#spent today working on a 250 word story for a competition

[wordswrittenbynight]

No one warns you how brutally difficult it is to write microfiction.

[itsclydebitches]

How do you manage to write so much? I have this fic I'm working on and I know exactly what I want to happen in the scenes, but I struggle with actually writing the prose for it and describing the events. Even getting 500 words out is hard, so seeing you churning out content is pretty amazing to me (especially because it's all so good). If you have any tips to share it would be really appriciated!

First - thank you so much, anon! I was literally just thinking tonight about how I haven’t written enough lately and then you come in with “How do you manage to write so much?” So I think that’s a good thing for every writer to keep in mind: how we might perceive our accomplishments doesn’t necessarily reflect what we’ve actually accomplished. Those feelings are something I’d like to address here. As is abundantly obvious, the advice I’m about to offer is stuff I often struggle to follow too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But let’s see... yes, I’ve got 10 tips (nice round number) for producing writing, approaching your writing, and dealing with that pesky “How do I describe events?” issue. These are in no good order:  

1. Reject the “Write ___ amount of words every day” advice. It doesn’t work. Or if it does work it’s because we’re prioritizing writing over literally everything else, which I personally don’t think is healthy. The days I haven’t written recently include things like “Battling a bad cold” and “Spent the day with Dad in the ER” (he’s fine!). If I had forced myself to write on those days it would have been in lieu of taking time to rest/recuperate, so I didn’t. If I were still demanding of myself, “You can’t lose your writing streak 😡” then I would have felt intensely guilty about taking that time to rest. That’s just training yourself to associate writing with negative emotions. Instead, I’ve started tracking my progress with Word Keeper.

As you can see, it’s all over the place, but over the last month I’ve found that it has given me a much better sense of what I’m accomplishing overall. Rather than getting upset about days where I only wrote a tiny amount, or didn’t write at all, I can now also easily remind myself of the days when I wrote a whole lot, or the days where I managed to be fairly consistent. Let your writing fluctuate. There’s something to be said for not being dependent on motivation (there are plenty of times where I encourage myself to write even if I don’t want to), but don’t hold yourself to overly rigid standards either. 

2. Consider rejecting the “Write for an hour every morning/carve out a specific time to do nothing but writing” advice. If that works for you, great. Me? I’ll never manage it. Beyond the fact that I would murder mornings if I could and, as established, don’t do well with a rigid schedule, my brain is way too hyperactive to focus on one task for long. And by “long” I mean... more than 10-15 minutes. So what I personally do is alternate tiny bits of writing with something else I want to accomplish, usually another task I’m having trouble focusing on. Let’s say I need to read an article and I want to write those 500 words. Both tasks are rather daunting. 500 words? 35 pages?? No thank you. I can, however, manage 100 words and 5 pages... so I just alternate. Read 5 pages. Write 100 words. Read 5 more pages. Another 100 words. Back and forth, with amounts that work for you. Whatever is doable, even if that means something like 10 words and half a page. And if you find yourself going, “Wait, wait just 100 more words so I can finish this scene,” all the better. Do that for an afternoon and you’ve made significant headway on both projects. You can also alternate with something you want to do. I finished the latest Before the Dawn recap by doing that with The Clone Wars. One 20 minute episode, then 250 words, essentially using my show as a reward system: write that little bit so you can find out what stupidity Anakin does next. 

Speaking of rewards...

3. Try using 4 The Words. I absolutely love this website because it turns writing into a game and I am an absolute sucker for validation of any sort. Essentially, you get to choose how much writing you want to get done in a single sitting - either timed or by word count - and that goal corresponds with a monster to defeat. Write the required amount in the allotted time period and you receive rewards for your avatar, experience, etc. If you’re like me and enjoy games at all, that’s a huge motivator. Maybe you’d never consider trying to write 750 words in a single sitting, but the 750 words monster drops the specific loot you need to finish a quest... so why not give it a try? I find that the time limits are quite generous and the system counts any words you’ve written, not what you decide to keep. Remember that writing is writing, so even if you churn out those 750 words and then decide you hate the whole scene, that time wasn’t wasted. It’s helping you figure out what you do want instead. 

4. Don’t set those rigid standards, but try to hold yourself accountable in some manner too. That’s why when I changed my blog theme I decided to put what project I was working on in the bio and what I planned to work on next. Whether anyone actually cares about that doesn’t matter, I perceive that as, “Damn I told everyone I’d have a Witcher drabble done next. Better work on that!” That veneer of accountability helps keep me on track. 

5. It sounds like you’ve already got an outline - which is great! Once you know what you want to happen, keep in mind that you don’t have to write it in that order. This is something I still really struggle with because I often post chaptered fics as I go. I can’t be writing Chapter 20 when Chapter 15 isn’t even out yet! But sometimes that’s the best way to get past your road block. If you’ve got a scene in your head that’s a little more clear, even if it’s just a tiny description or dialogue exchange, go write that instead of beating your head against the part where you’re stuck. 

6. Regarding the specific issue of prose and describing events: daydream about it. Be the most cliche, cringy author who falls headfirst into their own worlds. A lot of times when I’m stuck I try to stop thinking about this as me writing a scene. Rather, it’s a scene for me to escape into when I’m bored in the car, or falling asleep, or tuning out an awkward conversation. Presumably you want to spend time in the world you’ve created, so let yourself do that, either as an outside observer or taking the place of one of the characters. Fantasize about this moment and then afterwards think back to what your brain conjured up. Going, “I need to write this fight scene now” is kind of daunting and maybe you just sit there, having no idea how “fight scene” translates into actual pages of action. If, however, you daydream about an epic battle you might later go, “Oh yeah! I/they did that cool flip move to disarm the opponent. Let’s see if I can describe that...” 

7. If the problem is more “I know there’s going to be a cool flip move but how do I describe that without just saying ‘The hero did a cool flip move’???” Let yourself just write “The hero flipped the sword out of his enemy’s hands.” Probably the most annoying part about writing (besides, you know, all of it) is remembering that you can, should, and must revise. Write a shitty description and move on. Come back to it later. Composing the rest of the scene will help you make the description less shitty the second time around. And want to know a secret? It’s probably not nearly as shitty as you first thought it was. A lot of times I churn out what feels like truly horrific descriptions, let it sit for a while, and when I come back to the work as a “new” reader I think, “You know what? There are definitely things I want to change, but this isn’t nearly as bad as I remember it being...” Again, writers often can’t be trusted to judge their own accomplishments. 

8. Research things. Watch stuff. Read stuff - and pay attention to the fact that you’re currently reading to learn. No one is born knowing how to write compelling scenes. That comes of not just practice, but engaging with a ton of other stories and consciously/unconsciously pulling from them. Not sure how to write a cool fight scene? Go read some cool fight scenes. Watch your favorites on Youtube. Pull a detail from here, there, then weave them into something new. Some authors claim they won’t engage with any stories similar to their own because they don’t want to taint their own ideas, but that’s just trying to write without providing yourself with any fuel. If you want to know how to describe a farm, go read others’ descriptions of farms, look at pictures of farms, watch TV shows with farms in them, etc. Same with anything else you might be stuck on. 

9. Remind yourself that some kinds of writing are going to come more easily to you than others. That’s not just in regards to things like dialogue vs. prose, but also big categories like fiction vs. nonfiction. Me? I can (quite obviously...) write a ton when it comes to asks and recaps. Explaining my own thought process comes very easily to me, and I’m long-winded, which means that when the project is something like, “Tell readers what you thought about this book” I can churn out 4,000 words easy peasy. Fiction though? That’s a slog. That’s where I’m writing in 100 words chunks, sometimes pulling each word out with all the joy of enduring a root canal. I will never - EVER - be a Stephen King writing 2,000 words of fiction a day. And that’s okay! Every writer is different and it does no good to compare ourselves to others who are writing more (hard as that is) because there will always be someone doing it “better.” That’s a competition we can’t win. Getting writing done is as much a mindset as it is a skill. Teaching yourself to go, “Yeah! 50 words today!! :D” is going to help more than berating yourself with, “Oh. Only 50 words today :(” But a part of that is also recognizing that you probably wrote a whole lot more than just 50 words. Do you write for your job? Answer emails? Keep a journal? Answer asks? Text whole conversations with your friends? Writing of all sorts takes energy and it all “counts.” If you spent the day catching up on your messages, it’s no wonder you might struggle to write more during your free time. Saying you “haven’t written” today because you didn’t write fiction as well as all the writing we naturally do on a daily basis is absurd. Sometimes you’ve just got to recognize that and let yourself watch some TV instead. 

10. Finally, WRITE “BAD” THINGS. This is something I’m still really, really struggling with. It’s very much connected to #7, but try to let yourself accept what you’ve produced at a certain point. Doing that will, in time, help you produce more things in the first place. The author who obsesses over writing the perfect paragraph is unlikely to get to the second... and writing the second paragraph is what’s going to help them develop the skills to make the first paragraph better. Put aside the perfectionism. I’m currently trying to do that with my original work. I have lots of ideas for flash fiction and, like you, I know precisely what will happen in them... but I struggle to actually write the stupid things. I’ve recognized that a lot of that difficulty stems from how bad I perceive them to be. When a story doesn’t sound like that flash fiction with the national award attached to it my brain goes, “Well, looks like we’re trash! Time to stop writing forever and ever 🙃” At some point you’ve just got to take a mental broom and beat that bastard voice into the back of your mind, far enough to start writing again. Try to accept that no, our prose probably won’t win any awards. Also try to accept that hey, someday maybe it will. But neither can be reality until we actually write the story. So one of these days I’ll set a goal for a flash fiction, finish it, post it here for you masses to judge, and try to shrug off all the scary feelings that come with that. Every good writer has to write a LOT of bad stuff in order to start producing something decent, let alone good... so let yourself do that. The more we can concentrate on why we want to write, rather than those “Ugh this description isn’t good enough” or “I can’t even get 500 words done” feelings, the more we create a situation where, in time, we will write astounding descriptions and far more than 500 words. 

