#but yeah. search todd on my blog. there's so much of him

[pikelandavenue]

do you have any specific thoughts regarding todd flanders? i would love to hear them

hrmm... assuming you were inspired to send this after seeing a recent post i made, there wasn't anything that brought on that thought process other than someone having put this old post in my notes again the other day

i'm not very active with this blog anymore. if memory serves i started watching the simpsons back from the beginning in late 2019 and made this blog in early 2020, which is a long time ago already (remember, like, quarantine?). i had a strong hyperfixation on the show at the time and i used to post a LOT more, i'd post art, some of it incorporating headcanons i had for certain characters or original depictions of them, i'd post more thinkpieces whenever i'd want to psychoanalyze something for fun, and i DID used to have a lot to say about todd flanders

aside from posts i'd make like the one linked above i will never forget how heavily this particular episode really fed the fire of the idea that todd was destined for the potential to break free of his appointed one-notedness and eventually grow into this organic rebellion, i guess it got to me as something that felt so human, when someone is raised only ever being told certain things or trained to think in certain ways and as they get older they start to think for themselves and in many cases at least go through a phase where they desperately strive to adopt every ideology that contradicts those things they maybe now feel were harmful to their growth as a person, and maybe it's to spite a parent, or maybe it's to figure out who they wanna be, whatever it means to them in the moment they just HAVE to BREAK AWAY... it's a shared experience of so many people and it's sooo much fun to apply it to silly yellow cartoon child

if you've been following me since toddgate, which historically brought us such classics as the various psychoanalysis posts, emo todd, the whole tossica timeline (x, x, x, x), older bart hanging out with nelson and adoptive brother todd after rod goes away to college and they're some of the last og springfield kids still hanging around town (x, x, x, x, x) and so much more, i seriously love u and u earned that veteran discount

i think it all started with this post

[themaribatpit]

Jasonette July Day 12: Dare

Written by: The Maribat Pit  @jasonette-july-event Prompt: Dare Rated: T (Drink responsibly my friends) A/N: Maribat fangirl went to Uni in the UK. Most people thought they could outdrink the Americans, and that American beer tasted horrible.  DC fanboy isn’t much of a drinker. Also we planned this earlier, but I saw this blog post from @ritacrow-blogrequesting something similar a few days ago, so here you go.  I don’t know if you’re a fan of the in vino veritas/drunken confession trope, so feel free to skip it if you aren’t.

“So, why are we doing this again?” Tim asked hesitantly, as they gathered in the Wayne Manor lounge. “Because Pixie Pop here issued a challenge, and I don’t plan on letting her win”, Jason explained with a smirk. “All she said was ‘American drinking laws are bullshit’, and it’s not like you don’t know the name of every single bar in Gotham that doesn’t card.” Tim retorted.  “She also said American beer tastes gross, so I don’t know why you brought Budweiser of all things”.

“She dared us to try and drink her under the table, and I’m sure as hell not backing down.” Jason hissed, and Tim decided that it was pointless trying to argue.  The whole reason Tim and Steph were even involved was because they had just turned 18, which meant they were allowed to take part in this little drinking competition.  Alfred was in the corner of the room keeping score, someone had to, considering the night they were about to have.

After they all gathered in the lounge, it was time for the challenge to begin.  Barbara quietly sipped her glass of wine, curling into Dick’s side as she watched the movie playing on the TV.  Jason and Dick had downed a bottle of beer each, waiting for Marinette to finish her first glass of wine.  Marinette rested her back against Jason’s arm as she watched the movie play out, the night had just begun and she wasn’t about to let them win.  She wouldn’t be able to look any non-American person in the eye if they knew she got out drunk by them. Marinette took in the soft glow of the lounge, alternating between leaning on the sofa or Jason’s leather-clad shoulder.  It almost reminded her of her home city at night. She looked around at the people she had come to know, fairly certain she had the dopiest smile on her face at that moment.  

She had arrived in Gotham City not long ago, and she was surprised to find that some of them welcomed her with open arms.  Not all of them, obviously, some were a bit more welcoming than others.  Bruce didn’t really trust her as a magic user, and Damian usually kept to himself.  Preferring to be alone with his pets, Titus and Alfred (the cat). The others assured her not to take it too personally, that they are like that with everyone.  With Jason, it was hard to tell what he thought about her.  Dick was like an older brother to everyone, and in some ways reminded Marinette of Chat Noir, alot.  While Barbara, Steph and Cass were like the sisters Marinette didn’t have.  Tim was at least somewhat curious about her powers and how they worked, hard as he tried to fight it in the beginning.

With Jason, it was much harder to tell at times.  He wasn’t quite as closed off as Damian, though sometimes she found him in the Wayne Manor library reading by the window.  They had each other’s backs in a fight, and the fact that she was much smaller compared to him earned her the nickname “Pixie Pop”.   They worked well together on missions, and there was plenty of friendly banter between them.  There was almost a veneer of sarcasm and bravado.  

The only time it showed any sign of falling was when his pit madness took over.  Even then she was more focused on asking Plagg and Tikki for help, seeing as it was their magic causing this.  There was no fixing it, but they had managed to help get it under control.  Marinette was almost frustrated when he woke up to find her waiting at his bedside, after working around the clock to keep the madness at bay.  The sounds of him screaming and thrashing around were still ringing in her ear, and the most that he could muster was “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you there, Pixie.” he drawled.  

“Pixie, you there?” Jason gently poked her on the shoulder and she realised that she had been staring into her wine glass for a moment.  She took a large gulp before setting the glass down on the table, the night had just begun.  

As the night went on, Tim was not impressed with how beer tasted. “People actually drink this stuff for fun?” he muttered. He was starting to think Marinette might have a point about how American beer tasted. Sadly the old adage of “liquor before beer, you’re in the clear” meant that it was too late to try Steph’s approach.  Steph was nursing a Jack Daniels and coke as she watched the film, letting that light of the TV screen dance in front of them.

Later into the night, Tim was getting tipsy at that point. Considering this was his first time drinking, Marinette gave him a smile that said “you get points for trying”.  If Steph wasn’t drunk now, she was going to be feeling the effects very soon.  She mostly drank spirits chased down with soda and juice.  Barbara had already left after a couple of glasses of wine, deciding to leave the rest of them to this game.  Jason and Dick had beer bottles lined up in front of them, almost as if they were competing with each other first. Marinette continued to leisurely sipped her wine, knowing that she was their final boss at that moment.

In the end, only Marinette and Jason were left in the lounge.  Steph left had already left, and Tim followed not long after,  Alfred helped get Dick into bed after he nearly passed out on the coffee table.  “It’s you and me, Poxie Pip” Jason slurred, Alfred occasionally came in to check on them.  

Marinette, who at this point was slightly tipsy, leaned in close and whispered in his ear “What’s the matter? Afraid you’ll lose?”

“There’s worse ways to go, Pixie, trust me.” he laughed, Marinette gave him a very sad smile.  He finished the last of his beer bottle before laying down on the sofa, resting his head on Marinette’s lap. Marinette was certain she could feel her face heating up, she could hear her heart pounding in her chest as she looked down at him.  

“Are you sure my teeny tiny legs can support your big head?” she joked. Great, now she was doing it too. she looked away in hopes that he couldn’t see the blush on her face.  She didn’t get Asian glow, but now she was really hoping she had that as an excuse.    

“I’ve seen you lift goons twice your size and throw them across rooms,” he laughed “besides, this feels kinda nice.” he mumbled.

“Yeah but that was me as Ladybug, it’s also what keeps me from tripping over air and landing on my face.” she explained.  She didn’t think her heart would be able to handle looking down to see one of the few times she saw him completely at peace.  She was used to people who preferred her as her alter ego anyhow.

“I guess you win this round,” he slurred, Marinette still hadn’t moved his head from her lap.  If anything, her free hand was working its way through his dark locks of hair.  He smiled, letting himself be lulled to sleep by the simple yet kind gesture.  “Serves me right,” he yawned, “getting drunk with a fairy princess.”

Marinette turned her attention back to the last of her wine, “there he goes again, making silly jokes like that.” she thought.  “Especially with one as pretty as you,” he laughed. Marinette was about to get up at that moment, now he was just being ridiculous.  “I like you...” were the last words he said before letting sleep take him.  

It was everything Marinette could do not to drop her wine class on the floor in shock.  Marinette thought she heard wrong.  She shook her head, what did it matter? I mean, she had called her friends pretty loads of times before, it’s not like he said he loved her or anything.  These were things that you said to friends all the time, right? At that moment, there was a knock on the door, Alfred came in and saw Jason asleep in Marinette’s lap.  “I was just about to leave could you maybe help Jason get back to his room? That would be great thanks Alfred.” she quickly spluttered before dashing out of the lounge and down the hallway in search of an empty guest room to sleep in.  

Jason tragically awoke the next morning with a hangover and a vague memory of what had happened the night before.  He thought this was probably the very reason why Bruce did not drink.  Alfred came in with a tray of chilli dogs and water, to nurse the hangover.  “Thanks Alfred,” Jason groaned, “do I even wanna know what happened last night?”

“If you must know Master Todd, you won second place in last night’s drinking competition.” He explained, Jason sighed, Marinette wasn’t going to let him live that down.  He still had to admit he was impressed with her. “Miss Dupain-Cheng seemed rather flustered after you compared the experience to  ‘getting drunk with a fairy princess’ and confessed your admiration and affection for her.”   It was all coming back to him now, and he was about to be sick.  He told her that he thought she was pretty and that he liked her. He wasn’t wrong, but it probably didn’t sound as romantic coming from someone who was probably very drunk.   He reached for the chilli dog, hoping that he would be able to keep it down.   “In vino veritas indeed, or in birro veritas in your case”, Alfred quoted.  Jason took a sip of water, still too stunned to speak.  “If you still hold such affection for Miss Dupain-Cheng, might I suggest telling her when you’ve sobered up?” he suggested, giving Jason a slight sympathetic smile.

“I’ll try, thanks Alfred” he replied as Alfred left the room, leaving him to his thoughts.  

A couple of days later, Marinette was sitting in her studio, drinking a warm mug of hot chocolate.  Jason hadn’t called her or spoken to her since the party, and she had hoped that he had just drunkenly forgotten his little drunken confession.  It wasn’t that Marinette didn’t reciprocate his feelings, it just felt like there was no point in putting stock in something he said while he was so very drunk.  It almost made Marinette laugh a little at the thought.  Her phone buzzed, it was a message from Jason:  “Hey, you busy today? I’ve got something to tell you.  Sober, this time”.  Marinette smiled, maybe this time there was truth in the foul tasting American beer.

 BONUS: The next morning in the Batcave... Tim: That tasted like actual vomit.  Dick: It's an acquired taste, Baby Bird. Tim: Which is to say you were peer pressured into liking it.

[adultswim2021]

Stroker and Hoop #7: “Quiller Instinct (a.k.a. Peeping Todd)” | October 10, 2005 – 12:00AM | S01E07

Three episodes of Stroker and Hoop in a row have really taken their toll on me. It's a toll we almost pay (death). What I'm saying is that this episode will kill me, and I am writing around moaning dramatically, assuming I will be dead by morning. Goodbye everyone! Bye bye!

Okay so this one is about an AS SEEN ON TV type gadget guy stealing ideas from the mechanic guy on the show, whose name I think is Double Wide? Is that right? Weird name. Anyway, they steal his ideas and he is left bitter and scorned. We then find out that the company's products are not just stolen, but they also aid in stealing ideas by doubling as surveillance devices. The machines turn out be sentient and are gruesomely attacking their owners. They all reference a specific day of reckoning.

There were two things I liked about this one: first there was a scene where an informant tells Stroker what's going on by handing him a CD, and Stroker scolds her for not putting it in a jewel case. Very funny! AND RELATABLE. Then there's a bit at the end where the robots all start going crazy and mowing everybody down, so Stroker, Hoop, and others just go to Mexico to wait it all out, and that's basically how it ends.

Oh yeah, I forgot there's a subplot that one of the titles is named after: Hoop gets bitten by what he assumes is a radioactive porcupine and gets porcupine powers. Or does he? Anyway, it's sorta creative but it really doesn't yield much in the way of laughs. This whole episode seems okay on paper (as far as Stroker & Hoop episodes go) but man, I am all Stroker'd out.

MAIL BAG:

Did you  know that if you add a YouTube video to a tumblr post and try to insert it in the middle of the post, it’ll instead add itself to the END of a post AND delete whatever last paragraph is on there? Huh! It’s almost like this website sucks or something. Anyway, I’m reposting this mail bag so I can TRY to recreate my original response to it, because Kon literally posted this in private at me and then said “I’m gonna submit this to your blog so you can riff on it” and then I did but it got DELETED:

Man the porno episode of Stroker & Hoop was the first one I really hated. That said, I still searched the internet for an uncensored version lol because it looked like they actually animated the nude scenes for the inevitable, sure-to-be-made Stroker & Hoop season 1 DVD.

DAMN dude, what did I say to this the first time? I remember it ended with the phrase “you believe in HEAVEN, don’t you?”. Anyway, I hope we get a fully X-Rated Stroker and Hoop DVD, against all odds. I wish everything was available on DVD or blu-ray, no matter how bad it is. There should be a law. Sorry this was bad

This Kon guy sounds like a freak! All he cares about is cartoon titties!!! Someone send this dude a Stripperella dvd!!!!!

better yet, SEND IT TO ME! that woman is beautiful!

