#i kind of want to convert them to pdfs later and post them to somewhere

[thelittlestspider]

people who post their original fics on ao3 and wattpad are so much braver than me

[onlinemarketinghelp]

Email Marketing Made Simple: How To Start & Run A Successful Email Marketing Campaign https://ift.tt/2XNUTGQ

Email marketing has one of the highest returns on investment in all of online marketing. For every dollar spent on email marketing, you can expect about a 3800% return.

And no, that wasn’t a typo.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Email marketing requires a combination of work and the right tools. Only you can put the work in.

For my tool, I’ll be using Constant Contact. They can build opt in forms, send email blasts, run email automations, and have super powerful list management tools.

All the better? You can try Constant Contact free for 60 days, no payment method required. You can use the trial to follow along in this guide and set up your own email marketing campaign.

Click here to try Constant Contact free for 60 days

Run your email marketing campaigns with Constant Contact

Benefits of Email Marketing

I’m a big believer in the power of email marketing. There are a few reasons for that.

1. Everyone Uses Email

Email is a fact of life. And whether your audience is old, young, or somewhere in the middle, it’s almost guaranteed that they use email to some extent.

An OptinMonster survey showed that 99% of people use email every single day. You can’t say that about any other communication channel.

Imagine it like this: You have a business where you can sell an item to 100 people. You have 100 potential buyers.

But what if you could change locations and have 10,000 potential buyers? The move might be a little inconvenient, but that’s a huge increase in the amount of potential income you can make.

You can make the exact same comparison with social media vs email. You could reach a fraction of your audience on social media (despite its hype, social media doesn’t encompass everyone; I’m a male in my mid-20s and despise social media). So you could reach some of your target demographic on social media.

Or you can reach 99% of people with email.

That’s a no brainer. No other communication channel is so prevalent (or so easy to market to).

2. You Control Your Traffic

As a guy who makes his living by getting visitors to a website, this is a big one for me. Email allows you to control your flow of traffic.

Social traffic can be hard to build (though Pinterest traffic may be an exception). Organic traffic leaves you 100% in the not-so-benevolent hands of Google. And with the ever-increasing trend of using featured snippets to steal clicks, I don’t think that trusting organic traffic is wise.

So what can you trust?

Your email list. They believed in your brand enough to sign up for your email list. If you did a good job on your lead magnet, these people already know and trust you. You’ve already established your value by giving them something. They don’t mind clicking a link you sent them as long as its relevant to their interests.

Which leads me to my next point…

3. Email Converts Well

Since your audience trusts you and since you’ve established value, you can expect pretty high conversions on email.

Joe Blow who started down the rabbit hole by searching about dolphins and somehow landed on your site? Nah.

But someone who you’ve demonstrated your value to? Someone who already knows your name, your brand, and trusts you?

I can tell you from the Niche Pursuits email campaigns that email converts well. It’s an audience of people who are familiar with you and know that you do good business. The conversions are awesome.

4. You Own The List No Matter What

This is by far my favorite thing about email marketing. Yes reaches everyone, yes you control it, and yes it converts.

But no matter what happens, you can always have your email list.

If the stock market goes down, if real estate goes bust, if you lose everything in a divorce, you still have your list.

You still have your audience.

An email list is the ultimate guarantee that you won’t have to suffer financial hardship again. You own it, you control it, and no one can take it away from you.

It’s the fruit of your labor. So let’s talk about how to use it.

How To Start An Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing starts with building an awesome list. This means that you’re going to have to use some kind of opt in form to generate interest for your list.

It doesn’t mean that you have to create annoying popups with pretty much zero value.

You know the type:

That opt in provides zero value to me. Of course I love adventure! That doesn’t mean I’ll get an ounce of worth out of their email list. 

You need to show your audience that you provide amazing content, that you’re trustworthy. We call this a “lead magnet”. It’s something to hook in your audience.

But how can we build a lead magnet without being spammy?

It’s easier than you think. 

Best Practices For Opt In Boxes:

Use pop ups

Offer something of value

Make them relevant to what the reader is learning about

Make it actionable

A pop up within 10 seconds of a reader landing on a page is about right

Use content upgrades as your bread and butter

Use super lead magnets to build trust for high ticket items

Bad Practices For Opt In Boxes:

Putting them in the sidebar (you won’t convert anyone!)

Popping up too late

Offering “tips, tricks, and hacks” or other unclear value

Making a general opt in for your whole site

Converting Without Being Spammy

A good opt in box will help your audience achieve or get something. In internet marketing, we call this a “lead magnet”. Your readers like it, they want it, and they’re willing to give you an email address for it.

There are tons of strategies for developing lead magnets, but here are the two that work the best:

Offer your readers a bonus on an existing piece of content. In the olden days when Jesus walked the earth, these were often a PDF form of the post. There are better things to offer than a PDF. You want something actionable and easy for your readers to fall in love with. We’ll call this a “content upgrade”.

Offer your readers a super awesome, super amazing, super fantastic something that they would pay for. The good news is that they don’t have to pay for it; they can get it in their email address for free. These are best used if you have a funnel and sell higher-ticket items later on down the road. We’ll call this a “super lead magnet”.

Of the two of these, the content upgrade will be your staple. It’s the bread and butter of email marketing.

We’ll discuss how to build an awesome content upgrade and then talk about making a super lead magnet.

Quick Note: I’ll be using Constant Contact to build my email list. You can also use them to build your opt in boxes 🙂

Click here to get access to Constant Contact free for 60 days. No credit card required

Content Upgrades For The Win

A content upgrade is when you offer your readers something that’s “content plus”. If your page is about DIY craft ideas, then a content upgrade would be a video walkthrough for building home furniture (or whatever).

If you’re writing about how to catch big mouth bass, a content upgrade would be a free lure for bass.

The goal here is to take whatever your reader is learning about and upgrade it. Make it bigger, better, and more actionable. You want your content upgrades to be:

Related to what the viewer is reading now

Easy to consume (video, audio files, etc.)

Actionable

The first step to making an awesome content upgrade is to make it related to whatever your viewer is already reading. You don’t have to make these on a post per post basis, but I think that you should at least have a different opt in for every category.

Category level opt ins help you boost your conversion rate and will allow you to segment your audience. This is a big help later when you’re sending out emails or selling products. You already know what each segment is interested in, so you can craft emails or products just for them.

It’s a bit more work on your part, but the payoff can be enormous. 

I found an amazing content upgrade on Healthline. I opened up an article about sweeteners that parents should watch out for. Here’s the opt in box I got:

This content upgrade is brilliant for a few reasons.

It is related to what I’m reading. I am curious about unhealthy sweeteners, Healthline gives me an option to take a mindful eating challenge

It’s easy! Look at the wording here. “Free”. “Our Nutrition team will show you how to create lasting, healthy eating habits“. Lasting, healthy habits for free? I’m all in.

It’s actionable. It’s a challenge: go on this journey with us for 21 days 

I can’t see their opt in rate for this, but I’m guessing that it’s pretty significant.

That’s a great opt in. What are the characteristics of a bad opt in?

I did a little digging and found a bad opt in. It didn’t take me long.

This is a bad opt in for a few reasons. First, you can see that it doesn’t offer me much of value.

A Roadie insider? What is that? Why would I want to be one?

The next things they offer me are “exclusive deals and discounts”. I don’t think I’m interested. I’m reading an article about how to tune a guitar. Odds are good that I already have a guitar, so I don’t need deals or discounts.

