 and looking for a first car. I have my heart set on a certain mustang but the only thing is insurance cost. Its a 2000 GT and im going to be insured with state farm. Im 16 getting my license in 2 weeks so I know thats a big factor. Also I was trying to get some ideas about what it might cost and found this on the state farm website. http://www.statefarm.com/insurance/auto_insurance/veh_rating/ford.asp Not sure if its relevant but if it is than can someone explain what it means?

car home insurance quotes online

car home insurance quotes online

""Getting my own car, insurance and registration.?""

I'm getting my own car, but I don't have a license yet. So I was just wondering should I put it under my dad's name first? And also the registration and insurance. Should it be under my dad's name first or can I put it under my name? They were thinking about getting the insurance for me because it would be cheaper but would it be possible for them to get the insurance if the car is under my name?""

I need cheap insurance for me and my baby?

I recently moved out of my mom's house to live with my boyfriend. She was covering me on her insurance but now it's been dropped, We moved to where his new job is and we are letting a friend live with us. My boyfriend's yearly income is about 65,000. I can't be covered under his insurance because we aren't married. I have a 11 month old baby and I have to take pills regularly... I need to find an insurance plan that can cover me and her. If it makes any difference I'm 18 and I'm turning 19 in October... I know some insurance plans cover certain ages. I'd prefer something kind of cheap but I also need something that has decent copay..even if it raises the price a little. Does anyone know a good carrier?""

I'm uninsurable! How can I lower/get car insurance?

I am a insurance company's worst nightmare. 17 year old male, I have a job in a rough town, no experience and to top it all off I only finish work at 11pm so ill be driving at night. I have not passed my test yet but need the car for work. Whenever I use go compare or compare the market I am either quoted a stupid amount 10,000+ or I am uninsurable. I cannot get a box monitor installed because the car needs to be home at 11and I don't finish work untill then.""

Is a subaru wrx a good car for an 18 year old?

I'm 18 and I'm thinking about buying a wrx. It has 150000 miles with maintenance history and was run on high octane gas... seems to be mechanically taken care of. It needs a new paint job but I don't mind the project. Is it hard to drive this car on 5spd for people who have minimum manual experience? (i can drive a manual but I haven't had much practice) I plan on taking care of it and running it easy. How much does insurance increase if there's a lein in the car? Is it difficult to transfer leins? Car has 6600 left on lein and its a 2003.

Where should gain on life insurance be located on the income statement?

The item reads as follows: When one officer died, the company realized $110,000 from an insurance policy. The book value was $50,000. My gut feeling tells me it should be placed under other comprehensive income, but the solution to my homework problem says it should be under non-operating expense. Why is that? Shouldn't it be under other comprehensive income because the company doesn't really have control over it? I think it is under non-operating because it's REALIZED. Is that enough of a reason? Thanks.""

Geico Car Insurance Down Payment?

Im looking at car Insurances and was wondering if Geico makes you pay a down payment when you first start off? I know you have to pay the first months payment but what about a down payment? Do you remember paying a down payment?

I got a no insurance ticket so I bought insurance less then an hour after.?

The date on the ticket is the same date my insurance started. Anybody know what the outcome might be?

Sex change car insurance?

If a man gets a sex change into a women with boobs and everything would he be then entitled to womens only car insurance?

Which auto insurance companies in California offer auto insurance for international driving license?

I already called a few but they tell me there don't offer auto insurance for someone w/ IDL

I wanted to know how comes my insurance is so cheap now but when i did it 7 moths ago it was 2800?

so 7 months ago i got my insurance third party fire and theft with 2 additional drivers me as first driver and i am 20 for 2800,, and now i checked with the same details i did last time i didnt put down any experience or anything did it same exactly as last time and its about 1950 now ??? wth did i get ripped off? car is a vuaxhall corsa 2000 model""

Cheapest car to insure at 17?

Hi, I've applied for my provisional and on the 26th of Jan I'll be 17 and starting lessons then. However my parents are getting me a car before hand so when I do lessons, I can drive with my parents too and my brother to work. I need to find a cheap car to insure? I would be interested in a Peageuot 106 (Small engine obviously) and just plain. Would these be expensive?""