Way to not riff Kon's awesome mailbag, bro.

Hey! Fuck you pal! I explained myself! You should respect that

"Nothing made me laugh" is your new catchphrase. Because yes.

HEY, I’m at least doing a big smile tonight so that’s something.

does stroker & hoop ever do anything with the 70s cop show pastiche it has going on? i remember AS's black dynamite show (which I remember being ok) did but this seems like it doesn't. i can't even figure out what stroker is supposed to have going for it. i'm not watching to find out for myself, it's banned in this household (bummer)

This is a good point, it seems to be playing dress-up with the 70s aesthetic but it comes off more like a mid-90s cartoon you’d pair with Duckman more than anything else. Could this show be a reference to the 90s fad of 70s nostalgia and not the 70s itself? I don’t know. What I do know is: Duckman is good. I love it.

[hood-ex]

Hi! Love your blog and your fic! You seem like a really nice person who's also pretty knowledgeable about dc so I thought maybe you could give me some advice? I've recently gotten into Batman comics and have some ideas for fics I want to try, but I've never been so scared to write for a fandom before. There's just so much canon I haven't gotten into and I really want to get characters right. Its also kind of an intimidating fandom to get into. Do you have any tips that might help me out?

Sure, yeah! I totally understand how you feel btw. I was so nervous to start writing fics in this fandom for the same exact reason. 

One important thing to keep in mind is that your fic doesn’t have to encapsulate every single trait that a character has across all comics. You can pick and choose a few to focus on. 

For example, if I want to write about Damian then I can choose to focus on his brash attitude and his hesitance to partake in something considered fun or childish. I don’t have to include his love of animals, his insane intellect, his tendency to insult/belittle people, his moments of compassion, his desire to be accepted, his insecurity of being rejected/replaced, etc. 

Another way to make Damian sound more like Damian is to reference little things about him from the comics. For example, Damian likes to play a video game called Cheese Viking. Throwing that into a conversation will make the readers feel like you know this character on a deeper level (even if you don’t). 

What you get is something like this:

“Get out of my way, Todd! The time I’ve wasted on talking to you could have been spent doing far more productive things like getting to the next level on Cheese Viking!” 

Also, try and find moments in comics (or individual panels you find) that will give you an example of what a character acts like when they’re happy, sad, mad, stressed, etc. Base your own reactions off of those moments. 

For example, if I want to write a scene of Dick comforting someone, I’ll try and find a scene in a comic where he’s doing that. I can then analyze whether Dick uses touch to comfort someone, if he throws a few encouraging words at them, or if he stops and listens to their troubles. Comics are good for using as a base or outline on how you can make a character react to a situation. 

Now if you don’t have time to read a bunch of comics to look for that kind of info then I’ll share a little trick with you. There are blogs on Tumblr who post the most important, relevant, and impactful scenes from comics. 

My advice to you would be to find one of these blogs that posts a lot of comic panels, type in a character’s name into the search bar of their blog (or look at their archive), and if the blog has a good enough tagging system, tons and tons of panels that have the character you typed in will pop up. 

Browse through them. Pay attention to how the character speaks, how they react to certain situations, and how they interact with other characters. Take little notes on their behavior if you want. 

Another way to go about this is simply by typing random shit into the Tumblr search bar like “Dick Grayson sad” or “Bruce Wayne fight.” Sometimes you’ll get tons of results to browse through. A lot of it will be art or text posts, but there will also be comic panels included in the search. You can also do random comic issue searches to pull up comic panels for you to analyze. I used to just type stuff like “Nightwing 145″ or “Gotham Knights 37.” 

You can also do this with Google images as well as Pinterest. Pinterest has a shit ton of comic panels too. I see them all the time in the Google search results when I’m hunting for a specific comic. Seriously, just pick a comic and start searching for random issue numbers or keywords. Stuff will pop up. Read what comes up, takes notes if you want, and absorb that info into your character building arsenal. That way you don’t have to waste time reading the entire comic, you can just look at the most important bits from the comics and base your characters off of that to get you started. 

You’ll start to notice patterns of the character’s behavior and you may even be able to spot whether something sounds OOC or not. The only bad thing about that method is you may not be able to tell if a character is acting OOC based on a panel that is out of context. In time, the more comics you read, the more you’ll be able to deduce whether something is IC or OOC. 

Now, obviously, if you’re wanting to write about a specific comic event then you should definitely read the comic to get all the details and to understand what the characters are saying to each other in context. 

Anyways, just remember that most people are pretty lenient when it comes to batfam characterization in fics (hence why there are so many fanon takes). Even in canon, the characters aren’t always consistent because they’re written by so many different people who don’t all write them the same way. So you definitely have wiggle room for trial and error when it comes to characterization while you’re still in the process of learning about the characters. Just have fun and experiment! Trust me, it doesn’t have to be perfect at first. And if you’re still hesitant, try and emulate the vibe you get from one of your favorite batfam fics. That will at least give you a place to start. 

I hope that helps you out a little! Let me know if you need any more advice!

[ali-kitkat]

Audacity Ch 3

Start    Previous      Next 

Adrien followed the boy who sabotaged his plans to Chloe’s hotel. He assumed that he just left Marinette’s home before leaving for the night. His newest strategy was to show Marinette the error of her ways by hurting her friend, before he re-did the wish. She should have told him about her new friend, he should’ve met him before they were even alone together. She made her choice. She’s going to live with it now, he mused. When he re-does the wish, she’s going to remember her friend was injured, but only because she was going to have inkling of his actions, she should know that he wasn’t going to put up with insubordination. Altering her memories wouldn’t be difficult, she’s going to believe her friend was beaten because he was dangerous, which he is. That her friend was going to hurt her, Damian did, he took her away. He was going to be her hero again. Damian, he recalled, was checking in and headed upstairs to sleep for the night.

Having all the information he needed he headed to the bakery to get the ring. He loved her but she wasn’t exactly the smartest, hiding the ring in her diary box was a huge mistake on her end. He remembered that box very well as she had to unlock Sabrina’s hand from it. Since she wouldn’t open the box for him, he needed to delay her. Knocking her out was the smartest option, she wasn’t going to remember he hit her either.

*~*~*~*

Damian wasn’t surprised that the blond idiot couldn’t even hide on the roof tops very well. He spotted Adrien, pun intended, instantaneously. His was in a bright, obnoxious red suit, and he was sitting on the edge of a roof top watching the street, only moving when he had walked into his line of sight. He was easy to divert as well, all Damian had to do was walk into the Grand Paris hotel and Adrien left as feigned checking in. He left as quickly as he entered.

*~*~*~*

Adrien stared at his room in bewilderment, it was a mess. Marinette had destroyed it searching for the earrings.

“Spots off.” He muttered. Tikki flew out of the earrings and floated in front of him.

“What’s your plan now? Marinette has the ring and her memories; you can’t win her back and you can’t beat her either.”

“That’s where you’re wrong Teeks. I’ve got the ring right here,” Adrien taunted, holding out the diary box in his hand. “and you’re going to open it for me.”

She phased through the box and barely contained her giggles at the ring inside. She recognized Mari’s craftsmanship. A fake, she gave him a fake ring. Adrien snatched the ring out of the box. Slipping on the ring, he stood waiting for Plagg to appear and when he didn’t, he glanced down at the ring to see it hadn’t changed.

“Marinette gave me a fake.” He sighed infuriated, he ripped the ring off and threw it across the room.

“I’m going to show her the error of her ways, starting with her friend. Spots on Tikki.” He shouted as he leapt out the window.

*~*~*~*

His family didn’t worry about where he was all day, they did wonder why he was going out in his suit when all they were supposed to be doing was research on the botched timeline.

“Why are you going out as Robin? You know we’re not supposed to be seen, right?” Tim questioned, not looking up from his laptop.

“I have a friend who knows why the timeline was changed.” He replied, putting the ring in a false wall. He hoped his brothers wouldn’t question him about it.

“Wait what?” Dick asked, shock written on his face. Bruce looked up from the document he was reading and raised an eyebrow in question.

“You have a friend!” Jason and Tim yelled; the shock on their faces was quite amusing to him.

“Focus idiots, the timeline. You know why we’re actually here. Magic users and speedsters felt the change and my friend knows why. I’m going to check up on her because the person responsible happens to be obsessed with her.” He snarked exasperated, at the rate they were going to make him late and he was worried about Marinette. Damian had left immediately after.

He knocked on the balcony window waiting for a response. The interval of silence was too long for it to be normal, sure she could be asleep, but she knew he was coming back after he hid the ring. Carefully climbing in through the window he could see her on the ground, unconscious. She was still breathing, that much he could see. When her side he was enraged, her jaw was starting to bruise. Adrien knocked her out, and Damian was going to skin him alive. Lifting her into his arms, she shifted closer to him. He slipped out the window back to where he and family were staying.

When he got back, his family was waiting for him, Bruce and Drake sat while Todd and Grayson stood. They were all wearing shocked expressions.

“Damian, what the hell? Did you kidnap her?”

“What? No! Fucking Adrien Agreste knocked her out.” He defended, his rage rising. He attempted to set Marinette down on one of the sofas, but she wouldn’t let go much to his family’s amusement. The snickers behind him were setting him off further.

“Come on angel, you have to let go.” He muttered; she didn’t let go much to his annoyance and relief. He shifted her around enough that he had eventually woken her up. She froze in his arms before letting out an unholy screech.

“Who in the hell are you?” She yelled, flailing out of his arms. His family let out snorts and chortles at her bewildered expression.

“It’s me, Damian. Did I forget to mention that I’m a vigilante?” He replied dryly. She shot him a glare while rubbing a hand across her cheek. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just peachy. My ex-partner punched me in the face after he got what he wanted. Add that on top of the fact that he’s been manipulating me for the past year and that he caused my mother’s death. Yeah, I’m doing fucking swell; I’m going to tear him into pieces Damian.”

He could hear his family making noise behind them, fairly certain he heard Todd mutter Holy shit there’s two of them and decided to bite the bullet and introduce them motioning Marinette in the direction of his family.

“Marinette this is my family, unfortunately.” Damian presented, waving a hand in the general direction of his family.

“That’s rude baby bird.” One of the men standing spoke in a teasing voice.  

Marinette didn’t bother to muffle her laughter at Damian’s disgruntled expression. He glared down at her and she stuck her tongue out at him in return.

“I’m Jason Todd, the old man in the chair over there is Bruce Wayne. He’s Demon Spawn’s father.” A man with the white streak in his hair introduced himself.

“I’m Dick Grayson. How did baby bird meet you, because you are too cute to have just made friends with him?” The shorter man beside Jason spoke. “The one on the laptop is Tim Drake, don’t take his silence for rudeness though.”

“Right, Damian said you know why the timeline is screwed up. Can you tell us?” Tim interrupted, turning to face Marinette and Damian. Marinette raised an eyebrow in question. “Magic users and speedsters have experienced the backlash. They’re saying it originated from Paris, but they can’t place why or how.”

“A year ago, Paris was under attack by a magical terrorist named Hawkmoth and his accomplice Mayura. He wanted the miraculous from the local heroes Ladybug and Chat Noir. A set of earrings and a ring, together those two miraculous can make any wish true. Adrien Agreste the son of Hawkmoth, Gabriel Agreste, took the earrings and wished his mother never fell into a magical coma.”

“There’s no evidence of anything like that anywhere. How do you know that?” Tim questioned; wariness etched onto his face.

“I was Ladybug. Adrien betrayed me. He used them to wish for his mother back and magic comes with a price.” Marinette responded. She paused a moment. “That price was my mother.”

“Isn’t Agreste your boyfriend? Why would he betray you? Or knock you out?” Dick inquired.

“That asshole is not my boyfriend.” She snarled. “he’s the bastard who wished for me to love him and made me lose my memories of the last year.”

Dick stared at her in shock. “He made more than one wish?”

“Yes. He wished for me to love him and manipulated me into being his.” She sneered. “Not long after my mother died either.”

“What happens when you get the earrings back? Are you going to wish the timeline back to what it was?” Jason asked, curiosity taking over the shock. “Do you have the ring to do so?”

“No, I’m not going to wish for the previous timeline. I’m not stupid enough to abuse magic like that. Damian hid the ring for me, speaking of which. Could I get that back? I want to go rip Agreste a new asshole.”

*~*~*~*

Tag List: Let me know if want to be removed or added. 

 @bluerosette23 @thepeacetea @noirdots @tv-zombie-blog @2sunchild2 @vivilakitty @northernbluetongue @kurogaya913 @xxmadamjinxx @ayuchan07 @asianfrustration13 @poshplumcot @saltier-than-the-dead-sea @ladylb @littleredrobinhoodlum @mewwitch @winter-gardenflower @sonif50 @mooshoon @crazylittlemunchkin @captainmac6 @wookiestephen @octoberscorn @eliza-bich @dani-ari @theatreandcomicfreak @rikku052 @lysslovsanime @creator-josie @segajr @my-name-is-michell @luciferge @friedchickening @graduatedmelon @nomiegnome @kitten-rouge @beaversuenightly

[violetsmoak]

Pieces of April [5/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099044/chapters/50202530

Summary: On the anniversary of his death, Jason’s second life takes an abrupt new turn and he’s faced with a challenge that neither Batman nor the All-Caste prepared him for.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Warning(s): Past Jason/Isabel, kidfic, minor canon character death (pretty sure you can guess who, not either of our boys!), I’ll add more warnings/tags as I think of them.