Second, they don’t offer anything actionable. Since this is an article about guitar tuning, an awesome content upgrade would be a video guide. It would be easy to consume, helpful. 

And third, this is unrelated to the content I’m consuming. Nothing here about being a better musician or tuning guitars better. I’ll pass, thanks.

The biggest problem with this opt in is that it doesn’t offer me much value. What does “deals and discounts” even mean? Is that a $10 off coupon once a blue moon? Or is it 50% off a $500 purchase? The difference between those two things is enormous. They need a better value proposition.

Here’s an opt in that is okay. It’s not great, but it doesn’t make me want to bleach my eyes:

The value proposition here is better: saving money on my next trip. That’s pretty appealing. I do love saving money.

But it doesn’t tell me how I’m saving money. Will I be spending less on airfare or will I be swapping a nice Airbnb for a hut in the wall?

It also doesn’t tell me how much I’ll be saving or what I’ll need to do to start saving. A better opt in might be “3 things to say to your airline to guarantee cheaper flights” or something like that.

It’s a fine opt in. But it’s pretty eh. With a clearer value proposition and more actionable content, this could be a killer.

So now let’s look at an amazing opt in:

Woah. Take a look at that copy.

I have no desire to be a profitable Youtube music star, but I opted in anyways. Let’s break this down:

It’s related to what I’m reading. I was checking out best apps to learn guitar. They know I want to play music, they know I have a technical inclination. I’d rather use my phone than go to an instructor. There are good odds that I’ve seen someone teaching guitar on Youtube and have thought that I’d like to be in their shoes. They know that I’m a “real world independent musician”.

It’s easy to consume (a free book, nice!) and has a super clear value for me. I could make between $4,077 and $22,573+ per month! Look at those specific numbers.

It’s very actionable. 5 steps to a profitable music career. What gets easier than that?

It has social proof. They show you that the book has 4.5/5 stars. Nice!

That’s an awesome content upgrade.

As mentioned before, you can build these types of content upgrades in Constant Contact. Try Constant Contact free for 60 days, no payment method required

Super Lead Magnets For High Ticket Items

Content upgrades are great at building your email list for pretty general purposes. You want direct traffic, you want affiliate sales, you have a small funnel.

But if you sell big ticket items?

You might need to build a little more trust with your audience. You need to show them that business with you is always a win for them. 

The easiest way to build trust and give amazing value is to give something away for free. But this can’t just be anything for free; it has to be something so cool, so awesome that someone would pay money for it.

These “super” lead magnets should be something that most people would pay in the range of $20-$100 to have… and you’re giving it away for free.

The best super lead magnet I could find was on Authority Hacker. They have a course called The Authority Site System that teaches you how to build a 4+ figures per month authority website (check out my Authority Site System review).

Their opt in process looks like this:

First they have a popup that offers relevant, actionable, easy-to-consume content:

And the free training they mention?

It’s an hour and a half long webinar that tells you step by step how to build one of these sites.

No hype, no fluff. It’s an hour and a half of pure value. They give you their strategies for building sites, proof that the methods work, and tell you how to replicate it on your site.

This free training alone is better than some online courses.

And I don’t know their numbers, but I’m going to guess that The Authority Site System sells like hotcakes.

That’s the power of a super lead magnet: you establish trust with your leads. And once they trust you, they won’t have a problem buying from you.

Since these are more difficult to make than a content upgrade, I recommend a super lead magnet if you’re looking at selling your own products. Super lead magnets work well with high ticket items that require a lot of trust beforehand.

Now that you have a strategy for your lead generation, let’s look at what to do once you have the email list.

How To Run An Email Marketing Campaign

The best way to run your email marketing campaign is to start with the end goal.

What is your ideal outcome?

Do you have a funnel where you want someone to buy or do you want to build the relationship? Are you trying to wish a happy birthday to the members of your list or are you planning a 7 email series to create customers?

Or maybe you want all of these things for different audiences. Maybe high ticket clients get a happy birthday and others get a welcome message when they join the email list.

No problem. You can do all of that.

The post Email Marketing Made Simple: How To Start & Run A Successful Email Marketing Campaign appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

from Niche Pursuits

Email marketing has one of the highest returns on investment in all of online marketing. For every dollar spent on email marketing, you can expect about a 3800% return.

And no, that wasn’t a typo.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Email marketing requires a combination of work and the right tools. Only you can put the work in.

For my tool, I’ll be using Constant Contact. They can build opt in forms, send email blasts, run email automations, and have super powerful list management tools.

All the better? You can try Constant Contact free for 60 days, no payment method required. You can use the trial to follow along in this guide and set up your own email marketing campaign.

Click here to try Constant Contact free for 60 days

Run your email marketing campaigns with Constant Contact

Benefits of Email Marketing

I’m a big believer in the power of email marketing. There are a few reasons for that.

1. Everyone Uses Email

Email is a fact of life. And whether your audience is old, young, or somewhere in the middle, it’s almost guaranteed that they use email to some extent.

An OptinMonster survey showed that 99% of people use email every single day. You can’t say that about any other communication channel.

Imagine it like this: You have a business where you can sell an item to 100 people. You have 100 potential buyers.

But what if you could change locations and have 10,000 potential buyers? The move might be a little inconvenient, but that’s a huge increase in the amount of potential income you can make.

You can make the exact same comparison with social media vs email. You could reach a fraction of your audience on social media (despite its hype, social media doesn’t encompass everyone; I’m a male in my mid-20s and despise social media). So you could reach some of your target demographic on social media.

Or you can reach 99% of people with email.

That’s a no brainer. No other communication channel is so prevalent (or so easy to market to).

2. You Control Your Traffic

As a guy who makes his living by getting visitors to a website, this is a big one for me. Email allows you to control your flow of traffic.

Social traffic can be hard to build (though Pinterest traffic may be an exception). Organic traffic leaves you 100% in the not-so-benevolent hands of Google. And with the ever-increasing trend of using featured snippets to steal clicks, I don’t think that trusting organic traffic is wise.

So what can you trust?

Your email list. They believed in your brand enough to sign up for your email list. If you did a good job on your lead magnet, these people already know and trust you. You’ve already established your value by giving them something. They don’t mind clicking a link you sent them as long as its relevant to their interests.

Which leads me to my next point…

3. Email Converts Well

Since your audience trusts you and since you’ve established value, you can expect pretty high conversions on email.

Joe Blow who started down the rabbit hole by searching about dolphins and somehow landed on your site? Nah.

But someone who you’ve demonstrated your value to? Someone who already knows your name, your brand, and trusts you?

I can tell you from the Niche Pursuits email campaigns that email converts well. It’s an audience of people who are familiar with you and know that you do good business. The conversions are awesome.

4. You Own The List No Matter What

This is by far my favorite thing about email marketing. Yes reaches everyone, yes you control it, and yes it converts.

But no matter what happens, you can always have your email list.

If the stock market goes down, if real estate goes bust, if you lose everything in a divorce, you still have your list.

You still have your audience.

An email list is the ultimate guarantee that you won’t have to suffer financial hardship again. You own it, you control it, and no one can take it away from you.

It’s the fruit of your labor. So let’s talk about how to use it.

How To Start An Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing starts with building an awesome list. This means that you’re going to have to use some kind of opt in form to generate interest for your list.

It doesn’t mean that you have to create annoying popups with pretty much zero value.

