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nyerus · 5 years ago

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Hey I originally followed you for YOI stuff and since that seems to be on haitus, I have seen you and a lot of people rebloing stuff about a different anime or manga (i think) with different mlm relationships? I think they're two diff shows and I've heard about mdzs before. But lately youve been reblogging stuff from a manga tagged tgcf and it looks pretty cool--so i was wondering how I could get into it and what its about? Does it have actual gay charas?

Hello! I’m sorry for the late response! This morphed from a simple answer into a beginner guide of sorts, so I hope you don’t mind! I know there’s like 500000 guides out there, but I figured I’d give it a shot too! ❤

So the stuff you’ve been seeing everywhere is indeed MDZS or related to it–including on my own blog! (I promise when YOI comes back from war, I’ll be all over that again ;o;!!!)

So these works are all by the same author, Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù (MXTX) and they are separate danmei (i.e. Chinese BL) novels, though they share a lot of similarities between them:

MDZS (Mó Dào Zǔ Shī) – Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

TGCF (Tiān Guān Cì Fú) – Heaven Official’s Blessing

SVSSS – Scum Villian’s Self-Saving System

All of them are complete and fan translated, and I’ll answer your last question first: yes, they have actual gay characters! In the novels, the main couples end up canonically married! \o/ In some of the adaptations, their romantic relationships are also maintained (e.g. the manhuas (Chinese graphic novel)), though censorship is present.

Links will be added below this post! Grab some popcorn, this is long!

･:*:･ﾟ’★🐇MDZS🐇★･ﾟ’･:*:･

MDZS《魔道祖师》is definitely the most popular work by MXTX, as it has the most adaptations. You’ve almost certainly been seeing gifs and photosets from its donghua (Chinese animation) or live action the most. However, it has a manhua and audio drama (in both Chinese and Japanese) as well!

Synopsis: Reviled as the infamous Yiling Laozu, Wei Wuxian harnessed the forbidden dark power of demonic cultivation. Once the cultivation world decided he was too dangerous to leave alone, he was hunted down, and a terrible battle ensued that cost Wei Wuxian his life—and the lives of many others. 13 years later, he is resurrected under mysterious circumstances into the body of the pariah Mo Xuanyu. Now with this second chance at life (and while hiding his real identity), Wei Wuxian has to uncover the truth about a powerful malevolent spirit. It may just be the key to revealing a series of heinous secrets hidden from the cultivation world for years. And while the world may still hate him for crimes he didn’t commit, there’s one person who’s on his side—the illustrious Hanguang-jun, Lan Wangji—and is willing to stand by him against all odds. The two have a long and complex history, and Wei Wuxian is unsure of Lan Wangji’s motivations for helping him. But it couldn’t be more simple: respect and love.

Scene from the donghua.

Still from the live action, called “Chén Qíng Lìng”/“CQL”/”The Untamed.”

Panel from the manhua.

Art from the Chinese audio drama.

The great thing about MDZS is that you can really pick your poison in terms of what adaptation you want to get started with. If you are absolutely brand-new to the danmei scene, then starting with the donghua or manhua may be your best bet (both are ongoing). The novel of course is the most beloved, being the source, but all the adaptations have their own charms! They’re all worth checking out, and will keep you busy for quite a while.

･:*:･ﾟ’★🌸TGCF🌸★･ﾟ’･:*:･

Now, for TGCF《天官赐福》—that’s where my photosets are coming from: the ongoing manhua that started in October. There’s a donghua planned for late this year, and a live action in talks (info about that is largely unknown, but is slated for production sometime after the donghua release). TGCF actually has the same deal structure as MDZS apparently, so we’ll be getting an audio drama as well if that’s true.

Synopsis: Talented and virtuous, Crown Prince Xie Lian first ascended to the heavens when he was only 17. Once the darling of the earth and heavens for his boundless skill and purity of heart, he ended up falling from grace—not once, but twice! Subsequently, he became the laughing stock of the three realms. Spending almost 800 years roaming the earth and collecting scraps, he becomes known as the pitiful “rubbish god” and “god of misfortune.” No one could have expected Xie Lian to ascend for a third time, but fate seems to have something in store for this disgraced yet compassionate immortal. Thankfully, he is not alone, as the widely-feared ghost king, Hua Cheng, seems to have a special interest in helping him. The two of them embark on a series of adventures that unravel the secrets of their world, and of themselves.

Panel from the manhua.

Scene from the Donghua PV.

The novel for TGCF is a great place to start, especially considering how the manhua is still in it’s early stages (just starting it’s 2nd arc as of writing this post). The novel is long, incredibly well-written, and well-translated. The manhua is absolutely stunning, and follows the novel very closely thus far.

･:*:･ﾟ’★🎋SVSSS🎋★･ﾟ’･:*:･

The underrated sibling of the three, SVSSS《人渣反派自救系統》has only the novel to interact with for right now. A donghua is planned for this year. There was a manhua, but it was cancelled due to some problems with the publisher afaik. Word on the street is that they’re searching for a new team for it, so we’ll continue to pray!!!

Synopsis: Shen Yuan is an avid reader of the web novel Proud Immortal Demon Way. The novel revolves around the protagonist Luo Binghe, a kind child who is tormented endlessly by his Shizun (teacher/mentor) Shen Qingqiu, until he turns into a powerful demon lord and exacts his violent revenge. While initially a fan of the story, Shen Yuan hates the unsatisfactory ending. Upon dying suddenly, he finds himself transmigrated into the novel, at the behest of The System—a sci-fi interface which gives him missions and directives. Unfortunately, he ends up in the place of the cruel Shen Qingqiu out of all people! This new Shen Qingqiu now has to use his knowledge of the novel to navigate around the plot, within the restrictions that The System has implemented. He has to find a way to ensure a better ending, if he wants to keep this second chance at life. His plan for doing this is to be as kind and encouraging as possible to the innocent Luo Binghe, who quickly takes a shine to this new Shen Qingqiu. Even after forced to the dark side, and despite the tension between them after this, Luo Binghe won’t let anyone else touch his beloved Shizun.

Cover of the Thai release of the novel.

SVSSS only really has the novel to interact with as of right now. There’s currently an excellent re-translation in progress by tumblr user Faelicy! If you want to get started now, however, you can read what she’s done so far and then swap over to the old translation afterward.

･:*:･ﾟ’★NOTES★･ﾟ’･:*:･

• ALL three novels are intended for an R-18+ audience ONLY. Other adaptations are safe for minors over 16 years of age.

• Please be aware that the novels may contain potentially triggering content. Feel free to ask me for content warnings if you need them.

• All three of these are totally different from one another and only share common themes typical of the wuxia/xianxia genres.

• The original Chinese raws of MDZS and SVSSS are no longer available for purchase on JJWXC (publishing site). You can find print versions on Taobao. TGCF, however, is still available!

• If you’d like more info on anything, please reach out to me! I’m happy to help.

• LINKS WILL BE ADDED BELOW THIS POST.

#mdzs #tgcf #svsss #mo dao zu shi #tian guan ci fu #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #heaven offical's blessing #scum villain's self-saving system #guide #asks #Anonymous #nyerus.txt

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dear-selena · 5 years ago

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Omg, if you’re feeling it could you make a Caught Web Handed part two? I loved part one sm!

Caught Web Handed (Pt. 2)

Peter Parker x Reader

Request: “Omg, if you’re feeling it could you make a Caught Web Handed part two? I loved part one sm!”

Summary: When a new Tumblr blogger who claims to be Spider-Man starts reblogging a ton of Spider-Man fanfiction, including yours, the community goes into a frenzy and you confront the boy who promised not to say anything.

Warnings: Some swearing, this is literally so meta be warned

A/N: I would like to thank the anon who requested this two months ago! I’m sorry it took me so long to write this out! I genuinely didn’t know how to continue this story until recently. If you want me to continue this, please let me know! I could possibly write one more part to this, but only if you guys want it.

Words: 1971

REQUESTS ARE OPEN

Part 1

—————-

You love that Tumblr started the group chat feature, but damn, you wish you got notifications from it.

Yawning, you cover your mouth and suddenly crave your bed. Last night, you stayed up messaging a ton of bloggers in a new group chat someone created for your favorite web-slinging hero and didn’t even realize how late it was when the conversation whined down.

The group chat is called “Them Spider-Man OCs 😩😍🕸🕷❤️💙” and is filled with a bunch of your mutuals. The entire night was spent complimenting one another on each other’s fanfictions, and sharing anything and everything about everyone’s OC’s. You couldn’t help the giddiness you felt when people told you how much they loved Trevor Trenton, your Spider-Man OC.

Because Tumblr mobile refuses to send notifications when you get new messages, you stayed on the app for hours to make sure you were as involved in the conversation as possible. You knew you could have left the conversation at any moment, but you were just way too excited to finally bond with all your mutuals at once.

