#edit: the things that sold out in 5 minutes are back in stock and should arrive by the time i start shipping next week!!!!

[lazylittledragon]

my art shop is OPEN!!!

anyone who grabs anything has my eternal love bc i'm so happy to finally be able to do this

also all proceeds from the watermelon sticker are being donated to MAP (medical aid for palestinians) <333

[caleiiiii]

mcytbers as subway workers because i work at subway and i said so

i wrote this all at like 1 am im sorry

subway terminology (at least where i work)

waste out -means an item cant, or isnt, being sold, like overbaked cookies or expired milk. gets written down on a list for tax returns or smth

freezer pulls -pulling items from the freezer to the walk in fridge so they can thaw for the upcoming days

POS system -the software used for ringing up food, has a bunch of options per type of sandwich

generally 2 shift rotations , each one has a shift lead which is ur main opener or closer

characters

dream 

makes sandwiches so fast. 

how ??? 

he wraps the sandwiches immaculately as well

definitely a main closer

george 

just. disappears during a rush 

only to be found two hours later STILL doing dishes

dream and sapnap are not pleased.

sapnap 

convinces dream to waste out bread for him so he can eat it

gives ppl he likes free cookies 

terrible at wrapping sandwiches

tommy 

always works with wilbur and tubbo. always. 

he HATES freezer pulls but if he has to he can be seen SPRINTING between the freezer and the fridge

also bad at wrapping sandwiches

does all the online orders for tubbo because he cant read them well

tubbo 

loves to bake the bread and cookies

got a complaint once because he read an online order wrong so tommy always does them

hates ringing people up but loves to make the sandwhiches

technoblade

only works like 1 shift a week but its the most goddamn productive shift of anyone.

always makes sure they are selling potato soup when hes working

another main closer

wilbur

always controls the radio in the store

always works with tubbo and tommy, drives them to work

bribes others so he doesnt have to do the dishes

main opener

philza

the manager

super chill about scheduling

turns a blind eye to people “accidently” dropping cookies and wasting them out

niki

a goddess at baking the bread and cookies

never burns anything ever

everybody wants to work with her shes so nice

fundy

is really good at ringing those ppl up with 28372 coupons

horrible at making sandwiches tho

the only one that knows how to fix the soda machine when it breaks

quackity

always gets asked to translate the writing on the boxes since its in spanish 95% of the time

loves stocking the milk cooler so he can take home the expired sodas n shit

always forgets to remind customers when stuff costs extra

schlatt

that one transfer from another store that does everything

slightly wrong.

its been long enough now that he should know better but nobody wants to correct him.

eret

has tons of pins on his hat, 10/10

really good at making the wraps

always says hello when customers enter

karl

the new hire

immediately taken under sapnaps wing, much to the chagrin of dream

much more bread is now wasted out.

bbh and skeppy

regulars that are just. always there

they know all the employee gossip and get discounts on food

phil is .5 seconds away from asking them if they want a job

normal shift schedules

wilbur, tommy, tubbo (day shift)

dream, george, sapnap (night shift)

eret, niki, fundy (day shift)

technoblade, quackity, schlatt (night shift)

karl mainly works with the dteam, but jumps around

random things

the cookie incident

once tubbo accidently overbaked like 2 dozen cookies

so he and tommy ate all of them during their shift

they did not come into work the next day.

dream and techno rivalry

dream and technoblade have a rivaly about who can close and leave the store the quickest

eventually they decide to time themselves and race eachother on their respective shifts

techno wins with a time of 3 minutes before theyre officially allowed to close.

they both get yelled at by phil

technoblade’s only mistake

the only mistake technoblade has made ever was accidently leaving the bread cabinet open overnight

wilbur, tubbo, and tommy find it in the morning and have to throw all the bread out

tommy and tubbo split the bread and each leave with a garbage bag full of subway bread

wilbur still wont let techno live it down.

hacker things

once fundy hacked the POS system to give him a 100% discount

used it for about a month before someone (quackity) accidently pressed the option and snitched to phil

luckily, he just sighed and reset the system

cookie dough

wilbur comes up with the idea to pop raw cookie dough in the microwave and eat it half baked

phil comes in one day only to make -direct eye contact- with tommy as he and tubbo lick cookie dough off of some deli paper

allows it to happen as long as they pay for the dough

subway garlic bread

on a really slow day niki and eret are goofing off and create

~subway garlic bread~

it instantly becomes a secret menu favourite among employees and regulars

the bet

once skeppy bet quackity and schlatt that they wouldnt start a fake argument during rush hour

skeppy recorded the whole thing

technoblade can be seen in the backround silently making sandwiches as quackity and schlatt scream at eachother about if quackity has a “flatty patty”

phil tries to be mad but sees all the tips they made and lets is slide

sacrifices

george is the one always sacrificed to deal with the crabby middle aged moms

its his punishment for not helping during the rush.

torture

sometimes for fun wilbur takes his meal break right before the dinner rush

tommy stares at him in fury the whole time.

betting pool

none of the employees can tell if bbh and skeppy are dating

its to the point that they keep a betting chart on a white board next to the “top failure of the week” spot

subway ghost

after a few freak instances wilbur is positive that the subway is haunted and convinces phil to let him do a séance after hours

he manages to convince half the staff that the store is haunted

(the ghost is drista or smth idk aksjdhajk)

top failure of the week

a tally on the white board in the back room of who dropped/wasted out thw most items

sapnap has the record top failure of the week, dropping a total of 42 loaves of bread in a week

schlatt got put on the board once. never again.

enamel pins

tubbo finds a enamel pin of a bee that he puts on his visor

its not technically allowed but phil lets him do it anyway :)

bandanas

tommy and tubbo take subway bandanas from the back room and initial them before trading with eachother

nobody comments that theyre not technically allowed to have a hat and a bandana

the war

at some point a rivalry breaks out between the day staff

wilbur, tommy, tubbo, niki, eret, and fundy

and the night staff

dream, sapnap, george (techno, karl, schlatt, and quackity stay out of it)

what starts out tame eventually leads to workers purposely messing up stuff for the next shift to deal with, like not stocking the fridge or mopping the floor 

at some point eret switches to the night shift

the day shift does not take it well.

 after about 2 weeks phil is forced to step in as the store quality starts to go downhill

he closes the store for a day and makes everyone clean it u

 techno watches from outside the windows with a bag of popcorn

pogway

tommy starts placing the stickers they use to wrap sandwiches everywhere with the words “pogway” on them

everyone can tell its his handwriting but no one can catch him placing the stickers

phil even checked the cameras, still no trace of him

subway gun

sometimes tommy goes around spraying others with a spray bottle full of water used on the bread

he calls it the “subway gun”

wilbur gets fed up hides it in the freezer overnight

thats all for now! if i come up with anything else i might add it lol

EDIT PART 2 IS NOW OUT

[lalahbug]

The Informant - Levi x Reader

Fandom: Attack on Titan Word Count: 4,982

My Masterlist

Warnings/disclaim: general Modern/Mafia AU

Author’s Note: continued under story Originally posted on DeviantArt, under the same username, on 01/05.2017. Revamped/edited in 2020.

___ is a blank for your name/oc/whatever you prefer Written in 3rd person

Line/header is to separate paragraphs to indicate time skips, as Tumblr hates my formatting.

Story under cut

          “Hey, boss.” Eren knocked on Levi’s door.

          “What?”

          “It seems a new informant is in town. You know, since we disposed of the last one. You want them on the payroll?”

          “What, are you a fucking idiot, of course. Have them come in tonight.”

          “To the club?”

          “Tch. Eren, were you dropped on your head as a child?”

          “I don’t know, did you drop me at all.” Eren teased his adoptive father.

          “Shut up, get the new information dealer here, tonight, in the club.”

          “Sure thing.” Eren walked out of the office, closing the door behind him.

          Levi was leaning back on a couch, the normal whores were clinging to him, annoying the hell out of him. The club music was thumping through the building.

          “Eren!” Levi barked. Eren quickly popped into the VIP area. “Where’s my informant?”

          “They should be here soon.”

          “What do we know about them?”

          “Nothing. They just got in town, I don’t even know their name. I sent out word they were wanted at the club tonight. We got a handwritten note from them saying they’d be here.”

          “Who the fuck handwrites notes, why didn’t they just tell someone.” Eren shrugged and Levi clicked his tongue at him.

          “I’ll go see if I can find them!” Eren darted off, knowing he was about to be in trouble for not knowing more.

          Levi groaned while standing up, pushing the groupies off of him. He decided to go check on the bar. While overlooking everything, he stopped his gaze on a woman, who was fully clothed, no skin other than her face and neck showing. She was leaning against the wall, hands in her hoodie pockets, combat boots crossed. She was just watching, ignoring everyone, having headphones on. She didn’t stand out to others, blending into the shadows, but to Levi, she did stand out. Mainly because she wasn’t wearing anything see-through or skimpy. She was wearing a short shoulder-length black wig.

               “What do you want, Ackerman?”

          Levi didn’t realize he had walked over to her. “How do you know my name?” He growled at her.

          “Well, you are the one who wanted me here.”

          “Tch. You’re the new informant in town.” She glanced up at him as if asking if he was that stupid to ask that. “We need to talk, follow me to my office.” He started to walk away but noticed she stayed put. “Oi, brat, you deaf. I said, follow me.”

          “You don’t have any right to boss me around, ask instead of demand,” Levi growled at her a bit. “I came here because you need me. I don’t need you and if you threaten me. I have enough proof and information to bring down your whole operation.”

          Levi was a bit shocked by this news and glared at her. “Will you follow me?”

          “Yes.” She pushed off the wall and walked up next to him.

               Once in his office, Levi closed and locked the door. ___ pulled off her jacket since they were upstairs and now it was even hotter. Even in a simple black long-sleeved shirt, she oozed sex appeal to Levi. He loved watching her body move, even to the way she gently sat down and crossed her legs.

          “So, what information did you want?”

          “I want you on my payroll. Meaning, any information you get, you bring it to me. You get a weekly salary off of this agreement.”

          “No.”

          “Tch. What did you say?”

          “Are you deaf? No. I already told you. I don’t need you. You need me. I already have my clients set up. If you need information, you pay me half of my asking price, upfront, then once I get you the information. You pay up the rest. I’m very knowledgeable. I already have all of the other mob bosses in this town under me. The only one left, is you. You can take it or leave it.” She was cold and factual, there was only confidence and power behind her voice. 

          However, she was talking to the most powerful mob boss in this rotten city. However being under her in another sense didn’t sound bad. Levi is the most powerful man in this city and will not be under some woman’s shitty thumb.

          “Then leave, I’m not under anyone's orders. I give orders, I don’t take them. I don’t need you. Goodbye.”

          “Well, then I’ll take my leave. Have a great night.” With that, she stood without another glance at him, put on her jacket, and left. Closing the door behind her.

          “That bitch. Who does she think she is.”

          “Boss!” Jean burst into Levi’s office.

          “Oi! Did you forget how to knock, horse-face?”

          “It’s an emergency. That informant who has been here for a few months. She’s been getting information somehow and giving it to Erwin. He burned our stock!”

          “Get that bitch or one of Erwin’s grunts here. Now!” Levi barked.

          The noise of a precise slap echoed in the room as Levi stepped in. He pushed the other man out of the way. To see ___ tied to the chair, heavily beaten.

          “What the fuck, why are you beating her up. I need information, you beat her, now you’ve made my job even fucking harder.” Levi growled, she had a couple of scratches, cuts, a black eye, and was bruised on her cheek.

          “She was very unwilling to come here.” Eren piped up from the corner, Levi looked over to glare at him. Eren and Armin were both disheveled, cut and swollen lips, black eyes. “She put a fight, it took all three of us to get her down into that chair."

          Levi looked at ___, who then spat the blood out of her mouth near his shoes.

          “To what do I owe the pleasure of this kidnapping.” She sat up straight, making her words drip with sarcasm and venom.

          “Who did you talk to to get the information you gave Erwin?” Levi pulled up a chair to sit in front of her. 

          “I’m an informant. You will pay me, I will tell you.”

          “Tch. Fine, I need to get this rat. Name your price.”

          “Remember there are two payments. One I will name now, the other will be named after I give you the name you want.”

          “Bitch. You don’t seem to realize the situation you’re in.”

          “You seem to have forgotten, I already have all of the mob bosses in this town, under me. You mess with me any further. You will start a war. And if I don’t get paid and untied within 5 minutes. I will send my files to bring you down through the police.”

          Levi growled at her. He wanted to hit her. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He had underestimated her months ago and did it again just now. She clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk now that his grunts had to manhandle her.

          “3 minutes, Ackerman.”

          “Untie her.” Levi barked. Eren quickly did so. ___ stood and stretched.

          “Now my first payment will be; 1. My backpack that was torn from me, it should still be in the car I was dragged here in. 2. You will grant me any amenities and safe haven; I need at the drop of a hat. Meaning,” she sat back down in front of Levi. Her jacket was draped off her shoulder, she was wearing a gray tank top today. The most skin he’s ever seen from her. She leaned back, throwing an arm over the back and crossed her legs.

She cleared her throat. “Meaning, you will not do this shit again. Meaning, anything information I sell, even if it hurts you, THE MESSENGER WILL NOT BE TOUCHED.” She shouted at him. She finally showed some anger, some emotion. “If you ever put a price on me and put my safety in danger again, this agreement ends. And. I. Will. Bring. You. Down.” She stared daggers at him.

          Levi raised an eyebrow, she was smart. She wasn’t in it for just the money. She was in it to be the most powerful and most protected woman in the world.

          “I will never sell anyone your information that could tear your operation down. The same goes for my other clients. That is only for me.” Levi still had an eyebrow raised at her. She was intimidating but not scary. “Are you listening to me? Ackerman, if you make this deal and you go back on it. I have clients all over the world. You turn on me. You will bring war upon everyone under you.”

          “I get it, brat. Get her shit.”

               Levi and ___ sat in silence glaring at each other. Levi was checking her out, her piercings, her tattoos. He even stared at her natural hair, since he had never seen it before. Some about her just made him want to ravish her, he couldn’t decide if it was in a sexual way or a killing her way, yet though.

          Armin came in and gave her the backpack. She opened it and pulled out a file.

          “Before I give you anything. I need you to sign this contract. I only need the last page that you sign, you can keep the rest.”

          “You’re very prepared.”

          “I used to be a lawyer before this.”

          “That doesn’t shock me.” Levi took the paperwork from her. It was only about 4 pages and he signed the one page, handed her the one paper, and kept the file for himself.

          “Okay. Now that we’re on the same page.” She smirked while flapping the signed paper a bit. 

          “Enough of the shitty puns, tell me what I want to know.”

          She leaned over and took out a bigger file. “This is all of the information I sold to Erwin a couple of days ago.”

          “So you’ll resell information?”

          “Hey, this shit is hard to get sometimes. Especially shit on you. I’ll definitely resell info like this.”

          “Have you sold it to anyone else?”

          “Oh, sorry. That information is classified or will cost you extra.” She gave him a fake pout. He growled at her. Damn, she gets under his skin easily.

          “Then you better start a fucking tab.” Which only made her smirk.

          “I sold all of this information about 3 times, Erwin included. Dok and Pixis. Pixis is very much after your spot of the biggest mob boss. He’s even put Erwin to work for him. I wonder if you can figure what happened from that action.”

          “You mean because I refused to work with you. All of the mob bosses in this fucking city are using you to get information on me to work together and put Pixis in charge of this place. Which is why Erwin attacked my stock.”

          “I mean, yeah. That’s the gist of it," she smirked.

          “What else do you know about this?”

          “You know that lovely officer you have on your payroll?” Levi raised an eyebrow, she did know way too much about him. “Well, let’s just say he’s getting a higher pay now, so you’re not safe. Also, Pixis, he’s trying to up his drug market while having his moles here to taint your drugs.”

          “Who are the moles?”

          “It’s in the paperwork. Page 6.” Levi opened the thick packet, turning to page 6, which was a chart. Every man under Pixis, Levi scanned the page until he saw a familiar name.

          “Fuck. Eren. Jean. Oluo. Mike. Go get Reiner and Bertolt. Get information and dispose of them.” Levi was calm as all of the men left the room, his eye started to twitch. “I can’t fucking believe all this shit is happening because you’re too fucking good at your job,”

          “Oh, honey. I’m just good in general. I mean, not morals-wise, but any other way. You better believe I’m good.”

