#online from a less evil seller also an option

[steveyockey]

it’s so crazy when someone reveals they are regular amazon user. honey I go to the STORE

[bigthingsforeverintheworks]

Ok I almost took a media literacy L here before I decided to check out their website. First off it is just a publishing company, they're not writing them with AI or writing them at all.

The core business model is that you pay them a (relatively small, starting at $1500 dollars, they say up to $5000) sum of money up front and then they publish it, and you get all of the royalties, and much quicker than normal at that. Now that may seem odd, how are they making money from this?

Luckily their website has a list of famous company names

no clue what that means but those sure are companies (they do say on a different webpage that these are places they have "appeared in". Always glad to see that a company has articles that were made about it.

They have this testimony and yep the book sure does exist and was published by these guys, you can buy it from 6 different sites (none of them have any reviews but some have a preview and I mean. it looks fine, I don't know a lot about it but it doesn't seem that good on first glance).

So what they do is:

Proofreading (there's an option to get a human to do it for a "small extra fee", no numbers are given), this seems fine enough although I'm sure a human could do it. But weirdly enough they have this testimonial

First off this guy is talking about editing not proofreading which. kind of weird. But also it's just one of those things where like. Granted I haven't published a book but generally my understanding is editors are not evil and these types of people tend to be too protective of their work. Also this is just digging at traditional publishing.

2. AI design covers for you

Sure why not. I mean it won't be as good & you're not paying artists but whatever.

Stunning picture of a guy who discovered what AI does

3. They make AI audiobook & does advertising/printing (unclear if you need to pay for this)

Now looking at their blog-posts. First off we see this wonderful one where they explain how online publishers work.

Hm. Any conflict of interest there? This is a relatively standard practice (at least among tech companies) to put your own product in the same "objective" stance.

Anyhow they also have one about AI publishers.

Shockingly they're talking about it from a "make the numbers gooder" perspective but it's fine (besides the part where they don't link their sources but ok). They do keep talking about how editing in a way that makes it just seem like "that thing you do where you pay a company money and then they let you publish it" instead of a process wherein another person tries to help you improve the book.

A lot of it is just stuff where I have to either take their word on it or not.

Like ok optimizing a book for marketability is already on the wrong track but if i wanted to do so is AI the right place for that? Who knows. I do have a suspicion these articles are written by AI not just based on the AI-generated images

(look at the keyboards) but the redundancy and their classic list format does make it seem somewhat likely, Granted they do have human authors listed & I'm not really that interested in AI-vestigating companies but worth noting.

As for the article screenshotted in the original post, https://www.thebookseller.com/news/new-publisher-spines-aims-to-disrupt-industry-by-using-ai-to-publish-8000-books-in-2025-alone

For the record they were already in publishing before shifting to AI

And... they just seemingly don't get the point? Or they view all of these professions as just obstacles to the core essence of the book. But this is pretty clearly a non-answer.

Now for how they make money.

let's do some quick math. We assume they have 6 books at 20 ratings each, and 1 in 5 people leaves a review. Each book costs around 15 dollars (based on looking up one of the book's prices). That means they make 9000 dollars. (Probably less given the book sellers take a cut) but still that would be a decent profit for the author. Except I don't know where the 100% royalties they boast comes from. On their terms and service they say this:

and this is only when you earn more than $25 in a certain period (the period gets shorter as you pay them more)

But don't worry about literally anything financial that's not the point!

"I want to help bring books to the masses" yeah that's what publishing does. Ok but he means writing books as a hobby and/or legacy, same thing. Well no the writing you do on your own it's the publishing. Because the physical copies are very necessary. Like I don't know if i'm in the minority but I'd rather read a free PDF than buy something with an AI-generated cover, and if authors don't care about profit then they should too.

This guardian article has points about how it actually works & its similarities to existing types of publishing.

Initial reactions that still hold:

Why that image?

Why are they called Spine?

What are they even disrupting?

Things that don't really hold: Oh ew they're writing 8000 books with AI? Why?

Things I'm mixed on:

Anything about the actual humans; they do actually employ as of now 15 people who provide some services (e.g. a production manager) but also their goal is mostly to replace the traditional humans (who they view with disdain) with as much AI as possible before it becomes bad

Everyone involved in this should be catapulted into the sun.

A new publisher plans to churn out 8000 books in 2025 using AI. Everything about this from the massive waste of energy to the absence of any creative curiosity is utterly fucking depressing.

[shreerakhi]

Exploring Unique Designs from Leading Stone Rakhi Manufacturers

Some businesses are meant to outshine! Just like Shree Rakhi. With 65 years of experience in Rakhi manufacturing, they are currently leading in the market as the most liked Kolkata rakhi manufacturers. No doubt, they’re proud to say that they have made a family of over 9,000 dealers so far in the market. Numbers can’t lie! Not 50’s, not even 100 but with the efforts of expert artisans, Shree Rakhi has over 10,000 exquisite designs in their collection. But what’s unique in that?

Well, they offer a large variety of beautiful rakhis such as AD rakhi, Stone rakhi, God rakhi, Kids rakhi, Silver rakhi, Evil Eye rakhi, Ram rakhi and the list is endless. One of their Stone Rakhi categories has unique designs that were the most demanded in the wholesale market of the 2024 festive year.

So, let’s check out some of the beautiful designs that went trending in the 2024 festive year.

Unique Stone Rakhi Online Designs by Shree Rakhi

In the festive year of 2024, wholesalers have demanded thousands of designs from Shree Rakhi. However, some of their designs of Stone Rakhi have been in trend in the wholesale market. Check these designs below:

Peacock Stone Pendent Rakhi

Stone Chain Rakhi

Stone Chain Teeni Meeni Rakhi

Stone Chain Box Packing

These are the designs that not only hold the stones but are made with great craftsmanship. As a leading rakhi manufacturer, Shree Rakhi has sold thousands of pieces of these designs so far. But guess what! They’re not limited to these designs only. 

There are many other designs of rakhi with stones that have also been sold in the market. Whether it’s a collection of AD rakhis, Evil-Eye rakhis, Kundan rakhi, or Handicraft rakhi, varieties are endless. But the main question that arises here is why Shree Rakhi is the top choice for wholesalers as the leading stone rakhi manufacturers and suppliers. 

Let’s get the reason behind it!

Why Shree Rakhi Outlead in the Market As the Stone Rakhi Manufacturers and Wholesale Suppliers?

The obvious answer to this question is because of their great expertise and years of experience. Just like numbers don’t lie, they’ve maintained their legacy with 65+ years of experience in the market. With over 10,000 designs, 9,000+ dealer pariwar, and extensive seller support service, Shree Rakhi proved themselves as a king of Kolkata Rakhi manufacturers. 

With these years of maintained legacy, Shree Rakhi is leading the way becoming not only in Kolkata but the largest rakhi manufacturer in India. But what makes them stand out from their competitors? Let’s talk about this!

Why do Wholesalers Keep Choosing Shree Rakhi as a Rakhi Wholesale Supplier?

Shree Rakhi has become a popular choice for wholesalers as their Rakhi Suppliers. It is simply because they support their wholesalers like no other. Their extensive seller support service made wholesalers trust them as a leading rakhi supplier. 

Shree Rakhi offers their wholesalers competitive yet affordable prices, it doesn’t matter what the business size of a wholesaler in the market. Whether there’s a large wholesaler or a small one with less capital expenditure, Shree Rakhi offers design options, unique packaging with an affordable price structure so that no wholesaler can feel left out of the market.

What Wholesalers Can Get By Choosing Shree Rakhi As Top Stone Rakhi Manufacturer? 

Shree Rakhi takes care of their dealer pariwar well! By choosing Shree Rakhi as the stone rakhi manufacturer, wholesalers have the option to choose designs from a wide range of collections. Not only this but once you get associated with them as a wholesaler, they ensure that your order can be placed over calls, video calls, website, and offline visits to Badabazaar office in Kolkata. 

Shree Rakhi believes in making new connections and strengthening the existing bond. This is why they are not limited to serving domestically only, they are now delivering rakhis in bulk internationally.

To strengthen the existing bond, Shree Rakhi conducts yearly meetings with their dealer pariwar, where they listen to dealers’ hindrances and provide required solutions.

Final Words:

Shree Rakhi is a leading Kolkata rakhi manufacturer and supplier and has connections with thousands of wholesalers within and across borders. To choose Shree Rakhi as a rakhi supplier, you may simply connect with them by sending your enquiries to digital@shreerakhi.in or contact them at +91 93311 50473.

[phoenixyfriend]

What can I do to limit Amazon’s* negative impacts without harming vulnerable communities who rely on their services?

* or any similar company that people are forced to use to survive if they are poor, disabled, elderly, rurally isolated, or any combination of the above

My post on Amazon has been circulating pretty far these past few weeks, and a lot of people keep trying to argue about what can be done right now. 

1. Contact your representatives

If you live in the US, there are several sites you can use to figure out your senators (you have two) and your representative (you have one). Call them if there’s a phone number. Email them if there isn’t. They’re obligated to have SOME form of contact. If your rep is already on your side, they can use your email as evidence for how citizens feel about the issue when Congress is in session to argue. If your rep is NOT on your side, they will see the email as evidence that a portion of their constituency is NOT willing to reelect them if they don’t play nice, and that scares them a lot. Either way, make yourself heard. Harass them if you have to.

(For more local issues, especially things like minimum wage and labor laws, you can find your representatives for your state or city government, like your mayor or governor or county rep, and contact them as well. Make yourself heard.)

Write emails in your own words about one of the following subjects:

Supporting the USPS. It’s the backbone of the US shipping industry, and major shipping companies like UPS, FedEx, and Amazon use it for overflow.

Monopolies and antitrust acts. Reference past antitrust acts leveled against oil, railroad, and telecom monopolies.

Raising the minimum wage. Reference inflation.

Enacting a marginal tax rate on high earners (re: the 1%, but phrased in a way that they’ll take seriously). Reference the marginal tax rates of the fifties.

Increasing disability benefits. Try to work something in about how stringent the requirements to qualify are, and how benefits don’t cover enough for medical care, transportation, assistive technology, and so on.

Increasing social security benefits for retirees. People pay into this fund all their lives as part of their income tax; it’s supposed to benefit them right back! (You can circle back to marginal tax rates and how the rich usually have savings and don’t need social security, but the poor often don’t have savings and rely on it.)

Enforcing corporate taxation. Find some statistics on who paid corporate  taxes in the past few years and who didn’t. Make sure to find a few big names and what their tax rate SHOULD have been. Emphasize how much extra money the government would be making.

Nationalizing the health care industry. Reference how well it works for countries like Canada, Korea, or Sweden, and how often hard-working Americans are bankrupted by unexpected medical emergencies.

Enacting or enforcing higher standards of employee rights. Did you know that minimum wage employees in Indiana don’t have the right to a lunch break unless they’ve been working at least twelve hours?

Legal repercussions for predatory pricing practices. Walmart is the best-known for this, but Amazon does it too, and they’re a fair bit sneakier about it.

Capping rent prices. Housing costs are among the highest financial pressures Americans face right now, and the fact that housing costs have risen SO much faster than the minimum wage is why it’s impossible to rent a one-bedroom apartment on a minimum wage anywhere in the US right now.

Capping upper management incomes. A CEO should not be earning several thousand, or several million, times as much money as their employees. It’s a long stretch (so argue the more achievable things first), but imagine if we could convince the government to say “actually, you can only make up to twenty times as much per hour as your lowest-paid employee.”

Banning police as threats against unions. UNIONS ARE GOOD THINGS. SUPPORT THEM.

Anything else that comes to mind! There are lots of subjects. This list is not an exhaustive one.

2. Vote

Pretty self-explanatory, I think. Vote in every election. Sometimes you won’t be able to vote for your top choice, and that sucks, but remember that our system is fucked and you have to go for the lesser evil that’s still capable of winning. So vote Blue (because ambivalence to our desires is better than glee at our suffering), and then send as many emails and make as many calls as you can to force them to recognize that, since you helped them get into office, they have to honor the deal to actually represent you now.

3. Support small businesses

Okay, so supporting local businesses probably isn’t too easy in a pandemic. You can’t just walk to your nearest mom and pop store to see if there’s an affordable option. That said, if you can afford to do so, try to see if there are small businesses in your area that are doing delivery or curbside-pickup.

If you live in a more rural area, see about ordering from small online businesses for non-essentials. If you’re thinking “hey, I’d like a new scarf” or something, check Instagram or Etsy first. All faults aside, Etsy is only a marketplace, not a seller themselves, so they rely on the vendors using their site to remain in business. (Whereas Amazon tries to drive their vendors out of business to take over their market share.) You can also use Google Shopping, eBay, or Craigslist.

4. Don’t Use Amazon (or similar), but don’t shame people for using it either

Some people rely on loss leaders to survive. That’s a fault of the American economy being a horrifying mess, and I listed a whole litany of the causes above. Money talks, so avoid using Amazon unless there is NO other way to get your product, but if someone you know uses Amazon, and you know they’re struggling, keep your mouth shut. If they’re not struggling, mention your distaste for Amazon but don’t push the issue; they’re more likely to come around if they feel like you’re not passing a moral judgement on them for it.

5. Recognize that many fairly-priced products are more expensive than you’re used to

The example I usually use is fashion. We’re used to a shirt costing ten or twenty dollars, even at places other than Walmart or Target. This price is what we’re led to believe is reasonable, but it’s really a factor of incredibly underpaid workers, usually overseas. If you can’t afford it, feel free to blame the low minimum wage (I certainly do), but remember to take a step back and remind yourself that it’s not that the piece is expensive, it’s that you are underpaid, and the current system is trying to teach you to expect cheaper items as the norm so they can get away with paying even more people less than they deserve.

