#ive clicked not interested every single time and theres still more | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

idontwanttospoiltheparty · 3 years ago

Note

Ive never really understood the hype surrounding Taylor Swift - I mean, I like some of her songs, but im not big on modern pop music so generally she just doesn’t really click for me. But I find it interesting that theres quite a few of Beatles/Swift blogs - like, they should have very little in common given that they’re from completely different eras and all, but somehow people seem to find a lot of semblance between the two. << and thats not me shitting on any of these blogs btw! Hope I don’t come off as rude or condescending there <3

Anyway, I was just wondering what got you into Taylor Swift? (I think ive read your post on how you got into the Beatles)

Hi, anon! Don't worry, I don't think you're rude or condescending! I agree they don't have too much in common and I don't really like their music for the same reasons.* I do have a playlist of Paul songs that have similar vibes to Taylor songs but it's mostly lyric-based. (Also the Beatles For Sale songs actually have quite the Taylor-tinge because Paul and John were not immune to Country Music)

I saw @stewy say once that a possible reason there are a good handful of us Swiftie-Beatle People on here is the appeal of a vast discography, which I agree with. If you have an artist/group with 200ish songs, it's just really fun to really dive into their work and explore all the facets. I also think: we're talking about the most popular band of all time and one of the highest-selling artists of the 21st century. They have a lot of fans so there's bound to be overlap, regardless of musical differences.

Moving on to your question: Getting into Taylor was an extremely personal experience for me and so my explanation is probably going to be kind of long so I'll put it under a read more.

It was spring-summer 2014, I was 15. I had heard the more popular songs of hers starting with Love Story and enjoyed pretty much all of them (I always found her hopelessly romantic point of view fascinating) but before I got a Spotify account in 2013 it was difficult in general for me to really get into an artists' entire discography so most of her songs had flown under my radar.

At the time, I was in this very weird sort of codependent online friendship with this girl who was basically my first real best friend and my first more or less crush. She was very depressed and I was very much in an I Could Fix Her™ mood, except that I obviously couldn't fix her and it made me feel like I wasn't enough and she had begun pulling more and more away from me and not replying to my messages and it was simply driving me insane. I consider it the saddest period in my life.

at some point during this period, I started trying to connect with other people (all online, I didn't know how to talk seriously to anyone IRL) and explaining the issues I'd been having, and one of the people who brought me joy and whom I actually felt not drained talking to was a huge swiftie. And IDK the fact that she loved Taylor and the fact that talking to her made my life better (and also the fact that I liked all the Taylor songs I knew at that point) just made me decide to give her a listen. And I think that whole "large discography discovery" phenomenon really helped me at the time (funny, because her discography has doubled since then). It gave me something new to focus on; there were just so many songs to discover, all telling such rich stories. I also have always loved bridges, they are almost always my favourite part of a song. And Taylor, god-bless her, loves them too and always puts her ALL in them. Like pretty much every bridge of hers brings the song to the next level, and even a lot of her songs I don't adore tend to have great bridges (Stay Stay Stay and Paper Rings come to mind). I think one of her most underrated qualities is how good she is at song structure and really building up an entire musical journey with a song. She also almost always adds cool ad-libs in her second and third choruses to keep the songs interesting and dynamic (or at least since she's gone pop). Anyways, back to the story: Then Taylor announced 1989 as her next album and released Shake It Off, and it was just like this great happy thing for me to look forward to, when I had very little keeping me going. The era was promoting a lot of happiness which in hindsight was slightly fabricated and it was just a really great thing for me to latch onto.

At the same time I was coming to realize that I was gonna have to pull away completely from my friend and all those break-up songs just… Hit, y'know? Like, some people seem to think Taylor's a one-trick pony because she likes to write break-up songs but to me, break-ups are just like this moment where you as a human can potentially feel every single emotion, and Taylor's songs have covered every facet of the concept. Here are some songs I remember from that period, that all meant a lot to me at the time because they explained my own pain to me so well:

Haunted, for the absolute terror you feel in the first moments you realize someone is probably gonna leave you. Come on, come on / Don't leave me like this / I thought I had you figured out / Something's gone terribly wrong / You're all I wanted.

I Almost Do, for the inner turmoil you feel when you know you have to stay away from someone for your own good but you really, really have to resist just running back to that person. We've made quite a mess, Babe / It's probably better off this way / And I confess, Babe / In my dreams you're touching my face / And asking me if I wanna try again / With you / And I almost do.

Last Kiss, for that absolute sadness that comes simply with remembering everything that was good and not comprehending how it could've possibly ended. I still remember / The look on your face / Lit through the darkness / At 1:58 / Words that you whispered / For just us to know / You told me you loved me / So why did you go / Away?

Forever and Always, for that feeling of desperately wanting to hold on to what you still have but at the same time realizing it probably isn't going to last and having no idea how to fix it, plus feeling like the other person doesn't even care. So here's to everything / Coming down to nothing / Here's to silence / That cuts me to the core / Where is this going? / Thought I knew for a minute / But I don't anymore.

Dear John, my all-time favourite song, for that moment you find clarity and realize that you deserved better and that you were headed in an extremely dark direction because of this other person. [DISCLAIMER: my friend did NOT abuse me nor did we have some inappropriate age difference. But the way she would ignore me and her general moodiness really affected my own mental health and self-worth problems] You paint me a blue sky / And go back and turn it to rain / And I lived in your chess games / But you changed the rules every day / Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone / Tonight / Well I stopped picking up / And this song is to let you know why.

(She's covered more aspects of break-ups in other songs [cheating, divorce, feeling awkward around your ex amongst others], these are just the ones I remember being really important to me when I was first getting into her)

She really helped me feel a lot less alone during one of my loneliest periods and I really can't thank her enough for that. Soon after this, I started crushing on a girl in my class and Taylor's love songs started to take on a new meaning for me as well.

What's crazy to me is, when she went on hiatus for a few years, a part of me thought maybe I'd grown out of her and no longer had much in common with her, but when reputation came out I was pulled right back into my love for her as a person and musician and then when Lover came out I found that she was still explaining feelings to me better than I ever could (specifically with the songs The Archer and Cornelia Street). And now with folklore and evermore she's simply absolutely perfected her story-telling and I find myself deeply moved even by the songs I don't directly relate to. I feel like she has this amazing ability to find the absolute truth in the specific. I've never had a summer romance with someone who already had a girlfriend and mostly wanted to go back to her, and yet the bridge of august feels so real to me, y'know?

Back when we were still changin' for the better Wanting was enough For me, it was enough To live for the hope of it all Cancel plans just in case you'd call And say, "Meet me behind the mall" So much for summer love and saying "us" 'Cause you weren't mine to lose

It's hard to explain but looking at this, like it's so much more than the story it's telling. It's talking about how when you're young you really need so little to feel satisfied; how sometimes the idea of someone maybe spending time with you is better than actually doing things with other people; and how if someone using you without much thought can make you feel like you're not even entitled to grieve what you lost. Sorry. I'll stop. Don't want to go insane.

So, all of this is very personal and unique to me, but I think really the main thing that draws me to her is how vulnerable and honest she is about emotions, how eloquently she can explain the pain of being alive to me. Some people think she isn't the strongest singer, but I think, much like John actually, one of her greatest assets is how good she is at projecting emotion. The song happiness is a song I think has some lyrically weak moments but her vocal performance on it is so raw and devastating that every single line works even when, looking at it on paper, it feels like it shouldn't.

Hope this rambling made sense to you, lmao?? I love talking about Taylor though so thanks for the ask! Also very open to giving song recs if you do want to check her out more but I won't unless solicited to lmao *Sort of off-topic but I do think there's a relation between my fascination with the Beatles' history and my love for a great break-up song. I like pain I guess :)

#ask #anon #taylor #mine

3 notes · View notes

normal-thoughts-official · 5 years ago

Note

At what exact moment do you think malec fall in love?that moment in 1×06 when Magnus uses Alec's strength and then falls down exhausted? It's such an underrated moment but one can write a whole essay on it

as a matter of fact, yes, i do believe it was the moment in 1.06 (there is a reason it is my header, after all) and im really glad u asked because its one of my favorite moments and Ive been thinking of making a post about it in forever but never got to it so [cracks knuckles]

well, actually, i think 1.06 was the moment magnus fell in love. i dont know when alec fell in love, to be honest - i think with him, it was just something that kind of settled and clicked into place, you know? there was that attraction and there was the fact that magnus was an amazing person who had amazing chemistry with alec and who fought for him and extended his hand and tried to comfort him without judgement when no one would really allow him to be himself - and who gave him a space to be more of him than any other. but i dont think there was a precise moment when it hit Alec, and suddenly he had fallen; i think he realised he loved magnus when he said he loved him, but at that point it was already cemented. alec is a steady, careful guy; when he falls, he falls hard and becomes an absolute imbecile but until then it kind of settles in slowly, lodges itself inside of him until its carefully in place, and he doesnt really know when it happened. honestly, i relate to that because that's how it works for me, too.

but with Magnus, it was a little different - he had closed himself off from love for centuries, and while obviously he only fell in love with alec because he was already on the pathway to recover and had been for a while now, sure and steady (alec is definitely the right person for him, but he also came at the right time, cuz if he hadnt Magnus wouldnt really be able to allow himself to give in to the obvious pull they had), breaking that kind of wall is hard and is, for many people, something that happens suddenly, all at once, like the crash of a tsunami wave; it kind of isnt there until it suddenly is, flooding out and filling you. and with magnus that's definitely what happened; he had a click moment, when suddenly his walls were down and he found himself feeling, despite himself

you can see a clear difference in how magnus treats alec in 1.04-05 and how he does in 1.06. in 1.04-05 hes flirty, yes, obviously interested, but hes doing it teasingly, playfully, confident in a way that is only possible when theres not much on the line. don't get me wrong, i dont think he was using alec or lying to him - that's not the kind of person Magnus is at all - i just think that it was harmless flirting and interest with not much at stake. he was keeping his kind of playboy, devil-may-care persona (with the exception of the moment when he told alec there was nothing to be ashamed of, because of course magnus "compulsive emotional support" bane would immediately drop the act when he sees someone struggle. ugh. and alec notices this, too, all right, he can see right through to the person magnus really is in that moment, even if he closes himself off). and that wasnt even just in front of Alec; the whole "playing hard to get, i love a challenge" thing was after alec had hung up, there was no one there, he was just talking to himself the dumb dork and it is clear there is not much at stake for him here; he isnt in love, so theres no chance of heartbreak

compare that to the way he acted during drinks with Alec in 1.06. its a completely different person. even in his posture, the way he looks at Alec and moves around him, his facial expressions, theres a softness and vulnerability that just wasnt there at any point before (did yall thank Harry Shum Jr for ur rights today? seriously the man is such a great actor his talent is unbelievable). and for magnus to allow himself to be vulnerable- well, that's big. that's what he was scared of, after all. that's what has brought him hurt and made him swear off romantic relationships for so long

and he says this; he opens up to alec, a person he barely knows, tells him a little about his past, tells Alec hes unlocked something in him. it's not harmless flirting anymore, its not just a mere pursuit of someone hes casually interested in; theres something way, way deeper going on, and this is abundantly clear throughout the whole scene and every single one of magnus' actions. magnus has fallen. this is serious now; hes feeling things he didnt even remember how to, and his entire demeanor changes.

and look, that's really important to me, okay, because i hate the whole love at first sight thing. so when i started watching sh, i was kind of turned off from malec because i was like "oh theyre gonna suddenly fall in love for no reason" but no. that's not what happened. they had attraction, and chemistry, yes, for sure, definitely, but the feelings that sparked inside of them were very much real and solid and built organically, even if quickly. malec is so powerful because their attraction and devotion to each other makes sense, and because their relationship is so trusting, happy, fun, and healthy.

so lets go to 1.06 - the defining moment, the big game changer for the both of them. i know the exact milisecond magnus falls in love - its this one