Canon-Compliance: Takes place in between the two RHATO series, so after Roy and Kori and before Artemis and Bizarro.

Author’s Note: And now, for a change in POV!

First Chapter

________________________________________________________________

Of course, right after Jason leaves, the baby wakes up.

And starts to wail.

Tim freezes, all of his reflexes seemingly dissolved by the unyielding sound that such a tiny creature should not be able to produce.

Whatever Jason said about him being calm, in actuality, he’s completely freaked out over this whole baby thing.

Over the whole Jason’s baby thing.

This whole situation is just not in his area of expertise, nor does it require any of his previous training. And he can’t really see a situation where, on the infinitesimal chance Jason decides to give up vigilantism and become a stay-at-home-dad, he’d ever ask Tim of all people to babysit.

But then, right now, Jason’s not here.

The nurse from earlier returns, offering him a sympathetic look.

“It’s about time for her next feeding,” she tells him. “Do you want us to take her, or would you like to do it?”

Take her, please, Tim wants to say but bites his tongue.

He wasn’t talking out of his ass when he acknowledged that babies needed to be held. Human contact is good (even if that wasn’t basic medical knowledge, his own semi-neglected childhood can attest to that) and he all but volunteered himself for this to help Jason. He should at least do what he can.

Holding down the fort apparently includes holding down the baby…

“If you could just show me…?” he suggests, a sheepish smile pasted on and hopefully hiding his inner unease.

As expected, the woman’s expression turns into a mixture of amused and charmed. She chatters, motioning for him to take the chair Jason was sitting in before; Tim sits and lets her arrange the baby in his arms, showing him a light, gentle rocking motion to try to calm her.

“I’ll be right back with her formula,” the nurse says, though Tim barely hears her over the furious wailing.

He squints down at the scrunched-up face, trying to figure out how he ended up in this situation. Also, what exactly possessed him to call Jason his partner?

Because it’s the first believable thing to come to mind that didn’t involve spontaneous resurrections?

And technically, it’s even true. Sometimes.

And he was worried about Jason.

They may not be brothers, but they are family, and with that comes a certain awareness of each other. He knew the minute he saw Jason outside the dive bar that he was freaked out. He decided he would help him then, and he’s not about to back out now even if things have become way more complicated than anticipated.  

The nurse returns with the bottle of formula, and as soon as she’s explained how to properly position and feed the baby—apparently there’s more to it than just sticking a synthetic nipple in her mouth and waiting for her to chug—and prevent gas, she vanishes again.

To allow them “bonding” time.

Not what I thought I’d be doing when I got up this morning…

Tim’s done the baby thing before—sort of. But Steph’s daughter was bigger when she was born. Jason’s is tiny, and Tim is half expecting her to break into pieces before his eyes. Whatever manufactured confidence he had before, had been in the moment—and mostly for Jason’s benefit.

It had been imperative to get the infant out of the other man’s arms while he was clearly on the verge of a panic attack. Especially since no one ever knows how a cornered Jason Todd might react.

Not that I think he’d ever hurt an infant, but he doesn’t exactly process shock the way normal people do. It never hurts to have contingencies.

As he watches the baby guzzle her formula with surprising gusto, Tim finds himself going over a mental list of things that have to be dealt with if they’re going to get through life’s latest curveball more or less intact.

Paperwork for the baby. Arrangements for the mother’s body.

Isabel Ardila.

He knows her name only from the files as the woman Jason was seeing prior to the Joker’s last assault on the bats. She was caught in the crossfire, forcibly dosed with heroin to play on Jason’s past traumas, and following her recovery, ended things with Jason.

Or Jason ended things with her, Tim’s not sure. He never asked and he doesn’t intend to.

However it ended, clearly there was enough estrangement that she didn’t bother to tell Jason he was a father. It’s a decision he can, unfortunately, imagine the reasons for, even if he’s not sure he agrees with them.

Not like we can do anything about that decision now, though.

The baby slowly goes limp in his arms, and Tim has a brief moment of irrational, paranoid panic—has she been drugged?—before realizing she’s just fallen back asleep.

“Right. Because that’s a normal thing that babies do,” he murmurs to himself, and carefully maneuvers himself over to her crib to put her down on her stomach, like he’s seen in countless television commercials.

Then, uncertain, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and does a quick internet search, balking at the sheer amount of SIDS related articles, and scoops her up again to reposition her on her back.

Should probably tell Jason about that when he gets back…

Assuming Jason comes back.

Or even wants his help.

Which, Tim decides, he’ll offer anyway. Though that may mean playing to his strengths more than anything, preparing for every eventuality and having a series of back-up plans.

He highly doubts Jason’s thinking of any of that right now.

Phone in hand Tim begins typing quickly, pulling up tabs in his search engines for whatever concern pops into his head as he reads.

He suspects Jason is too uneasy about the whole situation to want to keep the baby, so Tim’s going to have to research adoption agencies through official and unofficial channels.

Open or closed, not sure what option he’d go with.

And then, there’s always the small chance he will keep his child. It’s a possibility that seems as likely as Bruce’s sudden predilection for joining the Russian ballet, but stranger things have happened in the family.

He skims through several forums and advice blogs for how to care for a newborn, makes a list of important supplies they might need in the immediate future and forwards it to Tam.

It’s several minutes later that his phone chimes, notifying him of her list of replies.

- Why the hell did you send me a list with diapers?

- Is this for a baby?

- Omg, did you kidnap a baby?

- Is that a thing that happens?

-First ninjas, now baby-napping?

Tim sighs and rolls his eyes. Normally he’d find her bemused and slightly-panicked responses a little amusing, but he doesn’t have the energy to go into details, even if Jason hadn’t sworn him to secrecy.

-A friend of mine has an emergency. Drop everything off at my apartment, please.

There’s a beat, another chime, but Tim doesn’t get a chance to read the message as his screen suddenly switches. The air is filled with a generic ringtone that Tim hastily mutes, eyes flicking to the baby and back to his screen. The number flashes ‘Unknown’, but Tim recognizes the number from earlier that day.

He stands, wanders away from the crib to answer quietly. “What is it, Harper?”

“Jay called me,” the older man says without preamble. “Told me everything. About the kid, about Isabel.”

“Yeah,” Tim agrees quietly. “I’d say shock is an understatement.”

“No shit.” He sighs. “Listen, I talked him down as much as I could, but the rest is on you.”

“What? Why?”

“He says you’ve been helping him.”

“For now, until someone more qualified comes along,” Tim retorts, implication heavy in his voice.

Roy catches it because he lets out a bitter laugh. “Sorry to burst your bubble, bird boy, but that ain’t gonna be me.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been in literally the same situation.”

“And I can’t right now. So I need you to be there for him.”

“He needs his friend,” Tim argues. “And he’s made very clear I’m not one of those.”

“Then you'd better become one fast, because I can’t.”

“Why the—” Tim’s eyes flick to the infant, and he can’t help giving in to the impulse to censor himself, lowering his voice, “—heck not?”

“Because I’m in a bad place right now,” Roy snaps. “I’m not in a good way for being around a kid, okay? I…” He pauses, like he’s weighing something, and then exhales. “I…fell off the wagon again.”

Tim's stomach sinks. 

“Roy…”

“Don’t tell Jaybird,” Roy orders. “I just…I need to sort myself out before I can be any kind of help for him. I show up there now, I’ll just add to his problems.”

“But—”

“This is you being tagged in, okay? Don’t fuck it up.”

There’s a harsh click in Tim’s ear, leaving him listening incomprehensively to the dial tone for several seconds.

“Are you…are you kidding me?!” he hisses after a moment, only just refraining from throwing his phone across the room in frustration.

He didn’t realize before Roy’s call just how much he was counting on someone else to step in and take over in the emotional support department.

I’m not cut out for this. This sort of thing…it should be Dick. Or Alfred.

He spends the next hour once again reviewing what he did to get roped into all this.

When Jason comes back—and something inside Tim unknots in relief that he did come back—he’s as ashen-faced as before. This time, though, there’s a determined set to his shoulders.

They stand and stare at each other in silence for a good five minutes before Tim realizes Jason’s waiting for him to speak first.

Right. Tagged in. Let’s do this. Ease into it.

“So, what are you going to do?”

Tim winces.

Yeah, that wasn’t exactly subtle.

Jason doesn’t seem to notice the awkward, though.

“No idea,” he replies heavily, leaning against the doorjamb and letting his head thunk lightly against it.

“Social Services is obviously an option.”

“No way in hell,” Jason snaps, straightening up and looking fierce. “I don’t trust them. And you can’t tell me with all the Wayne resources you’ve got access to, we can’t find something better.”

Tim expected that. He might not have had the exact same harrowing experiences with foster care as Jason did, but his very brief stint left him with a hint of that same disillusion with the system.

It’s not something I’d wish on any kid, least of all Jason’s.

“We can look into it. Organize the best possible adoption scenario without dealing with Social Services. There are actually a lot of couples in the community who would be willing to adopt.”

“No. This kid isn’t growing up anywhere near capes or masks or stuff like that.”

Okay, that’s understandable. It also makes it less likely he intends to keep her.

“Whatever we do, it will take some time,” Tim cautions. “Placing a child with a family isn’t going to be as easy as sticking someone in Witness Protection.”

Jason snorts and shakes his head. “Only you would think that’s easy.”

“So, now that that’s figured out—what are you going to do once the tests are finished?” Tim asks, focussing on the practical. “I don’t find a family within the next day or so, you’re going to need to bring her somewhere. Assuming you’re adamant about keeping the rest of the Family out of this?” That receives only narrowed eyes in response. “Stupid question, sorry. But she’s going to have to stay somewhere until then. I wouldn’t recommend leaving her here at the hospital, for a number of reasons.”

Jasons frowns, thoughtful. Then,

“I’ll keep her for now,” he decides with a heaviness that Tim suspects is caused more by fear than dislike of children. “Until we find a better place for her. Some family that won’t mind doing this in private.”

“Okay,” Tim nods. “On that note—where exactly will you take her?”

Jason falters, looking like he’s not entirely sure what to say to that.

“I…my safehouses aren’t exactly babyproofed.”

“I don’t think that’s an issue until they start crawling,” Tim replies, trying for humor but the very idea sparks another flash of panic in Jason’s eyes. He’s looking at Tim now with something dangerously close to expectance, and a realization hits Tim.

He doesn’t want to be alone with this.

And it’s the fact he’s never seen Jason look so vulnerable that sparks a truly terrible idea.

I’m so going to regret this.

“I have a spare bedroom,” he offers, earning a sharp glance from Jason. “Just until you wrap your head around this and figure out the next move.”

He half expects Jason to scoff, or laugh in his face or say something insulting.

It’s decidedly worrying when the only thing that happens is Jason’s shoulders slump and he nods.

Jason’s shoulders slump, and he nods.

“Yeah. Yeah, that would be…good. Thanks, Drake.” He pauses, considering something, and then adds, “Tim.”

Next Chapter

________________________________________________________________

Your feedback matters! I want to know what you think of my story, so feel free to leave kudos, a comment or as many of these emojis as you want and let me know how you feel!

❤��️ = I love this story! 😳 = this was hot! 💐 = thank you for sharing this 🍵 = tea spilled 🍬 = so sweet and fluffy! 🚔 = you’re under arrest! the writing’s too good! 😲 = I NEED THE NEXT CHAPTER 😢 = you got me right in the feels

[amplesalty]

Christmas 2019: Day 4 - A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Four rounds of sliders!

So, turns out I had the title of this movie wrong, it’s not just A Harold & Kumar Christmas, it’s a 3D Christmas! Which also answers the question of where we go from the second movie, apparently out goes all that racism and in comes just so, so many shots of things flying at the camera.

It’s 2011 by this point, have we not left all this in the past? Hell, they were doing this in House of Wax when I watched that last year and that was back in the 50’s. To their credit, they do poke fun at the whole 3D thing at times, like near the start Harold’s assistant brings in a big ass TV meant as a present for Harold’s father in law. Harold questions if the whole 3D thing hasn’t jumped the shark by now but his assistant disagrees, exclaiming that it’s going to be ‘amazing’ as he points down the camera for emphasis. Harold just dryly asks who he’s looking at.

Harold has been moving up in the world it seems, now a very successful businessman on Wall Street. Unfortunately this comes during the whole ‘Occupy Wallstreet’ movement and the streets outside his office is lined with protesters wanting to eat the rich. Perhaps with a side of eggs which they throw at him by way of the camera lens.

Like a good soldier though, his assistant steps into the line of fire and takes a barrage of eggs to the face. RIP in peace. They have this whole musical sting whilst it’s happening, I feel like this has to be referencing something but I’m not sure what, war movies aren’t my thing.

Harold’s father in law by the way is played by non other than Danny Trejo, which is a rather scary thought. Trying to impress the father in law is bad enough without factoring that into the equation. He’s predisposed to disliking Harold as well given that his mother was killed by a bunch of Korean street thugs when she came over to America.