You know the type:

That opt in provides zero value to me. Of course I love adventure! That doesn’t mean I’ll get an ounce of worth out of their email list. 

You need to show your audience that you provide amazing content, that you’re trustworthy. We call this a “lead magnet”. It’s something to hook in your audience.

But how can we build a lead magnet without being spammy?

It’s easier than you think. 

Best Practices For Opt In Boxes:

Use pop ups

Offer something of value

Make them relevant to what the reader is learning about

Make it actionable

A pop up within 10 seconds of a reader landing on a page is about right

Use content upgrades as your bread and butter

Use super lead magnets to build trust for high ticket items

Bad Practices For Opt In Boxes:

Putting them in the sidebar (you won’t convert anyone!)

Popping up too late

Offering “tips, tricks, and hacks” or other unclear value

Making a general opt in for your whole site

Converting Without Being Spammy

A good opt in box will help your audience achieve or get something. In internet marketing, we call this a “lead magnet”. Your readers like it, they want it, and they’re willing to give you an email address for it.

There are tons of strategies for developing lead magnets, but here are the two that work the best:

Offer your readers a bonus on an existing piece of content. In the olden days when Jesus walked the earth, these were often a PDF form of the post. There are better things to offer than a PDF. You want something actionable and easy for your readers to fall in love with. We’ll call this a “content upgrade”.

Offer your readers a super awesome, super amazing, super fantastic something that they would pay for. The good news is that they don’t have to pay for it; they can get it in their email address for free. These are best used if you have a funnel and sell higher-ticket items later on down the road. We’ll call this a “super lead magnet”.

Of the two of these, the content upgrade will be your staple. It’s the bread and butter of email marketing.

We’ll discuss how to build an awesome content upgrade and then talk about making a super lead magnet.

Quick Note: I’ll be using Constant Contact to build my email list. You can also use them to build your opt in boxes 🙂

Click here to get access to Constant Contact free for 60 days. No credit card required

Content Upgrades For The Win

A content upgrade is when you offer your readers something that’s “content plus”. If your page is about DIY craft ideas, then a content upgrade would be a video walkthrough for building home furniture (or whatever).

If you’re writing about how to catch big mouth bass, a content upgrade would be a free lure for bass.

The goal here is to take whatever your reader is learning about and upgrade it. Make it bigger, better, and more actionable. You want your content upgrades to be:

Related to what the viewer is reading now

Easy to consume (video, audio files, etc.)

Actionable

The first step to making an awesome content upgrade is to make it related to whatever your viewer is already reading. You don’t have to make these on a post per post basis, but I think that you should at least have a different opt in for every category.

Category level opt ins help you boost your conversion rate and will allow you to segment your audience. This is a big help later when you’re sending out emails or selling products. You already know what each segment is interested in, so you can craft emails or products just for them.

It’s a bit more work on your part, but the payoff can be enormous. 

I found an amazing content upgrade on Healthline. I opened up an article about sweeteners that parents should watch out for. Here’s the opt in box I got:

This content upgrade is brilliant for a few reasons.

It is related to what I’m reading. I am curious about unhealthy sweeteners, Healthline gives me an option to take a mindful eating challenge

It’s easy! Look at the wording here. “Free”. “Our Nutrition team will show you how to create lasting, healthy eating habits“. Lasting, healthy habits for free? I’m all in.

It’s actionable. It’s a challenge: go on this journey with us for 21 days 

I can’t see their opt in rate for this, but I’m guessing that it’s pretty significant.

That’s a great opt in. What are the characteristics of a bad opt in?

I did a little digging and found a bad opt in. It didn’t take me long.

This is a bad opt in for a few reasons. First, you can see that it doesn’t offer me much of value.

A Roadie insider? What is that? Why would I want to be one?

The next things they offer me are “exclusive deals and discounts”. I don’t think I’m interested. I’m reading an article about how to tune a guitar. Odds are good that I already have a guitar, so I don’t need deals or discounts.

Second, they don’t offer anything actionable. Since this is an article about guitar tuning, an awesome content upgrade would be a video guide. It would be easy to consume, helpful. 

And third, this is unrelated to the content I’m consuming. Nothing here about being a better musician or tuning guitars better. I’ll pass, thanks.

The biggest problem with this opt in is that it doesn’t offer me much value. What does “deals and discounts” even mean? Is that a $10 off coupon once a blue moon? Or is it 50% off a $500 purchase? The difference between those two things is enormous. They need a better value proposition.

Here’s an opt in that is okay. It’s not great, but it doesn’t make me want to bleach my eyes:

The value proposition here is better: saving money on my next trip. That’s pretty appealing. I do love saving money.

But it doesn’t tell me how I’m saving money. Will I be spending less on airfare or will I be swapping a nice Airbnb for a hut in the wall?

It also doesn’t tell me how much I’ll be saving or what I’ll need to do to start saving. A better opt in might be “3 things to say to your airline to guarantee cheaper flights” or something like that.

It’s a fine opt in. But it’s pretty eh. With a clearer value proposition and more actionable content, this could be a killer.

So now let’s look at an amazing opt in:

Woah. Take a look at that copy.

I have no desire to be a profitable Youtube music star, but I opted in anyways. Let’s break this down:

It’s related to what I’m reading. I was checking out best apps to learn guitar. They know I want to play music, they know I have a technical inclination. I’d rather use my phone than go to an instructor. There are good odds that I’ve seen someone teaching guitar on Youtube and have thought that I’d like to be in their shoes. They know that I’m a “real world independent musician”.

It’s easy to consume (a free book, nice!) and has a super clear value for me. I could make between $4,077 and $22,573+ per month! Look at those specific numbers.

It’s very actionable. 5 steps to a profitable music career. What gets easier than that?

It has social proof. They show you that the book has 4.5/5 stars. Nice!

That’s an awesome content upgrade.

As mentioned before, you can build these types of content upgrades in Constant Contact. Try Constant Contact free for 60 days, no payment method required

Super Lead Magnets For High Ticket Items

Content upgrades are great at building your email list for pretty general purposes. You want direct traffic, you want affiliate sales, you have a small funnel.

But if you sell big ticket items?

You might need to build a little more trust with your audience. You need to show them that business with you is always a win for them. 

The easiest way to build trust and give amazing value is to give something away for free. But this can’t just be anything for free; it has to be something so cool, so awesome that someone would pay money for it.

These “super” lead magnets should be something that most people would pay in the range of $20-$100 to have… and you’re giving it away for free.

The best super lead magnet I could find was on Authority Hacker. They have a course called The Authority Site System that teaches you how to build a 4+ figures per month authority website (check out my Authority Site System review).

Their opt in process looks like this:

First they have a popup that offers relevant, actionable, easy-to-consume content:

And the free training they mention?

It’s an hour and a half long webinar that tells you step by step how to build one of these sites.

No hype, no fluff. It’s an hour and a half of pure value. They give you their strategies for building sites, proof that the methods work, and tell you how to replicate it on your site.

This free training alone is better than some online courses.

And I don’t know their numbers, but I’m going to guess that The Authority Site System sells like hotcakes.

That’s the power of a super lead magnet: you establish trust with your leads. And once they trust you, they won’t have a problem buying from you.

Since these are more difficult to make than a content upgrade, I recommend a super lead magnet if you’re looking at selling your own products. Super lead magnets work well with high ticket items that require a lot of trust beforehand.