6. DONATE

Yeah! There are a whole lot of nonprofit agencies that focus on issues that relate to this topic. I prefer to donate to organizations that focus on enacting systemic change through legal or institutional channels, like the ACLU and AAPD, but there are a lot of options, some of which focus on more direct help, or on specific parts of the country. Figure out one that speaks to you, check it against a trusted charity rating system like Charity Navigator, and set up a monthly donation if you can afford to. Constant support can cause compassion fatigue, but consistent support is how you Get Shit Done.

7. March

Join an activist group and march. Sometimes there are other major events going on (hijacking one of the current marches against racism and police brutality in favor of one about monopolies would be in bad taste AT BEST), but there will come an opportunity to make your voice heard by showing up on the street and just yelling with a sign.

Now go forth and unleash hell.

[feelingbluepolitics]

"Nearly 200 chief executives, including the leaders of Apple, Pepsi and Walmart, tried on Monday to redefine the role of business in society — and how companies are perceived by an increasingly skeptical public.

"Breaking with decades of long-held corporate orthodoxy, the Business Roundtable issued a statement on 'the purpose of a corporation,' arguing that companies should no longer advance only the interests of shareholders. Instead, the group said, they must also invest in their employees, protect the environment and deal fairly and ethically with their suppliers.

"'While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders,' the group, a lobbying organization that represents many of America’s largest companies, said in a statement. 'We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.'

"The shift comes at a moment of increasing distress in corporate America, as big companies face mounting global discontent over income inequality, harmful products and poor working conditions.

"On the Democratic presidential campaign trail, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been vocal about the role of big business in perpetuating problems with economic mobility and climate change. Lawmakers are looking into the dominance of technology companies like Amazon and Facebook.

"There was no mention at the Roundtable of curbing executive compensation, a lightning-rod topic when the highest-paid 100 chief executives make 254 times the salary of an employee receiving the median pay at their company. And hardly a week goes by without a major company getting drawn into a contentious political debate. As consumers and employees hold companies to higher ethical standards, big brands increasingly have to defend their positions on worker pay, guns, immigration, [t]rump and more.

..."[T]he Business Roundtable did not provide specifics on how it would carry out its newly stated ideals, offering more of a mission statement than a plan of action. But the companies pledged to compensate employees fairly and provide 'important benefits,' as well as training and education. They also vowed to 'protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses' and 'foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.'

"It was an explicit rebuke of the notion that the role of the corporation is to maximize profits at all costs — the philosophy that has held sway on Wall Street and in the boardroom for 50 years.

..."[W]hile the group cast the change in language as an embrace of new corporate ideals, it was also a tacit acknowledgment of the heightened pressures facing companies across the country — including many that signed the document.

"In 2017, after [trump’s...] tepid response to the violent white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Va., the chief executives of several major companies disbanded White House business advisory groups in protest. Walmart, the nation’s largest gun seller, is under pressure after a series of mass shootings, including the recent massacre at its store in El Paso. Amazon, the giant online retailer, is facing scrutiny from lawmakers who say it avoids paying taxes and uses its dominance to hurt competitors.

"And protesters have mobilized across the country to call for a higher minimum wage.

"For companies to truly make good on their lofty promises, they will need Wall Street to embrace their idealism, too. Until investors start measuring companies by their social impact instead of their quarterly returns, systemic change may prove elusive."

No one believes them, of course. But that's just the opening premise for analysis.

Admitting that you have a world-destroying, nation-collapsing, sociopathic problem with evil greed is the first step.

From there, these corporations have a range of options, which all happen to lead to the same place.

Having admitted the destructive impact of their practices, they can try to bask in noble intentions but do nothing more.

Except the same conditions which forced this recognition upon them won't allow inaction.

Right now, the presumption is that they are playing the Facebook game, putting on a concerned and responsive mask over underlying runaway lawlessness, for the purpose of patting away inclinations toward ruthlessly regulating the stuffing out of them.

The drawback of this approach has become obvious. Having acknowledged a burden of responsibility, even when they didn't really mean it, highlights the utter emptiness of their assurances and self-policing actions. "We can, and will, do better" is not an infinitely useful decoy.

So whether this Business Roundtable meant it or not, corporations are now on a path toward change.

With trump, it's a case of being careful with what they wished for, but too late. They got their massive tax windfalls. They got their grossly permissive deregulation. The American auto industry was one of the first to recognize, recently, that trump's willingness to do away with improved mileage goals completely would actually lead to ruin.

In the public's solid assessment, the corporate world is tied closely to trump and Republicons. It is profoundly interesting that the corporate world has discovered that's not a good place to be.

Just look at the fallout generated against SoulCycle and Equinox because their self-proclaimed socially conscious billionaire Stephen Ross hosted a fat fundraiser for trump.

If they continue with trump and Republicons, the country will collapse socially and economically, and the world market will gutter. Furthermore, a fascist government actually is not conducive for autonomous businesses.

If they step back from trump and Republicons, and withhold much of the business contributions to Republicon political donations, Democrats will win. (They will, anyway, in part because of the heightened understanding of the damage Republicons and the business world have done.)

Depending on which Democrat becomes the Party nominee, the corporate world will no longer be left to it's own pretenses toward improving. Biden becomes less likely as he gets hammered more and more for assuring the corporate world that, with him, "nothing will change."

A Biden presidency will set off the same social upheaval as another trump term, just somewhat delayed. Warren's ruthless policy corrections affecting the business world reflect much of what has already been admitted as necessary at this Roundtable.

At this point, if the business world tries to use pretense to stave off real change, real change will be forced. If they try to do a little bit of change but not "too much," real change will be forced.

They know. They are trying to get out in front of it. That's what this Business Roundtable fundamental philosophical change shows: the acknowledgement that real changes are coming. Profit sharing and social and environmental responsibility are better than political, economic, environmental, and social convulsion and chaos.

[gcontrollers-blog]

Exciting New Switch Games for 2019

The Nintendo Switch has become a very popular gaming console over the course of the last year or so, and people are clamoring not only to get the Switch but also to get the right accessories and all of the great games that will be coming to the system in the near future. Let’s take a look at some of the games that will be coming to the console to see why people are so excited.

Astral Chain

Picture from :https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/astral-chain

This is an action game developed by PlatinumGames. You might recognize the name of as being the developer of other popular games like Nier: Automata and Bayonetta. You play as a police officer in Neuron, a special task force, and you have at your side a living weapon called Legion. There are a number of weapon Legion types that can be switched between, and this weapon is one of the driving features of the game. You will be able to control your character and the special weapon simultaneously to come up with a range of possible combinations and styles of fighting your way through the levels.

The game also has a nice design that appears to be partially cell-shaded. The characters were designed by manga artist Masakazu Katsura. It should come out in late August.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

picture link:https://store.steampowered.com/app/996580/Spyro_Reignited_Trilogy/

Many people have fond memories of playing Spyro the Dragon and the follow-ups when they were released years ago. The games were fun and there was a lot to love about the spunky purple dragon. Of course, there are many gamers today who have never had a chance to play the old games. With the release of this trilogy, which should be coming out on September 3 for the Switch, it provides new opportunities.

The game will come with the original Spyro the Dragon, as well as Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage!, and Spyro Year of the Dragon. The games have been fully remastered to provide a fantastic look to the classic. The gameplay controls have been improved, as well, which should prove to make certain aspects of the game less frustrating.

The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening

picture link from: www.comicbook.com

Most people have heard of The Legend of Zelda even if they haven’t played one of the games. Breath of the Wild was released at the same time as the Switch, and it brought gamers a massive world to explore. This latest game, which will be coming out on September 20, is a reimagining of the original Gameboy release from back in 1993. The look and the style of this game are fantastic and it has a “very Nintendo” feel to it. In the game, you will be playing as the hero Link who wakes up on a strange island and is trying to find his way home.

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

Picture link from   Wikipedia.com

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt will reportedly be releasing on October 15, although there are rumors that it could be later. This popular game has already been out on other consoles but now Switch fans will get to step into the shoes of Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher. One of the biggest benefits of this edition for the Switch is that it is the Complete Edition, meaning it will have the DLC already included. For anyone who likes gritty, fun fantasy and who have not played the game, or who wants to give it another go on the Switch, it is highly recommended by many.

Resident Evil Triple Pack

picture from: www.nintendosoup.com/

This will be released right before Halloween, and there is no better time of year to play the classic horror games. It is time that you returned to fight off hordes of the undead and other monstrosities with the Resident Evil Triple Pack. This includes two-player local and online co-op for RE5 and RE6. It will also include game modes from RE4. Those who like to have a good scare, whether they are playing alone or with friends, may want to check out this option for the Switch.

Luigi’s Mansion 3

picture from: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/luigis-mansion-3-switch/

If you want some lighthearted scary fare, Luigi’s Mansion 3 might be a nice solution. Mario’s green-loving brother does not always get the attention he deserves, but these games have always been fun in the past, and this one does not look like it will disappoint. It will be releasing on October 31 and will provide many hours of fun as Luigi makes his way through the haunted mansion with a slew of new abilities.

Pokémon Sword and Shield

pic linke from https://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/news/pokemon-sword-shield-nintendo-switch-november-2019-direct-2049119

The Pokémon games are always popular no matter their iteration and no matter the console. When the Sword and Shield release on November 15, it is sure to be a fast seller. It is possible to buy the games separately or to buy both of them in a bundle if you prefer. These games allow you to become a Pokémon trainer in some brand new regions, and you might even be able to find some new Pokémon along the way.

These are just some of the games that will be coming to the Switch in the coming months. There are plenty of other options for those who are interested in just about every type of genre available.

Don’t Forget the Accessories

While the games are all fantastic, you will find that many people who are buying a Switch or who already own one of the consoles are also interested in accessories. Retailers, developers, and publishers should know that the right accessories at the right prices can sell very well. Whether they are new cases, chargers, or even controllers for the Switch, there is high demand. Having quality third-party controllers and accessories available for consumers is always a good idea. Many times, it is even possible to get these items with your own branding.

We have been providing quality services and products for developers and game publishers for years, and we can ensure that you get exactly what you need. Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help.

[henbutane3]

Exactly How To Prolong A Kitchen With An Orangery.

Pulte Residences Consents To Get.

Content

Exactly How The Residential Property Renovation And Also Refurbishment Solutions In London Job.

Rj Refurbishment Solutions.

Begin Your Task.

Tiny Orangery Conservatories As Well As Glass Conservatories.

Allow The Sunlight In! Every Little Thing You Wanted To Know About Sunrooms

It is frequently a good concept to play evil one's advocate as well as ask what the builder will not be in charge of, such as structural engineer appointments. Request recommendations as well as tales about how the builder has met various challenges along the road.

Exactly How The Building Renovation And Refurbishment Solutions In London Work.

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Nothing on our internet site ought to be understood as legal, audit or tax recommendations.

Please seek advice from a LGI Houses brand-new residence specialist and also examine a residence sales contract for extra info and also disclosures.

For many years, we have actually aided thousands of families fulfill their imagine having a new customized residence.

Homes imagined may not be available at the lowest advertised price and also may present upgraded landscape design or designer items and furnishings which are not readily available for acquisition even upon additional settlement.

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If you're purchasing a new residence, you've involved the appropriate area!

Rewards and seller contributions may need the use of particular independent lending institutions or title business.

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In most cases that implies that an older house will feature a reduced tax obligation burden for the proprietor. While this should not be a making a decision factor when picking in between a recently built home or a resale residential property, it is a vital consideration. We are having a lot of issues with our home and also the problems followed they 1 year service warranty ends.

Rj Repair Solutions.

How much does a double storey extension cost UK?

The average cost of a double storey extension varies with the location across the UK, going from £1,500 to £2,500 per sqm, excluding finishes. In London the average cost excluding finishes is higher, between £1,800 and £2,800 per square metre for the building cost.

We have actually signed the contract with the same figure but little did we know. The construction team is slack, they took as long to develop that ultimately grumbled to the location supervisor as well as eventually resorted to whipping M on Item Evaluation. M is developing a large project in Willowdale for Stockland which's delayed as well, it's feasible they're not paying tradies or their monetary setting is not in excellent shape. Not exactly sure how much you're getting for hold-ups, we were provided $30/day whereas Clarendon provides $40/day.

New builds depend on future building, and the influx of new purchasers, to establish home worths, and that can be an unknown quantity. In contrast, resale houses tend to be in recognized communities with simple accessibility to work, institutions and also shopping. With an existing home you additionally have more control over your option of neighborhoods. You can purchase into a component of the city that you know, which uses the way of life and also social chances that you desire for you and your family members. That higher adaptability permits you to target homes in much more beneficial school areas, or with closer proximity to work, worship, purchasing and entertainment.

Start Your Task.

recommending your contractor to a buddy can show any kind of number of points, with build high quality being only one possible reason. With an older residence in an established community you can examine the background of the residential or commercial property's value, tracking its rise and fall and also determining if it is a sensible financial investment.

How much does a 4m extension cost?

Cost of a single story extension Building costs for a residential ground floor extension typically range from $2,000 – $3,000 per quare metre. Therefore a typical extension of 60 sqaure metres could cost around $150,000.

Little Orangery Conservatories And Glass Conservatories.

If you can, you can attempt to see builders' previous projects in person and also talk with previous clients, or if not, read reviews, suggestions and also rankings, and take a look at comprehensive photos of tasks. As larger home extnesions builders for small businesses , 50% of the property owners in the research had the ability to buy when they were in this age range, compared to just 37% of homeowner today. However, for those with the luxury of being able to decide when to purchase their initial residence, they ought to bear in mind that it does not pay to wait as well long. We adhere to eco-friendly structure methods and use eco-friendly products in kitchen cabinetry, carpeting, siding, paints as well as landscaping. Advanced building techniques and independent third-party examinations assist guarantee your house's high quality.

