#i know 2 things and its that i cannot see your url correctly and that you enjoy minecraft fish

[jollydreamerarbiter]

Free Pdf To Word Converters For Mac

How To Convert A Pdf To Word Document Mac Free

Convert Pdf To Word Free Software Mac

Oct 15,2019 • Filed to: Mac Tutorials

The PDF Converter free version is an easy-to-use tool that allows a PDF document to be converted to a fully editable PowerPoint Mac 2008/2011 pptx presentation- preserving the original layout of. This free online PDF to DOC converter allows you to save a PDF file as an editable document in Microsoft Word DOC format, ensuring better quality than many other converters. Click the UPLOAD FILES button and select up to 20 PDF files you wish to convert. Wait for the conversion process to finish. Top 5 PDF to Word Converter for Mac 1. PDFelement is widely used by professionals in multiple industries such as architects, designers, writers, developers, HR executives, accountants, and many more. In fact, PDFelement is useful for any scenario where documents are processed and PDF is the primary vehicle to disseminate written information.

When it comes to change PDF to Word format, users might search from the internet and try to convert PDF to Word online. If so, you might get bad result and take risk on your file itself. The online PDF to Word converter tool might produce low quality output, have limitations on file size, what even worse is that it cannot protect your file security. If you want a fast, secure and productive way to convert PDF to Word on Mac (macOS 10.15 Catalina), just read on to get the answer.

Method 1. The Easiest and Professional Way to Convert PDF to Word on Mac

PDFelement Pro - The Best Way to Save PDF to Word Document

PDFelement Pro is an all-in-one PDF editor and converter. It can help you convert PDF to Word and many other file formats without losing the original layout. The built-in OCR feature enables you to convert scanned PDF to Word and other format without hassle. And you can convert multiple PDF files to Word at high speed.

Why Choose This PDF to Word Converter:

Convert PDF to Word, Excel, PPT, EPUB, RTF, and images format with original format.

Batch convert PDF files into Word and other format in high speed.

You can convert scanned PDF with the advanced OCR feature.

You can easily modify texts, images and pages in a PDF.

Easily markup PDF and annotate PDF with sticky note and hand-drawing shapes.

If you want to create PDF from other types of file, you can also rely on this smart tool.

Its secure function lets you to protect your PDF file with password, watermark or signature.

Easy Steps for Converting PDF to Word on Mac (10.15 Catalina included)

PDFelement Pro for Mac is fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 or later, including the latest macOS 10.13 High Sierra. There are more amazing features for you to explore. Below is a step-by-step guide for converting PDF to Word document on Mac computer. And you can also convert PDF to Excel and other formats. For Windows users, you can download PDFelement Pro to convert PDF to Word on Windows PC.

Step 1. Launch PDFelement Pro for Mac

After you've downloaded and installed this Mac PDF to Word converter, launch it. On the primary window, choose 'Convert PDF' from the menu to open the PDF convertion window.

Step 2. Transfer PDF to Word

Click the 'Convert' menu and select the output format as 'To Word'.Finally, click 'Convert' to turn PDF into Word. You can also customize the page range and add more files for PDF to Word conversion.

Step 3. Convert Scanned PDF to Word

If you file is image-based scanned PDF, you can turn on 'OCR' feature under the 'Edit' tap. And then click 'Convert' to change scanned PDF into Word format.

Step 4. Edit PDF before Converting (Optional)

If you want to make some changes on your PDF before converting it into Word document, you can click 'Open File' on the primary window to import your PDF. Then click 'Edit' button on the top toolbar to modify the texts and images in the PDF. To edit pages, you can choose the corresponding options 'Pages' .

If you'd like to annotate your PDF, you can click the 'Comment' button and get options for adding sticky note, text box, drawing lines/shapes and highlight. Finally click 'Save' to confirm your changes.

Method 2. Save PDF as Word Document on Mac Using iSkysoft PDF Converter for Mac

To simply convert PDF into Word on Mac, I recommend iSkysoft PDF Converter Pro for Mac, which is a simple PDF to Word Converter Mac (10.15 Catalina included) program for someone who is facing the problem of converting PDF files to formats like Word, Excel, PPT, Text, and more for better editing, saving, etc.

Why Choose This Mac PDF to Word Converter:

This Mac PDF to Word converter can convert standard and encrypted PDF files to Word (.doc and .docx).

It can convert PDF to Word and other formats without losing the original style and format.

And you can use it to do batch conversion or convert only specified PDF pages.

It comes with OCR technology which saves image-based scanned PDF to Word and other formats.

Steps to Get PDF to Word on Mac

Step 1. Run the Program and Load PDF Files

Open this Mac PDF to Word application from 'Application' folder after you have installed it. And import the PDF files you want to convert to Word format. You may drag and drop one or several PDF files to the interface of the program. Alternatively, you can go to 'File > Add PDF Files' to select the PDF files and import them to the program.

Note: You may import up to 200 PDF files to the program. If you want to add or replace some text, and make some other editing before the conversion, you can go to the guides on how to extract image from PDF, delete page from PDF, and so on. If you want to insert or modify some text before the conversion, you can follow the guide on how to edit PDF files on Mac.

Step 2. Choose the Page Range and Output Format

Click on the PDF file to highlight it, and you will see a gear icon show up. Click on the 'Gear' icon to open the output settings window. In the 'Page Range' column, you can customize the pages you want. You may specify the Page Range to convert partial PDF pages to Word pages. And then choose 'Word' format as the output format prior to convert PDF on your iMac or Macbook.

Step 3. Start to Extract PDF to Word

Click the 'Convert' button to start the conversion. When it is done, you'll get a message. Click 'OK' to open it with Microsoft Word (if available) to make sure everything is converted correctly.

Method 3: How to Convert PDF to Word on Mac Using Automator

How To Convert A Pdf To Word Document Mac Free

First, you need to know that Automator is actually part of Mac OS X. Below are the simple steps that one follows in order to convert their PDF files to editable word document on MAC using Automator.

Step 1. Open the Application folder on your Mac gadget and double click the tiny silver robot icon to launch Automator. Then a dialogue window appears that requires that you make a work flow.

Step 2. Just below the action menu, on the first column; locate and click the 'Files and Folders' button. You are then required to click and drag 'Ask For Finder Items' from the second column and drop it to the workflow segment situated at the right-hand side of the window.

Step 3. You will then refer back to the first column and click on the 'PDFs' button. From the second column, this time you will drag 'Extract PDF Text' and drop it under 'Ask For Finder Items' on the workflow panel. On this process you will be able to see some options that you can set. For a converted text file that retains its original text formatting, you will choose the 'Rich Text' option.

Step 4. Finally save your work flow. Press Command – S and then provide a suitable name then click on the save button to conclude this process.

Step 5. Now start using Automator through the workflow process you have created to convert your PDF files to word. It is as simple of just finding and selecting the PDF file that you need converted and let the Automator do the rest of the job for you.

Pros:

It is part of the Mac OS X, users can access its valuable services directly.

Cons:

It is messy – the rich text option only ensures that the converted file retains its original format of text and not the overall layout of the document.

Method 4: How to Convert PDF to Word on Mac Online

You can use some websites to convert PDF to Word. We will now discuss about how to turn PDF into Word using freepdfconvert. So let’s get started.

Step 1: The first thing is to visit the website of freepdfconvert.com. After entering into the website, you see the primary page like below.

Step 2: You see that there are many buttons like 'PDF Converter', PDF to Word' etc. As you have to convert PDF to Word, click on the 'PDF to Word' button.

Step 3: Now you see a button named 'Select File'. By tapping on the button, you can browse for the PDF file that you need to convert.

Step 4: Once you select the PDF file, hit the OK button of your browsing box. You see the PDF file named 'TriFold Coffe & Muffin….' has been uploaded to the website for further conversion. Now you will have to hit the 'Convert' tab for start converting. It will take some time depending on the file’s size to complete the conversion for PDF to Word.

Step 5: Once the conversion is complete, you will see a new button named 'Downlaod'. By tapping on the button, you can go for downloading, deleting or saving to Google Docs as per your wish. By downloading the file, you are getting a Word file of your PDF file.

PDF to Word Online Converter

You can also opt to convert PDF to word on Mac online by using other online tools, below are 3 of the most common online PDF to word converters.

1. ZamZar PDF to Word Converter

Convert Pdf To Word Free Software Mac

ZamZar is a online PDF to Word converter that can actually convert your PDF file to a number of other file formats like PPT, xlsx and many more. Just start by selecting the PDF file or URL of its location – > Choose the format – > Then key in your email address so that you can receive the converted version of the file – > finally click on convert button.

Pros:

No need to download.

Easy to use.

Cons:

It takes a long time for batch files, it can only convert one PDF file at a time.

It requires the user to have an email address.

2. Online PDF-Converter

This is among the best PDF to Word converter online service that anyone can use. It is quite popular generally because f its versatility and ease of use. When you open the online2pdf.com website, select the PDF files you need converted (up to 20 files), select the desired output format (Word), and finally click on the convert button.

Pros:

Allows up to a maximum of 20 PDF files.

It is easy to use as well as edit the PDF files.

Cons:

You can only access this resource online, basically you can never do much without the internet connection.

3. PDF to Word Converter

pdftowordconverter.net is such an excellent website to consider for your online PDF to word conversion needs. Quite an easy to use resource as compared to the ZamZar option, as it only includes two simple steps. First, you will have to choose the PDF file – >then hit the convert button, and download the converted file to your Mac device.

Pros:

Very easy to use.

It is no fee.

Cons:

It is quite slow as it can only covert a single PDF file at an instance.

Method 5: Turn PDF into Word Using Google Docs

You may have already known that Google Docs has the functionality of creating as well as editing Doc files. Now you will be amazed to know that with Google Docs, you can also convert PDF into Doc file. The good news is that the service of converting PDF into Word is totally free of cost. So you can expect a good service of PDF conversion from the internet giant Google with their Google Docs. Another good thing is that the Doc file that is created or converted by Google Docs is compatible with cross platforms, so you can use the converted file on Mac, Windows, and Linux etc. Not only that, popular mobile platform Android also supports the Doc format.

Now learn the process of Google Docs to convert PDF into Doc. You should know that you will not be able to convert as Word, but Doc is also considered as one type of Word document.

As it is totally free to convert, you only need an updated browser along with a Google account (@gmail.com).

Step 1: First of all, visit Google Docs and login. As you know that one Google account is applicable for all the Google’s products, so if you have a Gmail account, you can login with that for Google Docs.

Step 2: You will have to tap on the tiny upload icon that is located next to the button of 'CREATE'.

Step 3: Now from the browsing option, go for the PDF file that you would like to convert.

Step 4: After that, in the 'Upload Settings' panel, check the option named 'Convert text from uploaded PDF and image files' along with other two options.

Step 5: Now by choosing the 'File' option, go for the button 'Download as' where from you can download the PDF file as Doc file. This Doc file will be compatible for cross platforms.

Method 6: Turn PDF into Word Using Adobe Acrobat

Using Adobe Acrobat, you can convert PDF to Word too. Here are the processes that you will have to follow in order to achieve the conversion.

Step 1: Open a PDF file that you will convert Word.

Step 2: On the top menu bar, go for 'File' option.

Step 3: From the drop down menu, you will have to go for 'Save As Other…'.

Step 4: Then go to :Microsoft Word' and after that it will show Word Document.

Step 5: Pressing on 'Word Document', it will show you paths for saving the PDF file as Word. Set the path and press Ok. It will be saved as Word file.

iSkysoft PDF Creator - Convert Word to PDF on Mac with PDF Creator for Mac

iSkysoft PDF Creator for Mac is an easy-to-use yet quality Word to PDF converter. With it, you can convert unlimited Microsoft Office files including DOC, DOCX, XLS， XLSX， PPT, and PPTX to PDF. It comes with many wonderful features:

Key Features:

Convert Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to PDF easily and quickly.

Create high-quality PDF with high resolutions and 100% original formatting.

Import unlimited Word files and convert to PDFs at once.

0 Comment(s)

[rigelmejo]

to anyone else learning chinese:

1. Please download Pleco dictionary app. It’s free. It will make your life significantly easier. It has quite good definitions. (If you are willing to spend a one time purchase cost of 10-20 dollars, I recommend getting the e-Reader and the dictionary add-on so it can look up virtually any word and idiom, look up by audio or drawing as well as typing, and so you can read virtually any chinese website or txt and most pdf docs in it with definitions and audio for everything).

2. Download google translate at minimum. It’s free. Keep one or both of these close at hand when you’re watching chinese or reading chinese - look up new words you see often. 

---

A note about these apps that I have noticed:

For me, a left hander who knows general stroke order but does not always memorize specific stroke order for every hanzi I see: Google translate is MUCH better at quickly accurately guessing what hanzi I am writing to look up. Even though I always write on my phone with my non-dominant right hand (so its a scribbly mess). No matter what hanzi I am drawing to look up in google translate, the app either accurately guesses immediately what i mean, or else suggests it as one of the first 3 options. For some reason, although Pleco is in nearly EVERY way superior to google translate - pleco often struggles to figure out what hanzi i’m drawing with my right hand on my phone. So i usually draw in google to find the right hanzi, then copy paste it into pleco for a more in-depth definition if i need one.

For me, Pleco seems to have better natural-voice recognition. When I hear a word or phrase, then speak it into pleco, I almost always get the correct chinese words to show up. When I use google translate’s voice function, unless it is a really really common phrase/word, google translate often misunderstands (and I mean really basic misunderstandings like meiguanshi not being heard correctly, shizun not being heard correctly, etc). I just notice that sometimes it gives back exactly what you said, but other times it is super off even though you said a very common word like “ye” or “yao” or “meiyou��. Whereas pleco nearly always can parse out what you actually mean when you use it’s voice function to look up something. So I personally tend to do voice lookup in pleco, then copy and paste if it’s an entire sentence or more as needed, to lookup the parts where i need to look them up (either in google for a quick full sentence translate, or pleco for a part by part closer translation).