Now that you have a strategy for your lead generation, let’s look at what to do once you have the email list.

How To Run An Email Marketing Campaign

The best way to run your email marketing campaign is to start with the end goal.

What is your ideal outcome?

Do you have a funnel where you want someone to buy or do you want to build the relationship? Are you trying to wish a happy birthday to the members of your list or are you planning a 7 email series to create customers?

Or maybe you want all of these things for different audiences. Maybe high ticket clients get a happy birthday and others get a welcome message when they join the email list.

No problem. You can do all of that.

The post Email Marketing Made Simple: How To Start & Run A Successful Email Marketing Campaign appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

November 24, 2019 at 01:07AMhttps://https://ift.tt/2XNTq3i https://ift.tt/2qF30cy

[robertcsaboca]

Top 10 Things to Check Off Your Fertility To-Do List

The moment my mental switch flipped to ‘I want to get pregnant,’ the ticking of my biological clock was so loud I could literally hear it.

At first, you don’t suspect that you or your partner may have a fertility issue, because this kind of stuff happens to others, but not to you, right?

Knowing what I know now after a half a decade of trying to conceive, I wish someone had given me this checklist I’m about to share with you much earlier in the journey.

Instead of waiting for years while trying naturally, and certainly at the very latest after miscarrying, I wish I was more proactive in the beginning. 

I believe that being educated about fertility is empowering and helps with decision-making, even if such decisions are made by elimination. If a test comes back negative, you have more data points and can move forward – and potentially save yourself a lot of time and unnecessary treatments so that you can get closer to getting pregnant with the help that is right for you.

Okay, so here are the top 10 things to check off your fertility to-do list – and they all involve speaking to your fertility doctor (so it’s even more important to listen to your gut when you first meet with them…)

10 Important Questions to Ask Your Fertility Doctor

Alright, you are doing this.You have an appointment in the calendar for your first visit at the fertility clinic. Well done, I bet getting to this point wasn’t easy…This first visit is usually a get-to-know meeting with lots of forms to fill out and medical questions to answer.Don’t let this first visit just be run by the clinic, this is also YOUR time to ask questions and collect as many data points as possible to see if the clinic is a good fit for you.

What types of treatments do you offer?

Most clinics offer standard treatments from ovulation induction, IVF, ICSI, IUI to egg donation. Not all clinics do PGS (genetic embryo testing), natural killer cells testing and treatment or other specialty (and more expensive) treatments. Ask them what their latest addition to their services is- that might give you a clue of how advanced the clinic is, depending if that is important to you or not.

2. What are my chances to get pregnant?

Every clinic has their success rates advertised somewhere, some more aggressively than others. Remember, you are NOT a statistic. Ask the doctor what your personal success rate might look like and what it depends on. Treat this percentage with a lot of caution. Don’t panic, it is just a number. And don’t read too much into it and get your hopes up, again, it is just a number. Every round of IVF is said to have a 5-50% chance of getting you pregnant. That is a wide interval with lots of room for disappointment, unfortunately. Just remember, strong women like you beat the odds all the time.

3. What are the costs and the additional/hidden costs?

The obvious costs are the costs for the specific treatment. But additional costs for medication, regular blood tests, additional scans can easily double that bill and are not included. Ask the doctor or nurses for the maximum costs you could expect going through this…then you won’t be as shocked every time you are being asked to pay for something. The financial toll of infertility can be soul-crushing, but it doesn’t have to be if you manage your expectations from the beginning and are prepared for what is to come.

4. Who do I contact for everyday questions?

The bigger the clinic, the more likely you will be in touch with the nurses and not the doctor. Get their email addresses, phone numbers, after-hours emergency numbers (if your clinic offers this, not all do) so that you know who to contact with medication, timing, and symptom questions throughout your cycle. Believe me, those unexpected questions will pop up on a Sunday morning and you’ll be happy there is someone you can call or email.

5. Which additional tests are necessary right now?

Usually your clinic will want to do all baseline hormone tests (TSH, Vitamin D, progesterone on day 21, sperm analysis) themselves, but if you do have lab results from previous clinics, definitely bring them along as you could save yourself some money.

Some fertility tests are standard, while others become relevant only after you’ve had failed treatment cycles or miscarriages. To counter that, it is definitely worth discussing the following 5 fertility tests with your fertility doctor sooner rather than later:

6. AMH – anti-Mullerian hormone blood levels reflect the size of the remaining egg supply – or “ovarian reserve”. A low AMH, often in conjunction with age or genetic disposition, can indicate fewer remaining follicles. A high AMH over 4ng/ml can be a sign of polycystic ovary syndrome. Anything between 1 ng/ml and 3 ng/ml is considered ‘normal’.

7. TSH – the thyroid-stimulating hormone shows if you have an overactive or underactive thyroid, which can have a significant impact on your menstrual cycle and, as a result, on your ovulation, fertilization, and implantation.

8. NKC – natural killer cells, which protect your uterus from infections and cancer. If there is higher than normal activity, these cells can prevent implantation and lead to recurring miscarriages.

9. MTHFR – sounds like an abbreviation for a curse word but stands for methylene-tetrahydrofolate reductase and is the ability to convert food into folate in the body. Women with a positive MTHFR gene mutation may have an increased risk of inability to conceive, miscarriages, and pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy). Always make sure your prenatal vitamin includes methyl folate.

10. DNA fragmentation – going beyond a conventional semen analysis of motility and concentration, this test looks at sperm at the molecular level. Higher fragmentation levels lead to higher male sub-fertility, miscarriage, and lower chances of conceiving naturally or with IVF.

Conclusion: Regardless of whether you just started or already have been trying for a while, these 10 things should be considered sooner rather than later as you embark on the next part of your fertility journey. Knowing that you are with the right clinic and having done the right tests for you will give you so much peace of mind along this journey.

P.S.  Click here to get your free PDF guide “3 Research-Backed Ways to Boost Your Fertility Today”

Like this post? Signup to our newsletter to get news straight to your inbox.

source https://fertilityroad.com/top-10-things-to-check-off-your-fertility-to-do-list/ source https://fertilityroad1.blogspot.com/2020/09/top-10-things-to-check-off-your.html

[mirianadubois90]

Top 10 Things to Check Off Your Fertility To-Do List

The moment my mental switch flipped to ‘I want to get pregnant,’ the ticking of my biological clock was so loud I could literally hear it.

At first, you don’t suspect that you or your partner may have a fertility issue, because this kind of stuff happens to others, but not to you, right?

Knowing what I know now after a half a decade of trying to conceive, I wish someone had given me this checklist I’m about to share with you much earlier in the journey.

Instead of waiting for years while trying naturally, and certainly at the very latest after miscarrying, I wish I was more proactive in the beginning. 

I believe that being educated about fertility is empowering and helps with decision-making, even if such decisions are made by elimination. If a test comes back negative, you have more data points and can move forward – and potentially save yourself a lot of time and unnecessary treatments so that you can get closer to getting pregnant with the help that is right for you.

Okay, so here are the top 10 things to check off your fertility to-do list – and they all involve speaking to your fertility doctor (so it’s even more important to listen to your gut when you first meet with them…)

10 Important Questions to Ask Your Fertility Doctor

Alright, you are doing this.You have an appointment in the calendar for your first visit at the fertility clinic. Well done, I bet getting to this point wasn’t easy…This first visit is usually a get-to-know meeting with lots of forms to fill out and medical questions to answer.Don’t let this first visit just be run by the clinic, this is also YOUR time to ask questions and collect as many data points as possible to see if the clinic is a good fit for you.

