#if anyone actually guesses what this is for they get to request a free 200-300 word snippet if they want to

[silverrowbrush]

The only context you get is that it has something to do with Reginald.

[darkpoisonouslove]

2021 Projects

It’s a new year and since my writing kinda slowed in the last couple of months (more like for over half a year now), I thought it would be motivating for me and informative for anyone who’s interested to lay out my ideas for my work during 2021. Now I do not call these plans because I do not want to jinx anything but I am excited about these projects and I hope that I will manage to fit them in throughout this year.

- Fix-It Series - a series of fics that deals mostly with the plot holes in the first three seasons of Winx. I have already written two works that would be part of that series once it is officially launched - Ice Is Stronger with Some Lightning and Darkness Mixed in; Left to Heritage - and have started work on several others. Now this isn’t so much a rewrite as much as it is me being petty enough to go “this could be fixed while still keeping the original sequence of events (on a grand scale) and I will prove it if the writers couldn’t be bothered to do so”. I am also confining this to the first three seasons because the rest would need complete rewrites (though, tbh I am not sure whether season 3 doesn’t fit into that mold as well).

- Season 2 CT arc - Now I already said that I would be writing fix-it fics but this one I feel deserves its own mention because I have taken it a bit far already. I am basically writing an entire curriculum about dark magic because I was getting annoyed by the fact that they never really learned much and I have taken the liberty to do some worldbuilding and mention a lot of other things that were never actually addressed. So now it will probably clock out on tens of thousands of words and it will need to be regarded as a separate thing. I am thrilled about all the things I have come up with, however, and hope this will be received well because I have really put my heart into it (and my mental energy) and have invested too much attention in detail.

- Speaking of rewrites, I have already started work on the season 6 rewrite thanks to an ask I got. I have outlined a big part of it and made all the changes to the overall structure of the season that I felt necessary. Currently, everything it needs is to map out each episode separately before I can write them out. I will be doing this in more of a script format because a full-on fic will take too much time that I really want to devote to some of my other projects from the endless pile. I am thrilled about the changes I have made and the arcs I have given the characters and I am really looking forward to actually producing the final form of this one.

- Fae creature AU - This is a story actually inspired by my rage over Fate: The Winx Saga. Or rather by the fact that they do not look like fairies at all in there so I actually took the liberty to reimagine the plot of the cartoon a slightly different way. The main gist is that Bloom never meets Stella on that summer day in the park. They meet years later after Bloom has already settled and has a family on Earth only for all of that to be shaken to the ground by the reveal that she is a fae creature with a long, long life ahead of her. The two of them need to adjust to the reality that they are some of the last of their kind and having a future becomes harder, the longer that future is. I have mapped out the most part of the plot of this but I am still staggering with my approach to the execution. I am currently betting on a long one-shot (something of 20-30k+ words) but we will see how that goes once I have a clearer idea about the actual structure.

- Bloom/Sky childhood... rivals AU - This one was totally born while I was making my Bloom/Sky Kerosene video. It deals with the way things would be happening if Bloom had been raised on Domino by her real parents and her and Sky had known each other all along. I have more concepts for this one than an actual, concrete plot but I have already done some work on the relationships that I want this to focus on. Bloom and Sky getting to actually develop as people alongside each other is the focus of this, of course, but there is a lot more that I would like to explore. Their relationship with their own parents (mostly their mothers) and responsibilities is something that I feel would have a big impact on them considering their titles. And of course, the best friends are also there - Brandon and Stella ftw! Plus, the other main characters will be getting in on this as well. However, due to the span of time this will have to cover and the lack of any plot or structure for it, this one will probably have a longer time to sit in the drawer until I can manage to solidify this as a story.

- 31-Day Fic Collection - I have already started this as a sort of writing exercise to keep me in the flow of things during January and February while I am dealing with finals and other uni stuff. I am planning on keeping this confined only to one couple (that you’ll never guess) but we’ll see. The prompts I have picked would require a certain dose of creativity that I usually get around exams when I am too busy to keep my eyes open, let alone write. I am planning on posting these during March in order to open that month for other writing but we’ll see how that will go since I am really behind on all of it (3/31). Anyway, I just wanted to announce this so that, hopefully. I will commit to it now that it is out in the open.

- 200-Followers Celebration - I still haven’t done that and it is the reason why I want to have March as a free month in my schedule in order to host this celebration. I was hoping I could post the ready works while I am working on completing any and all requests from the celebration. I am also pretty close to 300 followers but not quite there yet so it is possible that I will have the two celebrations together but only time will tell. I have not exactly figured out what to do with the celebrations but I have a couple options and will make sure to choose from them by the time this can be kicked into motion. In the meantime, I am open to ideas if you have any.

- Old requests - I have several old requests sitting in my inbox that I have neither forgotten about, nor abandoned. I just hit a roadblock with all of them but I am actually hoping to finish them by the time the follower celebrations are finished. Now these include a handful of requests for the Sparks of Life verse that are about to get a year-old at this point, the leftover requests about the Domme AU and two other requests from a random prompt list I reblogged around June last year. To be fair the SoL ones are the least thought out so far but I will get to all of them... at some point.

- Sparks of Life - now that I mentioned that, I have several works... in the works for this verse. I have announced all of them already but have not made much progress because I was just not feeling any kind of writing impulses lately. I am still excited about all of these stories but I just haven’t managed to find the right direction for them yet. I believe that stories get completed when they are ready to be completed but I will still do my best to actually put in the effort to finish all of these and finally share them because I have been hyped about them for so long and I have been posting random excerpts from them all and getting people on here hyped as well.

- Season 1 Re-rewatch - I will probably have to rewatch all of the seasons if I am fixing things in them but for this one, I might actually redo my “reviews” because I didn’t write my thoughts on it in-depth the first time around. Besides, it turns out to be the most solid season so taking it apart could help me immensely with all of my writing projects and that makes it worth the effort (besides, it’s not like I don’t rewatch random episodes whenever I feel like it).

- World of Winx Thoughts - I have actually started watching and reviewing this but I had to stop thanks to my uni workload and other things that needed to be done (honestly, everything is such a mess right now). I liked what I saw but, of course, I only got through the first episode so we’ll see how this goes.