Walking down the halls of Midtown High, you lazily stroll to your first class as if you had all the time in the world to get there. You hadn’t seen your friends yet this morning, making time go especially slow. Not knowing what else to do, you decide to open the Tumblr mobile app and check for new notifications in your group chat. To your surprise, a green circle appeared on the group chat photo someone edited of Spider-Man swinging through Queens with heart emojis all around him.

You open the chat, and your heart jumps immediately.

(Your Favorite Spider-Man Blog): Guys did TheOfficialSpiderMan account reblog your work too or is it just me?!?!

Suddenly frozen in place, you reread (Favorite Spider-Man Blog)’s message. With your heart bouncing in your chest, full of uncomfortable adrenaline, you quickly leave the chat and check messages and had to stop yourself from screaming.

An account called TheOfficialSpiderMan had indeed reblogged your latest update on your Trevor Trenton fanfiction.

Tapping on the blogger’s icon, you start investigating if this was truly the “Official” Spider-Man. The first thing you do is read the bio:

“Yes, I’m the real Spider-Man XD. Still trying to figure out how to use this site so bear with me.

Queens, NY | Avenger | Science Nerd”

Looking at the blog’s avatar, you see that it’s a selfie that the hero took while swinging in the air. You’ve never seen a photo of Spider-Man like this before, but you couldn’t tell if it was edited or not. If this is a fake account, this person must be really good at photoshop…

Scrolling through the blog, you notice that this person’s not only reblogged your fanfiction but almost all your mutuals too. You recognized some of the stories as one’s you’ve read prior and almost all of them were from people who were in the Spider-Man group chat with you. Eventually, however, you scrolled to the bottom of the blog and found a simple text post.

“Hey Everyone! It’s me, Spider-Man. I’m just here to interact with you guys cause I’ve heard that I have fans on this site. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for supporting me. Love you all

The post, although wholehearted and sweet, immediately fills you with worry. If this truly was Spider-Man, that means your favorite hero, the hero you’ve been fantasizing about through your writing, was reading your stuff. He was reading this personified version of himself that you created for your silly romantic pleasure, and that scares you shitless. A part of you feels exposed in a way you never thought possible, and even though your Tumblr username doesn’t quite give away your identity, you still feel extremely vulnerable. The thought of the man behind the mask seeing your work makes you feel quite uneasy, especially because you don’t know who the man behind the mask is.

Suddenly, the bell for first-period rings, and you’re brought back to reality. As peers shuffle through the halls around you, you shove your phone in your pocket and pick up the pace to get to your first class. While walking, you couldn’t help but wonder Why Spider-Man chose to solely reblog fanfiction. There are plenty of Spider-Man Tumblr posts consisting of gif-sets, fan edits, and general news about him, so why fanfiction?

It was as if Spider-Man has some sort of motivated intentions.

——————

Peter Parker hits the reblog button on yet another well-written story about him.

Well, better yet, him as a superhero.

Ever since he found out that you write fanfiction about Spider-Man a couple of months back, Peter couldn’t stop wondering what else was written about him. After a self-debate for whether or not it’d be a good idea to actually make a Tumblr account and find your work, he decided to go for it. After all, he was pretty bored last night, and what better way to interact with fans that through a popular fandom website?

So he created “TheOfficialSpiderMan” and immediately started reading fanfiction.

He has to say, he was quite amazed at how talented his fans were. A lot of the stories and characters they created were so unique, and the plots they wrote up were quite clever! He instantly picked up on some tropes people would write about, including ones where the reader was Iron Man’s child (he has to admit, he found those stories quite meta).

And after a ton of scrolling and reblogging, he came across a story about a version of Spider-Man named Trevor Trenton. He immediately knew that this story was yours, and took notice of your Tumblr name, (Your Tumblr blog name). He wanted to follow you but figured he should lay low right now. ‘I shouldn’t be giving certain fans special attention… especially if this certain fan is a good friend of his and possibly his crus-.’

“Hey, Peter!”

Peter turns around to see Ned with his usual smile on his face.

“Oh, Ned! Guess what?” Peter proceeds to shove his phone in his best friend’s hand. “I found (Y/N)’s Tumblr account!”

Ned’s eyes go wide as he examines Peter’s phone, seeing a post with your blog name on it. “Oh my god, Peter,” Ned starts to laugh. “You did not just join Tumblr to find her fanfiction.”

“Of course not,” Peter protests, going to show the blog account. “Spider-Man did.”

Ned looks up at Peter with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. “Damn Peter,” Ned says sarcastically. “Didn’t think you’d be one to join fandom culture.”

Peter rolls his eyes as the bell rings, indicating that second-period was about to start. Saying a quick goodbye to Ned, Peter quickly makes his way to his robotics class, a class that you just so happen to share with him. As Peter enters the room, he scans it and instantly spots you at one of the workshop tables, head buried in your phone, and wide-eyed.

Peter smirks. He knows exactly what’s going on.

He makes his way over you, and plops down in the seat next to you, causing you to look up at him in surprise. “Oh, hey Peter.” you squeak out, completely caught off-guard.

Peter couldn’t help but stifle a laugh. The last time he saw you this flustered was when MJ caught you writing Spider-Man fanfiction back at his place, and he had to admit, you looked pretty cute. “Hey, (Y/N). What are you looking at?”

You look back at your phone and quickly snooze the screen, shoving your phone in your pocket. “Oh, i-it’s nothing…” You say unconfidently, a blush appearing on your face. “Just a stupid Tumblr update.”

“Oh?” Peter asks, knowing what you meant by ‘update’. “Does it have to do with Spider-Man?” He couldn’t help but push the conversation on you. He was too excited to see your reaction.

“Actually, yeah.” You finally admit after a moment. “My mutuals and I are kinda freaking out cause a blog that claims to be Spider-Man is reblogging our stories. It’s weird.”

“Really, weird?” He questions. “What makes that so weird?”

“Why would a superhero go online just to read fanfiction. Superheroes shouldn’t even know about this kinda stuff. They should be focused on, I don’t know… saving the world or something. It’s just weird that he’s only reblogging fanfiction and-.” You cut yourself off when you look up at Peter and see he’s just sitting there, head propped up against his hand, leaning on the table with his elbow, sporting a knowing smirk of some sort. Confused at why he was looking at you like that, you almost question him. But that was when you started to connect the dots.

It feels like Spider-Man has some motivated intentions. Peter Parker is intentionally talking about this with you.

You squint your eyes at the boy in front of you. “Peter, did you tell Spider-Man about fanfiction?”

Peter blinks, his smirk off his face. “W-what? No, I didn’t.”

Your glare intensifies, and Peter sits up straight. “Are you lying to me? You just had your ‘I-know-something-you-don’t face on.”

Peter swallows, suddenly nervous. He didn’t think you’d react like this. “I’m not lying, (Y/N). I did not tell Spider-Man about fanfiction.”

You did… a couple of months ago…

You look away, now glaring at the table. “Then explain how Spider-Man knows about fanfiction and why he only reblogs it?”

Peter starts to sweat. “Uh, I-I don’t know. Maybe he likes to read?”

“Or someone told him to find it?” You look back up at Peter, whose clearly uncomfortable, making it easier for you to believe that he’s lying. “Maybe while they were at their Stark Internship or something?”

Peter mentally facepalms. He’s not getting out of this, is he?

“(Y/N), please.” Peter pleads. “I promise I didn’t say anything to S-Spider-Man. And even if I did, why is it so bad? Why is it bad that he’s reading fanfiction?”

“Because!” You shout, catching the attention of some of your classmates. Embarrassed, you force Peter to crouch down close to you so you can whisper. “The stories on Tumblr can get a bit uncanny. What if he finds smut about himself?”

Peter raises an eyebrow. “What’s a smut?”

You roll your eyes. “Exactly, and I’m NOT going into that right now.” You shudder, realizing what could happen if your favorite hero finds stories like… that.

Nevertheless, you push those thoughts out of your head and continue on. “But seriously Peter. You told me you wouldn’t tell him about this stuff, and how he’s reading a ton of it? Something doesn’t add up.”

Peter wants to argue back, but he honestly doesn’t know what to say. He can’t assure you that your writing is good and that he’s enjoying seeing his fans’ creativity because he’d have to reveal his secret to you, and that’s the last thing he wants to do. Especially now.

Before he knows it, your packing your stuff back up, getting out of your seat and slinging your backpack over your shoulder. “Find me when you can tell me the truth.” With that, you walk to the other side of the room and sit at a new table, just in time for the teacher to walk in and discuss the new project.

Peter couldn’t help but mentally beat himself up. Was doing all this a mistake? He genuinely just wanted to find your work and actually interact with his fans. He never expected it to backfire like this. Now he has to find a way to assure you he wasn’t technically lying, all while keeping his identity a secret. With all the thoughts racing through his mind, there was one that stood out:

He fucked up.