(gif isnt mine, i had it saved on my phone and dont remember who made it; if you do, please let me know so i can credit them)

bitch, you are seeing it happen!!! you're watching it, right now!! the way he looks up and his whole face changes; he goes from heavy breaths to these little puffs of air, looks up at alec in awe, and it's all over his face, the softness in his features, the open vulnerability hes showing for the very first time in the entire show - even when he was almost running out of magic, he still looked way more put together than he does in this moment; in here he is open, he has no masks, and hes absolutely soft and open and vulnerable. and you can see it dawn on him too, the realisation that he let alec in, just late enough for it to be too late. it's done. god, i cant fucking believe harry shum jr invented acting. like holy shit, dude

and alec sees it too; in this moment he looks down and he sees the vulnerability in magnus' face and he knows this is the real magnus; that's what he looks like without all the walls and masks, and it's just- beautiful. incredible. you can see the love and the softness inside of him and it's just so easy to find a home in those eyes of his, and ugh, i might be changing my mind, this was the moment alec fell in love too

but anygays, why now, right? what was the big gamechanger in this scene?

well, first of all, id like to stress again, just for good measure, that magnus was already well on his path to recovery from abuse and beginning to open up again; his journey through finding self love and strength to stand on his own feet and be able to open himself for others is his and his alone. alec could be his perfect match (and he is) (fuck it i dont care they are perfect for each other, i never really thought there was such a thing even in fictional couples but shit dude they really are as perfect as it gets, malec truly invented love its unbelievable) and it still wouldnt matter if magnus wasnt ready not only to open up, but to get in a relationship as his own person, and not putting himself down like with camille. of course, he still has a long way to go, and recovery is not a straight line, so he still does things like not tell him when hes hurt and downplay his own pain so as not to "annoy" him or whatever, but he is on equal ground. the very first thing that happens when they finally get together (after the whole wedding ordeal) is, they fight. because alec was being an asshole and treated magnus badly and was really rude and magnus was hurt and he was tired of always being the one to chase after Alec, and he told him that. that's extremely important, because it establishes that Magnus isnt just running after Alec or doing anything for him - he wants a mutually fulfilling relationship and hes willing to fight for it, demand it, not accept less than it. and that's fucking recovery right here, folks. it's so hard for previously abused people to do that. so hard. it still is hard for him, but hes doing it. so, again: Magnus' journey to opening up and finding space for a healthy relationship in his life is his and his alone. and they were lucky as shit to have met when they did.

so, with that being said: 1.06 (god, this answer is such a mess, im ndjdjdidicn). you can see magnus fall in love, right then and there. the moment it happens: when he falls, and realises Alec is still holding him, making sure hes steady. not just that, but holding his hand (despite that being totally unnecessary now), and asking him if he's okay.

it's really unsubtle symbolism (and i mean that in the best possible way): Alec holding him when he fell symbolizes support; holding his hand symbolizes caring, because he could just hold him as to not let him fall, but the fact that hes holding his hand shows that hes trying to support him not just physically, but emotionally; and asking if hes okay shows genuine worry and desire to listen to his needs. again, really unsubtle; but fuck it, that's also part of what makes it powerful, because when was the last time magnus had that, that open caring and supporting and reaching out for him? i mean, obviously Magnus has his friends who are amazing and great to him, but this feeling, of being cared for, so easily, so openly, so obviously, from someone who barely knows him, hell, from a shadowhunter - this is new. both because he hasnt really allowed it - after all, you need to fall for someone to catch you - and because he just. hasnt had that. every time before, when he showed vulnerability, he had his wounds open wide and used against him - with asmodeus after his mom, with Camille after whatever happened that made him consider suicide. and then suddenly this guy shows up, and Magnus didnt even mean to be vulnerable in front of him, not really, he was supposed to hold it, but he does and what he finds is just- caring. worrying. sweetness. a grounding presence and touch. alec is completely focused on him, and isnt rushing him to get back on his feet or anything - hes just holding him and being there for him. he wasnt even looking for it, and suddenly there it is - that trust and reciprocity hed been craving for so long.

and yeah, its unsubtle, but that's also there in more subtle ways; magnus asks for his help, and alec comes without questioning, even if he's mad with pretty much everyone involved. he asks Alec to give him his strength, and he does, openly, without walls - dude, that is so intimate, and you can see how easily the magic flows between them; that's something that can only happen so smoothly if the required trust is given without a second thought. alec is giving his life force to this guy, whom he barely knows, and he doesnt hold back at all - Magnus needs it, he gives it. easy, simple. trusting. an open, clear connection. hes worried about Magnus from the start; he gets in and his first reaction is yelling for magnus and kneeling beside him to make sure hes okay. hes already kind of holding magnus even before magnus falls; he puts himself in a position where hes kind of supporting magnus' weight, and just focuses on giving magnus what he needs. up to this point no one even bothered to ask magnus what he needs. and look, Alec isnt perfect, and he definitely still has his prejudices and ignorance at this point, but this is something special. having someone just give it their all to make sure ur okay, from the get-go, trusting you like that- that's not everyday. specially not for magnus. I think maybe Magnus wouldnt even have lowered his guard enough to have that stumble if Alec hadnt been so easily showing him hes in there together with him, as equals, without so much as a second thought- magnus' persona is polished. hes been through worse without stumbling both before and after. his guard was already down, because Alec had been showing himself to be trustworthy from the start.

and after that, it just keeps going. alec helps him clean up his apartment, without being asked, long after everyone else has already gone - he listens to Magnus talk about his past, attentively, without judgement. he even shows some vulnerability of his own - that fucked-stupid smile when magnus raised his hand to his lips, the glances he throws magnus' way, the way he even manages to talk a bit about his insecurities and confusion; hes opening himself up to Magnus, too. hes smitten. hes interested. the connection is established. he stays the night, and they end up talking all night long, despite the fact that Alec was called to work, and we dont even know about what. we know they are similarly competitive and have a good chemistry, so clearly this was a good, fun talk; but theres something running way deeper in there, too. magnus is showing alec a lot of himself, and alec is not only welcoming it, but reciprocating it as best as he can. that moment of spark isnt gone; it keeps growing, the bond that was formed gets stronger. at this point, Magnus has fallen (i firmly believe that he fell in that exact moment he looked up at Alec) but it gains shape and strength during that night and talk; its a little frustrating because Alec cant face what he wants, but the pull is real and strong enough for it to get stronger, the shapes clearer.

so- yeah. Magnus fell for Alec in 1.06, the moment he realised that he was willing to have his back, to see him as he was and welcome it and treat it with care; and to give him back in return. Magnus fell for Alec when he realised that, somehow, he had already formed the beginnings of a bond with him - the kind that's solid, that means trust and care and effort while also being easy, fun, nice. alec fell for magnus when he looked at him and saw someone that was also struggling with showing who he was, but who wasnt scared; someone who was kind, and good, and willing to listen to him and try to help him and who valued him. and that is so. fucking. important.

#ask #pastaownsmylife #sorry i got a little carried away but lets be real we all knew it would happen #im emo im dying squirtle #sh #shadowhunters #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #meta #malec meta #magnus bane meta #sh meta #overflowing trashcan

124 notes · View notes

cheesymovie · 5 years ago

Note

okay so I’m alone in my dorm @ uni and I’m bored as all hell & i’ve has a recent fascination w old movies??? & u reblog stuff about old movies all the time so I’m just wondering if u have any suggestions?? I wanna watch some good/fun ones but I have no idea how to find the ones that don’t suck!! always a sucker for the ones that have gay subtext but like. any suggestions at all would be so appreciated thank u queen

oooooh yes!!!!!!! you came to just the place! im just gonna list some of my faves, hang on cause this is gonna be a LONG one (im not sure what your cutoff for Old is so i just went with 1960)

silent:

wings: really well done visually, also features the first gay kiss in history (ofc the context is different, but it’s there!)

nosferatu: the legendary spongebob character’s origin story! the music is wonderful in this, it’s very Artsy, just one of the greatest horror movies ever (it’s a bit slow at times but most silent films are)

the cabinet of dr caligari: REALLY cool from an art perspective, the sets are incredible, i love german expressionism, another great one for when you’re in the mood to get Spooky

steamboat bill, jr: buster keaton is a legend for a reason, this is my personal favorite of his. theres also something very unique and charming about silent film slapstick that i just adore, and this is a wonderful showcase of it!

the gold rush: basically the same reasoning as above, but with charlie chaplin. also this movie has a lot of genuine emotion you dont often get from silent comedies!

sunrise: a song of two humans: a must-see for silent films, it has super intriguing visual effects that really give a dreamlike quality to it, as well as great acting for the limited medium

show people: a really sweet classic romance that also gives you a nice (if not totally accurate) taste of The Movie Biz @ the time

metropolis: one of the first sci fi movies ever. visually STUNNING like nothing ive ever seen, also a bit of a workers of the world unite moment

noir/drama/general Serious Stuff:

the big sleep: SEXY! the plot is hard to follow but it’s worth it for the characters and also just all i can say is. hot - it’s about a murder or two!

the maltese falcon: actually makes sense and like. Says Stuff abt humanity. gripping plot and nuanced characters -about a bird statue and the knights templar also human nature but also who could forget a murder or two!

sunset boulevard: absolutely enthralling characters, script, plot, performances, all of it! - it’s about a murder!

rebel without a cause: HUGE gay subtext with this one, one of the original Teen Movies

kiss me deadly: interesting!!!!! i was intrigued from start to finish w this one and you probably will be too

strangers on a train: one o those Psychological Thrillers, interesting n well acted - it’s about The Concept of Murder

north by northwest: super fast paced spy action movie that also #makes you think

murder, my sweet: another classic phillip marlowe story with that fast talkin detective dialogue i love so much - it’s about a murder! (my sweet)

double indemnity: the height of Cynicism in noir, not even any detectives in this just bad deeds and Tension -it’s about a murder or two!

key largo: just a hotel full of intriguing characters all At Odds with each other and the concept of heroism

random harvest: kinda cheesy amnesia plot but comes across well with good acting and dialogue

the lady vanishes: about a lady. who vanishes. funny at times and has that Classic hitchcock tension before he really landed on his final style

casablanca: “here’s lookin at you kid” “i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” just. one of the most iconic movies of the whole Classic Era and for good reason!

to have and have not: basically casablanca BUT consider this- i love Them (them being humphrey bogart and lauren bacall)

comedy/romance/general Light Stuff:

the thin man series: one of my absolute all time favorites! it’s just a story about two rich people who only love each other and alcohol getting dragged into solving various mysteries. my favorite thing about this is how much you can tell they love each other, like they’ve been married for years and just banter back and forth in a way founded on mutual respect n adoration which is So refreshing to see in classic movies!

it happened one night: i ADORE this movie! it’s a classic road trip comedy with a ton of bizarre side characters and hijinks, and also basically Invented the rom com genre. they’re also genuinely in love in a very cute way! it’s just sweet and fun and one of my fav movies of all time

arsenic and old lace: a dark comedy about old lady serial killers, brothers who think theyre theodore roosevelt and frankenstein (respectively), and Love. it’s super bizarre but a real joy to watch!

it’s a wonderful life: makes me sob every single time and leaves ya with that fuzzy warm feeling inside (recommended for christmas/winter viewing)

duck soup: i mean it’s the most iconic marx brothers movie, what more can i say!

bringing up baby: just a real wacky romp where it’s the lady and the tiger, with a whole lot of silly comedy

my man godfrey: makes fun of rich people n has a big loud ensemble cast (also romance)

the shop around the corner: they fall in love through letters but hate each other in real life! :0! bonus points for jimmy stewart’s voice

abbott and costello meet frankenstein: the title says it all. completely joyfully stupid movies like these are a big reason why i love old movies!

roman holiday: audrey hepburn’s debut movie. really sweet, has an ending that makes me cry

death takes a holiday: super interesting experimental concept not seen often in this era - Death literally takes a holiday and has to deal w life n love n all that

sabrina: a very nice and well acted little romance/cinderalla story w sprinkle of comedy

the philadelphia story: another Classique rom com with a love triangle n some nice fast-paced witty dialogue

musicals:

singin in the rain: one of the first classic movies i ever remember loving. every second of it is just. ah chef kiss

guys and dolls: very fun!!! just emblematic of good ol showtunesy musicals as a whole

top hat: fred astaire and ginger rogers!! need i say more?

on the town: really fun music n choreography, generally engaging to watch

cabin in the sky: an all black cast with a ton of great songs n talent!

the great ziegfeld: a really lovely period piece about 20s live shows with stunning costumes/choreography

gentlemen prefer blondes: it’s classic baby!