- Fate: The Winx Saga Thoughts - I will be writing out my opinions on this as well but I have no idea when I’ll manage to get to that (either free time or making myself sit down and watch it). Not much of a project, really, but I thought I’d mention it.

[casuallydelightfulobservation]

Dream Boyfriend or Animal Boyfriend?

@sherazyjade

I’m going to apologize in advance because this ended up being a short novel. This is my personal thoughts and opinions and I’m always happy to hear what other people think. If anyone has something to add, feel free to reblog and add or write in the comments. I hope that everything will make sense and that it's not too confusing. If it is, I apologize.

For a starter, both games are basically about you teaching your student(s)/boyfriend(s) about the world, you get to determine their personality and dress them in almost any way you see fit. Dream boyfriend has the advantage in the developing personality department, because when you have chosen the type that you want, you need to study for it, and the game automatically chooses which studies to do to get that personality.

In Animal Boyfriend ((which should really be called Animal Student because they’re your student long before you get the option of being lovers)) you need to keep track of which studies raises and lowers which traits yourself. It can be a bit rough in the beginning, but there’s lots of help to get both on the Animal boyfriend wiki, on the animal boyfriend Amino and here on Tumblr.

One advantage Animal Boyfriend has is that you can have up to eight different types to switch between, whereas in Dream boyfriend you're pretty much stuck with the one you initially chose, unless you want to study for a new one and lose the one you had.

Animal boyfriend has, aside from the default type, sixteen different types to choose from, not all types work together, so you need to figure out which ones will, whereas Dream boyfriend has, again beside the standard type, seven different types. The good thing AB has is that there are some special studies, that changes every day, and the regular studies that stays the same. The special studies can really help to increase a certain trait needed for a type. DB does not have the special studies.

You will eventually want your students to work and earn K (AB) or Stars (DB) so that you can buy them things. The advantage AB has is that there are some special jobs depending on what trait your student has, and you can increase the time they’re working or decrease it. In DB you can only decrease the time.

Something that I prefer with DB is that when your boyfriend/student gets tired and that reaches 100 % they go to sleep, so if you forget to put them to sleep, don’t worry about it because they’ll sleep when they get too tired. In AB you need to remember to put your student to sleep every 24 hours or they’ll enter ear state. When they’re in ear state the EXP (experience points) and K that they earn will be reduced by a third, and in the beginning, that’s a lot. If you still don’t put them to sleep, they’ll enter the tired state and the earnings will be more reduced, now also affecting mood and affection.

Now, Mood decides the student’s basic motivation when he works or studies, and when at max mood the motivation is 100. People can advise and you need to accept the advice (cheer them on) to raise the student’s motivation to a maximum of 200. When the motivation is at 200 you get double the EXP and K that you would normally get. If the student has been given advice but you haven’t received it when the study/work time ends, both his mood and affection decreases. According to the in-game help, Affection affects the student’s reactions and the content of the conversations.

One thing that I miss in Animal boyfriend, that exists in Dream boyfriend, is the friends list. In both games, you can see who’s visited you and your boy(s) in their memo, but in DB it’s much easier because you can send people friend requests and that makes it much easier. In the Japanese version of AB there is a friend list, so I’m hoping that it will be brought over.

If you’re after something that looks pretty, DB is the game to play. There are some beautiful clothes and hairs on that game and the details are amazing. AB doesn’t really have that ‘wow these clothes are gorgeous’ feel to their outfits, at least not to me, but there are some amazing clothes and hairs on that game as well.

A good thing about AB is that whenever a new gacha comes out, there’s almost always a free first try while in DB you don’t get that. In both games you can collect gacha tickets and gacha coupons. In both games the gacha tickets gives a free play, while the coupons work a little differently. In AB you need three coupons for a free play, while in DB you need to collect 10 coupons for one free play.

What’s good about DB is that you get Gold and Stars (in-game currency) when you log in or complete missions, and there are a lot of missions. In AB, when you log in you only get K or JIN (in-game currency) and you need to buy or complete some offers for free G, so that’s a little let-down. The only missions that you have in AB is the beginners’ mission, that’ll help you figure out the game but when that’s done, that’s it. In both games, you can have more than one student.

In DB you can get a new student/boyfriend at levels 30 and 60 to a maximum of three boyfriends/students. In AB you get a new student/boyfriend at levels 50, 75, 200 and 250 to a maximum of five students/boyfriends. The Japanese version has a sixth student at level 300, but there’s no telling if that’ll be brought over, though a lot of people want that.

Both games have a wide range of customization options. There are different categories in the closet button. I have to say that AB is better in that department than DB, because in AB the closet has labels that says ‘background’, ‘face’, ‘hairstyle’ and such. In DB when you press the closet button it comes up different options like ‘change clothes’, ‘saved outfits’, ‘sort closet’ and such. The good thing about DB closets is that if you change, say, the outfit it appears shows immediately. In AB you need to press a button called ‘change clothes’ for the change to actually appear.

The shops where you can buy different clothes, hairstyles and faces (it’s called makeup in DB) is really good. In DB it’s a little easier to find what it is you’re looking for, because you have different categories like ‘clothes store’, ‘makeup store’ and ‘hair salon’. I prefer that kind of layout. In AB, when you press the shop button, it takes you to an area that has different shops, like ‘style shop’ and ‘JIN shop’. When you press the shop that you want, that’s when you can choose from a drop-down menu what you want to look for. If you don’t choose it just shows everything and that can get kind of messy.

In the end, I guess it depends. DB is more casual, and the interface is easy to understand, whereas AB can be a little more confusing and demands more from you.

[tornadorojo5]

Top 10 Dumbest Promotional Mistakes that Made Companies Lose Millions Marketing going Wild

If you are a small business owner and get angry because of that small Facebook Ad you paid for $5 didn't work all that well, well, imagine that you are one Chief Marketing Officer, working for a "Blue Chip" company and realize that instead of making the company money, his marketing mistake actually cost his company millions.