          Levi let his eyes travel over her body.

          “So, I have another appointment I am late to, now because of you. So you’ll be driving me there. Or one of your grunts.”

          “Tch. Connie!” Levi barked. A small boy bolted around the corner. “Take ___ anywhere she needs to go.”

          “Yes, boss!”

          “Seeya, Ackerman!” ___ slung her messenger bag over her shoulder and followed Connie out of the room.

          “That woman. She’ll be my fucking demise or my savior.” Levi ran a hand through his hair.

           A few months of working with ___, Levi was steadily at the top again, even got Pixis to start working under Levi. Everything was going the best it could ever be, for Levi. Everything was so smooth, no moles or spies anymore. Information and communication were flowing amazingly in his organization now.

          “What?” Levi groaned answering his phone at like 3 AM.

          “Levi! I need a car. I need it now. I need to be put into hiding. Now!” Levi rubbed his eye before sitting up.

          “___?”

          “YES!” She screamed, it sounded like she was in pain.

          “Where are you?”

          “I don’t fucking know. I’m bleeding. I’m angry. I’ll send you my GPS location. Please. Get someone to me soon.”

          “You’re bleeding? You said please?” Levi was teasing her a bit.

          “Levi. Please. I just sent you my location.” She sounded weak but she hung up on him.

          Levi tried to call a few people but no one was answering. He sighed and got dressed and headed to her location.

               “___?” Levi walked around the building. Trying to find her.

          “Levi?” He quickly turned to see her collapsed in the entrance of an alleyway.

          “What the fuck are you doing here?”

          “I’m bleeding a lot, I needed to hide. Levi, help me up.” She was trying to be strong and demanding even in a time like this. Reaching a hand out to him, he pushed her hand away. Levi sighed and squatted down and picked her up. She gave some slight protest but was too weak to fight back.

               Since Levi couldn’t get a hold of anyone, he took her to his home. Carried her into the kitchen. While he prepared some rubbing alcohol, things needed to patch her up. ___ hoisted herself up onto the counter, near the sink, and took off her jacket and tank top. Leaving her in her sports bra. When Levi returned she was trying to rinse the blood off her.

          “Oi. You’re going to get blood everywhere.” Levi took a cloth with alcohol to clean her off. She winced a bit while he started cleaning the wounds before stitching her up. But she didn’t cry or yelped at all. “So what happened?”

          “Old client found me. He betrayed me, so I tried to take him down. Caused him a lot of problems before I left. So he’s here to kill me. I need to get more dirt to take him down. It’s my fault for not doing it right before. Ouch!” She glared at Levi as he poured more alcohol over now sealed wounds.

          “Who's your former client?”

          “Darius Zackly or Mister as half of the country knows him.”

          “You had Mister working for you?” Levi was shocked.

          “Yupp, he was under my thumb for a year. Best client ever. Until he tried to get me as a sex partner and make me his own. I thought it was a joke. But still, I turned him down. One day I was selling information on Zackly to someone, who was an alliance of his. The guy was in the mob for 8 years, no family, right-hand man of the other mob. That bastard was an undercover cop. Zackly found out, came after me, even though in our contract, states I can sell information to whoever I want, as long as it has no malicious takedown intent," she sighed. “He didn’t believe me, put a price on my head. So I went to the police, gave all the information about his organization to bring him down. But I didn’t know the DA was recently added to the payroll. So it didn’t get far.”

          “You almost brought down the most powerful man in the country because he put a price on your head.”

          “Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to die.” She pushed herself off the counter and stumbled against Levi. “Sorry. I guess I lost more blood than I thought. Can I borrow a clean shirt.” She pushed off him and leaned against his counter.

          “Yeah.” Levi guided her to his couch and sat her down and went to get her a shirt. “The most wanted woman in the world is on my couch, wanted by the most powerful and dangerous man in the country,” Levi grumbled before pinching the bridge of his nose again, he exhaled deeply. “What the fuck did I get myself into?” He sighed softly as he grabbed a clean white shirt.

               ___ was sitting on Levi’s couch, laptop on her lap, headphones on. She was hacking into many different cities and cell phones to listen and get information on Zackly.

          “So is this how you get a lot of your information?”

          “Yeah.” She was curt and quiet, never really asked for anything other than to use things to make food or tea.

          ’She’s stronger than I thought. Not all just attitude. She was stabbed twice but is working away. Mainly to save her life, but she did mumble something about protecting her new clients from Zackly. Making sure he won’t go after them to get to her.’

                    “Yeah, I need to break our contract. I’m in deep shit and I don’t want you involved. When I get it resolved we can sign again.” She was talking on the phone. “Unless you want to go against Mister with me, we need to break up.” She chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She had the same conversation about 15 more times. Even in a couple of different languages. Before turning to Levi. “Well, I’m sure you’ve been listening to all of my conversations. I need to break our contract. I won’t drag anyone else into this. This is my fault.” She didn’t look at him, just kept typing.

          “No.” She stopped typing and looked up at him.

          “Levi. You’re going to get everyone in your organization killed. I’ve tried this before. It’s not going to work. We’re breaking the contract. Once my new place is ready, in about 3 hours, I will be leaving and we are breaking apart.” She was stern. But Levi didn’t want her to fight this on her own. She continued working.

          “Isn’t there anything we can do? Any of us?”

          “Unless you can get me a list of every media, every police member and maybe even some people in the FBI that aren’t on Zackly's payroll, no you can’t. I still have proof of all of his exports, illegal guns, and drugs, I have his kill list, I have everyone who works for him and I have every one of his bank accounts and secret hangouts and escape routes. But in order to bring him down. I need to get this information to as many people as possible and to people who are not on his payroll.”

          “I know someone in the FBI, they’re on my payroll, though.” 

          She paused and looked over at him. “Really?” He nodded. In a flash she went over and hugged him, ending up in his lap. “Please, oh please. Give me their name!” She clung to him.

          Levi was shocked at the least, to say. “I can give you their contact information if you want.”

          “Just their work email! I need to send this info out, but I have to do it anonymously. Other witnesses can testify against Zackly. I plan to send that information as well.”

          “Okay.” He had a glint in his eye that suddenly made her glare at him. “It’s going to cost you, though.” She groaned. “You’re an informant, you should have seen this coming.”

          “I thought you just wanted to help me.” She went to stand up, Levi wrapped his arm around her waist, keeping her there. “Let go.”

          “You didn’t even listen to what I want.”

          “Ugh, fine. I’ll at least hear you out.”

          “There will be a three-part payment.” He smirked a bit at her glare, he put up 1 finger, intending to count each reason on his fingers. “1. We stay business partners, in the sense, you keep me at the top. 2. You are now on my payroll, you work under me. Remember this is about your life on the line. 3. You will go out on a date with me.”

          “Wait, what?!”

          “Or we can just stay dating now.” He gave her a small wink.

          “This is serious. I’m not some whore either. So fuck you, not literally. I know they are on your payroll. I’ll find them from there on my own.” She pushed away from him, trying to get up.

          “Oi, brat. I was serious. If you want, you can just agree to the first 2, for now.”

          “Fine. I’ll accept the first two.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I want to get out of this, I want to live through this.” Levi then spotted a cut on her neck, he’d never seen before.

          He poked it. “What happened here?”

          “Huh?” She reached up and touched it. “Oh, that was the first time someone tried to kill me. That was back when I was a lawyer, I quit later that year. Became an informant and a hacker.”

          “I didn’t know you were a hacker until today.”

          “Well, I’m only average. So I can’t hack like the FBI and get away with it. I can hack their email server, though. So that information please?”

          “Of course, business partner.” Levi let her off his lap then typed up the information into her computer. She got to work right away. Put on her headset.

          Levi brought her some tea.

               “You’re sure you don’t want to stay here?” Levi asked while she was gathering her things.

          “Yes. I want to be in my own place, with my dog and my resources. I’m waiting on that FBI agent to get back to me before I know what to do next.”

          “Meaning?”

          “Meaning, if they want to get the witnesses into custody now, I can send the information to every single email I can get my hands on and not worry about their safety. If they don’t want to do that, I’ve got to find a District Attorney who is currently working on taking him down. I know there has to be someone trying. But I don’t want to find that out for myself. An FBI agent would be able to do much more than me.”

          “Where are you going at least?”

          “Out of the country actually. I just need to go pick up my dog and head to the airport.”

          “Wait, you’re just leaving?”

          “Tell me, Levi. Where exactly, where else, I would be safer from the most dangerous man in the country? The man wants to slit my dog's throat and 10 children in front of me. Because he knows that the only way he could probably break me mentally before killing me. My life is in danger the longer I am in town. I’ve already almost died today. I don’t think I can afford to be here any longer, now that they know where I am.”

          “I saved you today. I can protect you, brat.”

          “I think you’re underestimating again.” She finished packing her messenger bag. Levi grabbed her arm.

          “Don’t go,” Levi demanded, but it was sort of pleading.

          “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. As long as your FBI agent is good at her job I’ll be okay.” She seemed more so trying to convince herself but she was still firm on her decision.”

          “Can you at least contact me once a week so I know you’re not dead?”

          “Maybe.” She gave him a small smirk before leaving his condo.

          “She’s going to be my fucking shitty demise,” Levi mumbled to himself.

          Levi tried calling ___, yet again. She had been off the radar for over 3 weeks and he hadn’t heard from her at all. The call went to voicemail yet again. The trials against Darius Zackly had started and his local DA was very intent on taking him down with all of the information ___ had sent almost the whole world. All the witnesses were in secret service and we’re testifying soon. 

                Darius and everyone in his main organization were locked up, behind bars, life in prison. So many murders, missing persons, and unknown drugs were solved now. ___ was being offered a reward, she just had to make it so she wasn't anonymous anymore. But she didn’t show.

          It had been nearly 5 months since she disappeared, Levi hadn’t heard from her at all.

               “Boss!” Eren ran into Levi’s office, panting.

          “Tch, what, boy?”

          “There’s someone here to see you.”

          “Who?”

          “You have to come to see.” Eren joked a bit.

          Levi groaned and clicked his tongue before standing up.

               “Look how cute he is.” Armin gushed over the dog holding a bag in its mouth. Who growled at everyone who came near him.

          “What’s this mutt doing here?” Levi scoffed.

          “He just showed up with this backpack in his mouth, it’s ___’s bag.” Levi’s widened slightly. The 110 pound Rottweiler walked over to Levi and sat in front of him, wagging his tail. The dog dropped the bag and Levi bent over and opened it, careful to not touch the saliva.

          “This is Boris, his plane got back before mine, I need someone to watch him. I’ll be back two days after you read this. Levi, take care of him for me. I told him to only trust you, gave him your scent. Everything he needs is in the bag. He is a very good fetch and guard dog. Sorry, ___.” Levi growled her name while crumpling the note.

          “What does she mean fetch dog?” Armin asked as he leaned down to pet the dog.

          “The idea is to train, through the use of some form of compulsion, a dog to pick up an object in his mouth, carry it firmly but gently and deliver it to the handler's hand. Like he did with the backpack.” Levi stated while pulling a chewing bone out of the bag, giving it to the dog. “So if I teach him what things are and where to find them, he can bring them to me.”

          “That’s cool!” Eren was excited.

          “But, he probably only listens to ___.”

          “She told Boris to listen to you, though.” Armin reminded him.

          “Let’s test it.” Levi looked at the dog, who was happily chewing on his hallowed bones. “Boris.” The dog's ears perked and looked at Levi. “I need a pen, go get me one.” The dog stuck his nose into the backpack and pulled out a zip lock bag with a pen and notepad. “Good.” Levi took the bag from Boris.

          “Boris!” Levi yelled at the dog, who was whining. “Shut up! I get you miss her too, but shut up brat!” Boris nudged his head against Levi’s leg. “Do you need out?” Boris started to run around, to say yes. Levi sighed and pushed away from his desk, taking Boris out.

          “It’s been almost 3 days, where is your owner?” Levi grumbled. He wouldn’t admit anyone, but he did miss having ___ around, he did like and miss her.

          Boris started pulling Levi all sudden. “Boris, heel!” Levi tugged back on the leash, making Boris only pull harder. Levi glanced up, to see ___ walking towards them. He just let go of the leash, letting Boris run to her, knocking her down.

          “Boris! You’re not a puppy!” ___ giggled while hugging her dog who was trying to drown her in licks and lay on top of her.

          “At least you’re alive,” Levi grumbled.

          “Yeah, sorry about that. I couldn’t use my phone out of the country, forgot to tell you about that. Did you at least get my message last month, the one to your email?”

          “I don’t check my email.” Levi glared at her.

          “Well, that’s your fault.” She stood up, grabbing Boris' leash. “You want to go get a coffee, as sorry from me, business partner.” She gave him a sly smirk.

          “What do you want?” Levi was skeptical.

          “Nothing. I feel a bit bad is all, but if you don’t care we haven’t talked for months. Then I’ll just head home.”

          “Didn’t expect to hear that from you.”

          “What do you mean?”

          “Well, you were the one who turned down the last part of my conditions.”

          “You said you were serious about it. I mean, I don’t know if it’s a compliment or not. But you're the only man who's been able to piss me off and get under my skin a lot.”

          “Good.” Levi pulled her in for a sharp and quick kiss.

          “Goddammit, Ackerman, who do you think you are.” She glared at him, looking at her smudged lipstick on his lips.

          “You’re the fucking informant, you tell me.” He teased while grabbing the open sides of her jacket, pulling her closer to him.

          She stared into his eyes for a moment. Before giving him an actual smile. “You think you’re mine.”

          “That’s one way of putting it.” She pulled away from him.

          “Well, now you just have to work on making me yours.”

          “Oi, brat. Don’t you remember.” He grabbed her chin, pulling her close again. “You work under me now.” A shiver ran down her spine at his demanding and dominant tone.

          “We’ll have to see how long that lasts then.” She managed a feeble smirk, she was losing her nerve. He had gotten under her skin, yet again. Making her weak against him.

          “Considering you’ve already lost, I have a feeling it’ll be a while.”

Author’s Note: continued Even though I wrote this a long time ago, it’s still my personal favorite of my own works. Also, this is Modern AU, where Levi and a few others are mob bosses. Mafia, whatever you want to call it. Levi also runs a nightclub and is Eren’s adoptive father. Reader is an information dealer(sells information to people.) She’s used to being in power and is pretty headstrong.

[ahgapride98]

REFLECTION ABOUT GOT7’S COMEBACK

Hello baby birds! I know it has been a long time since I last posted and I’m so sorry about it, I’ve been extremely busy with college and life in general and couldn’t find time to post anything here. But… good news: I’m finally free and I plan on finishing my ‘Memory Lane’ series, but first I need to address some things regarding this comeback that I’m not so happy about.

1. GOT7’s ‘Eclipse’ MV views in the first 24h. It’s no secret that we only got 6’5M views for Eclipse in the first 24h after its release (less than the views for ‘Miracle’ and ‘Focus On Me’ – JUS2 subunit). Now, I don’t really know who we should blame for this: YouTube or ourselves? While streaming the MV I noticed that the views were frozen for approximately 1h whole hour, and the worst part of all is that we never got those views back. I was so mad at YouTube for doing us dirty when we were putting all of our best efforts there for the boys (we had a great start, 500.000 views in just 1h after the release); But another thing I also noticed was that our streaming party didn’t really work, it was like ahgases were not working together to reach our 15M goal. It almost felt like we weren’t there, and that makes me sad because we almost got the same result as we did with ‘Look’ (6M views). I really had big hopes of breaking Lullaby’s record (10M in the first 24h), but it seems like we are going backwards instead of forward. This made me feel like the fandom decreased instead of growing - something that is not true because our fandom got bigger after the world tour. Now, like I said before, I don’t know if we should blame YouTube for this or ourselves. I honestly think it’s a combination of both, YouTube really did us dirty but we should have tried harder for our boys. (Funny thing: our views in the first 24h were really low but we managed to reach 30M views in just 5 days, beating our own record…).