meet me in st louis: very sweet very fun lots to love

an american in paris: kinda ran out of juice near the end here and realized Musicals is the Same. anyways watch it gene kelly is charming and can click his heels together

horror/sci fi

dracula: sexy. iconic. what more do you need

frankenstein: really has a Heart unlike a lot of these, also Iconic

bride of frankenstein: made me cry! see above but like, More

just realized im listing all the universal monster movies, so just, watch Any of those for a good and cheesy classic horror time

the day the earth stood still: a real cold war era movie about aliens and morality

plan 9 from outer space: a HILARIOUS so-bad-it’s-good old sci fi movie, highly recommend

them!: giant radiation ants babey! really good effects for the time n well done suspense

honorable mention: this is past the cut off date but watch santa claus conquers the martians oh my gosh it’s the epitome of old b list sci fi and it never fails to send me n pals into a regular Laugh Riot

#dont feel obligated to read all this #also! i dont feel entirely qualified to speak on gay subtext n didnt wanna come across wrong so it's pretty limited in here #bc a lot of them are like. Problematic coded villains and stuff of that nature #ok i realize this is much more than you asked for but you cant just hit me w an ask abt my hyperfixations n expect anything less #ok fiona #movin pictures

14 notes · View notes

ocean-butch · 6 years ago

Note

How is cas different from ur other girlfriends

akcjwjxia i had to wait like SIX HOURS to answer this bc of a goddamn test i had bUT OH BOY ANON AM I GONNA LOVE DOING IT alfjadjsk i just love talking about my gf i love her so much i wanna gush about her 25/8

the short answer would be basically in every way bUt imma do it part by part.

okay so, in a simplified version i’ve had relationships with people whose personalities worked well with me but who were shitty girlfriends or a good girlfriend who just didnt really fit with my personality. i’ve actually given that so much thought even before i met cass, but the point is that i met her and she was just perfect for me in both ways (technically its more complicated bc theres a bunch of logic into this that im not explaining bc my mind is weird and it would be Way too long but anyways). but ok let get into How she fits me perfectly.

first of all literally no one ever in my entire life has made me laugh as easily and genuinely as she does. im not even exaggerating, like laughing was never really A Thing for me to look for in girls bc it just never happened???? like i had fun conversations and stuff but there was never anyone that made me go “holy shit i have never laughed this much with anyone else” and we have So many inside jokes, which is a thing that i almost never have????? and i always used to wish i did bc everyone would talk about it and i’d feel like i just wasnt funny and That was the problem. and also this is really important bc its one of the things that made me realize that i liked (and eventually, came to love) her. bUT its not the only one so theres also like all these things that we like and we can talk about for HOURS like i remember when i watched infinity war and the first thing i did when i got home was call her and we talked about it for like 2 hours idek but it was great. the point is, we have a bunch of shared interests (which isnt like 100% necessary but its still really nice), wHICH LEADS ME TO: her music taste is amazing and i love that so much bc i love music With My Entire Soul and its the best thing in the fucking world (after cass & my friends and tied with the ocean) but yeah thats great too. AND i think more importantly than the last 2 things is that she is literally so fucking easy to talk to. like ever since the beginning we didnt really have that awkward phase where we run out of things to talk about and the conversation keeps dying like we never had that it just flowed so well and that was such a good feeling. another thing is also how comfortable i feel talking to her.

like i have never felt this way with any of my girlfriends bc i was always scared that i was gonna be annoying or say something Wrong and they’d start to realize i sucked and then break up with me, but shes just so kind and idk she just has this way about her that makes me feel at home and its always been there like i dont believe in love at first sight or anything like that but i swear to god the day after i met her i already felt like i could tell her anything and that was such a comforting thing and i needed that so badly at the time. i dont feel like i was able to describe this aspect very well tbh like im not doing it justice. like, she makes me feel like im not annoying at all, and like i could just randomly start ranting about anything and she would be like super invested in it, and just literally so comfortable in every sense of the word. she is my home, no ifs ands or buts, i just feel it every single time that we talk or that i simply think about her, and i have never felt this so clearly with anyone. and i think this comfort i feel with her is kinda connected with how she has always made me felt so appreciated, in a way that no one has ever done. like, i had like 2 tags about my wants and needs in a relationship, there was “my dream girl” to remind me that i shouldnt settle for anyone after i got out of a rlly bad relationship, and there was “things i wish someone would tell me” after my “first” relationship (i dont really count it bc Officially™ we only dated for a week) because my gf at the time would almost never be affectionate with me and it made me really insecure so i started that tag as a way to vent kinda. anyways my point is that i made those tags bc i would always feel super anxious in my relationships bc i never really felt loved or even wanted (aka the good personalities awful gfs relationships) i just felt like a burden and it was such a big thing for me.

okay now i’ll say that there Kinda was an exception to this before cass, because it would be unfair to say that that relationship was detrimental to my mental health, but it was still different. like, that ex did make me feel wanted most times, but not only did i still have A Lot of insecurities about the whole thing bc of some things she would say and do or not say and not do and i’d get like super uncomfortable or just sad really but also bc whenever the conversation would start to die out i was Absolutely Certain that she was gonna break up with me. it was pretty bad im not even joking. and like ofc my anxiety isnt her fault OR responsibility and like sure i still get anxious about cass sometimes but its not like that its basically just when she doesnt answer for a long time i think that something bad might have happened but even when my rude ass brain does try to tell me that she doesnt love me i KNOW that its not true, and that is a kind of peace that i have never ever had before. but anyways, so that was the good gf whose personality didnt fit mine and its weird now bc that is so obvious but i really didnt wanna believe it at the time even though i knew it wasnt gonna work out, but now its just really weird ngl (but i wont get into the why).

and now cass. wow okay let me tell you about cass. she is perfection. she is literally everything i have ever wanted AND things i didnt even know i wanted. she is everything no one else ever was and i just remembered that when we started dating in may i said that exact same sentence to abby. its just so true, she really is everything that no one else could be. because theyre not her. i’ve said this a lot of times but i really dont see how i could ever love anyone else after loving her, it just doesnt make sense to me because she really is like,, as good as it gets. there is no one better than her for me. we’re literally meant to be i s2g like when we broke up for a while i would tell everyone i wasnt really trying to move on at all bc i just hoped she would come back to me and i couldnt miss that chance. i knew she was my soulmate, although at some points i lost almost all hope (but never all) and i started thinking that maybe she was the love of my life but i wasnt the love of hers. and thats bc she really is everything ive ever dreamed of like she has all these little things that she does or say that sometimes wouldnt even mean anything to other people but to me they are So important bc theyre things ive dreamed about while my ex girlfriends ignored me akcjsjxn like, i was talking about how comfortable she feels to me and a big part of that comes from little things like the fact that even when we were just friends she would spam me when i was gone for a long time and that not only made me feel missed and appreciated but also it meant i could do that to her and it wouldnt be annoying bc she felt the same!! like, she missed me too! and me knowing that she actually Wanted to talk to me and the fact that she actually showed me she cared was super great when we started dating bc it made me feel like if i was feeling sad or insecure, i could literally just ask her to be a little more affectionate and it wouldnt feel fake bc i actually knew she cared. and you have No idea how much that meant to me bc i literally didnt know it was possible for me to feel that way. like honestly i thought it was an innate aspect of who i am that like if i asked for affection it would be meaningless? bc i’d be lowkey forcing the person to say something? but with her it felt different bc we had enough intimacy for me to feel comfortable enough to do that.

HOWEVER i never actually Had to do that bc i got insecure exactly once (1) on the first night we started dating back in may bc i didnt know how much she liked me and i was like in love with her so i thought she would think i was too much and then i told her i was sad and that i was gonna sleep and the next day when i woke up she said something along the lines of “how are you babe bc i remember you said you were sad last night and i couldnt stop thinking about it bc i want you to feel good all the time” and thats something so small but wow it just meant so much to me bc i would cry and beg any fucking force in the universe to make my last ex do Anything At All to try to make me Not Sad and it would be awful and i would feel so so unloved and then cass just said that and something clicked in me and i never doubted her feelings to an actual Meaningful extent while we’ve been together anymore (like ofc i get insecure sometimes and especially when we broke up, but while we have been dating ive never gotten like actually Sad™ specifically bc i wasnt sure she liked me) but it gets even better because some of the things she does are so so special that i never even imagined them like shes literally unreal, i literally never thought someone like her existed and its just so wild to me that i get to be with her.

and i know im saying a bunch of cliches but i mean it all so much like i remember when i was dating one of my exes i was learning her first language but she didnt try to learn mine and i really wished she would bc i just always loved the idea that someone would do that for me?? (and she was like the good gf so yknow,, just how that relationship literally did Not even compare to cass) and guess what yes cass is learning portuguese and its the cutest thing ever btw bUt the point is she does all the little things ive ever wanted in a partner (i literally have a post with a list of things i appreciate in a partner and she does all of them!! well, the ones that arent like irl or smth) also i literally have a draft in this blog that is a list of cute things cass has done/said that means a lot to me personally but i didnt post it yet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and like theres just so so many things that i havent talked about, like how im not even sure if i was ever in love with anyone of them anymore because what i feel for cass is just so different and so much more, or like how cass actually makes me want to try to get better, which ive never actually wanted before bc it always seemed to scary, like she literally makes me wanna be not only alive but also happy bc she makes me feel like i deserve it. she has been such a good influence on me and my mental health and thats so important and its the first time someone has been this good for me.

but anyways the point is that cass is right for me in every single way like she really is my other half she literally just is everything that she is and thats how shes different from my ex girlfriends.

#according to my girlfriend i spent over 2 hours writing this #AltHouGh #she DID distract me a few times bc she was being cute #and i love her #wow i love her #i know anon is definitely not gonna read this but my girl will alhajska #mine #answered #anon #luna

7 notes · View notes

simplemlmsponsoring · 6 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/social-media-marketing/social-media-automation-is-bad-and-other-marketing-lies/

Social Media Automation Is Bad, and Other Marketing Lies

When it comes to social media and marketing automation, there are ways to win big. However, there have also been some runaway dumpster fires.

via GIPHY

Remember AT&T’s super-spammy debacle called the “Ticket Chasers” program? It was a chance for people to win free NCAA tickets. They outsourced the campaign to a contractor, who then outsourced the Tweets to a robot, who then spammed the crap out of thousands of Twitter users.

The problem was that many of the recipients didn’t even follow @ATT or have any interest in NCAA.

Or, more recently, take @McDonaldsCorp’s unfortunate tweet.

There’s not a lot of substance there, but @Wendys sure loved it.

Even the best of us make mistakes, and public ones at that. But some point to these instances as proof-positive that social media automation is bad marketing—that it undermines the purpose of social media altogether: community engagement and meaningful conversations.

After all, you’d never automate messages to your friends and family, would you? Then how can you (gasp) automate messages to your beloved audience?

The truth is, these accusations miss the point entirely. Social media automation done well is both brilliant and has a positive return. The difference is using what I call “smart-o-mation” rather than “spam-o-mation.”

I don’t like spam. Nobody likes spam. But social automation doesn’t have to be spam.

‘It’s Only Time’

Once upon a time, my company, CoSchedule, ran a test around the perfect recipe for social promotion. We wanted to know how many times we should promote a single piece of content. Which networks work best?

We dug into our own data packed with millions of messages from tens of thousands of users. We also crunched the numbers from over twenty industry-recognized studies on the best times to schedule social media messages on every network.

I’m talking time of day, day of the week, every detail down to the hour. Then, we published our findings.

Recently, I met a marketer who was absolutely raving about this article. That was pretty fun to hear. In fact, he found so much value in it, he had it bookmarked and followed it religiously every time he scheduled a social media messages for his brand’s many accounts.

“For every message?” I asked him.

“That’s right, every message.”

“Doesn’t that take you a ton of time?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s not that bad. Just a few hours per week.”

He was an awesome guy, and we talked for a while longer. Eventually, though, I gave him some good news that I could get him the same results—perfectly scheduled messages—in one percent of the time with some of our automation features.

Surprisingly, he pushed back. It took some time for me to convince him that he should give up the intensive manual labor of scheduling things by hand. He kept saying, “It’s only time—it doesn’t cost me anything!” However, that’s where he, and many other marketers I’ve met, are wrong.