All of which is much MUCH easier said than done. But I hope this helps at least a little, anon! 💜

[bigyack-com]

Why the Success of The New York Times May Be Bad News for Journalism

The first time I met A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, I tried to hire him.That was back in the heady days of digital media in 2014, and I was at BuzzFeed News, one of a handful of start-ups preparing to sweep aside dying legacy outlets like the Times.Times stock was still sputtering, and the company had sold off everything but its furniture to keep paying for journalism.Mr. Sulzberger, then the heir apparent to lead the Times, politely declined my offer. And today, after eight years as BuzzFeed editor in chief, I find myself in his employ as the new media columnist.I’m stepping into the space opened a decade ago by David Carr, the late columnist who chronicled an explosion of new online outlets. My focus will probably be the opposite: The consolidation of everything from movies to news, as the media industry gets hollowed out by the same rich-get-richer, winner-take-all forces that have reshaped businesses from airlines to pharmaceuticals.And the story of consolidation in media is a story about the Times itself.The gulf between the Times and the rest of the industry is vast and keeps growing: The company now has more digital subscribers than The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the 250 local Gannett papers combined, according to the most recent data. And the Times employs 1,700 journalists — a huge number in an industry where total employment nationally has fallen to somewhere between 20,000 and 38,000.The Times so dominates the news business that it has absorbed many of the people who once threatened it: The former top editors of Gawker, Recode, and Quartz are all at the Times, as are many of the reporters who first made Politico a must-read in Washington.I spent my whole career competing against the Times, so coming to work here feels a bit like giving in. And I worry that the success of the Times is crowding out the competition.“The New York Times is going to basically be a monopoly,’’ predicted Jim VandeHei, the founder of Axios, which started in 2016 with plans to sell digital subscriptions but has yet to do so. “The Times will get bigger and the niche will get nichier, and nothing else will survive.”Janice Min, the editor who created Us Weekly and reinvented The Hollywood Reporter, said the Times’s broadening content mix poses a formidable obstacle for other digital subscription businesses.“Because we’re talking about the publishing business, it’s all still kind of sad, but in this parallel universe people talk about The New York Times in the way people in Hollywood talk about Netflix,” Ms. Min said. “It’s the tail that wags the dog, and it’s also the dog.”The rise of the Times from wounded giant to reigning colossus has been as breathtaking as that of any start-up. As recently as 2014, print advertising was collapsing and the idea that subscribers would pay enough to support the company’s expensive global news gathering seemed like a pipe dream.“We sold off every bit of the company we could sell off to hold our journalism investment as flat as humanly possible,’’ Mr. Sulzberger, who became publisher in 2018, told me in an interview last week. “All the smart people in media thought it was crazy, all our shareholders thought it was financially irresponsible.’’Just a few years later, amid a deepening crisis in American journalism, and a sustained attack from the president of the United States, Times stock has rebounded to nearly triple what it was in 2014 and the newsroom has added 400 employees. The starting salary for most reporters is $104,600.The paper is now quietly shopping for dominance in an adjacent industry: audio. The Times is in exclusive talks to acquire Serial Productions, the breakthrough podcast studio that has attracted more than 300 million downloads.The purchase requires deep pockets: Serial was for sale at a valuation of about $75 million, according to two people who were briefed on the deal, though The Times is expected to pay significantly less. (The Wall Street Journal first reported last month that Serial was for sale.)The deal, along with The Daily, the popular weekday podcast at The Times, could form the basis for an ambitious new paid product — like the company’s Cooking and Crossword apps — that executives believe could become the HBO of podcasts.When I spoke to Mr. Sulzberger last week, I was reminded of other figures in this digital economy who have experienced success at dizzying scale and speed, and still cannot believe it when you mention the word “monopoly.’’He sees plenty of competition for the Times — he cited cable news, though its own future is uncertain. What’s more, he says, Americans will buy more than one news subscription. He believes The Times is not dominating the market so much as creating one.“What I actually think you’re seeing is not a winner take all dynamic — what you’re actually seeing is a rising tide lifts all boats dynamism,” said Mr. Sulzberger (who no doubt would have flourished in that midlevel product job I offered him).His optimism is shared, at least publicly, by the small handful of news organizations that are scraping by on local subscriptions.“The Times has shown the rest of the industry a path to some success,” said Brian McGrory, editor of The Boston Globe, which has attracted more than 100,000 digital subscribers.Times executives say they are also looking for a way to help out their weaker cousins, given the threat that the collapse of local journalism poses to democracy.“But as they say in the airplanes, put your own oxygen mask on first before you start to help others,” said Mark Thompson, the newspaper’s chief executive.Because the Times now overshadows so much of the industry, the cultural and ideological battles that used to break out between news organizations — like whether to say that President Trump lied — now play out inside The Times.And The Times has swallowed so much of what was once called new media that the paper can read as an uneasy competition of dueling traditions: The Style section is a more polished Gawker, while the opinion pages reflect the best and worst of The Atlantic’s provocations. The magazine publishes bold arguments about race and American history, and the campaign coverage channels Politico’s scoopy aggression.I’m proud to be leaving BuzzFeed News as one of a handful of strong, independent newsrooms still standing amid the rubble of consolidation. But I miss the wide open moment 10 years ago, when we were among a wave of new players reimagining what news meant.My job as columnist here will be an exciting and uncomfortable one — covering this new media age from inside one of its titans (though I hope you’ll tell me if I ever get too far inside).And I hope that earlier era of innovation didn’t exist merely to create a farm team and some lessons for the newspaper equivalent of the 1927 Yankees.“The moat is so wide now that I can’t see anyone getting into it,” Josh Tyrangiel, former senior vice president of news at Vice who is now producing television and documentaries, said in an interview. “There’s no new thing coming. And the editor of Buzzfeed News, who was probably the chief insurgent, is now writing this column for you at The New York Times.” Read the full article

[judeblenews-blog]

9 highlights from Snapchat CEO’s 6,000-word leaked memo on survival

Adults, not teens. Messaging, not Stories. Developing markets, not the U.S. These are how Snapchat will make a comeback, according to CEO Evan Spiegel . In a 6,000-word internal memo from late September leaked to Cheddar’s Alex Heath, Spiegel attempts to revive employee morale with philosophy, tactics and contrition as Snap’s share price sinks to an all-time low of around $8 — half its IPO price and a third of its peak. “The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was compromising our core product value of being the fastest way to communicate,” Spiegel stresses throughout the memo regarding “Project Cheetah.” It’s the chat that made Snapchat special, and burying it within a combined feed with Stories and failing to build a quick-loading Android app have had disastrous consequences.

Spiegel shows great maturity here, admitting to impatient strategic moves and outlining a cohesive path forward. There’s no talk of Snapchat ruling the social app world here. He seems to understand that’s likely out of reach in the face of Instagram’s competitive onslaught. Instead, Snapchat is satisfied if it can help us express ourselves while finally reaching even meager profitability. Snapchat may be too perceived as a toy to win enough adults, too late to win back international markets from the Facebook empire and too copyable by good-enough alternatives to grow truly massive. But if Snap can follow the Spiegel game plan, it could carve out a sustainable market through a small but loyal audience who want to communicate through imagery. Here are the most interesting takeaways from the memo — and why they’re important:

1. Apologizing for rushing the redesign

There were, of course, some downsides to moving as quickly as a cheetah We rushed our redesign, solving one problem but creating many others . . . Unfortunately, we didn’t give ourselves enough time to continue iterating and testing the redesign with a smaller percentage of our community. As a result, we had to continue our iterations after we launched, causing a lot of frustration for our community. Spiegel always went on his gut rather than relying on user data like Facebook. Aging further and further away from his core audience, he misread what teens cared about. The appealing buzz phrase of “separating social from media” also meant merging messaging and Stories into a chaotic list that made both tougher to use. Spiegel seems to have learned a valuable lesson about the importance of A/B testing.

2. Chat is king

Our redesigned algorithmic Friend Feed made it harder to find the right people to talk to, and moving too quickly meant that we didn’t have time to optimize the Friend Feed for fast performance. We slowed down our product and eroded our core product value. . . . Regrettably, we didn’t understand at the time that the biggest problem with our redesign wasn’t the frustration from influencers – it was the frustration from members of our community who felt like it was harder to communicate . . . In our excitement to innovate and bring many new products into the world, we have lost the core of what made Snapchat the fastest way to communicate. When Snap first revealed the changes, we predicted that “Teen Snap addicts might complain that the redesign is confusing, jumbling all content from friends together.” That made it too annoying to dig out your friends to send them messages, and Snap’s growth rate imploded, with it losing 3 million users last quarter. Expect Snap to optimize its engineering to make messages quicker to send and receive, and even sacrifice some of its bells and whistles to make chat faster in developing markets.

3. Snapchat must beat Facebook at best friends

Your top friend in a given week contributes 25% of Snap send volume. By the time you get to 18 friends, each incremental friend contributes less than 1% of total Snap send volume each. Finding best friends is a different problem than finding more friends, so we need to think about new ways to help people find the friends they care most about. Facebook’s biggest structural disadvantage is its broad friend graph that’s bloated to include family, co-workers, bosses and distant acquaintances. That might be fine in a feed app, but not for Stories and messaging where you only care about your closest friends. With friend lists and more, Facebook has tried and failed for a decade to find better ways to communicate with your besties. This is the wedge through which Snapchat can attack Facebook. If it develops special features for luring your best friends onto the app and staying in touch with them for better reasons than just maintaining a Snap “Streak,” it could hit Facebook where it can’t defend itself.

4. Discover soars as Facebook Watch and IGTV stumble

Our Shows continue to attract more and more viewers, with over 18 Shows reaching monthly audiences of over 10M unique viewers. 12 of which are Original productions. As a platform overall, we’ve grown the amount of total time spent engaging with our Shows product, almost tripling since the beginning of the year. Our audience for Publisher Stories has increased over 20% YoY, and we believe there is a significant opportunity to continue growing the number of people who engage with Discover content . . .We are also working to identify content that is performing well outside of Snapchat so that we can bring it into Discover. Discover remains Snapchat’s biggest differentiator, scoring with premium video content purposefully made for mobile. What it really needs, though, are a few must-see tent-pole shows to drag in a wider audience that can get hooked on the reimagined digital magazine experience.

5. But Discover is a mess

Our content team is working hard to experiment with new layouts and content types in the wake of our redesign to drive increased engagement. Snapchat Discover is an overcrowded pile of clickbait. News outlets, social media influencers, original video Shows and aggregated user content collections all battle for attention in a design that feels overwhelming to the point of exhaustion. Thankfully, Snapchat seems to recognize that more cohesive sorting with fewer images and headlines bombarding you might make Discover a more pleasant lean-back consumption experience.

6. Aging up to earn money

Most of the incremental growth in our core markets like the US, UK, and France will have to come from older users who generate higher average revenue per user . . . Growing in older demographics will require us to mature our application . . . Many older users today see Snapchat as frivolous or a waste of time because they think Snapchat is social media rather than a faster way to communicate. Changing the design language of our product and improving our marketing and communications around Snapchat will help users understand our value . . . aging-up our community in core markets will also help the media, advertisers, and Wall Street understand Snapchat. Snapchat can’t just be for cool kids anymore. Their lower buying power and life stage make them less appealing to brands. The problem is that Snapchat risks turning off younger users by courting their older siblings or adults. If, like Facebook, users start to feel like Snapchat is a place for parents, they may defect in search of the next purposefully built app to confuse adults to stay hip.

7. Finally prioritizing developing markets

We already have many projects underway to unlock our core product value in new markets. Mushroom allows our community to use Snapchat on lower-end devices. Arroyo, our new gateway architecture, will speed up messaging and many other services . . . It might require us to change our products for different markets where some of our value-add features detract from our core product value. Sources tell me Snapchat’s future depends on the engineering overhaul of its Android app, a project codenamed “Mushroom.” Slow video load times and bugs have made Snapchat practically unusable on low-bandwidth connections and old Android phones in the developing world. The company concentrated on the U.S. and other first-world markets, leaving the door open for copycats of Stories built by Instagram (400 million daily users) and WhatsApp (450 million daily users) to invade the developing world and dwarf Snap’s 188 million total daily users. In hopes of a smooth rollout, Snapchat is already testing Mushroom, but it will have to do a ton of marketing outreach to convince frustrated users who ditched the app to give it another try.

8. Fresh ideas, separate apps

We’re currently building software that takes the millions of Snaps submitted to Our Story and reconstructs parts of the world in 3D. We can then build augmented reality experiences on top of those models and distribute them as Lenses . . . If our innovation compromises our core product of being the fastest way to communicate, we should consider create separate applications or other ways of delivering our innovation. Snapchat has big plans for augmented reality. It doesn’t just want to stick animations over the top of anywhere, or create AR art installations in a few big cities. It wants to build site-specific AR experiences across the globe. And while everything the company has built to date has lived inside of Snapchat, it’s willing to spawn standalone apps if necessary so that it doesn’t bog down its messaging service. That could give Snapchat a lot more leeway to experiment.