2. Melon issue. This is something I talked about in my ‘Lullaby Comeback Reflection’ post, and I still think the same thing. I don’t know why Melon hates us, but they do. On the first day (20/05), we debuted at number 52, and just went downhill from there reaching the 71st place. Then, on the second day (21/05), it seemed like we went up for a bit and managed to reach the 45th position, then we dropped to 55 and from there we charted 100 and eventually disappeared from the chart. On the third day (22/05), we appeared again at number 90 only to drop to the 91st place, and then go up to 75. Finally, on the fourth day (23/05), we charted the 82nd place and after that we disappeared from the chart. As you can see our results are not good enough, ‘Eclipse’ charted really low compared to other songs. On top of that, we only charted for four days before completely disappearing from the Melon chart. I’m positive this is Melon’s doing, they did us dirty in our last comeback too and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are supressing our listeners and sabotaging our streaming party. I’m so sorry for the boys because they worked really hard for this, but their efforts are still not recognised in Korean charts (specially Melon).

3. Timing. This is a really important point. We have to be honest and admit that GOT7’s comeback came in the worst time ever. First of all, it was scheduled shortly after Bambam’s ‘Black Feather Tour’ in Thailand, Jackson’s birthday fan meeting in China and JUS2 debut and tour. Many ahgases spent a lot of money buying the new subunit albums and tickets for all the shows. Also, we have the world tour just around the corner, so it makes sense that many ahgases prefer saving their money to buy tickets for the tour instead of buying the new albums. On top of that, we can’t forget that the majority of the fandom are teenagers and young adults that have final exams around this time of the year (myself included, the day of the comeback I had my first final exam in college). This obviously made the fandom focus on other things that were by far more important to us than the comeback (sad but true).

4. Sales – Album stock. This is closely related to the last point. Because of the timing the comeback was scheduled, our sales weren’t good either. On the first day, we sold 62,002 copies (our best result ever), but throughout the week we only managed to sell 214.125 copies (not good enough to win on music shows). Now, this has to do with the lack of stock: for some reason there weren’t enough albums and a lot of ahgases had to wait until Wednesday to be able to purchase them (that’s a whole day lost there, thanks for nothing JYP…). I don’t understand why this happened, especially if we take into account that GOT7 is the best album-seller under JYP Entertainment (‘Eyes On You’ sold 223.844 copies in the first week, the best-selling album under the company). They should have been more prepared and have stock ready knowing that even though GOT7 are not digital monsters, the rock with album sales.

5. Music shows. We don’t have to be geniuses to know that with our bad charting and lower sales, we have very few options of winning with ‘Eclipse’, even if we do well with MV views. In music programs, they give more importance to digital sales than physical album sales, and since we are not even charting anymore (in most charts), I am going to be honest here and say that I don’t think we are going to win anything (‘You Are’ 2.0). My thoughts are based -specially- after today’s Show Champion: we were nominated but didn’t win. Usually the time to bring trophies home is during the first week after the comeback was released (or the second week of promotions), after the first week winning is really hard. But based on our horrible start and everything that happened last week, I don’t think we are going to get any trophy with this comeback (just my opinion, I could still be wrong).

EDIT: I WAS WRONG, WE WON ON MCOUNTDOWN (30/05), MUSIC BANK (31/05) AND INKIGAYO (02/06)!!!!! 💚💚

6. JYP Division 2 - Promotions. This is something that has to do with this comeback, but also something that I have been accumulating for months now. The way Division 2 handles and promotes GOT7 is pure shit, it’s like they are not even focusing on them. First, they barely put them on variety shows, and the only one they went to -Idol Room- was lacking promotion music wise; and the promotion period is just two weeks (meaning that this upcoming week is the last one we will be seeing them on music shows). They spent the first 30 minutes of the program talking and messing around with Doni and Coni, and then introduced ‘Eclipse’. For a non GOT7 fan, an outsider, this could get boring pretty fast. Secondly, the album stock situation: because of that mistake we lost sales, sales that were crucial for music shows. Thirdly, the time they decided to release the comeback was extremely bad calculated, they should have known this could happen. Also, their decision of debuting a new subunit and sending Bambam on tour was something benefitial at the moment but with not so good long term consequences, as everything now seems rushed and poorly done. I understand that it’s really hard to schedule comebacks, specially if we take into account the company as a whole: Itzy’s debut - JUS2 debut / Jinyoung drama - StrayKids comeback - Twice comeback - Itzy comeback - GOT7 world tour - Twice world tour - StrayKids world tour... but even though everything is packed, I still think that things could have been done differently. There’s something wrong with the management team in Division 2 that is affecting GOT7 negatively, and that also makes me fear for Itzy (as both groups are under this division).

7. JYP strict rules towards fans – Fansigns problems. This point has to do with issues that happened weeks prior to the comeback, but that is clearly affecting the promotions. In case you didn’t know, ‘fans’ followed GOT7 members everywhere (yes, even to their homes), the situation got so out of control that even the boys had to post in their personal Instagram accounts the official statement released by JYP Entertainment, and because of that JYP reinforced the rules that ahgases must follow when they are with the boys. But this rules have gone as far as to not even allowing the fans to touch or high five the members in fansigns (now, let’s remember that the fans that go to the fansigns have spent a ridiculously huge amount of money on albums just to get the chance of going), and not letting the members write the names of the fans in the albums (they just basically sign the album and that’s it). And not only that, recently ahgases that went to one of the fansigns last week took to Twitter to express their discontent with how they were treated by the staff. I’ll leave some of the messages that ahgases posted on Twitter:

I do agree that we must protect the boys, and I think those rules are great to be followed outside. But on a closed space with security to watch over everything that’s going on in the event, not allowing fans to even get a high five with the members is going a bit too far. Also, the staffs’ attitude needs to be checked: they are there working, not having fun with their friends. They should know their position in the fansigns, and not disturb the conversations going on between fans and the members of GOT7. I really hope JYP Entertainment thinks things over, because if not the consequences could be catastrophic. Take as an example the upcoming tour, no info about VIP tickets has been released yet. In fact, for the America leg of the tour there are no VIP tickets. That makes me wonder how things are going to be done in the tour.

8. Album and comeback thoughts (focused on just the boys and music). After so many negative comments, the only good thing about all of this is seeing the boys together and doing what they love. I can’t express with words how happy I am to see them together again after so much time. Also, the whole album is a bop. It’s the bop of the year (fight me on that): all the songs are amazing, the vocals, the raps, the lyrics, the music, the style, the concep... just everything is out of this world. I’m so glad that they get to perform on stage and carry out the message this album has. I couldn’t relate more with the meaning of this album, and I know we all ahgases feel the same way. Even though a lot of negative things have happened in the past few weeks, I’m still happy to see they are back and better than ever. As their fans, the only thing we can do is support them no matter what and be there for them just like they are here for us when we need them the most. Also, I can’t wait for the tour to start and I can’t wait to see them again this year. I’m so excited that just listening to the songs of the last tour makes me feel tingly on the inside!

Well baby birds, that’s it for today’s post. I’ll update my ‘Memory Lane’ series as soon as possible as some of you have been asking for the remaining members. I love you all!!! 💚🐥💚

[goodbysunball]

Summer squalor: July rotations

Been a minute but the hits keep comin’. Three picks each on three different formats. No cure for the sweltering heat but these’ll sure take you elsewhere for a minute. Bon appétit.

75 Dollar Bill, I Was Real 2xLP (Thin Wrist/Black Editions)

NYC’s foremost crate-and-guitar duo continue to osmose into an ever-larger recording entity, though the results are hardly bloated. Like Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, 75 Dollar Bill specializes in patient sprawl, as on “Every Last Coffee or Tea” or the title track, a sort of musical kudzu covering more area, absorbing genres and instruments. Some shorter upbeat tracks are on display here, like “Tetuzi Akiyama” and “There’s No Such Thing as a King Bee” (featuring Knoxville’s own Carey Balch), and on the whole I Was Real’s double helping of material should please any and all fans of Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. They’re not rehashing, they’re honing in on what works, and the ecstatic closer “WZN#3” is the life-affirming proof.

Crazy Doberman, s/t LP (Mastermind)

Being only familiar with last year’s I Dischi Del Barone 7″ and some of the group’s personnel, I was expecting Crazy Doberman’s latest LP to be two sides packed to the brim with exhausting third eye jazz freakouts. Instead the group flexes restraint across this self-titled record’s two tracks, more of a creeping horror soundtrack than freedom music’s untethered brawn. Horns and woodwinds scrape and screech from cobwebbed corners, synths ooze up from cracks in the floor, and occasionally, as on the beginning of the B-side, the band coalesces into a dense, foggy shroud of noise. The electronic elements provide a very lush feel, though the heavily forested area you find yourself in suddenly obscures and distorts the way from which you came. The clarity and simultaneous panicked thoughts provided by being truly nowhere. One of my favorite records of the year. Not sure if there’s a North American source, but the Danish label can get it to ya - here.

Robert Turman, Flux 2xLP (Spectrum Spools)

Almost 40 years since Flux was first released on cassette, and 7 years since Spectrum Spools first brought it back to life on CD and vinyl. I preferred Way Down to anything else Turman did back when it was first reissued, but nowadays I’m inclined to agree with Low Company’s assessment of Flux as an “all-timer.” Single notes are strung together on piano or kalimba and delicately layered, every one given space to breathe and expire, the bass-heavy recording ever-so-slightly hinting at something melancholy, the pleasurable kind afforded by momentary and true isolation. The remaster sounds fantastic, loud enough to fill the room and spare enough to emphasize the negative space.

Constant Mongrel, “Experts In Skin” b/w “Shnuki” 7″ (Upset the Rhythm)

New 7″ from Constant Mongrel featuring two tracks that could’ve made the cut for Living In Excellence in style and spirit. “Experts In Skin” showcases the steadily building tension they mastered on the last LP, the chorus-heavy guitars swelling to include sax that puts an exclamation point on the track. “Shnuki” has Amy Hill taking a role as co-vocalist, a move that oughta be replicated again given the bouncy and comparatively poppy results, kinda like if Terry could manage a snarl. Well worth the import price of $1/minute. Clear vinyl, 400 copies only, no inner sleeve and a beautifully close-cropped picture of Amy’s face on the B-side label. Sorry State, Digital Regress, and Feel It all have it in stock in the US.

Long Hots, “Nickel & Dime” b/w “Give & Take” 7″ (Third Man)

Somewhat unexpected for Long Hots to be scooped by Third Man after last year’s self-released cassette, but the wider exposure is certainly deserved. The 7″ sports “Nickel & Dime” from the tape and adds on “Give & Take,” maybe my new favorite song by the Philly trio. A mean guitar lead sets the stage for the sneering vocal delivery, the dust kicked up by the guitar in between verses a clear warning to keep your distance. "Give & Take” could, and maybe should, be twice as long as the 7″ format allows. It’s not often enough that garage rock brandishes the glint of a pocket knife amidst all the bluster; Long Hots’ll give you the business. Order direct, or check your local shop for a taste.

Small Cruel Party, La Chrestomathie Du Désespoir 7" (I Dischi Del Barone)

Unidentifiable sounds pinging away at each other, sometimes forming into plasma globules but more often staying in place while the projected scenery flashes behind them. Trying to spot the source of the sounds in the two 5-minute pieces is an exercise in futility, as the listener is kept at arm’s length, separated by the heavy curtain made of the “inherently mysterious.” You already know where you stand with stuff this impenetrable (or maybe with Small Cruel Party), but anything I Dischi Del Barone puts out is worth rolling the dice for. The latest round of releases from IDDB/Fördämning Arkiv in July are especially enticing. Careful Catalog is where to go for this 7″ in the US.

Itchy Bugger, Double Bugger cassette (Little Winners)

New Itchy B, on a limited cassette that sold out in a flash, and it finds the main man in a more reflective mood than last year’s Done One. Needling guitar lines still stick in your craw for days - “Fooled by the Sun”/”Fooled by the Song” and “The Wanker From Mataranka” especially - but tracks like “Sometimes” and “Have You Seen John?” attempt to put words behind the yearning glossed over or cut short on the debut. Bittersweet pop in the Australian tradition, growing older, grappling with work/life balance (”Nothin’ Tougher Than Hard Yakka”) and trying to sell oneself on the idea that you’re not just treading water as the weeks slip away. Not sure that I rate it as highly as Done One just yet, but bits like the tangled, desperate outro of “I Gotta Is A” make it more memorable with every listen.

Jay & Yuta, Condemned Compilations cassette (Little Winners)

A collaboration between Yuta Matsumura from Orion and Low Life, and someone named Jay. Do you know Jay? Yuta’s vocals are immediately recognizable to anyone who’s heard the Orion LP, and the way he nails the sidewinding melody on opener “Unprecedented Nation” proves he’s only becoming more acrobatic. Musically the duo sample from several eras of electronic sub-genres, be it murmuring and irresistible pop reminiscent of Broadcast (”Be More Kind”), Brian Eno’s work with David Bowie (”Fruitbat Odori”) or industrial throb by way of New Order (”Mysterious Flaws In The House We Built Ourselves” and “Hahagana”). Condemned Compilations plays out like a mixtape, as Sorry State said, and though the lyrics occasionally belie the presumed low stakes of the recording sessions, it is pure, unabashed fun, summer’s readymade cruising soundtrack. Sold out from the source, but you can still grab the tape from Sorry State or Papertown Company.

Overt Hostility, s/t cassette (Loki Label)

Two 20+ minute versions of Jonathan Richman’s “She Cracked” from Philly’s finest feedback-conjuring troglodytes? Not since Cheater Slicks’ “Thinkin’ Some More” has a song been so savagely gutted, thick layers of mangled and distorted guitar covering the windows and the walls and suddenly you’re knee-deep in some warm primordial muck and you can’t get enough of it on you. Low fidelity captures the whole mess perfectly. Pure aural torture to my partner, and the only thing I want to listen to for hours once it’s on. I love this fuckin’ tape. 50 copies, long gone, sorry bub.

[xqr]

LLSIF Things 13: Birthday Edition

JP

Last time I complained about the SM points. Now it’s over my rage isn’t in motion, but I have to share this:

It’s not even me, but dis poor bitch in 4th got -452 and I think that was the record for most absolutely obliterated player. 

Hit rank 190!!! I can now have 12 hours free of idol hell. And, as I later realised 2 Medfests at full LP.

I SS’s this for the person in 1st who was probably dodging or just had some mad injustices dealt. But like yo the person in 3rd! Like poor bro here got a higher combo than 1st and got destroyed.

This was my rank on the last SM I played. I actually thought I might just stay in T2 again. Sadly not. As for the points ranking...smh I was above 30k a few matches before, but ‘just one more gem’ made me lose out there.

What y’all saw:

What I saw:

Anyway this step up box sounded sick like why the fuck wouldn’t I???

But first I had to pull together another few gems so

Smashed it. I actually found the beatmap really fun for this one. So with 203 gems I proceeded to the first pull:

Hoo boy an SSR. And just the one I wanted. An idolised SSR was secured.

ANOTHER SSR?? Yes pls. After several days I’ve decided to use this 3rd copy as a skill up bc she’s a scorer and I want an SSR seal. Also an SR I don’t have :D

So while the majority of people out there wanted their guaranteed SSR to be the birthstone one, I was hoping for the initial...

YESSS!! Now I have all the released SSR Panas. And Marine Hanayo!!! Good shit.

So. The unlimited scouting box. Man if I had known it would be unlimited I would have saved for longer.

I pressed the button and there was a lot of loading. Boy I had my fingers poised to take a SS of that UR flying out. But then only SRs came out and I was like ???? ok then be like that.

But turns out I was fucking right

Dis bitch flipped from a rare!! I cannot tell u how pleased I was. One a scale of Initial Pana to Xmas Pana in terms of cards I want, this was second only to Xmas Pana. After cosplaying this card I found a mighty need to own it. And here it was!! Turns out she’s a scorer too so I am blessed. She’s currently first in line for seal idolising.

Anyway, those SRs she came with. Cute kitty Pana!! New Pool Pana and Vday2. The problem with cool cards is my BiBi team is so tight these Panas have no hope.

And enough for a BT... Me: wtf is this. Me: is this an initial?? Schoolidolu: yes. Rip

I LOVE THIS CARD

She’s going to be sacrificed for a UR idolisation :)

Mmmm dat sweet skill lv 2

Me: I can’t believe it took me 5 tries. We’re at /that/ point.

The next sacrifice. 

So I had 33 gems left over after the scouts so I was like yes bitch we can reach 50 again. Do whatever must be done. So I did; rescue the prisoners from the present box!

And take their bonding gems

Honestly sometimes I just pull gems out of my ass idek how. But I reached 50 again.

Idol Pana: skill up, Dancer: idolised, Vday1: new!