We learn that in his youth, Mr Perez dreamed of celebrating Christmas with a Christmas tree but would never get his wish. It was only upon reaching America that his mother promised they would have one every year, only for his life to be cut short. That’s why he holds this season and Christmas trees in particular in such high esteem. We also learn that apparently he was born with his moustache, which honestly wouldn’t surprise me with Danny Trejo. Also, someone being viciously murdered by street thugs seems a bit dark for this franchise.

Speaking of facial hair, Kumar is still a layabout bum who got kicked out of medical school for failing a drugs test. I do dig the beard though. Vanessa has left him though and he lives in filth with a neighbor who rents out his bathroom to let homeless people take a shit. So yeah, little bit of a mismatch on how our two heroes lives panned out over the last 7 years. I’m digging the beard though, but he promptly shaves it off under the pretense of trying to finally mature somewhat when he finds out Vanessa is pregnant.

Although, he is a little distracted during this revelation by the unfolding scenes of A Christmas Story and Flick getting his tongue stuck to the flagpole. Clearly an Xbox man as well, seemingly playing some Crackdown and Gears of War recently. This isn’t like that time I kept seeing It’s A Wonderful Life everywhere, is it? I’m not going to start having A Christmas Story pop up in all these movies, am I?

H&K are reuinited for the first time in two years when a package turns up at Kumar’s apartment addressed to Harold, which turns out to be a massive joint. Kumar lights up, only for Harold to play narc and throw it out of the window. Miraciously though, it curves around and flies back in a different window, lighting up Mr Perez’s Christmas tree and nearly burning down the whole house. This only reinforces what a negative influence on Harold’s life Kumar is and it looks like our duo are going their separate ways again. But, this does give us our impetuous for another hour and a half of whacky shenanigans because if Harold doesn’t fix that tree, there’s a good chance Mr Perez might kill him.

So we get the odd foursome of Harold and his new white bread bestie, Todd (and his daughter) and Kumar and his neighbor, Adrian, out on the lookout for a tree. This does lead to perhaps the most racially driven portion of the movie as they head to a tree lot run by two African-American guys trying to do this ‘good cop, bad cop’ thing, the Fat Albert looking guy playing nice and the other wondering what a pair of honkey, cracker, white ass fools are doing coming up in their turf.

Turns out Mr Perez isn’t the only one out to kill Harold though, as the tree search takes them to a party by way of Adrian who has a hookup waiting for him that he met online. She’s a virgin because apparently all the guys at school are scared to go anywhere near her. Adrian realizes that’s because her dad is notorious Ukranian mobster Sergei Katsov. At first I thought this was Chris Meloni making his third outing in the series but no, it’s actually Elias Koteas who was Casey Jones in the Ninja Turtles movies.

After Adrian goes soft upon finding out this information, Mary will settle for anyone at this point and goes to start blowing Harold right in the middle of the party. An inopportune time then for Daddy to come home and find what looks like an Eiffel Tower situation going on.

Even after they barely escape though, the nightmare is far from over as they start tripping and think they’re in the middle of a multi storey evil snowman attack. And, this all takes place in claymation. This is a really awesome scene, the design of the snowman is great and the level of destruction going on is amazing.

I could do without Kumar showing off his clay cock though, I only dread to think how much worse this is in 3D with him waving it about in your face.

Luckily, old buddies Rosenberg and Goldstein are there to shake them out of their bad trip and take them to White Castle to relax. Man, they have a much easier time getting their this time. They’ve clearly learnt from their past experiences. Along with the whole 3D into the camera gimmick, the racism angle has been replaced somewhat with religion, notably here with a whole speech about how Goldstein’s wife had him convert to Christianity and him just going in on those ‘dirty Jew bastards’.

That and the use of his son as a distraction so Harold & Kumar can go steal a tree from a church. ‘Pillow fight in the altar boys room, last one there is a rotten egg!’. Going in on the Catholics as well, I see.

And of course, the big one, the main man JC. Apparently Heaven is like a nightclub and we get the story of how NPH was ushered in the front door following his altercation at the whore house. Only, Jesus didn’t take kindly to NPH macking on his ladies so put in a word to the big man upstairs to send NPH back down to Earth. I mean, it’s not 100% to the letter but I’ll take this as I fucking called it.

The third part of the trifecta of racism replacements in this movie is metaness. There’s a good example here how they call out NPH coming out of the closet in real life, only to reveal that NPH is as big of a poon hound as he’s ever been and this is all just a trick to get the ladies. David Burtka? He’s not his husband, he’s just his dealer!

There’s a couple of other moments like someone referring to Harold as ‘Sulu’ or Adrian saying he lied to Mary and said he was Robert Pattison’s acting coach and that Kumar worked in the White House.

NPH is starring in some big festive stage show and sweet talks one of the dancers back to his dressing room, suggesting she strip down so that he can give her a massage. Hey, it’s cool, we’re all girlfriends here, right? Now just give him a minute so he can squirt some of his special lotion on your back...

He hooks up H&K with a tree from the set but before they can head home, the gangsters catch up with them take them to a secluded part of town for an execution.

But as they make their escape, Harold finds his dick has become stuck to the pole they were tied to. Okay, firstly, between this and Office Chrstimas Party, I’ve seen just about enough dicks to last me til the end of the season. Secondly, maybe this is God’s way of reminding me that I have some unfinished business with A Christmas Story. Sure there was the original and that sequel no one asked for but there is another...

And just in case you forget this is a Christmas movie, Harold inadvertently shoots Santa out of the sky and Kumar has to perform impromptu surgery, because he always does. Santa being played by Richard Riehle who was in Grounded for Life and, relevant to this blog, Chillerama and the Rob Zombie Halloween II. Turns out he was the one who sent Harold the massive joint so that the two of them could reconcile. I never knew Santa cared so much about the friendship of two potheads. I don’t know if he’s a good fit for Santa though, a little too gruff and mean. Doesn’t have the heart of say, an Edmund Gwenn. That could have been an alternate way to do this actually, have a totally sacherine by the numbers Santa that gets corrupted by H&K when they get him to smoke with them, he’s on too much of a bad trip to deliver the toys like normal so it’s up to them to save the day.

I think I would have to put this above the sequel but behind the original in terms of quality. As one note and as fleeting an appearance as he is, the Ukranian gangster somehow feels more of a threat than the entire US government in the second film. Keeping this adventure local again makes it feel much more grounded and there’s just a more light hearted atmosphere to the whole thing when you don’t have that massively racist and oppressive tone pressing down on it.

[oh-mother-of-darkness]

asks (12)

Anonymous said: When I first came to this comic book fandom I was just a batman fan, didn't even know there was more than 1 robin (I feel so ashamed now oh my god), thought batman was the coolest superhero etc. But then I found your blog and started to pay more attention to batfamily. And now can't watch any batman-oriented movies (screw you, Nolan) or cartoons if there's no batfam member except Alfred. So, yeah, I blame you for this, thanks a lot (I'm serious, thank you so much, I love you)

:’) It’s my absolute pleasure

@macko-99 said: Do you think Duke has begun to acept the weird-ass crap that goes on in Wayne Manor or is he still getting used to it?

Is anyone ever truly used to it?

I like to think he know to expect something, but the day to day reveal of what exactly that something is can still be shocking. Just walk away, honestly. Don’t question it. This is probably normal.

Anonymous said: which comics do you recommend?

Hm my favorite series are Red Robin, Batgirl (2009), both Batman and Robins, and Robin: Son of Batman. Some of my favorite story lines are Under the Red Hood and The Black Mirror. For a better list, you’d have to be a little more specific about what you were looking for.

Anonymous said: hey what do u think of the dc's new Powerless show that coming out?

I’m really looking forward to it! It sounds like they’ve switched up their premise a little bit-- it used to be an insurance company, and now it’s R&D-- but I’m pretty happy with it either way, and I’m especially excited because the last trailer had them working for Wayne Enterprises. I wouldn’t necessarily expect any bats to show up in the show, but I can always pretend they’re there, and they might make references

Anonymous said: Can i request a fluffy damian acting his age™ hc's with cherry on top?

Hm I already did that one (here), so unless I come up with something else, I reckon that’s all there’s gonna be

@arabian-batboy said: Can write something where Bruce come across Jason in an alley after his resurrection but before Talia took him in & since he couldn't talk at that time (& because he's supposed to be dead) Bruce thinks it's just a hallucination and just leaves him?

Just for the record I am planning on writing this for you, Ive just been kinda busy lately. Sorry about the wait!

@lowbloodkiwi said: I've been on a completely unhealthy Jason Todd Binge and your blog is now victim to this search as well. (Aka nerdsobsessedwithheroes is me and Jason Todd beat my love for Dick Grayson oh no)

Lmao no problem :) My favorite list switches up all the time. Not the top spot, you know, but everyone else.....

Anonymous said: Would Jason have been better off never meeting Bruce or being adopted by him?

Hmmmmm that’s kind of hard to call, I reckon. I guess.... probably?

I think my answer would depend pretty heavily on whether Jason’s life gets any better or not-- specifically his mental health-- and I don’t know if that’s going to be the case. It would happen if I was in charge of things, but regrettably I am not.

Things as they are, Jason’s association with Bruce has been pretty terrible for him. The death/resurrection thing was traumatic on both ends, and then you got his estrangement from his family, all of the stuff with the League of Assassins, and now he’s killed a lot of people.

If Bruce hadn’t found him, we don’t know what would have happened, but I would assume four years in the foster care system and then... who knows.

The problem is that Jason was pretty messed up before Bruce got ahold of him, so I can’t say with any certainty that things would have worked out for him if he hadn’t gone with Bruce. I can pretty definitely say that it wouldn’t have involved dying and coming back to life, but I can’t say it would be fun. 

And even though Jason is doing really badly now, he’s very young in the grand scheme of things. If he can get to a better place that still involves Bruce, we potentially could be looking at decades of good stuff that ends up outweighing the bad. 

But for now, he personally probably would have been better off without Bruce. Of course, if that was the case, a lot of other people would be dead and/or worse off, but that’s not really the question here.

Anonymous said: What's your analysis of Jason and Bruce's relationship?

Okay I got 500 words into this and then my motivation suddenly disappeared, so I’m just gonna... come back to this question next round, if that’s okay

Anonymous said: Got any Jason Todd whump angst fic recs?

Ah I don’t actually read any fanfiction except my own, so if you’re looking for outside stuff, I’m afraid I can’t help you :///

My Jason angst is here: 1 2 3 4

I think the first one is probably the closest to what you’re looking for?

Anonymous said: how would you characterize tim? if you were writing the comics or describing his character to someone I mean

Oh boy that’s a complicated question

As a kid, I think Tim was highly idealistic and very eager to help. He was (and is) super smart, compassionate, and self-sacrificing... the problem being that if you continually sacrifice yourself, bad things tend to happen.

Tim volunteered to become Robin because he thought that Bruce needed him. Since that point, Tim has lost a whole lot of people: his birth parents, several of his siblings, and a lot of his closest friends (Bruce and Dick were fake-dead, Damian died, Cass died twice but both times very briefly, Bart, Stephanie, Kon).

All of that death (plus the trauma of 18086403658 near-death experiences and witnessing crime up close on a daily basis) has made Tim into a different person now than he was at the beginning. To quote Tam Fox, “Tim Drake is the saddest person I’ve eve met.” To quote Tim, “I grew up.”

Most of those people came back, but that doesn’t really fix things.

Grief is a big part of it-- so is this sort of exhaustion that makes Tim a little bit more likely to break rules than the others. His gray area is bigger. He’s a lot like Bruce in that he can be pretty calculating, and sometimes he isolates himself.

Even so, Tim has a lot of meaningful relationships (see above), and he never completely lost his nerdy-ass sense of humor or his empathy. Losing his birth parents was bad, but he did gain a new family, and that’s been good for him. His biggest motivation is still to help other people, and he’s great at it.

Anonymous said: I don't know why but I'm craving some of your exquisite angsty hc's with a hopeful or good ending or outcome or whatever,if you have any I'm all eyes bruh.Hmm maybe dami?Just go wild!may the angst guide you "if don't feel like it ignore me darling<3"

Oh shoot I forgot to mention you in that Tim angst. Sorry bout that, but it was for you

[bizmediaweb]

265: How One Blogger Grew His Traffic Tenfold Without Producing New Content

The post 265: How One Blogger Grew His Traffic Tenfold Without Producing New Content appeared first on ProBlogger.

One Blogger’s Experience of Growing Traffic Without Producing New Content

If you’ve been blogging for a while you’ll relate to Todd Tresidder’s story in this episode of our Blogger Breakthroughs series.

A blog that’s been around for a year or more ends up looking messy, and gives readers an inconsistent user experience. Content is old and repeated. Links are broken. Content comes in different styles and voices. Graphics look dated.

A blog can become a house with many extensions that hasn’t been architecturally designed with any clear thought or plan.

So what should you do? Scrap the blog completely? Or is it worth giving it a major overhaul? That can take time – sometimes years – but the rewards come quickly.

What Todd did:

New code base

New theme

New redesign

New internal linking

New navigation structure

Deleted junk, irrelevant and out-of-date content

Redirected deleted content to other posts

Rewrote, combined and updated remaining content

Branded image and social media policy

Todd stopped creating new content and started updating old content instead. And Google started rewarding his efforts.