""If a person lies about their age on a life insurance application, will the claim be deniable?

EVEN IF THE CONTESTABILITY PERIOD HAS PASSED in CALIFORNIA?

Full coverage Insurance question ?

Would I be covered if my fiance puts me on his full coverage insurance? I just sold my car so I will be driving his until I get my new one. I canceled my insurance. So I need to know if I need to have my own insurance, or if I will be covered by him just putting me on his. Thanks guys.""

My Car Insurance Company Is Telling Us To Add My Two Sons Into My Policy.?

My sons had their license for a while now. Few months if I'm correct. They are 18 and one is 16 turning 17 in a month. Ever since they got their license, they haven't drove because they didn't have insurance. I refused when they asked because the cost was about $250 a month for each. We live in California and have State Farm. Recently, I've been getting mails and calls that I NEED to add them to my policy. I was wondering is it was really necessary because they never drive and they don't have access to my car. I only have two keys to my car and I keep it with me all the time and I'm a house mom. So the point is, they never drove the car and never will until they get insurance. So my question is, do I really have to add both of them to my policy? and if I do, do I have to pay? and if so, how much? Would it be the same as what I was told when I first asked about the cost of insurance? Which is $500 dollars a month for both.""

Are vauxhall corsa's cheap on insurance?

Are vauxhall corsa's cheap on insurance?

What car insurance is cheapest?

im enlisted in the marines right now and i haven't shipped out to boot camp yet, i will be 18 years old and planning on getting a used jeep wrangler after boot camp, i just want to know which car insurance will bee the cheapest for it, thanks!""

Will insurance be different on any of the 5 Camrys?

My dad wants to get a new Camry. I really want the SE (i'm a 16 yr. old guy) But he doesn't want to pay a whole bunch more insurance. We have Allied. Our options are CE, LE, SE, XLE, Hybrid. Will there be a huge insurance difference?""

What do you think it would cost for a 2001 cavalier coupe monthly for car insurance?

I just need an estimate, thanks. I don't know where to look...""

""I'm 17, can a go under my parents insurance for my car?""

Hi, im going to buy my first car soon, im looking at a Pergeot 106, with a 1.4L engine. I've had a quote to insure it under my name, and lets say it's more than i can afford. So i know it's cheeper to under my parents insurance. Is this safe and how much would it cost for this car im looking at? My parents havnt had any crashes if this helps? Thanks so much""

Cheapest full-coverage Insurance Company?

I am trying to narrow down my options for Automobile insurance and find the best for my money... I am a high risk so State farm wouldn't accept me after I carelessly let my insurance policy cancel. I have been quoted 189.00 a month from Al Boenker Insurance and I am really not wanting to have to pay that much.... But any suggestions would definitely help! Thank you!

Do you have car insurance through Costco? Did you save money?

Thinking about getting an estimate from Costco. Im a member of Costco and thought I would look into it. Ever have any experience with their insurance? I know its an outside company.

I need help with car insurance.?

I am saving up for a car but I don't wan't the car to be a sports car because the insurance would cost to much. Could you tell me which cars are not sports cars. 1967 chevy impala 1969 chevy nova 1969 plymouth Barracuda 1995 chevy camaro 1970 AMC Javelin Ford thunderbird ford firebird Thanks!

""My family makes 80,000 but can't afford health insurance. I have loans and all, what do I do?""

We are currently living in Pleasanton CA because I want my daughter to go to a good public school (cant afford private schools)We have no family here in California, its just the two of us with our 5 year old daughter.(my husband is an only child, both of his parents died) It is very expensive to live in Pleasanton, but we rather live someplace nice where the school system is good and we are also interracial couple. We have credit card loans,(25,000) and my husband has a student loan. My daughter is on a Kaiser individual plan which is 300 a month. We have a car payment of 312 a month and still have 6000 left to pay off. We have a low interest rate on the car loan like 4%. We tried consolidating our loans but it did not work. Now my job offers health insurance, but it is very costly, 280 a month which I can't afford, and we are not qualified for the covered California. Please anyone has any advise we would love to hear some feedback.""