So ends JP’s Pana scouts. Total gems: 220, 1 UR, 3 SSRs, 8 SRs. Not bad.

EN

420 blaze it

EN reached 190 like an hour before JP.

Just under a month since the Great Xmas Pana Scout. And I had managed to find 128 gems. Pretty good going imo.

When u see dat 1 SR come out. Ok but I love the China Dress set so I couldn’t be mad. It’s a new SR at least. I saw RinSenpai pull Initial Pana in a 1SR pull and like if that had been me I would have been mad too. Bc I already idolised her and sold her off lel.

Yo how tf did I pull China Dress again?? Like whey instant idolisation but wow what are the chances? Also magician!!! Which I’m pleased for bc I didnt have a chance to pull for her during the Great Saving.

Once again Nozomi blesses us for the BT.

Except this time I had a second copy already from The Great Scout. So she’s not up for sacrificing just yet.

So cute even if I think those sleeves are the most awkward things one could wear.

I stopped being F2P last year so like why not buy some gems for my waifu’s once-a-year birthday? 

IS IT A HANAYO? YES. IS IT A UR? YES. IS IT A COOL UR? YES. IS IT XMAS PANA? NO.

Close enough but like i feel taunted. I now have 2 of her 3 cool URs. Just not the one I pine after. Well, I have them all across accounts..

Goddamn animal2 set. Soon I will complete it across servers. Surely that ugly Honoka UR will find me soon. But also SLG. Which I have on JP but it’s cute.

But who cares about SRs? I pulled a UR after 1225 gems. Finally did it. I felt like I truly deserved it. I will also now expect URs every time I pay Klab money lel.

Let’s have a look at my new angel and next in line for idolising:

I should have expected she was a healer as I am well aware of the skills of the other cool URs, but...

Booooy this card has a chance of activating less than 3 times a minute. My Eli is every 13 seconds at least. And she’s a scorer. Honestly Hanayo pull urself together and come back when u got something better to offer. tut-psh can’t believe a healer has a 23 second pause

Anyway I had 45 gems left...so I was a naughty again and bought 6 more gems bc yolo.

It flew out as 1 SR but luckily 1 flipped so my spending was somewhat justified. Hurray for Victorian idolisation (she’s made the team!) and Vday1 Pana now across servers.

I love her so much??

Helix

I didn’t do this with thumbs, but the fact I did this on a tiny screen when I was like ‘eh let’s just try and get more than a C combo’ was astounding. 

Maybe I should set Nico as my partner some time if she’s going to be so gay

If u thought the Helix account would get away without Pana scouting, ur wrong. Honestly tho I did this pull before EN got its UR and I was like pls, don’t give the Helix account another Pana UR. I can’t be more salty than I already am.

And there was no salt. There was Vday1 Pana again. She came home on all 3 accounts during the Hanayo solo boxes. It’s very odd. I also got new ones - Fruits and Cyber! Although apparently Cyber isn’t new?? She must have been sacrificed before I got this account. Still, I was excited to see her.

And Hanayo came home in the BT too!! What’s not to like

Bonus irl purchases:

Someone on fb was selling Honoka petits so I was like sure I’ll take them off ur hands

And then one Saturday morning I trawled ebay looking at LL stuff. Boy there’s a lot of bootleg shit out there, but in the midst of it some 20 or 30 pages in I found her.

A Japanese seller. Instantly more credible. And they had photos of their figure, not some stock image. I looked into their listing and they even opened the box and took photos of her still in the plastic and I was like dis seller is the real deal. Feedback all checked out. I was having her.

I paid £35 for her. Didn’t get hit by customs woop. My first large-ish figure (up until now I’ve only bought nendoroid petits) and now I worry that I will acquire more. Accidentally. 

Review: her fan is so hard to stick in her hand.

[glopratchet]

simo-beeing

I cant even believe ive pulled it off either, took a while to set up and almost got caught a couple times but it all payed off! Was actually stupidly easy if i do say so myself! he has only started his official guard training but has already proved to be quite capable with the basics, not as good as me of course, if you are reading this then thats one thing you should take away, you must be better than the rest or you will not survive in this new world attached is is his note paper he left around his latrine board which lists all the other shifts so ive done them all now! , some of the older residents already queing up to use it when ive come on shift, he has already made 200 from me alone he is now the richest boy in the guard aside from me :) Too late to back out now does this mean im in charge now? i'm not sure about this, im going to need some help directly to the awaiting bows etched beautifully on the surface, they look like stained glass windows The church has a logo too but it looks different, perhaps its different in the bible times? Like this alligator bladder inflatables, alligator collagen and many others that are all neatly organized into these clever boxes via conveyer belt to each corresponding window There are also windows for people to put their wastes in as well!! lies on a tray which collects them from the windows and comes around in a cycle that reminds me of those claw crane games, whatever you can squeeze out of the vending machine is yours I guess as far as the waste goes, the amount you take is based on your ranking in society Poor people cant take much but they get more than sodarites so they can trade it i suppose are dispensed from chutes hidden in the walls next to the windows This seems pretty complicated i hope you all are happy its your asses if this thing breaks, apparently everything is monitored via those cameras from control so maintenance is not something i need to worry about, as for retrieving the profits if the creature has been killed is also pumped out from his magical portal costume or something, i dunno Also washboards tons and tons of them and bubble wrap the alligators must really love to sleep on that stuff anyway this is all to be expected We basically sold out completely, 7 minutes of every hour are taken up by products thats why they scampered around so much at first, gave them more room to pump out more crap simultaneously , a flatbrim ballcap and navy jeans standing at one of his windows cheerfully greets every customer with a big smile I sometimes break from my gatekeeping to inspect some of the meat, it gives me mixed feelings to see it go through not knowing if im sending dead gators to a warm cozy home or chucking it in a trash pit somewhere, i ponder this as im picking flesh chunks off my claws , a high ranking position to be sure The most obnoxious thing is it came with matching shoes with little gators on them like COME ON!!! You shouldnt advertis ewho you are on your shoes for god sake! They cant take you seriously in these things, they look clownish We have even had talks to passing alligator ranchers about potential business deals in the future In any case our family has started rolling in the dough, unfortunately GiGi is still a dog biscuit away from the good fairy granting her speech but she doesn't seem too bothered by it, we really dont talk too much anyway The shivers are happy Life is easy, all i have to do anymore is open the gate that's it a HUD, with the locations of all the turrets and cameras for the stadium, best to keep the customer experience top notch afterall Although I don't think it matters too much,there are so many shivers in now every one has a different path to their tunnel system that even at a 5% attrition rate the population keeps climbing! Its starting to reach overcrowding levels but its not like we're sending anyone back alright? Were not! encryption codes for all the conversations that happen so far using your custom security systems A fulltime worker you have hired helps manage the trading floor while you police the stock market multiple times a day incase any occurances need your attention You created jobs for everyone, you created a life and a grand beard that laves the belly area of his long coat He wears light hiking boots presumably to trek through the sewers with and a travler's backpack for over night trips, sure signs of a trader! The success has lead to others trying their luck in there, but only few have even come close to GiGi's success, it might be your tech or the shiver's that attract them but one thing remains true It's your name that sucks to them most of the time, most of it stuck in there own routines, seems like they barely tolerate him now Water is quite rare for us now so we have to wait until it rains before doing the wash,still worth it though! or we salvage it from the toilet tanks any way the guy is called Mike, goes by GiMMiX online, one of the newer traders that have recently started coming here Normally I don't hear them until they are at the top floor then they normally eat at GiGi's before they leave He must be pretty confident to try sell me stuff when he knows who I am You should do this more often Dad, this is a nice talk over dinner, see ya with that guy and helped create a community of thriving humans who enjoy the gifts this world has to offer You and Lena? Yep that'll do, you'll name your robot Lena as a sign of appreciation Once you have entered her name you are greated with a box asking for a last name, you type in GiGis and it accepts it CONGRATULATIONS! "Lena GiGi-S-I-S" has been added to your home! You have created a second living creature that enjoys your presence A screen pops up with her picture on the left and some more information about her on the right, this is where you can change her name, informaion, add or remove her from your home and much more Some buttons appear at the bottom letting you navigate through the various screens you are glad that you managed to get communications working on a large scale between herds again You decide to leave the GiGis identification screens for later, you have just noticed that it is already outside and the herd of Shreks haven't gone past yet! Last night when you saw them they were making sounds that the Calvary were coming soon and every one was getting excited You always felt that division was the ruin of the humans indeed a couple of weeks pass and the music has been rejoined by happy trumpets that could only belong to GiGis It's nice to see her so happy, she really loves that music next week you get a visitor You hear a voice on the PA asking for you and asking to visit outside You buff up, take your gun and head to the top floor You open your window and see a woman your age looking up at you,she is pretty obviously pregnant, has grown nails and dark green skin She speaks "Hey, I'm Lena" "I know" you reply cautiously "i also Know that you have GiGis" She says pointing at your robot who is sitting to the side of the window "Yes, she is mine" Lena nods "I want to add her to the herd, the music has brought all of us joy and peace for years, GiGis would be a welcome edition to our little community" You weren't really sure what to expect when you got your first visitor, but it wasn't this You complte the transaction and feel very HAPPY as a result Music truly is the mystical link that connects all creatures on this planet! You wonder how you never saw it before,of course the differentherBS would feel joy at GiGis playing, what kind of a horrible person does this to beings who love music as their mother plays piano in the next room! The happy GiGis announces a new song "Go die in a fire (Ilium update discussion #405)" You don't mean to listen, but you can hear it quite clearly as the topic of the songs is pretty relevant to you right now You leave your home and head straight for the gate, you aren't really sure what you will do when you get there, but you are really angry! Before you know it you are flying through the air and in a yard with a massive collection of shreks and GiGis himself He is strangely cheery You stand up and aim your gun at him "Downѕtand!" you shout angrily He laughs "No" You fire at him, and are surprised to see that you shoot a stream of confetti GiGis laughs even louder now YOu start firing in all directions and realise that all you are doing is shooting party favors into the air, including one very large one right behind GiGis You dart back inside just as your entire house explodes into a million pieces and rains down onto the remaining houses You peek outside a bit later and see nothing but rubble where there were once houses and the words "All are GiGis" hovering above it all

[stuber45188020]

How to sell books on eBay

Whenever I mention in passing that I’m selling books on eBay, someone asks questions about the process.

  So, I thought it would be good to have a post that I can send people to when they ask that question in the future.

I am totally not an eBay expert (lots of people on the internet know more about eBay than I do!), but I’m happy to share what I do.

1. Install the eBay app.

This is not essential, but it makes adding photos to your listing so, so much easier.

If you don’t already have an account, you’ll need to make one.

This page has very detailed step by step directions for setting up an account. 

It’s not very hard, though; if you have basic internet savvy, you will be fine.

2. Do a search on eBay for the book you’re wanting to sell.

In the sidebar options on desktop, click “completed listings” so you can see if your book is

selling for a decent price

selling at all

If a book is only going for, say, $0.99, I just don’t think it’s worth the time to make a listing.

So, I like to make sure it’s worth my while.

(On mobile, click on “Filter” on the right hand top side and scroll down to toggle on “completed listings”.)

3. Click “sell one like this”.

This takes you to a page with a pre-filled listing, which makes your life way easier. A lot of the information like author, genre, etc. will already be filled out.

4. Edit the listing to make sure it’s accurate.

Make sure the condition (new, like new, good, etc.) is right for your book.

In the description, add any relevant info about the condition of the book (the back cover is torn, page 42 has markings, etc.)

It’s always best to err on the side of lots of disclosure about the condition of your book. That way the buyer knows exactly what they’re getting and you won’t get a complaint when the buyer receives their purchase.

5. Add photos of your own.

You can use an eBay stock photo of the book, but I always add my own photos as well. 

When I’m a buyer, I like to see an actual photo of what I’m buying, not just a stock photo. And so I figure that my buyers are the same.

Make sure to take photos of any imperfections so that your buyer knows what they’re getting.

6. Select Media Mail for your shipping.

Media mail is far and away the cheapest way to ship books. I always use this as the option when I list books.

You’ll need to weigh your book and enter that info in the shipping area. For a small book, I use my kitchen scale.

For larger books, I step on my bathroom scale with the book and then without the book and then find the difference between the two weights.

7. Decide if you want to accept returns or not.

My account is set to not accept returns; it’s just too much of a headache for books that aren’t worth that much to begin with.

Even though my account is set this way, my buyers do still have the option to do a return if the book is not as described. The “no returns” setting just prevents them from doing a return for a reason like, “I just changed my mind.”

8. Decide on auction/buy it now, and a price.

I always do my listings as “buy it now” because it’s simpler than an auction.

eBay gives a suggested price for your book, but you can use your judgment here, based on what you learned when you looked at the completed listings earlier.

I tend to price mine a little on the low end of things because a fast sale is my highest priority. Get that book out of here!  

9. Use a computer and your phone for max speed.

I like to do the whole listing except for the photos on my computer. It’s much faster to type on a computer!

I finish the entire listing except the photos and then I click “save for later”.

Then I open up my eBay phone app, find my draft, and add photos from my phone camera.

You could certainly make the whole listing on the app if you wanted, but I like having an actual keyboard.

10. Wait for someone to buy your book!

People might submit counter-offers, which you can accept or counter back.

Or they may just pay full price.

11. Once you’re paid, package and ship your book.

I save padded envelopes from my own online orders and I use those to package the books I sell. Just make sure you take off or cover over any barcodes from the previous shipment. Then put your book into the package and tape it up.

eBay will send you an email once you’ve been paid, and that email will have a button you can click to print a shipping label.

You’ll need to fill out a little bit of info, and then you can pay for and print the label right at home. So much quicker than going to the post office!

(Media mail is not available directly through the USPS website, but it IS available through eBay, for items sold on eBay. So awesome.)

Print the label (I always choose the “save ink” option) and tape it on your package.

(related tip: buy multi-packs of packing tape to help keep shipping costs down.)

12. Drop your package in the mail.

If the package is small enough, I put it right in my mailbox. Otherwise, I go drop it into the drop box at the post office (no need to stand in line).

How long does this take? Is it worth it?

Making an eBay listing sounds like a ton of steps, but once you’ve done it a few times, it should take less than 5 minutes.

(You’ll be slow at first. But you can get faster!)

And packaging up a book for shipping usually takes me less than 5 minutes.

So, for about 10 minutes of work, I get some money in my pocket, and I know my used book is going directly to someone who wants it.

It would be way faster to donate my book to Goodwill, but there’s a pretty good chance the book will get thrown away, particularly if the book is somewhat niche, like a homeschooling book.

So, I look at my eBay selling as a kind of matchmaking; I’m uniting a reader with a book they actually want.

What about selling on Amazon instead?

I’ve done that a few times, and it is faster to making a listing on Amazon.

However, I’ve not had very good luck getting my items sold (too much competition, probably), and also Amazon’s seller fees seem higher to me than eBay’s.

So I almost always list my books on eBay.

Any other questions?

Let me know in the comments.

And if any of you have good book-selling tips for eBay (or general eBay selling tips), please share!

The post How to sell books on eBay appeared first on The Frugal Girl.