It’s not about more content. It’s about better content. Quality is the new SEO.

Links and Resources for How One Blogger Grew His Traffic Tenfold Without Producing New Content:

FinancialMentor

WordPress

Pinterest

Further Listening

How to Get More Traffic by Updating Your Archives

Courses

Starting a Blog

ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Join our Facebook group

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: Hey, there. Welcome to episode 265 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger, a blog that is designed to help you start and grow a successful, profitable blog.

Now, today you’re going to hear from Todd Tresidder who has a remarkable story to share with you. I first came across Todd a number of years ago now at a conference. In fact, I heard about him before I met him. I kept bumping into bloggers who said, “You’ve got to talk to Todd. You’ve got to hear his story about how he completely updated his whole blog, which had been around for years, and gave it a real overhaul that just drove so much traffic and good things.”

Today, Todd is going to share his story of how he did that. He grew his traffic tenfold without producing hardly any new content on his blog. In fact, he deleted content on his blog and he’s going to talk to you about how he did that.

I think you’re going to love today’s episode, particularly if you’ve been blogging for a couple of years. This is one that is particularly relevant for anyone who’s got an archive of content already. This is something that you can do. It’s not going to be something that you can do quickly. It’s a big job but it can have amazing benefits for your blog.

So, hold on. This story doesn’t go too long but it is one that I’m sure you’ll get some real value out and you’ll probably have some questions. We may have to get Todd back on the podcast to answer them. So, hold on. Here’s Todd Tresidder.

Todd: Hi. This is Todd Tresidder from Reno, Nevada, United States. My site is called Financial Mentor and you can find it at https://ift.tt/24x6h6I. I teach advanced investment strategy and advanced retirement planning to build wealth. It’s an educational site that offers books, courses, the Financial Mentor Podcast, and one of the largest collections of free financial calculators anywhere on the internet.

I started Financial Mentor back in 1998, basically prehistoric times for the internet. Back then, all I had was a brochure where static website, built-in frames that modelled every mistake you shouldn’t do building a website. It was a showcase for worst web practices. Then I started using WordPress to run the site around 2008, which is where this breakthrough story I’m going to share with you picks up.

I quickly ran into a problem building the site in WordPress. It’s going to sound all too familiar to anyone who has been blogging for a couple of years or more. You start your site by writing your first blog post, then you write another, and another, and another, in a linear fashion until your site starts to take form. I followed the same linear build-as-you-go process, but also got sidetracked into detours as my business plans and goals changed over the years. Plus, I had no training on how to do this right.

I learned everything on the fly by doing and by picking up tips and tricks here and there. What I did was the equivalent of the guy with no previous construction experience suddenly deciding he’s going to build a house by picking up a board and driving a nail into it.

In my case, it was even worse because I was building the first room board by board. Then when my goals changed, I would start hammering away on the next room, and so on. The result was a hodgepodge mess of a site that had a little of this and a little of that but lack a clear focus and delivered an inconsistent user experience.

My writing style changed dramatically over the years, but none of the old posts have been updated to reflect my new writing style. I had no consistent publishing plans, so posts had widely varying topics and quality. There’s no consistent in internal linking. I had legacy problems like inline HTML because coding standards hadn’t been established when I started. There’s no proper use of social media or images because Pinterest and other outlets didn’t exist back then. The list of problems went on and on and on.

I realized I had a serious problem when every time I hatched a new plan to take the business to the next level, I would think, “Yeah, but I need to fix X and Y, and three other things before I can implement that strategy.” The site was so broken that I literally couldn’t build on it anymore. I either needed to scrap the business entirely or had to completely overhaul my site from top to bottom, set everything work right and provide a solid content marketing platform that I could build on.

I was actually leaning towards scrapping the entire business because reworking the entire site from top to bottom seemed overwhelming. But eventually, I figured out a step-by-step logical process to get it done one chunk at a time over a period of a couple of years, so I decided to go for it.

Now, before I explain exactly what that process was, please keep in mind that back then, content audits were unknown thing like they are today. Nobody was doing them or talking about them. I totally fumbled into this simply because my site was way more broken then most, so I had to get it fixed.

What I since learned is anyone who’s been building their site for two or more years faces the same situation I faced. The degree of the problem varies from site to site but we all confront this issue because their sites evolved naturally over the years that we develop them. It’s no different than writing a book. You start with chapter one and you write the book, page by page until it’s done. No author would ever publish that first draft because it has to go through several rounds of edits before the manuscript delivers a tight, cohesive reading experience.

Well, it’s the same exact thing with your website. You built it article by article, except most people never go back and edit it to create a tight, cohesive visitor experience. Instead, their published site is the equivalent of a first draft for a book.

My site audit checklist included the following; a new code base, new theme, new site redesign, upgraded internal linking, new navigation structure. I deleted a third of my content that was junkie, out of date, or irrelevant to the brand. I rewrote, edited, and combined what content remained to improve the quality. I then created a brand and image policy and social media promotion policy, and the list goes on and on.

When the audit was done, the site was entirely new, but with old articles. I literally stopped producing new content for years so I could dedicate all that writing time to improving the quality of what was already there. The counter-intuitive result was that the site grew faster than it ever had before.

Surprisingly, Google rewarded this effort almost immediately. It took exactly one week. However, that one week was harrowing because the first thing I did was delete and 301 redirected about a third of my post that were low quality. Google responded the very next day by practically removing my site from the search engine. For example, keywords that I’ve ranked on page one for years got pushed back to page 12. I was completely freaking out because I thought I’ve done the right thing but Google clearly wasn’t happy.

I held my breath for exactly one week as the loss of rankings and traffic continued. Then suddenly, everything reversed again and my rankings were better than they’d ever been. Keywords where I’d ranked on page two or three for years were suddenly on page one and keywords where I was on the bottom half of page one were now on the top half.

It was a huge change and this was just in the first few weeks with just the first step of deleting and redirecting junk content. But the content audit process I outlined was much more involved so the whole thing took me roughly two years to complete. During that time, my traffic to the site tripled with almost no new content added. In fact, the amount of my content was reduced by 30%. It was all about quality improvement, not quantity of content. Fast-forward to today and my traffic has grown roughly 10X with very few additions to content, but continual improvements to quality.

This nearly 10X breakthrough growth in traffic, while simultaneously reducing the amount of my content by a third, taught me a valuable lesson–quality is the new SEO. Growing your site is not about more. It’s about better. Google has always stated they want to return the highest quality result for any search query and they get smarter every year figuring out exactly how to do that. Don’t try to game the search engines and don’t be a slave to producing new content. Instead, align what you produce with what the search engines want to deliver. If you focused first on quality above all else, Google will figure it out and eventually they’ll reward you.

Darren: Wow. Thank you so much, Todd, for sharing your story today. You can find Todd’s site at financialmentor.com. It is a great site to have look around. He’s put a lot of work into not only the content audit that he talked about and the design of his site, but also you pick up a lot of tips just by looking at how he’s calling his rate is to action, how he’s getting them to subscribe to his newsletter and lots of other things as well. Lots of good tips just by looking over at that particular site.

There’s so much in this particular story that we could pull out now. I particularly related to the first part of Todd’s story and I’m sure many of you have related to that feeling of looking at your site after a couple of years of blogging and thinking, “My goodness, it’s a mess.” Content that’s dated, links and code that might be broken, plugins that kind of have broken, different styles of writing, different voices, different mediums, dated-looking content, the graphics that you’re using may outdated. Categories that perhaps you don’t even blog about anymore or content that’s replicated in different topics, different points in different posts, and inconsistencies with design and quality.

I’m describing my own sites here as I’ve looked at them over the years. We’ve done a lot of work over the last couple of years to do similar types of things as Todd. Although for us, it’s still a work in progress. I guess one of the things that I want to encourage you with a few can relate to that story is that it is a massive job to fix it, but it’s the type of thing that you need to just break down and do bit, by bit, by bit. You’re not going to do this overnight. There are parts of it that maybe you’ll do overnight like deleting old content and redirecting as Todd did, but for most of us, this is an ongoing process.

One of the things that I’ve notice amongst a lot of bloggers is that they’re spending a lot of time now updating their archives, spending as much time updating their archives as they do writing new content. Now, if you are in the early days of your blog, you probably want to spend a lot of time creating your archives, creating new content. But as soon as you hit that one, two, three-year mark of a blog, you also need to be paying regular attention to your archives. At that point, you might just want to pull back a little on how much new content you’re creating and start to pay more attention to those archives. If you were publishing five posts a week, for example, I would encourage you maybe post three new posts a week and do two old ones. Go back and update those as well.

Now, Todd gave a lot of new information very quickly there on what he did to fix his site. I just want to go through that list of things that he said again. I’ve written them down. You better find them in the transcript of today’s show in the show notes, which are at problogger.com/podcast/265, but here are the things that he listed off very quickly.

He said he rewrote his code base. There will probably be more important for those of you who maybe have changed platforms along the way but it’s some that you might want to seek the advice of a web developer or designer. He added a new theme, a new redesign. He did a new internal linking kind of setup. He went through old links and fixed some old links and really thought about how to, I guess, link and how his readers could navigate his site. He thought about a new navigation structure. This is so important for bloggers. You have a lot of categories in your archives that you maybe no longer write on any more or maybe you’ve chosen words to name those categories that aren’t really clickable. You might want to rethink your menu and navigation.

He deleted a third of his content; junkie, irrelevant, out-of-date content. This is something I know a lot of bloggers are going to be really nervous about doing because we’ve got in their minds that more is more. But as he said, quality is more. If you’ve got junky, out-of-date content, you need to either update it or you need to delete it and redirect it. That’s an important step there. Don’t just delete your old post. You want to work out how to redirect that with a 301 redirect. There’s plenty of good advice around the web on how to do that. There’s some plugins that can help you with that as well. But a 301 redirect tells Google that that post is no longer there, but you want to point anyone coming to that old page to a new page and that can help with your search engine optimization.

He rewrote, combined, and updated on the content that remained. This is probably the part that took two years. You heard him say that this whole process took two years. He would have gone through all that old content and updated it. He would have combined two post together, deleted one of them, and 301 redirected the one he deleted and overall improved the quality of the content.

This is what I’m saying a lot of bloggers spending a lot of time on there saying, “How can I write the best post ever on this topic?” that may have been written about 10 times before. How can you combine all of that information and create a new article that is the highest quality possible? This is what Google is rewarding. Then just having that one post on your site that is the go-to place, rather than having the same kind of article written and rewritten over and over again. He also did a branded image and social media policy. That’s certainly an important thing that consistency in your images and the calls to action to share is really important as well.

They’re the main things that Todd mentioned that he worked through. He also stopped creating new content at least for a year or so. He said that he has created a little bit of new content but from what I see, he’s probably spent more time on that old content. That’s because he’s been blogging since 1998 I think he said. He’s got a lot of content there and he’s able to do that for many of you.

You might want to be having one post, new post a week or maybe two new post a week to get some new stuff up there but also working on the old stuff. I would suspect, and I don’t know this for sure because he didn’t mention it that he would have been resharing that old content as he updated it. Again, once he did a complete rewrite of old content, I’m sure it would have been shared to his readers and they would have seen new content coming up because it was new to them, but in his mind, it was updated content.

Let me just re-emphasize what he said. “Quality is the new SEO.” it’s such an important thing. “It’s not about more, it’s about better.” These are Todd’s words; I’m quoting him here. He said, “Don’t be a slave to producing new content.” Now, again this really depends upon the stage of blogging that you’re at. If you’re in those first year or two, you do need to produce new content. But once you go and get past that, your site is going to suffer in terms of quality and ranking in Google if you don’t pay attention to quality as well.

I encourage you to spend some time in your archives this week. I do have a previous podcast that was recorded on a similar topic to this. It was episode 238. I told my story there about treating your archives as an asset. Talked about how your archives are depreciating over time and gave you some strategies on how to do some of what Todd talked about as well. If this is something you do want to dig into more, I do encourage you to go back to episode 238—not that long ago—and have a listen to that episode as well, it’ll give you some practical things that you can do. I wish you well in your updating of your content in your content audit.

If you got any questions for Todd or for me on this, I would love it if you would head over to our show notes today. As I mentioned at the top of this show, I think this is probably a topic we need to kind of dig even deeper into. We need to get Todd back on to do more an interview-style podcast. I haven’t asked him that yet, but if you’ve got any questions you would like me to ask Todd, I would love it if you would leave a comment on our show notes. That’s probably the best place to do it. The show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/265. I will collate those questions together and attempt to get Todd to answer them in some way or another, whether that be an interview or me. I’ll just ask him to leave some comments on that show notes as well.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today and the breakthrough story. We’ve got a few more in this series still to come and then we’ll get back into a more regular style of ProBlogger podcast. I hope you’re enjoying the series so far. I look forward to chatting with you next week.

How did you go with today’s episode?

Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

  The post 265: How One Blogger Grew His Traffic Tenfold Without Producing New Content appeared first on ProBlogger.