I cannot say enough good things about Pleco’s eReader function. One being that its a one time cost instead of a stupid monthly subscription like so many other apps. Two being it has a clipboard function to copy paste large sections and work through them piece by piece, it can READ ALOUD anything u give it and is usually fairly accurate about saying the right word, it can read through whole websites and novels etc. It also has decently made graded readers available for small one time purchases if you wanted a graded reader - but I had pdfs of Mandarin Companion books and i can read those pdfs using the pleco eReader function for lookup too! It is phenomenal. On the phone I use pleco eReader to read big things, on my computer i use Zhongwen (a free chrome dictionary extension).

For machine translations (like to translate a whole set of pages/paragraphs so i have an idea of the gist, before working through piece by piece). The translation on the site baidu is great, as is the free baidu translation app. The baidu website also has a section to put in most urls and have them fully translated into chinese or into english etc. Google translate can also translate individual web pages (though i think it does less good of a job - Like it often translates this is as “ta shi” even when its really more like “this is not fine” so na or zhe would be a better translation). In addition, if what I’m trying to translate is a webnovel - mltnovel.com is a great site where you can see machine translated english next to raw chinese. So you can see the gist translated in english, then find the more messed up parts and translate those parts more specifically yourself. 

[sophtopus]

Okay many people have not read Toby’s Long Tweet about Delta Rune

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqn3p9 See that URL? It’s the official link. Here is the full transcript copy pasted from the Tweet. I won’t put it under readmore because people tend to scroll past that. Past the break line is Toby’s own words. Deltarune is it’s own world. It’s NOT related to Undertale. This is exactly what he said in point 1 of his post. It’s also something he had worked for 7 years (earliest file was 2012). This game was more difficult to make compared to Undertale. Toby also doesn’t know when he’ll ever finish Deltatune. That’s why he released this demo to share with us. I cannot stress how important it is to be patient with the artist/author and let them do whatever they want. If Toby wants to create something new, LET HIM! Trust the Dog that he’ll make something interesting! Repeat TLDR: Deltarune is NOT Undertale!!! No matter how many similarities they have, they are NOT the same. Insisting that it’s the same will just rob you of enjoyment. It’s all in the first question. Scroll down for the rest of the transcript.

Here are my thoughts on Ch 1 of Deltarune. This should answer some questions.

It's October 4th. The DEMO (first chapter) of my game is supposed to come out on Halloween. Actually it was done a little while ago but I'm waiting for the translation to be finished. I feel like I should address what I think people will think before the game comes out. Of course, if I'm all wrong about this, then I just wasted my time, but... QUESTIONS I PREDICT PEOPLE HAVE 1. "Is this a sequel? What's going on?? I'm scared..." Please don't worry too much about that. Actually, I'm worried if people worry too much about "what it is," they might not be able to properly enjoy it... (laugh) I will say that basically, what you're seeing here is not the world of UNDERTALE. UNDERTALE's world and ending are the same as however you left them. If everyone was happy in your ending, the people in the UNDERTALE world will still be happy. So, please don't worry about those characters, and that world. It will remain untouched. To rephrase that, DELTARUNE's world is a different one. With different characters, that have lived different lives. A whole new story will happen... I don't know what you call this kind of game. It's just a game you can play after you complete UNDERTALE, if you want to. That's all. 2. "I have questions I want to ask about the story..." There's a lot of questions I'd like to answer, too. That's why I have to make the game. Please wait until then. 3. "When will the next chapter come out?" This is a difficult question. When I made the demo of UNDERTALE, I made it to prove to myself that it was possible to make a whole game alone (with some help with the art). Because I was able to make it in a few months, I felt that I had proved that it was possible. However, making the demo of DELTARUNE... took a few years. So, given the length of the rest of the game, and how long I'd be willing to spend on a project (7 years maximum) I think the answer is that it's actually impossible to make this game. Lots of things make this game harder to make than the last time. - The graphics are much more complicated and don't play to my strengths (black and white battle graphics were easy...) - The battle system is much more complicated due to multiple characters (I'll write about this later) - The overworld and other sections are more complicated due to multiple characters - Having multiple main characters is much harder to write especially introducing everyone properly in chapter 1 - The entire town had to be created correctly on the first try to set up properly for the rest of the game And further things outside of those: - Trouble starting tasks/concentrating and general difficulty paying attention - Travelling / other responsibilities like translation/ports - Self-doubt / burnout regarding the creation of the game Essentially it's not possible to make this game as one person (and Temmie). However, it MIGHT be possible to create the game if I'm able to make a team. So I'm going to try making a team. Because I really want to make this. But I may not be able to succeed because I have no experience successfully directing a team and I have no idea who I'm going to work with. Since I haven't started assembling the team yet I have absolutely no estimation of its completion. It could take up to 999 years depending on the efficiency level. By the way, I currently plan to release all of the chapters at once after we complete them. I'm not sure how long that will take. You'll buy all of the chapters at once as one purchase. That'll be the only option. I'm not doing pre-orders because I don't like those. It just seems like the best way not to burn anybody. Price is unknown. It depends on how long the game is, and how much it costs to make... I don't know anything about what consoles, etc. it'll come out for because by the time it comes out we might be on Playstation 14 or something. So... in short, I have no idea. 4. "Is this the game's final design? Will you change anything?" It's possible I could change things. This is basically a demo. I might even change this first chapter before release depending on how development goes. This is really an excuse to talk about the parts I think had issues. THE BATTLE SYSTEM: I think the battle system could be explained better. I had a super duper long explanation of things here but really it boils down to: 1. UT's system is incompatible with multiple party members but I wanted to do it anyway because it's cool 2. I'd like to make it so for pacifist players, characters won't have to "defend" so much Oh. The people who tested the game thought that the TP system and animations were cool so it's not all bad. By the way, did you notice that getting close to bullets makes enemy attacks end faster? It doesn't work for every attack, but... EVERYTHING ELSE: I thought everything else was OK. Actually some parts were kind of lazy, like finding the key pieces, but oh well. The UI had some things that could be changed too. When making a game, there's so much to do you have to draw the line somewhere. That's why I need other people to help me (laugh) Oh, and I have no plans to add more content to the first chapter. 5. "Will there be multiple endings?" No. No matter what you do the ending will be the same. (Honestly most games are like that, but for some reason it feels really oppressive to say here...) I think that's part of the reason why the ACT / FIGHT system feels so vestigial in this one. Oh... I'm just talking about the battle system again... 6. "I found some kind of bug, will you fix it?" Hopefully an e-mail for that exists on the website by now. Or, it would be better if you could tweet it with #deltarunebug . That would really help us and make our lives easier because tweets are easier to ignore than e-mails 7. "Can I be on the team?" I'll ask you first!!! (Total silence) 8. "What's the progress on the rest of the game so far?" 0%!!! Nothing!!! I've done nothing!!! I mean, I've done some songs and written the whole story, but... Since no programming or final art has been done, it's best to just think of it at 0%. 9. "Will you do a Kickstarter?" I still haven't finished that damn Alarm Clock, are you kidding me? There's no way I'm doing a Kickstarter this time. 10. "The game doesn't work" / "I don't like the game" / "Will there be a version for (platform)?" Because it's a free download I'm surrounded by a forcefield that destroys all complaints and platform requests. There might be more platforms for the DEMO but I don't want to make any promises. (At the very least it'd be nice to do something for the people who bought the game on console.) By the way at the time of writing I haven't even rendered a Mac version whatsoever at all. I hope I can release it... (laugh) 11. "Can I buy the soundtrack for Chapter 1?" Yes! You can buy it at [ http://tobyfox.bandcamp.com ] And other forms of distribution will be in the works too. I'm writing this in the past so I don't know what I just said. 12. "Any closing remarks?" (No one asks this, but...) Thanks for playing my game. I hope you liked it. For the past 3 years I've been waking up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep because I've been thinking about the scenes that happen in the game. Even though so many details are still hazy, I really want to show you the things I've been thinking about. That's really my only reason for making this game. If I don't show you what I'm thinking, I'll lose my mind. (It was actually a totally selfish motivation...) By the way, I was really worried at first about making this. The expectations for my next work would be really high, so high that I knew that no matter what I did, I felt like people would be underwhelmed. If you played "UNDERTALE," I don't think I can make anything that makes you feel "that way" again. However, it's possible I can make something else. It's just something simple but maybe you'll like it. See you in ?? years... OK? Don't forget.

[hydrus]

Version 455

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.gz

I had an ok couple of weeks. Some quality of life is improved, the UI should save sessions a bit quicker, and the database repairs itself more of itself.

Your client may warn you about a missing index on first boot. If it does, that's great--some new repair code is working!

session save

Some users with large sessions (typically around 2-3+ million 'weight') are experiencing severe UI lockups and general lag. This week I deal with part of that problem by greatly reducing the amount of CPU needed to save most sessions. Now pages know if they have been changed since being loaded, and if they have no changes, they can skip a bunch of session save work.

There's nothing you have to do here, but if you have been experiencing 12+ second freezes every few minutes, please let me know how you get on now. I can't promise things will be perfect, but if you have any large and inactive downloader pages, you should notice things running a bit smoother (exiting the program too, should be faster).

There is still a problem of lag and lockups when there are 200+ downloaders in the session. This is a different and unfortunately more severe problem that I have relieved in recent weeks but needs some other large work to completely fix. Best solution for now is to clear out finished downloaders if you can.

misc

Many of the simple system predicates, like height and filesize, now support the '≠' (not equal) operator! This is still in the early stages, but I'd like to add some options of the thumbnail menu so you can say 'find files that (do not) have this file's precise resolution/duration/size' etc...

You can now copy thread subjects to clipboard in the watcher downloader page list!

The advanced file deletion dialog now remembers the last reason you chose!

The network job widget (which shows download progress, you see it on any downloader) now shows the current URL it is working on under its cog menu. You can click it to copy to clipboard. May help to debug some odd network errors etc...

The way data sizes over 1KB are rendered has been overhauled. It should now generally be to three significant figures, so 3.11MB instead of 3.1MB, 12.3GB instead of 12GB. See if you like the change, and if not, try tweaking it to 2sf under the new EXPERIMENTAL option in options->gui.

database repair

tl;dr: Boot checks are better, you don't have to do anything.

I have spent most of my 'cleanup' time this year breaking the client database into smaller modules. These modules are now responsible for their own repair (which happens on boot), and they do much of it in a neater automatic way, using the same set of definitions it uses to initialise on first start to check whether an existing database is missing anything now. Most of my old hardcoded 'oh, you are missing this table' code is now simplified and modularised, works more reliably, and will be much easier to maintain in future.

You may get a popup when you boot saying you are missing one or more indices. There are several legacy reasons why this might be the case, but most often it will be because you once recovered from former hard drive damage and a clone/recover was unable to rescue an index. Whatever the case, these can now be regenerated automatically (they store duplicated data, so can be regenerated 100%), so please let it run. You might even notice PTR processing working faster afterwards.

Many tables can also be regenerated, and some can be completely repopulated. It is now possible (though not a great idea!) to start a client without a client.caches.db or client.mappings.db file and have it recover to a bootable state. Error presentation around this is improved, with instructions on what to do next in the case of critical problems.

I will continue modularising more of the database and fleshing out this repair code to cover more of the schema!

full list

misc:

many of the simple system predicates (width, size, duration, etc..) now support the '≠' (not equal) operator! searches only support one of these at once for now (e.g. you can't say height != 640 AND height != 1080--it'll pick one of these pseudorandomly)

the watcher page list right-click menu now has 'copy subjects', which copies the selected watchers' 'subject' texts to clipboard

the advanced file deletion panel now remembers which reason you last used. it remembers if you selected the 'default' value up top versus specific reason text, and if you enter custom text, it remembers that for next time too

the network job widget now shows the current URL as tooltip over the progress gauge, and under the cog menu, where clicking it copies it to clipboard

the various menu labels across the program should now show ampersand (&) correctly (e.g. in URLs)

the way byte sizes (like 21.7KB or 1.24GB) above 1KB are rendered to strings has been overhauled. they now generally show three significant figures. a new EXPERIMENTAL option in 'gui' options panel lets you change this, but only 2 or 3 are really helpful

if a repository clears the message on your account, you no longer get a popup telling you 'hey, new message from server x: ...'

the new ≠ system preds should be parseable (but be careful, likely buggy) using the client api's new system predicate parser, with '≠', '!=', 'is not', or 'isn't'

cleaned up some old data presentation methods and improved how client specific options are patched in to base hydrus string conversion code

.

ui freezes:

session pages can now detect if they have had no saveable changes since a certain time. they use this ability to skip redundant session save CPU time for pages with no changes since the last session save

for now, since the smallest atom of the session system is a whole page, gallery and watcher pages can only save time if _every_ downloader in the page has had no changes, so in their case this optimisation mostly only applies to completely finished/paused pages. it is still better to have several medium size downloader pages than one gigantic one

a new database maintenance task ensures that optimisation cannot accidentally lose a page (from something like an unfortunate timing of a session save after many manual session deletes)

the existing optimisation that skips 'last session' save on no changes now initialises its data as the 'last session' is first loaded (rather than on first save), meaning that if there are no changes while the client is open, no new 'last session's will be saved at all

misc session save code cleanup

.

database repair, mostly boring:

a client can now boot with client.caches.db missing and will rebuild that file. almost all of its tables are now able to automatically repopulate (issue #975)

all the new modules I have been working on are now responsible for their own repair. this includes missing indices, missing tables, and table repopulation where possible. modules now know which of their tables are critical to a boot, what version each table and index was added, and now manage both initial and later-created service tables and indices

essentially, all newer database repair code is now modularised rather than hardcoded. the repair and creation code actually now share the same table and index definitions. the code is more reliable, checkpoints its good work in case of later failure, and will be much easier to maintain and expand in future

lots of module repair and initialisation code is refactored and generally given a full pass

the core mappings cache regeneration routine now takes transaction checkpoints throughout its job to save progress and reduce journal size

master definition critical error detection code is no longer hardcoded!

mapping storage repair code is no longer hardcoded!

similar files repair code is no longer hardcoded!

parent or sibling cache repair repopulation is no longer hardcoded!

the local hashes cache module can now repopulate itself during repair

the notes fast search table can now repopulate itself during repair

the similar files search tree table can now rebuild itself during repair

next week

I'm not really happy with my productivity over the past two weeks. This repair and session save worked bogged me down a bit, but I also didn't get as many hours in as I had planned. In any case, I will try to prioritise smaller bug fixes next week. Keep on pushing.