[fmshahin]

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[i-globalone]

Sharing is caring! We love to consume content. We want to stay updated, know all the latest happenings around the world. Content gives us a leeway to strike a conversation with others as well as get sharing information. In the 21st Century, with so many things interconnected, a lot of stories are generated every other minute. While early on, it would’ve been impossible to keep track of all the happenings, with the Internet you get a safe harbor to access them. Probably not all at once, but you can access them in the future. Blogging has been instrumental in the Internet’s development and its hold over content creation and consumption. People have different experiences and stories to tell, and blogging gives you a platform for your stories. The development of the internet, from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, shifted its focus from sharing content to focus more on user-generated content. Blogging usually involves sharing your personal opinions and experiences. You can blog for a non-profit reason, keeping a journal of sorts, sharing it with your friends and acquaintances. Or, you can make for-profit blogs sharing your expertise on a certain subject. You might want to jump on the bandwagon of blogging. After all, everyone has a story to tell. In that case, we bring you a list of 21 Best Free Blogging Platforms to Start your Blog in 2020. #1. WordPress.com It is noteworthy to mention the fact that WordPress powers about 30% of the internet. They must be doing something to have such a share of the pie. And that is thanks to two reasons:‌ Easy-to-use and build interface. Lots of customizability options to choose form. WordPress is offered in two variants:‌ one is WordPress.com, and another is WordPress.org. The difference being the latter is used for the self-hosted blog for which you have to buy your hosting service and domain name. Both of these involve shelling some bucks out. This hosting problem is not the case with WordPress.com. They have designed the interface as such that you can easily set up your blog within minutes. The basic blog is stocked with all the basic features to create your first post. Although the drawback of the platform is that you won’t be able to use a wide range of plugins and themes that are available on the marketplace; plus you don’t have the full claim of your blog, your blog must abide by the rules of WordPress. And in any case, if you violate their ToC, they can straightaway suspend your website. The reasons are often ambiguous, and one is in constant fear of getting all the hard work flushed down the drain. #2. Blogger First developed by Pyra Labs in ‘99 and then sold to Google in ‘03, Blogger has seen its share of development over the years. Having the Google stamp over the product means that you get a quality assurance on par with Google’s other products like Google Drive. With the help of Google account, you can easily sign and start creating your first blog post. It is easy to use and self-explanatory in design. You don’t need to know the code aspect to redesign, although Google provides you with the HTML‌ codes to tweak around. Being backed by Google brings another benefit. It has a very good up-time, and your blog would rarely go down. Plus with the help of Google’s cloud services, you can easily save thousands of images and video data relating to the website. However, there are two major drawbacks: It doesn’t offer you many options to customize. Layouts restrict you. Google is known to discard their products in a flash (Orkut, Google Plus). Although there are very fewer chances of Blogger going offline soon, there is still a possibility. #3. Wix Chances that a Wix ad has greeted you by now are quite high. Wix is a recently launched service. However, they are targeting first-time users who want to start their content-based blogs and websites. And as such, they have created tools and mechanisms that are user-friendly and can get you started ASAP. It uses a drag-and-drop mechanism to customize your website, and also provides you with the HTML‌ code just in case you want to develop it at a more atomic scale. Unlike Blogger, it offers you about 500 designs to choose from. Although once selected, you can’t change the theme again. It also doesn’t allow you to install new features. With a free account, you get 500 MB each of the bandwidth and storage capacity. Enough if you are not running a media-intensive website. Also, with the free version, you will have a Wix marking on your website. And a Wix subdomain and not a top-level-domain like .com. #4. Tumblr Tumblr was made for the entire process of writing and expressing ideas easier. You don’t have to worry about hosting and all; you should focus on content that you want to share among the Tumblr community. Insanely popular amongst the teens, especially people belonging to a certain trope or fandom, you can easily connect with new people on the platform. The entire purpose of the platform is to create content and re-blog/share content made by other users/bloggers. It is more of a microblogging website centered around sharing, and not exclusive to written content. You can share almost anything, ranging from GIFs to images, without the need to write content. This option might repel some bloggers looking forward to writing content, but it promises you a good audience to pitch your content. Major drawbacks include: harder to take backup and import, and not many customizability options available. #5. Medium If you are a blogger looking to work your way around with words and seeking people who are interested in the same, Medium is the platform for you. Like-minded essayists, columnists, and bloggers usually visit the platform. Started in 2012 by one of the Twitter founders, it gives you a WYSIWYG editor through which you can easily put your content out. It follows a system synonymous with Facebook, where instead of a like button, they provide you with a clap button to rate the articles. It also follows a tag system that splits the story into different categories so that users can choose which category they want to read first specifically. It also comes with a total time read widget, which helps users to know how much time they will require to go through it. You can see how they designed features to attract readers. The benefits are: You don’t have to code. You can easily get an audience that wants to read the content. You don’t have to waste time designing a website. But the negatives are: Medium essentially provides you with an account. So if they disband your account, you lose all your content as well as your users. You also can’t monetize your audience through ads, although affiliate marketing can be used effectively. #6. Quora Quora can be said to be a glorified Yahoo Answers. While Yahoo Answers was not able to control spam questions and answers, which led to a drop in credibility, Quora has managed to control this issue. It is by far the #1 Q&A website. Unlike Yahoo Answers, you can follow others on Quora and create your following. You can get your question answered by popular people and get posed by questions from others. They are trying to expand their business by providing users with the ability to create their blog. Once you build a good following by answering the questions, you can have readers for your blog, and start writing for them. You can even become an authoritative person in a sub-niche such as blogging. Quora doesn’t provide you with options of customizability; you have to stick to their default template. You are provided with an editor to write your content. If you want to focus on writing content and not about anything else, this can serve you perfectly. #7. Weebly Coming on the lines of Wix, Weebly is a web-hosting service that lets you create blogs on the go. With the help of a drag-and-drop builder, you can easily customize the major elements of the website. They have designed their service so that you don’t have to break a sweat while designing the website. It gives you different customizable layouts and free themes to choose from. Even if you don’t want to buy the premium version, you still have the option to give their service a run. There are several cons, though: Integration with 3rd party apps is hard. Ads are present in the free version. exporting the website is difficult. #8. Yola Yola is a simple and straightforward service. You don’t get many pages to create and edit:‌ you get about two websites and three pages to do your job. But on the positive end, you get about 1GB of capacity and bandwidth. So if you are making use of product landing pages, this might work fine in your favor. Configuring and designing pages is easy and straightforward. Adding to the mix are drag-and-drop-widgets and customizable layouts, and visually, you can create your blog appealing. Plus, you also get the option to edit the CSS if you want to get your hands dirty in coding and tweaking. #9. Drupal Drupal is one of the most well-known website builders in the industry. Dries Buytaert developed it in May of 2000 as an open-source content-management framework that can hold your content in streamlined order. It gives you better reliability and performance, along with security. Drupal is not as popular as WordPress or Blogger, but it has its active community, which develops modules for it. Thanks to this community, there are a lot of themes to dabble with, plus you also have modules to enhance the functionality of the blog. On the downside, you need to know the technical aspects of Drupal quite well to start working with it. If you are a newbie foraying into blogging, learning technical stuff to start blogging is something you might not like. It also works slower compared to other customized platforms like Blogger. #10. SquareSpace Squarespace has sponsored a good number of videos on YouTube. But while they promote their service like crazy, they also offer you a service at the same standards. It is easy to use and offers you a lot of options. Seriously, a lot. From building personal blogs to create a web store, you can get it done easily and quickly with SquareSpace. The best part is that it comes with different themes to choose from. You need to tweak a little bit here and there, and you are ready to go live with your blog. So if you are a newbie blogger who wants to create a good looking blog without the hassle of getting into technicalities, you should give SquareSpace a look. You don’t have to worry about the host, as SquareSpace does the hosting part by itself. It comes with a 14-day trial period, after which plans start from $24-$48 per month. #11. Joomla One of the industry veterans: Joomla is an open-source content management service almost on par with WordPress. Like WordPress, users can log on to the backend of the website from where they can customize the content as they want. You have a healthy number of themes and add-ons to choose from to further enhance your blog, although the community is not that diverse as that of WordPress. It is a capable service with more options to customize your website compared to WordPress. Point to note here is that it is a self-hosted service, and you will require a hosting service and domain name to go along. So, although Joomla is free to use, you will need to spend bucks on hosting it. #12. Google Sites This service from Google is intended to target business users. It promotes data sharing and real-time collaboration among different users. That is, users can edit the same set of content and see which user has edited what content. It gives you a structured wiki-type website. If you have a Google account, you can easily sign-in and create your own blog/website. It follows a drag and drop mechanism, so you don’t have to dip yourself in coding. Plus, two of its best features are: It is responsive, looks great across different devices. It can be easily incorporated with other Google applications like Google Calendar and Google Docs. Although two major drawbacks are: The inability to add AdSense ads on your website. Few customizable options. #13. HubPages Founded by three ex-Microsoft employees, HubPages is a user-generated content aggregator website. Users are known as hubbers who provide content in the form of an article (known as hubs) to the website. The best part about this platform is that if your article generates enough traffic, you also get paid. To earn an income, you need to have a valid AdSense account. If you don’t have an AdSense account, you can apply for one after submitting 10-15 hubs. You get paid by the number of clicks you get on the ad. Once the earnings reach $50, you are paid. HubPages had acquired Squidoo, one of its major competitors, and now remains the top in its sub-domain, although they have shifted their approach from a single-site to multi-site. You don’t get to customize much, as all the posts follow a standard styling. #14. SimpleSite As the name suggests, it is a no-nonsense website builder. It compromises some of its customizability options for easy to set up features. While you are setting up, you have been provided with the option to create for personal uses or business uses to set up your blog effectively. It offers you a simple theme and not a lot of options to customize. It is a great service for first-time bloggers. It is also mobile-friendly so that you don’t lose the audience from a different platform. If you are planning to scale your website in terms of an increase in the audience this won’t be able to give you many options on that front either. It offers you a very limited set of features. Also, the support is quite a lackey, although you would rarely require one. #15. TypePad TypePad is one of the industry veterans. Started in 2003, it still enjoys niche popularity among a selected few. It is simple in design and easy to manipulate, one of the reasons why major companies like MSNBC, ABC, BBC, Sky News use the service for their weblogs. The product was made for non-technical users with essential features like the ability to add photo albums, mobile blogging support, and multiple author support. Other essential features include amazing customer support, easy tools to design, several design templates to choose from, easy to upload photos and manipulate sidebar with widgets. You can’t upload your website’s banner or change the colors of the blog unless you have a plus account. For further customization, you are given access to the CSS code, but for that, you will require a pro account. #16. Jimdo Jimdo’s website building service is targeted toward personal use and small business owners. These types of people aren’t interested in getting into the complexities of running a website from the ground up. As such, Jimdo has tried to make its website building service as smooth as it can. You can either make it through the Jimdo Creator, which is an interface based on drag-and-drop format. You can click on sections, and replace the content with your content. It also offers you another option:‌ Jimdo Dolphin. It is an artificial design intelligence solution. You need to answer some questions, and the AI will build a website for you. Best features include the ability to tweak your website’s overall SEO, one of the simplest website builders, ability to create a blog on the mobile app. But like some of the other services on this website, it compromises its easy to use nature with a lack of templates. You also don’t get a preview option; changes once made will automatically be applied to the live blog. #17. Angelfire Angelfire is the godfather of all website building services. It predates most of them present in the list. It is so old that when Mark Zuckerberg was 15, created one of his first blog on the website. On the front, they offer you over 200 templates to choose from, drag and drop builder interface, and a free plan to choose. Although the sad part is that quite a lot of things are going against it. Themes are not responsive and also not up to standard to what websites use these say. This shortcoming means there is no mobile version of your website. If you were to see their social media presence, their last tweets and posts were from 2012, and after that, it feels like an abandoned place. The bottom line is this: Angelfire would have appealed to people in 1996 when there were not a lot of options to tweak. But they have failed to keep up with the progress in web development. #18. Diigo Diigo is quite different in its approach. You don’t create content. You instead collect links from the internet and store it on a single page. You can bookmark and tag web pages for future access. Once you bookmark links, you can annotate certain parts of the webpage and highlight webpages. You can attach sticky notes to these highlighted areas or the entire webpage. After you create your bookmarks, you can choose to share them with other people; they have aimed to make Diigo a social-networking website. So it can do a great job when collaborating with other people to research on certain topics. One of the best features included in the premium section, where pages once annotated, will be with you forever — no matter whether that specific webpage exists at the source or not. Diigo can come in handy for you when searching for topics and content for your next blog. #19. Splash Splash is an event management service. It won’t appeal to users looking to build personal blogs and websites, but if you are planning to have a platform for your event, this can do a good job. A good number of Fortune 500 companies use Splash. And Splash’s approach is to maximize user conversion. It achieves this by providing users with analytics at each stage. It can also be incorporated with 3rd party applications like Slack and Salesforce for better hold on your marketing process. You can also track your events’ progress through the dashboard present in the Splash. Developing web pages is easy with Splash, and it provides you with a drag and drop builder and beautiful looking responsive designs so that your brand credibility stays put without compromising on putting in too much effort. It also gives you responsive themes to choose from that work amazing across all platforms, especially mobile platforms. #20. LiveJournal As the name suggests, with this website, you can create your own journal. The company claims that the service is the middle ground between blogging and social networking. It allows users to create journals that can then be shared with other people based on the restriction level. You can also keep your journal entirely private, making it work as a diary as well. You also get the option to join communities where you can share your journals among like-minded people. It has a friends page as well, which broadcasts other people’s journals. Kind of like how facebook’s social feed works. You also get the ability to change the user’s profile picture for each blog post. LiveJournal might not be that popular in 2019, but some of the communities have other 100,000 users in it and can be used to socialize with other people. #21. Hatena Hatena is a Japanese owned company, and its blog service is targeted to personal use. They want users to share the daily experiences for others and themselves as well, as they can check their blog in the future, in which case it will act as a journal. You can easily write and incorporate data such as images, videos, and even additional information like restaurant information to your blog post. You can also import tweets and bookmarks. It also gives you the ability to revert the changes you made while writing. It provides you with a set of good looking themes which you can edit from your desktop computer and your phone. Plus, you also get to set a restriction on who can read your blog post. The only drawback here is that since it is made by a Japanese company, you might have to face some issues to move around. Although, it claims that the service keeps in touch with all the latest developments, and constant updates are there. Conclusion Phew! So that was a massive list of free blogging platforms you can choose in 2020. You have to sort out your priorities and select the one platform that provides you with more benefits than the negatives it provides you. Happy blogging! /*Archive Template Only*/ #wp-coupons-outer-wrapper { padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; } #wp-coupons-wrapper { max-width: 1200px; } /*Navigation*/ body .wp-coupons-nav a, body .wp-coupons-nav a:visited { font-size: ; color: #0c0402; } body .wp-coupons-nav a:hover, body .wp-coupons-nav a.wp-coupons-nav-selected { color: #0872aa; } body .wp-coupons-subnav a, body .wp-coupons-subnav a:visited { font-size: ; color: #0c0402; border-color: #0c0402; } body .wp-coupons-subnav a.active, body .wp-coupons-subnav a:hover { color: #0872aa; border-color: #0872aa; } /*Coupon Panel*/ .wp-coupons-coupon-panel { background: #e5e5e5; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .wp-coupons-discount-percent { background: #1b3e5a; color: #ffffff; font-size: ; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .wp-coupons-expiration { color: ; font-size: ; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .wp-coupons-discount-code { background: #f9cc29; color: #0c0c0c; font-size: ; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .wp-coupons-discount-code span { color: #0c0c0c; border-color: #0c0c0c; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .wp-coupons-ctr:before { border-color: #f9cc29 transparent; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .wp-coupons-ctr:after { border-color: #f9cc29; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-separator { border-color: #d0d2d7; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-title { font-size: ; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-title, .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-title:visited, .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-link, .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-link:visited, .wp-coupons-banner .coupon-title { color: #0c0402; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-title:hover, .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-link:hover { color: #0872aa; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-description { font-size: 22px; line-height: ; min-height: ; max-height: ; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-type, .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-type:hover, .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-type:visited { color: #000000; font-size: ; } .wp-coupons-coupon-panel a.coupon-link { font-size: ; } /*Pagination*/ body .wp-coupons-navigation .page-numbers, body .wp-coupons-navigation .page-numbers:visited { background-color: #0c0402; } body .wp-coupons-navigation .page-numbers.current, body .wp-coupons-navigation .page-numbers:hover { background-color: #0872aa; } /*Click to Reveal Popup*/ #wp-coupons-ctr-popup #wp-coupons-ctr-discount-code span { background: #f9cc29; color: #0c0c0c; } #wp-coupons-ctr-popup #wp-coupons-ctr-discount-url a { color: #0c0402; } #wp-coupons-ctr-popup #wp-coupons-ctr-discount-url a:hover { color: #0872aa; } /*Buttons*/ body a.wp-coupons-button { background: #0c0402; border-color: #0c0402; font-size: ; } body a.wp-coupons-button:hover { color: #0872aa; border-color: #0872aa; } @media(min-width: 794px) { .wp-coupons-coupon.list.compact .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-link, .wp-coupons-coupon.list.minimal .wp-coupons-coupon-panel .coupon-link { font-size: 22px; line-height: ; } } source http://wtf.telenor.com.np/2020/01/08/21-best-free-blogging-platforms-to-start-your-blog-in-2020/

http://m.globalone.com.np/2020/01/21-best-free-blogging-platforms-to.html

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT STUFF

Could we have it both ways? I know of schlep blindness is Stripe, or rather Stripe's idea. But lowballing you is a dick move that should be generally applicable. So they're going to raise $200,000.1 0: their core business sounds crushingly hip when described in Web 2. Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have young founders.2 Don't sit on their boards.3 In a sense, the lower-tier firms' biggest fear, when chance throws them a bone, is that one of the reasons the early corporate raiders were so successful. In the real world, you can't seem good without actually being good is an expensive way to seem good without actually being good is an expensive way to seem good without actually being good. Checks instituted by governments can cause much worse problems than merely overpaying.

