#is companies giving ~priority support~ to paid users

[35gofbeansprouts]

💭.

[syedimran12345]

TOP 10 LOGO DESIGNING WEBSITES

Hello all are you really looking to create  ready for a cool logo to boost your brand? fortunately, you are not required to spend a bunch or be a specialist in design. Many resources are available that will help you with designing the perfect logo for your business. We'll examine the top ten websites for logo design in this post. They offer an endless number of options, simple tools, and for creating a logo." Now let's get started and discover which one best suits your brand!

What is logo designing? 

Logo designing is the process of producing distinct content and creative art forms that identify the business and reflect the unique method of depiction. The logo design process 

a significant role in enhancing a company's reputation and services. Let's take a look at the top ten logo design websites for creating and making it simple.

Why should we be concerned about the logo?

The logo contains certain important characteristics that contribute to business identity 

Brand Identity

Marketing and Advertising

Recognition

Professionalism

Consistency

Overall, logos are essential resources for brands, helping to establish their identity, recognition, confidence, consistency, loyalty, and uniqueness in the marketplace. As a result, it becomes essential for businesses to give priority to logo design and ensure that it correctly represents their brand while simultaneously communicating with their target audience.

1. ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR

In the modern digital era, Adobe Illustrator plays a vital role in the design industry. In simple terms, Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphic software that allows us to make graphic designs illustrator and many artists and content creators from various industries are widely using this software. This designing process can be taken for print and publicity, as well as for product design with the best quality output in digital design. It is a very professional software in multimedia production and it has powerful tools like pen tool and effects.

2. LOGO GARDEN

Here we come with the best and most elegant approach of using logo design software. Logo Garden is a digital world-generated software that will help you construct the logo in an instant and is easy to download. Logo Garden provides the tool to create and modify logo content and it provides an extensive range of style and font collections to help us create a logo for our business. It has many styles of logo and in one click, we can create the best logo. It includes a preview tool that enables us to examine our logo and download it in seconds. It offers reasonable, free, and paid alternatives.

3. HATCHFUL

It’s an online software tool developed by an established e-commerce platform that supports entrepreneurs and small business startups by quickly picking a logo and implementing it into their business. This tool has plenty of alternatives and hundreds of styles for creating logo templates, and the software easily understands our requirements and ideas and generates the most effective outcomes. If you'd like to make your logo idealised, you can utilise the logo builder. It offers different components and styles for logo designs. This free logo generator allows you to design and completely customise your logo in whatever way you like. Select the design, fonts, and colours for your tailored logo.

4. SQUARESPACE

Square Space is a website builder and hosting software. Square space allows you to develop websites without the need for coding or technical expertise. It also allows users to create logos using your ideas and modify them. Square space includes an elegant style which includes a unique frame. It is the best site for developing and personalising logos, and you can create websites with beautiful logo designs.

5. UCRAFT

The Ucraft logo maker app allows you to create your logo in a few minutes. It has an icon section to choose the element for our company and to add the name or text content, you can click the text icon to set the text theme and design to it. You can build with your favourite theme template and save it according to your requirements. The particular benefit of the Ucraft logo maker website is that it quickly offers ideas related to our firm and these stages, as well as Ucraft is a user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder for anyone looking to build a professional and responsive website. Whether you are a small business owner, entrepreneur, artist, blogger, or something in between, it's time to create a website for your brand.

6. WIX LOGO MAKER

In the world of digital designing, content plays an enormous role. As the logo is modest and unique, it draws the attention and attraction to the company. One click to produce a fantastic design. Wix logo website generator plays a vital role in generating the best-themed logo. It offers predefined personal themes and icons to create the design demands. To build the logo most simply, you need to enter the business name and industry services. Design your brand and choose your style for designing the logo requests, and after completing it, you can download it in any format such as jpeg, png, or SVG for better quality and content. The logo has some specific elements To capture the audience's attention, the logo should be simple and elegant. It also communicates the subject of the firm and is versatile and relevant.

7. LOOKA

Dawson Whitfield CEO (LOOKA) spent more than a decade creating hundreds of logos for clients before growing dissatisfied with the back-and-forth adjustments required to complete a design. Knowing that millions of people start businesses each year, he founded Looka (previously Logo Joy) in November 2016 to enable anyone to acquire amazing designs quickly and at an affordable price. This is a beautiful logo designing a website it has over 300 branded designs to create and custom marketing access to building your logo for your business it is also producing the brand kit for the clients and their logo elements and the logo ideas are simply creative and effective we can create a simple logo for our brand identity and once we customise it we can get a preview to check the quality and content and it helps to grow the reach and build our website in the digital world

8.99DESIGNS

99 Design is a service that links businesses and freelancers. 99 Design offers more specialised services, such as logo content. 99 design makes it easy to search its community designers with filters for skilful levels, areas of speciality, and industry specifications, depending on the designers. 99 design allows free sign-up and start freelancing. 99 Design hires professional graphic designers to work on their various projects. They work with many clients and keep their orders, projects, and work in an organised way. They have a large community to work on and have global contact from many higher clients to work with. 99 Design has value content on their company to create content and motivate many.

.LARGE DESIGNER COMMUNITY

.YOUR CHOICE METHOD

.MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE

.EXCELLENT CUSTOMER 

.PROMO CODES

9. DESIGN HILL

Design Hill helps to create a logo template and tailor it to your business. It has a template library of ideas and inspirations that help to shape our brand identity. With logo creation, every business needs an outstanding branding strategy to overcome and boost the growth and broad spectrum of audience and to get the maximum reach and visibility to their company at a single glance or with your presentation visually will give you a unique identity to your company. Design Hill provides better opportunities for creating a logo for our ideas using the most important tool called the brand kit tool. Having everything accessible in one spot allows you to sell your brand management operations and logo creation.

10. CANVA

 is the leading and most used tool. The Canva platform is a free graphic design platform with 11 main basic benefits of generating templates and different editing capabilities. Canva is an easy-to-use online graphic platform that can be easily used by anyone, no matter whether they know the basics of design. It also has a wide range of elements, such as images and design elements, that users can access and use in their designs. It also has a drag-and-drop option to make it quick. It allows you to be user-friendly, making it easy for anyone to create professional-looking graphic designs. You get an extensive range of tools. It helps you create responsiveness of graphics with a broad selection of templates. It is extremely easy to share your design with the world by downloading it. It additionally provides tutorial videos where you can learn and practice. Overall, Canva is a highly recommended tool for everybody who wants to create a professional and quality design.

CONCLUSION

By going through the contents of all 10 of these websites, you can come up with your ideas for exploring these websites. This will help you learn and work on creating a great user experience. It will also help you create a variety of design works based on your preferences and give you the intention to select the websites that best suit your needs.

Article by syed imran

[like-the-cut-of-your-jib]

CEO Statement on Sunday March 25, following cancellation of the first day of racing. Reproduced from the New Zealand Herald article below:

Sir Russell Coutts’ full statement on SailGP Christchurch

SailGP operates all over the world, and no doubt there are marine mammals in the water in all of the locations we race. We’ve never had an incident in 35 events.

Our people and our athletes care deeply about marine conservation. In addition to our normal marine mammal protocols, SailGP has had this extreme marine mammal management plan forced upon us in Lyttelton, demanded by the Department of Conservation, Ecan and Ngāti Wheke for this event. Otherwise, SailGP would not be permitted to race. Other harbour users, including commercial users, are not subject to such protocols.

In particular, Guy Harris, the harbourmaster, has been extremely restrictive in prohibiting practice for our international teams, including this morning where they were desperately seeking his approval to allow them much-needed time on the water. He refused without giving any reasons. Earlier in the week, he also stated to me that because SailGP is a commercial entity, other non-commercial entities and views have priority.

I find it astonishing the amount of influence iwi have over the authorities here in New Zealand. The Department of Conservation would not allow racing in Lyttelton unless SailGP had approval from the iwi. I suspect most New Zealanders don’t realise the full implications of such a stance.

It’s been my experience throughout my long career connected with the ocean that dolphins are extremely intelligent mammals and are inherently aware of boats around them. The Hector’s dolphin is not an endangered species as Otago university professor Liz Slooten recently claimed. That was a lie.

Of course, with any decision like this, there needs to be a balance. For example, one could say that because there is a chance of a road death that we shouldn’t be allowed to drive on the roads. I suspect most people would conclude that such a stance would be far too extreme and not practical. Inherently, as a society we accept an element of risk in our daily lives.

The Department of Conservation, Ecan and Lyttelton Port Company have enforced services upon SailGP - (which is an international company with its main offices in London and New York) - that are not required and not demanded anywhere else in the world, yet are nevertheless imposed as a condition for allowing the races to proceed in Lyttelton. The costs from those unrequired services total approximately $300k. In addition to that, there are 11 so-called expert dolphin observers that are being paid... $600 per day each, plus their expenses in a programme that totals $78,000.

It was demanded that those dolphin observers be on site from Thursday onwards, despite the harbourmaster reducing practice on that day to around 11 minutes of sailing. These are costs and services that SailGP doesn’t face anywhere else in the world. In conducting this event, SailGP alone is spending approximately... $5.5million the local economy.

SailGP distributes live broadcast to 212 territories worldwide and many of those broadcasters including CBS in the US turned the feed off well before the conclusion of the live broadcast window.

There are a lot of considerations in managing an event like this yet almost none of those are not being properly considered by the environmental and harbour authorities here in Christchurch.

The fact is almost all of the people here in Christchurch are incredibly supportive and positive. I’d like to thank all of those people who have made us feel so welcome. I feel sorry for the fans, local businesses and all those people that are so proud of this incredible city that the event has been so disrupted. Let’s hope we finish with some great racing today.

[payrupeshop]

DRIVING GROWTH AND REVENUE: EXPLORING THE BENEFITS OF PAYRUP ESHOP MERCHANT

The expansion of online enterprises in the current digital era has been nothing short of amazing. Businesses are looking for dependable and secure payment solutions to maximize their revenue and enable smooth transactions as more and more customers turn to online shopping. Leading e-commerce platform payRup eShop Merchant has revolutionized the way businesses develop and make money. In this blog post, we'll explore payRup eShop Merchant's advantages and how they might support businesses in thriving in the cutthroat online industry.

Improved client experience

The quality of the client experience that an online business provides is one of the main variables determining its success. Customers' shopping experiences are streamlined and delightful because to payRup eShop Merchant's user-friendly design and intuitive features. Customers can make purchases with confidence thanks to a secure and seamless payment process, which raises consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

Advanced reporting and analytics

Access to correct data and insights are crucial for making wise business decisions. Businesses are given access to sophisticated analytics and reporting capabilities by payRup eShop Merchant, which offers useful data on customer behaviour, purchasing trends, and sales performance. With the use of these insights, businesses may pinpoint trends, improve marketing tactics, and tailor the shopping experience in order to boost growth and profits.

Adaptive, and mobile-friendly design

A sizable amount of internet purchases are made through smartphones and tablets in today's mobile-driven environment. Customers may effortlessly shop from any device thanks to payRup eShop Merchant's responsive and mobile-friendly design. The reach of enterprises is increased by their mobile accessibility, which also creates new opportunities for generating cash.

Dependable security measures

The security of client data and financial transactions is crucial given the increase in online fraud and cyber threats. payRup eShop Merchant places a high priority on security and uses cutting-edge encryption technology to protect sensitive data. Customers are encouraged to make transactions without hesitation as a result of this, which promotes repeat business and increases revenue.

Continuous Integration

For optimal performance, an e-commerce platform must be smoothly integrated with current corporate processes. Businesses may connect their online store to systems for order processing, customer relationship management, and inventory management with the help of payRup eShop Merchant's simple integration options. This streamlined integration streamlines company processes lowers human mistake rates and spurs expansion.

Utilising the appropriate e-commerce platform is essential for businesses looking to spur growth and boost income in the digital world. A wide range of features and advantages offered by payRup eShop Merchant enable businesses to give their customers a seamless and secure buying experience. VISIT US :

Final Thoughts…

Popular bill payment facilities available on PayRup !