————–

-Peter Parker Tag List-

@sweetcoffeeblandtea // @house-arya // @jovialpeanut // @bookstoreblossom // @jackiehollanderr

-Marvel Tag List-

@sammghgecko

-Permanent Tag List-

@mindset-jupiter // @romance-geek // @imcharishope // @fakindob // @cutiekoa // @wowursofunny // @cals-cigarette // @supernerdycookietrashblr // @delicately-important-trash // @unlikelygalaxygive

#peter parker fanfiction #peter parker #peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #spiderman #spiderman fanfiction #spiderman homecoming #spiderman ffh #spiderman far from home #ffh #marvel #mcu #tom holland #tom holland x reader #dear-selena fanfiction

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archivedatl · 18 years ago

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AP web exclusive: All Time Low tour diary

Posted by Scott Heisel on 08-Dec-06 @ 04:43 PM

Last month, Baltimore pop-punkers All Time Low took to the road with Sugarcult for a series of shows on the West Coast. Here's some of what they saw, in words and pictures. Learn more at www.alltimelow.com.

#1------------------------------------------------------------ Ooohooo So last night we celebrated two awesome occasions...well 3 since matt's molars finally grew in...anyways yesterday was Haloween and our first night of our tour with Sugarcult. I must say, it is pretty strange touring with a band who I spent the better years of my middle school life watching on MTV. Regardless of where this band has been, it definetly didn't eff with their personalities. They were all super nice to us and each came up and introduced themselves. The show went pretty well but it wasn't a good judgement of our the whole tour is going to be because Sugarcult didn't even headline, the Eagles Of Death Metal did, and the tickets for $25 on Haloween night :) I'm sorry but I would never go to a show if those were the circumstances...I'd be out expanding my collection of holiday treats. Tonight the 'real' tour begins so we will see how it goes. We are playing Washington State University in Pullman Washington. We haven't done too many college shows, so this should be interesting...anyways before we got on the road a couple days ago we were couped up in Ben Harper's (formely of yellowcard, now in amber pacific) house/studio in long beach, CA working on our new CD :). We demoed some hot licks that were going to send over to our producer matt squire so that he can put in some input. I heard my blogs are going to be posted on the Alternative Press website for this tour, so if that's the case then...helll yeah! Well I just woke up from sleeping in the van so I am gonna walk out into the freezing streets of Pullman, WA crack my back and grab some Qudoba. Much Love, Jack --jbstar #2------------------------------------------------------------ Yoo dooodds, So I'm gonna update you guys on the passed couple shows...on Wednsday we played Washington State University. Those kids are freaking crazy! Everyone seemed to be having a good time and we made some awesome new friends. I cannot stress enough, how cool the Sugarcult guys are. Which is really cool because I have been listening to those guys since 6th grade! Anyways before we played, matt thought it would be a good idea to have a fork and knife fight backstage...yeah it turned pretty ugly and we should have some footage online soon enough. That night we partied at 'The Christmas House'. Lets just say that I'm pretty sure alex made out with a dog...I really miss Hit The Lights :( Anways...we played Seattle after the college show and it was offf the hoooook. Everyone in the room was dancing and it got pretty redic. As soon as we told them the alex/dog story they went nuts. We met up with the Pink Spiders that night. We were nervous about that because we've heard some stuff...but for real those guys are the shit. There all super nice and we have no complaints about them. We have yet to tour with a band who we don't get along with (fingers crossed). We also heard that we may be doing a few shows with Cobra Starship in Dec, if that happends that would be sick. I'll keep you guys updated. Someone made us a bucket of the craziest donuts ive ever seen at the portland show last night!! They were reallly good. Sorry for the lack of pics, I'll make sure my next post has more, its just hard to take good pics on a sidekick :). Talk to you guys soon!!Jacko #3------------------------------------------------------------ Yo Babaayyss, Last nights show was off the hook! I love playing at The Boardwalk in orangevale calii. The crowd was as wild as usual and a bunch of kids were singing along. A lot of the same kids who saw us there on the Amber Pacific tour came back. Its always cool to see so many familiar faces,,,cough cough hint hint nudge...you get the idea folks! The next couple shows should be interesting...reno and vegas. I wont be able to gamble but at least ill be able to look at a lot of lights. We all have family comming out, so that should be exciting. I havent seen my brother and sister in ages and i know their gonna be wasted so that means they will be even more friendly :) Also Meg n Dia join up in vegas which is sick, SO SIKED FOR THAT!!! We met them on warped and their super nice. anyways i think its time, i go to In and Out because after this tour im not going to be able to go back for a while :( im going to eat there everyday twice a day until we leave Arizona. Ive attached pics from our set on the Epitaph stage at this years Bamboozle Left and also some pics of our acoustic set the 2nd day! Thanks to everyone who watched us either/both days :) love you peace peace n a bottle o' hair grease, jack #4------------------------------------------------------------ Wow...vegas has to be one of the strangest places on this earth. First of all we showed up in Reno (shity city) only to find that only sugarcults crew was there and the show probably wasnt going on. We were welcomed by a hooker in a pink tanktop and no teeth asking if we had any shirts we could give her...Thankfully we have power windows and middle fingers. Thankfully zack was asleep or he might have took her up on some of her offers...he's getting desperate you know..just kidding! Anyways we decided to hang out with sugarcults crew for a little then start the drive to vegas early since it was 8 house. We got to go over the Hoover Damn which was sweet. It's seriously Vegas Vacation all over again! Anyways, we got to vegas around midnight and it was a fantastic site! My bro and sis were staying at the MGM so thats where i headed. Rian to the Excalibur, Alex and Matt to the Venecian and Zack to the Luxor. We all split up and hung out with our fam for the evening. My brother took me around vegas and boyyy was it interesting. I was approached by numerous drunk people. It was basically like an Ocean City, Maryland for older people. It's just a place for adults to drink, walk around drunk, act like teenagers and maybe gamble a bit here n' there. it was Akward to say the least. Anyways the next day was the show at the House Of Blues at Mandalay Bay...probably one of the nicest venues we have ever played. We introduced ourselves to the Meg n Dia folks and got to know our new tour mates as we shared a dressing room. We soon found they are awesome people and they share a love for getting wild! The show was pretty cool, and the crowd was big. It was weird though because the merch was not in the venue, it was in the cassino haha. Anyways Vegas was an experience we wont forget, and I cant wait till we go there again. I hope the next time we go, were 21...actually nevermind because that would be three years :)stay rad, Jack #5------------------------------------------------------------ Lame! Tonight was our last show on the Sugarcult Tour featuring The Pink Spiders and Meg n Dia :( Damone will be taking our place on this great lineup. I am jelous that they get to join up! Anyways we made some lifetime friends on this tour and it was a great experience for everyone. Every single show was amazing and the fans never let us down. Traveling to bumfuck arizona and hearing a couple hundred kids sing your song is the coolest feeling ever. Sugarcult was very warming towards us and their personalities suprised the shit out of me. they were such cool guys and even when zack was sick they made him soup and gave him Emergen-C. WHO DOES THAT !?!? Thats like something my mom does...so in a way Sugarcult are our parents. They actually reffered to us as their younger brothers on stage. At the last show of the tour in Little Rock, Arkansas us and Meg n Dia ran on stage during "Bouncing Off the Walls" and started bouncing around and took over Tim's Guitar n Mic, Marko's (my twin) guitar and Airens Bass. It was so fun to bro down with a band that ive been listening to since middle school haha. Alex also got to soundcheck with sugarcult at Texas AM College because tim was at the hospital taking care of his sickness (i think he had a nasty cold). It was so crazy to see alex soundcheck with a band who for the past few years have held a special spot on my ipod and in my cd player :) I attached a pic of him sound-checking for fun. At the end of the show we said our goodbyes and gave our hugs. This is'nt the end of these friendships though, only the beggining...now we head home to write a new cd. Catch us on the road in the northeast in december when we head out with Cobra Starship! Stay safe, Jack

#2006 #blog #Jack Barakat #text #alternative press #all time low #sugarcult tour

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stellatex · 5 years ago

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Nine Questions I Need Teresa Giudice to Answer

Originally published February 9, 2016.

Today’s the day. Christmas all over again for Real Housewives of New Jersey fans. Teresa Giudice, who has mostly been laying low since her release from federal prison on December 23, is set to make the media rounds to promote her new book, starting tonight with what is undoubtedly a contractually-obligated appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Bravo’s resident trash-TV obsessed Machiavellian puppet master Andy Cohen. Tomorrow morning, she will appear on Good Morning America with actual journalist Amy Robach.

The Housewives conceit–catty women posing as wealthy, fighting over petty drama, a trope from the heady days of 80s prime time soaps that quite obviously influences Cohen’s work, and one which Gloria Steinem recently called “a minstrel show for women”–may be of waning interest now, ten years on from the premiere of the Real Housewives of Orange County. Certainly, RHONJ has taken a dark turn, first with the introduction of Teresa’s family members (without her prior knowledge), then with the failed Giudice bankruptcy and subsequent criminal investigation, trial, and conviction. It feels like the Housewives have run their course. Certainly, the newest installment, Real Housewives of Potomac, feels like a Potemkin village of a Potemkin village, complete with early 90s fiberboard kitchen cabinets.