So here it is, the Top 10 Dumbest Promotional Mistakes that Cost Companies Millions!!!

Number 10: Apple-U2 Giveaway

You would have probably heard of this one, the story that made U2 part of the meme world for years to come, but just in case you don't know, let's go ahead and explain it a bit.

Back in the year 2014, some genius at Apple, Inc came up with the idea that people would love to have their new product prepackaged with an album that no one really cares about. At this point, you might think, "well, just a simple give away, what is wrong with that.?" well, aside from the annoyance it caused for people logging into iTunes for their very first time, there is also a mythological thing called "Royalties." So Apple, Inc paid an undisclosed fee in royalties to U2 and also took a whopping of 100 million in marketing campaigns for the band to promote their new album. As shocking as this might seem, Apple even stepped in to defend the promotion and the band which clearly led to a bunch of undesirable responses within various online communities.

Number 9: Walkers Weather Prediction

Answer quick, when I say "British Weather" what comes to your mind.? it was RAIN, right,? well you are probably smarter than the guys running marketing for Walkers Crisp and this is how the story goes. Some genius decided that people would have fun predicting the weather if they could win a prize for it, so Walkers Crisp decided to pay their faithful customers 10 pounds if they correctly guessed where the rain will fall on a grid map of the UK, of course, they weren't that stupid as they charged everyone the cost of a bag of chips (40 pence) to have a go, but as you've probably guessed, offering a total of $25 return to anyone that can guess the climate of a country with such a predictable weather pattern is not a great deal. Rain kept pouring during the time of the promotion and Walkers bravely followed through with their promises at a great cost. After the contest was over, Walker Crisp had to pay nearly 700,000 pounds to cover the entire contest but to be honest, you can conclude that it ended up working well as a marketing promotion since it made people remember the name "Walkers Crisp" for years to come.

Number 8: Ballon Fest in 1986 in Cleveland

For some people, the word "balloon" would cause them to have a flashback to the time United Way decided to release 1.5 million balloons over Cleveland and screwed up miserably. The whole stunt had a neat little idea behind it, since they basically wanted to do a little fundraising and grab the town's attention for a while, so they built a giant box the size of one city block and had 2500 students do the balloon filling while they waited for the crowds to gather. Once the launch started, it was one of the most beautiful things you could see, that is, for about 2 minutes, you see, nobody actually accounted for the fact that wind exists and therein lies their downfall...literally. The 1.5 million balloons started falling into the ground causing massive damage, the clogged the streets, waterways and pretty much every nook and cranny in town. If this wasn't bad enough, the balloons were blamed for the death of 2 fishermen who were found drowned 2 days later after the balloons interrupted coast guards in their attempt to rescue them, in fact, one of the fishermen wive's sued the company for 3 million dollars but settle for an undisclosed figure.

In the aftermath, United Way ended up paying millions to the city and the cleanup crews, not to mention settling several lawsuits from not a few citizens who were damaged by the balloons. 

To think that the Persians in the "300" movie used arrows to bot out the sun, what a waste, they should have just gotten United Ways to plan their attack and doomed the Spartans to a certain death.

Number 7: Jagermeister's Pool of Death

If you think the title is a bit too much, as you read on you will realize that is not far from the truth. This goes again to show that the marketers sometimes ignore the basics. So let's go a little into chemistry, some genius in the marketing team department decided that they'll make a gigantic pool party for Jagermeister's drunken fans, which I must admit, it was a great start, but then they wanted to have a lot of fog above the pool for that added effect which again, should be a plus to the sick party, however, what was not nearly nice was the liquid nitrogen they used to create the fog by pouring it into the water. Now, this is where everything goes to hell, the liquid nitrogen basically made an unbreathable fog above the whole area when it came into contact with the water and the marketing team must have been shocked big time upon realizing that humans need air to survive. This whole event was a mess and actually left one party-goer in a coma while hospitalizing 8 others. Jagermeister never actually disclosed. Now I realize that you need to see this by yourself so, here it is.

Jagermeister never actually disclosed how much they had to cough up for this mistake, but considering that they put someone in a coma, we can assume that it was a lot. Just goes to show, if you want to play smoke on the water, don't go happy on the chemicals.

Number 6: The Energizer Bunny

How can a cute little bunny screw up a company that much.? well, to answer that, go ahead and tell me the brand of the batteries in your remote. I bet you don't have a clue, and that was what the marketing team of energizer realized after it was a bit too late. While the bunny is actually a cute little mascot and it's probably known amongst the young whippersnappers of my readers, you can't really pull off that kind of marketing for something like a battery. The campaign was successful for sure, but the problem was that the actually managed to advertise their competitor in the battery field.

Duracell released a report after the Energizer Bunny first aired showing that their profits had actually doubled at that time because people thought that the bunny was advertizing Duracell, in fact, it worked so well that Duracell uses a bunny as their mascot now.

Now, as you may see, while the company didn't lose money, directly, the drastic drop in sales and all that money wasted on promoting your competitor is enough of a burn to make sure that they are more careful next time.

Number 5: The Tesco Math Problem

Tesco is praised for being a fairly cheap place to go shopping in the UK, but after this marketing failure, you might think that it's just because they really suck at math. Back in the year 2011, Tesco decided to do a special little promotion to outdo its competitor ASDA. Basically, it was the whole: "we will refund you twice the difference if our competitors item is cheaper." Tesco sadly forgot that most people go to school and know basic operations and count, and even if they didn't, they managed to learn on the way, so all its customers got savvy by only buying items that were on sale at ASDA, so they could go to Tesco, buy the same items on sale at ASDA and then after checking out they'd request double the difference by refering to ASDA website. For example, 1 shopper spends 200 pounds on Tesco in a shop that would have cost 120 pounds on ASDA (on sale products), so he or she is entitled to claim a 160 Pound voucher, therefore, Tesco is actually receiving 40 dollars for all that shopping.

You can see that doing this multiple times would save you a whole lot of money at the expense of Tesco. While this was a monetary and marketing catastrophe for Tesco, you have to give them props, they actually made a promotion that ended up being great for its customers...(dumb asses).