9. The freedom of profitability

Our 2019 stretch output goal will be an acceleration in revenue growth and full year free cash flow and profitability. With profitability comes increased autonomy and freedom to operate our business in the long term best interest of our community without the pressure of needing to raise additional capital. Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter. Snapchat ended up selling 2.3 percent of its equity to a Saudi Arabian prince in exchange for $250 million to lengthen its rapidly shortening runway. And last year it took $2 billion from Chinese gaming giant Tencent. Deals like that could threaten Snapchat’s ability to prioritize its goals alone, not the moral imperatives or developer platforms that would benefit its benefactors. Once profitable, Snapchat won’t have to worry so much about struggling with short-term user growth and can instead focus on retention, societal impact and its true purpose — creativity.

Via: Techcrunch Read the full article

[beatseo-blog]

Backlink Energizer

https://beatseo.net/backlink-energizer/

You Need To Be On Top Of Google's Page One To Earn The Serious Bank FACT IS : You'll Need Backlinks To Rank Sadly ... Most Marketers Are Building Backlinks Google Will Never Index or Count Here's The Secret That Will Propel You To The Top ALARMING New Case Study Reveals The Ugly Truth About Your Backlinks Backlink Index Syndication System Case Study: We took a total of 300 new backlinks that were built on near identical websites - using identical methods all within 48 hours of eachother. We then created TWO (2) Control Groups Energized and NOT Energized. Each Group contains 75 Spun Articles and, 75 Profiles from the same Web 2.0 community. 150 backlinks total in each. We Knew The Energizer Was Good. But These Results Even Shocked Us! Links left to be found - naturally - by Google had a dismal index rate. These NOT Energized Links even began falling out of the index at an alarming 73%!

These 150 Links Were NOT Energized - Ugly

Live Examples From The Case Study: This Is Control Group "A" - With Non-Energized Links...

    Only 20% Of Non-Energized Links Were Indexed After 7 Days - What A Waste!

  Now Control Group B With Energized Links...

    88.6% Of The Energized Links Are Indexed And Running Strong After 7 Days! Without Energizing, Over 80% Of Your Link Building Efforts Are Going To Waste!Can You Afford To Lose 80% Of Your Valuable Links?

  The Story Doesn't Need To Get Ugly For You ... Your Links Can Get Energized By Our Shockingly Effective, Battle Tested Real World Proven - SEO B.L.I.S.S. Back Link Index Syndication System

    Here's How It Works... Most links you build are worthless... And spending hours tediously building links, or spending hundreds of dollars or more outsourcing the work, just to find out a few weeks (or even days) later that your links have been de-indexed from Google and other top search engines... It's enough to make you sick. This plug-in automatically "energizes" every single link you build... And once they're "energized", they have roughly a 90% chance to get - and more importantly stay - permenantly indexed by the search engines...I Needed To Find A Way To STOP Wasting My Linking Efforts... Like many other marketers, I have far too often felt anger and frustration that our Search Engine rankings, and thus our income - could be tied to the whims of some creepy crawling robotic ghost in the Google machine. The constant rank checking, the scores of late nights logged into Google's Webmaster Tools ... staring at the screens, wondering WHERE were all those juicy backlinks we all work so hard for.Why wasn't Google finding ALL of those links? Why weren't the links showing up faster? Why can't we get past our competitors sooner? Why does it take weeks instead of days for Google to recognize all the hard work and efforts we put into backlinking our sites? It was enough to make a crazy marketer almost sane!

I Needed A Better Solution So I Teamed Up and Set Out On A Mission

I knew there had to be a better way to get maximum value out of all those backlinks and get better SERP results faster.... I tried a whole myriad of expert methods and software tools professing to be THE Solution. I "juiced" those links, I "boosted" em, I even put them on the Express ... Result?Those links were on a runaway train to Never Get Indexed! Worse yet, I had invested hours of time creating these special sites that were supposed to bring that Google Bot a crawlin'. Those half baked plans only resulted in more Web 2.0 sites in the morgue ... Death By Moderator. It was just another trainwreck and Google bot was the engineer. But, all was NOT lost. I'd learned what not to do, and more so, what it takes to get Google to consistantly add my backlinks to it's index.I finally found a solution...

What Happens When You Mix A PHP Coding SEO Mad Scientist With A Marketer Hellbent On A Mission... THE Wordpress SEO Plugin Of The Year!

You get a Google Index A$$ Kicking piece of automation that's THE fastest, THE easiest to use and, THE most effective tool available to get your backlinks indexed and into Google's cache... Pure and Simple - There's No IF's - AND's or BUT's about it ... If you can install a WordPress blog and a plugin - then you'll be Energizing your backlinks in no time flat!The faster you get your links indexed - the faster Google pays attention- the faster your rankings improve!It's truly the perfect marriage of SEO and automation technology... We took the universal simplicity of the WordPress blogging platform and it's "So EZ Grandma Can Use It" Plugin features - and turned it into a high powered, autopilot, Google Bot attracting, backlink syndication machine! It truly is pure SEO B.L.I.S.S. No More Messin' with that PHP server stuff! We buried all the complex technology deep in the guts of WordPress so you never have to bother with it! Copy and Paste simplicity ... you simply tell Energizer how to login to your Web 2.0 sites and other blogs - and it just works! No more post stealing gatekeepers like Ping.fm or Posterous. You ... are in total control, and we show you how our Smart Post technology will keep you in Total Control.

Don't Abandon Those Backlinks Plug Them Into the ENERGIZER!

To Energize your links, you simply follow these simple steps... 1. Upload the plug-in (About 2 minutes). 2. Import your web 2.0 accounts (About 10-15 minutes). 3. Import a list of links you want to energize (about 2 minutes). 4. Let the plug-in do the work automatically while you reap the benefits of higher rankings and more traffic!It really is that simple! It works because it syndicates your links to other websites and web 2.0 properties and makes sure they're noticed by the search engines... While thousands of links drop off of Google on a daily basis, you can be sure your links will stay indexed and powerful for years to come...

Powerful SEO - Easy To Use, Familiar Wordpress Plugin Interface

It Energizes your backlinks, like your own personal SEO Robot ... by automatically taking massive action every hour of every day - even while you're sleeping... Creating content filled with backlinks to your backlinks - drawing Google bot to your SERP boosting backlink pages like an irresistible magnet. Energizer dramatically increases both the speed, and the amount of your backlinks Google indexes by as much as 400%.We have personally tested and PROVEN this, and reveal all in the free report that comes with the plug-in. We're not talking spammy content or post after post of those shortened urls that No Web Master or Site Moderator wants inundating their sites ...It's the right content... FREE high quality content that webmasters LOVE to have on their sites... Not some spun junk that's going to get deleted the second a moderator sees it...And it attracts the Google bot like CRAZY! The faster Google finds and credits your backlinks, the faster your pages can blow past your competitors in the Search Engines, the Faster Your Money Sites start earning! Pretty bold proclamation there I know.... The thing is, we've built out over 250 Web 2.0 sites on the most popular platforms that most of the other guys had to quit using. They kept getting shut down....Our content and our backlinks stick.We spent thousands of dollars and countless hours testing and tweaking to make sure we get this right - And we have...

The Results For These Guys Have Been Amazing

    For indexing, right now I use Steve Aylor's (sputnik here and 4morereferrals at WF) Backlink Energizer. Once a BLE index cluster has been active for a couple of weeks and I've thrown a few links at those sites (nothing major really. Yahoo site explorer might show 20-25 links per site), I typically get somewhere between 75-85% indexing within 48 hours of being posted through BLE [ Backlink Energizer ]. Tom Goodwin Owner Backlinks Forum

"It is pure SEO BLISS!"

Steve,Before I say anything I want to thank you for your counsel and testing when I was building Niche Press Platinum. We appreciate all your help, and NPP has since become popular and powerful.When you told me about your new Wordpress plug-in, and how it worked, I was eager to test it out. How could I say no? After all, you did help me a lot with Niche Press Platinum, and if you built all those links back to articles on our network - how could I lose!From the testing and reports we did, it was easy to see that Backlink Energizer not only created backlinks to our users posts it did it in a steady and consistent manner!Out of the 150 pages, 142 out of 150 links were indexed by Google!It is pure SEO BLISS! = )We are now installing the plug-in on several blogs to continue to Energize our network. We will be sure to let our clients know how they too can Energize their content on our network and everywhere they get backlinks.Again thanks for all your input and I will be looking out for your next release! Best of Luck, Russ Hayes Niche Press Platinum

Revolutionary! This is the word that I feel best describes Backlink Energizer. To be completely honest with you it makes existing competition seem like cheap knockoffs, and it goes above and beyond what it promises at every turn in terms of features and Steve's awesome service. Nothing, and I mean, nothing, that is around today can really even hold a candle to the sheer luminous brilliance that it is dripping with. In short: Don't make the mistake of putting it off - this is one product you can't afford to miss. By: http://www.autoblogqueen.com Tricia Abney

As far as Backlink Energizer... IT ROCKS!!! Steve A., out did himself! If you follow the instructions as they are laid out, you can put your backlinks on natural steroids... and this type of link juice leaves no side affects and won't get you into trouble with the FEDs... hehehe BAM! This morning I'm in the process of building "7" BLISS clusters. I use SHWP blogs, plus the Web 2.0 properties in Backlink Energizer, plus Niche Platinum Press by Russ. That combination creates an awesome synergistic effect that will send your SERP rankings into the vaunted top spot. My final analysis, Get Backlink Energizer and get if NOW! Not tomorrow... NOW! To fully use Backlink Energizer, you will want to add SetCronJob to your arsenal of IM Tools. They have a free version but to implement a full scale automated BL building campaign, it is advisable to upgrade to the silver or gold plan, which is only $10.00, $20.00 annually respectively. Oh and have no fears about Cron Jobs; they are as easy as turning on your computer and bringing up Microsoft Word. Plus, if you get stuck, which I doubt it, the owner of SetCronJobs, Nguyen, will get you on the good foot in a hurry. One last thing, Steve offers "BLISS Cluster Packs" These packs are all of the Web properties set up and rearing to go. Once they are delivered to you, all you have to do at that point is copy and paste and then click, "Go baby go." I recommend that you purchase at least "1" BLISS Cluster Pack, that way you can use the spreadsheet they provide as a template for when you build your own BLISS Clusters. But then again, at the prices he's offering buy a boatload! Backlink Energizer will probably be one of my best purchases this year and that's saying a lot! Giles, the Crew Chief

With a vast range of software tools and services that can easily overwhelm a newbie, there is bright-light in darkness of overhype and poor post customer service – Backlinkgoldmine range of products. They give unbeatable value and deliver a post customer experience that is the best in the business. I am a fan and I am convince you will be so too!” Many thanks, Gary Young Internet Marketing Guru AB Sweden

"You will see the fastest results with Backlink Energizer and more importantly the results are stable." Link Boosting /Indexing pretenders MOVE OVER!Steve Aylor is at it again. Backlink Energizer is the fastest link recognition and page caching tool I have ever seen. And I can say without a doubt, this is true automation.Backlink Energizer is sooo simple to set up and when we combined it with the links we built using Backlink Goldmine and Backlink Bazooka, it truly is an explosive combination. It's helped propel multiple pages and keywords to page 1 on Google for us.Where other so-called competitors want to charge you per "installation", Steve has made this an absolute steal.If you are considering any kind of Backlink enhancing program, you can't find a better deal than this. And I have tried them all. You will see the fastest results with Backlink Energizer and more importantly the results are stable.Most powerful indexing and caching tool available. Thanks Steve Sincerely, John Dzeima Boresha

"We use this to build backlinks for our network and it works like GOLD!" Backlink Energizer from the guys over at Backlink Goldmine is exactly what it states!We use this to build backlinks for our network and it works like GOLD! Extremely easy to use and really gets the job done.This is a great tool to have in your SEO arsenal and I highly recommend this to anyone who is trying to acheive backlink indexation results. If you want your backlinks in Google's Index fast, this is the tool to do it. Don Wells Everlonglp3 - Warrior Forum

Do You Want To Experience Results Like These? Need To Know More Before Getting Plugged In?