I’ve been watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey since it premiered on May 12, 2009. I have seen every episode multiple times. I have watched every web exclusive available on Hulu and every behind-the-scenes video on the Bravo web site. I’ve watched every RHONJ cast appearance on Watch What Happens live. I’ve read all of Richard Lawson’s uhmazeing recaps on Gawker. I’ve followed Vicki Hyman’s meticulous reporting on the Giudices’ legal woes (she is truly doing God’s work covering this shitshow; reward her by giving a listen to her TV Hangover podcast). I’ve read all the forums (here’s one) and all the shady gossip blogs (but I’m not linking to them; you’re on your own). I have all of Teresa’s books, and even Melissa’s. I have corresponded privately with one of Teresa’s ghostwriters. I follow all of the RHONJ cast members, former cast members, friends of Housewives, and tangential friends and family on social media. I have a RHONJ Twitter list [now defunct, sorry]. I started and am admin for a Real Housewives Feminist Discussion Group on Facebook (invitation only, sorry).

I’m in deep.

I know as much about RHONJ as any viewer could possibly know. Sadly, I am somehow an expert on this show. The reasons I am obsessed with this show are personal and academic; cultural and escapist. That’s a whole other post. Or dissertation.

Point is, despite my better judgment, I love this show. I love it. I can’t fully explain it. I even love Teresa. I think she was the one who was “set up” in previous seasons, with producers and other cast members acting in unison to take advantage of her as a narcissistic simpleton, to amp up the drama. But that’s all for another post, too, and in the past at this point. The fact is Teresa–along with her four beautiful dorters–is and always has been the star of this show. People watched because she was good TV. She and Joe exhibited character flaws on the scale of a Greek tragedy, sure; but they were also hilarious. Hilariously inept, if caricaturishly stereotypical. Somehow strangely lovable, even though they were also criminally delusional. From the first episode, Teresa was flashing those hundred dollar bills, buying that gaudy furniture in cash, and we, the viewers, knew Something Was Up. It’s been a long, unspooling tale from then to now. In hindsight, viewers know that Joe and Teresa had already been living on fraudulently obtained money for years. Their crimes, according to court records, date back to at least 2004, five years before they appeared on America’s television screens.

To date, Teresa’s line has been that she was misled into “signing some papers” that she either didn’t read or didn’t understand (her story varies), either by Joe or by her accountants (!) or her lawyers (!). She’s played the role of innocent, “old school” Italian wife–the same role she’s played on RHONJ. Joe tried to take the fall for her in court and failed. Due to the Giudices’ decision to continue hiding assets right up until the sentencing, Judge Esther Salas rethought her original impulse of possibly giving Teresa only house arrest or probation, and instead sentenced her to 15 months in prison.

Teresa’s complicity in the crimes is not a matter of debate, though the extent of her participation is. Teresa pled guilty. She expressed remorse in court, presumably in an attempt to receive a lesser–or no–prison sentence. It is my opinion that she really believed the judge would take pity on her as a traditional mother of four beautiful dorters. The Giudices’ financial scams had been working for years, after all. She was famous. People loved her. She deserved and was well accustomed to her McMansion lifestyle. She was obviously not very financially astute. She was a good Italian wife who deferred to her husband. She was a good girl.

She thought wrong.

We can all read the indictment and draw our own conclusions. Now, Teresa is trying to make a comeback. According to Teresa [link lost], the Giudices have paid their court-ordered restitution and their mortgage is current. No mention is made of the $551,563 still owed to the IRS for unpaid taxes, nor the the creditors listed in their 2010 bankruptcy filing, totaling $13.4 million.

Based on the teaser clips already released by GMA, Teresa is continuing, in her obviously memorized, stilted, eye-blinking way, to hold on tight to her claims that she had no idea what she was doing, or signing. It has been my contention all along that this is probably what we would see from post-prison Teresa. I almost admire her dedication. The sheer hubris. The chutzpah. Too bad she hasn’t yet channeled all that white-knuckle stubbornness into anything more productive than unflinching denial of her multiple felonies, holding grudges against her own family members, and a devotion to flawless 24/7 drag queen makeup.

But I think she’s placed her bets on the wrong horse and fundamentally misunderstands her fame.

Despite everything, there are still viewers–myself included–who love watching Teresa. Who want her to come good. Who want to see some Goddamn Character Development. It seems like she’s going to keep pretending everything is okay, even though it very obviously is not, and that she will continue to deny her culpability in obtaining the millions of dollars of fraudulent loans that financed her over-the-top leopard-print lifestyle, the craven bankruptcy filing intended to wipe the slate clean, and the way she and her husband have financially ruined the many local business and small contractors whom they stiffed in the process.

So far, there has been zero accountability.

What Teresa doesn’t get here–and Teresa, as we know, doesn’t get a lot of things–is that the only remaining way to endear herself to the viewing, cookbook-buying public is through showing genuine remorse. She is being presented with yet another golden opportunity that she doesn’t really deserve in the form of this press tour for her perfectly timed, hastily-released biography. I don’t think she realizes that, without performing–convincingly–this type of epiphany for her ever-dwindling audience, her “career” as a Bravolebrity is over after this final fifteen minutes. It seems that I’m not the only one who thinks so; even her former co-writer, Heather MacLean, tried to explain this to her, to no avail.

Teresa needs chart a course that will keep her on TV and thus allow her to continue making the type of money she needs support herself and her children, especially in light of the fact that her husband is about to “go away” for at least three and a half years. Unlike others, I don’t blame her for capitalizing on her moment in the spotlight, and the prurient interest of the public, to hawk an autobiography and book a bunch of paid appearances. It’s the only legitimate way she has to earn an income, and certainly the only way to earn the type of money she needs to continue paying down those back taxes and massive debt (and I expect some lawsuits will be forthcoming from her many creditors).

But to make good, she needs to provide some real answers to some hard questions. No doubt Cohen will only lob only softball questions and make schoolboy jokes at her expense. He may ask a few tough questions tonight in the guise of “viewer Marge in Omaha on Twitter,” but his interest is in coddling his “star” and presenting a coherent narrative for RHONJ. In another timely moved that surprised no one (who was paying attention), Bravo announced yesterday that a seventh season of RHONJ will be on our screens “later this year.” Perhaps GMA’s Amy Robach will ask her some tougher questions. We’ll have to wait and see.

To my mind, there are certain things Teresa must address if she expects to return from federal prison and jump back into her role as Housewife.

So, in the spirit of Brian Moylan’s 98 Questions I Had During Last Night’s Interview With Joe and Teresa Giudice, here are the questions that I need Teresa Giudice to answer, presented in advance:

1. You said in your statement to the judge during sentencing that you “fully take responsibility” for your actions. You said, “It’s time for me to wake up… I will make this right no matter what it takes.” Why, immediately afterward, in your interview on Watch What Happens Live, did you backtrack and try to deflect blame to your husband while insisting things were just put before you to sign?

2. You claim to be “business savvy,” telling your husband on an episode of RHONJ, “Like, you know, that’s what I do now. I’m a businesswoman, so I’m thinking business.” You’ve touted your online businesses, your Fabellini drink line, your Milania hair care line, your success as a “New York Time [sic] best-selling author.” So how is it that you are also simultaneously claiming to be a clueless housewife who knows nothing of her own finances, including the assets from said businesses that you tried to hide during both your fraudulent bankruptcy and your sentencing?

3. If you are blaming your husband Joe for your ten-plus-years of financial fraud and the year you spent unjustly incarcerated in a federal prison, why are you still with him?

4. What would you say to the creditors, banks, and, most importantly, small business owners of New Jersey whom you and your husband fleeced to the tune of millions of dollars? Do you feel any obligation to repay these debts?

5. Explain this.

6. Why are you and your husband suing your bankruptcy attorney? Furthermore, do you not realize that, in doing so, you will be giving up your attorney-client privilege and opening yourselves up to a new investigation of your finances during the discovery process?

7. What are you going to do when Joe is deported?

8. You talk constantly about your love, love, love for your four beautiful dorters. Why did you put them in this position?

9. Why should viewers overlook your felonious criminal past and continue to support you by watching RHONJ or buying your books or products?

She’s taken to calling herself Teresa 2.0, and insisting that her time in the slammer transformed her into a zen-like superwoman who has her priorities straight. But we, the viewers, will be the judge and jury. Based on what we have seen to date, it appears that Teresa hasn’t learned a damn thing. I wish she would prove me wrong, but I don’t think she has it in her.

All images from the amazing T-Kyle.

#RHONJ

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likorys-shimenawa · 5 years ago

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FFN still exists, y’all, and has private messages. Just saying. xD (not that I didn’t get a sex offer there, but once in a decade is a pretty good) Wikia also, I found, is decent for discussion in comments?

And, though I use it sparingly, Discord. That’s the best right now, I think, and you can make places you only get ‘invited’ to.