     Related Stories

264: How One Blogger Builds Engagement and Makes a Difference with Online Community Events

263: How Mim Blogged Vulnerably to Grow a Six-Figure Blog

262: How Carolyn Started a Directory to Attract Readers to Her Blog

  265: How One Blogger Grew His Traffic Tenfold Without Producing New Content published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/

[dorothydelgadillo]

"Original Research as an Inbound Strategy Ft. Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media" (Inbound Success Ep. 31)

If you could use only one inbound marketing tactic to generate increased visitor traffic, leads and customers, this inbound marketing pro says it should be original research.

In this week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Orbit Media Co-Founder and CMO Andy Crestodina shares his takeaways from 3+ years of creating and publishing original research, along with actionable tips that other marketers - like you - can use to create research of your own.

Learn how his annual blogging survey has dramatically increased the number of backlinks to the Orbit Media site, generated incredible buzz on social media, and raised the company's visibility with its audience.

Listen to the podcast to learn more, or read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kathleen Booth (host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success Podcast. My name is Kathleen Booth and I am your host. This week, my guest is Andy Crestodina who is the Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media Studios. Welcome to the podcast, Andy.

Andy: I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Kathleen. Kathleen: Oh, I'm so excited to have you. This interview is really a funny story about how this podcast evolves. I first started thinking about having you on as a guest when I interviewed Oli Gardner, who was on a few episodes ago. If anybody is a regular listener, they know that I always ask the same questions at the end. One of those is, "Company or individual, who do you think is doing really well right now?" I like to have examples of people doing it best practice style and I know my listeners do, too. Oli, who is somebody that I greatly admire and consider to be incredibly wise in this space, came up with only one name. It was yours, so that is about the highest form of praise I can think of. As soon as he said that, I thought, "Alright, I have to get this guy on." So, I'm so excited to have you here. Andy: I'm glad to be here and honored by that, I'm a huge Oli fan myself and I had the pleasure of getting to know him over the last few years and just follow everything he does. Oli is the greatest. Kathleen: Yeah, he always imparts a lot of value when you hear him speak. Now, interestingly, speaking of imparting value, it was fascinating when you and I started talking and diving deeper into all the things you're involved with, from the Content Jam Conference to some of the original research that you've done through your agency. I realized that, years ago, when I had my own agency, which I had for 11 years, it was Quintain Marketing, that we were actually using your research and citing it when we were creating content or blogging. I didn't even know, at the time, that that was you. I just knew that it was this great research, and very helpful, and very interesting and we wanted to share it with our audience. So, it was just a funny way of realizing exactly the point you were trying to make when we spoke, which is that original research is such a fantastic way to get your brand out there and to get noticed. Andy: Yeah, what a cool case study. I'm glad to hear that. We've been doing it for a while now, so I think we all mention other stuff or cite other valuable things without knowing, sometimes, just how close we might already be to the person who conducted the research, so that's funny. I didn't know that. We should look back and find those pieces and see what's changed since then. Kathleen: Yeah. I had a full-time Content Manager and she was very interested in doing research around best practices -- how long should it take to produce a blog, and how much time are people spending on these things, and how long are these, all of these questions that she was doing a lot of research on? There wasn't a lot of information on it at the time and so, I think she was really delighted to find the work that you had been doing and to find that source. It was very helpful to her.

Taking a step back for a second, though, I'm getting ahead of myself, so tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, about your company, and what you do. Andy: Sure, so I am the Co-Founder here. So, in the very beginning, 18 years ago, my partner and friend from high school and roommate from college, Barrett Lombardo was the programmer. I was the designer and I also wore a lot of other hats. I was the project manager, I was the sales guy or the marketer. As time went on and as Orbit grew -- it's just a web design company -- we gradually narrowed our focus and hired experts and found people who are better at those jobs than we were.

Today, I have six designers, and 12 programmers, and a CEO and so, my job has really just narrowed in its focus. I'm basically just the marketer now, the CMO, but our style of marketing is the same as yours. I'm a content marketer, so this is 18 years of SEO and analytics work and 10 years of blogging, content strategy, marketing, and social. Kathleen: Great. Andy: So, I speak at events. I have a podcast and have written a book and I'm just one of those active people out there who does his best to teach anybody anything that I can. Kathleen: So, the company has been around for quite some time and you've been doing content marketing, it sounds like, for about 10 years, did you say? You mentioned a number of the different channels that you've leveraged in the course of your content marketing. I assume it took a little bit of time for you to get traction through content, and I would love it if you could talk to us a little bit about when you feel like it really started to get results and what it was that was getting results. Andy: Well, we were already somewhat successful in search before there was really much of anything in the way of blogging. This is years 2003, and '04, and '05. We started to rank for the most important phrases -- the geo-specific, local relevant phrases for our business category.

We're web design, but what I learned was that people don't do web design that often and so, I wanted to keep in touch with people over this very long buying interval. So, for me, the original idea behind content was to just stay top of mind with people during this long sales cycle and very long buying interval. So, I thought I needed to send people a newsletter or an email. I have to have an article that's useful, that people would care about, so I started publishing articles on my website and emailing this small list of people who I knew would be interested.

So, it was 200 subscribers in the very beginning and an article every month or two and then, gradually, we got better at the strategy piece and the planning piece around that and learned that these articles could, themselves, rank for informational queries and grew the list, got better at the optimization of the email sign up form, which is an entire art in itself, which I love and love to teach, but it wasn't until probably 2010 that we hired the CEO. He built the Sales Team, so I no longer had to do all that sales work. I used to spend all my days on the phone and all my nights writing proposals. So, after Todd joined, I suddenly had an extra 20 hours a week and that's the time, that's the moment when I doubled my publishing frequency. I started the annual conference, I wrote a book, I created a monthly event, all of the things. I just basically got much, much more active and started to get much better results after I took off that sales hat and began to focus more just on the marketing piece. Kathleen: Yeah, there is a lot of research out there on the direct correlation between the volume and frequency of publishing and the results you get. You can say it a lot, but, until you experience the boost that you get, it's hard to really appreciate the value of putting your time into it. I say that having worked with so many clients over the years and I can tell them, "If you blog three times a week, you're definitely going to get better results than if you blog one time a week." But, I find that, until they really see the product of that, it's hard for them to attribute any value to it because their time is so, so valuable, just like you experienced. You had so much on your plate and it can feel like taking two hours out of the day to write a blog is not the best use of that time, but it is amazing, the results it can produce. Andy: It's very hard to explain to people. You almost have to feel what it's like. The people who are good at this, it's like they're standing in a river of leads. It's crazy how much demand you can generate, how many people are looking for stuff on the internet, the amount of demand there is for each topic and for each service. I sometimes just open an Analytics account and just pull up one of my clients' accounts and just show them the conversion report. "Look, leads everyday. See?" You know what surprises me is that people say, "I get my leads from referrals." Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: Which doesn't mean that you wouldn't get more leads if you were successful at marketing. Referrals are great. Nothing hurts that or this doesn't affect that at all. Yeah, I know what you mean. Just over the weekend, I made a chart trying to represent this, explaining how the amount of time that you spend on something increases linearly. It's a line going up and to the right, but results are not a line. They're a curve. Results are exponential. Time invested is linear. So, anything, as long as you're working smart, any work that you put in that moves you even a little bit farther over to the right on that hockey stick exponential curve, it makes an incredible difference, right? So, in my experience, it mostly is a great idea to put more time and effort into that thing, whether it's a social media post, or an article, or a newsletter, or a podcast, an interview, an outreach thing, a collaboration, and event because the difference between good and great is so big that it's very much worth the time and effort to make yourself even a little bit better and get over to the right side of that exponential curve. Kathleen: Yeah, and it's the content. It's like the gift that keeps on giving. I look at people who say things like, "Referrals or word of mouth give me a lot of leads." I think, "But, take you out of the equation. What's your 'hit by a bus' strategy? If you're out for a few weeks, does that source start to dry up or slow down?" Whereas, you put something out on the internet and it doesn't matter if you get hit by a bus -- although let's all hope that never happens to any of us -- that piece of content is still out there. One of my colleagues here at IMPACT, Marcus Sheridan, who is known as "the sales lion" out in the world, has a fantastic slide I've seen him share, which is about this one blog he wrote on the cost of an in-ground fiberglass pool years ago. Andy: Yup, yup. Kathleen: Because he uses HubSpot, he was able to associate closed customers with that blog. They would first read the blog and then, they'd go through the sales process and then, they'd buy -- and because he's able to associate that, he can quantify the revenue that's come from it. So, he has this amazing slide he puts up, which is something along the lines of, "This one blog post has yielded millions of dollars in revenue." When he speaks to companies about why they should spend time blogging, the question he always asks is, "Is there anything else you could do with one hour of your time that is likely to yield you millions of dollars of revenue?" Andy: Yeah. Kathleen: Probably not. Maybe there's a sales meeting or something, but, usually, it takes more than one meeting to close a deal like that. So, I always like referring back to that because it really is one of the best illustrations I've seen. Andy: Yeah. They say advertising is temporary, but content is forever. Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: If you stop advertising, that thing just disappears from the world, but, when you publish something, especially if it's optimized and searched, I think that's one of the big differences. Yeah. No matter what the tactic, the benefits are durable, right? Subscribers don't all subscribe immediately, so email list growth is durable. Followers tend to stay following for some time, so social media growth is durable and links -- people don't just delete links and pages from the internet that often -- so, the SEO outcomes are durable. Search, social, and email, if you build up those channels, you can benefit from the results for months or years to come.

Kathleen: Yeah, it really is amazing and you and I are obviously big content marketing evangelists so we might be preaching to the choir with the listeners that we have here. The thing that I thought was interesting about you is that you really have embraced this approach in a number of ways, from creating the conference that you're doing to have a podcast, to blogging, to doing original research. It was actually very hard when we first got in touch to immediately identify the thing that we should focus in on for this interview because we could easily talk about all of it, but then, this interview would be about five hours long. I remember I asked you the question, "If somebody listening could only do one thing or implement one thing based on your lessons learned, what would be the one thing you would suggest they do that would most move the needle?" Your answer was? Andy: Original research. When you asked that question, you just instantly sharpened my focus because this could've been about so many things, but, absolutely, I think, at the center of the most successful content strategies in the marketing space, for sure, there's a lot of original research. So, all of the CMI stuff was built on this and they attracted thousands of links and even this relationship that, although we didn't know it at the time, started with research.

All the HubSpot stuff, right? Look how much they've published in the way of original research, so it is, according to research, according to Steve Rayson's research at BuzzSumo, one of the two most powerful formats for content. I'm excited to talk more about it. Kathleen: Well, I think the thing that is so compelling about what you've done is -- you just said it -- in the marketing space, we're both marketers marketing marketing, if you will. We are marketing our marketing services and there is virtually no more competitive space -- maybe other than insurance -- where trying to get found is so difficult because other marketers are good at marketing. So, to stand out in the pool of marketers, you really have to be doing something right. You've had this experience producing original research and it has enabled you to stand out amongst an incredibly crowded pool of very competitive, very ambitious marketers. So, tell us a little bit about the research you've been doing, when did you start doing it, and how'd you come up with the idea for it? Andy: Well, the hypothesis is that, in every industry, there are missing statistics. I call it "find the missing stat," so the one that you mentioned and you started right at the top, there was a gap. There was a lack of information about how long it takes to create content. How long does it take you to write a blog post? No one had really answered the question and we could do this as an exercise. You and I can pick a random industry, that'd be fun, and just think through it and just look around and find that there's missing statistics everywhere, so that's the first hypothesis is that there's a missing statistic in your market and that the internet will knock down your door if you can just find out what it is and create the soundbite, create the stat, create the number that sells for X. So, in our case, it was how long does it take to write a blog post.

Now, to create a statistically significant answer to that, you have to ask a lot of people how long they've been writing blog posts. So, we needed to get a thousand bloggers to answer a question. In fact, we made a short survey. It was 12 questions and that was the first question is, "How much time do you spend per article?" We averaged their answers and concluded it was ... I have to look it up. The first year was 2014. It was two hours and 14 minutes or something, was the average amount of time it took to write a blog post and that obviously helped people make their case as they talked about their services, or they talked to their boss. The first slide in their presentation at a conference, the first page in their book, it's an important piece of information in our industry is like, "Yes. This takes time, but how much time?" That's the average time.

It gets exponentially more valuable as you continue to research and you track the longitudinal data, the trend. Now, I think it's three hours and 20 minutes. It's gone up 40%, so we keep asking and answering the question. By doing so, you have become the primary source and people will link to you all day long. You've advanced the industry, you've become relevant, you've contributed to the bigger conversation in a way that you wouldn't with just another medium quality blog post.

Click here to view Orbit Media's 2017 Blogging Statistics and Trends Survey Results

Kathleen: Now, I have to ask, to what do you attribute the increasing amount of time it's taking people to write blogs? I have a theory on this and I'm really curious to see if you're going to validate it or not.

Andy: Well, with this, I don't have data. I have theories as well and my theory is almost what you said a minute ago, which is just that it's so competitive. I see the trend and let's correlate. Bloggers who spend more time are more likely to say they get strong results, bloggers who write longer blog posts are more likely to say they get strong results. Bloggers who use editors, a formalized editing process, are more likely to report strong results. So, all of these things suggest that there's a professionalization of blogging that started probably a very long time ago where it's just posting little thing, like in a weblog.