PayRup has a host of facilities that can all be paid online using our platform.

Choose to make payments for mobile prepaid , mobile postpaid , dth, electricity, landline bills, piped gas, broadband bills, water bills, e-gift cards purchases, cable tv bills, credit card bills, health insurance purchase, housing society payments, life insurance premium purchases, loan repayments, hospital payments, subscriptions, education fees, fastag payments, LPG gas bills, municipal services and municipal taxes’ payments Payrup has it all covered for our users under one roof.

[dynopatsalesforcetraining]

Everything You Need to Know About Salesforce Admin Training

Salesforce admin training in the modern era can empower both people and organizations while also streamlining processes and improving customer engagement.

Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM platform that supports managing client relationships for companies of all sizes. The setup and upkeep of Salesforce instances, as well as their configuration and personalization to suit the requirements of the organization, are under the purview of Salesforce admins. Naturally, the Salesforce admin training is in high demand and if you’re interested in a career as a Salesforce admin, there are a few things you need to do.

Like:

You must first become familiar with the Salesforce platform. You can accomplish this with the use of several resources, including Salesforce Trailhead, online courses, and instructor-led training.

After you gain the basic knowledge about the Salesforce platform, start preparing yourself for the certification exam for Salesforce admin. The exam is a clear demonstration of your knowledge and skills, and the accreditation is a primary requirement for Salesforce jobs in the Admin domain.

You can prepare for the Salesforce Admin Certification exam using a variety of different techniques, like studying on your own using resources like Trailhead, attending a bootcamp, or taking an online course.

The Importance of Salesforce Admin Training

Skills in Demand: There is a growing need for Salesforce administrators. Salesforce users need qualified specialists who can design, customize, and support the platform as more businesses use it to handle their customer data and procedures. Training in Salesforce admin provides people with the skills and knowledge necessary to address this need.

Career Advancement: Getting your Salesforce administrator certification gives up a world of job possibilities. The skills acquired during training can be used in a variety of businesses, and Salesforce admin roles are well-paid. Salesforce admin training can be a game-changer for anyone trying to further their career or move up the corporate ladder.

Effective CRM Management: To ensure that a company's CRM system runs without a hitch, Salesforce administrators are essential. Training teaches administrators how to tailor Salesforce to meet the particular requirements of their organization, resulting in more effective data administration, simpler procedures, and improved customer experience.

Data Security and Compliance: In today's data-driven world, businesses place a high priority on data security and compliance. Best practices for data security are emphasized in Salesforce admin training, assisting businesses in maintaining the privacy, accuracy, and accessibility of their customer data while adhering to legal requirements.

Troubleshooting and Problem Solving: When problems develop, the first person who owns the responsibility of troubleshooting and problem-solving goes to a Salesforce administrator. Administrators who have received the proper training are better able to identify difficulties, troubleshoot them, and quickly put up workable solutions. As a result, user experience is seamless and downtime is minimized.

Conclusion Salesforce admin training is an investment in your future because it offers a route to get the expected professional growth and equips businesses with the knowledge required to fully utilize Salesforce's advantages. Those with the necessary qualifications—skills and certification—will be in high demand always.

[legionofpotatoes]

I love your art, it is very detailed in a neat way. Was wondering how you got started making it as a source of income? How did you get your first paid work, I'd love some advice on how to get started, if that's ok

Thank you. Of course it's okay, although I doubt I have enough work experience in art to really delve into this. I only went full freelance this year, and had been juggling art as a side hobby until then. If you're still interested in my somewhat narrow perspective, and are okay with my long-winded rambles, I'll give it a shot:

So to answer your question fully, I'll describe how I started and move into personal advice and learnings later on. As a disclaimer, I am a white cishet dude in my late twenties with a moderate cocktail of mental illnesses, but overall I can pass for a functioning adult so a lot I have to say may come laced with privilege I cannot fully identify.

So uhh I began drawing in around 2012? I think? Maybe halfway through 2011? And I mostly made fanart for things I enjoyed and tried to branch out in communities that felt nourishing to my style and interests (I caught a bug for alt posters and enjoyed mainstream movies so I spent a long time on posterspy early on). There were a handful of opportunities that came from there but I could only accept a couple because of primary workplace commitments. Still, it showed that networking in a focused community was definitely a good place to start; I myself have huge trouble committing to social networks and really staying socially active, but I knew it was an essential ingredient in succeeding so I tried to make myself be involved in challenges and art support trains etc. as much as I could.

In parallel to all that I also ran a few third party online stores (redbubble, teepublic) for disposable income and would sometimes, if rarely, hit around $100-150 a month from those sources combined. It is a sort of thing that requires helper accounts on other social media sites to promote it on, because the stores themselves have a huge volume of content that translates into low organic discoverability. Obviously it was never gonna be the way towards financial independence through art, and with community projects being few and far between, I opened private commissions in around uhhh 2017 I think, focusing on offering a few styles I knew I could do well, and sometimes operating in individual fandoms (it was mostly a bioware thing to be frank). But I had to close them back down after a year or so, again because of work-life conflict and how badly it was burning me out. The reason I kept trying to monetize this hobby is because I honestly hated what I did for my main job and wanted to see a way out in some shape or form in the future.

And then in 2020 I had to quit my main job altogether because of *gestures at pandemic* and deal with a mental breakdown from all the wonderful things it did to us and me specifically. I took a short break and decided to give art a shot full-time, and that was around May this year. I was planning on opening up commissions again (and I still am), but a few sudden opportunities that fell in my lap moved that timetable down and now I'm grateful to even be doing something I am getting adequately paid for.

So, with that somewhat limited perspective, here's what I've learned that I'd tell myself if I was just starting out:

1. Being a fan of something can be a shortcut towards effective networking kickoffs. Which are important evidently. If you love something and enjoy making content for it, join communities, settle into a combination of social media websites that feel right for those interests + your body of work + your inner rhythm, and try to play to content discovery as much as your mental health allows you to. Like I said, I know that I myself am incredibly bad at self-motivating to talk to people, so I found that synergizing common interests into fanart - which I enjoyed making anyway - could be a way to give myself a gentle nudge forward and build those bridges leading to community activities, which then net experience and coverage. Sometimes even freelance projects from official avenues. Again; picking the right spaces for what you're after is key. Companies roam twitter, concept art recruiters scour artstation or linkedin etc, instagram can land you private commissions and collab opportunities, so on and so forth. Find your niche and try to kick up dust. However...

2. I do not believe that any social profile can replace a good portfolio. The thing that made an immediate difference to me this year was building a coherent, simple website with my best work front and center and a contact form on top. Every single opportunity I got came from that form (maybe via twitter or instagram initially, but always sealing the decision after going through the website), so I firmly believe that showcasing your skills and portfolio in a visually arresting and user-friendly way is a big priority. I had some reservations about tackling that task but fortunately I had help from a savvy life partner and we slapped it together via wordpress in less than a day. Twitter/whatever social media is prevalent in your target groups is definitely important to get the right eyes on your shit, yes, but those eyes will then look for a second stop where your work and rates are more clear and concise. Simplicity is key imo, I cannot overstate this. So make a cute, simple portfolio!

3. Your skills and rates will grow and change as you do. Let them. Over the years I built several lasting professional relationships from my obsession over mass effect and kept getting opportunities both from bioware and their partner companies, some small and some a bit bigger. A one-off job earlier this year opened an unexpected door to another much larger commitment, and then the work I did there brought some attention from small businesses looking for commercial commissions. These were all incredibly different projects in terms of scope and budget, and I've been tackling them all on a case-by-case basis and slowly coming into my own irt my needs, rates, and SOW thresholds. It is still a work in progress (and a LOT of literal work as well), and very much a thing I struggle with in publicly marketing, which is why I felt a tad underqualified to answer your question in the first place (obviously I did not let that stop me). But what it means for me now is that I am rapidly developing into whatever my "version" of a functioning freelance artist is, and when the conditions for that guy are met, I need to be able to confidently plant myself and operate from that space despite past precedents. Do not let anyone bully you into downpricing what you yourself perceive as legitimate products of personal growth and development. Speaking of which...

4. The shitty challenge of turning envy into inspiration, and paddling outside your comfort zones in full riot gear. it is hard, but realizing that being a miserable, self-hating artist in my early days got me nothing but more misery back was the first real step I took and what truly blew the hinges off. I was just not pleasant to be around, I would badmouth my work all the time, and it all somehow made sense in my broken mind because the validation I sought was purely external and the way I sought it was through eliciting sympathy via self-victimization (even when I made something objectively nice). It all led fucking nowhere. Except perhaps to my own narcissism that I one day managed to identify and start managing. So I started looking at things that made me seethe with envy and calmly deconstruct and figure out their inner workings instead, do studies, and find nuggets of inspiration or discover new ways to approach rendering or building up specific elements. It was an application of analytical diligence to what I wanted to be a purely emotional, esoteric workflow, but that I deep down knew wasn't. Art is a discipline and a skill, and maybe it isn't a straight line, but you gotta find some line to thread nevertheless. Being self-hating was almost an identity I had to break out of, and despite it still being like, 4-5% there? I realize its cause and effect on me, my work, and those around me, so it is with a conscious choice that I gently set it aside when I work and especially when I learn. It won't always stay quiet, but the effort is the difference. Your doors towards accepting true growth and venturing into uncharted territories, art styles, and networking will really open from there. But there's a huge caveat...

5. Toolsets, accessibility, privilege, and all the good things that enable artistic expression and profitability are not given equal to all. you might do all the mental work I mentioned to be ready to rock and roll and learn and draw your way out of anything, but digital art is a fucking money pit that asks almost too much at times. I don't got a good case study here but identifying and ensuring accessibility to the tools you need to do your best work is, like, super important. The ergonomics can improve as you make money and settle into the job, but the basics have to be made available to you. And some of that might not even be under your direct control. That can be anything from pen tablets to software subscriptions to opportunities in hiring sullied by sexism or what have you. You gotta navigate all that through careful networking and money/time management. I don't do a good job of devoting specific slices of time to work/study, and my primary clutch is iPad software which went from a good deal to a nightmare scenario over the years. So all I can say here is do what I didn't; network, invest in a PC/tablet, and pick a software you'll learn that won't burn a hole in your pocket.

6. Be nice to work with? This one is hard to articulate and has landed my own ass in hot water in my early years because of how socially inept I am, but nothing is more worthwhile than being.. like. a good person to work with. That can be anything like meeting deadlines, or sometimes missing them but eloquently articulating why, being generous in early stages, being communicable and not too wordy in your emails, having a good grasp on abstract artistic concepts and how to describe them in simple terms, having a clear, laid out framework of your working rates in commercial and non-commercial projects and sticking to those guns with grace, understanding when you need to say no and saying it well, the works. Just being nice. Sometimes that might mean going headstrong with something you believe in, or simmering down and sucking up to the big man, all relative and adaptive. Part and parcel of the service provision dance that we all have to do in order to make bank. Know your lines here, obviously, and don't like. work for nazis. or uh.. *shudders* exposure. but be nice and empathetic and communicable and word will travel eventually. Skill may be in abundance these days, but good people are most certainly not, and capitalism has a way of bubbling up scarcity. Grim, but uh, them's the breaks.

I know I'm ultimately telling you to like. Have a body of work, make a portfolio, grow, and network. But that's really how I see it for now. And being nice can be a cherry on top that sets you apart, along with the inherent irreplaceable voice of your artwork. I think I rambled on enough, but if there is something specific you need my help with, even if you want to come off anon and talk in private, please feel free.

[aughraseye]

In light of The Dark Crystal’s cancellation, I’d like to take some time to talk about something important; the future of creative storytelling on Netflix.

Though everyone has the right to be sad and angry about this cancellation, no one should be surprised.

Netflix has shown time and time again that they do not value creative storytelling. They do not value completing stories. They do not value the fans who treasure these shows and support their platform.