Fully understandable ... in fact, encouraged. We always want our customers to make well informed decisions about their financial Business Building Investments ... regardless of how large, or in this case, small. Please keep reading ... there's more, and there's also our unconditional Risk FREE Guarantee!

Who Should Be Using The Energizer

  Marketers Who Want More Profile Backlinks Indexed Faster... Resulting in highly targeted long term traffic and rankings...

Marketers Who Are Sick Of Wasting Good Links & Their Time... And want to see REAL results for their efforts...

Any Marketer Wanting Maximum Value From Every Backlink... Make EVERY link 10-100 times more valuable...

Marketers SICK Of Hacking On-Server PHP To Index Links

Marketers Wanting THE Easiest To Install Link Index Software

Marketers Wanting To Increase Links Found By Google 200%

  What You Need ... To Use The Energizer

  A Fresh New WordPress Blog Installed At Your Host

UserName / Passwords For Your Web 2.0 Accounts [ If Any ]

15 Minutes To Install A Plug In & Fill In EZ Info Fields

Copy N Paste A Text File Of Your Backlinks To Index

Copy N Paste A Text File Of HOT Keywords For Anchor Text

A Plan How To Spend All Your New FREE TIME!

ENERGIZER Indexes Links Non-Stop A Virtual SEO Guru - Minus The Attitude Packed Into This Mighty WordPress Plugin

  Energizer Transforms WordPress Into Unstoppable SEO Robots

Fantastico - WordPress - Plugin - Go! NO Complex Server PHP

You're In Control - Energize An UNLIMITED Number of Backlinks

Low One Time Fee - NOT Another ^$!@#! Monthly Subscription!

Easily Adjust Your Number of Posts Per Day

Instantly Dial Up The Number of Links Per Post

You Control The Keywords To Use As Anchor Text Links

Posts Content Google Desires - FULL RSS + Video and Images

Keep Your Web 2.0 Sites Rockin'... Smart Post = Mod Friendly!

Smart Posts To Your Own Self Hosted WP Blog Network

Smart Posts To Web 2.0 Site Blogger

Smart Posts To Web 2.0 Site Posterous

Smart Posts To Web 2.0 Site WordPress.com

Smart Posts To Web 2.0 Site TypePad

Smart Posts To Web 2.0 Site Tumblr

Smart Posts To Web 2.0 Site Live Journal

Smart Posts To Web 2.0 Site Xanga

Smart Posts To Web 2.0 Site Multiply

Like An SEO Guru On Staff ! Energizer = Yrs of SEO Skills Inside

Can Rapidly Improve Your Backlinking Efforts by Over 400%

The Easiest System To Index High Volumes Of Backlinks

Fastest, Simplest, Best Priced Link Index Tool - BAR NONE

  Supercharge Your Links, Traffic And Ranking Starting Today

It doesn't get much better than this... You simply upload the plug-in, and let it handle hours of tedious work on complete autopilot, multiplying the value of every single link to your websites and catapulting you to the top of the search engines...

Plug Your Backlinks Into The ENERGIZER Today!

  I love when we get to this part... You know, you could read this page for hours, and I could continue to tell you story after story, benefit after benefit, and reason after reason about how our Backlink Energizer could help change your marketing efforts in a big way - and it can! I could go on and on about all the different ways you can leverage this technology to give yourself an almost unfair 400% advantage over your competition, and their weak, likely never to be found by Google backlinks ...But you already know - More links indexed equals more traffic and money in your pocket...It's time for action. You need to get your links plugged into the Backlink Energizer and enjoying the benefits of SEO B.L.I.S.S. ... Today! You've got the most powerful WordPress SEO plugin developed for backlinking right on the screen in front of you. Only YOU can - figureatively - take those lost, lifeless, longing to be indexed backlinks and fire them up and breathe new life and energy into them! Those lost, but hard earned backlinks aren't going to jump into the Search Engine's Index by themselves! Take the Next Step... You don't even have to get your own hands dirty ... put your own SEO Robot to work today. Start pumping the Search Engine Indexes full of your of your new energized backlinks on autopilot! This one simple to use plugin could EASILY be worth a fortune to your business... But I want you to see the power for yourself first hand...

Take A Full 60-Days To See Real Cash In Hand Results Or You Don't Pay... 100% Satisfaction Guarantee

I want you to experience the software for yourself... Everyone is going to experience different results based on the niches your targeting, your keywords and your marketing plan....I want you to be 100% sure that this software is right for you. I want to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's just as powerful as I say it is, and if it's not, you don't pay. It's as simple as that. Go ahead and download it today, you can put it to use in the next 5 minutes... And if you don't agree that this a MUST HAVE SEO Wordpress plug-in that will easily pay for itself the first time you energize your links...If you don't experience amazing results over the next 60-days, just shoot me an email, I'll refund your money in full within 24 hours... You've got absolutely nothing to lose.... And you can be energizing your those old dead backlinks, and super-charging every new link you build in just a few minutes from now...

Seize The Day ... Take Action ... ENERGIZE Your Links, Your Traffic AND Your Profits ...

  Yes Steve, I'm ready to Take Action and increase my backlinking efforts using the SEO B.L.I.S.S. technology in your SERP Crushing Backlink Energizer Plugin. I'd love to easily Energize and index 1000's of my backlinks... and improve my SERP rankings even faster! Thanks for the 60 Day, No-Hassle Risk Free Guarantee. It's obvious to me now that this automation is worth hundreds of dollars. Both in my time, and the sheer volume of backlinks I can index. Let's get this started right now. Thank You and To Your Success, Steve Aylor P.S. - This WILL help propel you to the top of the search engines... This WILL be THE tool you turn to on a daily basis to promote your websites... Download it now and start seeing results today - I WILL be raising the price back to $67 in the near future, and you'll NEVER see it priced this low again... P.P.S. - This plug-in WILL help you in the search engines... You will get more traffic and higher rankings as a direct result of using it... Plus you get a full 60-days to see it for yourself or you get your money back... Download it today and start seeing the amazing results first hand....

 DOWNLOAD 

[sdfile url="https://rg.to/file/30d2c9f2b53b2e67107fcb691609c11b/Backlink_Energizer_1.6.rar.html"] Pass unzip (if): beatseo.net Keywords search: Backlink Energizer backlink energizer 1.6

[rivaco]

Video Marketing: Trends to follow in 2018

Videos are everywhere. (Image Source: Vecteezy)

The second quarter of the year is just around the corner. And what could be a better way to step into a new phase than with video marketing ruling the roost.

Over the past few years, videos have ushered in a very unique and popular method of storytelling. And if predictions are anything to go by, global consumer internet video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2019. Don’t believe it? You can watch the trend live in action on any social media feed.

Think of all the videos you saw on the internet over the past one or two years, and calculate the total time you spent watching them. As a marketer, that’s the opportunity you’re gunning for in 2018: tap into the time your current or potential user spends watching videos on the internet.

So before you sit back and scribble your video plans with your team, make yourself some coffee and check through these video marketing insights that could help you go a long way in 2018:

My 10-second glory

Remember the time when Instagram only allowed you to upload 10-second videos? Instagram knows their audience loves consuming video content so much, that they:

· First extended the video duration limit from 10 sec to 1 min

· Then added a separate section for just videos on their explore feed

· And finally made video stories larger than Snapchat ever did, and extended them to DMs

Instagram is the marketing clover leaf that SMEs have been looking for. Marketers have realised the vast potential the app has, which is why you’ll see some really popular faces promoting brands of all kinds. The result? Instagram now has 800 million active users, and we all know we make up for that humongous figure.

The only way to really crack Instagram marketing is to post the right kind of video at the right time. And you know it’ll help if your videos don’t look like hard pitch selling ads.

Live to tell the story you love

Stories: Snapchat brought them. Facebook tried to work them. But Instagram owned them.

What first seemed ripped off, Instagram Stories are now surpassing its competition by acquiring 250 million daily active users comparing to Snapchat’s 173 million.

Stories are pictures/videos that last upto 24 hours for people to view, post which they expire. What really pushes people to view these stories while they travel to work/eat meals/feed dogs/walk the beach/literally do anything, is the fear of missing out on it before it expires in 24 hours. Some brands have undoubtedly played well on the temporary nature of stories and made sure people are watching them, in action.

However — as is true for all populated social media platforms — brands would need to invest more in creating the perfect stories that people don’t tap through, if they really want to claim an undivided share in a crowded market of raining videos.

Going live in 3…2…1

Instagram, Facebook, and now Youtube. Why are live feeds everywhere? Because first, they establish instant connection, and live journalistic streaming on television is a passe. Also, with internet and live streaming access to anyone who signs up on social media, there’s a lot of personal interaction that is taking place between the story-tellers (in our case, brands) and the listeners (the viewers, if we may). This personal interaction accounts for immediate feedback for the brands.

Suppose you’re an already established name in the business of producing tea. But one day if you were to start manufacturing coffee, you can just hit live on your social media channels and ask your followers whether they’d love for you to innovate in a certain direction. People can leave comments on live videos and express themselves for an immediate sense of gratification.

Of course, live videos play on the FOMO angle too because you’re most likely going to miss what your favourite influencers and brands have to talk about once the video is over. To improve customer relationships, expect brands in 2018 to logistically prep up and step up for live feed sessions.

Oh, did you hear about Instagram helping you go live with a friend? We think it’s going to bump up video collaboration among brands and influencers to a whole new level.

Wait, video or ad?

A small research by Hubspot suggests that a whopping 80% of users recall a video ad they viewed in the past 30 days. Marketing done right?

Video ads are all on platforms. What’s the identification of a good ad? When you can’t tell until the end whether you were being sold something to. Youtube has ads strategically placed between songs. For a moment, you could be confused whether it’s really a song or an ad before the song even begins. Facebook recorded a 47% surge in ad revenue in their earnings in early 2017, increasing their ad revenue to nearly $9.2 billion and much of this came from video ads. Clearly, according to both Youtube and Facebook, short-form advertising is all about effectively competing for user’s attention as they scroll through their home feed.

Ads have become a necessary evil in the world of digital marketing. But you can always work out a way to make them look less cringy and more pleasant. Here’s a list of top performing video ads curated by the king of videos, Youtube.

Learning in action

2018 will take the trend of explainer videos further than where it stands today. From learning how to change a tire, to how to use an app, video is the best medium to explain anything. This will give space to brands to experiment with different kind of videos. Explainer videos can be made interesting with the use of sound, light, music, and interaction technique.

Interactive videos prompt you to click on a specific section in the video to move forward to the next. Instead of just being a lecture for a passive user, interactive videos actually engage a user in the process, to provide an immersive video experience. While interactive videos aren’t really a new trend, to say they’re going to become immensely popular in 2018, would be to aptly sum it up.

Ahead of their movie, Focus, Warner Bros launched this video as a clever interactive campaign. Brands that make slightly complicated products can use interactive videos for their walkthrough, for both internal training and communication, and external.