Dollarize Your Time

A few quick questions helped me calculate that his time was worth about $100 per hour. In his mind, he was saving money by not dropping $60 per month on an automation tool. By the end of our conversation, it was pretty apparent that while he was “saving” $60, he was actually spending $1,200 in time to accomplish the same function.

He was stuck in the “it’s only time” trap. He was grossly undervaluing his time. And we constantly see this in marketing teams.

Too many marketers think their time is free. But they don’t realize that it’s actually more valuable than their money.

The purpose of promotion is to get the right people to the right place at the right time—all with the goal of driving profitable customer action. The mechanics of promotion are about ruthlessly outsourcing tasks that can be performed just as well, if not better, by automated processes. When you don’t, you’re stuck in an unscalable pattern.

My marketing friend, like each of us, has 168 hours per week. Let’s generously say he only works 40 hours per week. (He probably works much more, like a lot of you reading this!) That means the three “free” hours he spends each week on perfectly timing his social messages equals 7.5 percent of his time.

Now, I’ll ask you the same question I asked him: “How would it feel to put in fewer hours and get better results?”

It’s possible because that same time previously sunk into menial tasks is now available for high-return pursuits—the stuff you absolutely cannot delegate to another person or tool.

It’s time to embrace smart-o-mation to get bigger results in less time.

Smart-o-mation versus Spam-o-mation

Smart-o-mation is a way to 10x your social media results while saving time and money. In fact, I believe in its power so much, it’s actually a part of my content marketing formula.

However, when people hear me talk about automation, some think I’m advocating for “Ticket Chasers”-style spamming, where you simply spew the same tweets, posts, and pics ad nauseam. This is spam-o-mation, a virtual recipe for alienating your audience in a public way. It’s also the form of automation people actually have a problem with.

Rethink Your Publishing Schedule

Harnessing the power of smart-o-mation is dead simple. It’s all about rethinking your publishing schedule.

Spoiler alert: It’s time to get aggressive.

In my experience, under-sharing on social media is a marketing epidemic. It looks like this: You publish a fresh blog post, then share a link on Facebook, Twitter, or maybe LinkedIn. Hopefully, it picks up some traction and nabs some likes, comments, and shares.

But within a few hours, your post evaporates from people’s feeds. In fact, some studies indicate a tweet’s shelf life is five minutes or less before it evaporates for good.

Now, couple that shelf life with the staggering amount of noise on social. Every single second, there are:

814 images published on Instagram 2,644,941 emails sent 7,844 messages tweeted

This is further compounded by the dismal reality of that post’s reach. According to a report by Social@Ogilvy, brands may experience as little as two percent organic reach.

If you’ve got 10,000 followers, a cool 200 of them will see the post as they breeze through their feeds over the course of two hours.

From our own data, we know that 77 percent of our users share their content on social media less than three times. 37 percent share content on social media just once after it’s published.

Here’s the deal. If you’re sharing a piece of content just once, you’re absolutely wasting your content. You’re leaving tons of engagement and traffic on the table—and this means revenue!

We know this for a fact because when we ramped up our posting schedule, our blog posts got 31.5 times more click-throughs—that’s a 3,150 percent increase in one week. And all because of our frequency.

We more than quadrupled our traffic with essentially no more effort.

Our first tweet attracted only two link clicks. A measly two people visited our content.

If we’d stopped there, this channel would have been a nothing burger. Fortunately, we kept talking about it. We tweeted about this piece of content eight more times, attracting 63 additional click-throughs.

You can take a deeper dive into exactly how we did it with a webinar Jay Baer and Nathan Ellering tag teamed.

How To Quadruple Traffic With A Social Media Calendar

One of my favorite quotes from Jay here was, “The goal isn’t to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business because of social media.”

That’s exactly what a more robust posting schedule helps you do.

If you’re sharing a piece of content just once, you’re absolutely wasting your content.Click To Tweet Smart-O-Mate Your New Posting Schedule

Over time and with constant testing, we settled on a social media promotion schedule that’s about 40 days long for blog posts alone. But, since we publish so much content, manually keeping up with so much social media posting legwork would cost an incredible amount in dollarized time. It would also be a huge opportunity cost.

While our marketing team would be doing excellent social media work by posting at the best times on the optimal days, their time to actually create more content and engage with our followers on social media would be seriously undercut.

That’s why we define our cross-platform promotion schedule and then automate every message with just a few clicks.

We still custom design graphics. We still write valuable copy for every social message. We’re doing far more than shooting out a title and link for 40 days.

But the point to embrace is that intelligent automation will save you time, and therefore increase your ability to drive business value with social media.

Get yourself unstuck from the “It’s only time” trap, get aggressive with your promotion schedule, and capitalize on social automation tools to do the time-consuming tasks for you.

In fact, Convince & Convert saves north of 10 hours each month via the same process. But remember, be smart, not spammy. Add value to your audience at every turn. This will allow automation to supercharge your results rather than sour them.

The post Social Media Automation Is Bad, and Other Marketing Lies appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Read more: convinceandconvert.com

#content #every #media #more #social #some #time #your #SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

0 notes

kindofsharethat · 8 years ago

Text

so last night people were sharing stories of how they became larries and i thought i’d make a big (emphasis on big) ol list of them because i found them really fun to read

I've been a 1D fan since 2013 and my sister and i always thought that l&h looked so good together but only the bromance and we're like "omg larries destroyed their friendship poor eleanor 1!1!1!", then in 2015 the "i'm gay pretty unfortunate isn't eleanor ?" happened and i was like WHAAT???? and i ended up searching more and more about larry (bc it was the only thing that came to my mind) and i found the videos and then i told my sister and then here we are.

I became a larrie because someone in my dash who rarely post about 1D posted the first louis/fred pic and tagged it babygate. So I went looking into the tag and found everything. I had doubt but then i saw the moment where H touch L arm and i was in! I actually became a fan of the music after. I've done everything in reverse with this band! But when i entered the fandom in feb2016 and i was hopping to see it all end like a month later! But hey, still here! And loving it mostly! End it!

it was 2011 and my friend told me she had found a really good song and the singers were so cute, she showed me wmyb video and i spent the whole day listening to it and then in the evening i wanted to find out more about these 5 guys. i started watching video diaries ans i was looking for the next one but i accidentally clicked "best larry moments" video aaand the rest is history

I became a larrie after aimh tweet hits 2m and everyone on all of my social media started freaking out even though I didn't follow any 1D blogs so I started search about them and now I'm here also at that time I was kinda homophobic 'cause I live in russia and grown up in middle eastern family and now I'm proud lesbian who knows a lot about LGBTQ+ history so thank you to my larents and 1D for making me gay lol 🌈💕

i was a fan since 2011 but didnt know about larry bc i was young and didnt have any social media but around 2013-2014 my friend showed me the "are you and louis dating" vid and i was like the mr krabs meme bc i just couldnt understand why larry would have to be covered up so i went home and watched "why elounor is fake" videos and my eyes were open and ever since that day ive been a larrie and i regret not knowing sooner but im here now !!

i saw the daddy daddy cool tweet and was like dude that's the wrong type of daddywtf? & I hadn't heard about a pregnancy? then a week later I had read the treatise and had a side blog and watched all the freddieismyqueen videos & was in way too deeeep lol. I've never been around when they weren't on the break even, I'm so confused about how I got here but now I can't escape 😝I had never even listened to their music before but then I also did that and was like damn they're so good?!

I just remembered going out once and being quite tipsy when DMD video came on so I pointed to Louis and Harry and said 'they're in love, but shh nobody can know' and one of my friends looked at me with a WTF?? expression on her face and said 'but I thought that was common knowledge'. Mind you, she still doesn't even know their names, let alone anything else. That was around the time bg was still a fresh wound and I'll never forget it bc it was so nice to hear it and also my hangover was a bitch.

I got interested in 1D right after their last concert, like right on Halloween. I became a Larrie that very same day too, right after i read Dan Wattpad's infamous "Harry and Louis hate each other". I saw articles floating around saying how they were enemies, reason for Zayn leaving...blah blah. I was sceptical, then i came across the famous OTRA hug, and i was like, no fucking way they hate each other, not with how they are hugging. I then delved into YT and discovered freddieismyqueen. Bless.

I joined july 2014 (2 months after they 've passed my country ouch) and was instantly hooked because this shit is like crack. Today I'm the darkest larrie that exists preaching the word for everyone who'll listen. I can WAIT for their CO because I have a party prepared? I literally have a wine since 2014 in my cellar that I'm only going to open the day they're free, I have nauthical theme stocked for the party. My friends just know that they have to come and that I'll be crying the whole month!!

weirdly enough i became a larry cos of that stupid channel 4 documentary id never heard of larry or gay shipping or whatever before that and i saw that and i was very mr krabs meme and i looked into it saw that it wasn't evil and gross like they were portraying it and never turned back

I joined the fandom in late 2012 and I wasn't a larrie but I wasn't an anti either i just hadn't looked into it but then i remember during the confirmation of bg on gma i felt bad for harry and i didnt really know why and I was surprised by my own reaction. Then with bg going on I started to realise that none of that could be real I did my research and I've been a larrie ever since :)

I joined the fandom in 2012, used to think Elounor was real but just because I never looked into it and I knew some people thought Larry was real at the time so I checked this insta page that debunked Elounor and I have no regrets 💙💚

When I become a 1D fan, in 2012, I liked elounor and I liked Eleanor unfortunately. I was not that into fandom things so I wasn't paying attention to details. But my whole view changed in 2014 when they came to South America for the WWAT and all those rumors in Argentina with the hotel room and Brazil that was an experience and I was like "ok something is happening here between them" and here I am, 4 years later and going strong as a larrie. I'm on the winning team 😌💅🏼

I became a larrie when my friend first introduced me to fanfiction. I read a larry one and was totally amazed by it. After that, I switched between het ones and larry ones, but always came back to larry. After that, I simply became obsessed with the pair, something that made me fall in love with the band and all of them. I watched the dairies and everything, and just saw how clear their infatuation was. Tumblr and a lot of other sites just simply proved the theory even more. No regrets ❤

i became a larrie late novemeber after a month of being in the 1d fandom. i watched freddieismyqueen videos and other proofs for hours everyday (especially over thanksgiving break)

I wasn't even a fan of 1D, but while I was looking for pictures of them to do a collage for a friend, I found one in which Louis and Harry were looking at each other and, damn, I can't explain what I felt, I just knew it. So, I was trying to figure out if I was the only one thinking there was something between this two, and it turned out I wasn't! I discovered tumblr, and I spent 3 days reading post, watching videos and proofs and...here I am, 3 years after, being the larriest larrie

I became a 1d fan when uan tour had just started and like. I watched all the damn youtube videos in about a week and I noticed that in the video diaries on the stairs they were so ~cozy, and they were so Extra™ on stage and hl weren't like that with the other boys. They just emanated the feelings I suppressed: Ultra Gay. And yeah. That's how it Began for me

I became a larrie when I watched the behind the scenes of wmyb and Louis was saying "I've gotta say it" and Harry was all over him and hid his face in Louis' shoulder and said "no!"