Number 4: Oprah and KFC

As we all know, Oprah is the omnipotent master of our destinies, so when she offers people a free KFC 2 piece meal, we all jump to get it, so why was it such a catastrophe.? Well, you can imagine that KFC was not all that pleased when people managed to print out over 10 million free food coupons from Oprah's website. During the time of the promotion, KFC gave away over 40 million dollars worth of free food and probably paid Oprah and an obscene amount of money to get her to do the promotion for them. No need to say that KFC will not be contacting her anytime soon.

Number 3: Silo...Bananas for Stereo

Now, this one didn't cost a lot of money but it was really stupid on the marketing side. So the same old formula comes to play, 

savvy customers + dumb exchange = price

Silo, a chain of electronic stores decided that a dumb exchange item would be bananas and the prize would be a stereo. Imagine their surprise when after the whole thing settled, they ended up with 11,000 bananas in their warehouse and a lot of stereos given away for around 40 dollars. So the only way to go is being nice and giving away all the bananas to the local zoo. Still, it kind of makes you think how wasted you have to be to come up with an idea like that in the first place.

Number 2: Mc Donalds Olympics

Well, pairing McDonald's with something that requires you to be fit, is a bit weird, but it gets weirder fairly quickly.

During the Olympics of 1984, McDonald's had a catchy slogan "If the U.S wins, you win." They included a ticket you could scratch on every meal and you would win a Big Mac for a gold medal, french fries for silver and a coke for a bronze medal in the event that was on the ticket. The problem was that the Soviets boycotted the Olympics and the USA ended up with 83 gold medals, 61 silvers and 30 bronze.

Basically, Mc Donald's lost a huge pile of money because the Russians were too lazy to compete. It seems that Russia can screw American businesses, even without the hackers.

Number 1: Lucky Number 349 by Pepsi

Riddle me this, what happens when you over estimate the powers of numbers.? If your answer was extreme riots and lawsuits, you probably work for Pepsi. Back in 1992, Pepsi had its "Number Fever" promotion and promised to give away 1,000,000 pesos, the equivalent to 40,000 US dollars to one lucky person with the right number on its bottle cap, the problem was that they had accidentally printed the winning number, 349, on 800,000 caps, due to an oversight in the manufacturing process. Consequently, they accidentally promise to give away a total of 55 billion of today's dollars. So people calmly understood the mistake and caused no trouble...Hell no!! people got furious, thousands of Filipinos began writing on the streets, demanding that Pepsi paid their rightful prize, which now totaled in millions. People even filed 689 civil suits and more than 5200 criminal cases for fraud and deception. However, Pepsi wasn't entirely at fault. It is believed that this marketing failed was caused by DG consultors, a Mexican consulting firm that Pepsi had hired to randomly pre-selecting the winning numbers which were clearly instructed not to make the number 349 a winner but, they clearly didn't read the memo.

Obviously with such a costly mistake, Pepsi couldn't affort to pay everyone, instead settled on giving just under 2000 US dollars, so Pepsi ended u paying nearly 10 million dollars for the whole campaign, rather than the original budget of 2 millon dollars.

Till next time friends, 

https://ift.tt/2s6rJDU

[mylincolncole-blog]

Kindle Scout Campaign - Guide - Part 2 - Services

The Early Days

This is a continuation of my campaign information, and if you want to check out the first post I made about this, you can find the link below to part 1.

My campaign is running really well, and I've begun promoting it to try and bring in more nominations. I'm not really doing any general promotional things right now, focusing more on the bigger things I can write about later in my campaign.

Breakdown

5/24/17 - Campaign Submitted

I received my link on this day and submitted to multiple different locations for promotions, including Scout Boost, Books Butterfly, and OnlineBookClub.

 Scout Boost - This is something I haven't tried before. They charge $94 dollars (get 25% off with code: 25%-OFF-NOW) and feature your book in newsletters and other places to get nominations. They only send out up to three books daily, and you can schedule the promotion up to four times (I did it twice because after a while I expect the returns to dramatically diminish). This is scheduled for the 7th and 16th of June to run.

Books Butterfly - I used this service last time around to get views on my campaign and they did an excellent job for me. I'm hoping they do just as good this time (I requested 6/8 and 6/18 as promotional days but waiting to hear back from them).

OnlineBookClub - This is a wholly new service, because it isn't even something that they offer. Several of my books have been featured as books of the day on Scott's website, and Raven's Peak was even book of the month in April and got a lot of publicity. Setting up my campaign to run on June 13th is something of a trial run, and if it goes well he might be able to open this up to be a permanent offering to reach his 35,000 newsletter subscribers and 170,000 website members.

I also scheduled advertising to go out across several social media sites, including Facebook (+Instagram), Twitter, BookBub, and Goodreads. I also submitted to Bing, GoogleAds, StumbleUpon, and Reddit and those were declined until the campaign begins (since the links show 404 until the campaign goes live). So, now I know which sites actually check and which don't really care!

5/26/17 - Campaign Begins

Today, I resubmitted to the self-serve advertising locations since the site is actually live. With all of the ads, I set my bids incredibly low (a few cents per click at most) because I would rather simply not get any impressions than spend too much money on the advertising. I'll tweak as I go and drop off the lowest performing advertising platforms to focus my efforts once I see who is responding.

I also submitted to two other paid platforms today:

Author Shout - This is another website that runs a promotion during the entire month, and it only costs ten dollars. I'm not really anticipating any huge results out of it, but if it manages to trickle in several people a day I will be thrilled with it.

https://authorshout.com/promote-with-us

Best Indie Press - This is one that I am leery about using simply because of it's lack of presence or information, but it is one that I sincerely hope proves my reservations wrong. It's expensive ($250, but $50 off with Coupon Code: TS50) and I wouldn't have done it except I want to test it out and report my findings with it. I've seen a recommendation of it from someone I trust, so I'm willing to give it a shot and review.

http://unbouncepages.com/bestindiepress_kindlescout/

Other things I've set up that don't cost money...

Newsletter - I set up two different automatic resend newsletters today, spreading them over my campaign to cover as many days as possible. I thought about segmenting it out and trickling it in, but I ended up just doing blasts. *Note* The reason I set two newsletters is one is for my campaign, and one is for another promotional thing I will mention shortly.