Sense8, Anne With an E, Santa Clarita Diet, The OA, Tuca and Bertie, and many more - now including The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. All of these Netflix originals were cut short before their story was done.

This has been a very transparent trend in Netflix’s handling of their most original and pioneering shows. They have a clear business plan which DOES NOT prioritize finishing stories, especially ones that are judged poorly by their intentionally ambiguous algorithm.

Their priority as a company is drawing in new subscribers with massive hits (a la Stranger Things) or the mindless mass appeal television that has helped make the cable model both so successful and also so banal. A show has two seasons at the most to fall in line with one of those categories. If it doesn’t...the axe has already been sharpened and hovering.

But why is this? Well first, after two seasons you generally see cast and crew asking for more money. Cancelling a show before this point saves Netflix big bucks. But more importantly from a consumer perspective, this is the amount of time they give a show to draw in those new subscribers. If it can’t do that, once again the axe falls even if it upsets current Neflix users.

And that’s the crux of this issue. Netflix does not care about you. They believe that they can cancel any show you care about and it won’t matter enough to make you cancel, to make any impact on their financial plan, on their metrics.

They have decided that it’s ok to mistreat their subscribers, sacrifice their narrative integrity, and betray the trust of the creators who brought them their stories. It’s abhorrent, and I tell you truthfully that this will not change unless Netflix starts losing money. You care about seeing stories finished? You care about innovative television? You care about watching a new show without constantly worrying that it’s going get axed?

Cancel Netflix.

Show them that this trend is unacceptable and unsustainable. Show them the conviction behind your sadness, your grief. Hit them in the ONLY place that matters, their money, their bottom line.

But wait! I hear you already saying, ‘I don’t want to cancel Netflix! Why can’t The Dark Crystal get a movie like Sense8 or renewed like Tuca and Bertie?’

Well...Because it won’t. At least not with Netflix.

Those are two shows in a loooong list, and Tuca and Bertie wasn’t even renewed by Netflix. It was picked up by another network, something which is not feasible for many Netflix originals due to liscencing agreements.

Look at the other cancelled shows on that list. Anne With an E fans paid for billboards and ads. Sense8 fans spent huge amounts of money on sending things to Netflix before getting the movie that most fans were unsatisfied with anyway.

And don’t get me started on the campaign to save The OA....There were billboards, and gift campaigns, and letter campaigns, and flashmobs, and in person protests, and musicians playing on the street and the subway. There were charity drives, and organized rewatches, and websites built to support the global initiative to save the show. One woman even went on a hunger strike.

And do you think that mattered?

No.

All of these shows are gone. Their stories unfinished. Their fans bitter and sad and burnt out from trying to convince an entertainment conglomerate that all stories have value and deserve to be completed, that creators deserve the chance to see their work finished, instead of misled about its future before being cancelled prematurely.

So I know we are grieving and disappointed that The Dark Crystal won’t continue in this form. But I ask you now to think about how you will feel next time this happens, because it will. How will you feel without the comfort of ongoing comics or book series? How will you react knowing Netflix is taking your money to abandon the stories that matter most to you?

Don’t let it happen. Do something now.

Cancel Netflix.

[ratingtheframe]

Why Armie Hammer’s Scandal Is More Than Kink Shaming

The 34 year old actor has had numerous allegations thrown his way this past month, from cannibalism to an obsession with BDSM. But do these allegations go beyond a widely accepted community of kink lovers and venture into deeply rooted misogyny?

Warning: this article contains mentions of cannibalism and sexual assault. 

For those of you who aren’t aware of Armie Hammer’s presence on screen, you may be scratching your head and wondering what on earth people are talking about, seeing the cannibalism aspect to this all as face value without making the connection between Hammer’s past behaviours and current allegations. The actor who rose to prominence in Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s The Social Network (2013) playing both of the Winklevoss twins, has become quite the favourite amongst the film industry. His role Oliver in Luca Guadagnino’s Call me by your name (2017) has sent Twitter into a permanent frenzy as memes and daily adoration for Chalamet and Hammer’s on screen romance continue to thrive even 4 years after the film's release. As well as Call me your name, Hammer is known for roles in Sorry to Bother You (2018), Rebecca (2020), On the Basis of Sex (2018) and soon to be released, Death on The Nile (2021). He currently has another film due to be released and a Call me by your name sequel in development. Sounds as if he’s got a lot going for him and despite him not being the biggest star to be churned out of Hollywood today, the recognition is still there and with that, he’s still being paid. 

The Allegations

At the beginning of the year, an account emerged under the handle of @houseofeffie, that was created to expose some lurid and unpleasant communication between several women and Armie Hammer. Some of which he had relations with whilst married to his now ex wife Elizabeth Chambers. The nature of these dms are incredibly disturbing and worrying considering that Hammer not only has children but as an actor, spends a proportionate time around women.

These are just a few of the messages that were exposed that led the media to brandish Hammer as a “cannibal”:

Hammer:

 “You are the god damned standard I hold women to in terms of kink and enjoyment of fucking the[n]...”

“I need to drink your blood, why the distance?” “...thinking of holding your heart in my head and controlling when it beats”

“I am 100% a cannibal...I want to eat you....Fuck...that’s scary to admit..”

“I’ve cut the heart out of a living animal before and eaten it while still warm”

“You were the most intense and extreme version [that I’ve ever had]. Raping you on the floor with a knife against you. Everything else seemed boring”

“You [were] crying and screaming, me standing over you.  I felt like a god. I’ve never felt such power or intensity.”

“You just live to obey and be my slave”

“Would you come and be my property till you die? If I wanted to cut off one of your toes and keep it with me in my pocket so I always had a piece of you in my possession?”

“I want to see your brain, your blood, your organs, every part of you… I would definitely bite it...100%”

...O-kay. Lots to unpack here. First and fore mostly, I’d like to address the kink shaming element to all of this. I personally don’t see any harm in kinks, BDSM, pornography, as long as people are consenting and aren’t inflicting unsolicited pain upon people. Therefore, kink shaming and finding Hammer’s taste in sexual preferences isn’t what we are here to discuss. In fact when I first read the allegations, that wasn’t even my initially thought. CNN posted an article two days ago titled “Armie Hammer May Be Disturbed, But Is Shaming Him the Answer?” an opinion based article by Aaron Weaver that explores the allegations and believes Hammer shouldn’t be shamed for his kinks. But this begs the question whether Hammer was actually being shamed? I didn’t see much evidence for this seeing as people were mostly horrified by his taste in human flesh than anything else, a kink that is uncommon in the BDSM community and is only practiced by the most extreme. 

Kinks aside, the most worrying thing about the DMs above is the way in which he views women and their bodies. It’s clear to see that he might not have much respect for women seeing as he proudly states his willingness to cut them up and drink their blood. And funnily enough, the sexual objectification of women’s bodies for one's own sexual pleasure without considering their comfortability is classed as misogyny. A reddit user made an extremely good point on a thread about Hammer’s scandal stating:

“To me, the problem is not that he’s into rough sex, or that he has kinks some people find scary. It’s not about yucking his yum, so to speak. I’m more concerned that he may have ignored safe words and pushed his partners beyond their limits. I feel like the media is focusing so much on his kinks and sexuality as opposed to his ignoring of consent, which is a complete and utter inversion of priorities”

Past Relationships

Another example of Hammer disrespecting the boundaries of women and sexual pleasure would be his past girlfriend Paige Lorenze. Lorenze is a 23 year model and former professional skier who has shone a light on Hammer’s worrying behaviour and his involvement in BDSM activity. The sources of Lorenze’s allegations are highly unreliable, which is one of the most frustrating things about this entire charade. The BBC BRIEFLY covered the fact that Hammer dropped out of his latest film amid the allegations, without fully going into detail about the allegations or the abuse subjected towards his former partners. It just goes to show we’re rubbish at taking abuse seriously enough to the point where people are punished for their wrongdoings. Had a more reliable news source covered this story, then it’d make it more viable to the public. Even though this scandal is in its early days, that doesn’t necessarily mean it's unimportant or should be swept under the rug along with the hundreds of other scandals that Hollywood refuses to expose.

Only the Daily Mail, The Sun and Page Six seem to have gone in depth with the accusations, making the entire story rather murky for the reader. Anyhow, Paige Lorenze said to the Daily Mail that Hammer had carved an ‘A’ above her groin without her consent and licked it whilst it bled. He had also reportedly tied her up and hit her with paddles to fuel his BDSM obsession and sexual desires. Lorenze was quoted saying 'Any man who is fantasizing about crushing bones, eating them, having sex with female limp bodies is a danger to all women'. Hammer insisted to Lorenze that his behaviour was normal, and that there was an entire community of people that carried out the same things he did on her. This is partially correct seeing as the global sex play market is worth over $30 billion, with practices in such activities dating back to the mid 19th century. However, the one thing the BDSM community doesn’t condone is not giving consent, which is where the fine line is drawn in between Hammer’s sexual preferences and the BDSM community. His choice to carve that ‘A’ into Lorenze isn’t backed up by a wider community of people who enjoy a variety of sexual pleasure. Lorenze claims he also DMed nude photos of her being tied up to people without her consent, further perpetuating Hammer’s lack of respect towards people’s boundaries. This is a serious incident, that sees someone with more power (Hammer is 6’5 and Lorenze is 5’6 btw) assert their dominance and by doing so, degrades and harms someone else. We shouldn’t be kink shaming Hammer, but shaming him for thinking that this behaviour is acceptable.

Hammer’s previous relationships can also draw some light into his lack of respect for women. He and his wife Elizabeth Chambers divorced in July 2020 after a decade of marriage. Though it's unknown what triggered the separation, these recent allegations may have something to do with it. Furthermore, two other women have come forward to express their distaste towards Hammer and his questionable fantasies. Entrepreneur and ex-girlfriend of Armie Hammer, Courtney Vucekovich, told Page Six that Hammer wanted to “break [her] rib and barbecue it and eat it”. She also expressed how easy it was for Hammer to charm his way through into getting women, especially young women into doing what he wants through “active manipulation and making you feel like he’s never felt this way about anybody.” Lorenze was also subjected to similar retort after reporting that Hammer too wanted to barbecue one of her ribs because she “didn’t need it”. Writer Jessica Ciencen Henriquez took to twitter last summer after a lunch date with Hammer and expressed that she had blocked him on Instagram. She later went on to tweet this:

“If you are still questioning whether or not those Armie Hammer DMs are real (and they are) maybe you should start questioning why we live in a culture willing to give abusers the benefit of the doubt instead of victims”

Exactly my point here. There���s not much to this scandal other than the fact that several people were hurt and undermined and someone else caused it. Someone who is societally above everyone because of their race, class, status and gender, with a well connected and dominant family support system. 

His background and past 

Hammer comes from a very powerful and wealthy family. Hammer’s great grandfather, Armand Hammer, was the chief executive officer and president of the Occidental Petroleum company founded in 1920. Now if you’re wondering the exact scale of such a company that is still running today, they are the 4th largest oil and gas acquisition in the entire world worth over $100 billion. ONE HUNDRED, BILLION, DOLLARS. Not all actors in Hollywood can say that their great-grandfathers were worth that much, which gives me little hope in seeing Hammer be held accountable for what he’s done. He was also kicked out of UCLA after apparently not “being able to do it”.  Just another rich white male with enough power, malice and money to work his way around any struggle.

Now that we’ve established Hammer’s allegations, it’s worth looking back to see whether the signs of such behaviour were already prevalent in the numerous interviews he partook in over the years. Complex highlighted an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2017, where the host brought up Hammer’s obsession with knots, to which he laughed off and claimed that “knots make sense” that they are a “language” and referenced how man used knots before the wheel. Valid points but ones that are debunked in light of his interest in BDSM. during a 2013 interview with Playboy (appropriate) Hammer expressed that his “sexual appetites changed'' when he married his wife and that hair pulling used to be something he enjoyed but could no longer do now that he was married “even though he wanted to”. This is quite the backwards comment when we’re talking about respecting boundaries and it's clear to see it was only a matter of time before his desires could no longer be repressed.

