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goodthoughts001 · 2 years ago

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RAKING it in ! Not yet but it's coming to a table near you. Online Casino Malaysia

Quick update on my break from Online Casino Malaysia. I'm back playing intermittently and really find that I’ve improved as a player in every aspect. Tilt still exists within and can do it's devilish damage but it's under control, hand reading skills have improved 10 fold and my luck is probably above average at the minute.

Mmm keep looking at the £25/50 10 seated NL on betfair it looks soooo juicy, however the odd multi and no more than 3 x 6-pacs a day for the moment. I say no more than 3 because I tend to find that more than 2hrs is too much at the poker table when focussing on a game. Multi’s I tend to not take notice too much of the table before the 1st couple of hours and music, TV etc are all good distractions.

At the minute Strictly (NO CASH) poker although I’m like an addict that thinks hey I’m clean I could play a bit of cash now I know I’m not ready yet; still e few creases to iron out. Losing 19k in a short period of time is a pisser but the manner in which it is lost is where I have learned a few things. Firstly, and undeniably even in the cold light of day I was on a miserable run of bad luck and bad cards (fact). However, secondly as a result I was not playing appropriate poker and one hand springs to mind which was the pinnacle of my tilty crap play.

Quick reflection coming:

I had witnessed dozens of premiums being busted and was pretty pissed to say the least, not alcohol BTW just playing pissed off (not good). I’m playing the 10/20 NL 10 seated cash and winning about £1500 so I have with my buy-in £3500 on the table and in late position I get dealt AA. Yes the best preflop starting hand possible, I remember when I got it thinking ooooh dear, anyway everyone folds round to ‘Rhaegar’ a Rock/solid player who frequents the Crypto tables who raises 4 x BB to £80. I feel I have to name the player here so that anyone who knows him will know what a Muppet play I made here. I smooth call and no other takers, see a flop 6 7 J Rhaegar bets £120 and I’m not messing here I re-raise to £240 to see where I am LOL. Rhaegar re-raises to £800 and I think SET SET SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET and proceed to re-raise all-in for all my stack – my AA will not be beat, it cant be beat, it’s lost too many times! Rhaegar calls with 6 7 and his 2 pair stand up as quick as I stand up to bang my head against the wall.

What have I learned from this and all the bad beats, A LOT. A lot about me in particular and a lot about poker which won’t be much to most but to me is a lot. I learned that OK I suffered terrible bad luck on occasion but had I not tilted the money I saved could have helped me earn it back. I lost 3k I didn’t need to here which is 1.5 buyin’s on 10/20 and if I add it all up I could have probably played through the bad run and came out on top like the top players do. Just an insight to my thinking here since having time out but obviously I could write forever with the amount of thinking I’ve been doing.

Back to now:

This blog has been a real reflection of my poker playing career and being able to look back on previous posts is a real eye opener and insight into the sometimes crazy view I have of events, especially when I was in 'Zombie' mode. In 'Zombie' mode I didn’t think it was tilt, it was everything else in my life the girlfriend, Kids, Dog, someone phoning me whilst in the middle of an important pots everyone but me basically. Playing like a twat was easy, it came natural. I looked for any reason I could to call instead of considering the opposite and well played like a twat. Also, I took the game serious and didn’t like the view one bit TY.

The only reason I have played the last couple of weeks is that a friend told me to check my account I may have some rake back and when I looked I had been credited with £300 so I though Ok I’ll have a dabble like the old days ‘bit of fun’ play. The account now has £3575 in it and I think Toshiwonka is back looking for some scalps!!!

The racehorse I bought MrToshiwonka 2yr old is doing really well and we have entered him for the £200,000 Super sprint @ Newbury in July so fingers crossed I’ll be in the winners enclosure with a bottle of the finest.

Good luck as always to anyone reading and be disciplined! LOOOOL

I would recommend a break to anyone feeling like the games against them it works wonders. I’ve lost a stone of poker weight as well. Only another 4 to go.

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diary-of-a-housewifes-housefire · 4 years ago

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I got out of the house because my step mom asked for help cleaning her garage. When I got there i told her whats going on at home and I need help. It took 6 hours with a break for dinner.

Then she asked what my plan was. And we polished it up.

Step mom is opening a bank account and making me a signer on it so I can have that set up without any entanglements. Every penny I've earned, and tried to save, has conveniently been needed, even though he makes a few thousand more than we need per month.

I used her phone to call Friend-R. She talked with her husband and said yes about the living situation.

Brother-B did the phone thing, brother-in-law- J is setting the phone up for pick up in bremerton OR overnighting it to BFF-A's house. Then sent a follow up message saying He doesn't know, nor needs to know what's going on, but if I need anything to re-start my life that they're more than happy to help. First, last, & deposit. Legal. Food. Whatever.

Brothers M & C and dad thought I was talking about next week, they're all out of town right now, but will be back.

So, Plan is to do the TRO with papers while the guys are here and use that time to pack and move without his interruptions. I'll message attorney-H about what I need to do about legally taking the kids without it being kidnapping, setting a temporary parenting plan, how long the TRO lasts. THEN relocating the goats, getting a storage unit and cost, and getting a truck and horde of people to get it done in a day or so. AND take pictures of the condition I leave it in. Then a job.

What actually happened..

Had a very challenging night with husband. He began a conversation that pressed all my buttons and I remained calm. Right up till my refusal to react brought about the mother of all reaction grabbing requests. "One last night together." He knows I'm an assault survivor. Barely. He knows I get wound up with touching, hugging, and can't get to kissing. He knows these all affect me. He knows I've had sex with him because I was too scared to say no. He knows im scared of him now. And it did affect me. Yay for him. Almost passed out again from the heart rate and panic. And then he tried to calm me down by holding my hand and rubbing my back. And he knows that doesn't help. But he's "being nice and trying to take care of me." I should just calm down. Stop acting so crazy.

Eventually the conversation ended. I can't remember what we talked about. Obviously I didn't log it. Stupid.

The next day I ran school with the kids and compulsively cleaned. (Stress management) He showed up unexpectedly with lunch for everyone. Asked me if I wanted to kiss him. Jesus fucking christ with this. He stared at me till I made a semi verbal grunt of disagreement. Then he left saying he was used to my rejection. He's supposed to work late, about 7 or 8. I never know when he'll be home. At about 3 I started to panic. I can't do this again. I can't make it another day with another conversation and more messing with my head. What if he presses the sex issue more? I can't do it. So I hid in my closet with my secret phone and called my brother-M. He walks me through my plan. Suggests I go to dad's rather than a friend. Dad is a marine, armed like someone in a post apocalyptic movie, and more than anything, intimidating as fuck. Husband won't dare darken his doorstep to mess with me. Then he tells me, call dad, call the attorney, make it happen. And I do.

So I call dad. He wants me to stay in the house. Don't lose the house. By all means, if I'm not safe, then bring the kids and get on the road, but don't lose the house. He's talking like I've taken a hill in Nam and retreat will be handing the ground back to the VC.

I call the attorney-H. She assured me I'm not losing the house. Abused spouses don't forfeit their homes when they run from their partners. We'll get the papers started for the TRO. We'll set the court date. I come back when he's gone. He can't come near me or he'll be arrested. I don't have to fear his divorce papers reaction. He can't come near me for 2 weeks, at minimum. And that's only because the temporary is reviewed to be permanent in 2 weeks.