Blog Posts - I've been writing these slowly and scheduling them in advance. My goal is to get about five to ten posts going during the campaign, some promotional and others informational (like this one).

HeadTalkers - Sort of self-explanatory, I set up a couple of these to help drive people to all sorts of different promotions. With luck, I'll get the twenty-five supporters I need to make these a reality (shouldn't be too hard).

Drive-By Promotions - This one is a little bit tricky because it requires a lot more effort to set-up as well as effort in general. Most people won't have time to do things like these, and my goal is more just to see how everything comes together long term.

Instafreebie Group Giveaway - I am hosting a group giveaway on the site for multiple genres with over seventy participating authors and even more books. I've done many of these before, but for this one I timed it so that it would start around midway in my campaign and run until it ends. Basically, authors sign up to promote their free books, I host the group, and we all direct traffic to the giveaway page. What I did was put global promotional links on my website (at the top and bottom) to drive website traffic over to my campaign page. (If anyone wants to join the giveaway, the signup is here). I usually get several thousand page views during promotions like this, so with luck at least some of those readers will nominate my campaign. It takes a lot of work to organize and setup, along with custom page design.

Handouts - I didn't do this last time, so this time I put together bookmarks, rip sheets, and QR codes for people to get to my website and then head over to KS to nominate. I also built custom landing pages to track traffic so I will know exactly how successful this part of the campaign is in bringing traffic. I'm going to a book signing on Memorial Day and I plan to hand out as many things as I can, and then I'll also be leaving bookmarks in as many shops, bookstores, and other places as possible. The other thing I did was make sure the bookmarks took people to my website, not the campaign site, so that after the campaign is over I can simply change the landing page to feature something new and still gain benefit out of that traffic.

Gleam Giveaway - I'm going to run a custom giveaway, also during the second half of my campaign. I'll be giving away a $50 dollar gift card, some custom The Everett Exorcism T-Shirts, and a paperback set of my World on Fire series. Altogether the prizes cost about $130 dollars, and the giveaway serves multiple purposes. I have a lot of entry options to help promote my books and brand, and one of the main options is to check out my book on Kindle Scout. This helps because I can drive people to the giveaway itself to reach an audience my normal promotions might not hit. It is also the feature of my second newsletter (so the first drives people to my campaign directly, the second drives people to the giveaway to hopefully catch the people I missed the first time around).

Summer Solstice - This was the exact opposite of the IF giveaway, because rather than scheduling it around the campaign, I scheduled to campaign to overlap with it. I put together several anthologies, and this will be the third one in a series of them. The Solstice is June 20th, and the book will be launched to begin heavily promoting that day. Much like the IF giveaway, the hope is to catch drive-by readers who come for the anthology and would like to support me. This one is incredibly difficult to put together and requires a lot of time and effort, and I do it to help cross-promote with a lot of friends and great writers from the Kindle Press World.

Basically, my hope is that I can drive a lot of traffic to my website for various purposes, and then customize the content on my website to unobtrusively funnel people to my campaign to check it out, too. The nice thing is I'll be able to track a lot of the results to see how well the various efforts performed.

My initial guess is that the drive-by options will be too much work/time expense for most people to put together, but I still felt it was necessary to mention them and hopefully help people think of ways to create their own drive-by promotions. It helps you practice funneling and website design as much as anything, and then when you try to do similar things to help promote real sales the experience is invaluable.

The other benefit of this is they don't usually cost money. It's more work, but if your checkbook is the problem and not time than these can be invaluable ways to save money while still bringing people to your campaign!

Results

So far, I have been getting over 200 page views per day, with the number running closer to 300 and peaking at about 420. As far as advertising goes, Facebook has been generating the strongest results, with twitter, google, and stumbleupon just behind it. Bing has been slow, but staying cheap, but reddit, pinterest, and bookbub have been somewhat floundering in results with clicks costing far too much to be worthwhile. I'm ramping those ones down and focusing my efforts in the routes with the strongest results.

My larger advertisements are also ramping up. My giveaway went live on Wednesday and my solo email went live Thursday of this past week (I have another one planned later in the month for the giveaway feature). I still haven't heard back from the service recommended by Tom Swyers so no idea if that one is going to pan out at all (they said contact back within 48 hours and it's been many days).

Upcoming

Next time I'll start reviewing the services I submitted to and giving you all an idea of what works and what doesn't. There were some services I didn't use this time around simply because I already analyzed them in my book and didn't want to spend more money (I'm more interested in trying and reporting on new things than simply getting campaign results).

I'll also post more statistics later on (don't worry!) and let you know how each individual piece performed. Hopefully, with all of the information I gather you'll be able to make your own campaign the perfect one for you!

If you want more in-depth analysis of just how Kindle Scout works and how to set-up a campaign, check out my guidebook. I already broke down things like the hot & trending lists, categories, blurb/cover/excerpt, and many other details that go into the basics of running a campaign.

Other Entries

[vsatips]

A Few Weeks Ago Amazon Announced Their Newest Alexa Based Product…Echo Look

I discovered this when I visited Amazon to reorder some vitamins…which I forgot to order btw. Because once I arrived I saw this:

Since I’m a huge fan of Alexa virtual assistant and I love fashion I got a little sidetracked. ‘But, no’ I thought, ‘who needs a camera powered by Alexa voice recognition to take my picture?’ I read on anyway and watched Amazon’s video. The video made some compelling arguments for why I need Echo Look. So I checked out the price….$200 and decided I’d ask for it for my birthday.

Amazon’s Video Introducing Echo Look

I explain more about why I decided I really need it a little later. But first, I need to explain why I think this product will be HUGE!

Echo Look’s Primary Function is to Take Selfies

Let’s have a show of hands…who predicted selfies would become a world wide phenomenon. I know I didn’t! In fact I’m still truly puzzled about how and why selfies became such a social epidemic.

But they did!

In case it’s not obvious to you, I’m not a huge fan of selfies. That may be in part because I’ve never really mastered taking them. All I’ve mastered is the ‘looking in the mirror’ method shown below…usually taken with an iPad

Above:  Me trying to take selfies as I pack for a trip.