Quora jumped on the bandwagon of making explainer videos last year when it attempted a beta video QnA for their website. Because it’s obviously easier to understand why or how certain things work when it’s in action.

AR and the future of video marketing

Augmented reality (AR) provides an opportunity for brands to garner organic reach on social media. Now that AR is a possibility, brands must consider how they can develop branded augmented experiences for customers.

AR captures the essence of video marketing in its truest form, by providing high quality interaction experiences with the customers resulting in durable brand-consumer relationships. It began with popular apps like Snapchat rolling out 3D bitmojis and face recognition techniques. 2018 may see better use of AR across multiple industries.

Our word

We think 2018 should not be your business’s year to be camera shy. As Seth Godin once said, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but the stories you tell.”

Authored by Shivangi Gautam, who loves good video ads so much that her friends wish she’d stop sharing so many of them. Also a content marketer at Flock.

Consider these for your next read:

Boosting one e-commerce business at a time!

To lead or learn to lead?

Video Marketing: Trends to follow in 2018 was originally published in Flock Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

[yahoo-roto-arcade-blog]

Recap of experts draft: Mad Max slides to second round in Friends & Family

Mad Max, beyond thunderdome (AP)

As much as the Yahooligans love to defend the home turf in the annual Yahoo Friends & Family League, we’ve got our work cut out for ourselves this year. Rotoworld’s Ryan Boyer is the defending champ and on a nice run, and MLB.com juggernaut Fred Zinkie has been added to the 2017 field. Throw in the usual staunch challengers from RotoWire, Rotoworld, the Wall Street Journal and Razzball, and the competition has never been tougher. (On the plus side internally, Yahoo’s Jason Klabacha is also joining the fray. Last year he willed the Cubs to a World Championship; this year he’ll focus on more personal tasks, like his fantasy players.)

[Sign up for Yahoo Fantasy Baseball: Get in the game and join a league today]

Add it all up and we had a 14-team bloodbath on Tuesday, a 364-pick meandering that answered a few questions but raised many more. We’ll let the combatants retell the story in their own words. Everyone started with a graph or two in any direction they chose, then we specifically inquired about steals and reaches.

As you consider the results, keep these specs in mind:

— standard 5×5 format

— transactions capped at 125

— only one catcher and four outfielders required; two utility players

— 1400 innings-pitched maximum; no minimum

— trading allowed, with a deadline of Aug. 13

Let’s get to it, if you have an hour to kill and want to improve your winning chances this year. (If not: too long, didn’t read.)

Michael Salfino – Wall Street Journal/Yahoo – @michaelsalfino

Previous F&F Finishes: 10th, 8th, 12th, 13th, 2nd, 7th, 11th, 12th

1. (1) Mike Trout (LAA – OF)

2. (28) Yu Darvish (Tex – SP)

3. (29) Daniel Murphy (Was – 1B,2B)

4. (56) Adrian Beltre (Tex – 3B)

5. (57) Edwin Díaz (Sea – RP)

6. (84) Ian Kinsler (Det – 2B)

7. (85) Ken Giles (Hou – RP)

8. (112) Julio Teheran (Atl – SP)

9. (113) Adam Eaton (Was – OF)

10. (140) Zack Greinke (Ari – SP)

11. (141) Tim Anderson (CWS – SS)

12. (168) Adam Duvall (Cin – OF)

13. (169) Joc Pederson (LAD – OF)

14. (196) Tanner Roark (Was – SP)

15. (197) Manuel Margot (SD – OF)

16. (224) Sean Manaea (Oak – SP)

17. (225) Chris Carter (NYY – 1B)

18. (252) Brandon Phillips (Atl – 2B)

19. (253) Matt Bush (Tex – RP)

20. (280) Tom Murphy (Col – C)

21. (281) Matt Duffy (TB – 3B,SS)

22. (308) Kevin Pillar (Tor – OF)

23. (309) Zack Cozart (Cin – SS)

24. (336) Drew Hutchison (Pit – SP,RP)

25. (337) Zach Davies (Mil – SP)

26. (364) Cody Bellinger (LAD – 1B)

Mike’s Take: I thought dominant closers were the story of this draft. The room would not let anyone get them cheap. This is obviously very different from most leagues, where not only saves but huge K/9 numbers from these bullpen aces can be more cheaply leveraged. ADP was out the window. But the lesson here is that at some point in every draft, absolute value of players is meaningless and the only thing that matters is the value to your team. In my case, I had lots of early batting average and I spent it on low-average homers.

Steal: Justin Upton at 111, or one pick ahead of where I had him queued up, was the steal of the draft without question.

Reach: The reach of the draft was me taking Chris Carter on his projection and contract without checking on the current state of the depth chart. Amateur move. Everyone is smart and makes good picks for them. But if forced to say, I’ll peg David Dahl with pick 82 only because Dahl seem pretty seriously hurt. I love Dahl if healthy, however.

Fred Zinkie – MLB.com – @fredzinkieMLB

First Year in F&F

1. (2) Clayton Kershaw (LAD – SP)

2. (27) Starling Marte (Pit – OF)

3. (30) Freddie Freeman (Atl – 1B)

4. (55) Matt Carpenter (StL – 1B,2B,3B)

5. (58) Seung Hwan Oh (StL – RP)

6. (83) Todd Frazier (CWS – 1B,3B)

7. (86) Matt Kemp (Atl – OF)

8. (111) Justin Upton (Det – OF)

9. (114) David Price (Bos – SP)

10. (139) Jason Kipnis (Cle – 2B)

11. (142) Aaron Sanchez (Tor – SP)

12. (167) Kole Calhoun (LAA – OF)

13. (170) Marcell Ozuna (Mia – OF)

14. (195) Dallas Keuchel (Hou – SP)

15. (198) Jay Bruce (NYM – OF)

16. (223) Carter Capps (SD – RP)

17. (226) Jung Ho Kang (Pit – 3B)

18. (251) Marco Estrada (Tor – SP)

19. (254) Marcus Stroman (Tor – SP)

20. (279) Eugenio Suarez (Cin – 3B)

21. (282) Asdrubal Cabrera (NYM – SS)

22. (307) Russell Martin (Tor – C)

23. (310) Brad Hand (SD – RP)

24. (335) Tyler Glasnow (Pit – SP)

25. (338) Mitch Haniger (Sea – OF)

26. (363) Joe Musgrove (Hou – SP)

Fred’s Take: I embraced risk in a big way. Drafting Kershaw No. 2 overall is arguably the biggest boom-or-bust pick of Round 1. I also drafted a handful of players (Matt Carpenter, David Price, Todd Frazier, Jason Kipnis and Carter Capps) who are dealing with some degree of injury during Spring Training. And, I wrapped up the draft with some volatile assets such as Jung-Ho Kang, Mitch Haniger, Tyler Glasnow and Joe Musgrove. Drafting this level of risk is not my usual plan, and I’m excited to see how this team fares in a tough league.

Steal: Max Scherzer at pick 23 is a steal. If he throws 215 innings, he’s a top-10 player. I’m not that worried about the finger injury and would have been happy to draft him late in Round 1.

Reach: For me, Xander Bogaerts at Pick 15 is a reach. His second-half fade last season should drop him to round 3 or 4. There are at least five shortstops that I would rather draft. One of them (Trevor Story) went to the same owner (Brandon Funston) 27 picks later.

Mr. Jones and Me (AP)

Jason Klabacha – Yahoo

First Year in F&F

1. (3) Mookie Betts (Bos – OF)

2. (26) Joey Votto (Cin – 1B)

3. (31) Brian Dozier (Min – 2B)

4. (54) J.D. Martinez (Det – OF)

5. (59) Kyle Schwarber (ChC – C,OF)

6. (82) David Dahl (Col – OF)

7. (87) Alex Bregman (Hou – 3B,MI)

8. (110) David Robertson (CWS – RP)

9. (115) Tony Watson (Pit – RP)

10. (138) Hector Neris (Phi – RP)

11. (143) Neftali Feliz (Mil – RP)

12. (166) Troy Tulowitzki (Tor – SS)

13. (171) Javier Baez (ChC – 2B,3B,SS)

14. (194) Evan Gattis (Hou – C)

15. (199) Nate Jones (CWS – RP)

16. (222) Jose Reyes (NYM – 3B,SS)

17. (227) Jarrod Dyson (Sea – OF)

18. (250) Greg Bird (NYY – 1B)

19. (255) Hernan Perez (Mil – 2B,3B,OF)

20. (278) Jeanmar Gomez (Phi – RP)

21. (283) Hector Rondon (ChC – RP)

22. (306) Ivan Nova (Pit – SP,RP)

23. (311) Cameron Maybin (LAA – OF)

24. (334) Kevin Siegrist (StL – RP)

25. (339) Huston Street (LAA – RP)

26. (362) Darren O’Day (Bal – RP)

Jason’s Take: I went in trying to be flexible depending on how things shook out but as things progressed I made a choice to go heavy on offense, punt on wins and Ks and try to be respectable in the other pitching categories. As the least accomplished player in this group, it was going to be tough to build a balanced team in this deep of a league and with a bunch of great players. I realized about six rounds in that Scott had the same philosophy to go all in on offense. It’s good to be on the same page as him but he’s better at the execution than I am. 

Steal: Max Scherzer going 23. I know he’s coming off the finger injury but if he fell to me at 26 my whole draft might have gone in a different direction. 

Reach: There’s a lot to like about Trea Turner but at 11 he went ahead of some really great, proven players. The speed plays but expecting the average to be well above .300 again could be a stretch and the power has never been there like it was in the second half of 2016. 

Andy Behrens – Yahoo – @andybehrens

Previous F&F Finishes: 3rd, 10th, 14th, 3rd, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 3rd, 7th, 1st 

1. (4) Kris Bryant (ChC – 1B,3B,OF)

2. (25) Robinson Cano (Sea – 2B)

3. (32) Jake Arrieta (ChC – SP)

4. (53) Dee Gordon (Mia – 2B)

5. (60) Chris Archer (TB – SP)

6. (81) Evan Longoria (TB – 3B)

7. (88) Andrew Miller (Cle – RP)

8. (109) Francisco Rodríguez (Det – RP)

9. (116) Jose Bautista (Tor – OF)

10. (137) Adrian Gonzalez (LAD – 1B)

11. (144) Carlos Santana (Cle – 1B)

12. (165) Dexter Fowler (StL – OF)

13. (172) Felix Hernandez (Sea – SP)

14. (193) Michael Fulmer (Det – SP)

15. (200) Ryan Madson (Oak – RP)

16. (221) Josh Bell (Pit – 1B,OF)

17. (228) Jacoby Ellsbury (NYY – OF)

18. (249) Josh Reddick (Hou – OF)

19. (256) Jurickson Profar (Tex – 1B,2B,3B,SS,OF)

20. (277) Sonny Gray (Oak – SP)

21. (284) Jedd Gyorko (StL – 1B,2B,3B,SS)

22. (305) Matt Wieters (Was – C)

23. (312) Jeremy Jeffress (Tex – RP)

24. (333) Hunter Strickland (SF – RP)

25. (340) Lucas Duda (NYM – 1B)

26. (361) Aaron Judge (NYY – OF)

Andy’s Take: As the originator of the wildly successful Total Corner Control™ drafting system, there was never any doubt that I would take a corner infielder in the first round. It’s my brand. Kris Bryant got the nod for me at Pick No. 4, but I wouldn’t argue with someone who prefers Altuve, Goldschmidt or Arenado. I’d hoped that Chris Sale or Corey Kluber would drop to me in the second, but I narrowly missed on both.