Since this whole shit storm began to travel Hammer’s way, he has since dropped out of the film The Billion Dollar Spy, which would’ve seen him star alongside Jennifer Lopez. BBC News reported that this move was made as Hammer stated that “I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for four months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic” following the ‘vicious’ online abuse he’s been subjected to. Hammer was again put in the firing line by Grand Cayman law enforcement for lying about a woman provocatively shown in a video was Miss Cayman of the Miss Cayman beauty pageant that’s held on the island. He and the woman were warned for their misconduct and had confirmed the matter is now closed. 

Final Thoughts

There are enough red flags in Hammer’s behaviour to open up a flag store, and I would go as far as to say that this isn’t the end of it. For someone who’s grown up having the majority of things they want, it's easy to want more beyond morality and despite the discomfort of others. Hammer’s move to drop out of his latest film was an attempt to lessen the blow of hate being turned towards him as opposed to the benefit of those he’s hurt. So far, him and his lawyer have denied all allegations and further action hasn’t been taken against the Hollywood star. He’s apologised for the DMs and brandished his actions a “foolish attempt at humour”. 

Wrapping his own behaviour up in humour is an attempt to detract from the severity of the behaviour itself, whilst excusing it, something he can get away with because of his status. 

Major media outlets haven’t done much in even attempting to expose this man’s behaviour and have left it up to unreliable sources to piece together the true persona of Armie Hammer. Though innocent until proven guilty, common sense is widely available to the general public meaning we should be delving into the past a little and comparing it to these allegations. Along with Hammer’s character, family and unnerving Instagram posts of cutting up meat and eating raw steak, there doesn’t seem to be much in the actor’s favour. 

All I would say is as a director, producer, writer or actor, would you feel comfortable in being associated with someone who believes they're a cannibal and marvels at the idea of drinking human blood? Or someone who goes as far to objectify women to the point where they become nothing but sexual fulfilment and pieces of meat? 

That’s all I’ll say and those who do feel comfortable doing such a thing means that Hammer may still have a career at the end of the day. One point to Hollywood, no points to political correctness and respecting women. 

[productrecommendationsapp]

7 Best  Shopify Product Recommendations Apps in 2021

Your online store is getting massive traffic, both paid and organic, but your conversions are still low.  Personalized product recommendations would be the trick that increases your e-commerce store’s return on ads spend ( ROAS).

With the cost of ads continually rising, displaying ‘also bought together’ products on pages like checkout should be a priority when setting up or scaling a Shopify store.

Why are product recommendations important?

This is a two-part question.

Displayed recommendations help customers discover more products and collections available in the store. This gets them closer to finding the right product and with a better deal.

In fact, 52% of shoppers expect brands to give them product recommendations based on their preferences and interests.

The second part -  merchant gets more sales - 26% of all revenues.

There are more benefits of displaying personalized product recommendations on your Shopify store;

Shoppers who clicked a recommendation feature are 2X likely more to return to the site

Online buyers spend an average of 12.9 minutes on a site when they click recommendations vs. 2.9 minutes for those who didn’t

Personalized product recommendations can  reduce cart abandonment by 4.85%

Definitely looks like a tactic you’d like to implement,. right? But to be able to display product recommendations on your Shopify store, you need to install an app.

So we’re listing down the best recommendation apps for Shopify stores here.

Wiser App by Expert Village Media

An AI-based personalized product recommendation for Shopify. The app helps your online store generate more revenue by adding an AI-powered product recommendation widget to the store creating new opportunities to capture shoppers’ attention and convert them.

4.9 ( 378 reviews)

Free to Install

Some of its clients include; Kappa, Perfumania, Andy & Evan, and many more. A Kappa case study indicate that Wiser helped the sportswear brand;

Increase its Average Order Value by 11%

Get a 40% boost in customer engagement

17% increase in sales

Key features for the app

AI frequently bought together.

Inspired by buying pattern - AI-based.

Upsell by Smart Popups

Cart Page recommendations.

Thank you page recommendations.

Recently viewed products.

New arrivals recommendations

Trending products recommendations

Shopify App Link                        

Recommendify

Shopify app helps you increase Average Order Value ( AOV) and recurring revenue with advanced e-commerce personalization. Recommendify company takes pride in providing user-friendly software that boosts merchants’ revenues through personalizing shopper’s journeys in real-time.

4.9 ( 29 reviews)

Starts at 24.95/month

It has generated over $80 million for Shopify merchants using their app and 8.42 million served product recommendations in the last month of June 2021.

Key features for the app

Use AI to recommend products your customers want to buy.

Handpick which products are recommended together.

Email recommendations for opportunities to upsell existing customers.

     Shopify App Link

Product Recommendation Quiz by RevenueHunt

This Shopify app helps drive sales, segment your customers and grow your audience by engaging visitors with a product recommendation quiz on your store. Merchants can leverage customers’ profile data to create more personalized higher return on investment ( ROI) marketing campaigns.

4.8 ( 88 reviews)

Free to Install

According to Demand Metric, interactive content like quizzes achieves 2X higher conversion rates than static content.

Key features for the app

Recommend the right products through shoppable quizzes.

Quizzes that let your collect actionable data from your customers for better segmentation.

Send captured leads to your mailing list or CRM.

Shopify App Link

Visely by Nemo.ai Inc

The Shopify app boosts your sales with personalized in-store and email recommendations  Also, it enhances every step your customer takes on the site in search and category pages with recommendations widgets.

5.0 ( 44 reviews)

Starts at 149/month

A  NIKIN Clothing case study indicates that Visely helped;

Increase their conversion rate by 7.8%

Customer engagement with products grew by 136%

AOV increased by 26%

Key features for the app

Instant search that increases customer engagement.

More than 20 widgets for personalized recommendations.

AI-based personalized category pages

Shopify App Link

Limespot Personalizer

It helps Shopify store owners deliver real-time personalization at scale across their e-commerce store, email, and mobile for upsell & cross-sell offers. Limespot continuously adjusts to hone recommendations for your site and incorporates catalog updates, and changes in your products, collections, and inventory status.

4.8 ( 1479 reviews)

Starts at $10/month

A Bicycle Warehouse case study indicates Limespot personalizer helped them

Decrease customer acquisition cost by 31%

Increase conversions by 3%

Get a Return on Ads Spend ( ROAS) of 22%

Key features for the app

Real-time 1:1 product recommendation.

Experiment & Optimize performance for each customer.

Using real-time segmentation for customer experiences.

Shopify App Link

Also Bought by Codeblackbelt

An award-winning Shopify app for premium cross-sells product recommendations. Its AI has been trained with billions of products and orders, refined and polished for years on many Shopify stores. The app's High Availability scores 99.99% to ensure that it is always helping in your sales.

5.0 ( 671reviews)

Free to Install

35% of Amazon revenue is generated from product recommendations named; ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought.’

Code Black Belt brought the software to Shopify merchants to provide Amazon-like recommendations to online stores powered by Shopify.

Key features for the app

Recommendation product widgets for your store.

AI-based recommendation engine.

Powerful cross-selling that works

Shopify App Link

Simile

The Simile deep learning technology analyzes your product images and automatically delivers relevant recommendations. It helps boost conversion with smart product suggestions displayed on your product pages. and elevate the customer experience with our AI-driven solutions for Shopify stores.

4.9 ( 41 reviews)

Free to Install

With over 71% of consumers get frustrated when the shopping experience is impersonal, a smart recommendation tool like Simile comes in handy.

Key features for the app

Visual search

Smart bundles

Similar upsell

Personalization suite

Shopify App Link

Final Thoughts

We know choosing the right recommendations app for your Shopify store can be an overwhelming task. Our goal here is to help get you closer to making the right choice.

When choosing a Shopify recommendations app for your store, make sure you go through the list of features they offer, the customer support they give, and the reviews they have received from other online stores like you.

[magicalengineershark]

A Step by Step Android App Development Guide for Startups

With time, the usages of the apps are increasing considerably. Right now, there are no such things that we cannot do with the help of an app. From shopping to chatting, we can do all the things with the help of an app. Therefore, you can comprehend the fact that the demand for android app development is increasing.

Thus, if you are planning to come up with an android app for your startup or wondering about how to develop an android app, then look nowhere else. Here, in this article we are providing you with an app development guide that will help you to serve your purpose. So, here are the tips that you must follow if you want your startup to be flourished.

Validate your idea through the android app development

When you are planning to come up with a mobile app, make sure to validate your startup idea. And you have to do it before hiring any android app developer company. You have to be precise about the fact that your app must strike a chord with your target audience.

Craft the wireframe of your app

After validating your startup, the first thing that you have to is to create a wireframe for your app. It will convey your potential customers that you have something in your palate to offer. Thus, what you have to do is to add some details to your product on a wireframing tool or document. Besides, you also have to incorporate the flow of your app and how users are going to navigate it.

Get rid of the features that you don’t need in the first version of the app

Now, it is the time to take a peek on the features, flow, prototype and the other features. It will help you to comprehend the elements that you can exclude from your app. In case, if you are going through any confusion, you can get in touch with the best android app development companies, they will help you to develop an android app for your startup.

It’s time to design your app

Well, most of the startups neglect the looks and design of the app. They always point their focus on the development of the app. However, it is one of the mistakes that they do. If you want to attract the customers, you have to make sure that the design of your app is attractive and user-friendly.

Create a pitch so that you can approach your technical co-founders

Once you are done with the above-written points, you must prepare a pitch for your technical co-founders. You have to make sure that your pitch consists of all the things like the brief about your app, your customers, context, background, wireframe, and the details about monetization.

Now, you can hire the Android app developer

Well, it’s time to hire an app developer. Whenever you are hiring an app developer, be precise that they have a strong designing team. Also, be affirming that the developing team is also up to the mark. Also, before signing any deals with them, check their credibility online. Also, go through the apps that they have created.

What should you do after hiring the developers?

Now that you have hired the developers, you have to take care of the design of the app. Besides, there are some other things that you must consider. So, here are the things that we are talking about.

•         Make sure to register with a developer account on relevant app stores. That app store will help you to sell your app through its platform.

•         Make use of analytic tools. It will help you to monitor the user engagement, number of downloads of your app, and other things. In this way, you will get an insight into the areas that you should improve.

•         When your app goes live on the app store, the first set of your customers are quite significant. Their behavior will give you insights about your app. Thus, it will be helpful to modify your app.

•         Check whether the android app development services that you have hired are providing you with post-development support. It will help you to grow your startup.

Therefore, if you are confused about how to app development, go through these points.

Why is it better to choose Android app services than iOS?

When it comes to startups, android app development is more convenient. They have numerous things to offer. Be it open source availability or easy downloading, android developing an android app is pretty effortless.

Some of the advantages that of developing an android app over iOS apps are:

•         The platforms of the android app are open source platform- Well, in the case of androids, development tools are free. Therefore, you can understand that the development costs are pretty low.

•         Customization methods are flexible- When it comes to the customization method, android apps are pretty flexible. We have already discussed that it is open source. Therefore, there are lots of APIs that you can use to modify the app.

•         Android apps have a better scope of development compared to iOS- If you observe the android market right now, you will acknowledge that it has a better range for growth. Besides, they consist of a better market share.

•         App approvals are faster- Well, it is one of the most significant benefits when it comes to android app development. Compared to iOS, you will get quicker approval of android apps. They give much priority to their app than iOS.

What are the myths that you must ignore?

Whenever you are about to come up with a mobile android app, you may have to come across some myths. Thus, it is imperative to bust those myths. So, here are some myths that you must ignore

Your job is done after the development

Most of the time, we think that our job is done after the development of the app. However, you are wrong in this way. You must know that building an app is the most natural thing in the process. The toughest part of the process is to gather customers. Therefore, don’t consider your work done after developing the app.

Make sure not to ask feedback from your friends and relatives

Well, it is essential to avoid the feedbacks from your relatives and friends. Instead of your friends and relatives, try to gather feedback from the real users. They are the best people to provide you with significant insights. If someone has paid for your app, make sure that their comment is valuable.