Same like that previous anon i hadnt even considered two guys being more than friends bc of where i grew up. But just watching proof videos of them for a while i kind of realized how in love they were. Thats when i started thinking about how different and colorful the world actually is compared to what I've learned from the people i grew up around

I became a larrie when my friend and I would watch their video diaries together, and I would see the way h&l acted with each other. I mentioned it to my friend and she was like yeah, Larry, and she showed me one YouTube video so I spent weeks watching every single one I could find, all these years later and I've come to accept theres no way to crawl out of this 😂

are we sharing larrie stories? my friend became a fan early 2012 (and a larrie) and was adamant on making me on too, and I finally gave in summer 2013. I rmr the day after TCAs that year, niall tried to do a twitcam and idr how but some article got written abt the twitcam that included a link to those 'you just have to pay attention' videos. I marathoned them all, and it was that arm moment that zayn failed to hide that #sealed it. though my friend gave me the skinny on haylor back in 2012~

i was like a super casual fan since their first album. my friend introduced them to me cuz she was crushing on zayn. i just knew their music but not actually them. i became a larrie during weedgate. weird timing, i know. i saw it on the news and got curious about what was going on. saw the video then got to know about the boys individually through past vids. i started from the very start from the xf vid diaries. those two, not subtle AT ALL. and well, the rest was history.

i was in entirely different fandom back in 2014, but one of my follower turns into a liam stan and starts to post about 1d and there was a post about how harry and louis can't touch each other and i thought that was really weird weren't they bandmates?? then i started digging around and stumble into a treatise blog. here i am now hahaha

I got into this fandom because of my best friend. She showed me week 4 diary video... and I was like are those two in a relationship?? I pointed at louis and harry and she said no why? And I was like I don't know they seem cozy together and I pointed out that harry was staring at louis lips... she didn't believe me first but now she is a larrie😂 So basically I got into this fandom knowing larry is real

I became a fan of the boys 4 years ago. I read about Larry and that fans believed they were together so I went on YouTube and saw some videos and read some stories (I think it was here on tumblr??) and I immediately believed they were together. There wasn't a particular moment for me, it was a lot of things. Probably, above all, the way they looked at each other. They never looked at someone else so fondly. And 4 years later I keep saying the same thing 💖

for me, i always thought louis was gay from way back in 2011 but i didn't really think of harry's sexuality cause i wasn't like a stan i was just a casual fan [which is why it confuses me when people say that if larry isn't real, louis is straight and horrible, no...he still gay as hell babe]. anyway i became a larrie cause i used to really follow celeb gossip and when the news dropped, gossip sites/tabloids kept mentioning harry and larries everywhere so i decided to investigate and...here i am

68 notes · View notes

themoneybuff-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Questions About Crowdlending, Prayer, Christmas Trees, Chess, Beans, and More!

Whats inside? Here are the questions answered in todays reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. Investing for childs future 2. Crowdlending investments 3. Shorter workweek thoughts? 4. Struggling to improve at work 5. Last minute holiday gifts 6. Praying for financial help? 7. Child care suggestions 8. Christmas tree suggestions 9. Learning chess for cheap 10. Keeping beans fresh 11. 401(k) help 12. I never want to retire I get two or three requests a week from a reader asking to reprint an article Ive written for some purpose. So, heres my policy on that. If you wish to reprint an article of mine for a print publication or an email newsletter, not a website, you have permission to do so provided that you attribute the article to Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar and include the URL of the site, http://www.thesimpledollar.com/. If you are interested in a reprint on a website, ask me first. Make sure that the article was actually written by Trent first, however, by visiting that article on the website and verifying that Trent was the writer of that specific article. Some portion of articles that appear on the site were written by other writers and youll need to ask them individually for permission. On with the questions. Q1: Investing for childs future I have a young kid (6 years old) and Id like to invest a little bit for him in a set and forget fashion. I realize Im pretty lucky to be living in an expensive place (Seattle, WA) while being able to max out my 401k, my Roth IRA and my wifes IRA. We dont have any loans, pay off out credit card monthly and just have a home mortgage with low interest. I am still able to put a little bit of money regularly on a brokerage account and a 529 for my son (although I dont want to put too much for a few of reasons: I dont know if hell go to college here (expensive) or in France where Im from (cheap), I value community college highly and dont necessarily aim for him to go to ivy league schools and finally I dont believe in taking at my charge all his higher education expense. My only downfall here is that I feel a bit behind on retirement because I moved to the US AT 26 for a temp job that became permanent at 32 and only understood 401k since I was 34. Im been maxing out ever since. I definitely have the saving mentality that we find Europeans! In essence, we live on about 40% off a single about 110k/year (my wife works for a non profit and brings an income that pretty much only pays for her laptop, cell phone, car gas and child care once in a while for us to go on a date). With that in mind, what could be our next smart moves (I feel that is not often addressed for people that are able to to reach all the conventional goals we see out there but dont fit in the high income category where advance money placement and tax schemes can be beneficial). So my questions are two folds: what is the next smart move for us (just keep investing in the Vanguard Total Market Index Fund?) what can I do to invest long term for my son? I was hoping for an IRA but he is not earning income. Is the anything else? Bob First of all, a 529 might still be useful for you even if your child goes to school in France, provided that hes attending a college or university thats eligible for Title IV student aid. There are hundreds of overseas universities and colleges that are, so youll have to research the ones hes considering. If youre not strictly saving for education for your son, however, your best bet is probably what youve already stumbled on gifting your child a certain amount each year below the gift tax exclusion limit ($14,000 a year) and then investing that money in a taxable account in your childs name while again gifting your child enough to pay any taxes on dividend income. This is of course assuming that your child is not earning an income of some kind via modeling or acting or something akin to that. For us, our savings for our childrens future is strictly in the 529 plans. Once they move out and go to school, their 529 plans are our financial support for their education. We hope to have enough in each account to cover in-state tuition for a few years at a state university (like Iowa State U or University of Iowa), though they can make other choices in terms of where to go to school should they wish too. Q2: Crowdlending investments What do you think about crowdlending investments? Carly Crowdlending refers to any program in which individuals can lend money to other individuals or businesses, supplying the capital for the loan and earning a return on that money in the form of the borrowers interest paid on that loan. Typically, many people provide small amounts to make up the capital for that loan for example, someone might want to borrow $10,000 and that loan is made up of 100 people lending $100 each. A number of businesses exist to help facilitate this, such as Lending Club and Prosper. It really comes down to the riskiness of the borrower. Someone with a high rating as a borrower represents pretty little risk and youll almost always get your money back and more. A high risk loan might net you a very nice return, but you have a real risk of losing your balance. In general, I would not invest money I needed going forward in a crowdlending investment. Its a good place to put money that you dont need if youre seeking a nice short term return on it and youre willing to pay a lot of attention and take on some significant risk. Remember, if someone defaults on a crowdlending loan, that means youve probably lost most (if not all) of what youve invested. Q3: Shorter workweek thoughts? What do you think about this article that argues that people 40 and over work better if their workweek is shorter? It matches my own experience. This one? Jenna I frankly agree with it. Speaking from my own experience, I find that the vast majority of my work gets done during three days a week. I tend to have about three days each week when I can really slip into a writing zone, and my work on other days is often just busywork. I think this is honestly true of most information and creative jobs. For every day of really great mental performance, I think people of all ages need at least a day of rest to recharge fully. If you demand mental performance day after day, that performance is going to degrade fairly rapidly and eventually result in burnout. The trick for me is in properly preparing for a three day week and getting it reliably without interruption due to personal or family illness or some other interruption. Part of why I write for a living is the flexibility of it, which means I cant just sit down and lock down three specific days of writing each week. Often, I have to break it up more than that. Q4: Struggling to improve at work I currently work as a bank teller. Went in for a performance review in October and read your advice about asking what I need to do to get a raise or promotion. Boss was great and gave me a list of things to work on. Thing is Im always busy and rarely have the chance to work on a lot of those things. I feel like Im not making progress on any of those things and cant find time for them. Not sure what to do. Bailey The best thing you can do is find opportunities to work on those skills in the course of your regular tasks. Without knowing your regular casts and the things that your boss suggested that you work on, I cant offer specific advice on that. However, there are probably at least some of the elements on that list that you can work on while doing other tasks. If theres new material to learn, do your best to learn it when youre not at work. If there are topics youre supposed to know about, spend time when youre not working learning those things. You should also try to get into a routine of having regular scheduled one-on-ones with your supervisor just to talk over how things are going and build a stronger relationship. If youve not really communicated in any way with your boss in two months, you might want to strengthen that relationship a little. Just ask for a regularly scheduled meeting once every two weeks or once a month and go over the things on that list. This gives you a deadline to push toward a little more effort on those things, and it shows your boss youre consistently trying to work for the brass ring. Q5: Last minute holiday gifts So my mom got sick and asked if I could host family Christmas and I said okay. In the past we did a name drawing for gifts but she also got everyone something small and shes not doing that this year but I want to do it so I am looking for good ideas for last minute small holiday gifts under $5. Amy What kinds of things did she give out? At that price point, Id probably go for consumable items. Get people nice bars of chocolate or a bottle of craft beer or something like that. Youre not going to go fancy at $5, but you can find something the recipient would enjoy. Just make a list of everybody whos attending and try to identify one food or drink item each one of them would like. Theres your shopping list, and thats exactly what I would do in your shoes. Q6: Praying for financial help? I pray and pray for financial help and it never seems to come. We never make ends meet. I try to follow your advice and things always turn out badly. Jaime A simple suggestion: rather than praying for financial help, pray to have the strength and wisdom and focus to make the difficult choices needed to put you and your family on a better financial path. Dont pray for money to be dropped on your lap. Instead, pray that youll have the foresight and wisdom to not spend money on foolish things. Pray that youll feel lower stress and that youll be able to lower the stress of those around you. Pray for the creativity to make your meal budget stretch a little further. Most of us already have the financial answers we need already in our life. We just need someone (or something) to take the scales away from our eyes so that we can see those answers. That change often comes from within, not from money from outside sources. Money drops into our lap more often than we think it does what matters is how we use it. Q7: Child care suggestions Moved to new city and starting school in January. Have a three year old. Thought there would be child care support through school but all slots are full. Program will subsidize child care but everything within subsidy is kind of scary. Suggestions? Danielle I have helped Danielle many times over the last few years. For some background, she was engaged to be married but her soon-to-be husband ghosted her and she cant find him for child support. She moved in with her parents for a brief while, then found an apartment on her own. She applied for a bunch of scholarships to go back to school and then I hadnt heard from her in a while until this question popped up. She has been using many different programs to help give her kid a great life and working her tail off, so I do have some real sympathy for Danielles situation. Danielle, you absolutely need to check and see whether your state has some sort of child care assistance offered through their Department of Human Services. Given your situation, its very likely that youre eligible for some help through such a program, which is available in a lot of states. Another approach you might want to consider is whether or not you have a close friend or relative you trust who could move in with you and provide child care in exchange for free rent. Do you have a sibling or close friend who might be interested in such a situation that youd trust? Those are the two best options I have in mind, other than making sure youre on the waiting list for child care options through your school. This will get somewhat easier when your child reaches school age, as youll both be able to go to school! Q8: Christmas tree suggestions Is a real Christmas tree worth it? We usually only decorate for a few days before Christmas and the twelve days after taking things down on January 6. Used a tiny artificial tree for the last few years and were considering a real one this year. Arne It depends on how you define worth it. Real trees are messier and take more work (because you have to water them) and need to be disposed of after the holidays; artificial trees have none of that. Plus, real trees have to be replaced every year. From a purely financial standpoint, real trees arent worth it. However, real trees have an enormous aesthetic advantage. They smell wonderful. When properly cleaned up, they look better than artificial trees (in my opinion, assuming you dont buy one thats half dead). Is the work and the (eventual) extra cost worth it to you? For some people, it is. For some, it isnt. We had a real tree for a few years when I was growing up and while I appreciated it in my teen years, it wasnt life changing for me. As an adult, I probably would not have a large real tree unless my children were genuinely excited about the concept and brought it up frequently. Q9: Learning chess for cheap My five year old was taught chess by his cousin at Thanksgiving and now he wants to play chess all the time. I can fumble through the moves but he is finding stuff on his tablet about openings and stuff that I have no idea about. I want to get better at chess and also help him find things to help him get better at chess. What tools are cheap/free? Andy It really depends on your goals with this. If youre just wanting to get a bit better and assume that this is a fad thats going to burn out, Id just get an inexpensive chess app for his tablet and for your phone and just play lots of games. Most games have a feature where they suggest good moves and point out bad ones and over a lot of games, you can gradually learn from that. If you really want to start learning openings and stuff, theres almost nothing better you can do than visiting your local library that has a selection of chess books, picking out a few, and then going through them at home. My local library has a couple dozen chess books on the shelves and can reserve hundreds more via interlibrary loan. Take them home and then just try an opening during a game with your kid. Pick one that looks like fun, memorize the first three or four moves of it, and bust it out with your son. Tell him what the opening is and then see whether or not it looks like youre in good shape. I have an eight year old that loves to play chess constantly but really has zero interest in actually learning the game. If your son is into openings, play into that and use it as an opportunity to learn together. Q10: Keeping beans fresh You mentioned cooking beans early in the week and keeping them in the fridge all week to use for meals. How do you keep them fresh and not just turn to mush? Every time I do it they get mushy. Blair First of all, dont cook them quite all the way to completion. I try to aim for beans that are not quite all the way cooked, just done enough so that they wouldnt be annoying in the dish but clearly could use just a bit more cooking. Theyre really firm at this point but definitely edible. I drain them and let them slowly cool down to room temperature. This usually cooks them just a bit more so theyre pretty close to exactly what I want. I drain them and rinse them again so that theyre close to dry, then I put them in a sealed container in the fridge. I aim to use them within four or five days. Most of the time, I add these beans late to something else Im cooking, like a soup. If Im using them in a salad or something, I might cook them just a bit more in some simple fashion, like with a bit of water in the microwave, but Ill usually just toss the beans right into the salad. This works for all kinds of beans. My personal favorite is black beans, which Ill use for pretty much anything I can get away with. Q11: 401(k) help I just signed up for my company 401(k) and there are only a few options available and none of them match up with anything you have ever mentioned. They have names like aggressive growth and moderate and safe. Alex Likely, the options you see are ones that whoever runs your 401(k) have pre-chosen for you and given friendly names that actually make it harder to figure out what they actually include. The first retirement plan I signed up for was very similar in that regard. You can ask the HR representative that deals with the plans whether or not you can pick your own funds, but its likely that you dont have such control, so you probably just have to choose one of these options. The honest truth? In a situation like this, its really hard to pick the best option for you because you dont really know whats going on underneath the options. In your shoes, if I was more than ten years from retirement, Id choose the most aggressive option available. If I was less than ten years, Id choose a moderate option. That is, assuming I couldnt see anything more about the plans than such vague descriptors. Q12: I never want to retire I dont like reading about retirement talk because I never want to retire. I love what I do (nursing) and I want to keep doing it in whatever aspect I can for as long as I can until Im shoved out the door and straight into a retirement home (or a casket). Why should I worry about retirement? Dinah Never retiring is a marvelous idea in theory, but it often doesnt quite pan out that way. Many career paths nudge people out the door when they get to a certain age, regardless of whether those people want to keep working or not, and sometimes health conditions pop up that continue to allow a mostly full life but cut off certain career paths. Another reason to save for retirement is that it opens up the possibility of a second career or a different kind of job later on. You may end up taking on a position that uses your nursing skills in a very positive way but it doesnt pay nearly as much as your current job; a retirement savings plan can help offset that loss in income. You really should save for retirement no matter what career youre in and no matter how much you love it. Its cover all your bases money, because you simply cant predict what the future holds. Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. Ill attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours. https://www.thesimpledollar.com/questions-about-crowdlending-prayer-christmas-trees-chess-beans-and-more/