How much would insurance cost for a 2003 bmw 330 ci? 17 years old?

How much would insurance cost for a 2003 bmw 330 ci? 17 years old?

How can I get affordable health insurance for my husband and I in the state of Florida?

I am a healthy 23 yr. old and my husband is a stable 32 yr. old.

car home insurance quotes online

car home insurance quotes online

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/united-guaranty-mortgage-insurance-quote-adam-douglas/"

[myaussie]

New Post has been published on Online Crowd

New Post has been published on https://onlinecrowd.com.au/why-high-quality-content-matters-more-than-keywords-for-seo/

Why High Quality Content Matters More than Keywords for SEO

Attention content creators: Google reads everything you write! Well, not “reads” in the literal sense, but its algorithms are now sophisticated enough to pick up on unnatural language and poor formatting—both of which send strong negative signals that hurt your ability to rank.

In fact, Google’s approach to ranking has gotten so sophisticated that they’ve learned that content quality matters more to search users than the presence of any particular keyword phrase. As a result, you may find a No. 1 search result that doesn’t contain an exact match keyword anywhere in the body.

We’re serious! In an exhaustive study of 600,000 keyword phrases, 18 percent of the domains that ranked position 20 or higher didn’t have the keyword in the text at all. Instead, these sites had a few things in common: website visits, user behavior signals and the number of links to the content all influenced Google to rank them near the top. All of these signals tell Google one thing: people seem to like this content.

In addition to these behavior-based markers of content quality, Google and other search engines actively sift through content to see signals of quality within the text itself.

After all, Google’s main objective isn’t getting your website traffic; it’s giving people good search results.

Thankfully, the company’s own guidelines are fairly specific and helpful. We’ll point you towards the exact markers of “high quality” Google is looking for.

What Are the Red Flags for Poor Content Quality?

Google’s guidelines for content quality are pretty thorough. This is likely because it’s hard to put into words exactly what makes something “good” or “high quality.” It takes a lot of nuance!

On the other hand, you can fairly quickly point out factors that immediately signal poor quality.

It’s like baking cake. There are a million different types of cakes out there and as many ways to prepare them. Flour, sugar, eggs and milk may be your raw ingredients, but you can make thousands of different types of delicious cakes. Also, “the right cake to bake” differs according to the context and circumstances. You can have a moist cake that’s yummy, or you could have a more solid cake that still does the trick.

But you can’t put sand in your cake. That’s a no-no. And it’s an automatic recipe for an inedible cake.

Similarly, Google highlights some markers of poor quality that instantly flag a page as having content not worth ranking:

Spamming keywords, especially if they’re irrelevant

Creating content that’s mostly copies of existing content

Typos, bad spelling, grammar errors

Sentences or paragraphs that never seem to end

Content that has little to no formatting, leaving just a dense chunk of text

Going crazy with links that aren’t relevant to the content at hand

Dropping lists of keywords somewhere in your page, especially if you’re hiding them with text color choices

Content that is excessively thin, especially for pages like blogs that promise substance

There are also a number of ways to get instantly deindexed by Google that go beyond content quality. Since that’s something you likely want to avoid, they’re well worth reviewing!

Google’s SEO Guide Considers Content Quality, Navigation Ease More Important Than Keyword Use

If you go and take a look at Google’s SEO starter guide, you’ll find that suggestions for how to use keywords properly don’t come up until around halfway through. Before that point, they take a moment to repeat four times that you shouldn’t overuse keywords or stuff them into your technical SEO elements.

Once they do mention keywords, they simply advise that you tailor your keyword strategy to your audience. For instance, people who watch soccer regularly might expect “FIFA” or “football” to be in the content they read, while casual users may expect more generic terms like “soccer playoffs.”

Immediately after that, they go back into quality. “Avoid writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes,” they suggest, as well as “awkward or poorly written content.”

To truly hammer the point home, Google spends far more time writing about ease of navigation and quality of life improvements for website visitors. Based on how the information is organized, Google cares more about your site map than your keyword usage when deciding rank.

“The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want,” explains the search giant. “It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important.”