So, these are the things that you must acknowledge if you are about to come up with an android app for your startup.

Source: Android App Development

[maritzaerwin]

How to Formulate Your Career Goals and Objectives (+Examples)

Progress results from targeted action. When you are not quite sure where you want to be career-wise, you won’t accomplish much. You need a strong sense of direction to push your career forward and that’s where precise career goals come into play.

By knowing where you want to be in 3-, 5-years, and, more importantly, understanding how you’ll get to that point can help you massively improve your career progression and accelerate job search. So let’s dive in and take a look at why having goals is important and how you can get better at meeting them!

Why You Need to Have Clear Career Goals

Job searching without career goals is like driving without a rearview mirror — you can easily miss some big opportunity heading your way. Setting clear professional goals and objectives can help you stay on track towards your success.

In fact, precise goal setting is one of the four techniques the US military used to increase NAVY SEAL passing rates from 25% to 33%. And their framework also delivers great results in the “civilian” fields.

Goal-setting teaches you to break lofty, intangible dreams into smaller, daily steps that are much easier to accomplish. For instance, rather than stating that you want to get a high-paid IT job, drill down to the specific goals such as a) write or update your resume b) craft a compelling cover letter c) find and review at least 5 job posts this week and so on.

Mental rehearsals help you visualize yourself in succeeding with your stated course of action.

Self-talk. Talk positively to yourself. The military found that doing so helped recruits “override fears” that are generated by the amygdala — a useful part of our brain that helps us deal with anxiety. So pep talk yourself into the right mood whenever you feel like the job blues are about to hit you.

Practice arousal control — getting your excitement or anxiety levels in check with the right breathing and emotional control techniques is key to helping you mitigate the crippling emotions and fears.

This framework is an excellent tool for helping you formalize and push through your day-to-day job search and short-term career goals.

When it comes to long term career goals, you’ll need some extra time to think and strategize about what you want to achieve in life.

Do you want an increase in your earnings, move up the career ladder, or change your occupation entirely? Asking yourself where you would like to be in five or ten years is a good starting point.

Doing so helps you work backward and plan for more short-term, smaller, and more achievable goals with an objective (as per technique above) and slaying them effectively so that you can hit your five or ten-year target.

Also, by having a formalized list of both short-term and long-term career goals, you’ll be able to easily answer the “what are your career goals?” interview question!

So let’s get started with the goal-setting part!

How to Set Your Career Goals

The benefits of setting a career goal give you something to work towards achieving, but it spurs you on to take the necessary steps needed to fulfill your long-term ambitions.

So how do you identify those steps? Here are some pointers, plus career goals examples.

Aim for Smaller Byte-Sized Career Goals

When setting up your career goals, be careful not to bite off more than you can chew. Set yourself smaller goals that can be spread out daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. This way you will not become overwhelmed by trying to achieve too much at once and potentially suffering a career set-back should you fail to meet your goals.

It is very easy to say ‘I want to double my salary in five years’, but achieving that goal can be made much more difficult if you try to take on too much too soon. So rather than writing down that broad idea, consider the following wording instead:

“In five years, I want to break into a management position in my industry that pays $80,000-$100,000 on average. To accomplish that I will need to a) improve my leadership skills by completing an online training course (by December 2020)  b)negotiate more supervisory responsibilities at my current job (starting from Jan 2021) c)get more proactive during group work (whenever the opportunity comes up).”

Having such a detailed formula planned out with achievable goals set at regular intervals is much more effective than merely stating some ‘dreamy’ objective without thinking much about how you’ll accomplish it.

Get Your Priorities Straight

Berkeley Career & People division advises prioritizing all the goals you are setting. As the earlier example shows, your grand career goal will likely involve several interim steps. Prioritizing them helps you focus your attention on what’s really important right now and reduces the overwhelm.

Also, as studies show people who can precisely picture or describe their set goals are 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to achieve them eventually.

So get that pen and paper, jot down your big long-term goal. Then pounder over and add short-term sub-goals that stand for steps you’ll be taking to get there. Here’s an example:

“In 3 years, I’d like to work as a Customer Success Manager for a SaaS startup with 1+ million active monthly users. I’d like to have a salary of $95,000 to $120,000. 

This year, I will maximize my issue resolution rate to 90% and try to raise the Customer Satisfaction Score to 85%.

By May 2021, I will complete a course in product management and apply for a certification from Boston University via edX

During the next year, I will attend at least 5 SaaS startup/Product Management meetups to network. 

Also, by February 2022, I will negotiate a promotion at my current job (from Customer Support Specialist to Customer Support Supervisor).”

Set H.A.R.D Goals

You’ve probably heard about SMART goals a dozen of times already. But the truth is…SMART goals don’t really work for most people. As one study suggests: only 15% of survey respondents agreed that their set SMART goals will help them accomplish something this year.

HARD goal-setting isn’t a new concept either. But it’s a big boon is that it helps you set more ruthless and refined goals — ones that are both challenging and delightful to achieve.

HARD stands for:

H — Heartfelt: Can you create an emotional attachment to the set goal? In three adjectives, describe what makes you want this. Your motivation can be intrinsic, extrinsic, or personal.

A — Animated: Can you visualize your goal? In great detail, describe exactly where you want to be and what do you want to do in 3-,5-,10-years. Try to paint the best picture you can.

 R — Required: What’s required of you to get to where you want to be? Set deadlines for yourself. What do you want to get done in 90 days? In the next 30 days? What can you accomplish today?

D — Difficult. What are the possible stumbling blocks on your way to the top? Do you need extra skills, training, credential, confidence? What difficulties will you need to overcome to achieve your outcome?

Research shows that people who use the HARD goal-setting technique end up feeling up to 75% more fulfilled than people using weaker frameworks. So give yourself a challenge, OK?

Several More Career Goals Statement Examples To Swipe

If you need some more inspiration, think about your career goals from either of the following perspectives:

Level up your skills

Improve your in-person networking skills

Get better at networking on LinkedIn

Boost your performance metrics

Get a new degree or extra certifications

Obtain a new license

Speak at an industry event

Change jobs or career fields

Negotiate a promotion

Break into management/executive roles

Improve your personal brand

Find a new weekend job

Launch a side-hustle

Start a business

By knowing what direction and steps you need to take in life over the foreseeable future will keep you ahead of the curve. Setting career goals will prevent you from going forward in an aimless direction and will make you stop and think carefully before taking up opportunities that are not quite right for your long-term goals.

How to Create Winning Career Objectives

While career goals are rather ‘personal’, a career objective (also known as resume objective) is a succinct statement atop of your resume explaining what you want to get from the job and what you are bringing to the table.

A career objective should align with your career goals. When these two don’t match, you can easily get derailed from your selected career pass and settle for opportunities that don’t quite tick all the boxes.

We wrote a separate big guide on writing great resume objectives with some snappy examples, so be sure to check it out. Here’s we’ll just recap some key best practices:

Maintain a positive, confident tone. Speak about what you want to achieve, rather than what you’d want to avoid.

Customize your career objectives to each role to make a positive impression with a potential employer.

Keep it short. A good career objective does not need to incorporate all your goals. It should not be more than 2-3 short sentences long.

It should be about “them”, not “you”. Don’t just say what you want from this job. Indicate how you can help the company.

Here’s a quick career objective statement for a recent graduate, looking for an internship position:

“BA of Management Sunnydale College graduate with strong marketing analysis, social media marketing, and writing skills seeks a full-time internship at Communications/Marketing Department at a SaaS startup”.

Don’t Forget to Create Accountability

Having career goals is one thing, but taking the necessary steps to reach them is another. You may sit and imagine yourself working in your dream job, but unless you actually take those physical steps to reach your goal, a dream is all it will ever be.

That’s why you need to build a strong accountability system to support your goals.

One study suggests that you have a 65% higher chance of completing a goal if you commit to someone. And your success rate rises to 95% if you have regular meetings with the person you’ve committed. While building an accountability tandem with a professional career advisor or mentor can give you the most acceleration, committing to your friend, spouse, or family member can be very beneficial too. They’ll act as your support system and will help you to get going despite possible setbacks.

Further, by becoming accountable for what you do, and remembering to praise yourself once you have finished a set of tasks, you can get great satisfaction from being another step closer to your dream job. This in itself can be extremely motivating and will encourage you to take the next step, then the next step, and so on.

You can also try to use various habit trackers and planning tools to personally track your progress on your small day-to-day goals. Doing so also helps you visualize your progress over time — a helpful and satisfying thing to do!

Wrap Up

Your career goals will remain ephemeral unless you break them down into management chunks, write down the outcomes, and place them on a timeline. By creating and accomplishing small steps one at a time, you will be consistently working towards your end goal, but you will also be more productive and motivated along this path to complete these tasks because you have a firm career goal in mind!

This post has been originally published on September 4, 2017 and has been extensively revised and updated on July 21, 2020.

The post How to Formulate Your Career Goals and Objectives (+Examples) appeared first on Freesumes.com.

How to Formulate Your Career Goals and Objectives (+Examples) published first on https://skillsireweb.tumblr.com/

[ngkio]

Introduction of NGK Block Chain

USA International Covenant INC acquired blockchain technology department in 2018

Started research and development of NGK.IO block chain

NGK.IO block chain is a block governance block chain, which allows economic equity certificates to be chained

You can issue securities and tokens through the NGK.IO block chain (TokenUSA )

  NGK Block Chain is a block chain based on the underlying technology of the blockchain. It provides the value issuance of rights and interests for enterprises and individuals. Through a decentralized structure, the real economy is connected to the blockchain to create an application ecosystem. The NGK.IO block chain realizes economy The direct conversion of value allows all digital currency enthusiasts to participate in the ecological construction of the government and achieve the goal of profitability. NGK will provide an open network for everyone to choose freely, and the construction of the underlying technology of the block chain will be on the chain All of the communiqués endow a strong transaction throughput and secure storage environment. In the ecology of NGK.IO, all communicator developers and communicator enthusiasts can effectively participate in the construction system of the block chain.

  PBFT+DPOSS consensus mechanism

The NGK.IO block chain is distributed with 21 super nodes, and each super node is entrusted to prove the rights and interests. The NGK.IO block chain entrusts 21 super nodes with responsibilities. The super nodes take turns to generate new blocks and confirm transaction data. The shortest time is only 1 second. It can complete the confirmation of thousands of transaction data. At the same time, the NGK.IO block chain technology code is open source, with a highly decentralized smart contract, and all transactions in the transaction contract cannot be tampered with and rolled back.

 NGK new contract super node voting mechanism

Super node voting + block chain decentralized application execution

The NGK.IO block chain is an open network. Users can develop smart contract DAPP for the underlying technology based on the block chain. At the same time, users can generate new tokens based on the smart contract. The new contract will enter the review period and the contract will be reviewed. During the period, you need to submit the contract and confirm the review content through the official website of NGK. If the contract is detected during the review period, the super node will initiate a vote, and the vote can effectively pull the contract into the review period. The block chain blacklist means that the contract will be abolished in the block chain, and the approved contract will be entered into the whitelist, and no voting decision can be made. At the same time, the developer's contract also needs to have certain qualifications to ensure the block chain Users participate in relatively high-quality projects.

 Super node review content:

Issuance mechanism

Communist background

Proof of equity

  Through 21 super nodes to review whether all new smart contracts have BUG, effective review has played a very good role in the operation of the entire block chain. Politically on the chain, NGK's technical team believes that only contracts with rich underlying and free trading and well-coded codes can be effectively applied in all walks of life.

 NGK.IO block chain governance solution

At the beginning of 2018, the Ethereum network was nearly paralyzed due to a very popular blockchain game. Many users paid ultra-high fuel costs to allow miners to process their own transaction requests in advance to give miners priority packaging. This kind of contract makes the network unable to meet the growing user needs. Bitcoin has also appeared because the contract BUG caused the transaction to point to the address of the hacker. As the application chain, EOS has also caused the return of some block chain transactions because of the new contract BUG. Go, NGK.IO's solution uses super nodes to review contracts to avoid these problems.