And honestly - the isn’t and won’t be ‘one space’ cause internet don’t work like that. As a teen from earlier internet (not that much, I’m 26) - there was fuck all. I likes Naruto, I got like, 2 forums linked to free episodes. I had blog sites where people postes fanfics or whatever. Those still exists as well (cooking blogs are so lit sometimes).

Wanna know what they also had? 18+ blogs. Forums. Pages. Except they were much less properly tagged.

You find a fandom, then find what sites are for it, then look for what you like (children should do so with their parents, sorry, internet ain’t not babysitter).

Like there won’t be a magical ‘pure teens-y space-y heaven’. There are some for young kids (I think like, 5 to ~12?), I think (neo-pets? The penguing site that I’ve seen memes of?).

The closes you get is TikTok because guess what, when Music.ly (or whatever part of the .ly thin) existes it became a feeding ground for sexual harrasment and predators and people pretty much extorting money for ‘collabs’ and ‘best fan ranking’ that would never happen (kid would spend 700$ for a daily leaderboard, let that sink in).

Cause teenagers don’t want to be coddled and they are dumb and they will cut their ears to spite their face. They are in the transition time and don’t want kiddie control, but also shouldn’t get full open access to wide web cause they’ll try to play at being adult by going where they shouldnt’.

Cause forget the ‘who let the *slurs* in?!’ that would be a nightmare to deal with if you want to get any donations.

Do you keep stanic Harry Potter? Do we keep Animorphs with all the icky PTSD, warcrimes and children dying? Do we keep very christian Narnia and Wrinkle in Time? Do we allow Twilight and all the Bad Messages it sends? Artemis Fowl is about crime so it can’t be good! And those Riordan novels have people other than straight cis! And that Coraline book gives me nightmares so my kid can’t possibly like it!

That’s just the fandoms. You would need to account for every religion (how dare you not block every evolution propaganda spreader!), every new fad (how dare you promore Babe, my kid cried cause we’ve vegan and we won’t stand for even a mention of farming!), every single ‘triggering’ thing because cancel culture would kill you on a smalles mistake.

[Do you let the antivax kids spread what their parents tell them? How about essential oils kid-users? How about scientology-kids? How about christian kids though to tell gays they’ll go to hell? You read to write 3k page rules book for this ‘safe space’?

Do you ban mentions of those topics? Then what about books like Narnia, do you ban all the allegory discussions too? Do you check every fanfic for being too literal? Do you ban Harry Potter too, or just the fics/posts where it’s vaguely about the religious symbolism, but leave those about fake magic? Do you allow real dicussions of vicca-type magic or ban every mention of healing crystals?]

Not to mentions - world. You know, this place full of countrys with different laws. What do you do to prevent a 16 year old Polish teen (over consent age) from interacting with another 16 year old, but from USA (so under consent age) in a vaguely flirty way (I mean ‘you look nice’ or ‘I love you!’ messages of ‘be my bf teehee!’)? How would you check this - document scans? Parental admission confirmed by what exactly?

Because parents who would pay for that kind of site (and it’s parents who’d need to donate) would be often also the worst ones, of the ‘I demand you cater to me or I pull my money and call the police!’.

The amount of moderation is impossible. Unless you go for specific fandom and that’s what we have now (and making a simple forum isn’t that expensive to start, I think, and you can have decent moderation there, but again - Discord).

Honestly, AO3 works because there is no rules and moderation or anything other than comments to interact. So you can’t get any cancel-culture baiting dramas.

I honestly wish someone would create a kid-friendly fannish space where all the adults involved in running the site have to submit police background checks and there are very clear rules and limitations on what kind of content and behaviour is allowed. Something with active, levelheaded moderators with good training in community management and conflict mediation. Someplace that helps young writers, vidders, and artists develop their craft. Someplace that would let kids in fandom today get the kind of healthy nurturing environment that fandom was for me when I got online at 12 in 1999.

It would honestly be as monumental and undertaking as the OTW—requiring dozens to hundreds of volunteers and at least a quarter million dollars every year—but it would honestly be a really good idea.

#a general safe space would be impossible #but fandom-catering ones wouldn't be that hard #but that's for single fandoms #unfortunately #I'd like to believe it's possible but with the mount of extremism views... not likely

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yveshasu · 8 years ago

Photo

In response to this post.

alright I’m never mentioning this story again but here we go- your lengthy ridiculous post as promised:

So back in early 2014- for a couple weeks or so- I was almost obsessively hoarding urls. Most of them were SPN, Hannibal, or WTNV related bc those were my main fandoms at the time. I ended up giving many of them away to people who were in those fandoms. However, I really was hoarding just abt everything I could think of, and that included a certain url.

At this point, Ylvis’ shoot to tumblr meme fame was somehow still around (for about 6 months) for whatever reason. Like, besides that one song, can you really think of anything else notable that they’ve done that’s gotten to the same level of infamy outside of their home country? I don’t really think so. But the song was somehow still funny to me (and my grandmother)- and at the time ‘Xofficial’ fandom-type blogs that had almost nothing to do with ‘X’ were still around and popular- so I went on a halfhearted whim and within a couple of seconds ylvisofficial was mine. No one would’ve really wanted that url right? But I thought it could be fun to use later on.

Anyway, around May I suddenly found that I could not queue posts or essentially do anything regarding my main blog. Slightly annoyed but thinking it was a tumblr glitch, I just left it alone and idly checked my email. There were two emails from Tumblr Support sent within the same timeframe. They went something like this:

“'Regarding Ylvisofficial.tumblr.com’ ‘Hello, We have received a request from the comedy duo, Ylvis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylvis), that they be given the web address ylvisofficial.tumblr.com. In order to respect their professional name, and because you have never posted to the web address, we have changed your blog’s web address to [temp blog w numbers] If you feel that this URL claim has been made unfairly, you can email us at [email protected] and detail your objection. If we do not hear from you within 48 hours, the web address will be permanently given to them.’”

Like….. okay, sure tumblr you can take it. I hope they enjoy their “”“official”“” url or whatever. I love that they included a wikipedia page instead of maybe like their actual website or something. Like I’m not going to fight them for their own url obviously- no one really cares at this point. But there was also that other email:

“'ACTION REQUIRED: Release All Unused Urls’ 'Hello, We recently determined that you have registered, but aren’t using, an unusually large number of Tumblr blog URLs. As you know, URL hoarding is against Tumblr’s Community Guidelines ( X ), as it’s important for URLs to be available equally to all of Tumblr’s users. Because of this policy violation, we have suspended access to your primary blog. Please release all saved and unused URLs from your Tumblr account(s) by visiting [ X ] Then, let us know when that’s been done so we can restore your access. We won’t consider posting or reblogging material to your saved URLs after receiving this notice as a valid “use.” In addition, please do not move URLs to other accounts or create new accounts for these URLs. It’s very important that URL real estate be available for the beneficial and fair use of all Tumblr community members, and we appreciate your help in making sure that happens.’“

Which is unusual? How often does this email combo actually happen to anyone? I think they just do random checks regularly, but since Ylvis sent a request to tumblr for that blog url, tumblr must’ve also- in the process of retrieving that url- realized that I had far too many urls hoarded. This all could have been resolved very quickly….. except I didn’t have access to a computer or consistent internet access for a week. So, I waited a week, agonizing over not being able to supply my ~dedicated~ followers w/ whatever fandom posts crossed my dash, and actually not being able to see my dash at all. Let me tell you, deleting 150+ blogs when you have to input your lengthy password every time gets exhausting. I think within two hours I was done, and they restored my account. 150+ mediocre to slightly good urls gone, but at least I had my blog back. After about a week all was well and done, and Tumblr Support, Ylvis, and I went on our separate ways. We haven’t interacted since.

This story sounds very boring as I’m retelling it so I’m sorry if you were expecting something more riveting anon, but what’s also sorta interesting is- that if you really do go to ylvisofficial- you will find nothing. They haven’t posted anything on their blog. On their official site they list their twitters, sure, but no mention of their tumblr. There could be several reasons for this: Maybe they thought their following was bigger on tumblr, but once the fad passed they weren’t interested in catering to that kind of audience anymore? Maybe they realized their official website would most likely be getting more traffic than a silly tumblr blog? Maybe they just didn’t want anyone defaming their respected reputation by posting memes and fan art under their good name?

I would have thought, perhaps, that if they cared so much to contact tumblr directly to acquire (I would assume monetarily) an ”“"official”“” url so that they could have an “”“official”“” blog where they would hypothetically post “”“official”“” news, that they would have actually done something with the url but no, it’s just floating around collecting dust. Much like it would have been if I still had it in my posession, honestly.

So I do wonder: How often has this happened to anyone? Did anyone know or care that Ylvis has an official tumblr blog? Has Ylvis and their particular brand of humor even been remotely relevant since that dark time of late 2013? What would the fox say, if they actually used their tumblr platform to say it?