0 referred to whatever those might turn out to be more complicated, legally, if any of the investors aren't accredited. In a sense, the lower-tier VC firms welching on deals. So you'd only want to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan, and to save long-distance bills he wrote some software that would convert sound to data packets that could be sent over the Internet. But you can't trust your opinions in the same position; he doesn't have majority control of Microsoft; in principle he also has to convince instead of commanding. That's one reason we urge startups during YC to keep expenses low and to try to solve problems and simply not discount weird hunches you have in the process of developing the pitch for the first conference, someone must have decided they'd better take a stab at explaining what that 2. As for how to write well, here's the short version: Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut DEL: out: DEL everything unnecessary; write in a conversational tone; develop a nose for bad writing, so you can get from modern technology.4 They're terrified of really novel ideas, unless the founders are unknown and the idea is very novel, you might have to launch the thing and show that users loved it before VCs would be convinced. Except he didn't. But here too we see the same principle: the way to the press, but other founders hear about it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong; be confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag; don't always make detailed outlines; mull ideas over for a few days in advance and you can't predict when you'll need to resort to lowering your price, this means in practice is that they are compulsive negotiators who will suck up a lot of people working to keep this from happening again. But the real costs are the ones most likely to get buyer's remorse. Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them.5

Or we can improve it, which usually means encrusting it with gratuitous ornament.6 If someone who had to process payments before Stripe had tried asking that, Stripe would have been perfectly safe to let them. That had already happened to Slashdot and Digg by the time I paid attention to comment threads there, but I haven't seen it. They leave 20% as an options pool for later employees but they set things up so that they can issue this stock to themselves if they get bought early and most is still unissued, and the right to get one's investment back first if the company gets sold at a low angle of attack, you just yell into the next gear. Much was changed, but there just aren't enough of them, and investing is for most of the tricks that have given VCs such a bad reputation among hackers. I think he really wishes he'd listened. Programmers like to make, and also to judge your ambition, reasonableness, and how fast you're moving forward. I'd like to propose an alternative idea: that in a modern society, increasing variation in income. As you start to believe it will. The startup will almost certainly hire more people at this point; those millions must be put to work, after all. I didn't ask my parents for seed money, though. If companies started doing that, they'd find some surprises.

When a startup reaches the point where VCs have enough information to invest in you, or an acquirer says they want to mislead you. I'm going to name them: type A fundraising is when you don't need to.7 Top actors make a lot more than you expect for the deal to close, so you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you'll regret most; go back and tone down harsh remarks; publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more, and thus generate more ideas; print out drafts instead of just looking at them. For example, if a reputable investor is willing to invest. To say that a and b would be bad, but I haven't seen it. In the original sense of the word, Bill Gates is middle class. YC to keep expenses low and to try to solve problems and simply not discount weird hunches you have in the West. Those remedial actions can delay, stall or even kill the IPO.8 But there is also huge source of implicit tags that they ignore: the text within web links. Our experience was unusual; vesting is the norm for amounts that size. When I get asked in interviews to predict the future, will be those most willing to ignore what are now considered national characters, and do the same. I soon learned from experience that schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of.9

Notes

This doesn't mean a great idea as an example of applied empathy.

Macros very close to 18% of GDP, despite dramatic changes in tax rates don't tell 5 year olds the truth. The reason Y Combinator only got 38 cents on the one hand and the cost of having someone from personnel call you about an A round about the size of the twentieth century, art as brand split apart from art as stuff. In ancient times it covered a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though.

What I dislike is editing done after the Physics in the world in verse. Any expected value calculation varies from person to run an online service. But that being so, you need but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. The downside is that we're not.

Cell phone handset makers are satisfied to sell services than a nerdy founder trying to steal a few people who might be an anti-dilution provisions, even if they don't have the same work, done mostly by people like them—people who will go away is investors requiring them. Digg's algorithm is very common for the founders of failing startups would even be tempted, but countless other startups must have been; a decade of inflation that left many public companies trading below the value of their name, but since it was the least important of the false positives caused by blacklists, for example, it's not the bawdy plays acted over on the y, you'd see a lot. MITE Corp. Well, of course finding words this way, because few founders do it well enough but the churn is high as well.

'Math for engineers' classes sucked mightily. At one point they worried Lotus was losing its startup edge and turning into a big chunk of this type is the last batch before a consortium of investors. I know when this happened because it depends on the Internet. Instead of making a good idea to make a formal language for proofs in which YC can help founders is exaggerated now because it's a hip flask.

Someone who's not a big success or a 2004 Mercedes S600 sedan 122,000. Whereas the activation energy to start businesses to use a restaurant is constrained in a wide variety of situations, but historical abuses are easier for us, because for times over a certain size it gets you there sooner. Their inexperience makes them overbuild: they'll create huge, overcomplicated agreements, and they would probably be to ask for more than the 50 minutes they may try allowing up to 20x, since they're an existing investor, and partly simple ignorance.

Handy that, except in the early days, and the low countries, where it was outlawed in the fall of 2008 the terms they were going back to 1970 it would be taught that masturbation was perfectly normal and not end up reproducing some of the most surprising things I've learned about VC while working on Viaweb. Apparently someone believed you have to say no to drugs.

My guess is a lot like intellectual bullshit. The disadvantage of expanding a round on the relative weights? I explain later.

So far the only way to make people use common sense when interpreting it. Not only do convertible debt at a middle ground. This was certainly true in the message.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jason Freedman, Jessica Livingston, Aaron Swartz, Marc Andreessen, and Sam Altman for smelling so good.

[goswagcollectorfire]

Carl’s Blog: CLEBURNE COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE; carlsblog.online; Arkansas-hillbilly.com; http://sbpra.com/CarlJBarger

5-17-19: The conclusion of the M&NA Railroad:  A daily scheduled trip form Heber Springs to Leslie normally took two hours and forty minutes depending on how many unscheduled stops the train made in picking up unscheduled passengers between scheduled stops.  The trip form Heber Springs to Miller took about twenty minutes, and from Miller to Higden, fifteen minutes.  The distance from Leslie to Heber Springs was sixty-one miles.  The sixty miles had one hundred sixty curves, and fifty-two bridges and trestles combined.  Shirley was thirty-three miles from Leslie, and approximately 28 miles from Heber Springs.  Between Heber Springs and Leslie there was scheduled stops at Miller, Higden, Edgemont, Shirley, Arlberg, Rumley and Leslie.  There were ninety-eight bridges between Leslie and Searcy, forty-six of which were between Searcy and Heber Springs and fifty-two between Heber and Leslie.  The passenger cars were painted dark red.  Their painted interiors were trimmed with mahogany and fitted with Pintsch gas lamps and Baker stoves.  The Van-Nay Interstate Vending Company offered candy, gum, tobacco and other items from their vending machines.  The M&NA railroad receive about 18% of the gross revenues.  In 1927, The M&NA railroad again went into receivership.  In 1935, the company was foreclosed upon and sold for just $350,000. On September 9, 1946, the trainmen went on a strike, and that was the end to train service.  The railroad later shut down permanently.  Most historians agree there were several reasons the railroad went under.  One of the reasons was the M&NA was concerned more with people than with schedules.  There may have been some grounds to the claim that M&NA should stand for "May Never Arrive.'  Maintenance was another big reason. The rolling stock of the company was always inadequate.  By the time the railroad closed in 1946, it owned twenty-three locomotives, of which ten were non-serviceable and one was completely inoperative.  In an article, "Memories of the Missouri & North Arkansas," written by Arlene Chandler and published in an October 2006, edition of the Cleburne County's newspaper, The Sun Times, we find some interesting stories from folks who lived during the M&NA time period.   (1)  Bruce Stair still recalls the excitement of standing at the depot seeing the big dark gold framed depot sign that read, "Heber Springs."  He watched the passengers get off and others board, training his young eyes on every detail until the train rumbled out of the station.  (2)  Chester Barger, who grew up in Higden, remembers the train well.  "I remember playing on the railroad tracks and the bridge.  It was fun. I got pretty good walking the rails.  As I got older, I got a job loading lumber into box cars on the train.  It was a hot job.  I didn't care too much for that job.  I used to ride to Pangburn to see my Aunt Pearl Mayben and my cousins.  It was fun hanging my head out the car windows and feeling the cool breeze blowing in my face."  Chester went on to say, "I believe I paid .10 cents to ride the train from Higden to Pangburn.  When I was called into the war in 1944, I rode the train to Heber Springs.  It was the longest ride of my life.  I didn't know if I would ever again see my folks alive or the little town of Higden.  Right after I returned from World War II, the M&NA railroad closed down and they started removing the rails sometime during 1949-1952, I think.  Anyway, I got me a job helping take up the rails.  It was hard work, and the rails were heavy.  It was really sad to see the railroad go." (3) Harvey Barger, Chester's older brother, remembers riding the train to Pangburn to see his girlfriend.  While dating her, he would spend weekends with his Aunt Pearl Mayten and catch the train back to Higden after a weekend.  "I liked riding the train.  It didn't take long to go from Higden to Pangburn and from Pangburn to Higden.  The thing I remember most about the ride was that the train ride was bumpy.  It was also very noisy.  I liked riding facing the front.  You could see more that away." (4) Loudeen Barger Schoolcraft, sister to Harvey and Chester Barger also remembers her experience on the train.  "My grandmother, Nancy Jane Bradford Totten, and I would catch the train at the depot in Higden.  We would ride to Pangburn to visit with my grandmother's daughter, Aunt Pearl Mayben and her family.  I believe it cost us .10 cents or something like that to ride down there.  Aunt Pearl and Uncle Henry Mayben would pick us up at the Pangburn depot and carry us to their place, west of town in a wagon.  I loved riding the train.  I was about twelve years old and while seated couldn't see very well out the windows so I would stand on my knees and look out the window.  It was fun seeing things I had never seen. “The train was my grandmother's only form of transportation to go see Aunt Pearl.  We really missed going to Aunt Pearl's after the train went out of business.  Those who didn't have an automobile were hurt the most."

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Are You Making Yourself Rich, or Poor? Here’s Why Every Choice You Make Today Matters

I come from a frugal family. My parents taught me to make smart money choices from an early age. Now that I’m an adult—and successful by many measures—those habits have proven so useful that I can’t imagine being any other way.

It wasn’t until I started hiring and mentoring other trainers that I realized just how much money people waste on unnecessary stuff: designer clothes, takeout food, top-of-the-line equipment, supplements. Their lives look great on Instagram, but what you won’t find in their profile is that they’re still sleeping under their parents’ roof because they can’t afford their own place.

I once had a trainer request a pay advance—for $300 jeans. One gym owner I know orders takeout for every meal and pays a $7 delivery fee each time. Factor in food and tip, and that’s easily $1,000-plus a month.

Thanks to the rising cost of living and our culture’s general penchant for extravagance, learning to manage your money early is more important than ever. For young trainers in particular, what you do with your earnings now can mean the difference between struggle and success later on.

A stock trader once told me that wealthy people feel valuable when they save money, and poor people feel valuable when they spend money. That resonated with me because it highlights the true secret to money management: confidence and self-belief.

As the founder of Female Trainer Society, I’ve seen so many young trainers unable to reach that next level because deep down they don’t truly believe they can. They don’t take themselves seriously enough, and that leads them to spend their money on superficial things instead of investing in themselves.

But you can do this. You can make six figures. You can live the life you imagined for yourself. You can achieve anything you want as long as you’re willing to work for it. (Mom and Dad taught me that too!)

It all starts with the right mindset—and a few simple tips.

READ ALSO: “How to Get Started as an Online Personal Trainer”

1. Sell something before you buy something

Look, I love Lululemon too. But when it comes to clothes, my rule is if I want to buy something, I have to sell something.

Trainers get Lulu apparel at a 25 percent discount, and that stuff retains its value. So if you sell it, you may make back almost what you paid for it. I do this all the time on Facebook Marketplace, and I find that brand-name fitness apparel sells quickly.

Just be sure to price it right. Often sellers will overestimate the value of their item. You wouldn’t believe how often people list products at prices that are the same—or higher—than what you’ll find in stores. If it’s available brand-new for cheaper elsewhere, no one’s going to buy it used from you. (And you do want someone to buy it, right? That’s kind of the whole point.)

2. Invest in yourself

There are a couple ways to accrue wealth. You can save. Or you can put your money to work so it makes money for you. That’s what I try to do.

When I see young trainers failing to invest in their business or their self-education, they always give the same excuse: “I can’t afford it.”

If that’s you, I have news: Yes, you can.

When I was 14, I wanted a snowboard. My dad told me that if I could earn enough to pay for half the cost, he would cover the rest. I did laundry, dishes, mowed the lawn … Okay, fine, my dad paid my allowance for those chores, so technically his money was footing the full tab. But my dad was teaching me a lesson: You can afford anything if you work hard enough.

Several years ago, I wanted to sign up for a coaching program. The course was $2,000. At the time, I was making $1,500 a month. (You do the math.) With just a week before the cutoff date for registration, I was selling off everything I could think of—snow pants, shoes, whatever. In the end, I raised enough to fund the course, and I guarantee that investment has paid off many times over since then.

I recently spent $500 on a Facebook ad that brought in $30,000 in revenue. That seems like a no-brainer. But many young trainers will say they can’t afford that initial investment (though their designer boots suggest otherwise).

Entrepreneur Russell Brunson has talked about a concept called “lead or gold.” If you absolutely had to make $500 by tomorrow or you and your whole family will die, you’d find a way to make $500. If you’re serious about your career, pretend that the stakes are that high.

READ ALSO: “What I Learned from 15,000 Training Sessions in a Commercial Gym”

3. Gamify your finances

My partner and I like to make a game of finding deals. We make a competition of it, and that helps us both stay on track. After all, if there’s one thing that motivates us fitness pros, it’s tapping into our competitive spirit.

Tech gives me the edge: I love Flipp, which searches circulars and coupons to find the best deals for all the items on your weekly shopping list.

I also like Mint. It links to all your accounts so you can easily see what you spend money on. It lets you create a budget and sends you notifications if you’re coming close.

I do my food shopping at the end of the day, when near-expired food gets discounted. Just the other week I snagged $100 worth of antibiotic-free meat for $38! Believe me, the rush you get from a deal like that is way better than fancy jeans.

I take the game further by establishing rules. For example, I refuse to throw out any food. At the end of the month, I clear out my cupboards and fridge and eat everything that’s about to go bad. I’m like Pac-Man eating pellets.

Level up!

READ ALSO: “Forget About Setting Goals. Do This Instead.”

4. Set aside money for taxes

I have friends who gross six figures a year, and because of that assume they don’t need to worry about saving. Then tax season hits, and they understand why that’s a mistake.

If you, like many trainers, are self-employed, you should be setting aside at least 25 percent of your income for taxes. If you make about the same amount each month, you can have your bank automatically transfer a stipend over to savings.

You should also be using accounting software like QuickBooks. For a small monthly fee, you can see how much you’re actually making after expenses. And that’s a number you should know.

5. Treat one client as your pension

If I have one financial regret, it’s that I didn’t start saving for retirement in my early 20s. I convinced myself I couldn’t afford it then, but I’d get to it eventually. When I think about the amount of exponential growth I missed out on, I can’t help but get annoyed with my younger self.

Research shows a way to think more seriously about your future: In one study, people who viewed aged images of themselves contributed more of their earnings to a retirement plan than those who viewed images of their current self. When you relate to your future self, you’re more likely to make good decisions for that person’s happiness and well-being.

Setting aside a couple hundred dollars a month can make a huge difference. Try this easy hack: Take the revenue from one client and put that into a retirement fund. So if you’re charging one client $300 a month, consider that your retirement money.

READ ALSO: “Why You Should Have Dinner with Your Clients”

6. Take your own advice

Trainers are always preaching to their clients about the importance of meal prep—right before they grab another takeout meal.