Are orangeries cheaper than extensions?

Building an orangery is often cheaper than building a single-storey extension - based on a structure that is like-for-like in size. Popular with people who want to benefit from modern open-plan living, orangeries are one of the most affordable ways to create a multi-functional space.

Gain from their blunders before it is to late to repair it with your house. Instances I found out of where to include extra insulation in between the interior walls to lower noise. Reconfigure the HEATING AND COOLING area walls to provide yourself extra space. Locate points out on your own when it comes to "permit" problems if you ask the zoning board yourself what taking place you might obtain the opposite response RH will certainly offer you.

Are glass walls expensive?

Glass walls are generally more expensive than walls made of traditional materials like bricks or drywall. However, the total cost of installation becomes lower for glass as the building gets taller. While the cost of the walls themselves remain constant, glass walls are much easier to lift than individual bricks.

A firm like metricon which has actually built countless houses could not reveal any type of photos/ colour graphes with coordinated color scheme or perhaps a software program where clients could picture their ended up house. What an irony it is, they agree to risk their online reputation but would not purchase a system. We checked out every home builder at display screen homes as well as shortlisted couple of based on the designs we liked.

There's always somebody that is readily available to assist when your sales agent or builder is not readily available. 6 months is a long time to eagerly wait for the conclusion of your new home. Getting regular emails from the building supervisor on the progression of the construct was very helpful and also insightful. Look $30/day is absolutely nothing i have found out that lots of building contractors supply $80/day as a sector standard.

The master shower room is leaking, the kitchen island is fractured. The driveway and the cement in the patio area are splitting and sinking and they simply told us we have to manage it ourselves. Our residence remains in the Mills al Rocky River in Harrisburg NC. Your house was integrated in 2018 and it worst home ever. Basically they just appreciate new clients, not the people that have already bought a house as well as our presently paying HOA costs. They likewise will certainly not permit photovoltaic panels due to the fact that they are afraid it will certainly injure new home sales.

They also exist regarding when the homeowners will certainly take over the HOA. Lastly as confirmed in the video below, they do not maintain their public locations quite possibly as well as have a bad house construct. Ryan Residences has and also remains to make the experience fun and worry-free. We have currently remained in our home a while and Ryan has exceeded and past in their dedication to handiwork.

Allow The Sunshine In! https://trusted-builders.co.uk/orangeries/ Would Like To Know Regarding Sunrooms

How much value does an orangery add?

Just like adding an extension, an orangery will create additional space and increased price value to your home. An orangery will increase your house value significantly, in some cases as high as 15%, although price increases of 5-10% are more common.

Their head offices are located in Dallas, Texas, UNITED STATES & London. They have around 26,000 employees as well as they obtain a revenue around $4.5 billion. Stone Realty has gathered the yearly results for the UK's greatest housebuilders to see who was top when it comes to the delivery of houses within the sales market.

Prior to you hire a building contractor in Dublin, check out our network of 217 building contractors. Go through consumer reviews, check their past projects and then request a quote from the best builders near you. Put together a shortlist of at least 3 building contractors in Dublin, Co . Dublin, Ireland that can take care of the full extent of jobs, either on their own or with sub-contracting.

[housebuyers4u]

How to Negotiate the Best Offer for your House (Step by Step Guide)

How to Negotiate the Best Offer for your House (Step by Step Guide)

Let’s face, Haggling sucks! Too high? Too low? Am I being taken for a ride? When it comes to negotiation on house price, most of us have woefully little experience.

That’s where we can help. We share our industry expertise on our top tips for negotiation – applicable for buyers and sellers – to ensure you hold all the cards when it comes to settling on the final house offer.

Let’s get started.

Negotiation via Estate Agents

Low Bids: Cheeky Or Worth a Try – What Should you Offer on a House?

Alternative Buying & Selling Scenarios

What Happens After a Home Offer is Accepted?

A Final Word

Interesting Facts about House Negotiations

Source: Thisismoney

1) Negotiation via Estate Agents

In this section we’ll look at 3 key areas:

Pre-planning: The house offer strategy

How to make a house offer

Negotiation: The house offer process

Pre-Planning: The House Offer Strategy

According to recent government figures, 83% of homes in the UK are sold via estate agents.  Agents traditionally work for the seller – a contract is drawn up between the two parties, and their job is to negotiate the best offer for their client.

For buyers this means the home buying offer strategy begins with that crucial first contact with an agent.

Meeting an agent: The first question agents understandably want to know is your budget. Downplaying this a little is key, as agents are notorious for their ability to upsell, showing you properties that are a little overbudget. If you’ve hinted that you could go higher than your original quota this effectively lowers your bargaining power.

Do your research: Online resources such as Zoopla and Right Move make it easy to see what similar properties in any area have sold for, and that of those on the market today. The Land Registry website is also a reliable source to search average house prices in any given area.

Have you got buyer appeal? Perhaps you’re a chain free or cash buyer. If so, be sure to make this information is known to the agent as some vendors might be more open to accepting a house offer lower than the asking price for a hassle-free transaction.

Don’t use an agent for financial services: According to the Home Owner’s Alliance, a major source of complaints from both buyers and vendors is that of an agents conflict of interests. This can occur when buyer’s use the seller’s agent as a mortgage broker. When this happens the agent earns commission – and such a situation can lead to both buyers and sellers losing out financially. The Money Advice Service recommends shopping around to get the best mortgage advice, including that of your bank and independent mortgage brokers.

After the groundwork is in place, the next step is to find your dream property. When viewing this should be considered as the first step in your house buying negotiation strategy, so take care to ensure the following:

Research the property carefully

View more than once (different times of day, during inclement weather if possible, make notes of work that will need to be carried out, etc.)

Get sight of the EPC

Promote your buyer appeal (first time buyer, chain free etc.)

Even if you love the house try not to appear too keen

How to Make a House Offer

Once you’ve found the right property the next step is to make your offer. This is where those all-important house negotiation tactics begin to come into play. You put in the offer through the estate agent who then communicates this to the vendor.

It’s recommended that you put the offer in writing to the agent (an email following a phone call will suffice, and you can easily set up a house offer letter template prior to the time, filling in the relevant details). Doing this negates the risk of any confusion further down the line.

The seller then has three choices:

Accept the offer

Refuse the offer

Begin the dreaded house sale negotiation process

If your initial offer is in the right ballpark, the latter is the most likely scenario. The haggling process takes place through the agent. For buyers this might represents a disadvantage, because the seller has a professional working on their behalf. It’s possible to appoint a buyer’s agent, if you’re really concerned, but this isn’t necessary (plus it adds further costs to the house buying process).

Negotiation: The House Offer Process

Can you negotiate on a house offer? The short answer is yes and here’s how.

As a buyer, your opening gambit (AKA your first offer) should be considered the start of an exploratory process. The key factor here is to determine how flexible the seller is. To this end, the following tips will help direct you towards understanding what your first house offer should be.

The first offer should be below what you’re willing to pay: This gives you flexibility to increase it, should it be necessary. This is a key psychological aspect of house offer negotiation, as upping your offer will appear attractive to the vendor.

Give the reasons for your offer: Mention any work that needs doing (installing double glazing, roof maintenance, new boiler, etc.) and state estimated costs.

Use other properties as examples: If similar properties in the area have sold for less, this is a valuable bargaining tool.

Imply interest elsewhere: Even if this property is ‘the one’, there’s no harm in implying that there’s another property you’re interested in. Estate agents routinely use the ‘there’s lots of interest in this house’ trick to get you to make or up an offer. Telling them you’ve got options is a cheeky way to stop this tactic in its track.

Even if a seller refuses to budge on their asking price, all is not lost. Asking for extras is another strategic move in how to win a house negotiation. Such requests could include:

Asking the seller to contribute towards purchasing fees

Requesting that certain items are included in the sale (curtains, appliances etc.)

2) Low Bids: Cheeky or Worth a Try – What Should you Offer on a House?

Clues that a low offer might be accepted

How low can you go on a house offer?

How to respond to a low offer

Clues that a Lower Offer Might be Accepted

There are many reasons a vendor might accept an offer lower than the guide price, the key is to be aware of what they are. Spotting the signs is vital part of how to get your house offer accepted as well as knowing how much less you should offer to maximise your savings – the following are clues to whether or not the seller might be, to put it bluntly, pretty damn desperate to sell.

The house has been on the market for a long time: Reasons for this include being overpriced or that there’s an issue with the property, such as needing major structural work).

The house has been reduced in price multiple times: Apart from probably having too high of an asking price in the first place, constant reductions in price show a desire to sell ASAP.

The seller is stuck in a long chain: Property chains are a necessary evil when it comes to selling a property. However, they can cause indeterminable delays. If the seller has found their next property and is keen not to lose it, they may well be open to a lower offer for a quick sale.

The house is advertised with multiple agents: In such a case, the estate agent will be keen to clinch the sale in order to get their commission.

Related: Why your house isn’t selling & how to fix it step by step

How Low can you go on a House Offer?

According to This Is Money houses in the UK sell for an average 3.5% less than the original asking price. The image below shows the percentages for a number of the UK’s largest cities.

This, naturally, varies around the country.

From the above image we can learn that the lowest average properties are sold in Bristol and Manchester (2.2%) and the highest average property is Edinburgh (8.3%).

Houses in London on average are 4.8% lower than the asking price.

A rule of thumb would be to go in at around 10% below the asking price. There’s a fine line between negotiation and insulting a vendor. What is a cheeky offer on a house that’s worth consideration to one person could completely undermine your credibility as a genuine buyer to another. Take into account the reason the house is on the market – the owners of a treasured family home that’s just been offered for sale are not likely to be impressed by a derogatory offer.

How to Respond to a Low Offer?

If you’re the seller, receiving a low offer can bring about many reactions – most of them emotional. Of course, you’re perfectly within your right to refuse. But before you do so, consider the following:

You've Actually had an Offer!

Take time to reflect

Consider the Buyer

Review the Market Again

Would you be Better Off Using a House Buying Service?

Someone is interested in your property, and this is the starting point from which the house negotiation can begin.

No matter what, always remember that as a seller you’re the one in control. If you don’t like an offer, you don’t have to accept it.

3) Alternative Buying & Selling Scenarios

In this section we’ll take a look at a couple of alternative buying and selling scenarios and they are:

Auctions and negotiations

New builds

Open negotiations

Sealed bids

While estate agents remain the more common sales route, other alternatives don’t necessarily mean you can’t negotiate a better deal.

Auctions & Negotiations

Regular house auctions, as in where bidders (either in a room or online) bid until the hammer falls, are only open to negotiation if the property fails to sell. In such cases there might be a case for the vendor accepting a reasonable house offer post-sale.

More common scenarios are that of open and sealed bids.

Open negotiations: In the same way as negotiating a house offer through an agent, make your opening gambit lower than the price you’re prepared to pay (by around 5-10% is a good guide). You’ll usually be informed if a higher offer is received, giving you the opportunity to increase a second or even third time.

Sealed bids: Although you might be desperate to clinch a deal, do not be tempted to bid more than you can afford. The vendor will usually accept the highest bid, so a top tip is to not offer a round number. Offering £255,075, as opposed to £255,000 could mean you trump a bid close to yours.

The key approach with both open and sealed bids is to carry out the same due diligence as when buying in a more conventional manner.

New Builds

Many people mistakenly believe that there’s no room for negotiation on the house price of a new build. Nothing could be further from the truth, and buyers often have more wiggle room in such a case.

The following are our top house buying negotiation tips for purchasing not only new builds but also standard properties too.

4) What Happens After a Home Offer is Accepted

When is an offer legally binding?

Gazumping

When is an Offer Legally Binding?

Agents are legally obliged to pass on any offers right up until contracts are exchanged, the point at which an offer becomes legally binding in England and Wales (different rules apply in Scotland). Up until that point either party can pull out. However, according to Co-op legal services, doing so may still leave buyers and/or sellers liable to various fees.

When this occurs due to the vendor accepting a higher offer, it’s known as ‘gazumping’. If you’ve managed to negotiate a particularly low sale price the chances of this happening are, naturally, higher.

Gazumping: Is Gazumping Illegal?

No and being gazumped can be extremely costly, with the potential risk of losing large amounts of money in solicitor’s fees, search fees and survey costs. If it happens to you, the only choice you have is to increase your offer over and above that of the gazumper. One way to lower the risk is to request that the vendor removes the property from the market. If they refuse, consider whether or not it’s worth the risk of losing out should another buyer make a higher offer than yours.

A Final Word

The majority of house buying negotiations take place through an estate agent, removing the need for awkward face-to-face haggling. Research is the most crucial aspect of the negotiation process, providing you with the necessary knowledge as to how to make the best house offer.

Despite your best efforts, a vendor might not accept your final offer on a house. If this is the case, and it’s the maximum you can afford, then it’s time to look elsewhere. However, by following our key tips for house negotiation, we’re confident you’ll be well-placed for securing your chosen property at a truly realistic price.

This article was brought to you by http://housebuyers4u.co.uk/

[espmstudentproject-blog]

The Truth Behind the Waste of the Clothing Industry

If you really want to know everything that goes on for the sake of your closet, read on...

Clothing is something that’s a necessity in life. Something we use everyday, purchase often, and fluctuates as the seasons and trends change. As the world around us is growing more aware of eco-friendly practices, the textile/clothing industry has been exposed as the second largest waste producing industry. This is something that directly concerns consumers as we are the ones fueling this economy of fashion. It’s possible that some of us have heard of the dangers of the industry, but the large majority doesn’t know how much waste is produced in every single step of a garment’s life cycle. I’m going to follow the life of your t-shirt, an object seemingly so innocent that has in fact caused a great deal of harm in many aspects. I will go through the production, consumption, disposal and possible future of your t-shirt.