   The NGK Tongzheng chain brings together the advantages of the underlying technology of the existing blockchain. In the NGK operating system, developers can build diversified smart contract tokens and diversified smart contract applications, and provide effective algorithm mechanisms through the preparation of smart contracts. , But all of this is based on decentralization. All users will make corresponding judgments on their contracts and entrust 21 super nodes to prove that after the certification, the developer’s contract will get a highest performance support, NGK The .IO block chain system will provide all blockchain ecological developers with powerful base stations with a transaction frequency of more than one million users.

 Development history and planning of block chain

June 2018

Set up a development team, and build the underlying technology prototype

February 2019

Start building smart contracts for two tokens

July 2019

Start the development of the original ecological governance management system

November 2019

Release NGK White Paper 1.0 for Enterprises

February 2020

The original ecological intelligent management system is completed

March 2020

Start to deploy upper-layer applications

May 2020

NGK.IO block chain starts internal beta testing

July 2020

NGK.IO block chain super node starts election

August 2020

The NGK Integrated Management Chain White Paper 2.0 is officially released, and the mainnet conducts block testing

October 2020

NGK Tongzheng Chain Ecosystem officially launched, NGK Chain Application Ecology is fully open

  important events

USA International Covenant INC applies for STO of digital currency

USA International Covenant INC Company regards the eight major enterprise shares held as the background of STO currency issuance

The STO obtained the STO digital financing certificate issued by the trust institution and the SEC (United States Securities and Exchange Commission)

NGK.IO block chain applied for US MSB blockchain license

NGK Chain officially released white paper 2.0 in August 2020

The total amount of NGK is constant at 1 billion

Initial issue price is: 0.0215 USD

The total number of NGK pre-mining for the first time: 60 million

Respectively;

STO crowdfunding: 35 million

Unlocked address spare: 10 million

Community launch plan: 15 million

 STO Crowdfunding Information

Crowdfunding time: 2019.11.05-2020.03.24

Crowdfunding: 35 million NGK

Crowdfunding price: 0.0215 USD

Crowdfunding distribution: foundation 5.85%, ecological construction 20%, developers 30%, angel capital 44.15%

  Super node introduction

All super nodes are built by hardware. Since the election of super nodes has certain competitiveness, then this means that the hardware configuration requirements for each super node are very strict, and at the same time, the contributions within the address in the NGK network are participating. In the election process, it is also regarded as a valid number of votes, so the number of votes obtained by the NGK super node is equal to its own number of votes + the total number of votes cast by each node.

  The role of super nodes

1. Review of new contracts

2. Confirm transaction data

3. The handling of handling fees arising from mortgage

4. Use specific algorithms to generate new blocks

5. Provide computing and bandwidth for the network

 Release mechanism

Constant total: 1 billion

STO pledges to raise 35 million

10 million spare addresses for unlocking

Super community launches 15 million

Every year, 150 million of super node fixed output is released

The release period is 6 years and 98 days

 NGK super node authorization certificate (DPOSS consensus mechanism)

NGK Tongzheng Chain authorizes 21 super nodes to provide proof to generate new blocks

Block speed: 3 Sec/block

Block reward: one block ≈ 14.2694 NGK rewards

   Distribution mechanism

The early block chain construction of Bitcoin and Ethereum was generated by the consensus of miners, and the same is true of NGK. All users participating in the NGK.IO block chain can use USDN to purchase hash power and obtain it by purchasing hash power. Block rewards for super nodes, block rewards are distributed in proportion to holders of computing power. This process does not require users to purchase physical mining machines to achieve the sharing of block generation benefits of super nodes, and each holder of computing power Can participate in community construction, then the builders of community ecology can also obtain corresponding benefits, that is to say, the return of the holder of the hash power is related to the super node, and the holder can get income from the mining pool.

 The common understanding of node computing power is:

Super node = mining pool

Every node = miner

USDN open position = purchase node hashrate

Generate new blocks = release NGK tokens

 All tokens rewarded by the super node will enter the Worker Proposal (Ecological Fund). This is the incentive of the NGK.IO block chain to all ecological builders.

 Super node benefits

Users participating in the hashing node can also use the obtained NGK tokens to vote for super nodes, and the voting will also be used as a way for the block chain to benefit the super nodes. At the same time, the NGK native tokens will be used for all fuels of the block chain and all node transactions The fees incurred and the fees for other developers to create smart contracts on the NGK.IO block chain will be used as the profits of super nodes.

 When a super node does not produce any blocks within 24 hours, then the rights and interests of this super node will be deleted to ensure that the future operation of the entire network will not be affected in any way, which means that the super node must fulfill its obligations and be responsible for generating New blocks, and confirmation of transaction data (bookkeeping) for everyone.

 As users continue to accumulate, in the current consensus algorithm of the entire blockchain, the speed and income of DPOSS super node mining is currently the highest of all block chains, and the revenue allocated to each user node will also be the most Yes, through reasonable incentives, NGK.IO block chain allows all users to actively participate in the construction of NGK.IO block chain ecology, so that the NGK.IO block chain system is in a stage of rapid development.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, December 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across since the October report, although some may be older than that.

I am also missing a lot here, but pared it down somewhat to make more readable. The lead up to the holiday shopping season was a lot crazier than I expected 🙃

Given the time of year, please do not expect another report until January. However, I will do brief posts of important news/blog posts in the interim as needed.

There are going to be big changes to this report coming in 2020. Have any suggestions or feedback?  Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

You are going to need to add Etsy’s tax ID to customs forms on New Zealand orders as of Dec. 1. Etsy’s ID is: 122-669-18.

FTC issues huge fines for selling fake likes & followers on social media, and for posting fake reviews online. “The [likes and followers] case could pave the way for further legal action on the same grounds, using the Devumi case as precedent. Indeed, shortly after the initial finding by the NY Attorney General, Facebook announced that it was moving ahead with legal action against several providers which it had found to be dealing in fake social media engagement.”

Everyone should read this article, if only to learn what not to do: Using “priming” to convert more buyers/users is a crucial marketing tactic.”Priming works by using associations made in our subconscious, and are almost always unnoticeable to the subject.” Example: “During a study, researchers approached customers in an electronics store, who’d entered to buy a new laptop.Half of the customers were asked what their memory needs were, and the other half were asked what their processor needs were...The group who were asked about memory, bought computers with higher memory and the group who were asked about processor speed, bought computers with much higher processor speeds.”

Etsy removed the word “Bugs” from the Bugs forum, & admits they will only will be monitoring it from 9-5 Etsy time (ET) Monday to Friday. They won’t be replying, but expect “hundreds of sellers” to do that job for them, unpaid. If you have an issue, you will now need to email through the Contact page, use the new 24 hour live chat, or phone them. [Note the parts they aren’t mentioning - Support is taking over a week to reply to emails right now, live chat will only be able to help with the simplest of questions (e.g., how do I change my email address?) & it is possible to spend over an hour on hold when you phone. You could spend quite a bit of money on long distance fees, especially if you are in a country that doesn’t have its own phone number, all for something you used to be able to get for free in the forum, sometimes on the same day. This is Etsy’s definition of “major improvements”.]

Check out this proposed US legislation, which wants large internet companies [yes, Etsy fits their definition] to reveal their algorithms & offer visitors a version with no “filter bubble.” You might not like Etsy search now, but I can guarantee it would become impossible if they removed all of the algorithm factors. [This editorial is a bit over the top, but does cover some of the key questions.]

ETSY NEWS

Items have been disappearing from a small number of Etsy searches since July, & Etsy still won’t tell us what is going on. If you discover you are affected, please let me know.

There have been a few threads on Etsy sending threatening emails about shops being below Etsy’s customer service expectations, often for just a few bad feedbacks or cases, which has shocked many long time sellers (even though they have been sending them for years; it appears they have decreased the number of “problems” you need to have to get an email.) Without announcing anything, Etsy released a page of “seller service level standards” that can help explain what they are looking for, namely cases & 1-2 star reviews, as well as the exact formula they use. I started a discussion thread here, & in case Etsy deletes comments in the thread, here is the dashboard showing your score. (Some people cannot make that link work; Etsy says only shops that received a warning can see it.) My blog post is here.

I summarized the 3rd quarter report here, and Etsy summarized it here. The stock market is not happy with management at the moment, with Morgan Stanley this past week stating that they expected Etsy’s 4th quarter to be worse than originally predicted, due to state sales tax laws and Etsy’s reduction in its Google Shopping ad buying. Note Etsy removed the “priority placement” for US free shipping about a week after the 3rd Q report, without any announcement, probably due to the blowback about it reducing first page conversions. (They didn’t announce anything; it just disappeared.)

Cyber Week traffic on Etsy was more than double what they saw on the average summer day.

They did a Q & A thread on the new stats, which wasn’t particularly useful. They admitted they intentionally removed the keyword & other data prior to November 2017 because “older data periods are less comparable to current stats”. [I believe that is code for “we’re too cheap to pay for the storage; investors need their payouts.”] They did finally add YOY comparisons back in a few weeks ago.

Etsy has again changed a few category & attribute options, including more baby stuff.

They did a holiday gift shopping promotion where people could call Etsy & get suggestions for gifts on Nov. 5. All gifts shipped free, so non-free shipping shops were not included. “It could also be a case study for personalization efforts to come from the long-running handmade marketplace.”

You’ve probably already noticed that Convos are now called Messages, but here is the announcement with the details just in case.

Etsy ran an Etsy search critique thread on November 13; the thread wasn't particularly useful, as almost all the staff who do the critiques aren’t experts in search. Basically, they say to use all of your tags, avoid repeating words in tags & titles, have 3-4 short phrases in your title, use commas in your titles (”Buyer research shows that using commas instead of dashes helps titles appear more clean and readable”), offer free shipping, and use all of your photos. The big takeaway for me was - they think we all have unlimited photography budgets, models, and time to do different modelled photos for every listing (including at the beach! LOL), photos of each of our different pieces in progress, photos of us working, & photos of each type of packaging. Needless to say, none of those things are bad if you have gobs of time or the money to pay someone to do all of that. But if you are like me and are a one-person business, live in a small condo, don’t have the strength to take photos all day, don’t have an abundance of people to model when I am taking photos (i.e., people I know have real jobs & aren’t around when I work on photos), and don’t have anyone to take photos of me making things, then this is pretty laughable. I wouldn't even consider doing all of this for my 5 best selling listings, never mind all 430+. YMMV. [The repeated mentions of process photos makes me worry they will be requiring those for everyone at some point …but I am sure I am just being paranoid.] One notable error was telling someone to use “color” (the US spelling) instead of “colour” (the proper English spelling) because the shop’s language settings were US English - Etsy currently treats these both the same, so there is no issue at the moment. Are they trying to give us a hint about something?

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Introducing BERT: Google’s new technology to help organic search process natural language better. This isn’t likely a change you can optimize for, but it should help searchers get more relevant results for complicated queries. “Here is an example of Google showing a more relevant featured snippet for the query “Parking on a hill with no curb”. In the past, a query like this would confuse Google’s systems. Google said, “We placed too much importance on the word “curb” and ignored the word “no”, not understanding how critical that word was to appropriately responding to this query. So we’d return results for parking on a hill with a curb.” Moz’s Whiteborad Friday covered the basics. [warning - some bits are advanced. Just skip those if you need to.] A study said BERT still isn’t very good at understanding “not” and other negatives. The NY Times may be one of the sites that is affected.

If you were disappointed when keyword research tool Keywords Everywhere became a paid tool, a new alternative has been released. Note that Keyword Surfer is still in beta. I’m going to try it for a bit and write up a short report if I think it is worth using. (The traffic estimates are way off, as in almost 10 times too low, for the sites I have info on.)  If you try it, let me know what you think!

While we are on the topic, here’s 13 keyword research errors you don’t want to make. Short takeaways - not every high volume keyword phrase will work for your specific product, don't ignore long tail, and make sure you look at the search results for any keyword before you decide to use it.