I hang up. Barely grab enough stuff for 2 days for myself and the kids. I couldn't think. I'm shaking. I grabbed 6 pairs of socks and only 2 pairs of panties. 2 shirts, then the kids. 1.5 pairs of pajamas, 4 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, a bra, 2 pairs of underwear...in total, not per kid. Went downstairs, told the niece to pack. She knew it might happen. She jumped up and got packing. I grabbed essential stuffies, 2 kid blankets, school laptops and books, and told the kids we were going to visit grampa. Thank God we're in a quarantine and school is online.

I was shaking. I was afraid he'd come home while I was packing. I was trying to plan a lie to explain what the fuck I was doing in case I got caught. My son started an autistic meltdown when he had to put on shoes. I yelled at him. I was scared. He was slowing us down. I promised him a milkshake, which I forgot about. I left all the phone chargers, my daughters ADHD medication...my own ADD medication. I thankfully remembered insulin. No toothbrushes, no books, no pens or pencils for the road. No snacks.

I had $100 from my step-mom and a $200 gift card that was delivered with the phone. All of my $900 had to be used for medical and household stuff. Eyeroll. That is called financial abuse. Trapping someone by removing their access to money.

We got in the car. The video camera alerts him any time anyone is in the driveway. We hurried. Pulled out of the driveway while daughter was still putting on her seat belt. By the time I got to the end of the dirt road my phone was ringing. 4 minutes down the main road and it was still ringing. GPS was still on. I turned off my phone. Asked niece to turn off her phone. He's gotten into both of them with his contract holder privilege. He can read any text, observe any app, track any location, unless the phone is off.

I used the phone gifted from my brother-B and in-law-J. I sent messages while shaking and driving. "Headed to dad's" I copied it and pasted it into text chats of the essential people but couldn't reply while driving. Of course it's dark and raining. Don't fucking wreck the car!!! Is ringing in my head. The data doesn't work. Messaging does. Daughter-R is asking where we are, how long till grampa's house, what city....she's got her phone. She has no fucking clue what we're really doing, and I'm worried she's on a messenger with him. Thankfully she wasn't.

A white car is tailgating me. It pops out to pass, or pull along side me. I ask niece what kind of car it is. It's a jeep. Then it happens again, it's a silver suv. Then it happens again, it's a white truck. Fuck. ...Is there a mismatched gas cap? ...No. Ok...sigh of relief. Tacoma rush hour traffic. Fuck. Searching rear view mirrors, checking the phone checking daughter. Answering questions vaguely. Wrong freeway exit. Can't see well at night . Back on the freeway. Panic. Right freeway exit. Shaking stops. Nerves are calming. Stop for food. Accidentally order 60 chicken nuggets. Who fucking cares. Get to dad's house. .... I can breathe.... I almost cry, but I gotta be normal for the kids. We unload. He's taking them around the house, and the night progresses from there. I check in with friends to say I made it. Brother-B tells me he's proud of me. He's never said that to me. He's my little brother, and he was the key to me getting out. I almost cry again.

I managed to get out of the house, with all 3 kids. The controlling mentally abusive commanding officer of military police/ training officer for the DoD husband didn't pull me over on the road or track me down and stop me.

It all happened because I was given a phone that he couldn't track. This is the same phone I'm using to write this post.

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behardonyourself · 5 years ago

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I AM AN IRONMAN...

I don’t even know how long I have been waiting to write this post. I think I launched my website in March or so, and I remember thinking how cool it will be if I get to write this post a few days after Ironman Arizona.

The journey is well documented on my blog and my Facebook page. I think everyone gets it - I was in the worst shape of my life. A lot of people that haven’t seen me since I left San Antonio in 2013 may not get that, but I hadn’t touched a weight since October of that year. To be honest, I hadn’t done much of anything since then.

First off, I’m not completely crazy. I’m ultimately just some dude. Completely human. I’ve told my story about running in December and not being able to go 1/4 of a mile. That’s completely real. Now, I kept this one quiet, but it’s important to understand that I thought about making a change in October of 2018. I took off running and cramped IMMEDIATELY. It wasn’t 500 feet. It hurt so bad. I then started to convincing myself that “I’m not a runner”, that maybe I was too heavy, running wasn’t healthy, the injuries over the years have taken their toll, etc, excuse after excuse. This journey that happened almost never got started. I was ashamed and embarrassed, but still felt comfort in the idea that I’d figure another way out “to get back in shape”.

I mention that fateful five hundred feet because I know a few of my friends have decided that they wanted to run and felt that exact same feeling of excruciating agony and walked away from any idea that they would eventually find comfort in the most basic exercise that we do as humans.

Many of you are familiar with the struggles in my personal life - 10 days into me actually being committed, my wife fell off of a ladder and absolutely destroyed her tibia, fibula, and just about every other part of her leg. At that time, our daughter Ava was only 5 months old. A lot of people use kids as an excuse not to workout, and trust me, it was tempting. Lisa was immobile. Ava was a handful (all 5 months olds are). Peyton had to be driven to school 30 minutes away (and picked up). So finding time wasn’t an option - the only way to do what I needed to do was to make time. Again, all of these things are on my blog but I think they are important for context.

So my story isn’t that of a runner or a cyclist that had dabbled in a few triathlons and decided to take the next step. Actually, it’s the opposite. I had NEVER ridden a road bike until April. I hadn’t run since 2004. I hadn’t swam a lap in a pool since 1995.

I simply knew I had to do something that scared me and motivated me enough to make me change.

You know what? I did that - in December I signed up for a 5k Spartan race. Really. That was in June and I signed up for it thinking it was going to take me every damn bit of that 6 months to get ready. I’ve called it the race that changed my life. I started training like an actual Spartan. Funny thing is that the body responded quickly, and a few weeks later, I realized that I’d probably be ok to do Spartan by June. So I went absolutely insane, and in January, decided that I wanted something bigger. I was standing in the Bahamas with several co-workers, and they hadn’t seen me in a couple of months due to Lisa’s injury. Juan asked me “what are you training for” and I told him either an ultra marathon, or an Ironman, or “something”. I think he though I was crazy.

Yep, Ironman it is.

Now, if 6 months was plenty of time to get me ready for a 5k race, there’s no one in the world that would’ve believed that I could possibly do an Ironman by the end of 2019. Until about 9pm on November 24, I wasn’t sure that I could do it. I didn’t know the first thing about triathlons, much less Ironman.

Obviously, I did that tiny sprint tri in Denton - and with a 200 yard swim, I hesitate to even refer to it as a triathlon, but it was a “race” and it was a great experience and I met some awesome people - Jeff, Brad, Michael, and a few other people that I’ve actually become crazy close with.

In true Boyd fashion, I never hired a coach. Now, I had 400 people telling me how important it was to hire a coach and I had to hire a coach, and there’s no way to do it without a coach, and you are 10x more likely to succeed with a coach, and a coach, a coach, a coach, a coach, a coach. Every fucking day someone told me how important it was. And you know what? It probably was. So I chatted with people from every sport and talked to triathletes. Lisa was who I talked to about swimming. A guy I grew up with in the mountains of Harlan County, Jon Carroll - was my go-to for running. I discussed bike stuff with many different people. I was fortunate enough to have a few former Tri pros be willing to answer questions for me, but typically they told me that I was doing way too much, that I am hard headed, that I’d end up injured, that they’d suggest something different, etc. One told me to stop asking him for advice because I wasn’t following it. Hell, I even had a sherpa - my buddy Bart always offered to come pick me up when I broke down on my bike. Luckily, I figured out how to fix most things, but he always checked on me, always listened to my boring training stories, always encouraged me and he and his wife even prepared my food the night before I left because I SUCK at cooking.