The first time you came into contact with your t-shirt was probably when you saw it at the mall. You checked its price tag, maybe tried it on, and the rest is history. What you don’t know is the long journey that t-shirt went through before it was even placed onto the shelves of that store.

So, where did this journey begin? There are many factors that go into a garment’s production, harvesting materials, transporting those materials, powering facilities and machines, shipping, so on so forth. All these factors contribute to the footprint of your t-shirt. For example, your t-shirt is made by cutting shapes into large pieces of fabric, having a lot of scraps left over. About 20% of the original amount of fabric is wasted. (1)

Another thing you might not know about your t-shirt is what it’s really made of. Most clothing is not plant based, instead fabric is infused with plastic synthetic microfibers. These tiny plastic particles can slip through you washing machine and pollute water sources. (2) Another synthetic fabric used is polyester, which is made from petroleum, a well known fossil fuel. The manufacturing of these fabrics is incredibly energy intensive under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act the EPA considers many textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators. Unfortunately, many garments that are plant based are not much better for the environment. The crops used in fabric are often treated by harmful pesticides, both harmful to the environment and any workers that are in contact with the chemicals. Cotton, which is one of the most popular fibers used, accounts for 25% of all pesticides used in the United States. (3)

Like I mentioned, the production of your t-shirt is not only harmful to the environment but harmful to the laborers involved too. Child labor is widespread in the textile industry because of the cheaper wages paid. Girls as young as 12 enter the industry and drop out of school to work, these are the same girls that are often victims of human trafficking. Environmentally conscious brands like Patagonia have come under fire for their production process that involves this kind of labor. (4)

(4)

The thing is, it’s not like buying your t-shirt makes you an evil person that supports human trafficking, it’s just all about being aware as a consumer. I myself used to beeline to the stores with the lowest prices and most options. Moving on to the consumption of your t-shirt, it’s critical to note that some brands should just be avoided.

The stores we likely shop at fall under the category of fast fashion. Fast fashion is inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends. These retailers include Forever 21, H&M, Charlotte Russe, Topshop, Zara, Cotton On, and many more. Unfortunately, fast fashion isn’t the only model that is problematic. Designer brands rely on being exclusive and sought after, meaning their quantity or stock stays limited. Any leftover clothes from last season do not get sold at lower prices, but are instead destroyed. The brand Burberry was caught in a huge scandal after being exposed for burning their excess stock. (5)

The garment or textile industry itself is extremely flawed. The industry has a linear economic model rather than circular, meaning that there is no life for a garment after its disposal. Only about 1% of clothing is recycled into new garments. Successful fashion designer and sustainability advocate Stella McCartney explains that because the industry isn’t circular, it’s extremely hard for consumers to be responsible with their purchases. (6)

The waste produced in the life cycle of your t-shirt is not only indirectly supported by our through purchasing, but also through your direct actions as well. The company Levi conducted a Product Life Cycle Assessment and found that  23% of the water used in a life cycle of a pair of jeans is only from consumer care habits and that 60% of energy used in the life cycle of your t-shirt is actually from post purchase washing and drying at high temperatures. (7)

The biggest concern regarding the textile industry is where the clothes end up once they have been used and discarded. The life of your shirt does not merely end once it is out of your sight. So, after its disposal where does it really go?

(8)

Your t-shirt will either go straight into a landfill, or perhaps you donated it to a charity or thrift store. Although, what many don’t realize is donating your clothing does not guarantee it a second life. Only about ⅕ of clothing donated to charities gets directly used or sold in thrift shops. The rest is often exported in bulk to generally to poorer or underdeveloped countries, such as Kenya. (3) However, the exponential speed at which clothing is produced means that there are even leftover items at this level of consumption as well. Excess clothing is often dumped and then burned. This waste is here, it’s prevalent, and it’s not going away anytime soon. Many of you may understand the environmental and ethical impacts that are associated with your t-shirt and the textile industry itself, but still consider the wasted materials as garbage. The reality is, just because your t-shirt has a rip or stain, doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. This is like thinking that a plastic water bottle doesn’t need to be recycled and has no potential after its single use. 100 billion dollars of textile is wasted every year. 100 billion dollars of waste that has the potential to be valorized. (6)

(5)

The pressing question is, how can us consumers responsibly discard clothing? Well, the truth is, recycling textiles is an untapped potential of technology. Because so many fabrics are made from blended and synthetic fibers, it is nearly impossible to separate them for materials for any new pieces. All you as a consumer can do is be aware that you are donating your clothing to responsible organizations, mending the items, or most importantly buy less. (8)

The future of the textile industry is not entirely in shambles. Positive progress relies not only on the consumer but on the producers and sellers too. Big brands such as Nike, Asos, and Gap have signed up for the 2020 Circular Fashion Commitment. Others such as Adidas have set goals to only use recycled plastics in their shoes by 2020, and H&M to only use sustainable materials in its production by 2030. (5) As a consumer it is important that you are properly informed on everything that goes into the life of your t-shirt, and that students and future professionals may one day be the pioneers of a sustainable industry.

See future blogs for tips on how to be a more sustainable shopper.

References

1. Reverse Resources. How Much Does the Garment Industry Actually Waste? [Online] Aug 31, 2016. reverseresources.net/news/how-much-does-garment-industry-actually-waste (accessed March 11, 2019). 

2. Turner, Jane. Plastic Pollution in Clothing. [Online] Oct 17, 2018. www.ethicalconsumer.org/fashion-clothing/plastic-pollution-clothing (accessed March 11, 2019).

3. Claudio, Luz. Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry. [Online] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1964887/ (accessed March 11, 2019).

4. CITI IO. 10 Truly Oppressive Working Conditions Of The Clothing Industry. [Online] Oct. 6, 2018. www.citi.io/2017/03/23/10-truly-oppressive-working-conditions-of-the-clothing-industry/ (accessed March 11, 2019).

5. Cooper, Kelly-Leigh. Fast Fashion: Inside the Fight to End the Silence on Waste. [Online] July 31, 2018. www.bbc.com/news/world-44968561 (accessed March 11, 2019).

6. BBC Newsnight. Stella McCartney and Ellen MacArthur on Fashion Sustainability. [Online] Nov 28, 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSErk0NfDlk (accessed March 11, 2019).

7. Levi Strauss. No, You Don't Have to Wash Those Jeans – Really! [Online] Jan 28, 2018. www.levistrauss.com/unzipped-blog/2018/01/25/no-dont-wash-jeans-really/ (accessed March 11, 2019).

8. Matteis, Stephanie. What Really Happens to Old Clothes Dropped in Those in-Store Recycling Bins. [Online] Jan 19, 2018. www.cbc.ca/news/business/clothes-recycling-marketplace-1.4493490 (accessed March 11, 2019).

March 11, 2019

[simplemlmsponsoring]

New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/website-traffic/what-is-skimlinks-how-to-use-skimlinks-to-effortlessly-monetize-your-content/

What Is Skimlinks & How to Use Skimlinks to Effortlessly Monetize Your Content

(DON’T hold this against me…  I am [allegedly] too busy and too important to notice things like MONEY… Or too financially scatterbrained…)

A few months ago, I noticed I was getting monthly deposits from a payee I didn’t recognize…

Don’t you wish you had that problem?… 

Well, with Skimlinks, you just might!

Even though I forgot ever adding Skimlinks code to Traffic Generation Café, it never forgot to quietly work in the background and send me an affiliate commission paycheck each and every month – without me lifting a finger.

What, on earth, is Skimlinks?

FULL DISCLOSURE

I DON’T write about making money online. EVER. For various reason.

Yet, I wrote this post. And stand behind it.

What Is Skimlinks?

Skimlinks is a content monetization network that allows you, the content creator, to passively and effortlessly monetize your content.

How does Skimlinks work?

You do what you do best – create content.

Once your content is published, Skimlinks does what Skimlinks does best: turns any product, brand mention, or merchant link into its equivalent affiliate link.

Here’s a quick What Is Skimlinks? overview:

With Skimlinks, you get instant access to over 24,000 merchant affiliate programs without the hassle of network sign-ups, approvals, or creating affiliate links.

Let me show you how Skimlinks works step by step.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 1

Add normal product links to your content.

How Skimlinks works: STEP 2

Your links look normal – your readers see exactly where they are going and trust the link.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 3

Skimlinks automatically turns your links into their equivalent affiliate links on clicked, via a brief redirect to the Skimlinks servers.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 4

Every time your readers click through a product link that Skimlinks is able to affiliate and make a purchase, you’ll earn a commission on the sale.

How does Skimlinks work: EXAMPLE

Let’s say, I want to mention my favorite Nespresso coffee maker in a post.

I don’t have to log into my Amazon affiliate dashboard and convert that link into an affiliate link – Skimlinks will do all the work for me.

I simply copy and paste the Amazon product link (https://www.amazon.com/Nespresso-Espresso-Machine-Breville-Aeroccino/dp/B01MZCQBY4/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1521489754&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=nespresso+machine&psc=1).

As far as you, the Reader, is concerned, you see an (ugly ) Amazon product link.

However, if you click the link, Skimlinks will automatically code it with my Amazon referral code and, should you end up buying the product, I get the commission.

Pretty sleek!

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

SIGN UP How Much Can You Earn with Skimlinks?

Hmmm….

How much comtent (COMmercial conTENT – content with links to products / retailers) do you write? How compelling is your comtent? Is it click-worthy? How much traffic do you get? How click-happy are your readers?

Take Traffic Generation Café, for instance. Not much comptent here, but even with a few sporadic mentions of merchants and products, I still get some passive income, as you saw from the screenshot above.

If you, however, run a website that lends itself nicely to publishing comptent (COMmercial conTENT)… well, the sky’s the limit!

…Or 75% of the sky, to be more accurate.  Skimlinks keeps the other 25%.

Entirely fair, if you ask me – ESPECIALLY, if you are earning a big fat ZERO without Skimlinks, right?

Let’s take a closer look at your potential earnings with Skimlinks. Or without Skimlinks, I should say.

How much could you earn WITHOUT Skimlinks?

Many publishers ask, “Why use Skimlinks, if I could create affiliate links on my own?”

With Skimlinks, you earn up to 110% of what you would’ve earned if you managed your affiliate links yourself.

And yes, Skimlinks does take 25% of that.

However, with Skimlinks, you have access to Preferred Merchants – merchants who have agreed to pay Skimlinks their cut above and beyond your commissions.

Stick with promoting Preferred Merchants and you’ll maximize your earnings potential.

Plus, you get your foot in the door with many Merchants that wouldn’t give you the time of day without Skimlinks, like Nordstrom, Macy’s, Canon, HP, Sketchers, Target… you name it.

PLUS, the affiliate behemoths like Commission Junction (CJ), ShareASale.com, LinkShare.com are also a part of Skimlinks network.

But wait… you can use Skimlinks on social media!

That’s right – Skimlinks lets you monetize your content on other platforms.

No matter where you post, whether on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, you can use Skimlinks browser extension link shortener to connect your audiences across channels and earn from your product and brand recommendations.

Just one of Skimlinks WOW factors… 

Skimlinks saves time. Time = money.

Let’s face it, you won’t tediously code each and every link you could on your own… not to mention the links you couldn’t since you don’t have access to their affiliate programs!

And even if you do make a bit less with Skimlinks, the amount of time it saves you, plus the automatic addition of affiliate links when you forget, pays for the difference above and beyond.

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

SIGN UP IMPORTANT: Affiliate marketing and disclosures

FTC regulations state,

When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product which might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement, such connection must be fully disclosed.

Monetizing through affiliate links? Disclose. Disclose. DISCLOSE.

Here is an informative guide from the FTC regarding endorsements.

Since disclosure laws may vary from state to state, country to country, comply with the local disclosure laws from your state/country of residence.

How to Add Skimlinks to Your Site

Once you are an approved Skimlinks publisher, integrating Skimlinks with your site is a breeze.

Your options are:

1.  For any website: JavaScript

Grab JavaScript code (will be given to you by Skimlinks) and paste it into the footer of your site.

That’s what I use at Traffic Generation Café.

2.   For forum owners

If you use vBulletin for your forum, they have a dedicated vBulletin plugin.

3.   For self-hosted WordPress blogs

There’s a plugin for that!

4.   For any other platforms

Skimlinks offers a range of simple implementation guides for everything else in-between, like TypePad, Blogger, Tumblr, and so forth.

5.   For social media

You’ll find out how to use Skimlinks with your social media accounts in your Skimlinks dashboard under “Tools“.

Skimlinks and SEO

Would the oh-so-evil Google punish your website for using affiliate links?

Short ‘n simple: no.

Google is NOT against you making money, trust me.

It just wants to make sure that you:

create websites with original content that adds value for users; choose a product category appropriate for your intended audience; use your website to build community among your users; keep your content updated and relevant.

Per Google:

The more targeted the affiliate program is to your site’s content, the more value it will add and the more likely you will be to rank better in Google search results and make money from the program.

For example, a well-maintained site about hiking in the Alps could consider an affiliate partnership with a supplier who sells hiking books rather than office supplies.

Skimlinks no-no: DON’T try to sell a burger to a vegetarian

How do you make money with Skimlinks without turning off your readers?

With over 24,000 active merchants, it should be a breeze to find the right products for your audience.

However, after observing so many blogs trying to sell a burger to a vegetarian, “common sense” might not be all that common after all.

Here are some (not-so-creative?) ideas to get you going.

1.   Go the ‘DUH’ way

If you are in a cooking niche, look up products under “Food, drink, and dining“.

If you run a mommie blog, you might want to go for “Babies, children, and parenting“.

If your blog is about fashion, go crazy and pick the “Fashion and accessories” category.

Find that common sense and hold on to it, in other words.