0 notes

thelifeofang · 6 years ago

Text

the first semester of college is almost over and here is what i’ve learned:

1) leaving home is just as terrifying as it sounds like, but it is one of the best things i’ve ever done and one of the decisions i have ever made for myself; there is no need to feel guilty about leaving. in the beginning, i had felt a lot of guilt about deciding to go to school 9 hours away from home. at home, i’m a big part of everything functioning on a day to day basis. big sister duties cover everything from doing dishes to changing diapers to soothing my sister’s pre-teen meltdowns and everything in between, and i knew it was going to be hard for my mom to make the adjustment to not having me around. just a few weeks after i left my dad deployed to norway for 3 months, and i knew it was going to be even harder on my mom to manage a house, dog, and four kids all on her own, so naturally i felt really bad about leaving her to do it alone. what i’ve found in being away is that i have to learn to separate myself from the angelique i am at home and the angelique i am as an individual, on my own, and in my own space. being away from home has allowed me to grow like no other experience ever has, and i’ve been able to discover more parts of myself than i ever would have if i stayed home. family obligations are important, but at the end of the day it’s still time for my siblings to step up and fill my space, and leaving is not something to feel bad about. it allows for growth, new experiences, and new memories, and something like it’s important to give yourself the space to do those things.

2) what you define as home can change, and that is okay. i’ve always defined san diego as home. it’s where i was raised and it’s the place i always come back to, so in that sense, it is home. but when i’m in san diego, i refer to ‘home’ as san francisco. initially, i assumed it was because that’s just where i spent the most time, where my bed was, and where i was enrolled in school, but it’s a lot more than that. what i’ve learned is home is not just defined by being the place you were raised or where your family resides, but the place in which you feel the most like yourself, where you grow the most, and where your people are. san francisco has brought to me some of the best nights full of the hardest laughter, craziest stories, and most amazing souls i’ve ever met. i know this city like the back of my hand and whenever i leave it, i’m almost immediately ready to come back, no matter how much i complain when i’m there. it’s my home in that it’s where i’ve established myself as who i really want to be, it’s the place i look forward to being in literally every single day, and it’s where my people are. my god, i love my people here. home is where your heart is and my heart is in these people. bless them for making this place so fucking fantastic.

3) don’t fucking procrastinate the goddamn essay, bitch. just do it. you’re going to hate yourself when you’re up at 3am writing a 5 page paper on something you had two weeks to do.

4) communication is key -- prioritize it. one of the most important thing i’ve learned about relationships of any kind is just how important communication is. i’ve always known that it was important to voice your concerns, to make sure what you’re doing or saying isn’t hurting others, and so on. i’ve just always tended to feel annoying when checking in like that with others because i didn’t want to come across as needy, a complainer, or in need of validation. the thing is, it’s not really like that at all. it’s so important to let people know when what they do hurts or bothers you and to do the reverse to make sure you aren’t hurting others. it’s one hundred percent okay to vocalize how you’re feeling, what you are and aren’t comfortable with, and to check in with others about the same thing. the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the better your relationships are with others because everyone feels okay with talking. i’m really glad this is something i’ve picked up and learned to value a lot more, because i feel like it’s just really strengthened my relationships and made me feel so much more comfortable in vocalizing what i’m feeling or have to say.

5) i’m still shit at budgeting. i always say i’m going to do better, and then someone suggests ice cream or boba and i can’t say no. where the fuck is my self control? who knows.

6) learn to be comfortable being alone. not every single moment has to be spent with other people. coming out of high school, i was used to constantly being with at least one other person and having someone keep me company while walking to classes, going to eat, and so on. this semester has taught me that it’s okay to be alone, it doesn’t make you look like a loser -- deadass no one cares --, and being by yourself teaches you a lot of independence. not everything has to be done with another person; you’re a big kid now and you got this bitch.

7) 8ams aren’t for me. i mean, once i’m there i’m ready to do the damn thing and get my learning on and whatnot, but getting out of that bed in the morning is hard as hell. never doing that again.

8) it’s okay if you fall out with friends from home. sometimes this is just inevitable, and sometimes it’s not even for any negative reason. everyone just gets busy and it can be hard to keep up with some people. those who are meant to stick will stick, but others might fall away and that’s okay. don’t beat yourself up about and don’t feel bad about.

9) the best people come to you naturally. the biggest thing i’ve learned about forming friendships in college is that when you talk to people with the clear intentions of trying to be friends, it doesn’t work out too well. it all feels too forced and awkward, and the conversation becomes shallow and superficial and it all falls away pretty quickly. the people who stick come to you naturally because, as they say, your vibe attracts your tribe. you’ll naturally just click and stick with people who have similar interests and energy to you, and the rest is history.

10) tell your friends you appreciate them and show it often! your friends become your family so quickly. maybe it’s just because we’re all so far away from home, but friends in college become your support system, your go-to’s, and just your family away from your family pretty quickly. you spend every day with them considering you all practically live together, and you bond fast because of it. on top of that, there’s a big ‘we look out for each other’ type vibe with college friends in comparison to high school friendships. of course you have your hs friend’s backs, but it’s different in college. it’s more of a we make sure each other are safe when we go out, we look out for each other mentally/emotionally, and we take care of each other like family does because we’re all so far from our actual families. you do so much for each other, sometimes without even realizing, and it’s so important to remind them how much you appreciate them for all of it.

11) keep condoms on you no matter what. pregnancy who? sti who? sorry, we don’t know them around here.

12) you can go on dates just for fun, it doesn’t always have to become something! dates are really fun and so is meeting new people. you can go on a date with someone just for the fun of going out with someone and having a good time, there’s nothing wrong with that. it doesn’t make you a hoe or anything. just have fun and see what happens! you don’t always have to commit to someone. just don’t be a dick and lead someone on. if you’re just here for a good time and not a long time and you’re into the casual dating thing, make that shit known.

13) there isn’t a place in the world that you can’t wear pajamas. that 8am? pajamas. grocery shopping? pajamas. ice cream run? pajamas. who’s gonna stop me? no one.

14) pizza and alcohol? not a good idea unless you want to vomit.

15) spontaneity is important and i love it. listen. i’m a whore for a good fucking adventure. my absolute favorite nights in the world have been the ones we don’t plan and just go out and see where the wind takes us. it’s the unplanned adventures that had me walking ten miles to krispy kreme at 3 am, running after a train at midnight two towns over, finding our favorite ice cream spot in the city, and getting to watch the sun set over the skyline. sure it might be hectic sometimes, but it always makes for the wildest adventures and the best stories. not everything has to be so planned and meticulous. let the city take you wherever it feels like taking you that day.

0 notes

questrade-sucks-blog1 · 7 years ago

Text

Competitor Analysis Tools (And a Sample Website Analysis With Only 2 Tools)

Your competitors can be a goldmine of information that can inform every aspect of your marketing and rocket your websites traffic. In this article youll find: A short list of the best competitor analysis tools available right now.A super detailed competitor website analysis using the two most powerful tools from that list. Lets get started! #Competitor analysis tools Competitor analysis is a lot easier when you have the right tools. Weve tried out a ton of different services over the years, so we feel confident in saying that these are the best. 1. SimilarWeb Widely used as a traffic estimation tool, SimilarWeb has loads of cool features that let you peek behind the scenes at your competitors strategy. Find out which channels are driving traffic to your competition with stats for traffic distribution, top organic & paid search keywords, top ad networks, audience interests, and competing websites. Sounds like a lot. And it is. 2. Ahrefs Yes, were biased, but theres a reason Ahrefs is consistently listed as one of the top SEO tools in the industry. Our primary focus is SEO and content analysis, and you can use our tool to analyse competitor keywords (organic and PPC), backlinks, traffic stats and more. Find out which pages on your competitors site are bringing in the most backlinks, social shares, and traffic, by running the Top Pages reports. Or dig deep into their link profiles with Site Explorer. With 192 billion pages in our database, weve got the largest index of backlinks on the web. Later in this post, youll find a detailed sample competitor website analysis carried out with just the 2 tools above. So if thats why youre here, just jump to it. 3. Audiense This service will help you analyze your competitors audience based on their Twitter followers. See stats on location, gender, interests, and the languages of those who follow your competitor. 4. Builtwith Dig deep into your competitors website technologies and tools with this handy service. Builtwith can uncover their web server, advertising services they use, analytics technologies, and much more. You can even find out which email services a given website is using. 5. WhatRunsWhere Find out where your rivals are advertising and peek at the creative they are using for their ads. Enter a domain too see its current adverts or pop in a keyword to see which ads run for it. WhatRunsWheres creators claim that their data is updated daily, which will let you monitor changes in your competitors ad campaigns. (AdBeat is a similar solution worth looking at.) 6. Compass Although this tool is still in its early stages, Compass has already collected a database of 3 million unique ads across Facebook and LinkedIn. Type in a relevant keyword to see whos advertising on these strong social platforms in your niche. 7. Simply Measured A free tool from SimplyMeasured called Facebook Competitive Analysis can easily compare your Facebook fan page with that of your rival. It will show you general engagement stats for posts and a valuable metric of Engagements as % of fans. 8. Rival IQ Rival IQ will analyze your social media performance across all the major social networks and compare it to your competition. Add your competitors website to your dashboard to compare audience growth, post engagements, and top posts. 9. Fanpage karma This service can show you the best (and worst) performing posts from your competitors Facebook fan page. Uncover the most frequently used words and hashtags, and analyse user reactions. Fanpage karma will also give you hints on what type of content to post on Facebook, and the times of day to post, by analysing your competitors performance. Plus youll get an estimate of the advertising value of your competitors Facebook posts. #Sample website analysis Our blog is focused on content and SEO, so thats what were going to focus on in our sample competitive analysis. And for the purposes of the walk-through, well pretend were about to launch a brand new infographic design tool. #Part 1: IdentifyingCompetitors The first thing we need to do is identify our main competitors. To do that we need to know exactly how potential customers will search for our service. I figured that would be something like infographic design tool. But turns out I was wrong. Because when I search for infographic design tool in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer (andclick on Also Rank For), we can see that the search with the highest volume is actually infographic maker.