So who attacks something like Ironman totally blind and without a clear cut plan? Yeah, I’m totally that guy.

But this was never about training my body - Ironman was my way to make my mind as hard as steel and I knew that if I put my body through it every single day and just refused to quit, that finishing Ironman would just be a formality. While other triathletes are worried about all of these stats and protocols, I was just worried about getting up and getting the fuck after it every single day. Completely pushing myself to the limit as many times as possible hoping to do my best to replicate what it would be like on that training course.

Was it the perfect way to train? No. Of course not. I wouldn’t suggest it, and most people would probably do better by paying someone with experience.

For me though? I wanted to shoulder every single bit. I wanted to risk the blame if I failed for the treasure when I crossed the line. I am a self-taught guy. I taught myself to bench press 600lbs. I didn’t pay someone else a dime to get my dead lift to 800lbs when that was my focus. I just went in every single day and spent hours upon hours of forcing myself to become strong. This was no difference. I ran until I couldn’t, and then ran some more. I just didn’t stop swimming. No distance was too far on my bike, and I always pushed harder and harder.

The funny shit is that I completely understand and am educated in the science behind the training. I completely get it. But I also knew that my body would follow my mind into the depths of hell if it was strong enough to go there.

In December, Ironman seemed ridiculous. That guy was 270lbs (I was 201 the day I left for Arizona). That guy was not doing an Ironman, but he had to become someone that could bare the crucible of 140.6 miles.

Whenever you’re putting yourself through the pressure cooker of a long ass training cycle, you’ll have distinct moments that will ultimately make you or break you. I remember mine vividly. Running was rarely “fun” or “easy” for me. It was “more fun than other times” and “easier”, but never EASY. I can think of times I would come to the intersection of where I could come to my house or I could go out for another lap and add another 1.5 to 2 miles if I turned left. I always turned away from my house when I had to make that decision. I can’t count how many times I decided “one more lap” in the pool and it turned into 1000 more yards. I’d cramp and keep swimming. I knew that something shitty could happen in Town Lake in Tempe so I wanted to be prepared. Something shitty did happen, and I conquered it. The bike? I fell in love with it immediately. It was never a task or a chore. It is my love and it’s something I’ll stick with for the rest of my life.

Now it’s time to be completely transparent here. I was totally overwhelmed with the idea of the swim. On the day before the race, we did our practice swim and I freaked the fuck out. I panicked. Now, I swam at a decent pace, but I knew that if I didn’t calm my mind, that shit would break me and I’d have to live with knowing I didn’t get through the first part of the race. Getting kicked in the face did not help. I was terrified all day Saturday and all morning Sunday. But I had to attack it - fear grows when you give it time and I knew that if I didn’t conquer that swim it would haunt me for the rest of my life.

On race day, I felt pretty good. I was nervous about the swim - not the distance. I had swam the distance a few times. Never in open water, and never with 3000 other people, but I knew I had the endurance.

Racing is a lot like life. You can be doing everything right and shit will happen. You can use it as an excuse and convince yourself that is why you didn’t succeed or you can use it for energy. I was given a gift of an excuse just a few minutes into the race when another racer and I were tangled up, and he completely pulled my goggles off. I remember thinking “you have got to be kidding me”. Of anything that could happen, I would’ve ranked this the absolute worst thing. I swam to a support canoe and told the guy “I’m not quitting, just calming my mind”. Again, I was freaked the fuck out but I knew that if I was going to swim this 2.4 mile race in 63 degree water, it was going to be without goggles - so I put my face in the water, and started banging the fuck out of that stuff.

My eyes were killing me - probably from the toxic waste that is Tempe Town Lake, and a bit from the cold water, but I kept trucking on. For much of the race, I had to utilize my backstroke out of necessity - not from an oxidative standpoint, but to give my eyes a break. Once my eyes cleared and I was able to see my Garmin, I realized that I was easily going to make time. Not the 1 hour 25 minutes I had expected, but under the 2 hour 20 minutes that are allowed from the time you entered the water - once my goggles came off, that was the target. Nothing else matters - survive the water, get to the bike.

The funny thing is that at one point in the lake, I just laughed. I thought “who the fuck loses their goggles that early and keeps going?” Me, motherfucker. I sang, smiled, and just kept moving forward.

The best story of the day came after the final turn. I had someone frantically yelling or grunting. Now, I had ear plugs in, so I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, so my first thought was that I had somehow missed a buoy and the support crew was going to send me back. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Someone had actually caught my goggles and he recognized that they must be mine since I didn’t have any, and he gave them to me. Yes, they were my actual ROKAS. Kind of disoriented, I put them on my head. Funny thing is I actually pulled them over my eyes when I got out of the lake (the swim was over).

After that, I just savored the day. The bike course was great and I was very fast. I smiled, chatted with other riders, pounded the fuck out of the hills and cruised down them. At no point on that bike did I feel tired, dehydrated, or in any kind of pain or danger. Maintenance was always on my mind, but I didn’t focus on what I feared - I focused on what I wanted. And what I wanted was to become and Ironman on this day.

The run was much the same. I kept waiting to hurt or feel pain, but I didn’t. I was in great spirits. I met a guy Mike on the run course after he and I kept passing each other, and at one point, we just stayed together and talked the whole way. Funny that he is from San Antonio and we have a mutual friend on Facebook. My goal was finishing - I felt great, but at about the 13 mile mark, I caught a little twitch in my calf. I did not want that to become a cramp that could shut me down, so I went conservative, ignored time, and we just kept a simple, easy pace to get across the finish line. It was a great time, and I was excited to see that his fiancee also crossed the finish line to complete her first Ironman as well.

In the military, we used to say that you don’t rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training. My training was the crucible that hardened me for that race. Race day was legitimately a formality that was standing between me and reaching a bucket list goal of becoming an Ironman.

Disclaimer, I hate stupid positive sayings that people that have never accomplished shit come up with. Laws of attraction bullshit, eat an elephant one bite at a time, etc. Motherfucker, thinking about being an Ironnman would’ve kept me fat and depressed. It took me breaking myself down and looking in the mirror and accepting that I had become a fat piece of shit to get this done. Man, fuck all of that happy thought nonsense. Attack, attack, attack. Figure out the bullshit details later. You tear 10 bites off that motherfucker if you are fortunate enough to get to that beast. Doing that shit on social media isn’t the same thing as kicking ass in real life. That “rise and grind” post at 4am doesn’t mean shit if you pull the covers back over your head. You have to go out and suffer. Your body will react to that invigorating workout on a machine in a nice gym, but your mind will only respond to going into the darkest cave that you can find. Calories burned doesn’t always mean that you’ve hardened the mind enough to make sure that you’re actually ready for what may come at you.

Race day was simply amazing. I took it in. I smiled. I thanked people. I encouraged people. I didn’t let one second pass me by. I was actually sad when I hit that red carpet, but to hear Mike Reilly say “Boyd Myers, you are an Ironman�� was completely surreal. I can’t put it into words.

The crazy thing is that I don’t feel like I’ve arrived or that I’ve made it to anything. Hell, part of me thinks “Why have you squandered to much time? What else am I capable of?”

My official finish time was 15 hours and 3 minutes. Finishing under 17 hours is all that mattered to me - to become and Ironman.