2.   Catch’em by surprise

Look for products that your readers might enjoy even though they aren’t exactly in your niche.

Have fun with it and go for curiosity factor.

For instance, this blog has a “Café” in the title for a reason…

So why not allow my readers to kick back and sip that perfect cup of coffee to keep themselves awake while sifting through hundreds of ways to generate traffic to their sites?

Here’s another thought: most of us have a coffee addict in the family or among friends.

How’s this for “Catch’em by surprise”?

***********

Time Release Caffeine Capsules

Sometimes it is fun to drink caffeinated beverages or eat caffeinated candies to stay awake. They are tasty and fun.

But what happens, say, if you have to suddenly fly into space to deal with an alien invasion?

You won’t have time to eat or drink on the flight because you’ll be busy with strategies and counter-xenophobe planning.

Be lucky, then, that you have some Time Release Caffeine Capsules on hand. Just pop one in the morning, and you’re alert for the next 8 hours.

***********

Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies

 And we don’t call them Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies for nothin’!

Each one is loaded with 200mg of caffeine!

The hardest part of these is not eating too many, because they really are that good.

And because they are so tasty, you’ll eat them fast – and that will get the caffeine in your blood with a powerful rush.

Trust us. Get some Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies for a heaping helping of wake up for dessert.

***********

Shower Shock Caffeinated Body Wash

 Some folks like imbibing their caffeine in coffees and sodas and energy drinks.

Others like eating it in candies and mints and “magic” brownies.

But if you ask us, the most enjoyable way to get caffeine into your system is to rub glowing gel all over your body and let it seep into your pores.

And if you just happen to get cleaner in the process, even better!

And tingling (unless you are being electrocuted by mutant eels) is always fun.

***********

Has nothing to do with traffic generation, yet goes with Traffic Generation Café perfectly well, don’t you think?

Skimlinks Marketing Takeaway

No more signing up for a bunch of different affiliate programs.

No more multi-site tracking.

No more wondering if you made any sales you haven’t been paid for.

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

SIGN UP

Have fun monetizing your content!

From Ana with

The post What Is Skimlinks & How to Use Skimlinks to Effortlessly Monetize Your Content appeared first on TrafficGenerationCafe.com.

Read more: trafficgenerationcafe.com

[evelynmfoye]

Turn Yourself Into A Volkswagen Shopping Professional

Many of us hate shopping for cars and consider it a necessary evil. It can be hard to know much with so many different options for cars. Because of this, its even more difficult to know what a good deal is. This article has some useful advice to better your shopping experience.

If you don’t negotiate with a car dealership, you may as well throw your money in the trash. You must not pay for the advertised price. They get inflated on purpose so that the customer can negotiate, so take advantage of that.

Check online before going to the lot. You should only go to a dealership when you know what model and manufacturer you are interested in. Research online to see what brands you want, which are safer and other items dealers will not tell you.

Shop around online before visiting a dealership. The only time you ought to visit a dealership is when you absolutely know which brand and make you want. You should look online and research the makes and models that are most suitable for you, the safety records and other information that a dealer will not discuss.

Instead of fixating on the monthly payments, keep your eye on the total price. Dealers will do anything and everything to get you that monthly price, even if it means saddling you with higher expenses and interest over the years. That’s why you need to look at the total price and the financing on that. From there, look into the monthly cost.

Do your research online in order to find the best deals. Sometimes, you may find the deal of a lifetime on the web. When you see the car you want, either go to the dealership selling the car or have your own dealer get the car for you. Going in person, however, is the cheapest route.

When you go shopping for a new car, have someone else go with you. They can help discern the situation, and they can fill in whichever gaps aren’t your strong points. And if you are going to share your Volkswagen with your spouse, you should definitely go together.

Put in the needed time to research any individual dealer prior to entering negotiations. You will have a negotiating advantage if you understand their trade and financing practices. Keep in mind that you can also protect yourself by reviewing previous customer reviews.

You may be at the Volkswagen lot for a good amount of time when trying to buy a car. It is a bad idea to be in a rush, because it might cause you to make a poor deal. Give yourself a whole afternoon. If you don’t have time to finish the deal, just come back later.

When negotiating cost, think about the entire price, rather than the monthly payment. Dealers can make the monthly price just about anything, but it will just increase the total price you pay. It is a better idea to concentrate on getting a great deal on the final vehicle price, including the financing. After, work out a monthly fee you can afford.

Discuss cars with people in your life that you trust. How do they like the cars they own? Do they regret buying the one they have? Have they heard anything about other cars that are on the market? If you are interested in purchasing a new vehicle, this article will give you some great advice.

No matter what car you chose, test drive it first. Don’t be so pressed for time that you skip this part. A test drive can give you so much information. For example, you might discover that there are handling issues or that the car is noisy or bumpy.

If you know you are easily convinced by salespeople, you should not go shopping for a new Volkswagen in Lynchburg VA by yourself. Take someone you trust to help facilitate negotiations and ask key questions. Before you even go out to look at cars, make sure you and your friend are on the same page regarding your budget and needs.

Car shopping can be both exciting and exhausting. It is possible to save a lot of time, and money, by shopping at home. A number of websites compile car information from various dealers and private sellers, to enable you to compare the cars and their features side-by-side. This can assist you in making a decision sooner.

Lynchburg Va

Look into auto shows to help you decide what type of car you’d like. This gives you a glimpse into the world of cars and what is available to you. In addition, it provides you an opportunity to converse with people who possess lots of knowledge on cars in a single location. You’ll know which models peak your interest, afterwards.

Don’t roll up to the dealership in an expensive Volkswagen in Lynchburg VA. This type of Volkswagen will cause the dealership to ignore any low offers you make, unless of course the Volkswagen in Lynchburg VA is one you are planning on trading.

Build your budget before shopping for any type of car. You must know exactly what your maximum is. Find out how much you’re able to spend on car payments monthly. Before looking at cars, you may want to shop around for a loan.

Consider purchasing outside of a dealership. You might be surprised to find that the vehicle you want is readily available from a private owner or small lot. Check out the classified ads in your area for great deals on local cars.

Social security numbers should not be given until a deal is made. Dealers will use it to check your credit report when you give it to them. Having multiple dealerships check your credit will have a negative effect on your score. You should work out a deal before you give out personal info.

It may be hard to find exactly what you are looking for. The cars you can afford may not have all the features you would like, or you may just not be able to find the perfect Volkswagen in Lynchburg VA. Not getting a heated seat shouldn’t break the deal you’re trying to get, if you don’t need it.

Don’t divulge your trade-in car immediately. First, you need to negotiate the best price possible and lock them into it, and then you can mention the trade in. If you tell them about your trade-in too early, you may get an even worse deal on that, so you have to be careful.

As you shop for your Volkswagen, it is smart to take a disinterested companion. They can make sure you will not make stupid mistakes. Have them come with you as you test drive the Volkswagen. Ask them to let you know if they see any red flags.

Have you read what you’re signing? The contract is very important and can cost you a lot of money if you do not pay attention. Once you’ve signed a contract, you’re legally bound to honor it. If you do not like what you see, read it over again. If your salesman does not want to let you take the contract home, there is more than likely some hidden clause they do not want you to find out about.

Tell the dealer that you want a mechanic to take a look at a prospective Volkswagen. Use a mechanic you can trust. The mechanic should be someone that you hand pick personally. Your mechanic can tell you if it is safe and if the car is worth your dollar.

Before visiting a dealership, feel free to call in advance and ask them if they have the specific car model you are interested in. If you show up, the salesmen will do his best to get you into a car, period. For example, if you want a 4-door car and the dealership does not have any to offer, you have wasted your time. Call first and ask.

Do not discuss your trade-in. Don’t disclose that you have a vehicle to trade in until you’ve negotiated a firm price for the new Volkswagen you will be purchasing. When you let them know up front, they’ll alter their offers based on that fact.

Think about gas mileage when car shopping. Highly efficient models may be more expensive initially, but they may provide big long-term savings at the gas pump. Take this into consideration before deciding on the vehicle you want to really help your long term budget.

Not all dealerships and salespeople are identical. Salespeople may have a pushy reputation, but this method isn’t as popular any longer. Some dealerships adopt a customer-oriented approach and offer a quality service instead of pressuring you into buying a vehicle right away. If you find yourself with a pushy salesperson, don’t be afraid to walk away. Other, more reasonable, salespeople would be thrilled to help you.

Don’t buy this next year’s car as soon as it is released for sale. If you try to get into one as soon as they are released, you will pay far more than you would otherwise. Once the hype dies down after a few months, then make your move.

A salesperson’s job is to make as much money as possible. While this is a given, you may forget this fact when confronted with a strong salesperson. Also, avoid extras when negotiating your sales price. A Volkswagen in Lynchburg VA that appears like a bargain sale may increase by hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Know the incentives available before starting the negotiation process. Do your research on the trade-in value on your vehicle, current rebates and incentives, and warranty programs. You can also haggle better if you’ve learned a lot more going into the dealership than you’d know if you just walked in without knowing anything.

Take some time before buying newly released models of cars. Getting into a new vehicle upon release will find you paying much more money. Let the cost go down some before buying it.

When a salesman says he is going to present your offer to the manager, do not accept the offer. Make another offer and once they give the manager this, he will make the lowest available offer. If they are eager to sell, this is likely to be as low as they will go.

Make sure you have discovered any rebates ahead of time. Volkswagen In Lynchburg VA dealerships frequently offer rebates on their websites to give you an incentive to make a quick purchase. Those dealership that are less ethical won’t mention the rebate and will try to take the cash themselves while you’re unaware.

Month-end shopping is a great way to find a bargain. Each dealership strives to meet monthly quotas that are in place. If you are buying near the month’s end, you are assisting them to meet the quota. This can help you get a better deal on a vehicle.

Figuring out what car you can get and love for a specified price can be difficult. Things can be easier! Knowing more about the process will help you to come away satisfied. Use these ideas on your next car shopping adventure. You’ll be shocked by the low price you may end up with.

After negotiating a bit on the price of the car you want, talk about your trade in. They might not offer much for your trade-in, so get to a good price in the new car before you make a deal. Ultimately, you feel you have run the gauntlet and are prepared to make a deal.

These days, everyone wants to know about the world of new Volkswagen in Lynchburg VA, but not everyone knows where to turn for the right information. Luckily, you will be able to find all the information you need right here. All you need to do now is put it into action.

from https://terryvolkswagenshowroom.com/turn-yourself-into-a-volkswagen-shopping-professional/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=turn-yourself-into-a-volkswagen-shopping-professional

from Terry Volkswagen Showroom - Blog https://terryvolkswagenshowroom.weebly.com/blog/turn-yourself-into-a-volkswagen-shopping-professional

[onlinemarketingcourses]

What Is Skimlinks | How to Use Skimlinks to Effortlessly Monetize Your Content

(DON’T hold this against me… 🤪😆 I am [allegedly] too busy and too important to notice things like MONEY… Or too financially scatterbrained…)

A few months ago, I noticed I was getting monthly deposits from a payee I didn’t recognize…

Don’t you wish you had that problem?… 😆😀

Well, with Skimlinks, you just might!

Even though I forgot ever adding Skimlinks code to Traffic Generation Café, it never forgot to quietly work in the background and send me an affiliate commission paycheck each and every month – without me lifting a finger.

What, on earth, is Skimlinks?

FULL DISCLOSURE

I DON’T write about making money online. EVER. For various reason.

Yet, I wrote this post. And stand behind it.

What Is Skimlinks?

Skimlinks is a content monetization network that allows you, the content creator, to passively and effortlessly monetize your content.

How does Skimlinks work?

You do what you do best – create content.

Once your content is published, Skimlinks does what Skimlinks does best: turns any product, brand mention, or merchant link into its equivalent affiliate link.

Here’s a quick What Is Skimlinks? overview:

With Skimlinks, you get instant access to over 24,000 merchant affiliate programs without the hassle of network sign-ups, approvals, or creating affiliate links.

Let me show you how Skimlinks works step by step.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 1

Add normal product links to your content.

How Skimlinks works: STEP 2

Your links look normal – your readers see exactly where they are going and trust the link.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 3

Skimlinks automatically turns your links into their equivalent affiliate links on clicked, via a brief redirect to the Skimlinks servers.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 4

Every time your readers click through a product link that Skimlinks is able to affiliate and make a purchase, you’ll earn a commission on the sale.

How does Skimlinks work: EXAMPLE

Let’s say, I want to mention my favorite Nespresso coffee maker in a post.

I don’t have to log into my Amazon affiliate dashboard and convert that link into an affiliate link – Skimlinks will do all the work for me.

I simply copy and paste the Amazon product link (https://amzn.to/2BzEpqX).

As far as you, the Reader, is concerned, you see an (ugly 🤪) Amazon product link.

However, if you click the link, Skimlinks will automatically code it with my Amazon referral code and, should you end up buying the product, I get the commission.

Pretty sleek!

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

How Much Can You Earn with Skimlinks?

Hmmm….

How much comtent (COMmercial conTENT – content with links to products / retailers) do you write?

How compelling is your comtent? Is it click-worthy?

How much traffic do you get? How click-happy are your readers?

Take Traffic Generation Café, for instance. Not much comptent here, but even with a few sporadic mentions of merchants and products, I still get some passive income, as you saw from the screenshot above.

If you, however, run a website that lends itself nicely to publishing comptent (COMmercial conTENT)… well, the sky’s the limit!

…Or 75% of the sky, to be more accurate. 🤣🙃😉 Skimlinks keeps the other 25%.

Entirely fair, if you ask me – ESPECIALLY, if you are earning a big fat ZERO without Skimlinks, right?

Let’s take a closer look at your potential earnings with Skimlinks. Or without Skimlinks, I should say.

How much could you earn WITHOUT Skimlinks?