All of this information can be summed up thusly: search engines aren’t dumb. They know the things that make life easier for their users and content better to read in general. They pay far more attention to these elements than how you use keywords.

In fact, with voice search on the rise, search engines have had to get smarter than ever about interpreting keyword intent and finding semantically related terms. That way, someone searching for “best places to eat near me” can pull up a list of “top-rated restaurants” without having to first sift through unhelpful results that contain exact keyword matches.

5 Tips for Writing Higher Quality Content

So now you’ve heard what definitely not to do when creating content, with only a hint of what so-called “high quality content” looks like.

To steer you in the right direction, here are a few general tips that can boost the quality of all content.

“Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.”

This rule comes directly from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. It’s actually the very first thing they say under “Basic Principles.”

The search giant even suggests you ask yourself “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” when making a decision on how your website operates. Those questions definitely apply when writing new content.

So foremost, determine an audience need based on a keyword search, and write to answer that need. The better able you are to satisfy someone’s search intent, the better behaviour signals your site receives, and the more likely you are to rank.

If you’re at a loss for how to connect a keyword to user needs, do a little research. Plug in the keyword yourself, and try to find questions related to it.

Or, if the keyword is directly related to an “I want to purchase something or research a purchase” intent, take notes on the content that ranks highest. Chances are good that the page offers excellent examples of site organization, layout clarity and overall usability in addition to some solid text content.

Edit Your Writing, and Push Yourself to Improve

Like good cake, good writing is definitely in the eye of the beholder. But at the same time, you wouldn’t bank on your cake getting top votes if all you did was use a box mix.

In other words, if you want to write better, you’re going to have to learn from others. We suggest reading publisher sites related to your industry that get high traffic, and cover topics similar to what you want on your blog.

Some general guidelines for improving your writing include:

Use less “being” and “linking” verbs in favor of strong action verbs. If you find yourself writing words like “is, was, are and be,” go back and see if you can identify the true subject of the sentence and what it’s doing.

Structure your writing like you would an outline. Tell people what they’re going to learn from your post as soon as possible, and then delve into each smaller point one at a time until you’re finished.

Write casually but not unprofessionally. Aim for a “friendly, conversational tone with a clear purpose—somewhere between the voice you use when talking to your buds and that you’d use if you were a robot,” suggests Search Engine Land’s paraphrasing of Google’s own Developer Documentation Style Guide.

Edit your writing! Far too many people don’t go back and reread. Watch out for sentence and paragraph transitions that could make people have trouble following your logic. Ask people for their opinion on how readable everything is. If they have a complaint, see if you can break the excerpt down into its most simple parts and reconstruct it.

Read, Read, Read and Read Some More

Reading teaches you how words and sentences form ideas. We take a lot of this stuff for granted, but it’s quite complex. Fortunately, others have mastered it and can teach you techniques to add to your repertoire.

Pay Attention to Your Audience’s Behavior Signals

What content pages get the most views? Which ones get the best responses or the most engagement in comments or on social media? Where do people tend to spend the most time?

Look to your own Google Analytics data, and try to identify patterns. People tell you what they like without ever having to say a word.

If You’re Struggling to Write Good Content, Go Back to the Basics

You may feel hesitant about writing on simple topics, such as “The Beginner’s Guide to SEO” or something like “Why People Buy Things,” but these are actually great topics. Yes, they’ve been done to death, but they help people learn.

Also, you might put things in a certain way that makes an extremely deep or complex subject click for your audience.

Above all else, articles like these teach you the fundamentals of writing for your audience. You learn how to break big concepts down to their bare components and communicate complex ideas with clarity.

Next to reading, writing down the basics is the best way to teach yourself how to craft better content.

Stop Obsessing Over Keywords and Start Writing Better

The writing’s on the wall: Google and online audiences are sick of bad content, keyword stuffing and deceptive practices aimed to help websites rank but that make readers miserable.

Put content quality factors like readability, grammar and topic organization as a higher priority than keyword use. People will know what you’re talking about, even if you don’t use an exact keyword match—and now search engines will too.