Your guess is as good as mine, but if you wanted to know from the fox’s mouth themselves their Instant Messaging box seems to be open at this time.

#shut up kita #dpechemode #ylvis #url hoarding #long post x/#asks #do i /still/ have a hoarding problem? p e r h a p s #similarly with my RD blog- I wasnt able to secure the name w/o a hyphen for whatever reason- despite the url not showing up #but T-RD works just fine nd I hope they arent interested in getting into tumblr anytime soon #theyre social media hermits anyways

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publichealthjurnal-blog · 6 years ago

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davidcdelreal · 7 years ago

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How to Make Your First $1,000 Blogging (22 step action plan)

Ready for a challenge? Sign up for my Make 1k Blogging email challenge. It's a free 10 email series that's main goal is to help you get your blog setup and make your first $1,000 blogging. Sign up only if you want to make some extra money. 😉

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Eventually, I started adding words to come up with a name that would stand out and landed on GoodFinancialCents.com. Even though I’m not thrilled with the name of my blog, I recognize that it’s not the most important factor of my business, either.

As you search for a name for your blog, don’t get so caught up in the process that you refuse to settle.

Make sure to pick something you like, but don’t overthink it too much. Once you have a few hours set aside to come up with a name, I suggest searching for possibilities on a website like GoDaddy.com. Most of the time, you can buy a domain for less than $13 per year.

#3: Sign up for a host.

Once you buy a domain name, your next step is setting up hosting for your blog. There are tons of options out there for hosting, but Bluehost is definitely the least expensive when you’re first starting out.

I started with a company called Lunarpages, which is comparable to Bluehost but slightly more expensive. You can also consider HostGator, Siteground, and others. Regardless of the hosting company you settle on, you’ll be able to install WordPress for free and get started right away.

#4: Pick a theme for your blog.

If you want your initial blog set-up to look professional, it helps to pick a premium theme. When I started blogging, one of the most popular themes was called Thesis. While it still exists today, there are a lot more options in 2017. Genesis, for example, is a popular theme option owned by Studiopress and the one I use for all of my sites.

Before you settle on a theme, make sure to brainstorm how you want your blog to look. Chances are, you’ll find a premium theme that makes sense with your blog style and goals.

#5: Research, research, research.

Regardless of the blogging niche you choose, you’ll want to do a ton of research at first. I can’t tell you how much time I spent trying to understand the mysteries of blogging over that first year. I devoured every piece of information I found, mostly because I wanted to master the craft.

Fortunately, there are a ton of free resources for bloggers all over the web. Make sure to read everything you can about choosing an angle for your blog, building a readership, and monetizing your site. Over time, you’ll figure out how to implement everything you’ve learned.

The more research you can do early, the broader your base of knowledge to pull from will be later on.

If you want to know how to do something, Google it! While this may sound like the worst learning strategy of all time, you'll be amazed at what you find!

#6: Network with other bloggers.

Most people picture “networking” as something you do with strangers at a cocktail party. You stand in the corner, awkwardly chugging beer after beer. Eventually, you work up the courage to meet someone new!

Online networking is similar, except that you don’t have to dress up. And since it's online, you don't have to feel like a big weirdo for reaching out.

When I started blogging, I learned to participate in a popular forum where other money bloggers hung out. By connecting with other bloggers, I was able to build my network, learn some valuable lessons, and create new opportunities for success.

When you are starting out in the blogging world, networking with other bloggers is crucial.

If you’re unsure how to get started, try commenting on your favorite blogs and starting up conversations on social media. Over time, you’ll build relationships with other bloggers that can pay off down the line.

#7: Publish your first post.

Publishing your very first blog post is a necessary, albeit scary, part of the process. Not only is it hard to start a blog out of thin air, but writing isn’t a cake walk, either. A lot of new bloggers think they’ll be able to crank out 3,000-word blog posts from day one, yet can barely squeak out a few words until they get the hang out of it!

The good news is, you don’t have to focus on perfection. Getting your first blog post published is a lot more important than making sure it’s the best post you’ve ever written.

Don’t forget that you can always go back and change things later on if you need to. Most long-term bloggers have upgraded all their content, including their very first blog posts, over time.

You might suck at first, but you'll get better with every word you write.

#8: Write guest posts for other blogs.

Guest posting is a great way to build relationships with bloggers and bring new eyeballs to your website. Not only can it help you get your name out there, but you can build valuable back-links to your website, too.

Once your blog is up and running, offering to guest post for other websites is a smart move.

If you’re unsure who to approach about guest posting, reach out to some of your favorite bloggers via email or social media and just ask. While it’s tough to put yourself out there, remember the worst they can say is “no.”

If you want to see how far I've come, check out this guest post I wrote for Smart Passive Income in 2011!

#9: Learn about keyword research.

As I started guest posting for other blogs, I began learning about keyword research. Instead of writing about random money topics, I learned I could optimize my efforts by targeting keywords with search potential.

The key here is trying to shoot for article ideas where I could rank in the search engines. You see, it’s not enough to write awesome content. If nobody reads it, what's the point? You have to make sure your articles are searchable for the long run. If not, you're just spinning your wheels.

My biggest breakthrough early on was coming up with a strategy to rank for “financial planner Illinois.” As a financial planner in Illinois, I wanted anyone who googled that term to find me.

But here’s something funny. After posting a query about how to rank for that term in a forum I belonged to, I received this message:

“Jeff, I noticed your thread in the forum and I just wanted to let you know that ranking for those terms is nearly impossible. With you being a one man shop and one website, you will never be able to compete with all the bigger investment firms located in the Chicago area. Sorry for the disappointing news.”

When you hear from naysayers like this one, don't listen. I have to say, this person was dead wrong. Because my desire to rank for this key word was so strong, I researched different strategies nonstop until I found an answer.

Eventually, my research led me to a friend who suggested I create a separate landing page for my business. For the title of the page, I chose Jeff Rose, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Illinois and added “Certified” and “IL” to help out with Google searches.

The cool thing is, it worked.

The bottom line: Learning some keyword research basics is crucial when you’re first starting out. Initially, I just used Google Keyword Planner. I would also just type phrases into Google and see what the suggested search would come up and focus on the long-tail version of the keyword.

For example, I would type in “Roth IRA” to see what else came up. As you employ this strategy, make sure to do your searches in an incognito window so your cookies don’t influence your search results!

No matter what, your #1 goal should be making sure you’re using your keyword in the URL, title, and body of each blog post. Make sure to check out this on-page SEO guide from BACKLINKO for more tips.

#10: Set up your core website pages.

Even if you just want a place to write, you need more than a “blog” page for your website to become a success. Your core pages should include not only a page for your blog, but an about page, a contact page, and a page for disclosures.

Without these pages, it’s almost impossible for anyone to find out who you are. If you want people to find your website and learn more about you, it’s crucial to populate your site with the information people want.

Here's my “about me” page if you want to take a look. If anyone is curious to learn more about me, I have the information front and center where they can find it.

Keep in mind that your “about” and “contact” pages give you the opportunity to share your side of the story. Telling people who you are in your own words can be very powerful, mostly because it helps people get to know the real you.

And, isn't that the point?

#11: Find your community.

Once you establish your blogging niche, you have to find out where your community hangs out. Is that a forum, a Facebook group, or somewhere else?

As I mentioned already, I did a lot of networking in a personal finance blog forum I found early on. This particular forum no longer exists, but I made a ton of connections there that still benefit me to this day. These days, I do a ton of networking in private Facebook groups and mastermind groups.

The bottom line is this: Look for places where bloggers in your niche hang out. Then, join those groups with a “help first” mentality. If you go in asking favors, you’ll come off as tacky and annoying. But if you join with the goal of serving others, you’ll build real relationships that last.

#12: Snoop out your competition.

The internet is so vast in its offerings that it’s nearly impossible to write a blog on a topic not covered elsewhere. In addition, every niche has a range of top blogs that bring in the most readers and the highest incomes.

If you want your blog to succeed, you should figure out why the top blogs consistently pull ahead in your niche. What are they doing right? What steps are they taking to build traffic that no one else is? What kinds of topics are they covering?

Look at the most popular blog posts on top sites and figure out how you could take that topic and make it your own. Keep in mind, you don’t want to copy people – you want to become better than they are.

In addition to conducting your own research, you can use tools like SEMRush to find out which keywords the top sites are angling for.

#13: Set up your social media accounts.

If you think you can succeed at blogging without worrying about social media, think again. By and large, social media is one of the best tools you can use to build your readership and bring traffic to your blog.

One of the first steps you should take as you start blogging is setting up social media accounts for your website. And remember, you don’t want to use your regular social media accounts for your site! You need to set up new accounts devoted solely to your business venture.

Once your social media accounts are up and running, you’ll want to install social media buttons on your blog. This way, readers who want to follow you on social media can do so with a simple click. Read this post for help setting up social media buttons on your sidebar or footer on WordPress.

Here's an example that shows that I mean:

#14: Write your first epic post!