I know I should master taking selfies, because it couldn’t possibly be that hard. After all, everyone you see from kids to grandmas are taking them…and most people know how to take them without using their bathroom mirror! How hard could it be? But apparently it is pretty hard for someone who’s completely oblivious concerning what their best angle to be shot from is, as well as how to make those sexy facial expressions which make you look thinnner and glamorous all at once.

It’s exactly because selfies have exploded onto the world scene that I predict the new Echo Look will become huge! Ironically, selfies aren’t even the new Look’s primary purpose.

Above:  Kim Kardashian’s advice on cropping to perfection

Kim Kardashian’s Guide to Taking the Perfect Selfie (Marie Claire)

Kim Kardashian is known as ‘queen’ of the selfie. Interviewers frequently ask her how she does it. How does she take such amazing selfies?  Marie Claire included her answers in a recent article which I made into a PDF you can download .  

Echo Look Will Provide User’s with a Photographic Journal of all Their Outfits. That in and of itself is pretty cool for clothing obsessed women like me. Yet even that’s not it’s primary purpose!

Echo Look’s primary purpose is to provide women (and impliedly girls who I suspect may end up being the most prolific user demographic for Look) with fashion advice! It’s unclear exactly what form this advice will take. It could be Amazon Echo software but there appears to be a human component to. This, for my purposes, isn’t the biggest selling feature.

Teens and young women I think are the target demographic for Echo Look.

Because frankly, fashion advice isn’t something I really need or want. I don’t want to sound arrogant…but I’m pretty confident that I know what looks good on me and what doesn’t. I’m also pretty confident in my ability to pick out the correct attire for any given situation…but I’m not the norm. The only reason I’ve arrived at my level of confidence is because I went to school for fashion design. Which hopefully explains my clothing obsession too.

Many women don’t share my confidence however. Many more don’t even know what looks good on them, because in general, that’s not an easy thing to figure out. I know, because I’m not great at helping other people figure that out either…it’s actually much harder than it looks. I’ve just been lucky because I’ve had years of concentrated practice with myself while in school. Unfortunately I’ve had much less experience with other people’s body types. I can tell when something does look good on someone else…but getting them to that point is difficult for me.

So, an Amazon Echo function that offers fashion advice to people 24/7 in the comfort of their own homes has the potential to be pure genius! Which is another reason I predict that Echo Look will be huge! Also, I think that this concept leaves room for future development. In my mind…the sky’s the limit. For example, how many years has the concept of virtual dressing rooms been kicked around…yet you never really hear of it taking off. With something like Alexa Echo home integration however, I think it’s not only possible but quite probable.

Below:  Part of my fascination with Echo Look is the ‘hand’s free’ capability.

More About Why I’m In Love With the Concept of Echo Look

Every time we travel I spend inordinate amounts of time figuring out what outfits I should bring. First I have to figure out what fits me, because as every woman knows, we generally have at least 2 if not 3 entirely different wardrobes based upon our current weight. I call mine my skinny, medium or fat clothes. Once I have a basic idea of which of those categories might fit me then I have to try everything on with a bunch of different options to decide which combinations look best. Last I have to find the exact right accessories to enhance each ensemble.

After I have about twice as many outfits as is practical I need to start thinning things out because I won’t have enough room (or really my bags won’t meet the pairline’s weight requirements) for everything I’d like to bring. For some reason this thinning out part is the absolute hardest for me. I keep thinking to myself…what if it’s cold…what if I run out of X types of clothing…what if, god forbid, I need to actually shop while I’m there! Not that I don’t love shopping…I do…sort of…but not under pressure and not when I desperately need one thing because that’s when I can never find that one thing.

It’s at this stage that Echo Look could really help me out. As part of the thinning process I take selfies, I guess you’d call them, so I can remember what’s supposed to go with what. I really think that Echo Look could be a huge time saver for me with this part!

The idea that I could just tell Alexa to take my picture and then turn around and take it again from the back, and have all those photos nicely stored and available at a moments notice is fantastic!

Below:  I guess you’d call my pre-trip packing photos ‘selfies’

Why I Can’t Ask for Echo Look as My Birthday Present

I was pretty shocked when I realized that I couldn’t actually buy Echo Look yet. That’s because Amazon appears to be beta testing it first. They are only sending invitations to Prime members who request them…but requesting an invite doesn’t appear to guarantee that you’ll receive one. I did request one and received this in an email shortly afterwards:

The email I received from Amazon indicating they’d received my request for an invitation.

After a few weeks of waiting and further research to see if anyone has been invited to buy Echo Look yet…I found nothing online on the topic. If people are receiving invitations no one is talking about it. So I devised a method to contact the Echo department.

My Search for Inside Information About Echo Look

I had to call Amazon customer service about an unrelated matter. Since we have a new distribution center near us most of our Amazon orders are now delivered by the Amazon Logistics department. This is both good and bad. Oftentimes we now can get next day deliveries and sometimes even same day deliveries. But finding those deliveries can be challenging! The new Logistics team leaves packages anywhere and everywhere but at our door…and they never ring the doorbell first. So this was my 3rd time calling them to complain about finding packages in weird places that were soaking wet because they leave them in the rain without first placing them into a plastic bag. It can be challenging finding Amazon’s Customer Service phone number so here’s the one that always works for me.

Calling Amazon Customer Service – Amazon Logistics – Echo Support

The Amazon Customer Service Phone Number I Use

(866) 216-1072

If you Google it, Google now shows you a different number in the first search result

Google Search Result:   (888)289-4331

I always had to call Customer Service 1st and explain my problem before being routed to Amazon Logistics so the 3rd time I called I remembered to ask if Logistics has a separate number that I could call directly and they do.

Amazon Logistics Phone Number (877) 252-2701 

The First Incorrect Inside Information I Was Given

The Logistic’s person I talked to was chatty so I asked her about Echo Look. She told me that everyone there is really excited about it but that no one really knows anything more about it than the general public. She said that the Logistics team was usually kept in the dark until after products were launched. But she seemed eager to want to help me out. So using Amazon’s internal computer network she figured out that in order to be invited to buy Echo Look you first needed to pre-order it.