What types of treatments do you offer?

Most clinics offer standard treatments from ovulation induction, IVF, ICSI, IUI to egg donation. Not all clinics do PGS (genetic embryo testing), natural killer cells testing and treatment or other specialty (and more expensive) treatments. Ask them what their latest addition to their services is- that might give you a clue of how advanced the clinic is, depending if that is important to you or not.

2. What are my chances to get pregnant?

Every clinic has their success rates advertised somewhere, some more aggressively than others. Remember, you are NOT a statistic. Ask the doctor what your personal success rate might look like and what it depends on. Treat this percentage with a lot of caution. Don’t panic, it is just a number. And don’t read too much into it and get your hopes up, again, it is just a number. Every round of IVF is said to have a 5-50% chance of getting you pregnant. That is a wide interval with lots of room for disappointment, unfortunately. Just remember, strong women like you beat the odds all the time.

3. What are the costs and the additional/hidden costs?

The obvious costs are the costs for the specific treatment. But additional costs for medication, regular blood tests, additional scans can easily double that bill and are not included. Ask the doctor or nurses for the maximum costs you could expect going through this…then you won’t be as shocked every time you are being asked to pay for something. The financial toll of infertility can be soul-crushing, but it doesn’t have to be if you manage your expectations from the beginning and are prepared for what is to come.

4. Who do I contact for everyday questions?

The bigger the clinic, the more likely you will be in touch with the nurses and not the doctor. Get their email addresses, phone numbers, after-hours emergency numbers (if your clinic offers this, not all do) so that you know who to contact with medication, timing, and symptom questions throughout your cycle. Believe me, those unexpected questions will pop up on a Sunday morning and you’ll be happy there is someone you can call or email.

5. Which additional tests are necessary right now?

Usually your clinic will want to do all baseline hormone tests (TSH, Vitamin D, progesterone on day 21, sperm analysis) themselves, but if you do have lab results from previous clinics, definitely bring them along as you could save yourself some money.

Some fertility tests are standard, while others become relevant only after you’ve had failed treatment cycles or miscarriages. To counter that, it is definitely worth discussing the following 5 fertility tests with your fertility doctor sooner rather than later:

6. AMH – anti-Mullerian hormone blood levels reflect the size of the remaining egg supply – or “ovarian reserve”. A low AMH, often in conjunction with age or genetic disposition, can indicate fewer remaining follicles. A high AMH over 4ng/ml can be a sign of polycystic ovary syndrome. Anything between 1 ng/ml and 3 ng/ml is considered ‘normal’.

7. TSH – the thyroid-stimulating hormone shows if you have an overactive or underactive thyroid, which can have a significant impact on your menstrual cycle and, as a result, on your ovulation, fertilization, and implantation.

8. NKC – natural killer cells, which protect your uterus from infections and cancer. If there is higher than normal activity, these cells can prevent implantation and lead to recurring miscarriages.

9. MTHFR – sounds like an abbreviation for a curse word but stands for methylene-tetrahydrofolate reductase and is the ability to convert food into folate in the body. Women with a positive MTHFR gene mutation may have an increased risk of inability to conceive, miscarriages, and pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy). Always make sure your prenatal vitamin includes methyl folate.

10. DNA fragmentation – going beyond a conventional semen analysis of motility and concentration, this test looks at sperm at the molecular level. Higher fragmentation levels lead to higher male sub-fertility, miscarriage, and lower chances of conceiving naturally or with IVF.

Conclusion: Regardless of whether you just started or already have been trying for a while, these 10 things should be considered sooner rather than later as you embark on the next part of your fertility journey. Knowing that you are with the right clinic and having done the right tests for you will give you so much peace of mind along this journey.

P.S.  Click here to get your free PDF guide “3 Research-Backed Ways to Boost Your Fertility Today”

Like this post? Signup to our newsletter to get news straight to your inbox.

source https://fertilityroad.com/top-10-things-to-check-off-your-fertility-to-do-list/ source https://fertilityroad1.tumblr.com/post/628785085003464704

[danielawilson80]

Top 10 Things to Check Off Your Fertility To-Do List

The moment my mental switch flipped to ‘I want to get pregnant,’ the ticking of my biological clock was so loud I could literally hear it.

At first, you don’t suspect that you or your partner may have a fertility issue, because this kind of stuff happens to others, but not to you, right?

Knowing what I know now after a half a decade of trying to conceive, I wish someone had given me this checklist I’m about to share with you much earlier in the journey.

Instead of waiting for years while trying naturally, and certainly at the very latest after miscarrying, I wish I was more proactive in the beginning. 

I believe that being educated about fertility is empowering and helps with decision-making, even if such decisions are made by elimination. If a test comes back negative, you have more data points and can move forward – and potentially save yourself a lot of time and unnecessary treatments so that you can get closer to getting pregnant with the help that is right for you.

Okay, so here are the top 10 things to check off your fertility to-do list – and they all involve speaking to your fertility doctor (so it’s even more important to listen to your gut when you first meet with them…)

10 Important Questions to Ask Your Fertility Doctor

Alright, you are doing this.You have an appointment in the calendar for your first visit at the fertility clinic. Well done, I bet getting to this point wasn’t easy…This first visit is usually a get-to-know meeting with lots of forms to fill out and medical questions to answer.Don’t let this first visit just be run by the clinic, this is also YOUR time to ask questions and collect as many data points as possible to see if the clinic is a good fit for you.

What types of treatments do you offer?

Most clinics offer standard treatments from ovulation induction, IVF, ICSI, IUI to egg donation. Not all clinics do PGS (genetic embryo testing), natural killer cells testing and treatment or other specialty (and more expensive) treatments. Ask them what their latest addition to their services is- that might give you a clue of how advanced the clinic is, depending if that is important to you or not.

2. What are my chances to get pregnant?

Every clinic has their success rates advertised somewhere, some more aggressively than others. Remember, you are NOT a statistic. Ask the doctor what your personal success rate might look like and what it depends on. Treat this percentage with a lot of caution. Don’t panic, it is just a number. And don’t read too much into it and get your hopes up, again, it is just a number. Every round of IVF is said to have a 5-50% chance of getting you pregnant. That is a wide interval with lots of room for disappointment, unfortunately. Just remember, strong women like you beat the odds all the time.

3. What are the costs and the additional/hidden costs?

The obvious costs are the costs for the specific treatment. But additional costs for medication, regular blood tests, additional scans can easily double that bill and are not included. Ask the doctor or nurses for the maximum costs you could expect going through this…then you won’t be as shocked every time you are being asked to pay for something. The financial toll of infertility can be soul-crushing, but it doesn’t have to be if you manage your expectations from the beginning and are prepared for what is to come.

4. Who do I contact for everyday questions?

The bigger the clinic, the more likely you will be in touch with the nurses and not the doctor. Get their email addresses, phone numbers, after-hours emergency numbers (if your clinic offers this, not all do) so that you know who to contact with medication, timing, and symptom questions throughout your cycle. Believe me, those unexpected questions will pop up on a Sunday morning and you’ll be happy there is someone you can call or email.

5. Which additional tests are necessary right now?

Usually your clinic will want to do all baseline hormone tests (TSH, Vitamin D, progesterone on day 21, sperm analysis) themselves, but if you do have lab results from previous clinics, definitely bring them along as you could save yourself some money.