Now, it's more like a business. It's a job title, it's a profession. So, as blogging becomes more like journalism and blog posts become more like articles, I'm not sure we should even call them blog posts anymore, they're mostly just articles, then you can see how that would justify a greater expense in an investment of time. When you see the correlation with results, you can see why people continue to do it is because they're finding firsthand that quality correlates with outcome. Kathleen: Yeah, that's very similar to what I was surmising because I know that when we first got into the content marketing game at my old agency back in 2008, you really didn't honestly have to put that much effort in to get results because so few people were doing it and blogs were short. You saw blogs that were 400 words and under. Now, that just really doesn't cut it any more if you're not delivering value. It isn't as simple as "blog and see results," it has to be "write good blogs that are really helpful and see results." So, I've observed the same thing. The posts are getting longer and more detailed. People are putting more work into them, at least, the people that are really good at this. Andy: Well, Oli's an example, right? Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: Just pick your favorite marketer and there's exceptions, right? People often cite Seth Godin as an exception. Kathleen: Yes. Andy: He writes frequent little shorties and that works for him. Yeah, and what better example than original research as an example of quality. You're literally making something original. Just look at a blog of any website and just count through the tips, or the ideas, or the opinions in the blog and ask how many of those are truly original. This is where research can give you just a huge and immediate edge. Kathleen: So, you came up with this idea and the first study or the results were published in 2014. When you first realized you wanted to do this, you mentioned you wanted at least 1,000 respondents. So, how did you go about building that list and making sure you got that number of responses? Andy: This is not a very practical answer because it's not a repeatable, scalable approach. What I did, it's almost like, as a joke, there's a software methodology they call the death march, which is when you just pull all-nighters until your product is done. It's crazy. Coffee.

Basically, I was and am fortunate enough to have friends who are generous and have audiences before we even called it influence or marketing, I guess. So, I just did tons and tons of personal outreach emails. I didn't use a tool. One at a time, I sent hundreds of LinkedIn messages and emails to people who I knew. The close friends who were open to it were kind enough to share with their audiences, so Ian Cleary was one. There's just a lot of people.

I also had to plan it from the beginning to include some bigger names in the piece itself, so there's 12 questions. For every question, there's a quote from Joe Pulizzi, or Ann Handley, or one of the big time names in the business. So, knowing that they'd be included, some of them promoted it. I'm like, "Yeah. As soon as I get done with this information gathering, I'm gonna include this quote from you, but I'm not quite done yet. If you feel like helping, you can just send this to your ... "

So, anyway, I sent 350 personal emails. My hands hurt. It was many, it was weeks and time's just a variable. So, you don't want to spend ... you can't spend half a year gathering data. Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: I think I spent about five weeks at night and on weekends, but, since then, I've gotten a little better at it. I have a list now of past respondents and I add to that list when I meet people who are content creators. There are tools now that didn't exist before that I knew of to do outreach, like OutreachPlus, or Mailshake, or these different tools that make sending semi-personalized emails to large groups of people much easier. Yeah. It was brute force, you could call it, slow. Kathleen: Now, did you find that you needed to offer any kind of incentive to people for responding? I don't just mean simple monetary incentives. Some people do that, but I've seen other cases where people will say you'll get the results before the general public or you'll get the full version. Everybody else will only get a summary. Was there anything like that or was it just purely people responding out of the goodness of their hearts? Andy: Well, I made it very simple and I reminded people in the outreach just how simple it was. It's less than two minutes to take, to answer 12 multiple choice questions and people often responded saying, "Wow, that was super easy." I honestly think that, for many of these, I spent more time on the email asking them to take the survey than they spent answering it. No, I never incentivized. It might skew the results, right? Because then, you're attracting people who are interested in getting incentives. Nope, I never offered anything. I still don't. It's just people. I know a lot of people have heard of it, so they want to contribute to an industry piece. No, Kathleen. I didn't, but I probably should've. It would've been easier. Kathleen: Well, I don't know. It sounds like what I'm hearing is that as long as you are able to streamline and simplify the questionnaire and keep it short and, therefore, keep the barrier to responding pretty low, that you really don't need to go that route. So, there's a lesson in there for people thinking about doing their first piece of original research to not overthink it and over-complicate it. Andy: That's for sure, that's key. I get surveys and I am on page 11 of a SurveyMonkey thing and I'm wondering like, "How are they even going to use this answer?" It's greedy basically, right? They're making the respondents pay more in their time and attention, but it isn't the only kind. The survey is not the only type of research. The survey was necessary to answer a question like, "How much time does it take to write a blog post?" Because there's no other source of that information, but I have since found other ways to create original research that don't require that kind of outreach, that can be created much faster. Kathleen: What would be some examples of that? Andy: Well, I tried to answer the question, "What features are standard on websites?" Because, I wanted to make an article about web design standards and I simply went to Alexa and downloaded a giant list of websites. Alexa.com has lists of the top sites and in every category and I had a virtual assistant go look and fill out the spreadsheet that I'd started that said logo in the top left, contact in the top right, value proposition above the fold, blah, blah, blah ... it's just observation. You just choose a data set and a hypothesis or a set of criteria and then, observe it.

So there's lots of research in marketing around the world that is not based on outreach and respondents. It's just simply based on observing data and creating an analysis from it. So that survey was actually extremely useful to me because it answers questions for my clients, like, "Is it standard to have a search tool on your website?" It's not. Today, you can still find it. It ranks toward the phrase "web design standards" and probably a hundred people read it every day.

Click here to view Orbit Media's article on Web Design Standards.

Kathleen: Well, I'll make sure to include a link to that in the show notes because I think that would be interesting for people to see what that looks like as a finished product. Speaking of taking research and turning it into a finished product, walk us through what that process looked like for you with the blogging research. I imagine the first time you did the blogging research, it was really just an individual project that you were working on by yourself. Was it just you that turned that into a publishable piece? How long did that take and what did the process look like?

Andy: Well, I had the help of Amanda, who is our Marketing Director, and Amanda Gant does a lot of the editing, and polishing, and some outreach, and coordination internally. So, I never do anything that's more than a draft, so there is workflow here, some workflow. I'm also lucky enough to have a team of designers, so I might do really rough graphics and diagrams in Excel or Google Sheets and give them to the designers.

They create those, so there's a lot of pieces that are coming together at the same time. From the very beginning, I do outreach with the influencers, so there's one per question. So, for the question like, "Do you work with a professional editor?" Or, "What's your process for editing?" With folks like Sonia Simone from Copyblogger, champion, brilliant, genius editor, it was just like, "Could you please give your insights into editing in general?"

Now, I wait until I have some analysis and I send them the data and I say, "Sonia, would you like to contribute by giving your two cents on the trend?" Then, I'd get input from the influencer on the actual data itself. As the reports come in and the research comes in, I will take an early look at the data to see if I can spot any trends or major shifts. Like, this last year, there's a huge spike in people doing paid content promotion. So then, I get the wheels turning on that as a topic and start to think about that. But, basically, I'm soliciting input, and there's content coming in from different sources.

There's my outreach partner who's getting the data. The data comes into SurveyMonkey or whichever we're using. Content from influencers comes in from this side. The data gets created as draft images, which are given to the designers, which come back to me. Amanda is contributing to the overall shape of the piece, but the fun part -- the light bulb moment -- is when you first get the initial quantifiable numbers in. You start to see the early results and you're like, "Wow, yeah. Are people spending more time or did that max out? Are articles really getting longer? Is it still true that publishing more frequently gets better results?"

There's a moment when you realize, "I'm looking at a spreadsheet here and I have insights into this industry that no one else knows about. It's 1:15 AM and I'm the only person who know that, in 2018, it takes this many minutes to write a blog post." It's fun. Kathleen: That's neat. So, start to finish, you're doing this yearly. How long is this process over elapsed time? Andy: If the average blog post takes three hours and 20 minutes, take a wild guess at how much time we spend on each one of these blogger surveys. Kathleen: Three months? Andy: Well, total hours. I track hours. But, that's true. It takes about three months end-to-end, for sure. Kathleen: Oh, gosh. I wouldn't know where to start, I would guess, at least, 40? Andy: Yeah, it's 150 hours. Kathleen: Wow. How does that divide out percentage-wise? Andy: Well, when I was doing it, it was 60 hours of outreach. Jason Quay has helped me more recently and he spends about 40 hours doing outreach that is simplified and faster partly because there's tools now. You could use OutreachPlus and it just helps. Tools like this make it much, much easier to send emails to lots of people and they're still genuine. Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: It's a human connection still. It's not mass mail, actually. The analysis is probably another 25 hours, the outreach, the editing, the image prep, it would be another 40 hours. You put in the promotion of the piece once it's done, of course, is gonna be even much higher. There, again, is that idea that time is incremental and on a straight line. It takes me 15 times as long as the average article because most of my articles take six hours to write or something, but the results are probably 100 times. So, would you spend 15 X on something? No. Most people would not do that, but what if you had some certainty that the outcome would be 100 X? That's huge. You should do it. We should all be spending 10 times what we used to spend on a specific content piece twice a year because you know that the results are ... you'll have contributed to the industry. You'll have helped all of your colleagues and made something completely original and new, so I think it's worth it. It's insane amounts of effort, but I think it's worth it. Kathleen: You've produced this report each year. How have you promoted it? What format is it published in and what channels do you use to get the word out? Andy: Well, I'm the guy who never uses a lead magnet, so I'm weird that way. You can get the whole thing just by reading the whole thing and anyone can get it, but there's a lot of great promotion tricks involved. One of them is each one of the data points in the piece actually can contribute to the value proposition of somebody out there somewhere. So, people who use a formal editing process are more likely to report strong results. Who would use that? Any company that offers editing services. So there's a lot of targeted outreach you can do to people who will instantly be thrilled to have found this bit of data. Year over year, you can go back and use a tool like Open Site Explorer to see who's linked to something. Anyone who linked to it before, covered it before might be interested in the update.

You can use tools like BuzzSumo to see who shared something. Whoever shared it before, would likely be interested in it again. In fact, you stack the deck by including all the influencers in the piece, means it's automatically gonna get visibility because they're gonna talk about it all over the place probably. Every year, Pulizzi and Rose would cover it. You don't have to make sure that the big names know about it. They were included in it. Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: It's like, "I don't have to let Ann Handley know that the new survey is out. Her face is at the top." So, the collaborative content means that the influencer marketing is built-in. Of course, it's big hit in the newsletter. As soon as it's live, you can reach out to publications and say, "Do you want to cover it from this angle or that angle?" You can offer certain media outlets exclusive versions of it by correlating, by finding different correlations and making something original for them. A lot of people said they wanted to cover it, and I would just give them the full raw data if they wanted to find something new in it. I've just done a full-court press on email and social.

Original research gets much more easy to promote after you've done it several years in a row because anyone who is involved with, shared, commented on, or linked to previous versions of it are people who you should let them know that the new one's live.

Plus, the 13th question in every survey is, "Would you like to be notified when it goes live?" Those are not people I put on my email list. I'm very careful not to send email to people that don't want it, but those people ask to get just the survey results. So, there's 1,300 people right there who asked to be notified when it's live. Kathleen: That's great. Now, I imagine there are an infinite number of ways that this content could be repurposed. You can have your one summary report, but are there other ways that you take this and turn it into ... I imagine you can make things like infographics, or slide shares, or what-have-you. How are you using it throughout the year? Andy: Well, the infographic is an immediate home run because my friend, Barry Feldman, who's my podcast co-host and good friend, he makes an infographic out of it. He pitches that different places. Everyone immediately picks it up. So, every year, I think it's been HubSpot who runs one of the early versions of the infographic on their site. There, again, you can use Open Site Explorer to see who linked to that version of it over there or you can use BuzzSumo to see who shared that version over there. Anyone who you like and has a certain level of fame, you could reach out to them and offer to collaborate with them on something. Yeah, repurposing it. It gets mentioned on the podcast, it gets written about in lots of places, in lots of ways. I used to do a bunch of ... I had to save energy while doing this research piece because, as soon as it went live, I tried to go on a little mini guest blogging tour.