[ryadel]

Getting Started with React Native and Visual Studio Code on Windows: Hello World sample app

Do you know React Native? If you don't, you should really do something about that, especially if you're a web developer interested in creating native mobile app. In a nutshell, Reactive App is a framework for building native apps using JavaScript and React. It uses the same design as React, letting you compose a rich mobile UI using declarative components instead of having to learn how to natively do it using Android Studio or XCode. Conversely from other web-to-native frameworks, the apps you'll be able to build with React Native won't be mobile web apps wrapped in a native shell (if you know about PhoneGap/Cordoba you know what I mean): they will actually be iOS and Android native app! The only difference is that, instead of using Swift, Kotlin or Java to put together the native UI building blocks, you'll be to this using JavaScript and React.

Install React Native (and its dependencies)

The first thing we need to do is to install React Native framework on our system, together with all its required dependencies to build and run Android apps. Unfortunately, we cannot build and run iOS apps, as they do require a MacOS (or, to better say, a OSX machine). This is more a Apple cruel restriction than a React Native limitation, though: the sad part about mobile development nowadays is that Apple does not allow any kind of iOS emulator outside their ecosystem, thus forcing any developer who wants to create multi-platform mobile apps to develop using a Mac... Which is kind of sad, if you tell me, since nobody should be forced to use a Mac. The only mobile framework who does actually allow to do something against that is Xamarin, which lets you use a really cool iOS remote simulator for Windows. Unfortunately, React Native has nothing similar, at least for the moment, forcing all Windows users to concentrate on Android... or to install a MacOS virtual machine using VMware or VirtualBox, which is basically what I'm still doing when I have to write software using XCode or React Native. Anyway, here's what we need to do to install React Native and its Android dependencies on Windows: Install Chocolatey Chocolatey is a cool package manager for Windows that will greatly help you to get the proper things without messing up your system configuration, which is rather easy using other standard, linux-oriented package managers such as npm, yarn and the likes. (Note that you'll still be using them - just not from the start!) To install Chocolatey, go to this URL and follow the instructions. In a nutshell, you'll be asked to open a Command Prompt window with administrative rights and cut-paste there a (very long) one-liner which will take care of installing Chocolatey for you in a single step. If you prefer Powershell over CMD, there's a (even longer) one-liner for that as well.

Install NodeJS, Phyton and JDK Right after installing Chocolatey, you'll need to use it to install some of React Native's required dependencies, such as: Node.js (8.3 or newer), JDK (8 or newer) and Phyton (2 or newer). You can do that by opening another elevated command prompt and typing the following command: > choco install -y nodejs.install python2 jdk8 If you already have the required version of Node.js, JDK or Phyton on your system, remove them to the above cmd to prevent Chocolatey from re-installing them. Install Android Studio The next thing you'll have to do is to download and install Android Studio. To do that, go to this URL and choose the Android Studio option. Choose a "Custom" setup when prompted to select an installation type. Make sure the boxes next to all of the following are checked: Android SDK Android SDK Platform Performance (Intel ® HAXM) (if you have a INTEL CPU: if you got an AMD one, click here) Android Virtual Device Once done, click Next to begin installing these components. Once setup has finalized and you're presented with the Welcome screen, proceed to the next step. Preparing the Android SDK Android Studio installs the latest Android SDK by default: building a React Native app with native code, however, requires the Android 9 (Pie) SDK in particular. Additional Android SDKs can be installed through the SDK Manager in Android Studio, which can be accessed from the Welcome to Android Studio screen: click on Configure, then select SDK Manager. If you prefer to do that using the menus, go to the Preferences dialog, then Appearance & Behavior > System Settings > Android SDK. Once you're there, select the SDK Platforms tab from within the SDK Manager, then check the box next to Show Package Details in the bottom right corner. Locate and expand the Android 9 (Pie) entry, then make sure the following items are checked: Android SDK Platform 28 Intel x86 Atom_64 System Image or Google APIs Intel x86 Atom System Image Next, select the SDK Tools tab and check the box next to Show Package Details here as well: locate and expand the Android SDK Build-Tools entry and make sure that 28.0.3 is selected. Eventually, click Apply to download and install everything you need.

Add the ANDROID_HOME environment variable

Open the Windows Control Panel, select System, then Change settings > Advanced: from there, click on Environment Variables, and create a new ANDROID_HOME user variable that points to the path to your Android SDK, which should be the following (be sure to check it): C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk To quickly verify it, open Android Studio again, then go to Preferences > Appearance & Behavior > System Settings > Android SDK. Add the platform-tools folder to PATH Again, open the Windows Control Panel, select System, then Change settings > Advanced: from there, click on Environment Variables. This time, instead of creating a new user variable, select the PATH variable and edit it. Add the following path to the existing list: C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\platform-tools Again, be sure to verify that this is your Android SDK folder. Install the React Native CLI Last but not least, you will have to use npm to install the React Native CLI. Open a command prompt with elevated rights and type the following: > npm install -g react-native-cli If you get a message from your OS saying that "npm" cannot be found, be sure that your NodeJS installation folder is present in the PATH environment variable: if it isn't, add it and try again.

Create a React Native Project

Once React Native and its required dependencies/components are installed, you have two options for create your first app: Create it from scratch using the React Native CLI. Clone a Boilerplate from GitHub and modifying it. Each option comes with pros and cons: the React Native CLI is good enough for a sample "Hello World!" application, but it's missing some key features you'll most likely need to add by yourself (Redux, React Navigator, axios and so on); the Boilerplate will install a set of pre-made classes and UI elements (a menu, a navigation system, and so on) that will probably ease your development curve. For the above reasons, I suggest to go with the boilerplate, so that you'll be able to feel a whole signficant React Native experience. Anyway, in the next two paragraphs we'll deal with both scenarios. Option #1: Use React Native CLI Open an elevated command prompt, get in the folder you want to create your app root folder in: once you're there, type the following command to create your first React Native app: > react-native init MyApp ... That's it! Option #2: Cloning a Boilerplate Clone the repository Copy it to another folder, such as /MyApp/ Remove the previous git history by deleting the root .git folder. Follow the boilerplate setup instructions. For example, if it comes with a packages.json file, it will most likely require you to run npm update or yarn install to install/update the required dependencies. If the project has a default name, you can also rename it to your own project name using yarn run rename -- MyApp Create your configuration file App/Config/index.js (if not already present) Run your app by typing react-native run-android (to run the Android application) or react-native run-ios (for the iOS application). Remember to start a Simulator or to connect an Android/iOS device before doing that! If you did everything correctly, your app should start running, installing some pre-requisites if necessary. For example, as we can see in the screenshot below, the Android app will install the Gradle build tool during the first run:

If you get the SDK location could not be found exception, it means that you either don't have installed the Android SDK or you didn't set the ANDROID_HOME variable (see below). ANDROID_SDK_ROOT variable. Other common errors that could prevent the Android app from launching are licensing issues (License for Android Package XXX not accepted) and the absence of a suitable emulator (No connected devices!): the former can be fixed by opening the Android SDK Manager and installing/updating the missing packages; as for the latter, just be sure to either plugin a debug-enabled Android device or launch an Android emulator from the AVD Manager.

Install Visual Studio Code

Now that our React Native app is ready, we just have to install a decent coding editor to be able to edit and/or debug it: that's where Visual Studio Code kicks in. Go to the Visual Studio Code official page and download it, then have it installed.

Install React Native Tools Right after that, open the Extension pane (bottom last icon on the left) and install the React Native Tools, a great extension to debug and syntax highlighting React on VS Code.

Your first React Native App

You're almost done: from Visual Studio Code, do File > Open Folder, select the /MyApp/ folder - the directory you created or cloned your first app in - and open it. You should be welcomed by the following page:

Now it's time to either connect your Android phone to your computer (providing that the USB Debug feature is enabled on it - click here to read how), or to launch an Android emulator using the Android SDK using the Android Studio's AVD Manager (click here to read how).

Right after that, from Visual Studio Code,  go to the Debug screen and select the React Native debug configuration: a brand-new launch.json file will be created on your app's root folder, containing some default options to enable the debug. Click the green "play" button from the debug toolbar (placed on the top-left corner of the editor, right above the Explorer tree) and let the magic works! If you did everything properly, you should see something like this:

Conclusion

That's it for now: I definitely hope that this guide will help other developers to try out React Native, as it's really something to be aware of!   Read the full article

[alley-cat-sunflower]

11 questions tag game

RULES: Always post the rules. Answer the questions asked, then write 11 new ones. Tag 11 people to answer your questions, as well as the person who tagged you.

I was tagged by @kazama-hime. Thanks…? But seriously, I don’t think you understand the level on which I need some kind of clarification. See, I get where you’re coming from, and that there’s something of a language barrier here, but there are several crucial words missing, so these aren’t brain-teasers (or not for the reasons they’re intended to be) because I literally cannot decipher what you’re trying to say. But hey, I guess I’ll do my best anyway? Sorry in advance for high sodium content…

1. Do you think an author’s life has on their novels the influence Saint-Beuve gives it? Or do you agree more with Proust?

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Sorry.

2. If a woodchuck could chuck and would chuck some amount of wood, what amount of wood could a woodchuck chuck?

Did you mean, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood”? Because

3. Do we agree?

About… what… exactly?

4. What do you think is the most pertinent: to canonise Socrates or to socratise a canon?

Definitely to Socratize a canon. If I’m understanding the question correctly, that’s asking whether or not the Socratic method should be taken as law or whether things previously taken as law should be questioned as dictated by Socrates. Since my major is Liberal Studies, that’s what I do already.

5. Favorite quote?

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” ~Bernard M. Baruch

6. If I say you I’m not saying what I’m saying (although I said it), what did I say?

What…?

7. “Kant’s philosophy is big waffle iron.” Justify.

What…???

8. Knowing that according to Sartre, “conscience is a being for which it is in its being question of its being qua this being implies another being than itself”, are you certain you have a conscience?

*squints* ………………………What????????

9. What happened to Cinderella’s father?

Didn’t he die or something? I figured he died, if she got stuck with her stepfamily. It’s been awhile since I read the fairy tale but I swear that was what happened.

10. What is the difference between a pigeon?

…Between a pigeon and a what?? If you’re asking about a difference, you need to give me at least two things to compare!

11. Find a question and answer it.

“Why am I even trying to do this?” ~me. (Answer: I… really don’t know. Friendship points? Because I like suffering? Because I can never resist an ask meme?? But it’s over now, so the why and how of it doesn’t matter.)

Now for my own set of eleven questions, if I can come up with anything now that my brain has been wrung dry…

Would you be an earthbender, airbender, firebender, or waterbender? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you really need to fix that ASAP.)

Do you like live theater? What kinds? Why or why not?

What was the last thing you ate? How long ago?

Do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert?

Name the three fictional characters that make up your personality.

In any or all of your fandoms, are you more of a content creator or content consumer? Both?

Do you typically use a laptop or desktop computer?

Do you have an opinion on anime/cartoons/games being made into live-action productions?

What is the object immediately to your left? To your right?

What is your favorite font/typeface?

Handwrite your tumblr url and post a picture.

I tag @doodlethewhiteraven​, @sabinasanfanfic, @shell-senji, @chibitorra, @magpul21, @myfiremoon, @flamingo-bubbles, @touchedvenus​, @msrolodexofhate​​, @kataangislove​, and @anamelessknight​ if any of them want to do this!!

[bobjlower]

5 Ways To Become A More Effective Trader

 Trading is one of the most rewarding — and challenging — careers in the world!

In a recent study, researchers discovered that profitable day traders make up a tiny portion of the professionals in our industry, less than 2% of all traders in a given year. For those who struggle to turn a profit, day trading can quickly lose its appeal: approx. 40% of all traders quit within the first month, and after three years, only 13% of those who entered the field continue to work ion the stock market.[1]

But for those who succeed, trading can provide the personal, professional, and financial opportunities that other career paths lack.

As their peers give up on the dreams that they had for their future, the best traders take consistent, repetitive steps to achieve their goals. In other words, they know how to form habits that will produce successful outcomes in the long-run.

And every long-term habit starts with a short-term choice.

Like many people who pursue a career in the market, you may be searching for ways to become a more effective trader. There aren’t any short cuts to success in this field, but there are are plenty of steps that you can take to set yourself up for a long and lucrative trading career. Here are five choices that you can make today to become a more effective trader:

 1. Work On Your Mindset 

Is trading all about mindset and psychology? It sure can feel like it sometimes. When you see a great setup and you don’t take it, fear and doubt are the cause. If you are in a profitable trade but cut it too early, the fear of giving back causes such bad behavior. When you are in a losing position and don’t want to close the loss, fear of losing and greed are the causes. When you take too much risk, wrong expectations and greed drive your behavior. And the list goes on…

The best thing that you can do to become a more effective trader is to work on your trading mindset; with the right training, you can master your emotions instead of letting your emotions master you.

You can get started by reading popular books about trading psychology, such as Trading In The Zone by Mark Douglas, Sway: The Irresistible Pull Of Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman, and The Art Of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli.