While getting any type of content up on your site is a huge accomplishment at the beginning, you’ll eventually want something better. Over time, you should make it a priority to write at least one or two epic posts per month.

An epic blog post is one that’s longer and more comprehensive than almost anything else you write.

Not only are longer posts more educational for your readers, but they tend to have good SEO value, too.

My first “monster” blog post was a Roth IRA conversion guide I wrote in 2009. While this post has been updated a few times since then, the original version was more than 3,600 words long!

I wrote this post because I knew it was going to be a hot topic. You see, the IRS lifted the income restrictions on Roth IRA conversations that year, meaning anyone could do it.

If you feel like something could become a “hot topic” in the future, it’s smart to get ahead of that topic with the biggest, most comprehensive blog post you can muster. Trust me – you won’t regret it!

#15: Start gathering emails.

As a blogger, one of the most valuable resources you have is your email list. People who sign up to receive email updates about your blog are your hardcore followers, so you want to do this right.

Adding a pop-up or email capture button on your website early on is crucial. If you wait too long to start capturing emails, you’re only hurting yourself!

While you’ll initially send your email list updates about your website, you'll hopefully graduate to promoting your affiliates. You can also use your email list to build sales funnels that guide your readers toward products you believe in.

When it comes to blogging, your email list is practically money in the bank. That’s why you should start capturing emails right away.

My favorite email service provider is ConvertKit hands down.

#16: Learn about monetization.

As a blogger, I’ve made money in a million different ways. My website not only brings in ad revenue, but additional funds through sponsored content, affiliate marketing and more. While it’s hard to nail each monetization effort from the start, you’ll want to start with these bare bones strategies from the very beginning:

Ad revenue – You can earn ad revenue on your site through Google Adsense, Media.net, AdThrive, and others. This ad revenue can ebb and flow based on the amount of traffic your website brings in along with user engagement. Once your blog is up and running, you can experiment with ad agencies to find the right fit.

Sponsored posts – After your blog becomes established, you’ll start receiving inquiries about sponsored posts or direct advertising. While pay is low at first, you can eventually charge $5,000 or more per sponsored post.

Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing lets you earn blog revenue by promoting products you believe in. In my epic post on The Best Places to Open a Roth IRA, for example, I get paid any time someone clicks through my page and opens a brokerage account.

While monetization is important, you shouldn’t worry too much about it during your first few months.

The most important steps to take at the beginning are getting your blog up and running, then adding content as you’re able.

Once you have at least twenty awesome blog posts on your website, you can move to the next step.

#17: Write your first money-making post.

Once you’re ready, you should come up with a strategy for your very first money-making blog post. This could be an affiliate review of a product you use and love, a personal case study comparing several products or services, or something else. As long as you’re promoting or describing a product or service you can actually sell, you have the potential to earn some cash.

Your money-making post could even be one of those monster blog posts I was talking about. One of my most popular money-making posts is called 100 Ways to Make $100 Fast. While this post started with just a few affiliates, I’ve updated it to include additional money-making opportunities over time.

As you try to nail down your first money-making post, make sure to use some basic keyword research to optimize your efforts. With the right product and keyword strategy, it’s not that hard to write a blog post that can bring in $1,000 or more each month on its own!

#18: Expand your reach even further.

At this point, you should have a basic blog with at least 20-30 blog posts. You should be focusing your time on gathering emails, writing new content, and learning SEO. You should also have a growing social media presence that continues to expand every day.

From here, it’s all about scaling up. To get your name out there – and to get new readers to your blog – you want to make sure people see your name all over the place. You can accomplish this goal by:

Commenting on other popular blogs. People will see your comments and (hopefully) click on your website to learn more.

Join Facebook groups. While it might seem like other bloggers are your competition, blog friends are one of the biggest assets you can have. Make sure to cultivate relationships with other bloggers early and often.

Stay active on social media. If a reader bothers to tweet you, you should respond. Remember, your readers have the power to share your content and bring even more people to your website!

#19: Create a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is a freebie you offer readers in exchange for their email address. This was something I failed to implement early on. I waited way too long to create a lead magnet for my website, mostly because I was overthinking it and focusing too much on perfection.

But when I finally launched my 1st lead magnet The Money Dominating Toolkit, the number of emails I was gathering more than doubled overnight.

Your lead magnet doesn’t have to be fancy; it can be a one-page PDF filled with tips, a checklist that focuses on your area of expertise, a printable resource, or a simple email course.

Need more examples? Here are some lead magnets that work miracles for other money bloggers:

#20: Nurture your email sequence.

Once you start gathering tons of emails and gaining momentum on your blog, a service like ConvertKit becomes a necessity. With ConvertKit, you can segment your email list so you’re not sending the same email to each of your readers every time.

Since your website probably focuses on more than one main topic, having this option can be a game-changer!

Eventually, you’ll want to start employing sales funnels into your strategy. With a sales funnel, you’ll send certain readers a series of emails aimed at tempting them into a purchase or an affiliate sale.

While you can set up a sales funnel manually, the best way to nurture your email list is with a service like MailChimp or ConvertKit!

#21: Review your top content.

Once you have a few monster blog posts and affiliate reviews up on your site, you’ll want to keep a close eye on your progress. By reviewing and updating your best content, you can make sure it’s accurate and give it the best chance at climbing up the ranks in terms of search engine optimization.

Some of my best – and most lucrative – blog posts have been completely overhauled at least five times. To make real money blogging, you have to keep your best content fresh and accurate all the time. The best way to do this is to keep a list of your top producing posts so you can update them at least 1-2 times per year.

#22: Survey your list.

You know what's better than being awesome? Becoming better every year.

As you grow into your role as a blogger, the best way to improve yourself is to ask your readers how you're doing – and what you could be doing better.

Creating a short survey for your list of subscribers can help you receive valuable feedback you can use to improve your website and, eventually, your profits.

A tactic I borrowed from Derek Halpern of Social Triggers is asking “What's the #1 thing you're struggling with?”

Since I have a financial blog, I ask what they are struggling with financially. For our Marriage More blog, we ask what kind of issues our readers are dealing with when it comes to their marriage.

If you have a fashion blog, you could ask for your reader's biggest wardrobe frustrations. If you're into fitness, you would ask about your reader's biggest problems with diet and exercise.

If you want to get more detailed information, you could even tie those questions into a short survey you can create for free with Google Forms. It doesn't matter how you get the information, as long as you get it.

Remember, your readers are the reason you're able to make money. The best way to grow your income while helping others is to figure out their pain points and create products, resources, and content that can help.

Start Making Money Blogging Today

If you follow every step on this list and commit to blogging for a full year, you will start earning $1,000 per month or more. It may take longer than you want it to, and Lord knows it won’t be easy.

But, I believe in you. And, you know what? As long as I have been blogging, I have never seen someone pour their soul into it for a full year and fail.

If you're feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to get started, I totally get that, too. That's why I created a free email series that can show you the step-by-step process for creating a profitable blog. By signing up today, you'll receive regular emails with action items to follow.

You can earn money blogging. Heck, you can even get rich. But remember, it all starts with that very first step.

The post How to Make Your First $1,000 Blogging (22 step action plan) appeared first on Good Financial Cents.

from All About Insurance https://www.goodfinancialcents.com/how-to-make-1000-blogging/

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mikegchambers · 8 years ago

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Baby steps to the cloud: migrating your corporate website

Cloud isn’t just for new projects —migrating an existing application like a website is often the preferred first step

It’s easy to get the impression that the cloud is so alien to on-premise IT that you have to wait until a new project comes along to try it out. Fortunately for patience-impaired like me, we can easily migrate existing workloads across and see immediate benefits.

Getting one migration project off the ground is the key to convincing the Powers That Be that 100% cloud is where the company wants to be in the future. This step is all about building credibility to achieve our ultimate goal of becoming cloud natives.

Quick Recap: Key Benefits of Cloud

While cost savings are usually the hook, that’s not what cloud is really about. At its core, cloud provides three benefits that are either needlessly hard or impossible to do yourself:

Availability: what percentage of time is your application ready for its users? While no system can ever reach 100%, we’re generally trying to do everything we can to be close to perfect. Being unavailable is the tech equivalent of a power outage — the TV is still on the wall but it’s blank.

Durability: how much of the system (code and data) are you expecting to lose? Hard disks will always fail, tornadoes will swallow up buildings and well-meaning people will always do stupid things. Durability is all about surviving the unholy trinity of entropy, disaster and human stupidity. In my TV analogy, the TV has been stolen.

Scalability: what can the system do to cope with increases and decreases in load? When your product gets a deal on Shark Tank, will it cope with a 10,000 times increase in traffic? This is a ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma with your own hardware because you inevitably end up with too few or too many resources. In real life, this is like having more TVs appear when you want to watch multiple channels, but vanishing when no longer needed.