I was beyond thrilled with that news! It explained why I hadn’t received my invite!

After hanging up I immediately went back to the webpage introducing Echo Look and tried really hard to find anywhere I’d missed about how I could pre-order it. Sadly, there was nothing…I couldn’t find any information on how to place a pre-order.

Above:  You have to admit, Echo Look’s design is pretty great too.

A Few Tricks for Calling Echo Support (877) 375-9365

At least I’d remembered to ask for Echo Support’s direct phone number. That ended up being a good thing because that number is much harder to find. Furthermore I discovered that once I did find it, it’s not very easy call and reach a live person either.

When you call (877) 375-9365 the phone doesn’t even ring…you’re immediately greeted with a robotic sounding message stating that it needs to determine whether or not you’re really a human. It was more than a little jarring to immediately hear this robotic voice before the phone has even rung. Then, after I listened to the message there was nothing but silence afterwards. It took me three calls before I finally figured out that I needed to say “I’m human.” There were few more moments of silence leading me to think that saying I was human wasn’t the solution, but then finally I heard the sound of a ringing phone faintly in the distance it seemed but then I was connected to a real live support person!

The woman I spoke to was also very nice and as eager to help as the Logistic’s employee, but she told me, somewhat sadly, that she really couldn’t enlighten me much more than the Logistic’s person had.

However we continued talking for a few minutes and it turned out she did have access to more information.

In the final analysis calling Echo Support did reveal 3 things that I hadn’t known before:

First, I was told that the prior customer service person was correct about needing to place a pre-order but her timing was off. She said you do that only after you’ve been invited. She said that was the only time that pre-ordering was possible and that preorders were placed from a link supplied in the invitation.

The 2nd thing I learned was that there have been some invitations already extended. But she didn’t know how many or what the future held for any more of them. She said generally there isn’t any consistent pattern to how these might unfold. But she also didn’t think they were looking for specific traits but rather that the selection process was a fairly random one.

Last, she offered to send me some additional information I might not have seen or have had access to by email.

I received her email shortly after we hung up. I’ve copied the most interesting parts below:

Email from Echo Support

As we discussed, the procedure to select the candidates is random, however you can always request the invitation to be on the wait list, Amazon will send you an email if selected or not selected; if you got chosen into the email you can see the link to pre-order the device.

Also, these are some details about the product:

Echo Look is an entirely new category of device – the first artificially intelligent style assistant with Alexa that helps you look your best. Echo Look is a hands-free camera — simply ask Alexa to take a full-length photo or short video of your head-to-toe look, without using a smartphone camera or mirror.

Echo Look mobile app (see above)

In the Echo Look mobile app, you can see your outfit from any angle, get outfit inspired recommendations, easily share your look with close friends on Instagram, Facebook, via text and other social networks and use Style Check for an ‘on-the-spot second opinion’ on your look.

Alexa Integration

As part of the Echo device family, both Amazon Echo and Echo Look have access to the Alexa Voice Service and use far-field voice technology to hear your voice when you say the wake word (for example, “Alexa”). Use the wake word with Echo Look to play music, control smart home devices, and hear information, news, sports scores, weather, and more.

What is in the box?

Echo Look device

Echo Look screw-on base

Power adapter 21W with 7.9 ft. cable

Mounting kit: wall plate, screws, anchors, and instructions

Quick Start Guide

Things to Try card

I hope this solution works for you, however if you need further assistance or want to know more about Alexa please feel free to reach us directly via phone call through this link:

Visit Amazon’s Webpage That Announces Echo Look

Here’s a link to Amazon’s Echo Look Webpage Where You Can Request Your Invitation to Echo Look

Amazon’s Information About Echo Look

The following is taken pretty much verbatim from Amazon’s webpage…in case you’re not inclined to actually visit it yourself.

Introducing Echo Look—everything you love about Alexa, and now she can help you look your best

With Echo Look, you can take full-length photos of your daily look using just your voice. The built-in LED lighting and depth-sensing camera let you blur the background to make your outfits pop, giving you clean, shareable photos. Get a live view in the Echo Look app or ask Alexa to take a short video so you can see yourself from every angle. View recommendations based on your daily look and use Style Check for a second opinion on what looks best. And, because Alexa is built in the cloud, she’s always getting smarter—and so will Echo Look.

Features & Functions

Take full-length photos or short videos so you can see a 360-degree view of your outfit. Use the app to create a personal lookbook, browse your outfits, and use computer vision-based background blur to make your outfits pop.

Using just your voice, easily take full-length photos and short videos with a hands-free camera that includes built-in LED lighting, depth-sensing camera, and computer vision-based background blur.

See yourself from every angle with the companion app. Build a personal lookbook and share your photos.

Get a second opinion on which outfit looks best with Style Check, a new service that combines machine learning algorithms with advice from fashion specialists Echo Look helps you discover new brands and styles inspired by your lookbook.

Ask Alexa to read the news and audiobooks, set alarms, get traffic and weather updates, control smart home devices, play music, and more.

Always getting smarter and adding new features, plus thousands of skills like Starbucks, Fitbit, NPR, and more.

This gives me the idea that maybe people would end up getting more than one Echo Look

Privacy Concerns About Echo Look

Rather than reinvent the wheel I’m just going to mention the fact that Echo Look presents huge privacy concerns any way you look at it, and provide links to the best coverage of this topic that I’ve found so far. Privacy concerns range from the simple matter of IoT devices generally having ZERO security to Alexa’s ‘always on and always recording’ utility…for sure privacy is a huge worry!

Setting privacy matters aside for one moment, here’s the thing…I still really want it! I think that if I want it this much, even though I believe I’m more sensitized to this issue than most people would be and that I really do fully understand all of the risks, I’m certain that many, many more people will want it too and that they won’t give privacy issues a second thought.

Public Reactions So Far

While there have been a ton of articles published about Echo Look…pretty much any and all online tech publishers have jumped on this story…very little has appeared that gauges responses of the general public so far. The most vocal group are members of meh.com…which appears to be a millennial Facebook alternative…oh, and they sell junk too. Below are some screenshots I took of user comments there.