What’s next? Haha, well, that’s where it gets fun. I’m looking at Ultraman. In short, it’s a 3 day race: -Day 1: 6.2 mile swim and 90 mile bike ride -Day 2: 170 mile bike ride -Day 3: 52.4 mile run

I am going to take a few days to weigh options and look at timing. I am considering taking a real season of training and prep, but I do know me, and I’ll just get back the fuck after it. No, don’t advise me on what I “should” do, because that’s not really how I’ve lived my life. I won’t listen.

Look, there is not a fucking thing in the world standing between you and your goals except the excuses that you keep selling yourself on as to why you can’t reach them. That’s it - we are capable of so much more than we know. People label me as uber-driven, obsessed, crazy, and a lot of other things, but I don’t have anything in me that isn’t in anyone else in the world. Whatever you’ve been thinking about, attack it. It doesn’t have to be Ironman. It doesn’t have to be fitness related. All that I know that is if I didn’t take those first steps, I would’ve never crossed that finish line. Fuck, in December of 2018, a 140.6 mile race was all but impossible. But now, I just know I can do so much more.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

#ironman #ironmanarizona #iamanironman #triathlete #swimbikerun #ultraendurance #motivation #goals #transformation #mybattles #xl

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estelofimladris · 6 years ago

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My Longest Day Ever in Fandom

This has been one of the hardest 48 hours for me as a fan. Really they’ve been pretty bad in the scope of me being a person, but in my fandom experience, this shit takes the cake.

** WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR The Magicians as well as some minor spoilers for Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Avengers: Infinity War, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Flash, and Supergirl. **

** ALSO: This shit gets super personal. Don’t read if it makes you uncomfortable. **

I get that I’m specifically interested in stories of struggle and triumph. I thrive with stories about how the things worth having aren’t easily obtained. And sometimes people fail and sometimes people lie. There are horrible obstacles and things to conquer.

A bit of my fandom-inflicted past:

Will Turner was my favorite Pirates character. We had tickets not only to the three-movie marathon on opening day, but then the midnight screening. I nearly didn’t go to the second screening.

Sirius Black is why I got into Harry Potter. I got into it at the weird middle place when the books were still coming out and the movies were being made. I had been forced to read the first book when it was first published and it had left a very bad taste for me so the fact that anything could draw me into the fandom was insane. I watched Prisoner of Azkaban entirely by chance while hanging with my cousins and had read all the books by the time Goblet of Fire was released. I lived in and loved a fandom where my favorite character was dead before I even got a chance to know him.

Grant Ward was one of my two my favorite Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. characters. I rushed a Ward cosplay for WonderCon, which happened to be scheduled about a week after the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and less than a week after the AoS episode “Turn, Turn, Turn” aired, revealing that Ward was a brainwashed and abused Hydra sleeper agent the whole time. I then nearly scrapped the entirely completed cosplay. Instead I wore it to WonderCon and had people whispering “Hail Hydra” to me all weekend.

I spent at least three years living with a TV curse. Every show that I watched before its renewal for a second season was cancelled. To this day, I struggle to watch new shows because I fear that I will fall in love with a show only for it to be cancelled.

In the past year, I have lost 5 of my favorite characters to sudden deaths/departures:

Bucky Barnes (Avengers: Infinity War)

Harry Wells (The Flash)

Leo Fitz (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Winn Schott (Supergirl)

And this is about the most recent one, Quentin Coldwater (The Magicians)

I also know that there are more to come:

Avengers: Endgame comes out next week.

Arrow is ending at the end of this year.

There are more stories of woe and uncomfortable spaces in which we want to see our favorites succeed and they fail or lose or die. But this, this is more than just someone failing or losing or dying.

I survived all that other shit. I was a little off for a few days following or weeks or months or even years. But we always come back to Fandom. Maybe not the same fandom, but the big idea of Fandom. Being a fan isn’t something you can really just stop.

I got into The Magicians because of serendipity. Two of my closest friends got into the show at some point last year and had mentioned that I’d liked it, but it was one in a malaise of fandoms that I’d been told that about and I only have so many hours in the day and space in my heart. One of the people I was rooming with at SDCC this last year had freshly gotten into the show and was going to the panel. Another of my friends was going to the panel as well who had freshly gotten into the show. When I asked about it afterwards, the lovely human said they’d met a lovely other new fan. My friends had met entirely by chance at the panel and I got to hear all about how lovely the fandom was and that it was a really great panel with a lot of promise for the new season.

I got home from SDCC and, one day while curious, watched the pilot of The Magicians.

I finished the show in less than three weeks. I watched it again. I’ve probably watched this show more than any other media since August.

A bit of background about me and why this show struck a very deep chord with me:

I met my entire close group of friends, my found family, because of Lord of the Rings. I learned Sindarin (elvish) in high school. Every screen name I have is related to my love and foundation of loving Lord of the Rings. I have a tattoo in elvish.

I grew up around a lot of mental illness. I myself have been diagnosed and treated for adolescent/adult ADD, but members of my family as well as every best friend I’ve ever had, has been depressed and most were suicidal. I had to confront my best friend over suicide attempts at 13. My brother was treated for extremely aggressive childhood depression when I was a kid.

I’m also queer. Still working to unstick myself from some definitions I’ve given myself, but I’m definitely genderqueer and androphilic and exploring my romantic identity in part because of this show.

I’ve delt with death my whole life. My first grandparent (maternal grandfather) died when I was 5 or 6. My last grandparent (paternal grandmother) died when I was 22. I had a dear friend die in a motorcycle accident in 2015. I’ve been there for people who have lost loved ones suddenly and held people’s hands through the deaths of parents, loved ones, and children.

I also am about to complete my third and final year of an insanely rigorous graduate costume design program.

This show felt like it was made for me to love it. It made it so easy.

The fandom was a loving community that welcomed me immediately and I have thrived there. I would come home from a crazy day at school, put on an episode of the show, and get lost in the lovely fandom that I’d found myself in. I mean that both ways. Yes, I tripped and fell and found myself among excellent people. But more importantly, I found myself in ways I didn’t expect through The Magicians.

Through a series of very unfortunate events, I stopped reading Fan Fiction about 7 or 8 years ago. I would occasionally write something, but nothing that I cared about what anyone thought about it. It was only writing that had to be written not writing for an audience in any way.

The Magicians got me reading Fan Fiction again. I drew fan art. I participated in discussions on the meta. I joined in when I don’t really have the free time, but it felt so good.

In Quentin in particular, I found a part of myself that was seldom voiced. This melancholy nerd who was Doing His Very Best™ all the time tapped into the kid who loved something so much it transformed their life. It spoke to the parts of me that I don’t talk about that feel like a fraud and a floundering fool. The Magicians told me that I’m not some pathetic thing. That I’m part of my world and that I belong. That it’s ok to re-think about sexuality and romance as an adult. It spoke to my struggles with school and creating something from absolutely fucking nothing.

Something that I’ve not told many people: I’ve struggled with feeling worthy of love. I’ve had some really big relationships that ended poorly and ever since coming out as genderqueer and living my truth, I’ve been single. Watching Quentin be so worthy of love and struggle with that himself, he really shifted my views on relationships.

So, Wednesday was, needless to say, rough.

The fun twist though, I have a mandatory class on Thursday mornings. I had a lot of anxiety about this finale already because I had a notion that something horrible was going to happen because its a Magicians finale. I really struggled to work on homework for the past week. (I texted a friend on Wednesday “How am I supposed to work under these conditions!?” partway through the day.)