Some fertility tests are standard, while others become relevant only after you’ve had failed treatment cycles or miscarriages. To counter that, it is definitely worth discussing the following 5 fertility tests with your fertility doctor sooner rather than later:

6. AMH – anti-Mullerian hormone blood levels reflect the size of the remaining egg supply – or “ovarian reserve”. A low AMH, often in conjunction with age or genetic disposition, can indicate fewer remaining follicles. A high AMH over 4ng/ml can be a sign of polycystic ovary syndrome. Anything between 1 ng/ml and 3 ng/ml is considered ‘normal’.

7. TSH – the thyroid-stimulating hormone shows if you have an overactive or underactive thyroid, which can have a significant impact on your menstrual cycle and, as a result, on your ovulation, fertilization, and implantation.

8. NKC – natural killer cells, which protect your uterus from infections and cancer. If there is higher than normal activity, these cells can prevent implantation and lead to recurring miscarriages.

9. MTHFR – sounds like an abbreviation for a curse word but stands for methylene-tetrahydrofolate reductase and is the ability to convert food into folate in the body. Women with a positive MTHFR gene mutation may have an increased risk of inability to conceive, miscarriages, and pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy). Always make sure your prenatal vitamin includes methyl folate.

10. DNA fragmentation – going beyond a conventional semen analysis of motility and concentration, this test looks at sperm at the molecular level. Higher fragmentation levels lead to higher male sub-fertility, miscarriage, and lower chances of conceiving naturally or with IVF.

Conclusion: Regardless of whether you just started or already have been trying for a while, these 10 things should be considered sooner rather than later as you embark on the next part of your fertility journey. Knowing that you are with the right clinic and having done the right tests for you will give you so much peace of mind along this journey.

P.S.  Click here to get your free PDF guide “3 Research-Backed Ways to Boost Your Fertility Today”

Like this post? Signup to our newsletter to get news straight to your inbox.

Via https://fertilityroad.com/top-10-things-to-check-off-your-fertility-to-do-list/

source https://fertilityroad.weebly.com/blog/top-10-things-to-check-off-your-fertility-to-do-list

[fertilityroad1]

Top 10 Things to Check Off Your Fertility To-Do List

The moment my mental switch flipped to ‘I want to get pregnant,’ the ticking of my biological clock was so loud I could literally hear it.

At first, you don’t suspect that you or your partner may have a fertility issue, because this kind of stuff happens to others, but not to you, right?

Knowing what I know now after a half a decade of trying to conceive, I wish someone had given me this checklist I’m about to share with you much earlier in the journey.

Instead of waiting for years while trying naturally, and certainly at the very latest after miscarrying, I wish I was more proactive in the beginning. 

I believe that being educated about fertility is empowering and helps with decision-making, even if such decisions are made by elimination. If a test comes back negative, you have more data points and can move forward – and potentially save yourself a lot of time and unnecessary treatments so that you can get closer to getting pregnant with the help that is right for you.

Okay, so here are the top 10 things to check off your fertility to-do list – and they all involve speaking to your fertility doctor (so it’s even more important to listen to your gut when you first meet with them…)

10 Important Questions to Ask Your Fertility Doctor

Alright, you are doing this.You have an appointment in the calendar for your first visit at the fertility clinic. Well done, I bet getting to this point wasn’t easy…This first visit is usually a get-to-know meeting with lots of forms to fill out and medical questions to answer.Don’t let this first visit just be run by the clinic, this is also YOUR time to ask questions and collect as many data points as possible to see if the clinic is a good fit for you.

What types of treatments do you offer?

Most clinics offer standard treatments from ovulation induction, IVF, ICSI, IUI to egg donation. Not all clinics do PGS (genetic embryo testing), natural killer cells testing and treatment or other specialty (and more expensive) treatments. Ask them what their latest addition to their services is- that might give you a clue of how advanced the clinic is, depending if that is important to you or not.

2. What are my chances to get pregnant?

Every clinic has their success rates advertised somewhere, some more aggressively than others. Remember, you are NOT a statistic. Ask the doctor what your personal success rate might look like and what it depends on. Treat this percentage with a lot of caution. Don’t panic, it is just a number. And don’t read too much into it and get your hopes up, again, it is just a number. Every round of IVF is said to have a 5-50% chance of getting you pregnant. That is a wide interval with lots of room for disappointment, unfortunately. Just remember, strong women like you beat the odds all the time.

3. What are the costs and the additional/hidden costs?

The obvious costs are the costs for the specific treatment. But additional costs for medication, regular blood tests, additional scans can easily double that bill and are not included. Ask the doctor or nurses for the maximum costs you could expect going through this…then you won’t be as shocked every time you are being asked to pay for something. The financial toll of infertility can be soul-crushing, but it doesn’t have to be if you manage your expectations from the beginning and are prepared for what is to come.

4. Who do I contact for everyday questions?

The bigger the clinic, the more likely you will be in touch with the nurses and not the doctor. Get their email addresses, phone numbers, after-hours emergency numbers (if your clinic offers this, not all do) so that you know who to contact with medication, timing, and symptom questions throughout your cycle. Believe me, those unexpected questions will pop up on a Sunday morning and you’ll be happy there is someone you can call or email.

5. Which additional tests are necessary right now?

Usually your clinic will want to do all baseline hormone tests (TSH, Vitamin D, progesterone on day 21, sperm analysis) themselves, but if you do have lab results from previous clinics, definitely bring them along as you could save yourself some money.

Some fertility tests are standard, while others become relevant only after you’ve had failed treatment cycles or miscarriages. To counter that, it is definitely worth discussing the following 5 fertility tests with your fertility doctor sooner rather than later:

6. AMH – anti-Mullerian hormone blood levels reflect the size of the remaining egg supply – or “ovarian reserve”. A low AMH, often in conjunction with age or genetic disposition, can indicate fewer remaining follicles. A high AMH over 4ng/ml can be a sign of polycystic ovary syndrome. Anything between 1 ng/ml and 3 ng/ml is considered ‘normal’.

7. TSH – the thyroid-stimulating hormone shows if you have an overactive or underactive thyroid, which can have a significant impact on your menstrual cycle and, as a result, on your ovulation, fertilization, and implantation.

8. NKC – natural killer cells, which protect your uterus from infections and cancer. If there is higher than normal activity, these cells can prevent implantation and lead to recurring miscarriages.

9. MTHFR – sounds like an abbreviation for a curse word but stands for methylene-tetrahydrofolate reductase and is the ability to convert food into folate in the body. Women with a positive MTHFR gene mutation may have an increased risk of inability to conceive, miscarriages, and pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy). Always make sure your prenatal vitamin includes methyl folate.

10. DNA fragmentation – going beyond a conventional semen analysis of motility and concentration, this test looks at sperm at the molecular level. Higher fragmentation levels lead to higher male sub-fertility, miscarriage, and lower chances of conceiving naturally or with IVF.

Conclusion: Regardless of whether you just started or already have been trying for a while, these 10 things should be considered sooner rather than later as you embark on the next part of your fertility journey. Knowing that you are with the right clinic and having done the right tests for you will give you so much peace of mind along this journey.