If you need help generating leads, please call us. We have an excellent lead generation program where we pay for all your advertising expenses and take all the risk for you. You only pay when you get results. This is a massive undertaking and understandably we’re limited in how many companies we can help at any one time. If you’re interested and find the program paused or not available, just leave your details and we’ll let you know when it re-opens.

  Thanks!  Click here to download the free pdf file. 

[emarkly-blog]

7 BIGGEST marketing strategies for 2017

There are so many stupid, generic business lists online:

"10 tips to grow your business!"

"3 secrets to SEO Google doesn't want you to know!"

"17 steps to making passive income!"

The worst part is, these clickbait articles are written by people who have never built a business before. I'm sick of seeing all this bad, unhelpful advice on the web.

Today, I'm going to give you actual, proven strategies to market your business in 2017. No B.S. No clickbait. No tricks.

In deep detail, I'm going to show you 7 tactics I'm actually using to grow my businesses this year — including emarkly Group, which I recently grew to 8 figures. I'm sharing these strategies so you can give them a try for yourself.

1. Free software as lead generation

For years people have been giving away free content as lead generation to get email addresses and build their contact database. But times have changed.

The crappy ebooks and free download markets are oversaturated. People don't want to exchange their email address for a regurgitated, one-page PDF that takes up space in their Downloads folder.

Instead, they want something valuable. With a bazillion ebooks and checklists out there, the new way to drive leads for your business is free software.

Here's how it works:

Find a problem related to your core business

Build a simple solution (this is important — it doesn't have to take you 1,600 hours)

Make it free

Drive awareness of your other products

🤑

I've done this recently with leoh.io. It's a simple, free Google Chrome extension that creates a personal dashboard. I use it regularly and it'll be a great way to drive traffic to mo.com in the emarkly.com near future.

The goal with building tools, apps, websites, and software is to create VALUE for your customer (and help them solve a problem).

Software works great as lead gen as you're able to deliver value to a consumer before you ask them to hand over anything. If people like the software, they'll want to get even MORE products from you.

Plus, you're able to separate yourself in a market that's obsessed with boring lead gen ebooks, PDFs, checklists, and resource guides.

So, what software should you build?

Here are a few ways to solve that:

Look at "how to" articles you can turn into software. For example, SEO auditing, site graders, headline analysis, etc.

Create quizzes related to your industry for customers to self-evaluate their situation

Spin out a small part of your larger app or business (think "freemium" business model)

To get you going, here are four types of free products you could make:

Chrome extensions

WordPress extensions

Website graders

Standalone apps

Quizzes

2. Cross promotion

Cross promotion is one of the most successful marketing strategies we've used for emarkly.

The reason cross promotion works so well is because it's a win-win situation.

In other words, think of it as a guest appearance on a rap song. You BOTH get to spread your message to new fan bases.

Instead of just offering your product or software, create a bundle with other products for the same price (or for FREE).

At emarkly, we regularly reach out to other businesses and try to find great cross promotion opportunities to entice new customers.

For example, we partnered with a company called Beacon for one deal. Here's how it worked...

First, we put together an offer. In this case it was, 'Buy emarkly and get a year of Beacon for free'

For every sale, we pay Beacon a percentage of the money

We send this "Sumo + Beacon" offer out to our emarkly mailing list

Beacon promotes the combined software deal to their mailing list, too

#Cha-ching 💰

We get the emarkly product out to a whole new subset of users (Beacon) for low cost, and Beacon gets their product out to whole new subset of users (emarkly).

Another way I'm currently using cross promotion is with my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. I'm reaching out to companies for free products to give to my audience. These companies get FREE promotion to my audience, and I get products to drive new listeners.

This is hugely beneficial for all parties involved:

My listeners receive added value (free stuff)

Partners get to reach my audience and grow their own brand

I get to reach my partners' audience

You don't just need a product to do this either. What are other ways you can use cross-promotion in your business?

Here are some more ideas: You can do this with joint webinars, guest posts, or coordinate a summit/event across multiple partners.

Cross promotion can be done at any size. It doesn't matter whether you have an email list of 100 or 100,000.

Think about it: Who wouldn't want to get their product in front of new people for free?