In this league, which uses the Yahoo default innings cap (1400), we can’t afford to mess around with pitchers who produce sketchy ratios and low K-rates. I feel OK about Jake Arrieta and Chris Archer at the top of my rotation, so that wasn’t a complete disaster. Andrew Miller, my seventh round pick, should help cover any minor pitching deficiencies. I liked my late fliers on Aaron Judge and Jeremy Jeffress. And, in keeping with F&F tradition, I made the first post-draft transaction (Duda dropped, Brinson added.)

[Bullpen Depth Chart | 2017 Player Rankings | Mock Draft]

Reach: I’m hesitant to call Andrew Benintendi a total reach, because I don’t think his draft price here was way out of line with other expert-ish leagues. He’s a terrific young player, no doubt. I’m just not sure his fantasy profile — low double-digit power and speed, nice average — is anything to get too excited about. 

Steal: As for the steal of the draft, I’m going with Nate Jones. DAMMIT. I was one pick away from landing him. I’d say there’s an excellent chance he claims the closing gig in Chicago (assuming a Robertson trade), and he’s the sort of reliever who’s worth owning even in a setup role. 

Welcome back, Eric Thames (AP)

Jeff Erickson – Rotowire – @Jeff_Erickson

Previous F&F Finishes: 8th, 12th, 7th, 4th, 4th, 1st, 13th, 11th, 12th, 8th, 10th

1. (5) Nolan Arenado (Col – 3B)

2. (24) Corey Kluber (Cle – SP)

3. (33) Nelson Cruz (Sea – OF)

4. (52) Zach Britton (Bal – RP)

5. (61) Carlos Gonzalez (Col – OF)

6. (80) Billy Hamilton (Cin – OF)

7. (89) Kyle Hendricks (ChC – SP)

8. (108) Dustin Pedroia (Bos – 2B)

9. (117) Raisel Iglesias (Cin – SP,RP)

10. (136) Kendrys Morales (Tor – 1B,OF)

11. (145) Eric Thames (Mil – OF)

12. (164) Jonathan Schoop (Bal – 2B)

13. (173) Dansby Swanson (Atl – SS)

14. (192) Yasmani Grandal (LAD – C)

15. (201) Brandon Drury (Ari – 2B,3B,OF)

16. (220) Matt Moore (SF – SP)

17. (229) Jeff Samardzija (SF – SP)

18. (248) Jharel Cotton (Oak – SP)

19. (257) Melky Cabrera (CWS – OF)

20. (276) Brad Brach (Bal – RP)

21. (285) Jerad Eickhoff (Phi – SP)

22. (304) Travis Shaw (Mil – 1B,3B)

23. (313) Steve Pearce (Tor – 1B,2B,OF)

24. (332) Mike Montgomery (ChC – SP,RP)

25. (341) Michael Lorenzen (Cin – RP)

26. (360) Melvin Upton Jr. (Tor – OF)

Jeff’s Take: Every snake draft is about figuring opportunity cost, and that’s especially true in deeper leagues such as this format. What does the league value? Where are the drop-offs? And what can you delay or avoid?

Usually I’m pretty good at evaluating those concerns, but I don’t think I did a particularly good job with that on Tuesday. To wit – look at the consequences of my Carlos Gonzalez pick in Round 5. There’s nothing wrong per se about the player, but it wasn’t a well-timed pick because of the nature of this league. With an innings-cap and moves cap in place, there’s a premium on getting high-strikeout starting pitchers and good closers. Once I went with CarGo over Carlos Carrasco with that pick, I was left scrambling to fill certain needs – second starting pitcher, stolen bases – that ultimately cost me the second closer that I wanted, let alone a third closer.

It’s possibly a minor point and this team still could be very good, but it’s a mistake I shouldn’t be making at this point in my tenure with this league.

Steal: Carlos Rodon, Round 20 by Ryan Boyer. Ok, so the White Sox are going to be pretty awful this year, but they still have a slew of interesting high-upside guys. Rodon demonstrated signs that his command was coming around last year, and he still has a really high strikeout ceiling. There were a lot of interesting starting pitchers late in the draft, but Rodon stood out to me.

Reach: Buster Posey, Round 4 by Patrick Daugherty. In a one-catcher league, I tend to avoid going after the elite tier of catchers unless I’m getting a significant discount. You can almost use the waiver wire to get the 15th best catcher at any point during the season, or at least wait until the middle of the draft to land a 20-homer catcher. Buster Posey is obviously better than that class because of his batting average and reliability, but I wouldn’t spend a fourth-round pick on him. 

Ryan Boyer – Rotoworld – @RyanPBoyer

Previous F&F Finishes: 1st, 3rd, 4th, 10th

1. (6) Jose Altuve (Hou – 2B)

2. (23) Max Scherzer (Was – SP)

3. (34) Ryan Braun (Mil – OF)

4. (51) Johnny Cueto (SF – SP)

5. (62) Kyle Seager (Sea – 3B)

6. (79) Jonathan Lucroy (Tex – C,1B)

7. (90) Roberto Osuna (Tor – RP)

8. (107) Cody Allen (Cle – RP)

9. (118) Odubel Herrera (Phi – OF)

10. (135) Lance McCullers Jr. (Hou – SP)

11. (146) Cam Bedrosian (LAA – RP)

12. (163) Aledmys Diaz (StL – SS)

13. (174) Keon Broxton (Mil – OF)

14. (191) Randal Grichuk (StL – OF)

15. (202) Rajai Davis (Oak – OF)

16. (219) Mike Napoli (Tex – 1B)

17. (230) Matt Shoemaker (LAA – SP)

18. (247) Curtis Granderson (NYM – OF)

19. (258) Carlos Rodon (CWS – SP)

20. (275) Starlin Castro (NYY – 2B)

21. (286) Blake Treinen (Was – RP)

22. (303) Carl Edwards Jr. (ChC – RP)

23. (314) Danny Valencia (Sea – 1B,3B,OF)

24. (331) Daniel Norris (Det – SP)

25. (342) Ryan Dull (Oak – RP)

26. (359) Kennys Vargas (Min – 1B)

Ryan’s Take: like my squad overall, but I fear I may have waited a bit too long to shore up my power. It would be helpful if Randal Grichuk cashes in on his huge power potential and Mike Napoli doesn’t fall off too much from last season. And, obviously, what happens with Max Scherzer’s finger injury could make-or-break me. 

Steal: I had Rich Hill queued up and ready to go in Round 8 before Del Don scooped him up right in front of me. I’m kicking myself for not going after Hill sooner. The concerns with him are mitigated in this format.

Reach: It’s not a big reach ADP-wise, but I can’t get on board with Brian Dozier at the beginning of the third round. He has to nearly have a full repeat at that price and second base is super deep.

Grey Albright – Razzball – @razzball

Previous F&F Finishes: 5th, 4th, 12th, 12th, 10th, 10th, 3rd

1. (7) Paul Goldschmidt (Ari – 1B)

2. (22) Rougned Odor (Tex – 2B)

3. (35) George Springer (Hou – OF)

4. (50) Ian Desmond (Col – OF)

5. (63) Carlos Carrasco (Cle – SP)

6. (78) Mark Trumbo (Bal – OF)

7. (91) Danny Duffy (KC – SP,RP)

8. (106) Jeurys Familia (NYM – RP)

9. (119) Addison Russell (ChC – SS)

10. (134) Adam Ottavino (Col – RP)

11. (147) Danny Salazar (Cle – SP)

12. (162) Jake Lamb (Ari – 3B)

13. (175) John Lackey (ChC – SP)

14. (190) Marcus Semien (Oak – SS)

15. (203) Brandon Kintzler (Min – RP)

16. (218) Vince Velasquez (Phi – SP)

17. (231) Travis Jankowski (SD – OF)

18. (246) Kyle Barraclough (Mia – RP)

19. (259) Mitch Moreland (Bos – 1B)

20. (274) Blake Snell (TB – SP)

21. (287) Tyler Thornburg (Bos – RP)

22. (302) Andrew Susac (Mil – C)

23. (315) Tyler Saladino (CWS – 2B,3B,SS)

24. (330) Alcides Escobar (KC – SS)

25. (343) Koda Glover (Was – RP)

26. (358) Steven Souza Jr. (TB – OF)

Grey’s Take: It could be because I go by the beat of my own snare drum — a small little metronome that only I hear, my own personal metro-gnome, if you will — but I loved my draft. Everyone I wanted was there — Goldschmidt at 7 overall; Odor in the 2nd; Springer in the 3rd; Desmond in the 4th; ergo, yadda, etc. all the way until the end of the draft. I won’t clickbait y’all, but let’s just say if you saw my rankings, you’d know why I love my team.

Steal: Tommy Joseph in the 16th round. Love, love, lurve Tommy Joseph this year. He’s a young, 30-homer guy who won’t kill you in average. He’s a cheap Duvall. “I love the smell of three-run bombs in the morning!”  That’s what a cheap Duvall says.

Reach: Chris Sale in the 2nd round. Honestly, literally, awkward sentence intro-ly, I could’ve named a bunch of people who drafted starters early. On our Player Rater — http://razzball.com/playerrater/ — there were two starters worth a top 25 pick last year. Of course, every year is different, but if we don’t know where we came from, how do we know where we’re going?  That’s me paraphrasing B-Real from Cypress Hill, but it’s true. I don’t pay for top arms, and don’t think others should either.

Dalton Del Don – Yahoo – @daltondeldon

Previous F&F Finishes: 7th, 5th, 5th, 6th, 5th, 5th, 2nd

1. (8) Manny Machado (Bal – 3B,SS)

2. (21) Chris Sale (Bos – SP)

3. (36) Jonathan Villar (Mil – 2B,3B,SS)

4. (49) Christian Yelich (Mia – OF)

5. (64) Jacob deGrom (NYM – SP)

6. (77) Hanley Ramírez (Bos – 1B)

7. (92) Kelvin Herrera (KC – RP)

8. (105) Rich Hill (LAD – SP)

9. (120) Willson Contreras (ChC – C,OF)

10. (133) Jose Peraza (Cin – 2B,SS,OF)

11. (148) Matt Harvey (NYM – SP)

12. (161) Jim Johnson (Atl – RP)

13. (176) Aaron Nola (Phi – SP)

14. (189) Yasiel Puig (LAD – OF)

15. (204) Alex Cobb (TB – SP)

16. (217) David Peralta (Ari – OF)

17. (232) Domingo Santana (Mil – OF)

18. (245) Ryan Schimpf (SD – 2B,3B)

19. (260) Justin Bour (Mia – 1B)

20. (273) Michael Conforto (NYM – OF)

21. (288) Jake Odorizzi (TB – SP)

22. (301) Shin-soo Choo (Tex – OF)

23. (316) Corey Dickerson (TB – OF)

24. (329) Denard Span (SF – OF)

25. (344) Taijuan Walker (Ari – SP)

26. (357) Jayson Werth (Was – OF)

Dalton’s Take: I wanted to go heavy with starting pitching, but Clayton Kershaw is the only one I’d take in the first round. I went Chris Sale over Max Scherzer, which I’ll probably regret but it was all about the latter’s injury. I fully expect Jonathan Villar to regress, but pick #36 seemed more than reasonable for a 26-year-old who just combined for 81 steals/homers last season. I was immediately offered this trade for Yasiel Puig https://twitter.com/daltondeldon/status/839490608465006594, but I held out for a better return.

Steal: Grabbing last year’s Cy Young winner in Round 10 is pretty decent value. Starters are a bit higher of a commodity in this league with a 1,400 innings limit, and Rick Porcello had a 2.62 ERA and a 0.85 WHIP after the All-Star break last season.