You can also take our psychology course to improve your trading mindset.

 2. Learn Something New

There are other things that you can study to become a more effective trader, like strategy development, market trends, and analysis techniques. Enroll in a professional course, webinar, or open source training program that will help you learn new technical skills; in a few short weeks, you will have the tools that you need to improve your performance and increase your profits.

Going back to the beginner mindset can open your perspective for new things and it will also remind you how it is to truly learn a new skill.

 3. Invest Into Yourself

You need to put yourself first. This may sound selfish at first, but every great person follows this principle.

If you cannot take care of yourself, you won’t be able to help the people around you and make an impact. If you are broke, you cannot support your family or donate money to causes that are important to you. If you are not healthy, you will be a burden to others. If you are not happy with your situation, you will drag people down with you.

Therefore, you must put yourself first.

Buy good food, get a gym membership or even a personal trainer, invest into books, go to seminars, get personal coaching, and treat yourself like a person you truly care for.

 4. Rethink Your Trading Strategy

At the same time, we know that there are plenty of traders who are committed to developing effective habits. If you have been taking consistent, repetitive steps to accomplish your goals without seeing any results, you may need to rethink your trading strategy.

Analyze your trading and your behavior objective yourself yoursellf:

What works best for me?

When do I lose the most amount of money?

Which mistake(s) do I repeat all the time?

What is the ONE thing I need to change that would have the biggest impact on my performance?

Are my losses my fault (breaking rules etc) or am I doing everything correctly?

And really take the time to answer those questions thoroughly. Go through your last 50 trades one by one and take notes. You will be surprised how obvious it will become what you will have to do to turn your trading around.

During our mental edge course, we have prepared many such lessons and assignments for you.

 5. Reconnect With Your Social Network

Most traders underestimate the role that their family and friends can play in their professional lives. Studies have shown that people with close social relationships can improve their workplace performance, increase job satisfaction, and see a positive impact on their ability to focus.[3]If you are feeling discouraged, this is the perfect time for you to reconnect with the people who care about you. It doesn’t matter whether you spend a night out with your friends or take 15 minutes to talk to a loved one on the phone: when you have positive social interactions on a regular basis, you will improve your ability to trade.

 Bonus: Long Game Mindset

I am a true believer that anyone can become a profitable trader if he/she manages their expectations the right way. Many traders fail because they believe they can have the millionaire lifestyle within the next 12 or 18 months.

Obviously, two things will then happen if you approach trading with such unrealistic expectations:

You will take way too much risk to realize the crazy return goals

You will get discouraged once you realize that you won’t make it

This easily ends in a vicious cycle and I have seen hundreds of traders go through those phases, before giving up eventually.

Instead of having a 12-month plan, adopt a 5 year plan. 5 years may sound like a long time but in the bigger picture, it’s not. If you give yourself 5 years, you will approach trading completely differently. You will be calmer, not stress out every week, you will be able to give it the seriousness it deserves, you will focus on slow and steady improvements instead of hunting for shortcuts, and you will build a solid foundation.

The alternative is that you keep chasing your own tail because you try to double your account every few months. Obviously, this is not how trading works and the sooner you can move away from the short term mindset, the sooner you will be able to take the right path.

Most traders say they want to trade for a living for the next 30 years,

but then act and trade like they have to retire next week.

Are You Ready To Get Started?

What changes are you going to make to become a more effective trader?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

 Tradeciety Trading Academy. (2019, February 06). Scientist Discovered Why Most Traders Lose Money – 24 Surprising Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.tradeciety.com/24-statistics-why-most-traders-lose-money/

[2]Bidwell, L. (n.d.). What is a mentor? Retrieved from https://www.successfactors.com/resources/knowledge-hub/why-mentors-matter.html

[3]Batz, P. (n.d.). 4 ways family and friends can boost your professional success. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/growth-strategies/2015/10/family-and-friends-can-boost-your-success.html

The post 5 Ways To Become A More Effective Trader appeared first on Tradeciety Trading Academy.

5 Ways To Become A More Effective Trader published first on your-t1-blog-url

[shadsterling]

Don’t use Netspend

I know it’s common for customer service agents to not understand a request, but when a critical institution like a bank doesn’t understand security that’s actually dangerous.

As you can see in the email exchange below, Netspend doesn’t understand email security or privacy.  As I post this, it’s been 38 hours and they haven’t responded.  (I’m posting this largely to have it online to link to in my complaint to the FTC.)

Sent 2018-Apr.-30 20:19 (the formatting is different due to limitations of Tumblr):

Since you apparently didn’t read the quoted emails, I’ll recap them for you.

I am not a netspend customer.  I wasn’t meaningfully aware of the service until a few days ago.

On April 27th I began receiving alerts about netspend account activity to my email address shadsterling@gmail.com.  I received a lot of email that day (a few hundred messages, maybe 3 times the usual), and did not have time to address them immediately.

On April 29th I largely caught up on emails in my inbox, and inquired to customerservice@netspend.com about the alerts; I’ll quote that message again here:

Two days ago I received several account activity notification emails, including the attached.  As far as I know I do not have a netspend account.  The emails do not contain links to suspicious URLs, and do seem to originate from from one of your mail servers.  I’ve tried to recover login information for your site using this email address (shadsterling@gmail.com), but tho your site says it sends my username to my email I have not received that message.

Did these emails come from your mail server?Is there an account associated with this address (shadsterling@gmail.com)?Did the charges I receive alerts about actually occur?

Thanks,

 - Shad Sterling

I attached to this message the most recent of the notification emails (I have received more since).

The first response I received was an automated response saying

Your attachment was stripped from the email you sent because its extension is on our list of unauthorized file extensions.  You may direct questions on this subject to the NetSpend Service Desk.

To which I replied

Since apparently you don’t allow attachments, I’ll just paste it into the body.

… followed by the raw text of the headers and body of the same alert that had been attached, which I’m omitting here for brevity.  It is also not quoted below, but I can send it again if that’s helpful.

The second response I received was not automated:

Dear Cardholder,  Thank you for contacting Netspend Customer Service! I apologize for the notification you received in error. It was intended for one of our cardholders. For security reasons, we are unable to remove the email from our cardholder's financial card account. However, we recommend that you contact your email provider (e.g. Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) to block these messages.

This struck me as problematic, so I replied again to confirm that my understand was correct:

I am not a cardholder.

If I understand correctly, you’ve done these things:

1. Allowed one of your customers to add my email address to their account, without confirming that they control this address.

2. Failed to notify me that this address was added to an account

3. Failed to inform your customer that they’ve added someone else’s email address

4. Refused to remove my address from their account

5. Refused to fix your system so that addresses cannot be added without confirmation

Is any of that incorrect?

And that is the message to which you replied by asking for my account information.  A message that begins with “I am not a cardholder”.

This is still problematic.  I would still like to confirm that my understanding is correct.  Is there an error in my list?

(with that, it shouldn’t be necessary to read the quoted messaged below.)

On 2018-April-30, at 16:39, Customer Service <CustomerService@netspend.com> wrote: Account Number: Unknown

Dear Cardholder, Thank you for contacting Netspend Customer Service! I am sorry to hear that you receive a notification from us without your permission and I apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused you.

I will gladly assist you with your inquiry; however, I am unable to locate your account with the information you have provided. Please respond with your contact number and the best time that we may call so we can provide you with a resolution. You may also call our Customer Service hotline for immediate assistance. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thank you for choosing Netspend. Have a great day!

Loren

Customer Service Agent

Answers to frequently asked questions and self-help options can be found online at https://www.netspend.com/help or by calling Customer Service at 1-86-Netspend (1-866-387-7363). Hours of operation: Monday-Friday 8 am-10 pm CST; Saturday-Sunday 8 am-8 pm CST.

--- Original Message --- From: "Shad Sterling" <shadsterling@gmail.com> Received: 4/30/18 11:04:05 AM CDT To: "Customer Service" <CustomerService@netspend.com> Subject: Re: Surprise account I am not a cardholder.

If I understand correctly, you’ve done these things:

1. Allowed one of your customers to add my email address to their account, without confirming that they control this address.

2. Failed to notify me that this address was added to an account

3. Failed to inform your customer that they’ve added someone else’s email address

4. Refused to remove my address from their account

5. Refused to fix your system so that addresses cannot be added without confirmation

Is any of that incorrect? - Shad

On 2018-April-29, at 18:15, Customer Service <CustomerService@netspend.com> wrote: Account Number: Unknown

Dear Cardholder,

Thank you for contacting Netspend Customer Service!

I apologize for the notification you received in error. It was intended for one of our cardholders. For security reasons, we are unable to remove the email from our cardholder's financial card account. However, we recommend that you contact your email provider (e.g. Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) to block these messages.

Thank you for choosing Netspend. Have a great day!

Katy

Customer Service Agent

Answers to frequently asked questions and self-help options can be found online at https://www.netspend.com/help or by calling Customer Service at 1-86-Netspend (1-866-387-7363). Hours of operation: Monday-Friday 8 am-10 pm CST; Saturday-Sunday 8 am-8 pm CST.

--- Original Message --- From: "Shad Sterling" <shadsterling@gmail.com> Received: 4/29/18 4:58:22 PM CDT To: "customer service" <customerservice@netspend.cde> Subject: Surprise account Two days ago I received several account alert emails, including the attached.  As far as I know I do not have a netspend account.  The emails do not contain links to suspicious URLs, and do seem to originate from from one of your mail servers.  I’ve tried to recover login information for your site using this email address (shadsterling@gmail.com), but tho your site says it sends my username to my email I have not received that message.

Did these emails come from your mail server? Is there an account associated with this address (shadsterling@gmail.com) Did the charges I receive alerts about actually occur?

Thanks,  - Shad Sterling

A MIME attachment of type <message/rfc822> was removed here by a drop-attachments-by-name filter rule on the host <corp-ironport02.corp.netspend.com>. ------ Please do not remove your unique tracking number! ------ <<#1072651-3339447-3820635#>>

[blackmojave]

What\'s So Trendy About Car Recovery That Everyone Went Crazy Over It?

Having an older car is nice because it is paid off, but with the advancement of airbags and other features that make cars and people safer, some people enjoy their newer model vehicles. When an older car is paid off and used, it can be less of a burden on the finances. With so many bills and monthly expenses that people tend to have, not having to pay out on the car loan or lease, can help the family budget. Some people think of a car expense as unnecessary, especially when cars can be paid off and not an issue. The days are now longer, warmer - and sunnier. There appears though a great difficulty in finding the answers to many of those dictates. Anyone with a vehicle, and a means of attaching a trailer to it, can tow. In researching this article I visited a local caravan and trailer dealer - posing as a potential and very enthusiastic customer. I wanted something suitable for my family holidays - perhaps quite large; four wheels at least - plenty of space to lounge about in, and a proper bathroom - I don't do 'slumming it' I advised her. She looked at my little suburban car, then back at me with a resigned look on her face - "I have a much larger one at home," I said sheepishly. Publisher: William Patrica Towing vehicles become important following numbers of reasons.

Make sure that the truck drivers are trained and licensed and the trucks are insured too. These are vital things many people choose to ignore and this is wrong and can prove fatal for your car transport. If you are going for top Castaic Towing then make sure that the company has offices in all the cities of the Northern America. Similarly, it is vital that the company offers to pick up and deliver the cars or vehicles at the destination. If your pick up point is on a higher plane or is inaccessible, then do mention that beforehand itself. Your chances of endurance, or avoiding injury, are up to the design of the car and the safety equipment you've chosen. Publisher: agnescelina Often you see cars and trucks or other vehicles on roads being towed away from an accident scene or because they stopped working due to some internal car problem. Publisher: William Patrica Towing vehicles become important following numbers of reasons. Safe towing is however important for maintaining the safety of the vehicle. One should know the basic functions of the tow bars and the towing process to do the work safely. Publisher: gabblet Car towing Equipments is a express that most of us dread because so far the exclusive commencement to towing is through the cops towing forth vehicles from unofficial parking slots and sometimes for made up reasons. Still, did you ever guess of exploit yourself car towing equipment? People love adding accessories to their 4x4's it can easily become a fun hobby for anyone who loves these big boys. Publisher: Wayne Allen The fun time starts when you own your very own mudding 4x4, next time you go out get behind the wheel of your very own mud bogging truck. Subaru Impreza: Staying Ahead in the Compact Segment 2. What makes cars luxurious? The Major Components of an Engine Welcome, Guest! This takes the piston down again and if there is a mismatch in the time the explosion fails to take place. The exhaust valve comes into action at the trough of the stroke to ensure no residues from waste gas are left inside the engine. At the base of the stroke, an exhaust valve unlocks so that the waste gas from the explosion can go away from the engine. The gas moves down with recurring explosions to the catalytic converter and muffler. However, you need a Chicago car accident lawyer to handle this task. The most irritating thing to happen to you on a working day would be when your car won’t start or when you realize that the date for servicing is fast approaching during the week itself. That means that you do not have time to call a towing truck to carry your sedan to the service centre. But, that does not mean that you are ready to call in any random towing company in your locality. However, you need a Chicago car accident lawyer to handle this task. Does negligence on your part affect the case? Yes. As per the contributory negligence rule of Illinois, you cannot file a claim if you are more than 50% negligent. As per the comparative negligence rule, the amount of compensation decreases with the amount of negligence on your part. Check Out Your URL How do you pay for the case? Find out a car accident lawyer who works on contingency basis.