This anxiety resulted in not all of my homework being done by the time I had set aside to cook a delicious dinner and settle in to watch the episode with friends. So at the end, after I had cried, drank, nearly threw up from being upset, and was all-in-all a complete wreck, I then proceeded to work on homework until I couldn’t, then I put myself to bed with an alarm set to wake up early and finish, but woke up with a nearly-vomiting anxiety attack (which I don’t get ever) an hour before my alarm.

I finished my homework on my 1.5 hours of sleep, went to class, tried to be eloquent and not burst into tears. I sorta succeeded at both, thankfully. My work was... sub-par, but present, which was the only real requirement. Despite some close calls, I didn’t cry until I was in my car driving home.

I got home, cried a lot, tried to eat and sleep (and failed at both) and ended up having a second wake with another friend and drinking, which finally made me fall asleep.

Throughout the day, I seriously considered deleting every Magicians post from my queue and even my Tumblr as a whole. I thought about dropping out of fandom entirely, including conventions, cosplay - all of it. I thought about selling or donating all of the considerable amount of Magicians merch and related items (cosplay, decor, fan-made merch) that I’ve accumulated in the past few months. I thought about shaving off the hair that I grew out specifically for Quentin that helped me re-shape my queer identity over the past few months.

I woke up in the middle of the night again with more panic attacks. It took sitting with my best friend to make me really fall asleep and stay asleep.

Today, I’m looking back at this whole experience up to this point and I’m so exhausted. I’m tired of crying over something that just brought me so much deep joy. I miss my fandom. We’re all in mourning and its chilling.

I decided somewhere in my insanity yesterday that I need to reclaim The Magicians that I loved. I posted about how it will take time, but they can’t kill the love that transformed my life.

I’m still not sure how to get out of this horrible raw place, but I know time will help. And actually eating a real meal.

I’m sharing all of this because I’m not the only one in this place. If you’re struggling, you are not alone.

I see you. I feel you.

Thank you for being a part of this fandom that has so heavily enriched my life. You are loved. We will find ourselves again.

#personal #but also about the magicians #fandom #the magicians #quentin coldwater #i'm a fucking disaster right now

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camgirlsurvivalguide · 7 years ago

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FAKE HAIR DON’T CARE - The what’s what of hair extensions

Come one, come all! It’s the Camgirl Survival Dummies Guide to putting someone else’s severed hair on your head and pretending it’s your own! I was asked by a few people recently to give advice on hair extensions (since I have some experience) and I decided to write up a big old post here for anyone who wants to take a peek at it.

The best person to talk to about hair extensions is, first and foremost, your stylist. Not all hair types work with extensions. Extensions can and do damage your natural hair, depending on the method you choose, and choosing to DIY any of these methods can cause damage, to your natural hair or to the extensions you buy. Extensions are expensive, and there is almost no way around that. They’re also a fucking pain in the ass, if I’m being honest, but damn do I look and feel twelve thousand times cuter when I’ve got my great big bad hair on - so here are my tips and tricks to making the most out of using someone else’s hair as your own.

GENERAL EXTENSION ADVICE

- Be gentle. Use a soft brush and work tangles from the bottom gently up toward the weft. Remember kiddies: the hair doesn’t grow back after you rip it out, like it does on your own head. Each fucking strand probably costs you like five cents, so treat your extensions like the gold they truly are, and they’ll last you longer.

- Wash sparingly. If you use a non-permanent extension method, this is great, because you can just take them out when you shower, but if you’re using a permanent method ... dry shampoo now is your best friend. Do not scrub permanent extensions near the root/scalp. Don’t blow dry or apply heat near the bonds/near the root/scalp. Use heat tools sparingly.

- OIL. Your natural hair produces natural oil, which is why your roots look healthy shiny and the ends of your hair look like a shitty split end desert. Your extensions can’t produce oil for themselves, so you’ll need to add oil for them. Always use heat protecting spray before styling your extensions, use a leave in conditioner when you do wash them (in the case of clip ins) or once in a while with your permanent extensions, and be sure to add an oil (like Moroccan or argan) to the length of your extensions to keep them looking natural.

- Medium length hair woes are usually what cause us to go get extensions, but are also subsequently the worst length of hair to try to hide using extensions. Search “how to blend short hair with extensions” for tutorial ideas on how you can get your hair to look a little more convincing.

TYPES OF EXTENSIONS

CLIP INS PROS: Cheaper, longer-lasting, DIY-able CONS: More time consuming, cheapest looking WORKS BEST ON: already long, relatively full hair AVERAGE YEARLY COST: $300ish

Ah, clip-ins. Everyone and their dog had a set at some point in high school, and they looked just as shitty as they felt: dry, thin, and very obviously not growing out of the tops of our own heads. Clip ins can look awful, and they can look pretty damn good - it just depends on how much work you’re willing to put in.

I wear clip ins for a few reasons. First, I’m cheap and I like to do things myself, and clip ins let me experiment. I dye them myself, and (since they just ... clip ... in) I put them in and take them out whenever I want, so I’m not paying a professional their professional rate to help me with them. Second, my hair is naturally quite oily, and I go to the gym 5 days a week, which means I wash my hair a lot, and that’s not wise with more permanent types of extensions. Being able to put in clip-ins only when I want to works for my lifestyle, since I find myself not wanting full, crazy luxurious hair probably 75% of the time. Lastly, for the past year my hair has been a pastel colour, and for anyone with crazy colour hair, you know as well as I do that it fades fast. Being able to dye my natural hair and my extensions myself at my house was the cheapest and most reasonable method for me to have extensions that matched my hair.

My advice with clip ins is to do it properly: get a good set of extensions, and when you first receive them, go to a salon to have them coloured to match your hair and cut to blend with your style. It’s good to go a little heavy in terms of weight (the fuller the better) because it’s easier to blend more hair than it is to try to blend a thinner set.

TAPE INS PROS: Mid-range price wise, absolutely beautiful, semi-DIY CONS: High maintenance, limited style options WORKS BEST ON: thin/fine hair, jaw length or longer AVERAGE YEARLY COST: $2500+

Long story short, tape in extensions fucking rock. They look amazing. They add length and volume without the clunky bulk at the root that clip ins cause, they blend seamlessly with your natural hair at most hair lengths, and they’re relatively low hassle because once they’re installed, they stay installed for 6 to 8 weeks. The hair can be used for up to 6 months (as long as you take good care of them), too, which means you’ll get 3 or so installs on any given set of hair. It’s also a relatively inexpensive method in terms of install price: my girl put them in for $100, and would remove them for $100 (putting fresh tapes on and the whole nine yards). I loved my tape ins. I really did.

The reasons I got them removed were cost and effort. Sure, they looked fucking fantastic, and when my full time job and only responsibility was to get cute and get on cam once a day, it was something that blended into my lifestyle pretty well. But now that I’m a student with a gym routine, the whole diva hair thing is a lot lower down on my list of priorities, and styling all that hair every day takes time. The biggest bummer with tape ins is that you can’t wear your hair up in a ponytail or a bun because of how the tapes lie. Not even that it would look bad (which it does) but it’s kind of painful if you try, in my opinion. I had to schedule hair appointments every 7 weeks like clockwork and that got expensive pretty quickly.

Let’s do the math: $200 every 1.5 months = $1600 in installation (not including colour, cut or tipping the stylist). The hair itself cost me between $400 and $600, which I had to do twice a year at minimum, so that’s roughly another $1000 ... that’s $2600+ per year, just in hair and install (again, not including colour and cut and tip, which is a whole other ballpark). They looked amazing, and I don’t regret having them, but for me, it was a limited-timeframe sort of option.