Reach: No one jumped out at me here to be honest, but I probably wouldn’t have taken Andrew Miller (whom I admit might be the best reliever in baseball) ahead of Roberto Osuna, given saves are a category.

Andrew Benintendi, buzzy rookie (AP)

Patrick Daugherty – Rotoworld – @rotopat

Previous F&F Finish: 10th, 13th

1. (9) Anthony Rizzo (ChC – 1B)

2. (20) Corey Seager (LAD – SS)

3. (37) Jon Lester (ChC – SP)

4. (48) Buster Posey (SF – C,1B)

5. (65) Mark Melancon (SF – RP)

6. (76) Andrew Benintendi (Bos – OF)

7. (93) Jose Ramírez (Cle – 3B,MI,OF)

8. (104) Jose Quintana (CWS – SP)

9. (121) Stephen Piscotty (StL – OF)

10. (132) Rick Porcello (Bos – SP)

11. (149) Ben Zobrist (ChC – 2B,OF)

12. (160) Addison Reed (NYM – RP)

13. (177) Nomar Mazara (Tex – OF)

14. (188) Brad Miller (TB – 1B,SS)

15. (205) Logan Forsythe (LAD – 2B)

16. (216) Jon Gray (Col – SP)

17. (233) Brian McCann (Hou – C)

18. (244) Andrew Toles (LAD – OF)

19. (261) Daniel Hudson (Pit – RP)

20. (272) Lance Lynn (StL – SP)

21. (289) Alex Gordon (KC – OF)

22. (300) J.A. Happ (Tor – SP)

23. (317) Brandon Moss (KC – 1B,OF)

24. (328) Scott Schebler (Cin – OF)

25. (345) Adam Wainwright (StL – SP)

26. (356) Pablo Sandoval (Bos – 3B)

Patrick’s Take: I found myself feeling a little flat-footed at 1.9. I could not decide between Rizzo, Donaldson and Bryce. Prone to flashy picks, I wanted to pull the trigger on Bryce, but retreated to Rizzo. I like his dependability in a roto league where there’s major incentive to maximize games played at every position. I know I won’t have to manage super hard to get to my 162 at first base, a position that is pretty shallow this year. This league has such unique rules. With the innings cap, it doesn’t really pay to make starting pitching a focal point in the draft. I tried to focus on hitting, hitting, hitting, but still found myself feeling an irresistible urge to stop the slides of dudes none of us really wanted to own (Rick Porcello, J.A. Happ).

Only pick I straight up did not like was Brandon Moss. I felt out of ideas that round. Wish I had taken Scott Schebler there. Thankfully, I got him the next frame. My one true vanity pick was Jon Gray. I feel like the rules are set up to punish someone like him, but you have to live a little.

Steal: Hard not to go with Bryce Harper bounce back at 10, but I will take David Price in the ninth. The worry is self explanatory, but we probably baked in more risk than the current facts on the ground call for. Anthony Rendon also fell awful far.

Reach: Not Trea Turner. Wish I had had D.J. Short’s courage. This is an extremely smart group. Very little struck me as out of whack. The gang was maybe a bit bullish on Jean Segura and Khris Davis repeats. I would have let prodigal son Eric Thames fall farther, as well.   

Scott Pianowski – Yahoo – @scott_pianowski

Previous F&F Finishes: 4th, 6th, 1st, 2nd, 11th, 4th, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 6th, 2nd

1. (10) Bryce Harper (Was – OF)

2. (19) Francisco Lindor (Cle – SS)

3. (38) A.J. Pollock (Ari – OF)

4. (47) Jose Abreu (CWS – 1B)

5. (66) Gregory Polanco (Pit – OF)

6. (75) DJ LeMahieu (Col – 2B)

7. (94) Anthony Rendon (Was – 3B)

8. (103) Adam Jones (Bal – OF)

9. (122) Dellin Betances (NYY – RP)

10. (131) Shawn Kelley (Was – RP)

11. (150) J.T. Realmuto (Mia – C)

12. (159) Brandon Belt (SF – 1B)

13. (178) Victor Martinez (Det – 1B)

14. (187) Brandon Crawford (SF – SS)

15. (206) Kevin Kiermaier (TB – OF)

16. (215) Mike Moustakas (KC – 3B)

17. (234) Luke Gregerson (Hou – RP)

18. (243) Sean Doolittle (Oak – RP)

19. (262) Kolten Wong (StL – 2B,OF)

20. (271) Brett Gardner (NYY – OF)

21. (290) Welington Castillo (Bal – C)

22. (299) Yangervis Solarte (SD – 2B,3B)

23. (318) Joe Panik (SF – 2B)

24. (327) Yadier Molina (StL – C)

25. (346) Michael Saunders (Phi – OF)

26. (355) Pedro Strop (ChC – RP)

Scott’s Take: I still think you can win a league like this with a semi-punt, so I went into the fray looking for versatile offensive commodities at every stop. I also wanted some ratio-dominant relief pitchers with maybe 2-3 closers, but that didn’t exactly fit how things fell. No. 10 overall isn’t my favorite spot to pick — now that Josh Donaldson is dinged up — so I downshifted to the upside of Bryce Harper in the first round. I temporarily had Carlos Correa in the second round, and was thrilled, but an owner was bumped offline and the round redrawn, which cost me a nifty bargain. Oh well, Lindor still applies to the type of player I wanted to acquire.

Starting pitching can be reevaluated or fixed rather easily in a 12-teamer, through trades, streaming, that sort of thing. It’s a tall order in a league of 14 owners, especially given the strength of this year’s owner pool. My offense better produce. On the plus side, I have the depth and resources to take a center cut of daily matchups, if I am game to manage the team that delicately.

Steal: Freddie Freeman is more value than steal at Pick 30, but his line-drive rate validates his profile, and the Braves have quickly and quietly upgraded their lineup. Other values I approve of: J.D. Martinez at Pick 54 (I hope I get a few of those later this month); Evan Longoria Pick 81 (now in the Ibanez All-Star years); Julio Teheran Pick 112; Kenta Maeda Pick 126; Jerad Eickhoff Pick 285.

Reach: I’m not sure how quickly the category juice will arrive on Benintendi, and remember he skipped Triple-A entirely. I wouldn’t consider him at this price tag. Other overpriced commodities: George Springer (a fourth or fifth-round pick in third-round clothing); Christian Yelich (all those ground balls make me leery on his power upside; don’t like the division, team, or park, either); Zach Britton (if I take a closer that early, I want a wipeout strikeout rate); Danny Duffy (I try to avoid red ink in March, unless it’s discounted).

D.J. Short – Rotoworld – @djshort

Previous F&F Finishes: 6th, 1st, 10th, 1st

1. (11) Trea Turner (Was – 2B,OF)

2. (18) Noah Syndergaard (NYM – SP)

3. (39) Edwin Encarnacion (Cle – 1B)

4. (46) Yoenis Cespedes (NYM – OF)

5. (67) Gary Sanchez (NYY – C)

6. (74) Craig Kimbrel (Bos – RP)

7. (95) Masahiro Tanaka (NYY – SP)

8. (102) Maikel Franco (Phi – 3B)

9. (123) Lorenzo Cain (KC – OF)

10. (130) Sam Dyson (Tex – RP)

11. (151) James Paxton (Sea – SP)

12. (158) Kevin Gausman (Bal – SP)

13. (179) Elvis Andrus (Tex – SS)

14. (186) Carlos Gomez (Tex – OF)

15. (207) Neil Walker (NYM – 2B)

16. (214) Tommy Joseph (Phi – 1B)

17. (235) Nick Castellanos (Det – 3B)

18. (242) Joe Ross (Was – SP)

19. (263) Chris Owings (Ari – SS,OF)

20. (270) Santiago Casilla (Oak – RP)

21. (291) Robert Gsellman (NYM – SP)

22. (298) Jorge Soler (KC – OF)

23. (319) David Phelps (Mia – SP,RP)

24. (326) Anthony DeSclafani (Cin – SP)

25. (347) Mauricio Cabrera (Atl – RP)

26. (354) Alex Dickerson (SD – OF)

D.J.’s Take: When looking at my team, the thing that stands out to me are the selections of Trea Turner and Gary Sanchez. It wasn’t my plan going in, but I’m going to live or die by those guys. I’m expecting regression from the both of them. How can there not be after the amazing rookie seasons that they had? But what isn’t discussed enough is that they each offer nice floors to their value even if that happens. Turner should still be a difference-maker in the speed department and Sanchez should provide enough power to stand out at the catcher position.

Steal: It’s only appropriate that I throw my support behind Dalton’s selection of Jose Peraza in the 10th round. I expected him to come off the board a bit earlier. There’s a lot to like here. The speedster has a clear path to playing time after the Brandon Phillips trade and qualifies at three different positions. I have a feeling he’s going to come in handy.

Reach: This sort of seems like a cop-out, but I liked most of the picks. Benintendi in the sixth round strikes me as somewhat aggressive given some of the other more established outfielders already on the board, but I’m also the guy who put a lot of stock into Turner and Sanchez off of half of a season’s worth of at-bats, so maybe you shouldn’t listen to me.

Chris Liss – Rotowire – @chris_liss

Previous F&F Finishes: 2nd, 2nd, 3rd, 9th, 3rd, 2nd, 9th, 1st, 6th, 3rd, 1st, 9th

1. (12) Miguel Cabrera (Det – 1B)

2. (17) Madison Bumgarner (SF – SP)

3. (40) Kenley Jansen (LAD – RP)

4. (45) Stephen Strasburg (Was – SP)

5. (68) Wil Myers (SD – 1B,OF)

6. (73) Wade Davis (ChC – RP)

7. (96) Chris Davis (Bal – 1B)

8. (101) Justin Turner (LAD – 3B)

9. (124) Jackie Bradley Jr. (Bos – OF)

10. (129) Gerrit Cole (Pit – SP)

11. (152) Yasmany Tomas (Ari – OF)

12. (157) Byron Buxton (Min – OF)

13. (180) Hunter Pence (SF – OF)

14. (185) Max Kepler (Min – OF)

15. (208) Michael Brantley (Cle – OF)

16. (213) Jason Heyward (ChC – OF)

17. (236) Dylan Bundy (Bal – SP,RP)

18. (241) Cesar Hernandez (Phi – 2B)

19. (264) Didi Gregorius (NYY – SS)

20. (269) Joaquín Benoit (Phi – RP)

21. (292) Josh Harrison (Pit – 2B)

22. (297) Orlando Arcia (Mil – SS)

23. (320) Gerardo Parra (Col – 1B,OF)

24. (325) Garrett Richards (LAA – SP)

25. (348) Joe Nathan (Was – RP)

26. (353) Greg Holland (Col – RP)

Chris’s Take: My approach to this format is always get top-tier pitching early and try to shore up saves. To that end I took Bumgarner, Jansen, Strasburg and Wade Davis in Rounds 2, 3, 4 and 6. I took Miguel Cabrera with the first pick because batting average is the category that’s most difficult to repair if you’re struggling.

The draft went fairly well for me, but I regret one pick, Jackie Bradley, in the ninth round. I was set to take Lorenzo Cain to shore up steals, Cain went one pick ahead of me, I considered reaching for Eric Thames, checked his ADP, decided he might be there on the next go-around, so I passed and took Bradley in 9, Gerrit Cole in 10. Of course Thames went to Erickson before I had another shot at him in Round 11. It’s a lesson I’ve learned a few times, but apparently didn’t sink in: forget ADP, just pick the guy you want. Bradley might well wind up being the better pick anyway, but I screwed up in not taking the player I wanted. I tried to play chicken on Julio Urias later in the draft and got snaked again – Urias’ stats are more valuable than his ranking in this format because it’s the per-inning numbers, not the totals that matter.