How to Find the Best Towing Company in Salt Lake City: Car related problems can happen anytime at any place. You... http://bit.ly/spxQyx — 68articles (@68articles) December 1, 2011

Your vehicle's heating unit needs to be operating correctly to keep your windshield defrosted mainly because having great vision is very important to safe driving. Publisher: sarina lissa Usually Towing services are always in need. Publisher: agnescelina Often you see cars and trucks or other vehicles on roads being towed away from an accident scene or because they stopped working due to some internal car problem. Publisher: Christina Xio Towing services are always in need. Whenever anyone is stranded on n the middle of somewhere or if the car stops working on a busy road or someone meets an accident, a towing service is always needed there to help out the people involved. Publisher: Adriana Noton The winter season is characterized by the falling of snow almost everywhere, on the roof tops, on cars and even on roads making them impassable. Preservation librarians use a number of different chemicals to prevent the growth of mold spores. Chemical compounds such as ethylene oxide, thymol, and orthophenyl phelol are regularly used. Chlorine dioxide is a chemical that is growing in popularity due its safety level for library employees and patrons. These chemicals act as effective sporicides in a variety of library settings. They are applied on books and surrounding shelves by manual wiping or utilizing chlorine packets that release the chemicals in gaseous form into the air.

Decreasing compaction in the root zone of the lawn

Make sure that the truck drivers are trained and licensed and the trucks are insured too

Hire the company that gives you transparent breakup of the towing of your vehicle

Check if they offer all of these services 24/7 and instantaneous service too

Strap down the cargo

Check if the rates are 100 per cent transparent

Publisher: Roye Millor Installment cash loans are considered as the best options for anyone who does not get high salary. Publisher: Adamina Ada Whenever you need to visit Great Britain for work, your transportation will be hassle free. Publisher: Shaun Frater Tow trucks have been used for many years since their first invention in 1916, every year new variations of the tow truck appearing, each of them being designed for different sizes and types of vehicles. The tow truck has seen many technological improvements over the past years, becoming one of the most flexible ways to get one car transported safely to its destination. Datatag is a specialist trailer insurance provider. Horses are very easily scared so the smoother the drive, the better for the animals welfare. When the destination is reached it is much easier to handle an animal that is in a calm state than one that is suffering from stress. If the experience is a pleasurable one, it'll be a lot easier to get the animal back in the trailer for the return journey. Datatag is a specialist trailer insurance provider. All policies are underwritten at Lloyds of London. Their task is to ensure that all systems are operational. The biggest piece of advice to this article, if RAID failure first: Leave It Alone. IT professionals have put much pressure on them, like a catastrophic system failure occurs. Their task is to ensure that all systems are operational. Many times, panic, troubleshootingThe processes are initiated to resolve the problem. Often these processes only make matters worse, and in many cases can make the data unrecoverable. We keep track of what the environment can exist in this data from a media company. Publisher: Julianne Nick If you are planning a bit of a vacation, perhaps a car journey through Europe, then you might need a bit of practice driving while hauling a caravan trailer. Publisher: Mark Ames If you are a keen motorcyclist it is likely that you'll want to consider the advantages of owning a lightweight motorcycle trailer to tow behind your bike. The advantages of owning a motorcycle trailer are numerous and will enhance your overnight or several day touring or camping trips that you'll make. Publisher: clydehess Driving a tow truck insurance very long miles with a big pickup truck, a long trailer, as well as a great deal of shipment most certainly requires safety. Caring for Car Rentals: Your Responsibility As A Customer 2. Maintaining ATV Online 3. Maintenance Parts For Your Go Kart 4. Subaru Impreza: Staying Ahead in the Compact Segment 5. What makes cars luxurious? Once the trailer is properly attached to the towing vehicle it is a good idea for the individual to test the trailer and vehicle combination and drive it around a little bit before loading up the horse. This way a person can get used to the trailer being attached while driving. The next thing is to make some final changes before loading the animal. Some additional considerations would include the adjusting any of the air vents, and to double check for any problems on the inside of the trailer like sharp corners, or problems with the flooring. You may be the best driver in the world, however, the people you encounter on the road may be the complete opposite and you may be forced into a car accident. Another problem you might encounter when on the road is vehicular malfunction, which towing Toronto professionals know much about. When you encounter either or both of these situations, it is best to call a reputable towing service to give you much-needed aid. How would you know that you need the assistance of a towing service?

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10 WordPress SEO Questions That Took Me 10 Years To Answer!

Of the many different content management systems and web publishing platforms I’ve done SEO for, WordPress is the most popular.

Blogs, company websites and web shops run on WordPress. Designers are fascinated by its versatility and the range of adaptations possible with it. Users love its simplicity and effectiveness.

But being easy to use, WordPress also makes it tempting to take on things you shouldn’t — or overlook/ignore important elements of SEO that can cause problems with business growth, success and profitability.

This column isn’t a step-by-step guide to WordPress SEO, but will address some of the frequent questions I’m asked about SEO for WordPress websites. It will familiarize you with WordPress SEO and dispel some of the myths and misinformation about SEO in general.

Question #1: I’ve Heard That WordPress Is Search Engine Optimized (Out-Of-The-Box). Is That True?

No, there isn’t such a thing as a search engine optimized CMS. Though WordPress is search engine friendly, you will still need to do some manual SEO work for best results. Just switching to WordPress won’t rank your site on Google’s front page auto-magically.

The myth of the “SEO Optimized CMS” continues to spread only because CMS vendors have made it a unique selling point. They announce it at client meetings. They proudly state it on their websites. They highlight it on marketing materials. They speak of it at conferences.

Business owners or leaders without much technical knowledge about SEO often cannot distinguish between the similar-sounding terms “search engine optimized” and “search engine friendly.” I’ve seen companies invest the equivalent of annual salaries of a team of employees on a new CMS that was chosen over others only because they believed it would cover all their SEO needs.

Sadly, that’s not how it works. What WordPress does offer is a great starting point. You can build a site without spending much time or money, and easily weave additional SEO elements into it — if you know how.

Question #2: I’ve Installed A WordPress SEO Plugin. That Means I Don’t Need An SEO Consultant, Right?

SEO isn’t a “quick and easy install.” It’s not turnkey. It’s not “set and forget.” That isn’t how SEO works. SEO is a continuous process that should be woven into the fabric of your ongoing marketing efforts.

There’s no WordPress plugin that can cover all elements of SEO, just as a great hammer won’t by itself help you build a fantastic new house! Configuring your SEO plugin correctly is a step in the right direction — but it’s only the first step! The big picture is a lot more complex and comprehensive.

You need a specialist working for you who understands organic search, knows how SEO strengthens your marketing, and keeps you from making costly mistakes. This person should be engaged in a long-term relationship with you — either as a member of your staff or a consultant/agency on a monthly retainer — to ensure that you perform at your best.

Maybe a few real life examples will help illustrate this better.

When you upgrade WordPress, or a plugin, or install a new plugin or theme, it will alter your website’s code. These changes may negatively impact your site’s SEO if not properly accounted for, which could cost you lost rankings.

Adding new plugins can slow your site down. Site loading speed is an important ranking factor in Google’s algorithm — and just that innocent change could negatively impact your rankings.

Content marketing is critical for every online business. Optimizing your content for specific keywords based on SEO analysis can do wonders in attracting your ideal prospective customers, engaging them, and converting them into buyers. WordPress alone will not be able to advise on keyword trends around which you should build this content.

Running periodic SEO audits can ensure that your site is always optimized and able to stay abreast of the changing SEO environment. Having a WordPress SEO consultant on tap for advice and guidance can increase organic traffic so much that it pays for itself many times over.

Question #3: How Do I Chose The Best WordPress SEO Plugin For My Website?

There are two SEO plugins that distinguish themselves from the rest: All In One SEO Pack and WordPress SEO by Yoast. The former is slightly more popular, while the latter is slightly better rated. (I use Yoast, myself.)

Keep in mind that you may also need additional plugins for tasks tangential to SEO, such as one that allows you to implement your analytics tracking code across the website.

Before deciding which plugin(s) to use, here are some important questions to address:

Compatibility: Is the plugin compatible with other functionality and technology on my site? Will it continue to be compliant in the future? Don’t make assumptions. Find out first.

Support: Will there be adequate technical support for the plugin from the developers, or the community? Check out support forums, reviews and feedback from long-term users to make your assessment.

Usage/Popularity: How popular is the plugin? Many downloads is an indication of widespread use, and a community of experienced users who can offer you ideas or help troubleshoot problems.

Future Development: Does the team or company developing the plugin have a history of updating and revising their solutions? Buying themes and plugins from reputed vendors and Elite providers on marketplaces like themeforest and codecanyon is safer than trying out one from an unknown provider without a track record.

Question #4: How Do I choose A Good WordPress Hosting Solution?

Many factors — like cost, ease of installation, and web server management — can influence your choice.

If you have the resources, time and capacity to deal with hosting, upgrades, backing up data and restoring the site, get a virtual private server (VPS) and manage everything yourself.

If not, a managed WordPress hosting solution handles your technical, security, administration and performance issues for a modest fee, leaving you free to focus on your business and handle things like content creation. Plus, you can sleep better at night!

A few more things to consider with your blog hosting include:

Support For Plugins: Some hosting providers won’t permit certain plugins. Check if that will affect you in any way.

Backup & Restore: A few providers offer “one click” solutions to restore your site from backups if anything goes wrong.

Staging Environment: Having a way to build, test and experiment with your site out of the public eye, and then easily publish it later, can be helpful.

Reputation: Some providers look great on the outside, may even be strong brands, but offer low-quality hosting solutions. Do your research carefully to avoid trouble down the line.

Beware Of Affiliates: WordPress hosting services which offer partners a commission for referring new clients can be harder to evaluate because reviews are biased and often not factual. Be careful while judging on the basis of such lopsided reviews.

Expertise: A hosting provider may actually be a WordPress specialist — or just an expert at selling! Check this out before you make a decision. A silly thing like slow web servers or a careless security system can hurt your business website badly.

Question #5: Can Free WordPress Themes Hurt My SEO?

A great benefit of WordPress is the huge array of free themes available. Many are harmless and are great choices for any website pr blog. Some, however, can hurt your SEO. Consider the following:

Are There Any Spammy Links? A WordPress theme that’s given away as part of a link network or SEO tactic can hurt your organic search visibility and SEO results. If you are not permitted to remove links, don’t use the theme or template.

Will It Be Updated And Supported? Few free themes are patched against security vulnerabilities or upgraded for future WordPress releases. That could be bad for your SEO.

What Do Others Say About It? User reviews and feedback can tell you if the developers are trusted and have a good reputation.

Does It Follow Google’s Guidelines And SEO Best Practices? Run a quick quality check on the demo site and see if it meets Google’s guidelines, is mobile friendly, loads quickly and is coded well. This research can save you plenty of frustration later on.

Question #6: What’s better for SEO — Installing WordPress On A New Domain, Subdomain Or Subfolder?

That’s a great question if you already have a company website and want to add a blog. Where to install WordPress? Let’s look at your options.

New domains are usually relevant for short-lived campaigns, such as event marketing or product launches. But hosting your blog on a fresh domain is an option. While you may not achieve the same SEO effect as for your “main” company website, an experienced SEO consultant can help you reach your audience efficiently, working with your creative agency and developers in getting things right and preventing an organic search fiasco.

By helping content marketers focus on what your audience cares about, testing if creative ideas are likely to work, and adjusting the site’s keyword strategy suitably, your chances for success can be maximized. But first ask if you’re sure you really need a new domain.

If not, your blog may be hosted on a subdomain, like blog.yourcompany.com

My own experience suggests that, for a blog, it is best for SEO when you install WordPress in a subfolder, like yourcompany.com/blog.

Question #7: Will Adding A Post To Many WordPress Categories Be Good For My SEO?

On WordPress, you have the option to assign your pages and posts to more than one category. But how will it affect SEO? Not too badly — if you take care.

When you post the same content in several categories such that that it appears on more than one URL, you have duplicate content. This means you either must avoid doing it, or inform Google which version of the page is the original which is to be indexed. You can do this using meta directives and rel=canonical.

If your content will only live on one URL, you likely won’t need to worry about duplicate content issues (even if other pages on your site contain an excerpt). Be sure to check with your SEO consultant to see how your particular WordPress theme handles categories.

Question #8: My Fancy New WordPress Theme Uses HTML5 And Multiple Instances Of H1 Tags Per Page. Is That Bad For SEO?

Though using H1 tags more than once is not wrong from a coding or design point of view, it’s not ideal for SEO. HTML5 opened the door to this practice, but when people use multiple H1 tags on a page, it can be seen as spammy and harm organic search rankings.

I recommend that you only use H1 for the first heading, which is often the most important one on the page. Keep the old adage in mind: If everything is important, then nothing really is!

Question #9: How Can I Improve My SEO With WordPress Widgets?

WordPress widgets make it easy to publish identical blocks of content across multiple pages, such as sidebars and footers. That may not be dangerous or harmful for SEO, though it rarely offers any advantage.

A smarter way to use WordPress widgets is to offer tailored content focused on what the visitor finds on that page. This adds value, is user-friendly, and enhances the browsing experience. You can use widgets to

Add a social layer that promotes engagement with a community application plugin like BuddyPress.

Add a media plugin so that users may upload images and videos.

Feature new forum members and their posts or photos.

Make new content inside forums and groups easier to discover.

A strategy like this would work equally well for any site, such as one about dog training, or travel or automobiles. WordPress widgets let you target sub-niche audiences within your niche, engaging them in content they have expressed interest in. They act like vitamin injections for your business!

You’ll improve visitor loyalty, and make it easier for search engines to understand what the page is about.

Because you’ll delight visitors, there’s a higher chance of getting more inbound links or Facebook ‘likes’ or Google +1s.

Plus, it makes new content inside forums and groups easier to discover, both on search engines and by visitors to your site’s home page.

The key SEO lesson here isn’t to add many new things or a broader range of content, functions or offerings, but instead to narrow down on to the subject or topic being discussed on that URL. Less is more. Remove clutter that isn’t moving you closer to your business goals.

A word of caution: Be careful with site-wide links that are not 100% relevant. Stay focused on the topic. If the link isn’t relevant in context, remove it.