I managed to cut costs somewhat, though. I found that I could remove the extensions myself at home using a tape extension remover I found online for cheap (which was more or less just a blend of coconut oil and rubbing alcohol), and I would usually dye my extensions and my hair from the same box dye at home, too - so when I went to the stylist, I was only asking her to install and cut to blend them. Still, tape in hair is expensive, and you run the risk of ruining them if you DIY. I know there are tons of YouTube tutorials on how to put in your own tape hair extensions but I tried like 40 fucking times and screwed them up each and every time, and so did my girlfriend who tried to help me with it, so ... yeah. Not really DIY-able all the way.

BEADED/SEW IN WEAVE PROS: Cheap, DIY if you have a patient friend CONS: Heavy, painful, hard on your natural hair WORKS BEST ON: Very thick, full/coarse hair AVERAGE YEARLY COST: $300+ DIY, $1000+ (???) professional

My best friend has a lion’s mane for hair: super full, crazy thick, super gorgeous. Unfortunately, she fried the living fuck out of it with bleach one day and lost almost all the length she had. Tape ins weren’t an option because in order to have enough hair, she’d have to buy like 4x what a regular person would put in, so the cost just didn’t make sense. Clip ins were fine but she wanted to be able to go to sleep and wake up and still have long hair - so, I watched a couple tutorials on YouTube about beaded weaves, ordered a lil kit off amazon, and viola! We had our own weave salon up and running in my living room.

I don’t have much advice on these, because it really was a pretty hodge-podge DIY sort of situation. We took clip-in extensions, clamped beads to her natural hair and then sewed the wefts to the little beads, which would take me 2 or 3 hours, and we’d do this once every 6 weeks or so. It’s hard to explain and you definitely couldn’t do it alone, but if you’re one of these people with short but super thick hair, it would do you good to look up this process and see if you could convince a friend to help you out.

KERATIN BONDED EXTENSIONS PROS: Very natural looking, super style-able, practically invisible CONS: expensive, time consuming, not DIY at all, hard on natural hair, one-time use hair only WORKS BEST ON: very fine/thinning hair AVERAGE YEARLY COST: ??? it’s expensive as fuck I just know that

I’m pretty sure these are the extensions that Paris Hilton used to advertise. In summary, they’re fucking expensive, but they look exactly like your own hair and they work amazingly for individuals with hair so fine/thinning that tape in extensions would show through. The installation requires really special, intensive training to pull off, so stylists who offer this service usually charge through the roof for it - and you can only use the hair once, since the hair is in tiny strands with tiny bits of keratin as adhesive, that they install using tiny tweezers or something like that. A friend of mine had these and absolutely loved them, but they were very expensive and very time consuming, not to mention very delicate: she had to be super easy on her hair, particularly as the bonds got older with age.

MICRO BEAD EXTENSIONS / “Dream Catchers” PROS: Super fucking nice. The nicest. The nicest ones you can get. CONS: Super fucking expensive. The most expensive. The most expensive ones you can get. WORKS BEST ON: Most average hair types - fine to regular to thick, but not thinnest/thickest AVERAGE YEARLY COSTS: probably kajillions. I’ve heard horror stories.

So these are the Rolls Royce of extensions, from what I’ve been told. They essentially combine the techniques of a beaded wave and the keratin bond to create thick individual strands that can add a ton of length in a super natural looking way. I wanted these pretty bad but just couldn’t justify the price. I *think* they can be re-used, too, but I’m not totally sure - I’ve never had them myself, nor do I know anyone well enough to have asked them if they just collect the strands of hair that fall out of their heads or if they throw them out. It’s a weird, kinda personal thing to ask, if you think about it.

EXTENSION Q&A

Q: Where do I buy good hair extensions? A: I bought mine from a store in a mall (bad idea) and from my hair stylist (sort of good idea, sort of bad idea). I’ve heard tons of great things from online sellers like Bellami Hair, but I personally like to touch and see the hair I’m spending hundreds of dollars on in person before I buy it. Call me old fashioned, I guess. My girlfriend bought her hair from Sally’s (clip ins and beaded weave) and they looked great, too.

Q: What about Amazon? A: If it’s cheap, it’s going to look cheap. Extensions aren’t cheap because they’re an over the top luxury sort of item, so if you’re not willing to pay the price, I argue that it’s not worth it to do them at all. This is coming from someone who literally tried to DIY fix my own tattoo one time because I didn’t want to pay someone to do it. I get it. I’m cheap, too. But extensions don’t work well cheaply done.

Q: I’m not really good with styling my hair. Are hair extensions hard to make look good? A: Yeah, they are - but they’re also an amazing way to force yourself to get good at styling. I sucked at styling my hair before I got tape ins. I didn’t know how to curl or braid, no joke - and now I can do a whole bunch of stuff, because having extensions forced me to learn how to make them look good. They do require work. It’s not like you’ll wake up every day with movie star looking hair - you’ll have enough hair to make into movie star hair, but you still have to actually style it to that point.

#hair extensions #camgirl survival guide #camgirl tips #sex worker tips

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techyblogger · 5 years ago

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I wasted $19 and 40+ hours on Wealthy Affiliate so you don’t have to... https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/d6khuh/i_wasted_19_and_40_hours_on_wealthy_affiliate_so/

I’m going to provide a full written account of my impressions of Wealthy Affiliate in this post. I also put together a 14-minute YouTube video about it which I’ll link to at the end. Hopefully this will save some people significant time and money, because right now WA is making crazy profit peddling very ineffective training, and I'm not okay with that.

Last December I decided to go "all in" on SEO and affiliate marketing. I’ve been earning a full-time living online since 2010 but mostly as a freelance web designer.

Things have been going well lately:

In July I earned a total of $1,728 from various affiliate programs

In August I earned $2,261

A few weeks back I decided to take things to the next level and started signing up for a bunch of affiliate marketing courses.

The biggest and most popular is one called Wealthy Affiliate.

It’s been around since 2005 and has more than 1.5 million members.

By my calculations, about 5000 new people sign up for a free account there every week, and about 600 of those upgrade to a “premium” account.

(Yes, that means the course generates a TON of revenue. More on this later.)

I signed up for a premium account myself and spent more than 40 hours going through all the training materials.

Now I don’t consider myself an expert affiliate marketer by any means, but I believe I know enough already to recognize bad training when I see it.

And Wealthy Affiliate is really bad training.

To the point where it probably reduces your chances of affiliate marketing success.

I believe there are 7 main reasons for this:

1. OUTDATED TRAINING

I went through all 120 lessons in the core WA training.

Most of the videos I’ve seen in there date from 2015-2016. Some date from as early as 2012.

Much of the text accompanying those videos clearly hasn’t been updated for years either (despite what the “last updated” dates say).

This wouldn’t be an issue... except we’re talking about affiliate marketing here!

This industry evolves FAST! What worked in 2016 isn’t nearly as effective today.

To give but one example, there are 10 consecutive lessons in the core training devoted to Bing and Yahoo PPC.

Those lessons come BEFORE any training on Google PPC, with the justification that “Yahoo and Bing still get around 33% of search traffic online.”

No, they don’t.

As per statcounter.com, Google has held a ~90% market share since as far back as 2009.

No affiliate marketer in their right mind would focus on Bing and Yahoo ahead of Google nowadays.

(Furthermore, the core training in WA seems to get more outdated the deeper you go. Only the free training appears any way recent. A skeptic might say that’s to convince free members to upgrade to a paid account. And once they do, screw em!)

2. OUTDATED CREDIBILITY

Your guide for all the core training is Kyle Loudon, one of the owners of WA.