Many publishers ask, “Why use Skimlinks, if I could create affiliate links on my own?”

With Skimlinks, you earn up to 110% of what you would’ve earned if you managed your affiliate links yourself.

And yes, Skimlinks does take 25% of that.

However, with Skimlinks, you have access to Preferred Merchants – merchants who have agreed to pay Skimlinks their cut above and beyond your commissions.

Stick with promoting Preferred Merchants and you’ll maximize your earnings potential.

Plus, you get your foot in the door with many Merchants that wouldn’t give you the time of day without Skimlinks, like Nordstrom, Macy’s, Canon, HP, Sketchers, Target… you name it.

PLUS, the affiliate behemoths like Commission Junction (CJ), ShareASale.com, LinkShare.com are also a part of Skimlinks network.

But wait… you can use Skimlinks on social media!

That’s right – Skimlinks lets you monetize your content on other platforms.

No matter where you post, whether on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, you can use Skimlinks browser extension link shortener to connect your audiences across channels and earn from your product and brand recommendations.

Just one of Skimlinks WOW factors… 😉👍

Skimlinks saves time. Time = money.

Let’s face it, you won’t tediously code each and every link you could on your own… not to mention the links you couldn’t since you don’t have access to their affiliate programs!

And even if you do make a bit less with Skimlinks, the amount of time it saves you, plus the automatic addition of affiliate links when you forget, pays for the difference above and beyond.

😉👇👇

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

IMPORTANT: Affiliate marketing and disclosures

FTC regulations state,

When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product which might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement, such connection must be fully disclosed.

Monetizing through affiliate links? Disclose. Disclose. DISCLOSE.

Here is an informative guide from the FTC regarding endorsements.

Since disclosure laws may vary from state to state, country to country, comply with the local disclosure laws from your state/country of residence.

How to Add Skimlinks to Your Site

Once you are an approved Skimlinks publisher, integrating Skimlinks with your site is a breeze.

Your options are:

1.  For any website: JavaScript

Grab JavaScript code (will be given to you by Skimlinks) and paste it into the footer of your site.

That’s what I use at Traffic Generation Café.

2.   For forum owners

If you use vBulletin for your forum, they have a dedicated vBulletin plugin.

3.   For self-hosted WordPress blogs

There’s a plugin for that!

4.   For any other platforms

Skimlinks offers a range of simple implementation guides for everything else in-between, like TypePad, Blogger, Tumblr, and so forth.

5.   For social media

You’ll find out how to use Skimlinks with your social media accounts in your Skimlinks dashboard under “Tools“.

Skimlinks and SEO

Would the oh-so-evil Google punish your website for using affiliate links?

Short ‘n simple: no.

Google is NOT against you making money, trust me.

It just wants to make sure that you:

create websites with original content that adds value for users;

choose a product category appropriate for your intended audience;

use your website to build community among your users;

keep your content updated and relevant.

Per Google:

The more targeted the affiliate program is to your site’s content, the more value it will add and the more likely you will be to rank better in Google search results and make money from the program.

For example, a well-maintained site about hiking in the Alps could consider an affiliate partnership with a supplier who sells hiking books rather than office supplies.

Skimlinks no-no: DON’T try to sell a burger to a vegetarian

How do you make money with Skimlinks without turning off your readers? 🧐🤔

With over 24,000 active merchants, it should be a breeze to find the right products for your audience.

However, after observing so many blogs trying to sell a burger to a vegetarian, “common sense” might not be all that common after all.

Here are some (not-so-creative?) ideas to get you going.

1.   Go the ‘DUH’ way

If you are in a cooking niche, look up products under “Food, drink, and dining“.

If you run a mommie blog, you might want to go for “Babies, children, and parenting“.

If your blog is about fashion, go crazy and pick the “Fashion and accessories” category. 🤪❤

Find that common sense and hold on to it, in other words.

2.   Catch’em by surprise

Look for products that your readers might enjoy even though they aren’t exactly in your niche.

Have fun with it and go for curiosity factor.

For instance, this blog has a “Café” in the title for a reason… ☕☕☕

So why not allow my readers to kick back and sip that perfect cup of coffee to keep themselves awake while sifting through hundreds of ways to generate traffic to their sites?

Here’s another thought: most of us have a coffee addict in the family or among friends.

How’s this for “Catch’em by surprise”?

***********

Time Release Caffeine Capsules

Sometimes it is fun to drink caffeinated beverages or eat caffeinated candies to stay awake. They are tasty and fun.

But what happens, say, if you have to suddenly fly into space to deal with an alien invasion?

You won’t have time to eat or drink on the flight because you’ll be busy with strategies and counter-xenophobe planning.

Be lucky, then, that you have some Time Release Caffeine Capsules on hand. Just pop one in the morning, and you’re alert for the next 8 hours.

***********

Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies

 And we don’t call them Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies for nothin’!

Each one is loaded with 200mg of caffeine!

The hardest part of these is not eating too many, because they really are that good.

And because they are so tasty, you’ll eat them fast – and that will get the caffeine in your blood with a powerful rush.

Trust us. Get some Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies for a heaping helping of wake up for dessert.

***********

Shower Shock Caffeinated Body Wash

 Some folks like imbibing their caffeine in coffees and sodas and energy drinks.

Others like eating it in candies and mints and “magic” brownies.

But if you ask us, the most enjoyable way to get caffeine into your system is to rub glowing gel all over your body and let it seep into your pores.

And if you just happen to get cleaner in the process, even better!

And tingling (unless you are being electrocuted by mutant eels) is always fun.

***********

Has nothing to do with traffic generation, yet goes with Traffic Generation Café perfectly well, don’t you think?

Skimlinks Marketing Takeaway

No more signing up for a bunch of different affiliate programs.

No more multi-site tracking.

No more wondering if you made any sales you haven’t been paid for.

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

Have fun monetizing your content!

From Ana with

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '182248755880547'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); Source link

[nicholerestrada]

Your Small Business Marketing Guide in a Recession

Stand Out – Be Seen – Be On Google Page 1 Before You Pay For Services – CLICK HERE! We call it RBI Marketing. You have heard of ROI which is Return On Investment and this is RBI which means Return BEFORE Investment! Let’s get the ball rolling and you will pay us for our services AFTER you see your site ranked on Google page 1 for your chosen keywords!.CLICK HERE!

***********

We are always on the lookout to hire quality, professional independent representatives for our local business pay per result search engine optimization services. Just use the form on the home page to contact us!

************

Your world will never be the same.

Sounds like a bit of an ominous statement doesn’t it?

Considering the amount of bad news that flows throughout our daily lives it’s nearly impossible to look at the above statement and attach a positive meaning to it, however I see great opportunity in what I am writing to you.

We are witnessing our world undergo huge changes almost daily. In the past few years, we’ve seen an historic shift of technology and economy unlike any other, and the transition is not near completion.

“The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.”

– Isaac Asimov

Change will always occur, that’s inevitable. As Asimov reminds us, a lack of acknowledgment or understanding of this change can make or break businesses [and lifestyles] forever.

Where Did The Money Go?

The advent of global economy and technology-enabled business practices are in a rapid state of flux. Growth and change are a given in business, but we’ve never witnessed such rapid transition in such a short time period, the effects of which are being felt on every streetcorner of the world.

The recent economic events and credit crunch are moving the tectonic plates of business and the cozy confines of national or local economy are shifting to a global platform. These shape-shifting occurrences are too large, too rapid and there are too many moving parts even for the experts to comprehend.

How does this effect you?

For starters, just look around your neighborhood, listen to your neighbors or friends. The global housing bubble has popped. This part of the puzzle will directly effect you, me, and every citizen on this planet as millions upon millions have based so much of their personal wealth, retirement, and family around their homes.

Next, consider that just recently the first of the Baby Boomer generation retired and a trickle began the first stage to what will certainly turn into a raging river of generational change. A large portion of the Boomers base their retirement on two major components: housing and the stock market. This is the largest generation we’ve ever seen. They will be transitioning to their golden years and many will be forced to retire due to health problems, job competition, etc. The problems we’ve experienced in both housing and stocks and the pressures felt by Boomers will shape the future of business significantly.

The massive transfer of wealth and earning potential from Boomers to Generation X is underway. Further, more jobs will be handed down to a smaller group of people, which will cause a ripple effect of opportunity. On the other hand there will be less total disposable income coming from the Gen Xers vs. the Boomers because of this. Many businesses will be effected as their sales are forecast on a premise of Boomer spending that simply will cease to exist.

You + Me + Technology

The advent of web technology and tools such as laptops, e-commerce and social media are contributing to a massive global population shift. We aren’t uprooting and destination-bound like people were in 1849 during the Gold Rush, but the tides are changing nevertheless. We don’t need to move houses, we have moved into a new virtual space in our minds and the impact is huge. We don’t do business like we used to, we don’t shop like we used to, we don’t interact like we used to, we don’t write letters, we don’t do a lot of things that were commonplace as little as 10 years ago.

In addition the growing trend of crowdsourcing will effect every aspect of life from politics and religion to science/technology and business. It’s also becoming common for corporations to listen in and have their customers or focus groups do the thinking for them. This is not a case of the evil overlord manipulating his pawns – many are willing to do the work – they’re even passionate about it. This is smart for businesses and brings about a more community-oriented, inclusive customer relationship in the process.

Do you think the Twitter trend on Capitol Hill will have an effect on politics? Do you think social networks such as Facebook will or the gravitation from television to online media will change business? You bet it will.

Your local shop

The speed and connectivity of web-enabled business has given consumers a power unlike they’ve ever had in history. This will continue to make a huge slice of the business pie disappear. A product seller or distributor will have to really take a look at their business model and ask themselves how they will be able to compete or how they add value. Many local storefronts have already become casualties of this movement. The reality is many store owners will be expecting customers to travel to them in addition to paying the shop overhead when often that same customer can compare dozens of prices, offers and customization options for the same product in an instant online.

Here’s where you’re wondering about the great opportunity I mentioned earlier…

As you’ve probably come to expect from my blog posts I am an eternal optimist for your small business. True, I see many doors closing and many businesses becoming extinct, but these shifts are being nothing more than opportunities for you. These shifts are part of the natural ebb and flow of the business life cycle. They are a reminder that the world will always change.

“Necessity, who is the mother of invention.”

-Plato

When we look to the future we can feel comfort in the fact that we as people always do our best work in times of need. Right now business needs to change. Right now business owners are seeing their profits drop and necessity is staring them in the face.

Pattern-recognition is a survival method innate to many a living creature. The patterns are difficult to detect in the business world because it’s changing by the minute. Not having the time or knowledge to recognize these patterns might overwhelm some business owners into making a bad decision for themselves. The single most important work a business owner can do is to spend time on their identity. What is my business? Who are my competitors? Where is the business world going? How can I be positioned for where it’s headed? These are a handful of a hundred questions to answer for business success. The prevalent pattern is one of flow, of a shift in power from corporation to consumer, from passive television watching to active internet searching. That’s the pattern you need to see here. In addition, if you’re waiting for things to get back to normal, I’m here to tell you, they won’t.

Someone moved the cheese. Let’s find some new cheese.

I see great opportunity for businesses that create their own product. Today’s business world demands not only something to be created but it must be unique in what it offers or it will get lost in the shuffle. Give your business a unique product, something with value and it will be given every chance to succeed. Your business has a global reach. You have the ability to put your product in the hands of someone halfway around the globe. That is mind-blowing. You just have to put a product out there that will do the work for you. You can’t physically travel the globe in ways that your product can. Create a product that will do the walking and the talking for you.

I see great opportunity for unique service-based businesses. The key word here is ‘unique’. The ‘me too’ business doesn’t differentiate itself so it’s already going to have a harder time standing out. Create a service or add to your service by latching on to the wants or needs of your customer. What does your hotel customer need? What does your technology offer to save them time? How can you be unique? There are many free tools available online to help you gain the answers to these questions and distribute your message to your target. The sheer volume of social tools available to you on the web is incredible. These tools are essential to your service. Again, create something that will walk and talk for you.

Now is the time to spend as much time on strategy than ever. Now is the time for you to stop the busy part of business and really ask yourself how you can answer the questions I’ve raised.

The shift is happening.

Your world will never be the same. That’s a good thing.

Source by Tim Andren

Source: https://garkomedia.com/2018/11/19/your-small-business-marketing-guide-in-a-recession/

from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.wordpress.com/2018/11/19/your-small-business-marketing-guide-in-a-recession-2/

[garkomedia1]

Your Small Business Marketing Guide in a Recession

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Your world will never be the same.

Sounds like a bit of an ominous statement doesn’t it?

Considering the amount of bad news that flows throughout our daily lives it’s nearly impossible to look at the above statement and attach a positive meaning to it, however I see great opportunity in what I am writing to you.

We are witnessing our world undergo huge changes almost daily. In the past few years, we’ve seen an historic shift of technology and economy unlike any other, and the transition is not near completion.

“The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.” – Isaac Asimov

Change will always occur, that’s inevitable. As Asimov reminds us, a lack of acknowledgment or understanding of this change can make or break businesses [and lifestyles] forever.

Where Did The Money Go? The advent of global economy and technology-enabled business practices are in a rapid state of flux. Growth and change are a given in business, but we’ve never witnessed such rapid transition in such a short time period, the effects of which are being felt on every streetcorner of the world.

The recent economic events and credit crunch are moving the tectonic plates of business and the cozy confines of national or local economy are shifting to a global platform. These shape-shifting occurrences are too large, too rapid and there are too many moving parts even for the experts to comprehend.

How does this effect you? For starters, just look around your neighborhood, listen to your neighbors or friends. The global housing bubble has popped. This part of the puzzle will directly effect you, me, and every citizen on this planet as millions upon millions have based so much of their personal wealth, retirement, and family around their homes.