Basically, is it working? Is it there? Do I have enough resources? Fault tolerance and high availability are snooze-inducing buzzwords for the average human, but flip the words around and they just mean your application can tolerate faults and will be available more than you would expect. In practice, pulling off this magic trick is all about finding bottlenecks and points of failure. In essence, you are creating a plan B for everything, always assuming plan A is going up in smoke.

I was going to say how the most unexpected things fail but a picture speaks 1000 words.

But you also need to determine which website is worth the effort. For a corporate webpage that manages employee’s tennis court reservations, who really cares if it only works 95% of the time running on someone desktop PC? Big deal if it breaks (apologies to tennis fans). But if your site is streaming video for the Game of Thrones finale, you damned well better achieve 100% availability (I’m looking at you, HBONow). This is clearly much better candidate for migration.

Example Project: Your Company’s Website

It’s not new, it’s not sexy, but your company’s website is important and it’s one of the few ways your customers get a glimpse into your internal technology horror show. It’s a good place to start for a cloud migration since the transition is well understood and your glorious success will be highly visible.

There are many ways to build a website on-premise but here is one of the most common approach:

A typical website configuration makes cloud people cry.

Bad, bad, bad. This is a sorry design based largely on the ‘hope and pray’ approach that has a unhappy track record for disappointment. If one piece fails, it all fails. Cue screaming customers, mad executives and pagers beeping at 3am.

Anecdotal personal experience, not scientific.

Apart from the declining availability that happens when you multiply lots of 99% probabilities together, it also cannot be upgraded without downtime. This is just about the laziest setup for a website (though surprisingly common) and while might be fine for a hobby blog — would be a train wreck for anything remotely popular. Let’s make it work properly a la cloud.

Pray that nobody kicks the server and the hard disk lasts forever because it scores low on our Big Three.

Version 1: Just add cloud!

In practice there are just as many ways to cloudify a project but here’s my first sketch at using AWS to lift this website into the 21st century. Marvel at my graphic for a few moments and I’ll explain on the other side…

Fun fact: 90% of the world’s cat videos are stored on S3.

This isn’t as complicated as it looks but it was fun to draw. Piece by piece, this is what we have:

VPC: the dotted line is like the electric fence around your cloud playground. “Virtual Private Cloud” is tech talk for your very own piece of cloud real estate.

Route 53 lets us point traffic at the domain name level wherever we want at massive scale. This is a smart managed networking service that we can later use to do all sorts of cleverness (like routing regional users or fighting off denial of service attacks).

CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN). These are extremely powerful, very cheap and loaded with kick-ass. Usually 90% of website content is static (e.g. images and video) so with a CDN — quick win alert! — you can offload this and release significant server resources. But wait, there’s more! The CDN can distribute to servers geographically closest to your visitor, so it also helps speed up your site for customers far, far away.

S3: Amazon’s mindbogglingly large storage system can securely store files, feed CloudFront, and even hold machine images for servers. In this example, we’ll keep 90% of our data here because it’s super-reliable, highly secure and cheap.

Regions: the diagram shows one region but it can be duplicated exactly to others. If you open an office in Asia, we can just roll out a copy to this region, update Route53 (so local customers hit their local region) and we’ll be done by dinnertime. Need a third region in Europe? Done.

Availability Zones: each region has at least two AZs. Why? Because power fails, networks go down and life happens. We mitigate this by having our infrastructure across two AZs so our customers will never know when an outage occurred.

Elastic Load Balancer (ELB): this takes every incoming request, determines which instances are available to help, and sends it over. If a zone is down, the ELB will be the piece that switches everything across. ELBs are the unsung heroes in orchestrating most of the cloud dance.

Auto-scaling: this is simpler than it sounds. When our instances get too busy (or freeze or die), auto-scaling steps in, powers up some new boxes, installs all the software we need and tells the ELB that it has more places to send work to. It’s the manager that watches the checkout line and says, ‘We need another register open’.

Instances: cloud lingo for ‘servers’. There was just one ‘webserver’ in the first diagram, now we have a fleet of interchangeable machines all doing the same thing. We can add more, take them offline, perform upgrades as needed and generally operate without impacting visitors negatively. We build these instances based off our custom images.

ElastiCache: caches remember the answers to questions and since webservers get asked the same questions frequently (‘hey, what’s the homepage look like?’), they can take the load off the database that would otherwise be doing the work. Caches are much faster than databases and are particularly useful for read-heavy applications like websites.

Database (RDS): scaling databases is hard, replication is scary, and most companies do it badly. RDS is a managed service that does this for you, allowing us to scale quickly with read replicas while also doing its own housekeeping, like backups and maintenance.

This Looks Expensive — and Complicated

I know what you’re thinking. “I just wanted a Honda Civic and you gave me a Tesla delivered by a SpaceX rocket.” I did, but fortunately it’s cheaper and more reliable than the Honda (if that’s even possible, hey Honda fans?).

This is the sort of environment you can build out in a few hours on AWS and might easily have an average running cost of a few hundred dollars a month (depending on your usage). The reason it’s so fast and cheap isn’t because I’m the best cloud guy in the world with extremely reasonable rates and a great can-do attitude, it’s because cloud is code. Let’s repeat that together (the cloud part):

Cloud is code. Infrastructure is code. Build it up. Throw it away.

Nobody is ordering servers, racking hardware or approving purchase orders. We simply build out a CloudFormation template (like a blue print for your house), click “Create” and automation happens. An army of bots builds exactly what we want and we’re done. The hardest part will be migrating files and content, and even that can be fairly simple with a few scripts.

Version 2: Simpler, Faster, Better

Ok, version one solved many of our problems presented in the Dire Stack of On-Premise Failure. It gave us much more availability, durability was effectively solved, and while scalability was impressive, it could still be improved.

Imagine you have a webpage that’s going to get massive amounts of traffic unpredictably across multiple geographic regions. Suddenly you get one million visitors from Australia when a TV ad runs during a national event, and then nothing for 24 hours. And now the traffic hits the West Coast, 10 million visitors during TV ads on cable in the evening, and then it goes quiet. How do you scale up fast enough or make sure the right regions are in place?

In order to accommodate this extreme traffic, I present for your consideration “version 2”:

In the classic website model, you need a web server, database and code to connect it together. In this new version:

Static HTML pages are served on the global CDN (CloudFront). These are just files thrown out to the user’s browser on request.

JavaScript pulls dynamic content through Lambda (via an API). This runs on the client (keeping the hard work on their side).

Lambda connects to ElastiCache, DynamoDB or RDS for the data. This is a massively-scalable tool that runs small chunks of code.

You might remember from last week’s blog post on Mobile Apps that this is a serverless implementation that effectively handles the scaling for you. It’s exceptionally resilient to denial of service attacks and offers blazing performance for a distributed visitor base. It’s also much cheaper to implement than version 1. While it’s not going to work for CMS-based sites that rely on the more traditional stack, it’s an A+ alternative for high traffic landing pages with a spiky demand curve, such as those targeted by TV ads.

What’s the smallest step you can take?

Sometimes the Big Bang migration can be alarming so it’s also worth mentioning a couple of small move alternatives that would greatly improve your overall website infrastructure with just a little cloud.

CDNs can and should be deployed to any and all public-facing websites. CDNs are cheaper than coffee. We’re talking pennies per gigabyte and this single step will have a huge performance improvement for any website. Seriously, it’s a no-brainer.

Lift and shift: if you moved the webserver and database from the first diagram into the cloud, you would expect a slight performance bump (cloud providers’ networks are faster than yours) and it could promote further baby steps to total cloudification. Over time it can morph into the version 1 diagram fairly easily.

Serve a backup site from S3: if your IT people are refusing to budge, one idea is to serve a backup version of the site from S3. This means whenever your site is down, a static version is served in its place. This will only work for certain types of site but it does allow you to handle failure a little more gracefully, and then opens the door to future cloud migration.

Store your code in cloud repositories. It’s a sensible safeguard but this practice also gets your development and IT groups familiar with automation tools. Automation is catnip to developers and it’s the Trojan horse to cloud.

There’s nothing alarming about automation at all.

Imagine the Possibilities for Your Applications

There are many ways to bring cloud into existing applications and workloads in your organization. The ephemeral nature of virtual hardware can be difficult to grasp and somewhat unsettling.

Pre-cloud, we built everything like it was poured concrete, a major production that was hard to change and move. Cloud providers gave us small ready-made pieces that are like Lego bricks. We can add, change, build up, tear down and have this enormous flexibility that takes a while to fully appreciate.

In most companies, getting ‘on premise’ servers versus cloud servers, it’s like comparing communist-era food rationing to Costco.

This simple example is just a website. Imagine what you could do for a distributed point of sale system in retail. You could create cloud-based services that securely support your cash registers, website and mobile e-commerce app. Write once, use everywhere. Mind blown.

Did you enjoy this? Click the little heart below!

Baby steps to the cloud: migrating your corporate website was originally published in A Cloud Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from A Cloud Guru - Medium http://ift.tt/2pf6OLF

#A Cloud Guru - Medium

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