And I get it. I still remember when I first started and was working all hours, taking on every client I could. By the time I was done working, the only places that were still open sold fast food. I was spending $150 on takeout every week, and it wasn’t even quality nutrition.

Those meal-prep tips we give clients aren’t just lip service. They work. And you can save a ton of money following them.

I make sure to keep quick, ready-to-go foods in the freezer, and I always have cooked chicken prepped and ready to go. After a recent long day, I used that chicken, some frozen peppers, and frozen tortilla shells to whip up fajitas in about five minutes.

As a trainer, you’re setting an example for your clients. When you advise them to avoid takeout, be sure to follow your own advice.

READ ALSO: “A Trainer’s Guide to Protein”

7. Realize something is better than nothing

Thinking about opening your own training space? Good for you! Just don’t feel you need to start out with the works.

I remember one new gym owner who dropped six figures on equipment alone. The gym looked beautiful—they even had brick professionally installed on the walls—but I cringe to think of the sheer number of hours they’ll have to work just to pay off those bills.

A lot of people have an all-or-nothing mindset. I like to teach that something is better than nothing.

Opening a gym with over $100,000 worth of equipment is a big jump. But you can get a solid start by renting a small space inside a larger gym for a fraction of the price. And don’t assume you need the shiny new equipment, either—I’ve found great deals for used equipment online.

People tend to misjudge what will have the greatest impact on their career. Truth is, more than any amount of fancy clothes or equipment, grit and personality will take you much farther. And those are free.

READ ALSO: “Three Mistakes that Could Cost You $100,000 and Sink Your New Gym”

    More Habits of Highly Wealthy Trainers

When it comes to your career and financial success, every choice you make today matters. Learn the two habits you need to break free from the daily grind when you pick up your copy of Jonathan Goodman’s limited-edition, two-book box set The Highly Wealthy Online Trainer.

Compiled here for the first time, these books will empower you to think and act differently, and reap the rewards. Why a box set? Because marketing strategy is worthless unless it is acted upon, and that requires good habits. The two go together.

What you get:

Book #1: Habits of Highly Wealthy Online Trainers

Book #2: Marketing Breakthroughs of Highly Wealthy Online Trainers

Don’t wait –> Order your copies today.

    The post Are You Making Yourself Rich, or Poor? Here’s Why Every Choice You Make Today Matters appeared first on The PTDC.

Are You Making Yourself Rich, or Poor? Here’s Why Every Choice You Make Today Matters published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/

[fitono]

Are You Making Yourself Rich, or Poor? Here’s Why Every Choice You Make Today Matters

I come from a frugal family. My parents taught me to make smart money choices from an early age. Now that I’m an adult—and successful by many measures—those habits have proven so useful that I can’t imagine being any other way.

It wasn’t until I started hiring and mentoring other trainers that I realized just how much money people waste on unnecessary stuff: designer clothes, takeout food, top-of-the-line equipment, supplements. Their lives look great on Instagram, but what you won’t find in their profile is that they’re still sleeping under their parents’ roof because they can’t afford their own place.

I once had a trainer request a pay advance—for $300 jeans. One gym owner I know orders takeout for every meal and pays a $7 delivery fee each time. Factor in food and tip, and that’s easily $1,000-plus a month.

Thanks to the rising cost of living and our culture’s general penchant for extravagance, learning to manage your money early is more important than ever. For young trainers in particular, what you do with your earnings now can mean the difference between struggle and success later on.

A stock trader once told me that wealthy people feel valuable when they save money, and poor people feel valuable when they spend money. That resonated with me because it highlights the true secret to money management: confidence and self-belief.

As the founder of Female Trainer Society, I’ve seen so many young trainers unable to reach that next level because deep down they don’t truly believe they can. They don’t take themselves seriously enough, and that leads them to spend their money on superficial things instead of investing in themselves.

But you can do this. You can make six figures. You can live the life you imagined for yourself. You can achieve anything you want as long as you’re willing to work for it. (Mom and Dad taught me that too!)

It all starts with the right mindset—and a few simple tips.

READ ALSO: “How to Get Started as an Online Personal Trainer”

1. Sell something before you buy something

Look, I love Lululemon too. But when it comes to clothes, my rule is if I want to buy something, I have to sell something.

Trainers get Lulu apparel at a 25 percent discount, and that stuff retains its value. So if you sell it, you may make back almost what you paid for it. I do this all the time on Facebook Marketplace, and I find that brand-name fitness apparel sells quickly.

Just be sure to price it right. Often sellers will overestimate the value of their item. You wouldn’t believe how often people list products at prices that are the same—or higher—than what you’ll find in stores. If it’s available brand-new for cheaper elsewhere, no one’s going to buy it used from you. (And you do want someone to buy it, right? That’s kind of the whole point.)

2. Invest in yourself

There are a couple ways to accrue wealth. You can save. Or you can put your money to work so it makes money for you. That’s what I try to do.

When I see young trainers failing to invest in their business or their self-education, they always give the same excuse: “I can’t afford it.”

If that’s you, I have news: Yes, you can.

When I was 14, I wanted a snowboard. My dad told me that if I could earn enough to pay for half the cost, he would cover the rest. I did laundry, dishes, mowed the lawn … Okay, fine, my dad paid my allowance for those chores, so technically his money was footing the full tab. But my dad was teaching me a lesson: You can afford anything if you work hard enough.

Several years ago, I wanted to sign up for a coaching program. The course was $2,000. At the time, I was making $1,500 a month. (You do the math.) With just a week before the cutoff date for registration, I was selling off everything I could think of—snow pants, shoes, whatever. In the end, I raised enough to fund the course, and I guarantee that investment has paid off many times over since then.

I recently spent $500 on a Facebook ad that brought in $30,000 in revenue. That seems like a no-brainer. But many young trainers will say they can’t afford that initial investment (though their designer boots suggest otherwise).

Entrepreneur Russell Brunson has talked about a concept called “lead or gold.” If you absolutely had to make $500 by tomorrow or you and your whole family will die, you’d find a way to make $500. If you’re serious about your career, pretend that the stakes are that high.

READ ALSO: “What I Learned from 15,000 Training Sessions in a Commercial Gym”

3. Gamify your finances

My partner and I like to make a game of finding deals. We make a competition of it, and that helps us both stay on track. After all, if there’s one thing that motivates us fitness pros, it’s tapping into our competitive spirit.

Tech gives me the edge: I love Flipp, which searches circulars and coupons to find the best deals for all the items on your weekly shopping list.

I also like Mint. It links to all your accounts so you can easily see what you spend money on. It lets you create a budget and sends you notifications if you’re coming close.

I do my food shopping at the end of the day, when near-expired food gets discounted. Just the other week I snagged $100 worth of antibiotic-free meat for $38! Believe me, the rush you get from a deal like that is way better than fancy jeans.

I take the game further by establishing rules. For example, I refuse to throw out any food. At the end of the month, I clear out my cupboards and fridge and eat everything that’s about to go bad. I’m like Pac-Man eating pellets.

Level up!

READ ALSO: “Forget About Setting Goals. Do This Instead.”

4. Set aside money for taxes

I have friends who gross six figures a year, and because of that assume they don’t need to worry about saving. Then tax season hits, and they understand why that’s a mistake.

If you, like many trainers, are self-employed, you should be setting aside at least 25 percent of your income for taxes. If you make about the same amount each month, you can have your bank automatically transfer a stipend over to savings.

You should also be using accounting software like QuickBooks. For a small monthly fee, you can see how much you’re actually making after expenses. And that’s a number you should know.

5. Treat one client as your pension

If I have one financial regret, it’s that I didn’t start saving for retirement in my early 20s. I convinced myself I couldn’t afford it then, but I’d get to it eventually. When I think about the amount of exponential growth I missed out on, I can’t help but get annoyed with my younger self.

Research shows a way to think more seriously about your future: In one study, people who viewed aged images of themselves contributed more of their earnings to a retirement plan than those who viewed images of their current self. When you relate to your future self, you’re more likely to make good decisions for that person’s happiness and well-being.

Setting aside a couple hundred dollars a month can make a huge difference. Try this easy hack: Take the revenue from one client and put that into a retirement fund. So if you’re charging one client $300 a month, consider that your retirement money.

READ ALSO: “Why You Should Have Dinner with Your Clients”

6. Take your own advice

Trainers are always preaching to their clients about the importance of meal prep—right before they grab another takeout meal.

And I get it. I still remember when I first started and was working all hours, taking on every client I could. By the time I was done working, the only places that were still open sold fast food. I was spending $150 on takeout every week, and it wasn’t even quality nutrition.

Those meal-prep tips we give clients aren’t just lip service. They work. And you can save a ton of money following them.

I make sure to keep quick, ready-to-go foods in the freezer, and I always have cooked chicken prepped and ready to go. After a recent long day, I used that chicken, some frozen peppers, and frozen tortilla shells to whip up fajitas in about five minutes.

As a trainer, you’re setting an example for your clients. When you advise them to avoid takeout, be sure to follow your own advice.

READ ALSO: “A Trainer’s Guide to Protein”

7. Realize something is better than nothing

Thinking about opening your own training space? Good for you! Just don’t feel you need to start out with the works.

I remember one new gym owner who dropped six figures on equipment alone. The gym looked beautiful—they even had brick professionally installed on the walls—but I cringe to think of the sheer number of hours they’ll have to work just to pay off those bills.

A lot of people have an all-or-nothing mindset. I like to teach that something is better than nothing.

Opening a gym with over $100,000 worth of equipment is a big jump. But you can get a solid start by renting a small space inside a larger gym for a fraction of the price. And don’t assume you need the shiny new equipment, either—I’ve found great deals for used equipment online.

People tend to misjudge what will have the greatest impact on their career. Truth is, more than any amount of fancy clothes or equipment, grit and personality will take you much farther. And those are free.

READ ALSO: “Three Mistakes that Could Cost You $100,000 and Sink Your New Gym”

    More Habits of Highly Wealthy Trainers

When it comes to your career and financial success, every choice you make today matters. Learn the two habits you need to break free from the daily grind when you pick up your copy of Jonathan Goodman’s limited-edition, two-book box set The Highly Wealthy Online Trainer.

Compiled here for the first time, these books will empower you to think and act differently, and reap the rewards. Why a box set? Because marketing strategy is worthless unless it is acted upon, and that requires good habits. The two go together.

What you get:

Book #1: Habits of Highly Wealthy Online Trainers

Book #2: Marketing Breakthroughs of Highly Wealthy Online Trainers

Don’t wait –> Order your copies today.

    The post Are You Making Yourself Rich, or Poor? Here’s Why Every Choice You Make Today Matters appeared first on The PTDC.

Are You Making Yourself Rich, or Poor? Here’s Why Every Choice You Make Today Matters published first on https://medium.com/@MyDietArea

[helenpattersoon]

How to share creative work fairly in the digital age

Reposting beautiful illustrations, inspiring quotes, and funny doodles on social media has become ingrained in our online habits—it’s a new era of digital sharing, and we’re still kinda figuring things out. But there are certainly a few fundamental things to take into consideration before sharing the next illustration that makes you feel, “it me”.

In many cases, these viral gems are original creative works by an artist—an illustrator or graphic designer who has decided to bless us by posting their work online. Artists share their own work as a means of growing their business, to build their portfolio or online presence—of course they want to attract fans and customers who might purchase from their store, hire them for a project, or recommend them to others.

But what often happens is that the original creator’s Instagram handle gets cut off in the process of reposting, or their image is simply uploaded to Twitter without any credit, shared without any trace back to where it came from. There are consequences to this which can affect a designer’s livelihood. So it’s important for all of us to know how to share creative work properly online, whether we want to repost something to a personal channel, or a brand social account. I reached out to artist and author Adam J. Kurtz to learn more and put together this deep dive on how to do it right.

  View this post on Instagram

  this is actually sorta the opposite of that old one i posted last week oops

actually just made this today during a zine making workshop i did for @wix’s design playground. it was a fully analog exercise (except for one or two designers who cheated but ok i know it’s hard to not use all our tools!!!) but i just did this little single panel version to share because i like it so much. anyway i had a great time thanks for having me etc.

event photos by @yotiroboti!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 7:49pm PDT

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Meet Adam J. Kurtz, an artist and author whose work often goes viral—often without credit

Adam recently published a vlog about his experience of finding his work posted to a company’s social media channel, without his permission or credit. Adam’s first step was to contact the company directly first, asking for the post to be deleted. He received an apology, and was promised that it wouldn’t happen again, however it totally did happen again with the same company. So Adam decided the next step was to request a payment for a ‘retroactive social media license’ for the use of his work—he invoiced the company and was successfully paid. Adam’s vlog is a great explainer on how to share creative work properly online, whether for personal or work use:

When I first saw Adam’s video I was instantly struck by how well he addressed this new aspect of digital sharing. “I don’t think many of us can exist without sharing our work online”, Adam told me by email, when I asked him about being a very shareable creative in the digital age. “Whether it’s a creative studio portfolio showcase, or individual creatives sharing new work, process, daily warm-ups, or other bits and pieces. It’s how we build our brands, find new fans, and get more clients. This is how the business mostly works now. It can be scary enough to share your work with an audience when you’re worried they might not like it,” Adam explained.

Adam makes a living from his creative work—he’s designed products for the likes of Fish’s Eddy, Urban Outfitters, Tattly, and some of his other clients are Adobe, Instagram, The New York Times, Penguin Random House, Pepsi. Adam’s products, his writing and graphics tap into universal themes that resonate deeply (and are super fun)—it’s understandable that many people connect with what he does and that his work often goes viral.

  View this post on Instagram

  the bitch (ur undeniable responsibility for ur own actions) is back

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Dec 23, 2017 at 9:35am PST

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While an artist can choose to share their work online to build their own following and establish a presence online—Adam for example has built a following of nearly 200,000 followers on his Instagram account—we need to be more aware of the best way to share designs when it’s created by someone else—whether it’s on our personal account, or when sharing something for a business.

What are the best practices when sharing creative work online?

  View this post on Instagram

  inspired by the response to my lil “f u pay me” vlog, here are some guidelines on how to repost my work. in general i’m rly chill and grateful about this but i’m not trying to directly help you sell your granola or meditation classes… when a company wants to use my art for business purposes they can hire me or license something. and of course use your best judgement! . if you’re coming to my instagram or anyone else’s and thinking it’s just a stock image service, you’re mistaken. if you’re enjoying something or feeling encouraged, that’s totally awesome (and the point) and i’m so glad. this post is really more geared towards stopping companies from posting for their own profit, under the guise of “friendly reposts” that undervalue creative work made by real human people. . and if you wanna hear me talk about this for 13 minutes head to YOUTUBE.COM/ADAMJK

i kinda just went in on how our creative work has value and how it’s up to all of us to educate others, especially if we work for a company with a social media team.

the response has honestly got me inspired to talk more and put more videos up. . p.s. i’m not here to publicly shame anyone! that’s not usually the best way to get things done. but if you wanna repost these guidelines or privately share this post with an account you see doing this stuff often, that’d be cool. remember that kindness is often more powerful than anger, especially when trying to educate someone!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 4:44am PDT

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Of course if you find something funny or touching, you want to share it with your followers—and there are soooooo many social sharing buttons which make this super easy. But this also makes it easy to accidentally or otherwise cut off the original creator’s handle. When people repost artist’s work to a personal network, this is no doubt a very beneficial action for artists, but you still want to just check quickly that you’ve credited the work properly.

Adam’s tip: When sharing to your personal account, tag the creator in both the image and caption, don’t alter the image, or edit out the creator’s handle or watermark.

Here are some best practises based on Adam’s suggestions, that we encourage everyone (whether for personal or biz use) to consider when sharing creative work—that could be a cartoon, illustration, quote, photo or other image. It’s super helpful advice that can generally be applied to all creative work:

Check that the artist’s credit is not buried under a long comment and paragraph of hashtags. Be mindful of tagging the artist in the first couple of lines underneath the post.

Feature the artist: Is the work being shared because it’s going viral and you want to get in on that, or to showcase the artist? In Adam’s case, he is only ok with brands sharing his work if the point is to showcase the work itself.

Communicate: Brands should not share work without a credit or if the image has been altered. A partnership should not be implied, and the post shouldn’t advertise a sale or promotion if there isn’t one. If you want to set up a partnership with a designer based off an example of their work you like, reach out!