Next, consider that just recently the first of the Baby Boomer generation retired and a trickle began the first stage to what will certainly turn into a raging river of generational change. A large portion of the Boomers base their retirement on two major components: housing and the stock market. This is the largest generation we’ve ever seen. They will be transitioning to their golden years and many will be forced to retire due to health problems, job competition, etc. The problems we’ve experienced in both housing and stocks and the pressures felt by Boomers will shape the future of business significantly.

The massive transfer of wealth and earning potential from Boomers to Generation X is underway. Further, more jobs will be handed down to a smaller group of people, which will cause a ripple effect of opportunity. On the other hand there will be less total disposable income coming from the Gen Xers vs. the Boomers because of this. Many businesses will be effected as their sales are forecast on a premise of Boomer spending that simply will cease to exist.

You + Me + Technology The advent of web technology and tools such as laptops, e-commerce and social media are contributing to a massive global population shift. We aren’t uprooting and destination-bound like people were in 1849 during the Gold Rush, but the tides are changing nevertheless. We don’t need to move houses, we have moved into a new virtual space in our minds and the impact is huge. We don’t do business like we used to, we don’t shop like we used to, we don’t interact like we used to, we don’t write letters, we don’t do a lot of things that were commonplace as little as 10 years ago.

In addition the growing trend of crowdsourcing will effect every aspect of life from politics and religion to science/technology and business. It’s also becoming common for corporations to listen in and have their customers or focus groups do the thinking for them. This is not a case of the evil overlord manipulating his pawns – many are willing to do the work – they’re even passionate about it. This is smart for businesses and brings about a more community-oriented, inclusive customer relationship in the process.

Do you think the Twitter trend on Capitol Hill will have an effect on politics? Do you think social networks such as Facebook will or the gravitation from television to online media will change business? You bet it will.

Your local shop The speed and connectivity of web-enabled business has given consumers a power unlike they’ve ever had in history. This will continue to make a huge slice of the business pie disappear. A product seller or distributor will have to really take a look at their business model and ask themselves how they will be able to compete or how they add value. Many local storefronts have already become casualties of this movement. The reality is many store owners will be expecting customers to travel to them in addition to paying the shop overhead when often that same customer can compare dozens of prices, offers and customization options for the same product in an instant online.

Here’s where you’re wondering about the great opportunity I mentioned earlier…

As you’ve probably come to expect from my blog posts I am an eternal optimist for your small business. True, I see many doors closing and many businesses becoming extinct, but these shifts are being nothing more than opportunities for you. These shifts are part of the natural ebb and flow of the business life cycle. They are a reminder that the world will always change.

“Necessity, who is the mother of invention.” -Plato

When we look to the future we can feel comfort in the fact that we as people always do our best work in times of need. Right now business needs to change. Right now business owners are seeing their profits drop and necessity is staring them in the face.

Pattern-recognition is a survival method innate to many a living creature. The patterns are difficult to detect in the business world because it’s changing by the minute. Not having the time or knowledge to recognize these patterns might overwhelm some business owners into making a bad decision for themselves. The single most important work a business owner can do is to spend time on their identity. What is my business? Who are my competitors? Where is the business world going? How can I be positioned for where it’s headed? These are a handful of a hundred questions to answer for business success. The prevalent pattern is one of flow, of a shift in power from corporation to consumer, from passive television watching to active internet searching. That’s the pattern you need to see here. In addition, if you’re waiting for things to get back to normal, I’m here to tell you, they won’t.

Someone moved the cheese. Let’s find some new cheese.

I see great opportunity for businesses that create their own product. Today’s business world demands not only something to be created but it must be unique in what it offers or it will get lost in the shuffle. Give your business a unique product, something with value and it will be given every chance to succeed. Your business has a global reach. You have the ability to put your product in the hands of someone halfway around the globe. That is mind-blowing. You just have to put a product out there that will do the work for you. You can’t physically travel the globe in ways that your product can. Create a product that will do the walking and the talking for you.

I see great opportunity for unique service-based businesses. The key word here is ‘unique’. The ‘me too’ business doesn’t differentiate itself so it’s already going to have a harder time standing out. Create a service or add to your service by latching on to the wants or needs of your customer. What does your hotel customer need? What does your technology offer to save them time? How can you be unique? There are many free tools available online to help you gain the answers to these questions and distribute your message to your target. The sheer volume of social tools available to you on the web is incredible. These tools are essential to your service. Again, create something that will walk and talk for you.

Now is the time to spend as much time on strategy than ever. Now is the time for you to stop the busy part of business and really ask yourself how you can answer the questions I’ve raised.

The shift is happening.

Your world will never be the same. That’s a good thing.

Source by Tim Andren

from RSSUnify feed https://garkomedia.com/2018/11/19/your-small-business-marketing-guide-in-a-recession/

[reallifemag]

The Constant Consumer

Image: New Necessities by David Delruelle. Courtesy the artist.

Every day, the imperative to perceive oneself as a customer grows across a range of experiences and institutions: in the shopping centers and business improvement districts that have replaced public squares and parks; in the schools and hospitals, where offerings are tailored not to general social welfare but to individual consumer choice and what each can afford; and in the gym, where exercise, nutrition, and other forms of wellness have been redefined as personal lifestyle choices.

If the customer is always right, then you’re never wrong when you’re consuming. No contemporary company has offered that Faustian bargain more broadly and aggressively than Amazon. In a previous era, being at home meant you probably weren’t shopping. The mall was, as Ian Bogost noted in an essay for the Atlantic, where “consumerism roared and swelled but, inevitably, remained contained.” Freeing consumerism from that containment was one of the internet’s earliest applications, streamlining the process of shopping at home, and later, on phones.

Recent technologies have enabled the role of customer to be fused with the newer role of user, who inhabits an entire system rather than a specific transaction. Exploring that transition, writer Kevin Slavin describes how the experience of app-based food delivery narrows one’s perspective: “For users, this is what it means to be at the center: to be unaware of anything outside it.” Those apps’ minimal interfaces, requiring little more than the push of a button to order food, conceal the labor and logistical sophistication that make it possible. Users don’t need to understand the messy complexity that supports their simplified solipsism. In Slavin’s example, that insight wouldn’t help them order more food, so the user experience excludes it.

Amazon similarly merges the customer and the user within its own optimized environments, letting these subjects exist at the center of an ever-expanding system. Imagine an avid Amazon customer’s typical day living with a near future iteration of the platform: He wakes up and speaks his first words of the morning to his Amazon Echo in the kitchen, asking Alexa to order toothpaste after noticing he was running low. Upon checking his email, he gives Alexa a few more instructions, adding social engagements and reminders to his calendar, checking the weather, and finally opening the garage door once he’s ready to leave for work. At the office throughout the day, idle shopping fills his distracted moments. He browses books, clothing, and even furniture, placing orders within seconds, many of which automatically appear in his shopping cart based on patterns from his activity history (he even knows that some of what he buys will be waiting at home tonight). During the evening commute another Alexa-enabled device in his car prompts him to send his sister a birthday card, an action he asks Alexa to do for him. He stops by Whole Foods to pick up groceries — as an Amazon Prime member, it’s always the most cost-effective option in his neighborhood. He arrives home to find a variety of Amazon packages stacked neatly on the living room coffee table, delivered throughout the day by part-time contractors who let themselves into the house via the smart lock on the front door. The soundtrack to his entire day is provided by Amazon Music, in which his Prime membership has automatically enrolled him for a small monthly fee. Few parts of this hypothetical day, which is already within the realm of possibility, remain untouched by Amazon’s user experience.

Amazon, as much as any single company, is transforming the environments in which we live and embedding itself within the fabric of daily existence. Beyond individual experience, those changes also manifest themselves in the physical environment. Many physical retail stores have been rendered obsolete as Amazon and other online retailers started undercutting them on price and offering a wider selection. (Bookstores experienced this first but it eventually spread to almost every form of retail.) Sidewalks and building lobbies have become staging areas for packages, with delivery vehicles exacerbating traffic and obstructing bike lanes as piles of brown Amazon boxes increasingly take up space. As Amazon and food delivery apps eliminate some of the most common reasons to leave one’s house one wonders what sort of neighborhood life will be sustainable in affluent urban areas.

In light of Amazon’s all-encompassing ambitions, the strategy behind several of the company’s most important product initiatives — Alexa, Amazon Prime, physical retail stores (including Amazon Go and Whole Foods), and Amazon Key — becomes clearer. These products seek to redefine what being a customer means by immersing us more completely within the Amazon universe. Formerly, being a customer was a role one assumed upon physically entering a store or ordering something from a company. Amazon promises to create a newer type of environment, a hybrid of the digital and the physical, that lets us permanently inhabit that role: the world as Everything Store, which we’re always inside.

Amazon represents its efforts to erase the remaining bulwarks against consumerism as its “customer obsession.” Throughout Amazon’s existence, the company has claimed that traditional corporate priorities, from high-profile retail partnerships to short-term profitability to the company’s stock price, have always ranked below customer satisfaction. Early in the company’s history, CEO Jeff Bezos sometimes insisted on keeping one seat open at the conference room table during meetings “for the customer,” and he still scans customer feedback himself, escalating problems to relevant departments with emails that consist of a single question mark.

Bezos’s letter to Amazon’s shareholders on April 18, 2018, praised the company’s customers for being “divinely discontent,” unfailingly raising their expectations beyond whatever standard a company sets for them. In the letter, Bezos likens this force to nothing less than evolution — “We didn’t ascend from our hunter-gatherer days by being satisfied” — and goes on to describe the “customer empowerment phenomenon” that informs Amazon’s approach: Consumers’ access to product reviews, price comparisons, and shipping timelines has created a space where they and not retailers call the shots. To succeed in this landscape, Bezos suggests, companies must respond to their customers’ ever-increasing power by treating them like the linchpins that they are; whoever does this best will rightfully dominate its market.

Amazon’s obsession with customers appears to have endeared them, again and again, to a public that should know better: Earlier this year, Amazon announced that Prime memberships had surpassed 100 million globally, with more new members joining in 2017 than in any previous year. The company’s second-quarter sales in 2018 grew 39 percent versus the previous year. Many have started welcoming Amazon’s physical presence into their homes, with Alexa-enabled devices ranking among the company’s best-selling items. “Customer obsession” is a happier narrative for this dominance than one of aggressive market capture, anti-competitive tactics, and ruthless labor exploitation. Like “support the troops,” or “what about the children,” caring about the customer seems like an impregnable position to take. It’s a more specific iteration of Google’s “Don’t Be Evil”: How could a consumer-focused company be evil, when we are all consumers? What could be wrong with the company being focused on our needs?

But that is the fundamental problem: Amazon’s constant praise of the customer implies we are all already customers and nothing more — that we should understand “consumer” as our core identity. The company’s endless praise for the consumer role is part of its intent to disarm us, to invite us to enter its universe of deals and recommendations and to internalize the status of permanent customer — and specifically, Amazon’s customer. Overall, Amazon’s most important product is how it creates and refines a world in which the Everything Store converges with just plain everything and, being ubiquitous, becomes invisible.

We dream of being creators, friends, neighbors, or citizens, but rarely of being customers. The customer role used to be temporary and specific — buying something from a seller — and not an aspirational identity. What happened?

In the 19th century, industrialization and mass production yielded an unprecedented flood of goods. Commerce was suddenly no longer constrained by supply but demand. Stimulating consumption became crucial; making customer a primary and perpetual identity was a key solution. To achieve this, retailers worked to make feelings of agency and significance available to people, but only on condition of being a customer. This approach is articulated by a slogan often attributed to department store magnate Henry Gordon Selfridge in 1909: “The customer is always right.”

Part of being “right” was being offered choices to be right about. Whereas Henry Ford once famously joked that customers could buy a car in any color they wanted, as long as it was black, such narrow standardization proved a less viable course as mass markets became saturated. Rather then sell products on their basic utility, advertising began to orient itself toward identity, selling the idea that individuals could reveal their unique selves through purchases. Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, pioneered this approach in the 1920s, purporting to link goods to individuals’ inner desires. By the logic of identity-driven advertising, wanting more things corresponded to greater personal depth. Being a customer gave one access to not only a cornucopia of goods but also the rich recesses of one’s psyche.

These processes have only become more sophisticated over the decades. At the individual level, unrestrained identification with the customer role has foreclosed other identities we might imagine for ourselves, such as political activism, resource stewardship, and community participation. David Harvey, in A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), diagnoses a late 20th century shift toward “a market-based populist culture of differentiated consumerism and individual libertarianism.” In this culture, at the structural level, businesses must cater to the customer identity to survive. In lieu of tolerating moderate inconvenience, higher prices, and some potentially awkward human interactions in order to support local businesses, the logic of efficient and limitless customer service offers fast food chains and big-box stores, which offer cheaper goods and routinized retail interactions. These, in turn, are now in the process of being supplanted by Amazon.

Consumerist approaches aren’t the best solutions to many problems, but at present they’re often the easiest to imagine and most realistic to implement, if only because they have the support of the corporate powers that benefit from them. The transition toward consumerism across so many domains exemplifies a phenomenon that writer Sarah Perry calls a tiling structure, a system that “tiles the world with copies of itself.” Tiling structures flourish because they solve certain problems well enough that they become more or less mandatory, and block alternate solutions. Perry cites billboards, strip malls, and big-box retail stores as particularly visible examples of tiling structures. By minimizing their costs relative to the revenue they generate while externalizing negative impacts such as poor pedestrian access and unpleasant aesthetics, they spread throughout suburbia in the 20th century, entrenching sprawl as the default format of American retail. Even identity-oriented marketing itself is a tiling structure: It has worked well enough for those with something to sell that it has gradually pervaded the commercial landscape, leaving its detrimental social and personal effects for someone else to fix.