P.S.  Click here to get your free PDF guide “3 Research-Backed Ways to Boost Your Fertility Today”

Like this post? Signup to our newsletter to get news straight to your inbox.

source https://fertilityroad.com/top-10-things-to-check-off-your-fertility-to-do-list/

[ozsaill]

Optimizing Iridium GO use on board

Desert and sea are the incongruous pairing when sailing along Baja, where cactus-studded mountain ranges plummet to a Gulf full of marine life. Miles of isolated coastline make for stunning cruising grounds. We love the remote, wild-west feel of the Sea of Cortez… but we need to stay connected. There are approximately 2,534,934 more cardón cactus than cell towers here so we rely upon our Iridium GO.

What do we use it for? Keeping up with email. Checking news. I get twitchy without dipping into social media. Most important is weather: in case we needed a reminder, an early-season hurricane threatened to come our way as we sailed up the Sea these last couple of weeks. These are much the same tasks/functions we use on passages, too. I’ve detailed how we make the GO work for us below to share from what we’ve learned, help with understanding what it can do, and maybe set some expectations. [Unless noted otherwise, the context for all this is an iPad, because that’s what we use!]

Pre-departure checklist

Effective use off the grid starts with preparation before sailing away.

Prep for email:

Set up ‘normal’ emails to forward to the Iridium email address, leaving original on the server (so it will download to laptop later when we have wifi later). Prevents needing to pass out the dedicated Iridium email address. Email to that address only accessible with the satellite connection, which is very inconvenient once you’re back in wifi land.

Put ‘normal’ email as the reply-to address in Iridium Mail & Web app settings, to avoid replies getting locked in the Iridium inbox.

Purge the Iridium email inbox (or risk a painfully long download of the old messages you’ve forgotten). This purge is done on the Iridium website: visit http://iridium.com/mailandweb, login BELOW the Iridium logo (not at the top of the frame!), select Change Email (also on that line below the Iridium logo), and scroll down for buttons to purge Inbox and Big Mail (messages over a certain size are shunted here).

Prep for browsing:

Use the Opera browser. Iridium defaults to Safari with recommended links for lower-bandwidth information access. I found these too slow to bother with.

Tune Opera browser: select the red ‘O’ – choose ‘Savings Enabled’ and select Mini. Under advanced settings, turn off images. I pre-set the home page, aka Speed Dial, with sites or pages I want to use while we’re remote

Prep for social media:

Posting to a Facebook profile? Authenticate Facebook to connect and post with the Iridium Mail & Web app at http://fb.myiridium.net/. Facebook requires this handshake every 60 days. The Facebook app is not GO-friendly.

Posting to a Facebook page? Whoops, Iridium app feature only posts pics to profiles, not to pages! I prep by scheduling a few Totem page posts with favorite pictures while we’re away.

Using Twitter? You can connect a Twitter account to facilitate posting (the Twitter app is not GO-friendly). When we crossed the Indian Ocean in 2015, I set up Twitter to send texts for certain tweets to our Iridium messenger.

Managing email

We use the Iridium Mail & Web app to manage email. It’s… basic, and a lot of it still acts like beta software, but it’s functional and free. Emails are delivered in plain text format; most attachments will make a message too big to be practical for available bandwidth. For other (paid) email clients, see third-party apps listed on the Iridium site.

Composing email is a lot easier with a Bluetooth keyboard (I use this $19.99 keyboard from Arteck as an easy way to get it done). Sometimes I want to use my laptop and fullsize keyboard; I get those tomes into email by converting them into pdf files that can be transferred to the iPad, then copy/paste the contents into a message.

Sending / receiving email takes time. Here’s a snapshot of the download dialog while I retrieving messages one morning. It took almost 20 minutes! Crazy if you’re used to normal internet. When you can do it from somewhere remote and beautiful? Who cares!

Remote and beautiful: a sea level view of the anchorage at top – Puerto Don Juan. No cell towers here!

Browsing the web

“Browsing the web,” blithely stated as if it were remotely like what you do on a typical wifi connection…. Oh, it’s not! It is like watching paint dry or grass grow, and if you have any hopes for speed remotely resembling what you have at home, it is an exercise in frustration. Shed those expectations! Just enjoy what you CAN do.

It usually takes a few minutes to load the text-version of a web page. Here’s a quick comparison of how Race to Alaska’s Facebook page compares in stripped-down Opera Mini vs. normal display. (Tangent: talk about a nail biter with R2AK! We know crew on two of the boats clawing their way north right now, Sail Like A Girl and Wild Card. Go go go teams!)

I usually have my iPad (downloading *whatever* via the GO) next to me while reading on my Kindle… read a few pages, check GO progress, read a few more… you get the picture. It takes several minutes for a single page. The first one often requires multiple retries before something seems to click in, but once it does, you’re good. When we sailed from Puerto Vallarta to La Paz last month I browsed for cake recipes online via the GO, and found a fantastic berry trifle for Siobhan’s birthday (the same day as our landfall in Baja, graciously served by the Bahia de los Muertos palapa restaurant).

Social media

We use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These apps are not accessible with a GO data connection, but Iridium’s app facilitates posting lower resolution images to a Facebook profile or Twitter account. Web pages for both can be accessed using Opera. The quality can be surprising: this image I posted from our last remote anchorage, off Isla Angel de la Guarda, was good enough to garner comments. The high-bandwidth nature of IG isn’t suited to the GO at all and T&Cs don’t allow scheduling, so our insta goes dark when we’re away from normal internet access.

I’ve seen some pretty blurry pics posted via the Iridium. Our MO: take a preferred image, use a resize app on the iPad to shrink dimensions, and attach to the Facebook function in the Iridium Mail & Web app to post. Our image settings in Mail & Web are set to 100 (scale of 0-100) with ‘resample’ on; dimensions here for 600 pixels wide. The pic above came out at about 44k, which isn’t horribly onerous to squeeze through while looking decent.

It’s a bummer that the Iridium’s Facebook posting function only works with profiles; many boats, Totem included, maintain a Facebook page as an alternate kind of daily blog. But I can at least access a text version of the Totem page through Opera; I enjoy staying connected to dialogue with anyone good enough to give us their time by engaging there.

Other cruisers!

The GO makes it easy to keep up with other cruisers, too. Texting between two GOs was the easiest way to stay in touch with friends on SV Manu Kai as we sailed towards a deserted bay in southern Mexico a few months back. This week, when we arrived in Puerto Peñasco, we reported back the marina situation (no berths!) SV Lea Scotia, waiting in Isla Angel de la Guarda by text from our GO to their InReach… an email to the GO account on SV Empyrean let us fill in more details to share.

Weather

This is the A-Number-One, Most Important By Far reason we have the GO: good weather data, dependably delivered. We primarily use PredictWind, which is tuned for the Iridium device (more about how we do that in this post). For this last overnight run up the Sea of Cortez, a look at the current patterns was helpful in directing our route to Peñasco.

A quick comparison of weather models indicated winds would be light or extra light. Cue the motorboat ride! In these examples, the GO is used on a Windows laptop.

Comparing different weather models – easy with PW – indicates probable forecast accuracy.

iOS quirk: there’s a proxy setting to tweak for the GO’s wifi connection. In the iPad settings, choosing the GO’s wifi network > click that circled i for information > Configure Proxy > switch setting to “off” for PredictWind downloads and set to “automatic” for… everything else. Minor.

Setup

None of what I wrote above matters if you don’t have a good Iridium setup to start. First, don’t cheap out on the hardware. The external antenna is essential, tempting as it is to cut that cost. So is quality cable to connect device to antenna. This bundle does the thinking for you.