Question #10: Can It Hurt My SEO If I’m Not Using The User’s Native Language?

While you can use WordPress in another language, you should always set it up to speak your visitor’s language. That provides a better, richer, more engaged user experience, which enhances your SEO.

The WordPress community has already translated the tool into many languages. You can configure your installation through the administrator panel — without any coding or technical skills.

Because it isn’t a good user experience to mix languages on your website, make sure you translate all WordPress plugins into your language also. Before buying it, check to see if a plugin is translation-ready, so that you can translate it using a program like Poedit. Do the same for any WordPress theme you install. This becomes particularly important if you plan to expand your business into new markets, countries and regions.

Avoid localization by IP because many Web users are on proxy servers and VPN switches which can make it seem as if they are in another location or country. Don’t automatically switch languages, creating confusion in the visitor’s mind.

I hope you enjoyed these practical WordPress SEO tips. I’ve tried to focus on popular ones from my experience. You may have other great tips to share, or questions to ask. Please join the discussion by posting a comment or question below.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Source

http://searchengineland.com/10-wordpress-seo-questions-took-10-years-answer-214050

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A Business Plan for a Computer Repair Business

New Post has been published on https://beingmad.org/a-business-plan-for-a-computer-repair-business/

A Business Plan for a Computer Repair Business

So, you have decided to open up a new computer repair business but really are not sure how to proceed. If that is the case, below we are going to tell you everything that you need to do in order to not only make an educated business decision. But also, the steps you need to take to create comprehensive business plans that will at the very least, provide you an excellent road map for your new venture.

There are many different kinds of formats used to create a business plan. In this example, we are going to assume that you will not need an outside financing source and that your computer repair business will only be a local operation, at least initially.

The concept behind a business plan is relatively simple to understand and execute. Essentially, you want to make sure that what you are thinking about the opening is financially viable, and if so, then write down everything that you need to accomplish in order to turn your idea into a profitable endeavor. Below we are going to layout a traditional business plan and let you know precisely how to complete each section.

# 1 – Executive Summary – You really do not have to work on this section of the business plan if you do not plan on showing it to anybody, or you are not looking for investors or an outside financing source. That being said, if you are really serious about turning your new enterprise into a profitable going concern that has the ability to not only grow but is also sustainable, you should sit down and spend a few hours writing out the executive summary.

The executive summary which is also sometimes called the management summary goes at the very beginning of the report, but should only be written AFTER you have completed the entire business plan. Its intended purpose is to capture the reader’s attention, get them interested in the business, and briefly explain the concept and everything else that is contained in the report.

# 2 – Business Description – This is where the real work starts when you decide it is time to get serious and begin writing out your business plan. What you want to try and do is to get all of you ideas down on paper so that you can refer back them in the future if you need to.

Please do not be concerned with you writing style at this point, but only the information. Later, after you are sure you have included everything that you want or need, you can go back and clean up the material. Below are some of the things that need to be discussed in this section.

A) Why you believe this is a good business to start.

B) What do you know about this type of business?

C) What skills are you bringing to the table?

D) What skills do you need to acquire?

E) Who is your market?

F) Why is there a need for the service or product you plan on supplying?

G) Why you believe that your business will be able to serve your market better than any of your competitors.

H) What will make your business standout from the competition.

Okay, you get the idea. Please do not limit yourself to the things we discussed above, but also include anything and everything else that you think could be important.

# 3 – Market Analysis – This might be the most important consideration for anybody that is thinking about opening up a new computer repair business. After all, if there are already 14 other similar companies competing in your neighborhood, it would probably be a good idea to think about doing something else.

In all seriousness, you really have to understand your competition at the highest level, know what their fees are, be familiar with the services they provide and figure out a way to improve on everything that they do. If you are confident you can meet or exceed the stipulations mentioned above, then your new business just might have a chance of succeeding. Below you will find some of the areas you need to research and be familiar with.

A) Write down each and every store or standalone operation that you will be competing against.

B) Note each and every service that they provide.

C) Figure out exactly what they charge for each job.

D) Here is the tough one, ask yourself, now that I know everything about my competition, how am I going to everything they do, better and cheaper?

If you are able to answer that last question, and you are happy with the way you answered it, you just might have a real chance of making it.

# 4 – Organization and Management – More than likely when you first start your computer repair business, you are not going to have any employees. But, there are going to be certain jobs, like setting up a computer network for a large company that could require a little extra manpower. If so, have you thought about who you know that you can bring in at a moment’s notice that would be willing to work part-time?

Next, people that enjoy working on computers are usually very organized and hopefully, you happen to be one of them. If not, it is really going to be very hard for you to run a company that is in an industry that is time sensitive. After all, when you tell somebody that you are going to arrive at their home or business at 4 pm, and you show up three hours later, do you really think that they are going to call you the next time they have a computer problem?

Another thing that you need to take into consideration in this section, is as your company grows and you acquire more and more customers, when do you hire another computer technician and who do you hire? Do your hire somebody that already has a great deal of experience and will demand a very high salary? Or, do you hire a novice that you can train that will be less expensive? Below are some of the things you are going to need to ask yourself in order to complete this section of the business plan.

A) Am I organized, and if not, how do I improve in this area?

B) Am I good at training people?

C) Do I have any friends that will part-time work?

D) Do I know how to delegate, or do I have to do everything myself, so that I know it was done correctly?

E) Can I accept other people’s shortcomings and help them improve in those areas?

F) Should I invest my capital in my staff and how much of an investment can I justify?

And, you thought it was going to be easy to open a small computer repair business. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. If you are not prepared to at the very least to answer some of or all of the question in this section, starting your very own business just might not be a great career choice.

# 5 – Services and Products – This is an area that you really should not have too much trouble with. If you do, then you definitely should not be thinking about starting a computer repair business. In this section, you need to use the information you gathered about your competition and write down all the services or products you plan on promoting, as well as the fees you plan on charging for your services.

# 6 – Marketing, Advertising, and Sales – Computer geeks by their very nature are usually not outgoing people that make the good salesman. That being said, your business needs customers and to get them you are going to have to think out of the box and come up with some creative ideas. We are going to provide you a few proven marketing and advertising techniques below, but you really need to figure out what your competition is doing in this area, and then either copies them or come up with better schemes.

A – Website – Of course you are going to have to build a website, after all, you are in the computer business. Hopefully, you know how to properly SEO your new site, if not, find somebody that does before you waste your time, effort, and money by creating a site that nobody is ever going to see.

The good thing about a computer repair businesses is that virtually every one of them is a local operation. That means that your competition on the internet for highly targeted traffic will not be that fierce. In other words, if you correctly onsite and offsite SEO your new website, there is a very good chance that it will move up the search engine rankings extremely quickly and you will get to Google’s first page, and just maybe, the top spot on that page in only a couple of months.

TIP # 1 – Remember this is a local business, and when you select your URL it is critical that you choose a local name. What we mean by that is, if the name of your new business is “Joe’s Computer Repairs”, that is not what you want to use for its URL. Instead, you want to use your town’s name in the URL.

That means if you live in Dallas for example, you want your URL to be “DallasComputerRepair.com”. The reason you want to do this is very simple to understand, all of the search engines will move your site up their rankings whenever somebody in Dallas types in the search term “Computer Repair”.

TIP # 2 – For any new business, it is absolutely critical that when somebody does find your website, you get them to either give you a call or send you an email. To do this, you really have to offer a great deal that everybody who visits your site, is sure to see. A few examples you could use are the following.

I – Second repair visit FREE.

II – Half price on service calls for all new customers.

III – Free antivirus and malware software for all new customers on the first service call.

B – Low Cost or Free Advertising – All new businesses have the same problem, which is they are not generating any cash. Thus, they cannot afford to spend too much on marketing or advertising. So, you have to find ways to promote your business that is either totally free or cost very little. Below we are going to provide a few suggestions, but you know your local market far better than we ever could, and you need to come up with your own marketing ideas.

I – Craigslist’s – If you are not familiar with this site, it allows you to place classified ads for free, so use it. In addition, there are quite a few other sites that provide the same free service, so please find them, and use them.

II – Social Media – Almost everybody has heard of the following websites Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. These types of sites are called social media and they allow their users to interact with one another. If you were able to build up a strong local following on anyone of these sites, almost assuredly, your business would eventually turn into a huge success story.

III– Flyers – Printing out 10,000 flyers is not that expensive and they can be a fantastic marketing tool. Not only can you hand them out in your neighborhood, you can also distribute them to the local businesses and put them up on bulletin boards at grocery stores.

IV – Neighborhood Newspapers – If you are fortunate enough to live in an area that receives a free neighborhood newspaper delivered to your door each week, you might want to think about advertising in it. Their advertising fees are very reasonable, and your ads just might be able to generate enough leads to get your new business off the ground.

It really does not matter if you are the very best computer repair engineer in the world, if nobody knows about you, your business will surely fail. In reality, this might be the most important section in your business plan, because if you do not develop a marketing and advertising program that is going to work in your local market, almost assuredly your new business will not be around for more than a year, if that long.

# 7 – Financial Projections – The great thing about starting a computer repair business, is that in most cases, you will not have to spend a great deal of money to get it up and running. You do not have to rent a store, more than likely you already have a car, computer, and some, if not most of the software that you need. In addition, you do not have to put anybody on the payroll right away. So, other than your advertising expense, you really do not have any cash flowing out of the business.

The most important thing for you to note in the financial projection section of your business plan are the capital expenditures you need to make to open the business. These could include but are not limited to a new laptop computer, more software, a better cell phone plan, and your advertising expenses.

As for your income projections, you should definitely set goals for yourself using realistic figures. After all, you do not want to set your goals so high, that you later become discouraged when you don’t achieve them, and you do not want to set them so low, so as to not challenged yourself.

Conclusion

For the most part, the people that do well in business not only had a great idea to start with but were also committed to their company and were willing to put in the time and effort that was required to make their firm a success. Working for yourself requires far more determination and discipline than just about anything else you can do in life.

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New Post has been published on Vin Zite

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SEO Link Building Tips and Techniques

As of right now, backlinks are the most important factor when it comes to the search engines deciding where to rank your website. In the future that may change, but there is no doubt that back links will still continue to be an important factor in the ranking process. Because of this fact, it is important that you steadily build links leading back to your website. In this post, I will talk about a few effective ways to accomplish this including creating Link Bait, Blogging, Press Releases and Article Marketing just to name a few. But, I won’t just tell you to use these techniques I will also tell you how to use them correctly and effectively.

Before I start, we want to make clear that I am not concerned about whether a link has been tagged “follow” or not. Research by a few independent SEO firms has confirmed that while PageRank is not transferred through “no follow” links, overall rankings are affected by “no follow” links in a positive way. I will address this issue and discuss the studies in depth in a future blog, but in the meantime, I want to make it clear that some of the link building tips I will discuss include building links from sites that “no follow” their outbound links and that I believe this is a non-issue. I believe this because Google built their entire algorithm on the fact that backlinks were the most important ranking factor. I do not believe that Google intended the “Nofollow” tag to be used as widely as it is currently is and they would never allow millions of webmasters to ruin all the work they put into their algorithm by tagging every outbound link on their site as “no follow.” Google may say that “no follow” links have no impact on rankings, but I simply don’t believe them based on studies I have seen and simple common sense. In our opinion, Google continues to say that “no follow” links have no effect on rankings in order to keep their intended targets of the “no follow” tag, spammers, in check, but in reality, they allow “no follow” links to have at least some positive effect on rankings.

Link Building Tip 1: Blogging

Blogging is the easiest and most effective way to gain back links. Not only can blogging lead to backlinks, but it also is a way to consistently add content to your website, and we all know that Google loves sites that consistently add quality content.

The key to gaining backlinks through blogging is to make sure that you are blogging about topics that are either directly related to your businesses or field of expertise or that provide useful information for your readers. Once you have found your blogging niche the next thing to do is create an RSS feed and submit both your blog URL and RSS feed to as many blog directories as you can find. I have clients that gain hundreds of backlinks each and every month simply by blogging on a consistent basis. I recommend that you blog at least once a month, but once a week is even better.

Link Building Tip 2: Press Releases

Press releases are a great way for businesses to gain back links to their sites. There are many free press release distribution sites out there to submit your releases too, but using a paid service like PRWeb can result in hundreds of backlinks from major news organizations with just one press release. Making press releases a regular part of your link building strategy can result in thousands of quality back links over the course of the year.

Your press releases can be about anything that you want related to your business. Whether it is an expansion, the purchase of new expensive equipment, a fundraiser or sponsoring a local event, a press release is a great way to get the word out about your business as well as a way to gain valuable back links which will help your search engine rankings.

Link Building Tip 3: Article Marketing

Article marketing has been declared dead as an SEO and link building technique many times over and it is still alive and kicking. There are rumors of its demise once again floating around out in cyberspace because of Google’s new algorithm update that was released on April 25th. I for one won’t believe article marketing is dead until I see it with my own eyes. It is true that many article sites, such as Ezine Articles, took a hit in the rankings when Google’s Panda was released, but the effects were not fatal and Ezine has since taken steps to ensure that the articles posted on their site are of better quality moving forward.

I ran my own SEO test over the last two months and found that article marketing is still alive and well. I took a brand new site and wrote article after article and posted them on Ezine, Articlebase, Articlecity and others. The articles were the only source of back links I actively perused. The results have been astounding so far. Five out of the six keywords phrases I am currently optimizing for are now on the first page of Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. I cannot definitively prove that the sole reason for these rankings is the articles and the links contained in them, but the anecdotal evidence is quite strong and the most important thing is that my site has not been penalized or fallen in the rankings over the last two months. Things could change and I will keep an eye on it and report to all of you if they do, but as of right now, article marketing is alive and well and a great way to acquire backlinks to your website.