I agree with the one person who wrote that this will probably be huge because they don’t think it will be…but obviously not for the same reason!

The only other real opinion piece I was able to uncover is this very short BBC news article that states ‘so far the reactions are mixed.’

What the Big Tech Publishers Think About Echo Look

Reactions here have been almost universally negative…because of Privacy concerns. Two of the best articles along those lines are:

Wired’s Amazon’s ‘Echo Look’ Could Snoop a lot More Than Just Your Clothes

The Verge’s Amazon’s Echo Look is a Minefield of Privacy Concerns

One other article which on the face of it appears to be really negative based upon it’s title ‘The Echo Look is Amazon’s Trojan Horse‘ by Backchannel, really isn’t. In it they really offer some pretty optimistic insights I think, and predict a multitude of unanticipated uses will quite possible quickly follow Echo Look’s release.

I was pleasantly surprised to read this last article which came out a few days after all of the negative and cautionary ones did. It was only one which is really positive about matter’s of privacy. Computerworld’s How ‘Amazon Echo Look Will Improve Privacy This one article alone goes a very lone way towards dispelling any of the privacy concerns stated by all of the others.

Not only that, but Computerworld’s prediction agrees with my own…they predict that Echo Look will be huge!

Conclusion

One last reason I believe Echo Look is destined for greatness is because it’s Amazon. Not that many people are aware of Amazon’s position in the fashion industry…and I’m no expert. Even though we generally don’t order something online in our household unless Amazon carries it…because any other site would be too much effort apparently…I almost never order clothing from them. Socks and underwear…yes…but actual clothing…no. But wait…I really do!

It just dawned on me that one of my favorite online vendors for clothing is Zappos. If you don’t buy clothing from Zappos yet, you don’t know what you’re missing! You get free shipping both ways and 365 days to decide if you want to keep something! Literally no other clothing merchandiser in the world offers such lenient purchasing policies! And guess what…Amazon owns Zappos!

So to wrap things up here, while I’ve yet to receive my own invitation, I still think that Echo Look will, in all likelihood be ‘the next big thing’ if only for the reason that ‘selfie challenged’ baby boomers like myself desperately need it!

My Previously Undisclosed Selfie Album

Btw, I never publish pics of myself, and in fact have procrastinated about writing one very important post for over a year now because of my fear of this…so I’m biting the bullet and sharing this album of my selfies in the hopes that I can now get on with writing that very important post. If you’re interested it’s about how I went from long brown hair to short and grey (really white) in just 1 year’s time pretty painlessly. And yes, I do realize that my long procrastinated about post may not sound very important, but trust me when I tell you that it really, really is.

Why? Because a lot of women struggle with how to stop dyeing their hair and make the transition to grey without looking like a freak for the few years time it usually takes for their to completely grey grow out. Often this transition is harder for people with brown or red hair. Since grey hair is trending right now, and it’s so fashionable to sport grey…I need to publish it before these circumstances change.

The selfie album below is comprised of some of the photos I took to document my transition. The ones I’m sharing here represent only the best ones taken over roughly the span of one year. I know that they are pretty pathetic, which illustrates how beneficial Echo Look could have been, had it been available to me at the time I took these.

Below:  Part of my ‘Going Grey’ documentation.

Question for My Readers

There’s one more thing I need to do before I overwhelm you with ‘additional resource links.’ I have one important question for my readers. Do you think if I sent this post to the Amazon Echo department that then they’d send me an invitation? As I mentioned above, in talking to them they explained that they aren’t privy to this secret selection process either. Because it’s not for sale yet, Echo Look is outside the realm of their department currently. They were unclear who actually does have jurisdiction over beta testing…but they seemed to think it was occurring currently. So please leave me a comment if you have an opinion on this…especially if you have any knowledge about the inner workings of the beta selection process…I’d be forever grateful.

Comments

Here’s where you can leave your comments for me…anonymously or not…you get to decide 🙂

Comment Form

contact-formcontact-field label=’Name or Nickname if you don%26#039;t want your real name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’//contact-form

Additional Resources

Highlights of the World’s Obsession with Selfies

(In Reverse Chronological Order)

2017 Current Selfie Trends

Astronaut selfies

Wired’s recent article ‘Worker’s Who Snap Selfies Dangling from Skyscrapers’

eNews online maintains 10 celebrity selfie photo galleries with titles like…Lady Gaga’s Strangest Selfies, and Best Celeb Hewlthies

Celebrities sharing their breastfeeding selfies…are being called brelfies

2016

2016 Mother’s Day Selfies at Wichita Eagle New’s website

2015

In 2015 more people were killed taking selfies than by shark attacks.

Sarasota Herald Tribune 2015 The Year of the Selfie photo gallery of politicians taking selfies

2014

In 2014 a trend caught on in art museums around the world of transforming famous works of art into selfies

2013

Huffington Post made a great infographic on selfies in 2013

In 2013 Mashable called selfies ‘the social-media era’s most loved (and loathed) mode of photographic self-expression.’

In 2013 CNN reported that Oxford Dictionary named Selfie the word of the year.

Curiosity the Mar’s Rover’s Selfie in 2012

2012

In 2012 Time Magazine Ranked ‘Selfie’ #9 in It’s Top 10 Buzzwords

While personally I couldn’t watch the video ‘How Curiosty Took a Selfie‘ I found in a 2012 volume of National Geographic Magazine…I did read the story. Curiosity, the Mar’s Rover pictured above, probably had no idea of the year-long planning effort it took to orchestrate making that selfie a huge success.

2011

January 2011 was when Mashable reported that the first #selfie hashtag was used on Instagram.

2010

On June 30, 2010 Mashable launched Social Media Day

Echo Look May Be Amazon Echo Home’s Next Big Thing…it May Be the World’s Next Big Obsession Too A Few Weeks Ago Amazon Announced Their Newest Alexa Based Product...Echo Look I discovered this when I visited Amazon to reorder some vitamins...which I forgot to order btw.