Here’s another keyword and topic research tool that compiles questions people search along with a relationship tree so you can see how ideas are connected.

More common SEO problems with ecommerce sites.

If you code your own website, check out the new Google instructions on writing your organic search snippets. Note this is supposedly only about display & not about ranking.

Improve your Instagram traffic with 8 SEO tips for your profile and posts.

Which is better for SEO - Squarespace or WordPress? The results are likely skewed by the fact that “platforms like Wix and Squarespace tend to attract less SEO-savvy people than WordPress.” They agree with what I have been saying for a while: if you know what you're doing, Squarespace sites can rank just fine.

Excellent tips on how good SEO also helps you comply with US disability access laws.

The latest on Google updates - there was apparently one around November 7. This one may have hit affiliate websites more than other types.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article claiming Google manipulated search results to favour its interests & those of its advertisers, including eBay. [The original article is behind a paywall; the link is in that news coverage.] However, many in the SEO community - most of whom are not usually reluctant to criticize Google when they are behaving poorly - feel the article is way off base, & demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge of how Google works. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land & Search Engine Roundtable even did interviews with t WSJ staff for the article, and was amazed at how much they got wrong. “Even a basic understanding of the difference between organic listings (the free search results) and the paid listings (the ads in the search results) eluded them…[Glenn] Gabe told us that not only were his conversations with the paper off-the-record but also that he was misquoted”

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Here’s something I don’t see discussed much: using templates (& other consistent branding) in your social media, blog and website posts.

Content hubs are a very useful way to increase your search engine traffic for a core topic while providing a landing page for social media, ads etc.

Good primer here for beginning social media marketing for your business. You’ll need to do more research depending on your target market and what platform/s you choose, but it is definitely a good overview of getting started.

If you think influencer marketing is right for your business, here are 10 places you can find influencers to work with.

Your email subject lines can change the open rates; here are 19 tips to make them more clickable.

Instagram started testing hiding “likes” on posts in the US as of November 11th, & then announced plans to try it out globally. A study on previous tests showed that there may be some effect on influencer engagement.

Facebook has introduced its own payment system, currently in the US only, for limited situations only at the moment.

Reddit is an often overlooked social media platform to use for business but the traffic is strong, so check out these tips on asking it work for your business. [infographic]

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Pay for online ads (outside of Etsy) but don’t know what negative keywords are? Here’s how to use them with Google.

Hubspot continues their massive rush of “ultimate guides” with everything you wanted to know about Amazon ads.

Facebook now allows you to have different text in the same ads, which can be adjusted for different groups of users.

Amazon is predicted to continue cutting into Google’s online ad dominance through 2021; Google currently has 73% of money spent on online ads in the US.

If you are interested in long term brand building in your advertising, you might be interested in this article, where Adidas admits it was ignoring brand ads & pushing instant returns for too long.

Just in time for the holidays, Google Merchant Center rolled out a bunch of upgrades.

Buying TV ad time is losing popularity; it will be less than 25% of all advertising spend in just a few years, while digital spending is now over 50%.

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Facebook changed how they count page impressions.

Everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Oh, and also everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Which one do you like best? [If you have your own website or freestanding blog and are not using the Console, you probably should be reading both of those. Seriously, just set the darn thing up, then learn how to use it later.]

Also, the Console now features a speed report, and has changed how they send you messages.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Trend alert: many struggling or failed retailers sell clothing. “This sector is saturated with supply and is arguably over-stored.” … “For younger shoppers, as they choose which apparel brands do get their attention, sustainability and other cultural issues are often at the forefront.”

US sellers can now get discounted UPS rates through Shippo.

A bug is keeping suspended Amazon sellers from being reinstated.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Don’t use these common customer service lines. ...“there are studies that support the use of positive language in customer service. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do for a customer, focus on what you can do. No one likes to be told no.”

Another article on the psychology of colour; beware that some of this is a bit simplistic, as there are always exceptions.

Holiday shopping will push further into December this year, with half starting around Cyber Monday (Dec. 2). 62% of “high spenders” (over $2100 spent on the holidays) will shop on their smart phones. 25% of respondents to this survey said they already started shopping in September. It turns out most people want gift cards, among other stats. Nearly half of US shoppers are more likely to shop with companies that are socially responsible. Mobile shopping is expected to beat desktop shopping for the first time this season. And yes, most Americans expect to add to their credit card debt before January, men more than women.

US retail sales fell 0.3% in September; online sales fell the same amount.  

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Trend alert - apparently Generation Z is not big on makeup, and it is affecting large companies’ profits.

Google’s co-founders hand the parent company Alphabet over to the current CEO. They still work for Google and will focus most of their time there.

Google Webmaster spokesperson John Mueller tackles the controversial question - is a hot dog a sandwich? [humour]

[kirankowda]

Google Shopping Campaigns help you advertise and sell your products via Google platforms using their prerequisite formats.

Google Shopping allows enables users to search and compare products directly on a Google platform, depending on their search queries. After you submit your product in the format given by Google, it shows up as a product ad; this small square of online real estate that’s extremely viable to sell products.

Google Ads and its partner tools have stormed the world of eCommerce and retail, not least because they facilitate focus on more crucial parts of running a business and automate frustrating processes that once consumed a lot of time and effort.

What is a Google Shopping ad?

Google Shopping advertisements are based on search terms images, not keywords like standard text ads. This makes them more engaging and convincing, and your website or online store is likely to boost leads and conversions.

Google Shopping ads fall under the category of paid ads and are also generally known as Product Listing Ads, a term that Google once used. They appear across Google’s Search and Shopping platforms and are open for users to view and click on, should they be interested. They’re a crucial advertising channel for eCommerce businesses because appearing in search network results early in the search funnel allows retailers to drive direct conversions and be noticed from the beginning of a buyer’s journey.

A sophisticated Google Shopping plan is a must for marketers and e-retailers looking to make a big splash this year and in future years, because comparison shopping is trending in the consumer world and this tool makes it all the more accessible.

Why do you need Google Shopping Ads for your eCommerce business?

Despite its many benefits, Google Shopping Ads continue to be overlooked by retail players both big and small. In fact, these ads account for only 20% of retail paid search clicks according to Forbes, so the remaining 80% makes a more than viable entryway into driving more conversions. In a nutshell, Shopping Ads generate sales for your eCommerce store. While breaking down the benefits, though, these ones stick out:

Benefit #1: More effective than text ads.

A traditional Google Shopping Ad displays a high-quality product image, a clear headline, and a price tag. Sometimes they may even contain star ratings and reviews. The added visual element instantly attracts a user’s eye, way more effectively than a chunk of text would however well be written it is.

Benefit #2: Links to your product data feeds.

Shopping ads are created with information from your data feed. The automated feature pulls data relating to product headlines and pricing from your feed on Google Merchant Center, which is why it is important that this feed is up to date, complete and accurate. However, this bypasses the process of manually creating shopping ads and adding photographs which, needless to say, is highly time-consuming.

Benefit #3: Increases conversions.

Research has found that marketers who spend more on Google Shopping Ads while looking at it as a viable advertising option tend to see up to 130% higher rates of conversion in comparison to normal shopping ads. This is in part because it’s placed overall organic and traditional PPC ads. The visual content adds to the winning formula because it’s interpreted faster and better by the human brain, unlike plain text which constitutes the rest of the search page.

Benefit #4: Can include additional information.

Google Shopping ads aren’t limited to image and headline; by using extensions, a business can include more relevant information for users. This could boost engagement and drive sales. Examples of these are reviews and special promotion indicators. By making them this customizable, Google essentially allows marketers to maximize the use of minimal ad space.

Benefit #5: Reduced Costs Per Click.

Shopping Ads inevitably lead to better click-through rates. This, in turn, lowers your costs per click, which not only saves ad spend but also gives you more traffic for what you have invested. In the long run, this leads to higher returns on investment (ROI) which means you could invest more and see higher sales.

Benefit #6: Great mobile visibility.

On mobile browsers, traditional PPC ads are only shown two at once. This makes it much harder to secure a spot because it’s valuable and highly competitive. However, Google Shopping Ads get placed by default onto the top. The carousel layout also allows up to 15 search results currently, which means competition isn’t as tight- it all boils down to how relevant your product is to that particular mobile user’s search query.

Benefit #7: Automatic updates.

This is a huge draw of using Google Shopping Ads. Once you’ve set up a product feed on Google Merchant Center, Google Shopping campaign is automatically updated every night to ensure that you’re not bidding on out-of-stock products, broken links or irrelevant search queries. It works the same way with adding products; fresh products are added to the feed within a fixed time frame so there’s no need to manually manage ads.

Benefit #8: Clearer data.

Analytics data for Google Shopping Campaigns are generated based on products, not by product type or ad group. This way you can filter and segment data dimensions based on products or product attributes. This gives you a clearer picture of ad spend and segmenting and also helps to identify what product is selling better, in case you’re looking to optimize it or promote it more. With a little more research, you can also get anonymous data about your competitors’ graphs, to make comparisons and optimizations more fruitful.

How to create perfect Google Shopping Ads for your eCommerce business

Google’s default way is one of the leading ways to set up a Google Shopping Ad. However, it can take some time to get used to navigating around the tool and looking for more information, especially since a working Google Merchant Center account is also a prerequisite. Here’s how to set up the perfect Google Shopping Ad.

Method #1: The default way

Navigate to the menu on the left and click on ‘Campaigns’.

Identify and set your preferences for campaign name, merchant, bidding, campaign priorities, daily budget, and other factors.

To create your first ad group, enter all the required information.

Click on ‘Save’.

To move into creating a new ad-

Choose the right format and fill in the prerequisite information.

Click on ‘Save Ad’.

It’s important to note that your new ad will show up in the ‘Ads’ tab once saved, but it will not be promoted to users until Google reviews and approves it. Depending on the selected format, this process may take a few days.

Method #2: The AdNabu way

While setting up might be simple, understanding the functioning of Google Shopping and Google Ads requires quite a while. If your company has no time or resources but desperately requires this function to support your product feed, you can sign up on AdNabu to get much-needed attention.

You can learn exactly how to use Google Ads and all its features to increase conversions by more than 30%. The company manufactures and monitors multiple Shopping Ad campaigns that will fulfill your company goals and can identify the best-performing campaigns with high ROI from the very start.

To begin a free trial on AdNabu and create the perfect campaign on the go, the process is as follows:

Land on the AdNabu homepage.

Click on the ‘Start Now’ button in the top left corner to begin

Best Practices on creating Google Shopping Ads for your eCommerce store

To launch successful ads and bring in leads and revenue, there are quite a few ‘best practices’ and tips and tricks that you need to tack on to your Google Shopping checklist.

Best Practice #1: Refine your product data feed.

Setting up a Shopping Campaign is near impossible without an accurate data feed on Google Merchant Center. It is also crucial to have a working process by which the marketers can regularly update stocks, pricing, product details, and availability.

Best Practice #2: Make sure your feed matches your website.

The information on your data feed- product name, images, and pricing- need to be harmonious with what’s on your website. If not, it’ll come across as an error or anomaly and Google will automatically stop showing your product ads. You can use Google’s spreadsheets to maintain this or a third-party API if you have too many products that can’t be manually managed.

Best Practice #3: Use keywords in your Shopping Ad titles.

Product titles are key to running a successful Shopping Ad. As irrelevant as keywords are to actually display your ads, they’re very important when crafting product titles; keyword-rich titles that correspond neatly to the search term convey to the user that they’re in the right place. This pushes them to click on the ad and follow through to your landing page.

Best Practice #4: Use high-quality photographs.

Photos with logos, watermarks or on-display pixels will irrevocably be rejected by Google’s strict algorithms. To prevent this from happening and delaying your ad campaigns, use high-resolution images where the product stands alone and against a white or plain background. Nothing should take away from the product being advertised.

Best Practice #5: Start with a smaller data feed.

If you’re just dipping your toes into Google Shopping and ads, then consider beginning with a smaller data feed with only a few products. This way, if it doesn’t work out or isn’t optimized enough, you can pull back the campaign without suffering too much of a loss in ad spend.