The key to good article marketing is creating informative, original and unique articles. Don’t just write one article and post it on 10 different article sites. Instead, write 10 different articles and post them on 10 different sites. Make sure you use to mix up the anchor text of your links as well.

If done right article marketing can result in a ton of quality back links and increased rankings.

Link Building Tip 4: Directories and Review Sites

Using business directories and review sites isn’t the most innovative link building strategy, but it is a proven way to gain back links to your site. These backlinks aren’t the most valuable, but believe it or not, some of these directories actually get a decent amount of traffic and being listed in them can drive traffic to your site. A number of people who visit your site is taken into account by Google when they decide where to rank you. Google figures that if a lot of people are visiting your site and spending time on it then your site must have valuable or interesting information on it and they will rank your site accordingly.

When listing your site in business directories start with industry specific directories if they exist for your industry. A few years ago I might have suggested that you submit your site with DMOZ, but now I wouldn’t even waste your time. DMOZ doesn’t carry the juice it once did and there are rumors of corruption and “pay-to-list” schemes going on within the organization. I have submitted numerous sites over the years and only a handful have ever been accepted even though I followed their guidelines exactly. After submitting to industry-specific listings, submit your site to any and all local business directories in your area. After that pick a few business directories a week and submit to your site. Over the course of time, you will find that you have gained a large number of backlinks. Once again, these aren’t the best kind of backlinks, but they are not worthless either and they can drive traffic to your site.

There are a few review sites that I recommend creating a listing for. Manta, Yelp and Angie’s List are the ones I always list my sites and my client’s sites in. Don’t be afraid of negative reviews. If you receive a negative review the best thing to do is find out if it is legitimate. If it is legitimate then your best course of action would be to reply to the comment on the review site and try to minimize the damage. If it is not legitimate you can contact the site administrator and ask them to remove it. You will have to prove it is an illegitimate complaint or they won’t take it off their site. The links from these sites can also drive traffic to your website.

Another benefit of listing your website on sites such as Manta, Yelp and Angie’s List, is the improvement of your Google Places listing. Google Places are ranked using a different algorithm than the one used to rank organic listings. Based on independent research, the consensus is that the most influential determinant of whether or not your local listing will appear in the results is mentions or reviews of your business across the net.

Link Building Tip 5: Create “Link Bait”

“Link Bait” is content on your website that makes people want to link to it on their own. There are many forms of link bait you can choose to incorporate onto your site. Below are a few examples.

1. Well written, humorous and/or informative content.

This one is a no-brainer. If you have well written, informative, compelling and or humorous content on your site people are going to link to it.

2. Widgets/Tools

Creating fun and interactive widgets and tools is a great way to get people to link to your site. I helped a client of ours develop a BMI and calorie counter widget. That widget has resulted in many inbound links since its creation.

3. Video

Many people and businesses have a YouTube channel. YouTube is great, but why should you push people to your YouTube channel when you can get them to watch your videos right on your site. By embedding your videos right on your website you will encourage people to link them thereby gaining back links.

Conclusion

These are just five examples of link building techniques. There are others, but these five are the most effective. In the future, I will write about some other effective, but less used link building techniques.

Keep in mind that link building can be a long and time-consuming process. Patience is the key when it comes to link building. Don’t take the easy way out and take part in some link building scheme or pay for links. These techniques will only hurt your site in the long run.

[euro3plast-fr]

The top 10 mistakes in B2B Marketing

How to avoid the common pitfalls of B2B maketing campaigns

As a marketer with practical experience within the B2B space as well as working as a trainer, teaching a number of digital marketing subjects, means I have direct access to marketers and business owners. I've noticed a number of issues and themes have appeared quite frequently over the last 12 to 18 months. When coming up with the 10 mistakes for this guide I brainstormed with Dave and his team and it was a much wider list!

We boiled down to 10 themes that I have explored in detail, giving you some background into what they are and examples which you may sympathize with or are currently experiencing. The advice to tackle these issues includes a mini do to list to help shape your actions plans, and it goes without saying that there are more practical and detailed resources within the Smart Insights ecosystem of content.

Although the focus for this guide has been B2B, any marketers can get something out of this 10 mistakes guide.

1. Thinking that user experience is just for web and dev

If I'm honest, even though I totally agreed with the principles of user experience the 1st time I studied it back in 2008, and I loved Steve Krug’s book “Don't make me think”, I’ve read Jakob Nielsen “Web Usability”, and I’ve used user flows and use cases for my web personas.

However, post website projects I've left user experience alone.

What a mistake that was.

If you really want to succeed and provide products and services and market them in a way that's really going to connect with your prospects you need to get into this. It will make you more money, I promise.

Usability means making sure something works well and that a person of little experience can use it for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated.

The key fundamentals of good UX is to:

1- Identify the user needs. This comes from having a deep understand of your customers which take shape in the form of personas and customer empathy maps.

2- Understanding your business goals. You should have clear KPI's and map back to an objective first approach for all your campaigns and activities

3- Technical constraints. Does it Better will always beat Did it First.

Set up your personas with a customer empathy map to dig deeper into your prospects and customers and do some UX testing.

B2B marketing generally has a longer process and sales cycle than you find in B2C and you must have a good understanding of your decision-making unit and how they go about finding information on your products and services.If you have a persona drawn up, use them. I still see marketing teams that create a persona, tick a box in their head, and carry on as they did before.

  To punch up your personas a notch and really embrace UX, you need to create a customer empathy map for your personas.

The empathy map has 6 different components:

How the customer thinks and feels

What the customer hears

What the customer sees

What the customer says and does

The customer’s pain

The customer’s gain

A customer empathy map can improve your marketing. It can help you understand what keywords would be a better fit for your SEM, what content works, should you be doing paid social etc. otherwise you are just guessing.

It has become a lot more affordable to do UX test, you can get 10 videos of tests from whatusersdo.com for £300 and add filter questions to who gets the test so your matching to your target audiences.

Usabilityhub.com can give you insights on things like your navigation, or click tests for your latest DM campaign or landing page, responses start at $1 per response. $1! Cheap as chips.

Does it work?

I asked Timi Olotu, Senior Writer & Content Strategist for What Users Do, he shared a case study from Pan Macmillian, they increased click throughs to book retailers by 400% after watching user tests struggle with completing their business goals.

“It’s amazing the things we can overlook when we become acclimatised to our own sites or lack the mindset of a user genuinely in need of a solution. For example, Pan Macmillan – one of the world’s largest publishers and B2B businesses – increased click-through to book retailers by 400%, simply by adding a ‘Buy' button next to book descriptions. The company never had these because the site was traditionally considered to be an ‘online catalogue’. But having watched UX testing videos of how people actually use its site, the Pan Macmillan team realised a ‘Buy’ button would not only be great for users, it would also be great for business.” 

2. Not setting up your Analytics to correctly track your leads

This is a very deep subject, but for this guide so I just focused on some of the common issues I have seen with the B2B analytics accounts that you should be giving some attention to.

One of them is not having goals set up on your website.

I do a lot of analytics audits, and teach analytics in a monthly workshop for General Assembly, so I get to see a lot of analytics accounts. From my experience, around 40% of the accounts I see do not have any goals set up on their accounts. This is more down to not understanding how to set up analytics to create the goals. For example, if a goal for you is to submit a form, but that form does not have a destination URL , you need to set up event tracking, and with that, create an event goal. I always say “you don’t know what you don’t know” so don’t kick yourself. Just learn it, and fix it.

Access free Member resource – 10 business to business mistakes guide

This detailed free guide takes you through useful strategies to avoid the 10 most common B2B mistakes..

Access the 10 Business-to-Business Mistakes

You cannot expect anyone to put value on our marketing efforts if you are not able to track and attribute what you are doing. For me, this is a vital part of marketing.

I like to map out the flow of the business through their funnel, from top to bottom, and check what tracking solution they need (based on their website configuration). This is a worthy exercise to do as you may find that you’re not tracking everything correctly for you to understand and find a solution to the questions you are trying to answer.

For example, you have a lot of video content assets and you want to know if they help people convert for a free trial, therefore a micro goal would be ‘watched a video’. So, in your analytics audit you need to check and set up event tracking on your website to see this data.

RACEMacro and Micro GoalsType of tracking needed          In place ? Yes / No ReachScroll ReachEventN ActRead Blog / case study Watch Video Watch Webinar Social Share Live Chat CTA clicksStandard Reporting Event (YT script GTM) Event Event Event EventY N N N Y Y ConvertLead gen- form for content Request Free Video One Month Trial Create Account Watch Video (how to get started) Contact form (enterprise accounts)Event Event Event Destination Event DestinationY Y Y Y N Y EngageLog into SaaS accountEventN

In the guide, I talk about Event Tracking, Segmentation, Custom Dimensions and Data Import, so download and have a read!

3. Not testing improvements

“We don’t use A/B tests to pick winners. We use them to avoid losers as we stack confirmed winners”. @growthtactics

When you have FREE tools like Googles Optimize, Convert.com or Optimizely for your website, and nearly all campaign programs from Adwords to email have FREE options to test, and people are STILL not doing it. A few small changes is all it can take to make your marketing efforts go further. We all have a leaky bucket, wouldn't it be nice to understand what is stopping people from converting?

AB testing is not just for ecommerce testing to see if a man holding the shoe gets more people to convert that a woman holding the shoe. You should be testing everything, all the time. Make it a company culture.

You can test anything, and you can make an impact just playing around with words. Don't believe me, here are some A/B tests I did for a hotel company targeting B2B bookings. If we used the word star instead of using an asterisk I got more sales, it was a simple as that.

When it comes to testing, it can be easy to get lost in the sheer volume of “where the hell do I start”

I am a big fan of Widerfunnels PIE framework, as it really helps you to understand where you should be focusing your attention.

You need to rank each page with a score out of 10 over these 3 areas.

Potential – How much potential for a conversion rate increase does this testing opportunity have?

Importance – How important is this page? How many visitors will be impacted from the test? What is the traffic volume? What is the cost of the traffic? What is the quality of the traffic? What is the impact on ROI?

Ease – How easy is it to test on the identified page? What are the barriers, both technical and political, to testing that surround this page.

This gives you your test order.

Download the guide to find out how to create a good hypothesis and see a CRO case study in action.

4. Buying technology and not knowing how you will use it

Sales using one CRM, Marketing using a Marketing Automation tool, both not talking to each other and thinking that some new tech-tool is the magic wand to make things better. It isn’t. You need processes, you need procedures, you need data and content in place for it to work. I have spoken to a few marketing managers recently who are spending time doing admin to add more detail to the database which is just an email address and sometimes a name.

There are loads of cool tech solutions to make our marketing pop. However, if you jump in and buy the technology before you know how you will use it, and how it will fit into your current ecosystem, you can waste money, and actually hinder your sales. The tech works but with no data, it is just an expensive place to hold your mailing list.

I had a good chat about this topic with John Odam-Adjei, founder of Medasi, he has worked for large, multinational technology-oriented transformation projects for large multinational companies and now helps startups and established SMEs take advantage of cloud technologies to better engage customers, reduce their costs and increase profits. To do more with less, if you will.

“It’s really important to have a roadmap when deploying a new solution such as CRM. It doesn’t have to be complex at the start – that tends to happen anyway as the project unfolds. A roadmap is a good tool to hang, discuss and structure ideas for how the new business processes and tools will impact the business. From there, you can craft a project plan to get the outcomes you need.

Download the guide to get the 6 steps to creating a road map.

5. Content Mapping: Aligning content assets to the Sales Funnel

“We are thinking about content marketing as campaigns, we need to do better. 9/10 marketers are doing some content marketing, 50% don’t have a strategy or know what success looks like. On average only 30% of content is effective” Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute.

You know the drill, create original, relevant content that mirrors your personas pain points, use it to communicate a message to your audience and hope to drive a profitable customer interaction. Blahblahblah.

Content is a meaty subject, and needs to have a defined strategy, you NEED content! It feeds your website, your email programs, your social comms, everything. After you have defined your personas, and worked on your pain points, content themes, and objectives with clear and solid KPIs, I always do an audit.

I see people with an editorial calendar and they think that that is their content strategy. You need to audit your content to the funnel. Why? See what you are missing. I see clients either have too much at the front or back, and they never repurpose. That white paper you want people to download on twitter. That should be an intro to a blog post and a click to email the pdf to your desk which is a better UX and makes your content efforts go further.

6. Using social media as a billboard

"View social media as a two way medium. You have to offer something interesting or valuable in order to garner engagement. Simply broadcasting your offers will put people off. Think immersive store experience vs market trader”. Andrew White, Media Solutions Consultant, Linkedin

Social Media is supposed to be Social

I think there are a lot of brands, that see social media as a channel to broadcast their marketing messages. Personally, I think that we have become a little jaded and don’t ‘trust’ brands and their social content, and some brands struggle to have a unified and authentic brand voice on social media.

If a brand is using social as a broadcast channel, then that brand voice will never be heard. You need to understand your audience, how they use social media, and max this out with empathy. This is hard to do as you may need to let go of some of the control and be media neutral putting yourself in the shoes of your customers.

B2B brands that do social really well.

Intel on Facebook to celebrate the diversity of its own engineers. It called attention to the strength of Intel’s corporate culture and surely went a long way toward helping its recruitment efforts.

Oracle used Twitter to really show their 440,000 followers its philanthropy side, gives prospects, customers, and potential staff a chance to see a softer side to the brand.

7. Not cleaning your database

Hands up. Who has a data strategy?

It is not the most glam of all marketing tasks, but your data is the blood that runs through your marketing body, and your blood may be a little toxic. Having a data strategy and process of how you manage data will keep your blood flow moving in the right direction.

You have all heard the phrase that B2B data decays faster than B2C, around 25% of your data, on average, will be dead in a year, job moves and changes, that sort of thing, yet you will still meet businesses that have NEVER cleaned their data.