I've got a little kid at home now and I'm too busy, but I help people who want to cover it and so, lots of other websites will pick it up and start to write about it. When they do, I'm fast to get them other insights they need. Emarketer.com is very rigorous and they want to know all about how I gathered the list, so you have to just be able to provide that to them. It's really PR basically. Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: You made news. As soon as you make news, you have to be ready to continue to get the echo chamber going and respond to requests, to people who want to talk about that news. Kathleen: Yeah, and this has obviously worked really well for you because you're continuing to do it. Can you talk a little bit about the opportunities that doing original research has opened up for you? Andy: Well, one thing that I didn't do as well, but I think I would do if I was in a different industry would be to create statistics that support our value proposition, which is an obvious one, right? That's why most people do research and marketing is not to get direction in content marketing, but to support their value prop. So, companies that do X are more likely to get this result, so it becomes part of your homepage and all of your materials. Another way to do research to get results that I don't do but could, would be to do it like a smaller data set but higher touch. So, you guys would be great at this. On behalf of one of your clients, you interview 50 CMOs. Tell them what their top pain points are or something. So, when you call someone and say, "I'd like to interview you. It takes five minutes. I just need some data." They say yes not because it's a cold call because it's not, but it's still a pretext to build a relationship. Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: You're on the phone with someone that you'd like to, one day, connect with more, or sell to, or collaborate with. So, I think that high touch, smaller dataset outreach, like phone interviews, would give you a much better networking benefit that I've gotten. So, there's definitely ways, different angles on this that would give you better benefits than what I've experienced myself, but the upside to us has been very high in terms of just list growth, and followers, and mentions, and search, all those good things that happen when you ... through normal content marketing, just an extreme version of it. Kathleen: You've had opportunities to speak as well at conferences, I'm sure. Andy: I was doing a ton of speaking even before this and I don't talk about it that much. Occasionally, I put in a slide where, just like any other slide, it supports something else I'm saying, but what I would say is it helps other people. I get mentioned in a lot of other presentations because of it. Kathleen: That's great. Now, you're a guy that I know that appreciates some solid data. Do you have any data you can share with us about what impact this has had on the company, whether that's website visits, or backlinks to your site, or customer acquisition, any of that? Andy: Sure, so I'm gonna go right now to Google Search Console and we'll see which of my pages have been linked to the most, according to Google itself. We will see just how these were the articles that've attracted the most authority and links from other sites if I pull it up. You can see how the spike in traffic from email -- it's always one of the top emails -- I could put my own domain into BuzzSumo and you could see how these are always some of the top shared articles. So, I said at the beginning, many, many years of search, there's a gazillion links to our website, but I'm looking now at the Search Console> Search Traffic>Links to Your Site report. I'm gonna sort by source domains and number one is our homepage, that's normal. Numbers two, three, and four are all blogger surveys. Kathleen: Wow. Andy: So, there's been four and then, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Number nine is another blogger survey, so there's four URLs on my site that are these surveys. Kathleen: Four in the top 10. Andy: Yeah, it's four. All four are in the top 10 and three of them are the top three if you just include the homepage. So, it would be unethical to not link to research, right? It's called a citation, it's like the bibliography. So, it becomes very obvious after you think about it, even for a few minutes, why original research attracts links and gives you a durable SEO authority benefit. It's because people have to link to it to support the way that they used it, so a high domain authority website links to this survey probably once a week, just organically. I don't have to do outreach. It's like you're just link attraction. Kathleen: For anyone listening to this thinking, "I need to get on the ball and do some research" what advice would you give them, for a person starting now, based on your experience? Andy: Well, look at the industry that you're in and try to find gaps. I would define that idea of the missing stat -- the missing statistic -- and something in your industry that is frequently asserted but rarely supported. So, whatever it is in your industry that's frequently asserted but rarely supported, you can go out and your goal is to then fill in that gap.

There's a blank spot. You're gonna fill in that blank spot with an important supported piece. But then, again, you shouldn't go in with an outcome in mind. It's research, so you should be prepared to find unexpected things. If you don't have the network to do a huge, giant survey thing, either partner with the media, partner with someone else, right? If you ever want to partner on a research piece, we're gonna do something amazing, Kathleen. Kathleen: I'm calling you right after this. Andy: Yeah. When we hang up, we're gonna create a small piece. Kathleen: We're gonna figure out what the missing statistic is. Andy: Yeah. It's gonna be good, or just use that observation trick, or, better yet, here's an even easier one, you can aggregate data from other surveys. So, every year, I do this how much money do marketers make survey or not a survey but a research piece. Now, I have no data about how much money marketers make, but I just go to Glassdoor and payscale.com and find the median of all of their marketing job titles compensations. I immediately have 60,000 data points and almost a more authoritative answer than either of them because I have the combined. Kathleen: Yeah. Andy: I can say like, "The average marketing coordinator makes $43,000" or, whatever the numbers are. So, you can also just aggregate data from other sources. Popularizing existing research, there's nothing unethical about it. It's called being like Malcolm Gladwell, that's all. There's lots of people who mostly do marketing of other people's research. That's not weird. But I would start by looking at your industry. Try to find a missing statistic, that thing that's frequently asserted but rarely supported. Kathleen: Well, it sounds like what I'm hearing is something that actually makes me excited, which is that you don't have to be a statistician. You don't have to be trained in the art of asking questions a certain way. It really does sound like you have to scratch your own itch. You have to think about "what's that piece of data that I want?" and maybe put together just a short list of questions around that. You could start with that, or, I loved your example of the observable survey of the websites. Are there things out there or trends that you could observe? Like you did, get a virtual assistant to do some of the work for you. All of this, I'm thinking, at least from what you said, it doesn't have to be a massive undertaking. You can make it a massive undertaking if you want to, but you don't have to. There're a lot of ways to simplify it, which is really reassuring. Andy: Yeah, yeah. There's tools that have all kinds of data where you can just grab the dataset from there and, sometimes, combine different datasets. Seriously, in a mini workshop, if you and I spent 20 minutes, had a glass of wine and just brainstormed, we'd come up with some great topics. You could just imagine what the outcome would be, what the insight would be, who would care about it, how you'd promote it, where you'd publish it, what formats might it work well in, who might be an ideal contributor to it, what influencers would want to know. There's so much missing information in the world, right? These are great days to be a marketer and think bigger than the other marketers around you. Kathleen: Yeah, and so many great tools for collecting and analyzing data, too, that weren't there just a few years ago. Well, so much good stuff here. This is so interesting and I am 100% gonna take you up on that. Let's have a glass of wine and brainstorm topics.

In the meantime, I'm going to ask you the same few questions I ask everyone. So, starting with the one that bubbled your name to the top of my list, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Andy: Well, I've gushed about her already. I'm gonna give the name Sonia Simone because I owe so much to her writing and teaching in the very beginning. Copyblogger is an amazing resource to this date. Rainmaker Digital is the other name for the brand, but Sonia Simone, I got to see her two weeks ago. It was awesome, it was beer not wine, but I saw her at Social Media Marketing World, which was fun. Yeah. If you ever talk to her or have her on your show, she has this just soft voice, but knows every answer. She knows everything, she's a killer SEO, she's just an incredible, incredible marketer. Her targeting is accurate, her quality is huge. She's so unassuming about it all, but that woman could blow up any brand. She's amazing. Kathleen: Well, now I'm going to have to have her on. So, Sonia Simone, if you're listening, I'm coming out for you. I'm looking for you to be my next guest.

Building on that, marketing is changing so quickly. The technology that underpins how we market is changing so quickly. How do you stay up-to-date? What are your favorite sources for educating yourself? Andy: So, I like this format. I like that we're on a show and I think that it's a great opportunity and our listeners will appreciate a podcast recommendation, I hope, because podcasts are just a fantastic way to learn while your eyes and hands are busy. Experts On The Wire with Dan Shure is an SEO podcast that a lot of people still don't know about. I'm listening right now to his 90th episode, but he has so many great guests that you've never heard of who know so much. Some of it's partly news, a lot of it is very tactical, but, for anyone interested in search, Experts On The Wire by Dan Shure is an excellent podcast. Kathleen: That sounds like a great recommendation. I, too, love podcasts, which is probably why I wound up starting one, so I'll have to check that out.

Lastly, you've shared so much great information and so many wonderful insights into how to conduct original research. If somebody out there is thinking about doing this and wanted to get in touch with you and ask some questions, what's the best way for them to reach out to you? Andy: LinkedIn might be my best social network, although I'm very active on Twitter. Yeah, orbitmedia.com, or social media, or andy@orbitmedia.com is my email. My phone number is (773)353-8301, leave me a voicemail. Kathleen: He wins the prize as the first guy to give out his phone number in a podcast. Andy: Everyone has everyone's phone number, anyway. Who cares, right? Kathleen: That's true. Andy: People don't call each other unless they're serious about really something urgent. Kathleen: I love it. Well, that was one thing that Oli did say about you when he mentioned your name was that you're a great inbound marketer not because you're trying to actively sell something but, rather, because you're trying actively to be helpful. I think this is the perfect example of that, so thank you so much for sharing all of this.

This has been really fun for me. If you are listening and you enjoyed the podcast, I would love it if you could give us a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever platform you choose to use when you listen. If you know somebody who's doing really kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thanks, Andy. Andy: Thank you.

Want to stay updated when the podcast is released?

Drop us your name and email address below and we’ll send you the show notes every Monday!  

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/original-research-inbound-strategy-andy-crestodina

[ask-dsminecraft]

Ramblings From An Alpaca Farm In South Wiltshire: September 2017

I used to be at work when the e-mail arrived, my Backberry quivered in my pocket as I sat at a desk doing one thing. Anyway, the e-mail was from the WTA(E) which heightened my excitement. I downloaded the certificates (Oh sure, I can obtain as well as a carry out a myriad of different functions) and the primary one was Qjori's results. By now I used to be standing up and trembling barely. This was the massive one. There was too much riding on these results. So from the highest. Get in there my son! I exclaimed out loud (and that i mean LOUD!) Pretty good for a fourth fleece! So what did the rest of it mean? The subsequent stat was the SD or Normal Deviation. Again I knew the decrease the quantity the higher. Qjori's came in at 3.90. Now I did not know what it meant however I knew that was a good number, excellent. In the event you do that, people can be tempted to click on by means of to your website to see what else you might have there. A video that demonstrates how to do one thing is often very talked-about. Persons are at all times searching for useful, free recommendation and data on the internet. Instructional video's are in all probability the simplest sorts of video to make, as you simply need to reveal a product or one thing that you recognize too much about. Give your viewers a chunk of your self by making your video clip private. People are curious by nature and love to seek out out all about other folks. Be pure and be your self. Michel Maling enjoys blogging and sharing recommendation with others. Studying to generate your personal earnings on-line is a good solution to work in the direction of monetary freedom. Log in or Create Account to publish a comment. Publisher: Nadia khan YouTube is one in every of the most well-liked websites on the web -- and for good purpose.

I did not weigh him as we speak, That is TWO DAYS IN A ROW! What willpower! I'll in fact weigh him tomorrow. The sun truly came out today and that i took the opportunity to remove Tsars coat and let him charge around 'au naturel'. He really was going for it in the present day, he truly pronked and was leaping on all and sundry. There was even a small orgle! He stands around as if he owns the place and aside from the bald rear left leg you wouldn't know there had been anything incorrect with him (he hides it effectively within the under picture!). I used to be also wanting by the fleeces as I went and a new show group is taking form. Little Todd is coming alongside nicely and after initially considering that he was brown he's most definitely gray. Now we have not ever had a grey earlier than and I am a bit uncertain as to how much white they want on them to be categorized as grey for the show ring? Has Todd received sufficient white on his face? I just don't know. Right here he is subsequent to Tabitha whose fleece can be beginning to change in a quite encouraging manner. Finally I took an image of the final word poseur in the sphere, Talisker. Always seems fab (aside from all of the crap he is carrying round in his fleece).

I was given the most important Inca coat out there however it merely didn't do. Fortunately there are different alpaca homeowners with muscles and Gary from Popham saw my dilemma and lent me his 'proper man measurement coat'. Into the ring and blow me down 'we' gained second place. Now I comprehend it was the alpaca winning the rosette but I wish to assume it was an actual group effort. The lovely girl in query, who behaved impeccably I might add, is owned by Lawrence Shapland of Leytown Alpacas. I don't know when you learn this drivel Lawrence however I hope you don't mind the mention. Anyway, a real crew effort by Leytown, Inca, Patou and Popham alpacas noticed a second place rosette won. I had my alpaca present 'fix' and was able to leave the show a bit of happier although I would have cherished to have immersed myself for the four days. Never thoughts there's all the time subsequent 12 months. A fast drive home then off to work for me for a 5 to 2 late shift. Up at 7.30 resulting from a small man calling his new friend and I'm away to work once more in an hour or so.

At the moment rather a lot of parents are contemplating a home hen coop for his or her backyard. They like the concept of recent eggs every day and entry to all natural poultry meat—meat with no progress hormones or antibiotics.And then there are those that just like the thought of a hen or some chickens for pets. Oh Yeah and this pet can still provide you with eggs daily! However in case you are eager about placing a house hen coop in your yard there are some points you really need to think about first. Number one challenge--Does your local municipality allow the elevating of chickens in your backyard? That is the first thing you might want to know. Second - what is going to the purpose of the chickens be? It might seem a bit of crazy, some individuals have intentionally built cell coops specifically to permit their chickens to keep up their grass by consuming up the pest insects and naturally fertilizing the the soil. Take these three considerations in to account and you'll feel higher and be ready to get started with the design of your own home rooster coop. Designing and building your coop shall be lots simpler when you have high quality constructing plans. Plans that cowl all the problems needed to be covered--in depth. This is especially necessary for the novice. Placing up a house chicken coop is presupposed to be fun, easy, and shouldn't price too much. Get the fitting plans and you will find that's true. Jasper White has constructed a terrific free useful resource at Rooster Coop Heart for insightful tips and information on planning, building, and caring for a great hen coop go to Hen Coop Heart . Log in or Create Account to submit a remark. Writer: James J Harley There are lots of benefits you will get by raising chickens. A method to have the ability to get pleasure from such wonderful issues is by raising chickens in your urban chicken coop in your yard. Publisher: James Harley Among the numerous benefits you can get for having rooster coop building plans to help you out is that it might take away all the guess work there could also be.

Should you loved this article and you would love to receive details about Adopt an alpaca Hensting Rocky Road Silver i implore you to visit the web site.