With a KD (keyword difficulty) score of 93, its going to be tough to rank for. But if we want to be the biggest in the infographic design business, then thats got to be our ultimate aim. Now lets run a Google search and see whos ranking.

Looks like the 3 guys Ive highlighted under organic search are going to be our top competition in search. But Im also interested in the two companies who are running ads on the keyword. So, Im going to grab all 5 and add them to a new spreadsheet:

Now letspull some key stats to see what were up against. Pulling Key Stats For Each Competitor To give us an idea of how entrenched the competition is (and how tough it will be to break into the niche) were going to pull some stats and metrics for each of our competitors domains. First, lets find out how much overall authority (power) each site has. We can use Ahrefs Domain Comparison tool to analyse all 5 domains at once. Tools > Domain Comparison > Enter competitors domains > Compare

Well get a load of useful stats back for each site. But for now Im interested in: The Domain Rating for each siteThe total number of referring domains (Ref Domains). A high DR score indicates that the site has good authority and is likely to rank well in search. A high number of referring domains could also be an indicator of a strong site provided those links are not low quality. At a later stage well want to figure out whether thats because the site/service is organically popular, or if they have a particularly effectivelink building/PR strategy. Either way, well be able to gain an insight by fully analysing their backlink profile (heres how to do it). But for now Ill add the figures to my spreadsheet.

As you can see, all of the sites have a high number of referring domains and good authority. Why These Metrics Are Important SEO metrics give you an indication of the overall competitiveness of a niche. When your competitors have a high DR score they are likely to have been around for a while and acquired a solid backlink profile. Ina nutshell: More quality links = higher DR score = more trust from Google. So what does this mean? In simple terms, if2 sites launch a piece of content targeting the same keyword, then the site with the higher DR score will (probably) rank highest. Which sucks when your site is new. But the good news is thats not the end of the story. Because when we analysed over 2 million keywords, we also found that it was possible to outrank sites with higher DR scores by building backlinks to individual pages. So if your site is new and is in a competitive niche with high DR scores, then your initial plan should be to build links directly to pages you want to rank. And as you do that Your DR score will also start to increase! Domain Rating scores are exponential, so its easier to get from DR10 to DR20 than it is to get from DR20 to DR30 (and so on). Which meansa site with a DR score of 80 isnt twice as powerful as a site with DR40 it could be many times more powerful. I should also point out thatGoogle deny overall domain authority influences rankings,however,all our testing findsa strong positive correlation between DR and rankings. That being said,as we also found links to individual pages trump overall DR it could be that this is caused by sites with higher DR naturally attracting more backlinks to individualpages. Remember, correlation is not necessarily causation. Analysing Competitor Link Growth Next Iwant to get a feel for how many new referring domains each site is acquiring per month. Why? Because your competitors wont stand still. So, if one of your competitors is acquiring 200 new referring domains each month, then youll probably need to build more than that just to catch them. This is not an exact science, but if we take an average over the past few months we can get an idea of how things are moving. We can do that by running the New Referring domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer and setting the period accordingly. Site Explorer > Enter domain > Explore > Referring domains > New > Set custom period > Show New referring domains

Looks like easel.y acquired 672 new referring domains in the 3 month period between August and October. So thats an average of 224 per month. Ill run this report for each of our competitors and add the numbers to my spreadsheet.

Checking The Link Acquisition Curve Its also worth checking out if your competitors link growth is consistent, or if they have experienced a big growth over a short period. The Referring domains graph on the Site Explorer Overview page shows us link growth over the past year in a nice visual format. For example, we can see that Venngages link growth has been consistent.

While Visme have had a big spike in referring domains over the past few months.

That could be the sign of an active SEO campaign. So we might want to take a closer look at their recent backlinks to find out what theyve been up to. We can nip back to the New referring domains report and select a period to analyse. Below I have filtered the report to show referring domains for October (view individual links by clicking the Backlinks button).

Ill probably want to export this report for later analysis.

Why Understanding Competitor Link Growth Is Important Link popularity remains the biggest single SEO ranking factor.

Which means that over time youll want to build a link profile which is on a par with (or ideally better than) your competitors. Understanding the rate at which your competitors are acquiring new referring domains (linking sites) gives you a rough target to shoot for with your link building. In my example niche, the number of new linking sites each month is pretty high. But in other niches youll find link growth is slower, or even static. Either way, your aim should be to acquire links faster than your competitors. I should point out that not all links are equal. One link from a high DR site may be worth the same as several links from low DR sites. See chapter 1 of our link building guide for more on assessing the value of a link.#Part 2: Traffic Analysis We know who our competitors are. Weve grabbed their key metrics. Its now time to take a look at their traffic. Heres what we want to find out: Where they get their trafficWhich countries provide their trafficWhich sites provide the most referralsTotal monthly traffic & key stats (pages/session, time on page, bounce rate) We can pull all that information from a great competitor analysis tool calledSimilarweb.

Lets walk through the process for one ofour competitors (Easel.ly). Well start by entering their domain into the Website Analysis search box.

Clicking the site takes us to an overview page, which has lots of useful stats.

But for a bit more detail, well run some specific reports. Where Do They Get Their Traffic (Sources)? If youre familiar with Google Analytics, youll know that Google splits traffic sources into the following channels: Organic search (traffic from search engines: Google, Bing etc)Referral (clicks to your website from links on other sites)Direct (typed in URLs, bookmarks, clicks from messages etc)Paid search (Google adwords, Bing ads etc)Social (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc)Email (clicks to your website from emails. Your email list is likely to be #1 source here)Other (unidentified traffic sources, some feeds) Like this

Now, in an ideal world, wed be able to take a peek at our competitors Google Analytics account to find out which channels are driving their traffic but as thats about as likely as Scotland winning the World Cup, the next best thing is to get an approximation from SimilarWeb. We can do that by running the Traffic Sources Overview report.

Well get a percentage figure for each channel.

And well also get a chart showingestimated traffic volumes.

Of course Social doesnt really tell us much. So the good news is we can click through to get an actual breakdown by platform.

Much better. Why Traffic Sources Are Important Understanding which sources provide the most traffic to your competitors will help you decide where to focus your marketing efforts. For example, in certain https://alanleenhouts.com/blog/ niches, there might be huge traffic from social media. If we look at publishing giant Buzzfeeds traffic sources, we can see that they get over 50% of their traffic from social:

So if you were launching a site in the publishing space youd want to make sure your content was highly shareable. In other niches, organic search might be the biggy. Travel site TripAdvisor get two thirds of their traffic from search, with just 1% coming from social:

And if youre running an Ecommerce site, then you might find your competitors are spending more on ads. Online beauty retailers LookFantastic pick up around 14% of their traffic from paid search:

As you can see traffic sources vary from niche to niche, so its essential that you know exactly where the traffic is in yours. What The Traffic Sources Data Tells Us Here are the traffic sources for our 5 competitors.

While there is some variation from site-to-site, we can infer a general trend and rank traffic sources for the niche: Direct TrafficSearch TrafficReferral TrafficSocial TrafficEmail TrafficPPC TrafficDisplay Traffic Indeed, if we calculate the average value for each channel we get thefollowing:

Between direct traffic (typed in URLs, bookmarks), search traffic (lets call a spade a spade: thats Google) and referrals (linkclicks from other websites) we have over 90% of total traffic for the niche. Which suggests our growth strategy should be: a) Acquiring new customers from Google searchand referral trafficb) Retaining them Iwont be covering client acquisition and retention in this guide. But as its clear our competitors strategies are effective, here are a few pointers for what we would want to look at: How do our competitorsget potentialcustomers into their sales funnel (email capture, lite version, free trial etc)?How do they convert them from potential customers into actual customers?How do they retain them? What we will be taking a closer look at is our competitorsorganic traffic and referral traffic. Organic traffic will be covered in part 3, but for now, lets find out whats driving all that referral traffic. I already mentioned that SimilarWeb traffic figures are estimates. They should not be considered to be 100% accurate, but in the absence of precise data they are sufficient to give us an insight into our competitors traffic levels and sources.Which SitesProvide The Most Referrals? Nowwell take a look at which sites are currently providing the most referrals to our competitor. With a free SimilarWeb account we can see the top 5 referring sites by running the Referrals report under Traffic Sources.

Here are the top 5 referrers for easel.ly.

Why Understanding Your Competitors Top Referrers Is Important Whats the best kind of link to get to your site? We already covered metrics. So you might think that the answer would be a link from a high DR site. And yes, thats a great link to get. Its definitely going to help move your site up the search engine rankings. But the very best kind of link is a link that drives actual referral traffic. After all, thats what links are for right? When you know which sites drive referral traffic to your competitors you can make it a priority to pick up links from them. The best bit: Without getting too technical, its very likely that Google assesses the likelihood of a link being clicked when calculating how much weight it should pass to your site.

So not only will they send you traffic, theyre going to be powerful links for SEO purposes too. Which is why knowledge of your competitors top referrers is marketing gold. What The Referral Data Tells Us We already know that referrals account for (roughly)25% of all traffic in the niche. My first thought is this seems a little high. When Hubspot benchmarked traffic sources across 15,000 sites, they found that average referral traffic was 10% for business to business sites and 9% for business to consumer.

Which got me wondering: Are these referrals coming from natural links acquired through PR/outreach? Or are they perhaps affiliate links generating commissions for the referring sites? Lets take a look at the top 5 referring sites for all our competitors.

Theres one site that clearly stands out. Creativebloq.com is the top referrer for 4 of our competitors and the number 3 referrer for the other one. So lets take a look at those links. We can use Ahrefs Site Explorer to show us all links pointing to a competitor site from a particular domain. Here are the links pointing to CanvafromCreativeBloq. Site Explorer > Enter competitor domain > Explore > Backlink profile > Referring domains > Search in results: creativebloq.com > Expand backlinks

When I checked the individual pages, it turns out these are regular links and there does not appear to be an affiliate relationship. But I did discover why referral traffic is so high. Because when I click the green arrow next tothe first two backlinks and preview thestats for the referring pages it turns out they get HUGE organic search traffic. The first referring page gets 26,000 organic visits per month. Pretty big. But the second gets a whopping 43,000!

Its easy to see how a link from one of those pages could drive a ton of traffic. Which means: a) The high referral percentage for the niche is likely to be accurateb) Well want to do everything we can to build a relationship with CreativeBloq and pick up links from those pages!Which Countries Provide Their Traffic? Next we want to find out which countries provide the bulk of our competitors traffic. We can get that information by running the Geography report under Website Audience.

Here are the top 5 countries for easel.ly.

Traffic data for more countries is provided with pro account.What The Country Data Tells Us There seems to be a decent amount of traffic coming from India and Mexico. Well need to look into this in more detail, but if these are potential customers (and not cheap Facebook clicks), then it might be cheaper (and easier) to target these countries initially. Whats Their Total Traffic And Key Stats? It might seem a little unintuitive to gather this information last. But there is a good reason. We can pull this information for all of our competitors in one go using SimilarWebs Compare feature.

When we click the button we can select up to 5 sites to compare.

And we get everything we need in the Website Audience > Overview report.

Simple! Andnow our competitive analysis spreadsheet is filling up nicely.