Kyle reveals 3 of his affiliate sites throughout the training.

I checked them all on Ahrefs last month. The numbers do not look good in 2019.

Here’s the “best” one: [image]

As you can see, that site has been in free fall since 2017. Kyle was adding content up until March 2018, long after the free fall had begun. Now the site receives only 54 visitors from Google each month.

The other main trainer in WA is a guy named Jay Neill. He does the weekly live training webinars for premium members.

The main site he points to as evidence of his affiliate marketing prowess looks like this in Ahrefs: [image]

Not huge numbers, by any means.

And yet, incredibly, Jay claims to be earning $300 PER DAY from that site: [image] + [image]

For proof of his earnings, he offers a single Amazon earnings screenshot from a 3-day stretch way back in February 2016: [image]

I messaged Jay within Wealthy Affiliate and asked him for more recent earnings proof. Here’s a screenshot of our entire conversation: [image]

As you can see, he wasn’t very happy with my inquiries 😕

My last message to him was August 22nd... and no response since.

Given all that, it seems clear to me that both Kyle and Jay have had some success with affiliate marketing in the past, but there’s no evidence that either of them have earned much money that way since 2016.

(Well, Jay surely earns a small fortune as an affiliate for WA, but I don’t think that should count.)

And yet these are the two main people teaching you how to be a successful affiliate marketer in the most popular affiliate marketing course in the world!

Which wouldn’t be such a big deal... if students of WA were actually getting good results from the program.

But if they are, I’m not seeing it.

There’s a blog post on the WA website, written by a well-known affiliate of WA, that purports to list proof and examples of successful WA students in 2019: [image]

I went through the 50+ examples listed and found only 9 reporting what I would consider to be great results.

Perhaps it’s just me, but if the Wealthy Affiliate training is truly still effective these days, I would expect to see a lot more than 9 students having great results over the past several months.

Especially when 600+ people join the premium WA training every single week.

3. MISLEADING CLAIMS

I’ll limit myself to just three examples here.

“It is going to take less than 30 seconds to get a fully operational, profit ready Wordpress website up and running online.”

What you get in 30 seconds is actually a bare-bones WordPress installation, which most web hosts offer with a single click nowadays.

“Wealthy Affiliate members have always noticed notable "boosts" in rankings and traffic with every Google update.”

Within WA, it’s not hard to find members reporting otherwise: [image] + [image] + [image]

“With what we have already given you, you could easily scale a campaign to make over $1 MILLION per year...in fact, if you put your effort into just one of these target audiences, you could likely make that with just one.”

That’s from a training lesson about how to pick an audience to market Wealthy Affiliate to, so you can earn affiliate commissions. (60% of the core training is devoted to teaching members how to refer other people to WA.)

And yes, they really did say “easily” 🙄

4. BAD ADVICE

Limiting myself to three examples here, too.

“There is NO SUCH THING as choosing the wrong niche.”

This point is hammered home many times throughout the training.

And yet, many WA members seem to end up choosing the wrong niche: [image]

Funny that.

List the price in your Amazon reviews

A Wealthy Affiliate member noted this bad advice back in May: [image]

When I checked a couple of weeks ago – more than 4 months AFTER that member’s blog post – the training still hadn’t been updated.

Which means new premium members are still being taught to list prices in their Amazon reviews, and risk getting banned by Amazon as a result.

Manually backup your WordPress site every week

Yup, they really advise this in the core WA training: [image]

Despite the fact that there are free WordPress plugins you can use to automate your website backups, and there have been for years.

5. MISSING CRUCIAL INFO

Going through all 120 core training lessons in WA, I noticed that there was no – or in some cases, grossly insufficient – training on the following topics:

Nofollow

Building backlinks

Affiliate disclosures

Google Adsense

Alternatives to Google Adsense

Caching

Updating content

External linking to authority sites

Citing sources

Outsourcing content

Schema markup

Featured snippets

Video (no training in OEC series)

YouTube SEO

Alternatives to Jaaxy

Which sources of traffic are best and why

Email marketing

Instagram

WordPress page builders

To be clear: most of these topics are addressed – with varying levels of proficiency – within Wealthy Affiliate.

The issue is that they are not addressed within the core WA training material!

So while many of them are crucial to affiliate marketing success, you might never know about them as a member of WA.

6. POORLY ORGANIZED

Within the core WA training, lessons often appear scattered, disjointed, and repetitive.

I get the distinct impression that the entire course was not planned out in advance, but rather pieced together haphazardly over the years.

For example:

It’s not until the 46th lesson of the “Online Entrepreneur Certification” that you receive instructions on how to plan out an article before you start writing it. Which wouldn’t be so bad, if you hadn’t already been advised to write 20+ articles throughout the previous 45 lessons!

In Level 3, Lesson 7 of the OEC you’re advised to set up a Google Adsense account. Then, in the very next lesson, you’re told that actually Google Adsense is a waste of time and you should focus your efforts on affiliate marketing instead.

Level 4, Lesson 9 of the “Affiliate Bootcamp” is about creating your own videos. Five lessons later, the same topic is covered again as if for the first time.

7. BROKEN RANKING SYSTEM

I’ve been amazed at how much time and effort some WA members seem to devote to writing comments and blog posts that add very little value to the community.

For example, I received 18 welcome messages from other members when I upgraded to Premium, the majority of which seemed very generic, as if copied and pasted from a template.

And I’ve seen countless more comments throughout WA that felt like a complete waste of time.

Someone might post a question, for example, and get a response like this:

“I don’t know the answer but hopefully someone else does! Good luck!”

This baffled me for a while, but then I learned about the Wealthy Affiliate ranking system.

If you’re not familiar, all WA members are ranked according to their contributions to the WA community, and the top 25 are referred to as “Ambassadors.”

There’s even a leaderboard: [image]

This explains why you see so many people posting so many generic messages and comments within WA: everyone’s trying to improve their ranking!

But here’s the thing:

It’s entirely possible to achieve a high ranking in Wealthy Affiliate... and still suck at affiliate marketing!

I’ve gone through the leaderboard and found several examples of folks ranking in the top 50 while simultaneously reporting that they’re struggling to earn money from affiliate sites they’ve been working on for years!

This is nothing short of madness.

Presumably the WA ranking system was intended to get more members contributing thoughtful content and helpful comments.

But mostly it just serves as a distraction.

Many folks seem to be so caught up in improving their WA ranking that they’re devoting little time to building successful affiliate sites.

...

To summarize, the 7 big problems I see with Wealthy Affiliate are:

Outdated Training

Outdated Credibility

Misleading Claims

Bad Advice

Missing Crucial Info

Poorly Organized

Broken Ranking System

All of these issues are especially inexcusable for 2 reasons.

FIRST

I think it’s safe to say that Wealthy Affiliate is the most popular affiliate marketing course in the world.

More than 1.5 million members to date. And by my calculations – based on numbers I’ve seen inside WA – another 750 or so sign up for a free account every single day.

That’s a lot of people who rely on the WA training to build a successful online business.

And I’m sorry, but I believe that training is failing those people miserably.

SECOND

About 90 of those 750 daily new members eventually upgrade to Premium.

By my calculations – again, all based on numbers I’ve seen inside WA – each paying member is worth about $300.

Multiply 90 x 300 x 365 and you get $9,855,000.

That’s approximately how much revenue WA is now generating per year.

(Probably an underestimation, actually.)

Granted, WA surely has some big expenses – their hosting costs must be astronomical, for one thing.