Best Practice #6: Organize your product groups.

Segmenting your products into groups is key; consider doing it based on ROI. A good way to start selecting categories is to use your eCommerce store’s navigational category pages. Since you already have your products organized in a way, you can clone that set up in your product groups and ad campaigns as well.

Best Practice #7: Maintain your Quality Score.

Your quality score, which Google assigns to you, is an assessment of the quality of your product advertisements, keywords used and landing pages for your website. The precise metrics used to measure are kept under wraps, but it’s now common knowledge that a quality score can have a major effect on the likelihood of an eCommerce store being picked to display their Shopping Ads against a search term.

Best Practice #8: Use product promotions.

This is an excellent feature that almost always leads to higher conversion rates. If your business is running any special promotions, be sure to tack them on to the promotional text in your shopping ad. Make sure these are relevant and are in sync with what’s being carried out on your website, or else they won’t be displayed.

Best Practice #9: Maintain your landing pages.

Your Google Merchant Center data feed is linked directly to your landing page, which is also the first page your potential customers land on when they click through an interesting Shopping Ad. It’s clear, then, that a clean, accurate landing page is highly important to both bringing in a lead and retaining them as a customer. Ensure that there are no low-quality images, broken links, unnecessary redirects, and out-of-stock products on the main landing page.

Things to look out for while creating Google Shopping Ads for your eCommerce store

Like all tools, Google Shopping takes a while to understand and weave into digital marketing strategies. There are also some facets that firms tend to overlook, realizing they exist only after they have affected their campaigns negatively in one way or another. Consider keeping these pointers in mind when creating Google Shopping Ads and, in general, carrying out your campaign:

Consideration #1: Using negative keywords to your advantage.

To reiterate, keywords aren’t a core factor in the successful implementation of shopping campaigns. However, negative keywords are important when it comes to streamlining your traffic and weeding out irrelevant leads. A negative keyword is a keyword you don’t want to match with; setting those will also give Google perspective on the kind of users to send your way.

Consideration #2: Make sure your prices are accurate.

While Google Shopping Ads can display prices as part of an ad extension, they need to be very accurate to make it through the screening process. This is vital when dealing with foreign currencies so make sure your conversions are correct down to the last decimal.

Consideration #3: Shopping campaigns are country-specific.

Leading on from the previous point, keep in mind that in Google Shopping ads are displayed on a country-specific basis. Therefore, if you’re marketing to different countries, you’ll need more than one ad campaign- one for each country. This also means you’ll need more than one data feed in Google Merchant Center.

Consideration #4: Make sure your URLs work.

Google requires that you specify a destination URL in your Shopping ad. Ensure that these are live, accurate and up-to-date links. Any hint of a 404 error or a dead page link and your ad will not show on search engines because it was disapproved.

Consideration #5: Bids are placed on products, not keywords.

Since Google Shopping Ads are displayed based on the search terms, bidding is done on products or product groups and not on keywords. This gives the marketer a huge amount of control; it lets you set your own bids on individual products or groups depending on how much you’re willing to spend or how fast-selling that product is. This feature comes in handy during sales and discount seasons.

Consideration #6: Ensure the ‘Everything Else’ group works.

Every time you segment products into a group, you’ll find an ‘everything else’ group being created. This is automatically set up a campaign that serves as a catch-all for products that may not fit neatly into the categories or groups you’ve already defined. This way you won’t lose out on traffic even if these products are a little out of the way, because they’re still valuable to a user who’s looking for something like them.

Consideration #7: Use the Search Impression Share metric.

This metric is key in identifying which product group has the potential to grow beyond the rate it’s already at. It will also indicate how well or poorly your product is performing in comparison to others selling similar products.

Consideration #8: Use Smart Shopping Campaigns.

This type of campaign merges standard Shopping ads and display remarketing ad campaigns to expand the reach and maximize conversion rates within the set budget. This elevates your existing standard campaigns but also acts as a safety net to target users who visited your website but didn’t buy anything.

Conclusion:

It’s always useful to keep this checklist handy at all times while setting up, breaking down or re-optimizing Shopping campaigns. It ensures that you’ve hit all the right spots, haven’t left a stone unturned and are well on your way towards increasing ROI while reducing CPC and, in general, getting the most out of your ad spend.

[emergingtechblog-blog]

Big Tech, Big Data, and the Past and Future of the Internet

We take for granted a free and open internet, but we’re paying for it with our data. How did it get this way, and is it too late to go back?

Last year, in a hearing before U.S. Congress, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained how the social media company makes its money. “The business model is running ads. And we use the data that people put into the system in order to make the ads more relevant, which also makes them more valuable.” This is the system which allows us to use Facebook, and many other services on the internet, without paying money. But the price for this is that tech companies now have access to massive amounts of information about our personal lives, and concerns about what they’re doing with that data are growing. New regulations such as the EU’s General Data Protection Act have attempted to ensure that data is only collected with our consent, but there are doubts about how much this will actually change. Tech giants such as Google have argued that the way they currently operate is necessary for them to make money - but how did this model of the internet become so entrenched, and can we do anything about it?

The free and open internet is an idea which became baked into the web during its early development. Although the concept of a network of connected computers originated with U.S. Military research at DARPA, Fred Turner identifies the influence of hippie counter-culture in the development of the internet. Similarly, world wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee envisioned the web as being built on egalitarian principles where anyone could freely share information with anyone else. But if internet services remained free to use, that meant that companies had to find another way to profit: advertising.

Ethan Zuckerman, the remorseful inventor of the pop-up ad, theorises that advertising became solidified as the default revenue stream for the internet in the late 1990s. In trying to sell the value of early web-platform Tripod to advertisers, he invented a JavaScript code which could open a new browser window with an ad in it. At first they were very successful, but the rate at which people actually clicked on these ads quickly dropped off, making them next to worthless. Nonetheless, Zuckerman believes that the pop-ups allowed the free, ad-supported model of the internet to survive long enough for society to implicity agree that the web should always be free to use. In turn, companies figured out how to monetise user data and target their ads, so they could sell people things they actually wanted to buy. Hence the rise of Big Data - as security expert Bruce Schneier says, “surveillance is the business model of the internet”.

One of the major issues with this model is that corporate tech companies have historically had very little government oversight. The freedom of the internet has always been tied to libertarian values - in 1996, political activist John Perry Barlow declared the ‘independence’ of the web from traditional governance. But arguably the main reason is that the internet has developed so rapidly it has outstripped the ability of government regulators to keep up with it. Sheila Jasanoff has argued that the frameworks currently used to make technology policy are inadequate, partly for this reason. The web in particular has expanded into society very quickly - tech giants such as Google and Facebook have only existed for around two decades or less, and are now some of the largest companies in the world. The innovations that go along with them, such as the sophisticated algorithms used to track us across the internet, are even newer - but they have already been incorporated into the basic functions of many web services. Shoshana Zuboff states that trying to end commercial surveillance on the internet is like asking a leopard to change its spots - the practice is built into the practices of most big tech companies.

This process is known as “technological lock-in”: when a technology becomes so integrated in society that it would be difficult or impossible to change it, even if we wanted to. The problem is, it’s all too easy for this to happen, because often we can’t foresee the long-term impacts of a technology until it’s already too late to avoid them. David Collingridge calls this the dilemma of control. When a technology is in the early stages of its development, we can change it easily, but we have a hard time predicting the potential negative impacts it could have. By the time it becomes widespread enough for us to notice problems arising, trying to change the technology would be a project on such a massive scale as to be almost unfeasible.

At this point, it seems we are indeed locked into the data-driven, ad-funded model of the internet - as Zuckerman worries, society has become used to the mass surveillance that currently pays for their user experience. It’s unlikely that we can make the switch to a paid-for model; there has already been pushback on other attempts to violate the tenets of the free and open internet, such as the FCC’s controversial repeal of net neutrality, which would allow Internet Service Providers to throttle back broadband speeds for certain websites, rather than giving equal priority to all traffic. This suggests that we aren’t ready to let go of the affordances that the internet in its current form allows us, although it may be at the expense of our privacy.

So if we’re unwilling or unable to give up the free internet, how do we take back control of our data? This is where the lock-in might still be averted, but it may require the kind of government regulation which has previously been lacking when it comes to Big Tech. One possible solution is to break up tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon so they don’t have a monopoly over user data, a policy which has been proposed by one of the Democratic front-runners for U.S. President, Senator Elizabeth Warren. The other big change we could make affects the structure of the internet itself, and it comes from researchers such as the W3 Consortium, one of the main standards organisations for the web. They have argued for a system where each user stores their own data in a ‘pod’ and gets to decide for themselves who to share it with. This goes towards preventing a kind of personal lock-in to particular platforms, since currently the information you generate on one application isn’t easily transferrable to another.

Of course, these kinds of solutions are large-scale and systemic. They may prove difficult to implement, particularly in the face of big tech’s political influence. However, they are still plausible - and that means that although the free internet is probably here to stay, there is hope that we can change it for the better.

[mitchipedia]

Leveraging its recent Tumblr purchase, Automattic is looking to revive old school blogging.

Nilay Patel at www.theverge.com:

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg thinks the future of Tumblr is bright — he wants the platform to bring back the best of old-school blogging, reinvented for mobile and connected to Tumblr’s still-vibrant community. And he’s retaining all 200 Tumblr employees to build that future. It’s the most exciting vision for Tumblr in years.

Matt joined Verge reporter Julia Alexander and me on a special Vergecast interview episode to chat about the deal, how it came together, what Automattic’s plans for Tumblr look like, and whether Tumblr might become an open-source project, like WordPress itself. (“That would be pretty cool,” said Matt.)

Oh, and that porn ban.

Mullenweg uses Tumblr.

He declined to confirm the reported purchase price of $3 million, which is peanuts compared with $1.1 billion that Yahoo paid. But he did say:

Verizon is a company that does over $120 billion dollars in revenue. They got Tumblr through Yahoo, which then merged with AOL, became Oath, got bought, became Verizon Media. It’s something they inherited a few levels down.

Their top priority was not trying to maximize the purchase price — there might even be a corporate reason for the purchase price to be lower, for taxes or something. They were really looking for where the best home was going to be. That was really where we tried to optimize the deal, especially in terms of bringing over close to 200 people. We’re taking them all on. I am aware of some of the details of some of the bidders — you know they were not planning to keep much, if any, of the team going.

We did more of a Berkshire Hathaway approach: we really want to bring over the management team, take what was working well, which is Tumblr’s engagement,and grow from there.

I do like to think this is what happened at Verizon. They knew they were not the right company to give Tumblr the care it deserved, but they took the time to be responsible and find it a good home.

For Tumblr I think this is the best possible outcome.

Don’t believe the rumors. Tumblr is still home to vibrant blogs and communities. I’m looking forward to seeing what Automattic does with it.

The porn ban is wrong, but given today’s economic climate it’s not unexpected. If you run adult content you run the risk of being blocked in the Google and Apple app stores – which briefly happened to Tumblr and which likely precipitated the porn ban. No company can afford that. (How do Reddit and Twitter get away with it? Mullenweg says he doesn’t know. Maybe they’re big enough that Google and Apple are afraid of blocking them.) “I will say that overall, a really thriving home for adult content is probably best for a company or a website which is totally dedicated to it,” Mullenweg says.

All sorts of interesting hints here on where Tumblr might go. Mullenweg says he’d like to restore RSS integration so you can follow things that aren’t actually on Tumblr, and bring Tumblr back to the open web.

I want to create a place on the web which is fun and supportive and substantial. You’re an old-school web user — at one point blogging had a real magic to it. A frisson. You’d have blog rolls and links and people would follow and comment and you’d keep up with things and it was a really, really nice social network. But it also was totally distributed and people had their own designs, and all those sorts of things. I think we can bring some of that back and reimagine it in the mobile world which is where Tumblr is also super strong….

“… I hope and believe that Tumblr’s best days are actually ahead of it.”