Some of this is common sense, but it’s always good to remind ourselves that there are living, breathing humans behind these designs whose livelihood depends on being properly credited for their work. Why do they post it online if they don’t want us to share it, you ask? Good question! The point is, artists are quite happy for you to share their work—the right way, and with a proper credit. And if you’re a brand using someone’s creative work to build your following online, there should be compensation involved for the artist.

  View this post on Instagram

  checklist for getting over common fears — read the book for the actual advice broken down!

. i’m donating 100% of my pride month royalties for @thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem to the @teganandsarafoundation to help them support economic justice, health, and representation for LGBTQ girls and women. . you might remember we raised $7,500 for this great organization with the book preorder campaign last year, but I’m hoping this is a continued opportunity to use my art for good in the same way that @teganandsara continue to use theirs, leading by example for so many of us. . i earn $1.05 per book sold (in bookstores, on amazon, at my 6/13 @strandbookstore event, etc) so we’ll see how much it ends up being! if you haven’t got a copy yet this might be a perfect excuse to help yourself and others. . more details at thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem.com/pride. #thingsare #pride

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 5, 2018 at 12:47pm PDT

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

I don’t want to scare you from sharing your favourite artist’s work, just be careful about how you share it. Creative people are tired of being told that the ‘exposure’ will be great—if it’s for personal use, a credit can go a long way to bringing new fans (and possible buyers) to a designer’s website. If you’re a brand, unless you’re showcasing the artist’s work only, there’s a responsibility to pay the artist for using their creative work—bills can’t be paid with exposure.

Tips for creators: what to do when you find your work shared without credit

Adam also pointed out to me that the risk for artists these days is not only if the work will be received well, but if it might take on a life of its own without any connection back to the artist, spiralling off into the digital sphere across the umpteen platforms we’re all constantly updating, streaming and scrolling through.

“Now you have to be kind of worried that they will [like it], and might help themselves to it for any number of reasons,” Adam explained. “My perspective is kind of the same for both—make your work and share it. If people don’t like it, they keep on scrolling. If one bad apple out there does repost or otherwise use your work unfairly, you can deal with it then.”

For designers who might be hesitant about sharing their work online, Adam feels that the positive results outweigh the possible risk. “If you don’t share, nobody can ever see anything,” he says. “That is worse than any other negative outcomes. We can’t worry about what we can’t control, so try to let go of those concerns until they become relevant. That’s just good life advice in general, really.”

  View this post on Instagram

  sometimes laughter is the best medicine… sometimes it’s mood stabilizers! this pin is for anyone working towards balance. about to be sold out for good, i’ve got 20 left.

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on May 19, 2018 at 9:17am PDT

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If you’re a designer and you find that someone has posted your work without permission or without a credit, here are some tips for creatives that Adam shared with me.

Ask accounts to update their caption: Adam says, “It sucks when it’s already been up for a while, so there’s not the same benefit of having your work seen and a possible influx of followers. But I have a keyboard “text replacement” shortcut on my phone now. With a few taps I can easily paste a little comment that basically says, “Hi thanks for sharing my work but please credit me in the caption so your followers can find my art and books.” It’s not written aggressively, and since I started doing it, most people have responded positively.

Send a private email or direct message first: “There are plenty of people tweeting at big brands and seeing no retweets, no comments, and no response from the brand. So my approach is typically to be direct and discreet first. I DM the brand, email a listed address, or something like that. It keeps people from being on the defensive. And while I can’t really spend the time to educate everybody, it can make a difference later.”

Adam also told us how a proper credit can go a long way for an artist, if their work is featured and shared with a big audience:

When ‘exposure’ is maybe okay but probably not legal:  Adam says, “I’ve had one or two popular Instagram accounts […] share my work properly, with clear credit, to audiences of several million. That’s the kind of reposting that we’d all like, where a huge audience gets exposed to our work, and maybe 100+ new followers find us as a result. Reposting content might be questionably legal in the first place, but in the case of those big meme accounts, you can get your ‘payment’ in the form of that proper crediting.”

At the end of the day, if you’re a creative person who’s producing artwork, you should get to decide how that art is used.

Remember, it’s your work—decide how you want your work to be shared: Adam says, “When it’s a company, you are in charge. You might not want a certain business using your art to promote their stuff. You can ask them to delete it, and if they really keep ignoring you, you actually can file a copyright claim through Instagram support. Your work has a value and if a brand hasn’t asked or paid for it first, then you can decide how to respond. It’s your work.”

So, what’s the best way to share my next favourite relatable #content?

In an ideal world everyone would stop and think, “Where did this come from?” before sharing the next pug cartoon or cute illustration which is going viral. When posting to your personal social media channels, make sure you credit the original artist properly with a visible tag, and if an artist has added their name at the bottom of an artwork, don’t cut it off if you’re using a tool which resizes an image (the work should really not be edited at all).

What to do if you’re not sure where an illustration came from? Try to trace it back from where you found it, or use Google reverse image search.

If you’re working for a brand and want to share original work to showcase an artist’s work, at least seek permission first with an explanation as to why you want to make the post, and make sure to add a link to their handle at the top of the description. If the post is being used to promote a business or build brand awareness, contact the artist first to discuss compensation—or commission something especially for you!

Finally, if you notice someone sharing original work without an artist credit, give them a polite heads up and encourage them to repost it with a correction. The artist will love you for it.

Want something created especially for you?

Work directly with a designer to make it happen.

Let’s do it!

The post How to share creative work fairly in the digital age appeared first on 99designs.

via https://99designs.co.uk/blog/

[pamelahetrick]

How to share creative work fairly in the digital age

Reposting beautiful illustrations, inspiring quotes, and funny doodles on social media has become ingrained in our online habits—it’s a new era of digital sharing, and we’re still kinda figuring things out. But there are certainly a few fundamental things to take into consideration before sharing the next illustration that makes you feel, “it me”.

In many cases, these viral gems are original creative works by an artist—an illustrator or graphic designer who has decided to bless us by posting their work online. Artists share their own work as a means of growing their business, to build their portfolio or online presence—of course they want to attract fans and customers who might purchase from their store, hire them for a project, or recommend them to others.

But what often happens is that the original creator’s Instagram handle gets cut off in the process of reposting, or their image is simply uploaded to Twitter without any credit, shared without any trace back to where it came from. There are consequences to this which can affect a designer’s livelihood. So it’s important for all of us to know how to share creative work properly online, whether we want to repost something to a personal channel, or a brand social account. I reached out to artist and author Adam J. Kurtz to learn more and put together this deep dive on how to do it right.

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 this is actually sorta the opposite of that old one i posted last week oops

actually just made this today during a zine making workshop i did for @wix’s design playground. it was a fully analog exercise (except for one or two designers who cheated but ok i know it’s hard to not use all our tools!!!) but i just did this little single panel version to share because i like it so much. anyway i had a great time thanks for having me etc.

event photos by @yotiroboti!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 7:49pm PDT

Meet Adam J. Kurtz, an artist and author whose work often goes viral—often without credit

Adam recently published a vlog about his experience of finding his work posted to a company’s social media channel, without his permission or credit. Adam’s first step was to contact the company directly first, asking for the post to be deleted. He received an apology, and was promised that it wouldn’t happen again, however it totally did happen again with the same company. So Adam decided the next step was to request a payment for a ‘retroactive social media license’ for the use of his work—he invoiced the company and was successfully paid. Adam’s vlog is a great explainer on how to share creative work properly online, whether for personal or work use:

When I first saw Adam’s video I was instantly struck by how well he addressed this new aspect of digital sharing. “I don’t think many of us can exist without sharing our work online”, Adam told me by email, when I asked him about being a very shareable creative in the digital age. “Whether it’s a creative studio portfolio showcase, or individual creatives sharing new work, process, daily warm-ups, or other bits and pieces. It’s how we build our brands, find new fans, and get more clients. This is how the business mostly works now. It can be scary enough to share your work with an audience when you’re worried they might not like it,” Adam explained.

Adam makes a living from his creative work—he’s designed products for the likes of Fish’s Eddy, Urban Outfitters, Tattly, and some of his other clients are Adobe, Instagram, The New York Times, Penguin Random House, Pepsi. Adam’s products, his writing and graphics tap into universal themes that resonate deeply (and are super fun)—it’s understandable that many people connect with what he does and that his work often goes viral.

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 the bitch (ur undeniable responsibility for ur own actions) is back

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Dec 23, 2017 at 9:35am PST

While an artist can choose to share their work online to build their own following and establish a presence online—Adam for example has built a following of nearly 200,000 followers on his Instagram account—we need to be more aware of the best way to share designs when it’s created by someone else—whether it’s on our personal account, or when sharing something for a business.

What are the best practices when sharing creative work online?

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 inspired by the response to my lil “f u pay me” vlog, here are some guidelines on how to repost my work. in general i’m rly chill and grateful about this but i’m not trying to directly help you sell your granola or meditation classes… when a company wants to use my art for business purposes they can hire me or license something. and of course use your best judgement! . if you’re coming to my instagram or anyone else’s and thinking it’s just a stock image service, you’re mistaken. if you’re enjoying something or feeling encouraged, that’s totally awesome (and the point) and i’m so glad. this post is really more geared towards stopping companies from posting for their own profit, under the guise of “friendly reposts” that undervalue creative work made by real human people. . and if you wanna hear me talk about this for 13 minutes head to YOUTUBE.COM/ADAMJK

i kinda just went in on how our creative work has value and how it’s up to all of us to educate others, especially if we work for a company with a social media team.

the response has honestly got me inspired to talk more and put more videos up. . p.s. i’m not here to publicly shame anyone! that’s not usually the best way to get things done. but if you wanna repost these guidelines or privately share this post with an account you see doing this stuff often, that’d be cool. remember that kindness is often more powerful than anger, especially when trying to educate someone!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 4:44am PDT

Of course if you find something funny or touching, you want to share it with your followers—and there are soooooo many social sharing buttons which make this super easy. But this also makes it easy to accidentally or otherwise cut off the original creator’s handle. When people repost artist’s work to a personal network, this is no doubt a very beneficial action for artists, but you still want to just check quickly that you’ve credited the work properly.

Adam’s tip: When sharing to your personal account, tag the creator in both the image and caption, don’t alter the image, or edit out the creator’s handle or watermark.

Here are some best practises based on Adam’s suggestions, that we encourage everyone (whether for personal or biz use) to consider when sharing creative work—that could be a cartoon, illustration, quote, photo or other image. It’s super helpful advice that can generally be applied to all creative work:

Check that the artist’s credit is not buried under a long comment and paragraph of hashtags. Be mindful of tagging the artist in the first couple of lines underneath the post.

Feature the artist: Is the work being shared because it’s going viral and you want to get in on that, or to showcase the artist? In Adam’s case, he is only ok with brands sharing his work if the point is to showcase the work itself.

Communicate: Brands should not share work without a credit or if the image has been altered. A partnership should not be implied, and the post shouldn’t advertise a sale or promotion if there isn’t one. If you want to set up a partnership with a designer based off an example of their work you like, reach out!

Some of this is common sense, but it’s always good to remind ourselves that there are living, breathing humans behind these designs whose livelihood depends on being properly credited for their work. Why do they post it online if they don’t want us to share it, you ask? Good question! The point is, artists are quite happy for you to share their work—the right way, and with a proper credit. And if you’re a brand using someone’s creative work to build your following online, there should be compensation involved for the artist.

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 checklist for getting over common fears — read the book for the actual advice broken down!

. i’m donating 100% of my pride month royalties for @thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem to the @teganandsarafoundation to help them support economic justice, health, and representation for LGBTQ girls and women. . you might remember we raised $7,500 for this great organization with the book preorder campaign last year, but I’m hoping this is a continued opportunity to use my art for good in the same way that @teganandsara continue to use theirs, leading by example for so many of us. . i earn $1.05 per book sold (in bookstores, on amazon, at my 6/13 @strandbookstore event, etc) so we’ll see how much it ends up being! if you haven’t got a copy yet this might be a perfect excuse to help yourself and others. . more details at thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem.com/pride. #thingsare #pride

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 5, 2018 at 12:47pm PDT

I don’t want to scare you from sharing your favourite artist’s work, just be careful about how you share it. Creative people are tired of being told that the ‘exposure’ will be great—if it’s for personal use, a credit can go a long way to bringing new fans (and possible buyers) to a designer’s website. If you’re a brand, unless you’re showcasing the artist’s work only, there’s a responsibility to pay the artist for using their creative work—bills can’t be paid with exposure.

Tips for creators: what to do when you find your work shared without credit

Adam also pointed out to me that the risk for artists these days is not only if the work will be received well, but if it might take on a life of its own without any connection back to the artist, spiralling off into the digital sphere across the umpteen platforms we’re all constantly updating, streaming and scrolling through.

“Now you have to be kind of worried that they will [like it], and might help themselves to it for any number of reasons,” Adam explained. “My perspective is kind of the same for both—make your work and share it. If people don’t like it, they keep on scrolling. If one bad apple out there does repost or otherwise use your work unfairly, you can deal with it then.”

For designers who might be hesitant about sharing their work online, Adam feels that the positive results outweigh the possible risk. “If you don’t share, nobody can ever see anything,” he says. “That is worse than any other negative outcomes. We can’t worry about what we can’t control, so try to let go of those concerns until they become relevant. That’s just good life advice in general, really.”

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 sometimes laughter is the best medicine… sometimes it’s mood stabilizers! this pin is for anyone working towards balance. about to be sold out for good, i’ve got 20 left.

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on May 19, 2018 at 9:17am PDT

If you’re a designer and you find that someone has posted your work without permission or without a credit, here are some tips for creatives that Adam shared with me.

Ask accounts to update their caption: Adam says, “It sucks when it’s already been up for a while, so there’s not the same benefit of having your work seen and a possible influx of followers. But I have a keyboard “text replacement” shortcut on my phone now. With a few taps I can easily paste a little comment that basically says, “Hi thanks for sharing my work but please credit me in the caption so your followers can find my art and books.” It’s not written aggressively, and since I started doing it, most people have responded positively.

Send a private email or direct message first: “There are plenty of people tweeting at big brands and seeing no retweets, no comments, and no response from the brand. So my approach is typically to be direct and discreet first. I DM the brand, email a listed address, or something like that. It keeps people from being on the defensive. And while I can’t really spend the time to educate everybody, it can make a difference later.”

Adam also told us how a proper credit can go a long way for an artist, if their work is featured and shared with a big audience:

When ‘exposure’ is maybe okay but probably not legal:  Adam says, “I’ve had one or two popular Instagram accounts […] share my work properly, with clear credit, to audiences of several million. That’s the kind of reposting that we’d all like, where a huge audience gets exposed to our work, and maybe 100+ new followers find us as a result. Reposting content might be questionably legal in the first place, but in the case of those big meme accounts, you can get your ‘payment’ in the form of that proper crediting.”

At the end of the day, if you’re a creative person who’s producing artwork, you should get to decide how that art is used.

Remember, it’s your work—decide how you want your work to be shared: Adam says, “When it’s a company, you are in charge. You might not want a certain business using your art to promote their stuff. You can ask them to delete it, and if they really keep ignoring you, you actually can file a copyright claim through Instagram support. Your work has a value and if a brand hasn’t asked or paid for it first, then you can decide how to respond. It’s your work.”

So, what’s the best way to share my next favourite relatable #content?

In an ideal world everyone would stop and think, “Where did this come from?” before sharing the next pug cartoon or cute illustration which is going viral. When posting to your personal social media channels, make sure you credit the original artist properly with a visible tag, and if an artist has added their name at the bottom of an artwork, don’t cut it off if you’re using a tool which resizes an image (the work should really not be edited at all).

What to do if you’re not sure where an illustration came from? Try to trace it back from where you found it, or use Google reverse image search.

If you’re working for a brand and want to share original work to showcase an artist’s work, at least seek permission first with an explanation as to why you want to make the post, and make sure to add a link to their handle at the top of the description. If the post is being used to promote a business or build brand awareness, contact the artist first to discuss compensation—or commission something especially for you!

Finally, if you notice someone sharing original work without an artist credit, give them a polite heads up and encourage them to repost it with a correction. The artist will love you for it.

Want something created especially for you?

Work directly with a designer to make it happen.

Let's do it!

The post How to share creative work fairly in the digital age appeared first on 99designs.

via 99designs https://99designs.co.uk/blog/marketing-advertising-en-gb/sharing-creative-work-fairly/