3. Paid marketing on untapped channels

Facebook and Google ads are incredible because they have huge volume. But the same thing that makes them great — tons of eyeballs on the platform — is also a problem for marketers. Everyone knows about Facebook and Google ads, and every business, from Fortune 50s to mom-and-pop shops, market there.

Advertising is most successful when there is market inefficiency.

These advantages occur on channels where there's a lot of volume, but less competition or no competition.

So, what are these channels? (I know you're asking.)

The platforms that work vary business-to-business, and industry-to-industry. But here are a few ideas to get you started...

Reddit

Did you know you can buy ads in specific sub-reddits? Not a lot of people are doing that right now.

Here's an example ad:

Reddit has huge scale. It's the 24th most visited website on the web, with roughly 1.2 billion pageviews per month.

Best of all, you can niche your idea on reddit and target a very specific audience. Currently, there are 1,037,343 subreddits (and growing) covering every niche you can imagine:

Chess

Animal bloopers

Ping-pong

Online marketing

Small cities

Life tips

Specific diets and nutrition plans (e.g. Paleo, Ketogenic, bodybuilding, etc.)

And tons more.

Instagram

There's incredible value to be found on Instagram, too. But not through their ads platform, which runs through Facebook Ads). Instagram's current advantage s through buying ads directly from people with large followings and highly engaged audiences. Search on Instagram for users with followers in your target market, and directly pay the person to post on their channel.

I know one fitness Instagrammer who only gets paid $1,000 a month to post one post per week promoting a product. Compared to normal advertising on Instagram, this is a massive savings. With hundreds of thousands of people in her audience, that works out as some of the cheapest ads you can buy.

Niche websites

One of my favorite strategies is to target super-small sites where prices are low and traffic quality is high. We did this to great effect with Mint.com's marketing strategy.

A few additional places you could find untapped advantages:

Message boards

New sites / blogs

Directories

Niche blogs and other niche websites

What you're looking for is an advantage — a platform where an audience has already been created, and the site isn't saturated with advertisers yet.

Even better: If there are no ads on the site, you have zero competition.

4. Content Multiplier marketing

I've been blogging since 2000. This makes me old as hell in the Internet world. As your elder, I demand respect (and lots of tacos).

Content marketing has changed a ton in the past couple of years, though. Almost anyone can set up a blog, write a semi-readable article, upload some GIFs and share it with the world within an hour.

This type of content marketing is mostly commoditized.

To separate your brand and your business, the best content marketing is now multi-channel.

For example,

This article started out as a YouTube video.

Now I've turned it into a blog post.

Next, I'll create a podcast episode for it.

Lastly, I'll take snippets for external guest posts.

Think of it like a pyramid. I start with one core piece of content. Then, with my team, I turn that one piece of content into multiple, cross-channel pieces.

Your content can start out however you want — an audio recording, a video, blog post — the key is to increase awareness and showcase on different channels.

People want to consume content across various mediums, not just one. The more leverage you can make your content, the more you'll stand out.

Plus, you'll attract different types of fans with different content: readers, visual learners, auditory learners, etc.

Create content that's easy to replicate. Audiences are in newer locations so get MORE leverage out of each piece of your content.

5. Acquisition as marketing

Acquisition as marketing was on my list of marketing strategies for 2016 and it's making another appearance this year for one simple reason (and no, it's not because I'm being lazy)...

Acquisition as marketing is STILL underutilized.

Acquisition is often seen as glamorous, big-money deals that only the biggest companies do. But almost any company can make acquisitions. You just have to identify the right targets.

With an acquisition, you're looking for a way to reach an audience that will be interested in your product or service. It could be:

Mailing lists

Highly followed social accounts

Products

Blogs

Chrome plugins

Shopify plugins

You're looking for any acquisition that can put your business front and center in the eyes of more people in your target market.

Where should you look for acquisitions?

Product Hunt is a great source for failed businesses. Hundreds of new products launch every day and very few of them go on to make enough money to be sustainable.

Here's a recent look at marketing products showcased on ProductHunt:

Head over to Product Hunt and search for keywords related to your business to see what you can find. Some products may not have made any money, but may have built up substantial mailing lists.