Second, give yourself ample time for setup and do it while you have good internet connectivity in case you need to troubleshoot. This bears repeating: give yourself ample time for setup! I don’t mean a few days before you expect to need it – I mean a couple of weeks to make sure you’ve figured it out and eveyrthing’s working. Seriously. Most complaints/frustration stem from leaving it too late. PredictWind has good instructions (including video tutorials) to assist.

Finally, having the latest firmware update makes a significant difference! Download link and instructions here. Each update has provided a leap in functionality and/or connection speeds.

All good?

This post hopefully is useful for people wondering how they’d use an Iridium GO and if it’s worthwhile having on board. Did I do OK? Let me know, in the comments or through our contact form, if there are other questions I can help answer. After 3+ years and a couple of oceans, we’ve worked out a few kinks and found this an invaluable piece of kit for our cruising needs.

Totem and crew are on the hard among the shrimp fleet of Puerto Peñasco, making plans for a summer in the Pacific Northwest.

from Sailing Totem https://ift.tt/2Ig4rRy via IFTTT

[euro3plast-fr]

How to avoid drowning in digital marketing advice in 2017

Use these 3 tools and 4 techniques to save time keeping up with digital marketing developments

Five years ago (how time flies) Dave Chaffey wrote about taming the social media fire hose. With so many tweets and Facebook and LinkedIn updates sent every minute hoping to impart advice, even if we narrow that down to Digital marketing advice it is still a never-ending hurricane of content, advice and views. How do you make sense of it all?

In a previous post on the issue staying up-to-date on social media we advised using tools like Hootsuite combined with Twitter lists, which bring channels together and allow for easier social media listening. This is all well and good for social, but what about the general vast amount of digital marketing advice posted every day? How do we digest it and take actionable steps from it? That's what we'll look at in this post.

We are always pondering this problem so it was interesting to see this post from one of our LinkedIn group members that confirmed we weren’t alone. Donna asked:

How do you avoid sinking in good content?

I'm drowning in good advice! I'm bringing my digital skills up to speed, and I've attended the Econsultancy course and downloading lots of content. Too much in fact. So how do you sort out the good, the bad & the indifferent. Any tips to help this newbie from sinking.

This challenge of too much advice is perhaps biggest in digital marketing... You could spend all day, every day reading blogs on how to improve your SEO, how to improve your productivity, how to get more leads via Social Media, and end up with no time left in the day to actually put anything that you have read into practice!

So as digital marketers, we need a way to quickly sort the wheat from the chaff, so we can get all the key info without drowning in a sea of content designed to help us, but actually doing anything but. There are a number of ways we can do this, and I’ve divided our ideas into strategies and tools. Thanks to everyone who commented on our LinkedIn discussion for their ideas, here's our summary of techniques to share your insights further - thank you!

Three techniques to avoid drowning in content

Technique 1. Find reliable providers

You should 'Sniff out' reliable providers and use these for updates on Digital Marketing rather than random Googling or glancing at social media and going with whatever comes up first or grabs your attention. This is a basic but effective tactic, and actually one of the best ways of cutting through the unnecessary content and getting straight to the gems of useful advice. We’d like to think Smart Insights is certainly one of these reliable providers and several were kind enough to say so in the discussion, but there are others that specialise in certain areas. Search Engine Land is great for news on Google’s algorithm changes, whilst Yoast is brilliant for succinct and actionable SEO news and advice. Build up a list of a couple of sites you really rate for providing advice in each of they key areas of digital marketing: Social Media, Email Marketing, SEO, Content Marketing etc. Then always turn to them to keep up with the latest news, rather than looking whatever comes up on your Twitter feed or Google search results.

Technique 2. Build a folder structure to keep tabs on your advice

Rather than just downloading a white paper here, a research report there, and a compilation of stats that looked interesting and then forgetting about them, a good strategy is to put together a file structure to make sense of all the advice you download. Saving web pages as PDF can put these alongside research reports.

This may sound like common sense, but it is often overlooked. We assume after skim reading a white paper that we’ve learnt all we need and thus there is no need to save it somewhere to come back to later. We all do this, but by doing it we are massively overestimating our cognitive abilities. After reading something in a rush we are unlikely to have taken it all in, and when a week later it comes to actually putting the advice into practice we won’t be able to remember it all. Build yourself a simple file structure where you divide into the key areas of digital marketing or RACE (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage). That way you’ll be able to save advise you really rate and return to it when you need to be able to put it into practice.

Technique 3. Sign up to quality newsletters

Rather than searching for digital marketing news, you can have the news come directly into your inbox on a weekly or daily basis (depending on the newsletter). I would suggest weekly newsletters are usually higher quality as the editors can offer the pick of the week rather than just sending out everything they have so they can fill a daily newsletter. Somewhat obviously, we think the Smart Insights weekly newsletter is a great one to sign up to - it's free as part of Basic membership. Luckily though it’s not just us, we got plenty of people telling us they rate it too.

So, pick a few sites you think are at the top of their game for marketing news and advice and sign up for their newsletters. If you ever find yourself not using the content that is emailed to you, just un-subscribe. We use Jeff Ente's weekly Whosbloggingwhat.com to check we're covering all the latest news - it's a great place to start when it comes to using newsletters to keep up to date and will give you ideas of others to follow..

Tools for finding and managing your insight

1. Feedly 

For us, Feedly is the best alternative if you don't use Twitter lists to keep up-to-date with different publishers. Feedly is an RSS feed reader that shows you the popularity of blog articles in the categories that you select as being relevant to you (say Marketing, Tech, Social Media). It’s a great way to stay on top of marketing news by seeing what’s hot that day. Just subscribe to the sites that are most relevant for you and then look at them once or twice a day or week. We use Feedly since the categorisation is easy to use and you can see the most relevant articles based on number of views from other Feedly readers.

2. Evernote 

Evernote is possibly the best tool for managing resources once you have found articles of interest you want to return to. It’s a great place for keeping track of what you have read and ideas you may have off the back of it. Note down highlights of interesting articles and points you think you could action off the back of it. It's free unless you have a very high volume of use and it syncs your content nicely across devices.

3. Instapaper 

When you find a piece of content you don’t have time to read right now, the instapaper app can save it to your Smartphone for reading later offline. The simple text format means ads and pop-ups are removed and you just get the content you need. It is a great app for using down time. When you’re on the train and your signal keeps dropping in and out with every tunnel, you can be reading articles you’ve saved for reading offline. Better still, the paid version can create playlists of articles, which it will read to you. So when you’re on the bus home or out for a walk, you can be swatting up on the latest marketing news!

4. What’s hot in Digital 

This is a feature available in our members area for Expert members of Smart Insights. It gives our readers the latest 'must-read' developments from the month-to-date.

These include the latest major platform changes to the key Digital Marketing channels; Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. That way you’ll never miss out on any key news, but you won't have to spend hours keeping up to date.

Our inspiration for creating 'What's Hot' was interviews with our Expert members who explained how they have weekly or monthly meetings with their team or agency to review the most relevant changes to act on each month, so we developed it to support this process - that's another technique in fact!

We hope the techniques and tools here help inspire new approaches to stop you drowning in content! If you have any clever strategies or know any nifty tools to save time keeping up with marketing news then please let us know.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/how-to-stop-drowning-in-digital-marketing-advice/