Data is just a proxy for people and the truth is, you can not do email, CRM, Direct Marketing campaigns to your prospects and customers if your data is poor.

Crap in, crap out.

The term dirty data was created for a reason, and you should be scared by it. But what to do? The first step to recovery is to define a data strategy.

Step 1- Do an audit

Step 2- De dupe

Step 3 – Check and honor preferences

Step 4- Enrich your dataset.

Step 5 -Write as formal document

Download the guide to find out what is involved in each step of a data audit.

8. Not following best practices in Organic or Paid Search

Search is a high intent channel, people head over to Google and are actively looking for information, you may have the best product, super smart website, but if no one can find you, you don’t catch any fish and will go hungry.

PPC

2016 saw quite a large change to Adwords in the form of expanded text ads. You have until January 2017 to edit all of your PPC adverts before they roll over to the new format. Previously we had headlines of up to 30 characters, a single description of up to 80 characters.   Now you have almost a 50% increase in the amount of space for your adverts.

Do an audit and tweak your ads also check for ad extensions and site links, You can use site links to drive people to different pages on your website, you can use call out extensions for specific value proposition messages, you can have all localization extensions to show where your business is located, what time you open till etc.

Remarketing

I am a big fan of remarketing, actually let me rephrase that, I am a big fan of people that don't do sloppy remarketing. I am referring to the business that follow me around the web like a little lost puppy based on the notion that I came to your website and didn't convert your big-hitting-we-are- going-to-die macro conversion……. so they stalk me. What's worse is when I actually convert and fill out your damn form or buy your products and services, you still follow me around the web.

You can build very clever bespoke remarketing lists based on the actions of your users on your website by creating segments and using these to build your remarketing lists.

Organic

I've always believed that as long as you adhering to Google best practice guidelines in creating and setting up your web site and you're producing valuable relevant content that people want to read and the people want to link to, then you're all good. There is a tool called Screaming Frog which is free to use and it will pull all of your web pages, the title tags, alt tags, meta descriptions, keywords for you to export as an Excel document for you to audit and tidy up your house.

“Only 3% of searches have the classic 10 blue links” Rand Fishkin, MozCon 2016

3% of searches show 10 blue links, I had to reread it, and what do we all ask for? ‘Hi SEO team, can I rank #1 for this page……” Download the guide to read how to use keyword research to improve your organic reach and find opportunities to rank within the SERP features.

9. Care sales copy

Yes, it is b2b, but that does not equal boring, b2b is personable there is a human emotional element as well as rational. You can have fun, you can improve your writing with storytelling, you can make better use of your email campaigns without making it all about the sale.

The problem with this is that your customers really don't want to listen to all the wonderful features and benefits of your products and services they just don't care enough. You need to bring storytelling to the table and inspire people to behave differently.

DropBox is a great example of using storytelling to connect to an audience, because the truth is your customers will relate better to the story if it can identify with the characters or personalities within.   Drew Houston the founder of Dropbox could have just started with the story of “we have invented a file hosting system offering a personal cloud as a service”. Back in 2007 people didn't really understand what a cloud was, the FAB message didn't stick. So instead he opted to start with a story that his target prospects could identify with and that story started by reminding people about the frustration of leaving behind USB sticks or being given a USB stick which might have made you worry about getting a nasty virus on your laptop and then he started talking about Dropbox .

How do you write customer centric converting copy? Yep, you guessed it, dowload to the guide for the tips.

10-Not aligning Sales and Marketing

Small or large , there is always some silo behaviour between work streams, but for us all to get along and achieve the same company wide objectives you need to work together. Sales and marketing need to align, agree on what a MQL is and when to hand over to sales, what is the user flow for that.

Could you have a service level agreement between the two departments and work together to master the technology you are using to manage your prospects and customers.

Could you have a service level agreement between the two departments and work together to master the technology you are using to manage your prospects and customers?

Your SLA document aims at providing mutual accountability by agreeing project plans and responsibilities together at the start of any marketing programs or campaigns through to what sales intend to do with leads when they get their hands on them.

Ideas for your SLA:

Quotas: how many leads do marketing need to deliver to sales over a set period.

Define what a lead is: all data is not equal, therefore not all leads are created equal. Agree with sales what a qualified lead looks like and either set this up in your automation system or take a spreadsheet approach.

Timescales for follow-up – agree what the follow-up will look like and within what time scales this will be completed. Do prospects get a welcome email as soon as they fill out a form, when will someone call if they request a call back?

Map strategy and tactics to RACE to visualize activity to achieve goals together. I have found this very powerful for the whole company to see how each cog turns the wheel, and to expand on this and identify how marketing is going to find customers, how they will manage the leads, and when they hand over to sales.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/b2b-digital-marketing/b2b-strategy/top-10-mistakes-b2b-marketing/

[netmaddy-blog]

Business Plan for a Computer Repair Business

New Post has been published on https://netmaddy.com/business-plan-for-a-computer-repair-business/

Business Plan for a Computer Repair Business

So, you have decided to open up a new computer repair business but really are not sure how to proceed. If that is the case, below we are going to tell you everything that you need to do in order to not only make an educated business decision. But also, the steps you need to take to create comprehensive business plans that will at the very least, provide you an excellent road map for your new venture.

There are many different kinds of formats used to create a business plan. In this example, we are going to assume that you will not need an outside financing source and that your computer repair business will only be a local operation, at least initially.

The concept behind a business plan is relatively simple to understand and execute. Essentially, you want to make sure that what you are thinking about the opening is financially viable, and if so, then write down everything that you need to accomplish in order to turn your idea into a profitable endeavor. Below we are going to layout a traditional business plan and let you know precisely how to complete each section.

# 1 – Executive Summary – You really do not have to work on this section of the business plan if you do not plan on showing it to anybody, or you are not looking for investors or an outside financing source. That being said, if you are really serious about turning your new enterprise into a profitable going concern that has the ability to not only grow but is also sustainable, you should sit down and spend a few hours writing out the executive summary.

The executive summary which is also sometimes called the management summary goes at the very beginning of the report, but should only be written AFTER you have completed the entire business plan. Its intended purpose is to capture the reader’s attention, get them interested in the business, and briefly explain the concept and everything else that is contained in the report.

# 2 – Business Description – This is where the real work starts when you decide it is time to get serious and begin writing out your business plan. What you want to try and do is to get all of you ideas down on paper so that you can refer back them in the future if you need to.

Please do not be concerned with you writing style at this point, but only the information. Later, after you are sure you have included everything that you want or need, you can go back and clean up the material. Below are some of the things that need to be discussed in this section.

A) Why you believe this is a good business to start.

B) What do you know about this type of business?

C) What skills are you bringing to the table?

D) What skills do you need to acquire?

E) Who is your market?

F) Why is there a need for the service or product you plan on supplying?

G) Why you believe that your business will be able to serve your market better than any of your competitors.

H) What will make your business standout from the competition.

Okay, you get the idea. Please do not limit yourself to the things we discussed above, but also include anything and everything else that you think could be important.

# 3 – Market Analysis – This might be the most important consideration for anybody that is thinking about opening up a new computer repair business. After all, if there are already 14 other similar companies competing in your neighborhood, it would probably be a good idea to think about doing something else.

In all seriousness, you really have to understand your competition at the highest level, know what their fees are, be familiar with the services they provide and figure out a way to improve on everything that they do. If you are confident you can meet or exceed the stipulations mentioned above, then your new business just might have a chance of succeeding. Below you will find some of the areas you need to research and be familiar with.

A) Write down each and every store or standalone operation that you will be competing against.

B) Note each and every service that they provide.

C) Figure out exactly what they charge for each job.

D) Here is the tough one, ask yourself, now that I know everything about my competition, how am I going to everything they do, better and cheaper?

If you are able to answer that last question, and you are happy with the way you answered it, you just might have a real chance of making it.

# 4 – Organization and Management – More than likely when you first start your computer repair business, you are not going to have any employees. But, there are going to be certain jobs, like setting up a computer network for a large company that could require a little extra manpower. If so, have you thought about who you know that you can bring in at a moment’s notice that would be willing to work part-time?

Next, people that enjoy working on computers are usually very organized and hopefully, you happen to be one of them. If not, it is really going to be very hard for you to run a company that is in an industry that is time sensitive. After all, when you tell somebody that you are going to arrive at their home or business at 4 pm, and you show up three hours later, do you really think that they are going to call you the next time they have a computer problem?

Another thing that you need to take into consideration in this section, is as your company grows and you acquire more and more customers, when do you hire another computer technician and who do you hire? Do your hire somebody that already has a great deal of experience and will demand a very high salary? Or, do you hire a novice that you can train that will be less expensive? Below are some of the things you are going to need to ask yourself in order to complete this section of the business plan.

A) Am I organized, and if not, how do I improve in this area?

B) Am I good at training people?

C) Do I have any friends that will part-time work?

D) Do I know how to delegate, or do I have to do everything myself, so that I know it was done correctly?

E) Can I accept other people’s shortcomings and help them improve in those areas?

F) Should I invest my capital in my staff and how much of an investment can I justify?

And, you thought it was going to be easy to open a small computer repair business. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. If you are not prepared to at the very least to answer some of or all of the question in this section, starting your very own business just might not be a great career choice.

# 5 – Services and Products – This is an area that you really should not have too much trouble with. If you do, then you definitely should not be thinking about starting a computer repair business. In this section, you need to use the information you gathered about your competition and write down all the services or products you plan on promoting, as well as the fees you plan on charging for your services.

# 6 – Marketing, Advertising, and Sales – Computer geeks by their very nature are usually not outgoing people that make the good salesman. That being said, your business needs customers and to get them you are going to have to think out of the box and come up with some creative ideas. We are going to provide you a few proven marketing and advertising techniques below, but you really need to figure out what your competition is doing in this area, and then either copies them or come up with better schemes.

A – Website – Of course you are going to have to build a website, after all, you are in the computer business. Hopefully, you know how to properly SEO your new site, if not, find somebody that does before you waste your time, effort, and money by creating a site that nobody is ever going to see.

The good thing about a computer repair businesses is that virtually every one of them is a local operation. That means that your competition on the internet for highly targeted traffic will not be that fierce. In other words, if you correctly onsite and offsite SEO your new website, there is a very good chance that it will move up the search engine rankings extremely quickly and you will get to Google’s first page, and just maybe, the top spot on that page in only a couple of months.

TIP # 1 – Remember this is a local business, and when you select your URL it is critical that you choose a local name. What we mean by that is, if the name of your new business is “Joe’s Computer Repairs”, that is not what you want to use for its URL. Instead, you want to use your town’s name in the URL.

That means if you live in Dallas for example, you want your URL to be “DallasComputerRepair.com”. The reason you want to do this is very simple to understand, all of the search engines will move your site up their rankings whenever somebody in Dallas types in the search term “Computer Repair”.

TIP # 2 – For any new business, it is absolutely critical that when somebody does find your website, you get them to either give you a call or send you an email. To do this, you really have to offer a great deal that everybody who visits your site, is sure to see. A few examples you could use are the following.

I – Second repair visit FREE.

II – Half price on service calls for all new customers.

III – Free antivirus and malware software for all new customers on the first service call.

B – Low Cost or Free Advertising – All new businesses have the same problem, which is they are not generating any cash. Thus, they cannot afford to spend too much on marketing or advertising. So, you have to find ways to promote your business that is either totally free or cost very little. Below we are going to provide a few suggestions, but you know your local market far better than we ever could, and you need to come up with your own marketing ideas.

I – Craigslist’s – If you are not familiar with this site, it allows you to place classified ads for free, so use it. In addition, there are quite a few other sites that provide the same free service, so please find them, and use them.

II – Social Media – Almost everybody has heard of the following websites Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. These types of sites are called social media and they allow their users to interact with one another. If you were able to build up a strong local following on anyone of these sites, almost assuredly, your business would eventually turn into a huge success story.

111 – Flyers – Printing out 10,000 flyers is not that expensive and they can be a fantastic marketing tool. Not only can you hand them out in your neighborhood, you can also distribute them to the local businesses and put them up on bulletin boards at grocery stores.

IV – Neighborhood Newspapers – If you are fortunate enough to live in an area that receives a free neighborhood newspaper delivered to your door each week, you might want to think about advertising in it. Their advertising fees are very reasonable, and your ads just might be able to generate enough leads to get your new business off the ground.

It really does not matter if you are the very best computer repair engineer in the world, if nobody knows about you, your business will surely fail. In reality, this might be the most important section in your business plan, because if you do not develop a marketing and advertising program that is going to work in your local market, almost assuredly your new business will not be around for more than a year, if that long.

# 7 – Financial Projections – The great thing about starting a computer repair business, is that in most cases, you will not have to spend a great deal of money to get it up and running. You do not have to rent a store, more than likely you already have a car, computer, and some, if not most of the software that you need. In addition, you do not have to put anybody on the payroll right away. So, other than your advertising expense, you really do not have any cash flowing out of the business.

The most important thing for you to note in the financial projection section of your business plan are the capital expenditures you need to make to open the business. These could include but are not limited to a new laptop computer, more software, a better cell phone plan, and your advertising expenses.

As for your income projections, you should definitely set goals for yourself using realistic figures. After all, you do not want to set your goals so high, that you later become discouraged when you don’t achieve them, and you do not want to set them so low, so as to not challenged yourself.

Conclusion

For the most part, the people that do well in business not only had a great idea to start with but were also committed to their company and were willing to put in the time and effort that was required to make their firm a success. Working for yourself requires far more determination and discipline than just about anything else you can do in life.

That being said, starting a new computer repair business is not without its risks. But, then again, it is not without its rewards either. If you feel the time is right and you have all the skills that are required to run this type of business, then why not go for it? After all, what is the worst that can happen; you lose a little bit of time and money, and end up having to get a job working for somebody else if your business does not make it.