Your personal network is also a great way to find acquisitions. Ask around in your industry to see what opportunities are out there and waiting for you. LinkedIn is a great place to start.

To give you a real-world example: Just this year I noticed a site owned by someone I know stopped updating the product. I reached out and she sold me the site. #teaisforclosers

Once you've found a product or list you'd like to acquire, the first step is to make contact and build that relationship. When we FINALLY acquired emarkly.com , it took 7 years and 200+ emails, but it never would have happened without making first contact.

Here's the exact email I send for acquisitions. Keep it simple, stupid:

SUBJECT LINE: Acquiring {your product name}BODY:

Hey {First-name}

Huge fan of the product.

You open to selling?

Sincerely, Noah

6. Mobile

As a marketing channel, mobile is still pretty early.

In 2017, I believe there will be huge opportunities on mobile because the conversion rates are so shitty and very few people are doing mobile marketing well. This means you can still get cheap advertising opportunities.

To show you I plan these articles out and don't just wing them, I'm going to make a callback to bullet point 3 above: mobile has a marketing inefficiency you use to your advantage.

I know this point is a bit broad, but I bet most of you aren't even thinking about mobile right now. So the best thing you can do is start.

First, confirm HOW much mobile traffic you have:

Head to your Google Analytics

Click "Audience" on the left-hand side, then click "Overview"

Scroll down to "System"

Click on "Operating System"2 ways to identify international marketing opportunities1. Google Analytics2. Keyword searchWant more marketing strategies for 2017 (and beyond)

Many websites I know in the industry are seeing 50%+ of traffic coming from a combination of mobile and tablet. (If you don't use Google Analytics, assume this is true).

Second, go to your site on your phone and see how the experience is on mobile. Make a list of improvements. Some things from OkDork we optimized on mobile:

Shrunk the header section so it's easier to get to the content

Optimized the navigation for mobile use

Ensure all email capture and CTAs look (and work) great

Third, begin to measure the effectiveness of your mobile traffic. How many visitors from mobile sign up? Join your mailing list? Do they read more of your posts?

Analytics will help you to discover all of this data and enable you to make informed decisions about how to make the most of your mobile traffic.

7. International marketing

A few years ago I made a bunch of Facebook games for a company I built called Gambit. We were bringing in about $40k per month, and I noticed that half of our money was coming from places like Finland, Portugal and New Zealand.

I forgot my 8th grade geography (it had been a while, OK?), so I had pull out a map to figure out where our money was coming from.

Here's something us close-minded U.S. citizens don't always remember: International countries have money, they face many of the same challenges as we do in the U.S., and many populations speak English, too.

For next level international marketing, you can even translate your stuff. For example, the popular landing page software Unbounce recently launched a German language version of their highly-successful CRO blog.

But let's take this one step at a time. Thinking international doesn't mean you need to start spending dollars on translators right away.

Even if you just stick to the English speaking international countries, you'll likely find:

Advertising is cheaper internationally than the U.S.

There may be less competition (more bang for your buck)

Better results and more sales

Until my Facebook games business took off, I'd neglected a huge percentage of my market by not thinking international.

The internet has made the world flat and there's a lot of opportunity out there. You just need to go looking for it. Sometimes, that means searching beyond your front door.

As a starting point, you can head into Google Analytics and take a look at where your traffic is coming from. To do this:

Open up Google Analytics

Click "Audience" in the left-hand navigation

Click on the "Geo" menu

Click "Location"

This list is a great place to start identifying countries you could expand your marketing.

Keyword tools like SEMrush are also really useful to gauge interest in international countries.

If you search for keywords related your business, you can filter by country to see where people are actively searching for products/solutions related to your business.

Throughout this post you may have picked up on a few key themes:

Find your marketing advantage — and look for market inefficiencies

Wherever there's an audience, there's opportunity (even small, niche sites)

Don't just look on your doorstep, cast your net wide when looking for growth

I'll be using these 7 marketing strategies for 2017, and I hope you can too.

With these strategies, I believe 2017 is going to be our biggest year yet at emarkly.com Let's make it the same for you and your business.

Here's to an incredible year...