Why These Stats Are Important We recorded several metrics above, so lets quickly go over each of them. Monthly traffic This is the total monthly traffic the site receives from all sources. When we grab this figure for several of our competitors we get an immediate feel for the overall size of the niche (and potential traffic). And of course we also find out exactly who the biggest site(s) in the niche are. Visit Duration The average time spent on site by each visitor. Generally, a high average visit duration is desirable as its a sign that visitors are engaged with the site/content. Pages Per Session The average number of pages viewed by a visitor to the site. Again, the higher this figure, the more likely it is that visitors are engaged with the site and sticking around. Bounce Rate And talking of sticking around, the final metric we are interested in is bounce rate. A bounce is when a visitor clicks through to a website site and then clicks back (or closes their browser tab) without viewing any more pages. High bounce rates can be a sign that visitors are not finding what they are looking for on the site. Although this is not always the case. Wikipedia for example has a very high bounce rate (84.85%):

But thats probably because visitors get exactly what they need (information) from the page they land on, then move on to their next search. Overall though, if you notice a competitor has: high average time on sitelots of pages per sessiona low bounce rate Then youll want to take a closer look at their site. Chances are they have a good user experience and content thats resonating in your niche. You can find all of these metrics for your own site in your Google Analytics Audience Overview report.

Compare your sites metrics against your competitors to see how youre shaping up. #Part 3: Organic Traffic Analysis In this section were going to dive a little deeper into our competitors organic search traffic. Well be using Ahrefs Site Explorer and analysing one competitor at a time. Checking Organic Traffic Volumes And Key Stats We already got an indication of total organic search volume for each competitor fromSimilarWeb, but well want tocheck the figures in Ahrefs. Clicking on the Organic search tab on the Site Explorer Overview report for a domain shows us: Total organic traffic per month (chart by country)Total number of keywords (chart by country)A breakdown of organic traffic by country Site Explorer > Enter competitor domain > Explore > Overview > Organic search

Recommendation As with SimilarWeb our traffic figures are estimates and should not be considered 100% accurate, but in the absence of precise data they are sufficient to give us an insight into our competitors organic traffic.Spying On Our Competitors Organic Keywords Next we want to find out which keywords are currently driving our competitors search traffic. We can do that by runningthe Organic keywords report for each domain. Site Explorer > Enter competitors domain > Explore > Organic search > Organic keywords

Above we can see that Visme are currently ranking for 7,243 keywords. By default the report will be ordered by actual traffic volume (calculated based on their search position). But we can also order the report by total search volume if we wanted to find some particularly juicy keywords to rank for.

Theres some enticingvolume there, but Recommendation Pay attention to the KD (keyword difficulty) score for each keyword. Itcan be tempting to go for keywords with big volume. But a high KD score means it will be tough to rank without building a lot of links. Our enhanced Keywords Explorer tool provides an estimate of the number of backlinks required to rank for a keyword. For example, infographic maker, which has a KD score of 93, will require backlinks from 1,033 domains to rank in the top 10 positions.

If youve got your link building down, then go for it. Otherwise, it might be worth targeting keywords with a lower difficulty score to begin with. Our keyword difficulty score is calculated by counting the number of individual sites (referring domains) pointing to each result in Googles Top10 for a keyword. As backlinks remain the single biggest SEO ranking factor we find that in most cases this score provides an accurate representation of the difficulty of a keyword. That being said, there are many other factors which influence rankings beside backlinks (on-page SEO, content depth etc) so we recommend further analysis of the search result/competition before selecting a keyword to target. We do have plans to include other factors in our difficulty calculations in the future so watch this space! There is one more important thing you should pay attention to while analyzing your rivals organic traffic. SERP features your competitor ranks for. The number of SERP features Google provides in search results is constantly growing. Featured snippets alone, for example, are shown for 12% of search queries, as per our recent study. And they get almost 10% of clicks from the results on the first page. Can you afford to neglect this? Organic keywords report can show you what SERP features your competitor occupies, ranking for a specific keyword. You need to apply Features filter, choose Target domain must be featured option and tick the relevant SERP features (I will tick all to give you the full picture):

As you can see, Visme is ranking in a bunch of various SERP features for quite a few good keywords. Finding(And Filling) Content Gaps Whats a content gap? Its a keyword your competitors rank for, which you dont. Needless to say, thats a gap youll want to fill! So the good news is Ahrefs has a tool specifically designed to help you find these gaps. Weve cunningly called it our Content gap tool. By entering competitor domains into the tool you can quickly find a bunch of cool new keywords to target on your own site. In the example below I have compared 1 of our competitors sites against the other 4. This is because myhypothetical infographics company doesntactually have a website (well maybe a hypothetical one, but thats no use here). Normally you will be comparing your own site against your competitors. Ahrefs Site Explorer > Content gap > Enter competitor domains > Enter your domain > Show keywords

Note that I set the report to show me keywords where at least 2 of my competitors rank and at least one ranks top 10. And it looks like there are plenty of content gaps for us to fill.

So we can go ahead and pick some cool ones for adding to our content plan. Recommendation If your site is relatively new, use the Volume and Difficulty filters to find keywords with good search volume and a low difficulty score. The low difficulty score means they will be easier to rank for, while the solid search volume means that ranking will give a nice bump to your search traffic.#Part 4: Content Analysis In this section well be looking at our competitors content. Specifically: Their most visited content (highest organic traffic)Their most linked to contentTheir most shared content We can pull all of the above from Ahrefs Site Explorer. Finding ACompetitors Most Popular Content We can discover our competitors most visited content (organic search) by running the Top Pages report in Ahrefs Site Explorer. Were interested in editorial content/blog posts here, which means for most sites well want to search the blog folder URL/subdomain as opposed to the entire domain. For example, if I was analysing Ahrefs I would search ahrefs.com/blog. Heres the report for Vismes blog. Site Explorer > Enter competitor blog folder/subdomain > Explore > Organic search > Top Pages

In the above example we can see that Vismes content with the highest search traffic is a post about visual advertising techniques. Its currently bringing in around 647 organic search visits per month and ranking for 304 keywords. We can viewthe individual keywords the page is ranking for by clicking the number under the keywords column.

Looks like by moving up a few positions that page could receive a lot more search traffic. Why This Report Is Super Valuable The old school approach to SEO involved conducting keyword research to find suitable phrases to rank for, then creating individual content for each of those keywords. 100 target keywords = 100 new pages on your site1,000 target keywords = 1,000 new pages on your site Needless to say it was pretty laborious. Not to mention costly. These days? As Google gets better at understanding the meaning behind content, one great article can rank for hundreds or even THOUSANDS of keywords. Even if that keyword doesnt appear anywhere on the page. An example we often use is guest posting. Thats the same thing as guest blogging right? And Google knows that. Search for guest posting and Google will also return pages that are optimised for the keyword guest blogging. They even highlight the word guest blogging in the URL and content.

So why is this report so valuable? Well, by finding your competitors top content you can figure out which of their articles are: a) ranking for a ton of keywordsb) pulling in loads of traffic And then instead of starting with a big list of keywords, you can start with a small list of articles to replicate which you already know Google associates with multiple keywords. Much less time consuming. And much less costly. Finding Your Competitors Most Linked To Content To find our competitors most linked to content well run the Best by links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer. Again, well be specifically looking at blog/editorial content. Site Explorer > Enter competitor blog folder/subdomain > Explore > Organic search > Best by links

We can see that the most linked to content on Vismes blog has backlinks from 24 referring domains. And scrolling down the report revealsthat most posts on their blog pick up links from less that 10 sites.

Which makes them (potentially) very beatable in search with some proactive link building. Why This Report Is A Link Building Goldmine Ive mentioned a couple of times already how important building (and acquiring) links is for your site. Links mean referrals, buzz (your site is mentioned elsewhere on the web), and ultimately, more organic search traffic. So we know we need to build links, but where do we start? Simple. We find out whats working for our competitors. The best by links report shows your competitors top linkbait content. And if it worked for them, it can work for you too. The trick is to create something even better than your competitors content. And then Reach out to all the sites linking to your competitor, show them your content, and ask them to link to it. Thats it. So how do you find all the sites linking to your competitors content? Easy. Just click the number under the RD column for a popular piece of content.

And youll get a list of all sites currently linking to that page.

Which means that your competitor has created your prospect list for you. That was nice of them Tip: Pay Attention To Which Types Of Content Are Working When analysing your competitors you might find that a specific type of content is working well in the niche and acquiring lots of links. For example: Research/data based contentInfographicsVideosInfomapsExpert roundups If you notice a trend, then you might want to focus your efforts on creating that type of content. But Bonus tip: Also Pay Attention To Which Types Of Content Are Missing On the flip side, if you notice theres a gap, i.e. text heavy content that could be simplified as an infographic, then thats another opportunity right there. And once again you have your prospect list pre-prepared and readyto go! Finding Your Competitors Most Shared Content Social media can drive huge traffic. So well also want to find out which of our competitors posts generated the most shares, tweets, pins etc. To do that, well run the Best by shares report in Site Explorer. Site Explorer > Enter competitor blog folder/subdomain > Explore > Organic search > Best by shares

Its worth sorting the report by individual social networks (click the logos) to find the most popular content on each platform. For example, this post generated the most Facebook shares.

While this one has been pinned over 2,500 times on Pinterest.

Knowing which types of content resonate on each network willhelp to inform our promotional efforts at a later stage. We can add thedetail gathered in this section to our spreadsheet and move on to part 5.

#Part 5: PPC Analysis Finally, well take a look at our competitors PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns. For each competitor we want to find out: Which keywords they are bidding onWhich ads they are runningTheir top landing pages Its super easy to do withAhrefs. Just enter your a competitor domain into Site Explorer, then run the 3 reports in the Paid Search section.

Finding acompetitors PPC keywords The PPC keywords report will list all keywords your competitor is currently bidding on. Below we can see that Piktochart are currently bidding on 151 keywords.

For each keyword we get: Their current ad positionAd block position (top, middle, bottom)Search volumeKeyword Difficulty (KD)Their traffic share (percentage)Number of resultsLanding page URLHow Competitor PPC Keyword Data Can Make You More Money If your competitor is spending money on a keyword what does that tell you? It tells you that keyword is PROFITABLE. Because unless your competitor is in the business of pouring money down the drain, you can bet that they track the ROI for all keywords they are bidding on. And if a keyword is not converting then they will kill it. Your competitors PPC data can unearth high converting keywords that you would probably skip right over when conducting keyword research. For example, you might be looking for keywords with minimum search volume of 1,000. But what if your average conversion rate is 2%? And a keyword with search volume of 300 is converting at 10%? Im sure youve already done the maths. That low volume keyword is going to make you more money! So not only can you find keywords for adding to your own PPC campaign, you can also find great keywords for targeting with content in organic search. Viewing acompetitors PPC ads To preview an ad for a keyword, we just hover over the yellow Ad icon.

Wecan also preview allour competitors top performing ads at once by running the Ads report.

Discovering a competitors top PPC landing pages Finally, to view our competitorsmost popular landing pages, well runthe Top landing pages report.

How PPC Data Shows You The Whole Funnel Wouldnt it be great if you could peek at your competitors sales funnel all the way from customer search to conversion? Well, if youve examined their PPC data then you already have! As I mentioned previously, you can bet that your competitors have tested and tested to find the highest converting keywords for their campaign. And guess what? They will have carried out the same rigorous testing with their ad copy and landing pages. So by examining their message from ad to landing page you can figure out the language and calls to actions they use to turn searchers into customers. And when youre looking to create (or improve) your own sales funnel, thatknowledge is priceless. What WeLearned In This Competitive Analysis Process So now we have completed our competitive analysis, lets quickly recapwhat we discovered: Our top competitorsTheir key metrics (DR, Referring domains)Their link growth (speed and consistency)Their traffic sources (all channels)The top referring sites in the nicheThe countries which provide most traffic in the nicheTotal traffic for each competitorKey traffic stats for each competitor (time on site, pages per session, bounce rate)Theorganic keywords driving our competitors search trafficTheir top content in organic searchTheir top linkbait contentTheir most shared contentThe keywords they are bidding on in paid searchThe copy they are using in their PPC adsThe landing pages their ads point to Im sure youll agree, thats a ton of information we can use to create our own marketing and growth strategy. But guess what? Its just the tip of the iceberg. Both tools (Ahrefs and SimilarWeb) have a treasure trove of additional reports we can run to, not just peek behind our competitors marketing curtain, but rip it down toexpose their entire marketing, content,and link building strategies. Ready to get started? You can sign up for a 14 day trial of Ahrefs here and a SimilarWeb account here. Finally, heres a link tomy spreadsheet if you want to use the format for your own analysis. Over To You And what are your favorite tools and practices for competitive analysis? Let us discuss them in the comments below! https://ahrefs.com/blog/competitive-analysis/

0 notes