Tiling structures have introduced customer-service logic to cultural spaces that were once sheltered from markets. Communities based on common interests, shared identity, or physical proximity, from neighborhoods to political groups to religious institutions, must now respond to their constituents’ increased mobility and access to information by treating them like the empowered customers that Bezos described to his shareholders — customers who will leave if they find something better elsewhere. Individualized, personal-identity-based appeals replace collective orientations. As a tiling structure, this shift occurs because it works for the group implementing it, not because it’s best for everyone.

The best example of this transition may be the neighborhood itself. Living in a city, for many, resembles a pure customer experience, in which buying or renting an apartment or home determines one’s relationship with a place more than membership in any kind of community. Residents commonly don’t know their neighbors and oppose local developments that serve a greater good at their own expense. Real estate agents even appeal to individual identity to brand various locations and increase their appeal. Higher education, similarly, has recategorized students as customers, emphasizing efficiency and consumer choice over education’s role as a socially useful endeavor to participate in.

Our lives are increasingly oriented toward a global system of consumerism mediated by massive, scale-seeking platforms rather than smaller, more localized groupings. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, published in 2000, documented declining participation in labor unions, fraternal organizations, and religious groups, partially attributing that decline to socially atomizing technologies like television and the internet (which was relatively young at the time) — both key facilitators of consumer culture. Many of the fading forms of social engagement Putnam describes have their own shortcomings, like restrictiveness and discrimination, but their benefits are undeniable, ranging from personal happiness to civic involvement.

As globalized platform consumerism erases more of what preceded it, replacing intricate social arrangements with individual links to large impersonal systems, it’s harder to remember what we’ve lost. Less and less equipped to imagine ourselves as anything but customers or users within those systems, we adopt the desires that companies like Amazon can best satisfy: convenience, choice, and frictionless consumption. These developments may be replacing another consumer system that wasn’t necessarily worth preserving itself, but beyond those visible changes, we face a new risk: becoming users offline, in the physical world. The more Amazon can control our experience of that environment, the less we’ll care what’s outside the system it creates.

Amazon’s true objective, it seems, is a full infiltration of the world rather than ongoing refinement of a walled garden confined to the internet. Instead of scaring its customers with its totalizing ambition, the company has successfully marketed this arrangement as  desirable. To permanent customers, further gains in convenience, choice, price, and delivery speed are pure benefits. If life is meant to be a series of consumer experiences, they might as well happen as seamlessly as possible.

Years ago, Amazon’s “1-click” purchasing option seemed to remove all remaining friction from online shopping, but there was still a long way to go. The company’s more recent initiatives respond to deeper psychological friction that might prevent us from purchasing a product using Amazon’s platform. In a reprise of what happened a century ago, manufacturing and distribution have again progressed to a point where the customer is the greatest constraint on commerce. A single-click purchase still requires opening Amazon’s website or app, but people spend plenty of time away from their device screens. The Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices, placed throughout our homes like furniture, connect more directly to our supposedly subconscious impulses by letting us simply speak our desires and translating those words into Amazon orders. We might change our minds by the time we get around to opening an app, after all.

Amazon Prime complements this arrangement, letting us become formal members of the Amazon ecosystem and feel like we’re always already inside the Everything Store. The company’s physical retail stores — Amazon Go, Amazon Books, and now Whole Foods — extend that territory to the urban space that Amazon had previously bypassed. And home technologies like Amazon Key reopen the home at the conclusion of the order, inviting the company’s delivery workers to let themselves in and drop off our merchandise.

Writer Matthew Stewart, describing the urbanist vision revealed through Amazon’s patent filings, characterized its strategy as “a colonization of everyday experience; a concerted effort to control an all encompassing infrastructure of home, office and retail automation, one in which the city becomes a giant fulfillment center, and humans mere inventory pickers.” More than removing friction from its user experience, Amazon wants to be our environment.

In realizing such a totalizing vision, Amazon faces an obstacle: If being a customer feels so great, as the past century has trained us, what happens when the consumer experience encompasses us so completely that we forget we’re customers at all? The minor friction of 1-click ordering pleasantly reminds us how easy it is to be one of Amazon’s empowered customers, the object of the company’s obsession. Will we remember that feeling if “smart” devices can effectively read our minds and our desires subtly manifest themselves in our homes?

This quandary returns us to the definition of user. A user isn’t just an evolved customer but a qualitative transformation of that role: one who occupies a system and creates value for the system’s owner by merely being there, just as Google and Facebook’s users generate valuable data by partaking of their services. Those platforms, for all their seeming omnipresence, haven’t figured out how to expand beyond their digital containers. This is Amazon’s ambitious vision: The world is its platform, and instead of being customers, we will just become users whether we are looking at screens or not.

[annegalliher]

What Is Skimlinks & How to Use Skimlinks to Effortlessly Monetize Your Content

(DON’T hold this against me…  I am [allegedly] too busy and too important to notice things like MONEY… Or too financially scatterbrained…)

A few months ago, I noticed I was getting monthly deposits from a payee I didn’t recognize…

Don’t you wish you had that problem?… 

Well, with Skimlinks, you just might!

Even though I forgot ever adding Skimlinks code to Traffic Generation Café, it never forgot to quietly work in the background and send me an affiliate commission paycheck each and every month – without me lifting a finger.

What, on earth, is Skimlinks?

FULL DISCLOSURE

I DON’T write about making money online. EVER. For various reason.

Yet, I wrote this post. And stand behind it.

What Is Skimlinks?

Skimlinks is a content monetization network that allows you, the content creator, to passively and effortlessly monetize your content.

How does Skimlinks work?

You do what you do best – create content.

Once your content is published, Skimlinks does what Skimlinks does best: turns any product, brand mention, or merchant link into its equivalent affiliate link.

Here’s a quick What Is Skimlinks? overview:

With Skimlinks, you get instant access to over 24,000 merchant affiliate programs without the hassle of network sign-ups, approvals, or creating affiliate links.

Let me show you how Skimlinks works step by step.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 1

Add normal product links to your content.

How Skimlinks works: STEP 2

Your links look normal – your readers see exactly where they are going and trust the link.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 3

Skimlinks automatically turns your links into their equivalent affiliate links on clicked, via a brief redirect to the Skimlinks servers.

How does Skimlinks work: STEP 4

Every time your readers click through a product link that Skimlinks is able to affiliate and make a purchase, you’ll earn a commission on the sale.

How does Skimlinks work: EXAMPLE

Let’s say, I want to mention my favorite Nespresso coffee maker in a post.

I don’t have to log into my Amazon affiliate dashboard and convert that link into an affiliate link – Skimlinks will do all the work for me.

I simply copy and paste the Amazon product link (https://www.amazon.com/Nespresso-Espresso-Machine-Breville-Aeroccino/dp/B01MZCQBY4/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1521489754&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=nespresso+machine&psc=1).

As far as you, the Reader, is concerned, you see an (ugly ) Amazon product link.

However, if you click the link, Skimlinks will automatically code it with my Amazon referral code and, should you end up buying the product, I get the commission.

Pretty sleek!

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

SIGN UP

How Much Can You Earn with Skimlinks?

Hmmm….

How much comtent (COMmercial conTENT – content with links to products / retailers) do you write?

How compelling is your comtent? Is it click-worthy?

How much traffic do you get? How click-happy are your readers?

Take Traffic Generation Café, for instance. Not much comptent here, but even with a few sporadic mentions of merchants and products, I still get some passive income, as you saw from the screenshot above.

If you, however, run a website that lends itself nicely to publishing comptent (COMmercial conTENT)… well, the sky’s the limit!

…Or 75% of the sky, to be more accurate.  Skimlinks keeps the other 25%.

Entirely fair, if you ask me – ESPECIALLY, if you are earning a big fat ZERO without Skimlinks, right?

Let’s take a closer look at your potential earnings with Skimlinks. Or without Skimlinks, I should say.

How much could you earn WITHOUT Skimlinks?

Many publishers ask, “Why use Skimlinks, if I could create affiliate links on my own?”

With Skimlinks, you earn up to 110% of what you would’ve earned if you managed your affiliate links yourself.

And yes, Skimlinks does take 25% of that.

However, with Skimlinks, you have access to Preferred Merchants – merchants who have agreed to pay Skimlinks their cut above and beyond your commissions.

Stick with promoting Preferred Merchants and you’ll maximize your earnings potential.

Plus, you get your foot in the door with many Merchants that wouldn’t give you the time of day without Skimlinks, like Nordstrom, Macy’s, Canon, HP, Sketchers, Target… you name it.

PLUS, the affiliate behemoths like Commission Junction (CJ), ShareASale.com, LinkShare.com are also a part of Skimlinks network.

But wait… you can use Skimlinks on social media!

That’s right – Skimlinks lets you monetize your content on other platforms.

No matter where you post, whether on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, you can use Skimlinks browser extension link shortener to connect your audiences across channels and earn from your product and brand recommendations.

Just one of Skimlinks WOW factors… 

Skimlinks saves time. Time = money.

Let’s face it, you won’t tediously code each and every link you could on your own… not to mention the links you couldn’t since you don’t have access to their affiliate programs!

And even if you do make a bit less with Skimlinks, the amount of time it saves you, plus the automatic addition of affiliate links when you forget, pays for the difference above and beyond.

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

SIGN UP

IMPORTANT: Affiliate marketing and disclosures

FTC regulations state,

When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product which might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement, such connection must be fully disclosed.

Monetizing through affiliate links? Disclose. Disclose. DISCLOSE.

Here is an informative guide from the FTC regarding endorsements.

Since disclosure laws may vary from state to state, country to country, comply with the local disclosure laws from your state/country of residence.

How to Add Skimlinks to Your Site

Once you are an approved Skimlinks publisher, integrating Skimlinks with your site is a breeze.

Your options are:

1.  For any website: JavaScript

Grab JavaScript code (will be given to you by Skimlinks) and paste it into the footer of your site.

That’s what I use at Traffic Generation Café.

2.   For forum owners

If you use vBulletin for your forum, they have a dedicated vBulletin plugin.

3.   For self-hosted WordPress blogs

There’s a plugin for that!

4.   For any other platforms

Skimlinks offers a range of simple implementation guides for everything else in-between, like TypePad, Blogger, Tumblr, and so forth.

5.   For social media

You’ll find out how to use Skimlinks with your social media accounts in your Skimlinks dashboard under “Tools“.

Skimlinks and SEO

Would the oh-so-evil Google punish your website for using affiliate links?

Short ‘n simple: no.

Google is NOT against you making money, trust me.

It just wants to make sure that you:

create websites with original content that adds value for users;

choose a product category appropriate for your intended audience;

use your website to build community among your users;

keep your content updated and relevant.

Per Google:

The more targeted the affiliate program is to your site’s content, the more value it will add and the more likely you will be to rank better in Google search results and make money from the program.

For example, a well-maintained site about hiking in the Alps could consider an affiliate partnership with a supplier who sells hiking books rather than office supplies.

Skimlinks no-no: DON’T try to sell a burger to a vegetarian

How do you make money with Skimlinks without turning off your readers?

With over 24,000 active merchants, it should be a breeze to find the right products for your audience.

However, after observing so many blogs trying to sell a burger to a vegetarian, “common sense” might not be all that common after all.

Here are some (not-so-creative?) ideas to get you going.

1.   Go the ‘DUH’ way

If you are in a cooking niche, look up products under “Food, drink, and dining“.

If you run a mommie blog, you might want to go for “Babies, children, and parenting“.

If your blog is about fashion, go crazy and pick the “Fashion and accessories” category.

Find that common sense and hold on to it, in other words.

2.   Catch’em by surprise

Look for products that your readers might enjoy even though they aren’t exactly in your niche.

Have fun with it and go for curiosity factor.

For instance, this blog has a “Café” in the title for a reason…

So why not allow my readers to kick back and sip that perfect cup of coffee to keep themselves awake while sifting through hundreds of ways to generate traffic to their sites?

Here’s another thought: most of us have a coffee addict in the family or among friends.

How’s this for “Catch’em by surprise”?

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Time Release Caffeine Capsules

Sometimes it is fun to drink caffeinated beverages or eat caffeinated candies to stay awake. They are tasty and fun.

But what happens, say, if you have to suddenly fly into space to deal with an alien invasion?

You won’t have time to eat or drink on the flight because you’ll be busy with strategies and counter-xenophobe planning.

Be lucky, then, that you have some Time Release Caffeine Capsules on hand. Just pop one in the morning, and you’re alert for the next 8 hours.

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Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies

 And we don’t call them Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies for nothin’!

Each one is loaded with 200mg of caffeine!

The hardest part of these is not eating too many, because they really are that good.

And because they are so tasty, you’ll eat them fast – and that will get the caffeine in your blood with a powerful rush.

Trust us. Get some Highly Caffeinated Brownies and Cookies for a heaping helping of wake up for dessert.

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Shower Shock Caffeinated Body Wash

 Some folks like imbibing their caffeine in coffees and sodas and energy drinks.

Others like eating it in candies and mints and “magic” brownies.

But if you ask us, the most enjoyable way to get caffeine into your system is to rub glowing gel all over your body and let it seep into your pores.

And if you just happen to get cleaner in the process, even better!

And tingling (unless you are being electrocuted by mutant eels) is always fun.

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Has nothing to do with traffic generation, yet goes with Traffic Generation Café perfectly well, don’t you think?

Skimlinks Marketing Takeaway

No more signing up for a bunch of different affiliate programs.

No more multi-site tracking.

No more wondering if you made any sales you haven’t been paid for.

Skimlinks is free and easy to use. Join and start earning today!

SIGN UP

Have fun monetizing your content!

From Ana with

The post What Is Skimlinks & How to Use Skimlinks to Effortlessly Monetize Your Content appeared first on TrafficGenerationCafe.com.