But unless my calculations are way off, there should still be plenty of money available to hire a small team of professionals to resolve all the issues outlined above.

But for whatever reason, that’s not happening.

…

To wrap this up:

By many accounts, WA was once a great place to learn affiliate marketing.

Unfortunately, in 2019, that’s no longer the case.

Nowadays the only people getting wealthy from Wealthy Affiliate are:

a) the owners

and

b) affiliates like Jay Neill who write ridiculously biased and misleading reviews of WA so people will click on their referral links.

If your goal is to learn SEO and/or affiliate marketing, please do steer clear Wealthy Affiliate.

At best, their training is unhelpful.

At worst, it will actually reduce your chances of success.

...

Here’s my 14-minute video critique of Wealthy Affiliate, featuring Robert De Niro and an awesome little monkey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQvqUcoUFyE

If you have any questions about WA, I'll be floating in the comments.

submitted by /u/ndoherty13 [link] [comments] September 20, 2019 at 02:48AM

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lucyariablog · 7 years ago

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Content Creation Robots Are Here [Examples]

How much will the evolving landscape of AI impact content creation?

I had a conversation with BuzzSumo co-founder Steve Rayson who said writing algorithms are available for purchase, have been bought, and are in use by major platforms. And, they are creating well-written, data-backed articles, he said.

I was surprised. I knew the AI landscape was evolving in the industry: But just how much would it really affect content creation? I took a data-driven look at the reality.

How much has AI been implemented behind the scenes for content creation? And what does this technology cost?

The key phrases behind content-writing robots you’ll see a lot – intelligent narratives, natural language generation (NLG), and automated storytelling technology. Now, let’s meet the writing AIs behind three leading publications.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Cognitive Content Marketing: The Path to a More (Artificially) Intelligent Future

Narrative Science and Quill

The biggest player in the content AI field could truly be Narrative Science, which created NLG software called Quill.

It describes itself as: “Humanizing data like never before, with technology that interprets your data and transforms it into ‘intelligent narratives’ at speed and scale.”

Narrative Science started in 2010 as a Northwestern University experiment turning baseball box scores into traditional stories. In 2011, it raised over $6 million to study the landscape of how to create “human-free stories” (such an oxymoron to say). In 2013, it raised another $11.5 million for further development. Today, Quill can generate news stories, industry reports, and even headlines without human intervention. It’s limited to the confines of news reports and data-backed content, but it can generate that type of content at scale.

Narrative Science “rents” Quill mostly to financial clients for whom it can create 10- to 15-page financial reports in a matter of moments (what would take a writer possibly weeks to put together). MIT Technology Review reports Quill is churning out over a million words a day. It creates content for clients like Groupon, Forbes, T. Rowe Price, Credit Suisse, and USAA.

Adaptation to tone and voice

Client companies can inform Quill of the style of language, tone, and angle to use. That goes beyond what much automated content software has been able to do. For example, if an audience is known to love a certain team, Quill can write a story that softens the blow when that team loses. Crazy!

You can inform Quill writing algorithm of language, tone, & angle to use to create content. @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

It certainly can’t write a creative story (yet), but here’s a look at a few sentences written by Quill around the performance of mutual funds:

The energy sector was the main contributor to relative performance, led by stock selection in energy equipment and services companies. In terms of individual contributors, a position in energy equipment and services company Oceaneering International was the largest contributor to returns. Stock selection also contributed to relative results in the health care sector. Positioning in health care equipment and supplies industry helped most.

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Cost of content creation

Narrative Science launched a version called Quill Engage for free, but all it can do is translate Google Analytics into plain English for you or your clients. That’s it. Here’s an example of what that looks like. (It reminds me of a simple SEMrush audit report.)

Though Narrative Science doesn’t publish pricing for Quill, I looked at Quora where one person reported a tier pricing system and shared numbers that were in the ballpark of what a few people in the industry confirmed to me. Pricing is based on story types. One story type – one interpretation of one dataset – could generate up to 100,000 stories and cost $70,000 a year. While three story types would be $175,000 a year.

The Washington Post and Heliograf

In the past year, The Washington Post has published more than 850 stories created by its in-house automated storytelling technology called Heliograf – although, more realistically, it may be better named in-house reporting technology because it churns out news articles and social media posts.

Some of the content it writes are basic tweets like this one:

Landon beat Whitman 34-0; https://t.co/V6zVPi7a9O @LandonSports @koachkuhn

— WashPost HS Sports (@WashPostHS) September 2, 2017

Other content was complete stories. (Again, “story” is a stretch – it’s more the style of a journalistic report). Heliograf supplemented The Washington Post reporters covering the Rio Olympics, and created 300 news stories and alerts for the event. The Post also has used Heliograf to cover hundreds of political races.

Cost of content creation

Today, The Washington Post sells Heliograf’s technology through Arc Publishing, which starts at $10,000 a month and can increase to over $150,000 a month. And, The Wall Street Journal reports, the CIO has said that the profitability is astronomical – 60 to 80% margins.

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The Associated Press, Automated Insights, and Wordsmith

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s oldest news networks, was founded in 1846 when five newspapers from New York City funded a pony express-type route to bring news of the Mexican war faster than the U.S. Post Office could. It’s crazy to think that today robots are writing thousands of the AP’s news stories.

The AP saw Automated Insights as an answer to combat the low output of corporate earnings reports by its writers. With the AI technology, output increased by 12 times. With the help of Automated Insights, AP now produces 3,700 quarterly earnings stories, which are brief. Here’s an example.

.@AP used @AInsights software to write 3,700 corporate earnings stories a quarter, says @JuliaEMcCoy. Click To Tweet

Automated Insights could hold the very keys to the castle for making content robots accessible to everyone, including B2B companies and small to medium-size businesses. Here’s why. Automated Insights has gone on to create an insanely smart content robot, Wordsmith, which it calls “the world’s first public natural language generation platform.” The catch? A lot of human content work is required for the algorithm to work.

Here’s how Wordsmith works:

Add your data to the software (tell it a few data points for a “story”).

Write a template for the story.

Preview the output of the NLG software and edit it.

Publish your half-robot/half-human-created story (yes, straight from the app).

You must first work within the software to set up rules, a template, and data points. But once you do, the content can be created. Here’s an example from Splinter’s Kevin Roose:

“Bad news, homeowners. In the last month, home prices in Phoenix Metro Area have fallen. Overall, 3,214 houses were sold in Phoenix over the last 30 days, with Phoenix County leading the way with 3,032 sales.

Potential buyers take note: the median sale price in Phoenix fell to $424,000, while the available housing inventory rose. 

There are now 3 months of home inventory left in Phoenix.

Go find a bargain, buyers!”

That’s darn good copy for a bot. The writing skills are basic, thus an experienced journalist could put it into better context – to tell a more effective story.

The direction of Wordsmith – a mutation of bot and human – could be a direction for marketers. Hundreds of businesses have invested in using Wordsmith, including Allstate, Microsoft, and Yahoo! The software generates over 1.5 billion pieces of content per year. Plus, it can develop content in more than 20 languages. That’s not even the crazy part yet. The API is “milli-second” fast. You read that right. It can generate content in seconds what would take a team of writers possibly weeks to develop.

The direction of @AInsights Wordsmith, a mutation of bot & human, could be direction for marketers.… Click To Tweet

Cost of content creation

Access to Wordsmith starts at $2,000 a month with an annual contract. Managed services, which are recommended, are an additional fee. Set-up costs for each story’s data points also are an additional charge.