Finally, once you get to Round 15 in this format, swing for the fences. Maybe it’s a little less true in the 14, rather than 12-team version, but lots of freely available talent on the waiver wire.

Steal: Max Scherzer at pick 23. I know there’s some risk with his knuckle, but he’s expected to be fine for Opening Day, and he’s a first rounder in this format if completely healthy. I was 50/50 between him and Bumgarner at pick 17.

Reach: All the catchers. It’s a one-C format with daily moves. Almost every one was drafted too early. I also don’t like Julio Teheran in Round 8. Modest K/9 for that round, and only had seven wins last year, though the offense is a little better.

Is this the year Giancarlo Stanton puts it all together? (AP)

Rudy Gamble – Razzball – @rudygamble

Previous F&F Finishes: 10th, 9th, 6th

1. (13) Josh Donaldson (Tor – 3B)

2. (16) Carlos Correa (Hou – SS)

3. (41) Giancarlo Stanton (Mia – OF)

4. (44) Justin Verlander (Det – SP)

5. (69) Andrew McCutchen (Pit – OF)

6. (72) Khris Davis (Oak – OF)

7. (97) Alex Colome (TB – RP)

8. (100) Cole Hamels (Tex – SP)

9. (125) Eduardo Nunez (SF – 3B,SS)

10. (128) Albert Pujols (LAA – 1B)

11. (153) Jameson Taillon (Pit – SP)

12. (156) Steven Matz (NYM – SP)

13. (181) Ender Inciarte (Atl – OF)

14. (184) Brandon Maurer (SD – RP)

15. (209) Fernando Rodney (Ari – RP)

16. (212) Drew Smyly (Sea – SP)

17. (237) Leonys Martín (Sea – OF)

18. (240) C.J. Cron (LAA – 1B)

19. (265) Robbie Ray (Ari – SP)

20. (268) Yuli Gurriel (Hou – 3B)

21. (293) Stephen Vogt (Oak – C)

22. (296) Tyler Skaggs (LAA – SP)

23. (321) Arodys Vizcaíno (Atl – RP)

24. (324) Mallex Smith (TB – OF)

25. (349) Drew Storen (Cin – RP)

26. (352) Jorge Polanco (Min – 2B,3B,SS)

Rudy’s Take: I welcomed this draft as a chance to hose off the stench of last year’s cursed team (Harper at 1.3, Gomez at 5, Rosenthal/Giles at 8/9). This year followed previous years in that Aces go early (6 of first 24 picks were SPs) and relievers go quick (13.5% of draft pick investment whereas I think the norm is 9-10%). Given the caliber of players in the draft room and their lightning-quick trigger fingers in-season on breaking news, my only chance of competing in this league is to NAIL the draft. I have no idea if I nailed the draft (ask me in 4 months) but I think my offense has a solid R/SB/AVG base with an intentional strength in HR/RBI (Donaldson, Correa, Stanton, McCutchen, and Khris Davis in first 6 picks) and a solid pitching staff with experience at the top, upside in the middle/back, and hopefully 3 closers to start the year out of Colome, Rodney, Maurer, Vizcaino, and Storen.

Steal: I did not see many ‘steals’ in the top half of this draft. The best value based on my projections was Dalton landing Jonathan Villar in the middle of round 3 which was a round lower than my projected value for him and NFBC ADP. I was also surprised Trevor Story lasted until the last pick of the 3rd round.

Reach: Brandon Funstion had every SS except Machado on the board to choose from at 2.15 and chose Bogaerts over Correa, Seager, Villar and Lindor. I would have gone with those SS in that order before Bogaerts (though I do think Bogaerts’ is in their tier). I doubt you will find another league outside New England or Dutch-speaking countries where Bogaerts gets drafted before Correa. 

Brandon Funston – Yahoo – @brandonfunston

Previous F&F Finishes: 9th, 11th, 9th, 13th, 13th, 9th, 7th, 5th, 9th, 7th, 9th, 1st

1. (14) Charlie Blackmon (Col – OF)

2. (15) Xander Bogaerts (Bos – SS)

3. (42) Trevor Story (Col – SS)

4. (43) Aroldis Chapman (NYY – RP)

5. (70) Jean Segura (Sea – 2B,SS)

6. (71) Carlos Martínez (StL – SP)

7. (98) Eric Hosmer (KC – 1B)

8. (99) Miguel Sano (Min – 3B,OF)

9. (126) Kenta Maeda (LAD – SP)

10. (127) A.J. Ramos (Mia – RP)

11. (154) Salvador Perez (KC – C)

12. (155) Ryon Healy (Oak – 3B)

13. (182) Matt Holliday (NYY – 1B,OF)

14. (183) Julio Urías (LAD – SP)

15. (210) Carlos Beltran (Hou – OF)

16. (211) Hunter Renfroe (SD – OF)

17. (238) Michael Pineda (NYY – SP)

18. (239) Devon Travis (Tor – 2B)

19. (266) Yoan Moncada (CWS – 3B)

20. (267) Matt Strahm (KC – RP)

21. (294) Drew Pomeranz (Bos – SP)

22. (295) Will Harris (Hou – RP)

23. (322) Howie Kendrick (Phi – 1B,2B,3B,OF)

24. (323) Charlie Tilson (CWS – OF)

25. (350) Roman Quinn (Phi – OF)

26. (351) Brad Ziegler (Mia – RP)

Brandon’s Take: I wasn’t enamored with having to pick at the turn (No. 14 overall), but I ended up landing Charlie Blackmon, a 5-tooled outfielder playing his home games in a hard-to-fail offensive park. He was the No. 11 overall player last season, and I have him ranked at No. 11 for this season, so I feel fortunate to have landed him at the end of the line in Round 1. The biggest issue I had with this draft was accumulating enough useable speed. With Blackmon and Jean Segura selected early, I diverted my attention away from acquiring speed in the middle rounds, and found myself misjudging how early I needed to reach for my later round targets (Jose Reyes, Rajai Davis, Manuel Margot, for example). I ended up having to load my bench with speed flyers like Yoan Moncada, Charlie Tilson and Roman Quinn. Clearly, solidifying my speed will be at the top of my early-season to-do list.

Steal: Rajai Davis, No. 201 overall (Ryan Boyer, Rotoworld). I think it’s only appropriate that my steal of the draft is a guy that is known for his ability to steal (bases). Davis was a top 120 player in the Yahoo game last season, and he’s finished inside the top 120 in four of the five seasons he’s accrued at least 400 ABs (No. 160 in the one outlier campaign). Slated to be the A’s regular centerfielder, he has a good chance of reaching 500 ABs this season if he’s stays healthy, in which case he should turn a very tidy profit.

Reach: Rougned Odor, No. 22 overall (Grey Albright, Razzball). I’m a big fan of Odor, but not at No. 22 overall, ahead of Robinson Cano and Brian Dozier, two 2Bs with more trustworthy track records that finished ahead of Odor in ’16 fantasy value. Odor almost never walks and his 33 HRs come on the wind of a spike in HR/FB rate that is likely to see some regression. There was probably a decent chance that he could have been had a round later.

But wait, there’s more: 

Grey Albright’s F&F Review

Chris Liss’s F&F Review 

Thursday’s Yahoo Fantasy Freak Show (includes some F&F talk)

Rotoworld F&F Review Podcast

East Coast Offense Podcast

[judeblenews-blog]

9 highlights from Snapchat CEO’s 6000-word leaked memo on survival

Adults, not teens. Messaging, not Stories. Developing markets, not the US. These are how Snapchat will make a comeback, according to CEO Evan Spiegel . In a 6,000-word internal memo from late September leaked to Cheddar’s Alex Heath, Spiegel attempts to revive employee morale with philosophy, tactics, and contrition as Snap’s share price sinks to an all-time low of around $8 — half its IPO price and a third of its peak. “The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was compromising our core product value of being the fastest way to communicate” Spiegel stresses throughout the memo regarding ‘Project Cheetah’. It’s the chat that made Snapchat special, and burying it within a combined feed with Stories and failing to build a quick-loading Android app have had disastrous consequences.

Spiegel shows great maturity here, admitting to impatient strategic moves and outlining a cohesive path forward. There’s no talk of Snapchat ruling the social app world here. He seems to understand that’s likely out of reach in the face of Instagram’s competitive onslaught. Instead, Snapchat is satisfied if it can help us express ourselves while finally reaching even meager profitability. Snapchat may be too perceived as a toy to win enough adults, too late to win back international markets from the Facebook empire, and too copyable by good-enough alternatives to grow truly massive. But if Snap can follow the Spiegel game-plan, it could carve out a sustainable market through a small but loyal audience who want to communicate through imagery. Here are the most interesting takeaways from the memo and why they’re important:

1. Apologizing For Rushing The Redesign

“There were, of course, some downsides to moving as quickly as a cheetah We rushed our redesign, solving one problem but creating many others . . . Unfortunately, we didn’t give ourselves enough time to continue iterating and testing the redesign with a smaller percentage of our community. As a result, we had to continue our iterations after we launched, causing a lot of frustration for our community.” Spiegel always went on his gut rather than relying on user data like Facebook. Aging further and further away from his core audience, he misread what teens cared about. The appealing buzz phrase of “separating social from media” also meant merging messaging and Stories into a chaotic list that made both tougher to use. Spiegel seems to have learned a valuable lessen about the importance of A/B testing.

2. Chat Is King

“Our redesigned algorithmic Friend Feed made it harder to find the right people to talk to, and moving too quickly meant that we didn’t have time to optimize the Friend Feed for fast performance. We slowed down our product and eroded our core product value. . . . Regrettably, we didn’t understand at the time that the biggest problem with our redesign wasn’t the frustration from influencers – it was the frustration from members of our community who felt like it was harder to communicate . . . In our excitement to innovate and bring many new products into the world, we have lost the core of what made Snapchat the fastest way to communicate.” When Snap first revealed the changes, we predicted that “Teen Snap addicts might complain that the redesign is confusing, jumbling all content from friends together.” That made it too annoying to dig out your friends to send them messages, and Snap’s growth rate imploded, with it losing 3 million users last quarter. Expect Snap to optimize its engineering to make messages quicker to send and receive, and it even sacrifice some of its bells and whistles to make chat faster in developing markets.

3. Snapchat Must Beat Facebook At Best Friends

“Your top friend in a given week contributes 25% of Snap send volume. By the time you get to 18 friends, each incremental friend contributes less than 1% of total Snap send volume each. Finding best friends is a different problem than finding more friends, so we need to think about new ways to help people find the friends they care most about.” Facebook’s biggest structural disadvantage is its broad friend graph that’s bloated to include family, co-workers, bosses, and distant acquaintances.  That might be fine in a feed app, but not for Stories and messaging where you only care about your closest friends. With friend lists and more, Facebook has tried and failed for a decade to find better ways to communicate with your besties. This is the wedge through which Snapchat can attack Facebook. If it develops special features for luring your best friends onto the app and staying in touch with them for better reasons than just maintaining a Snap “Streak”, it could hit Facebook where it can’t defend itself.

4. Discover Soars As Facebook Watch And IGTV Stumble

“Our Shows continue to attract more and more viewers, with over 18 Shows reaching monthly audiences of over 10M unique viewers. 12 of which are Original productions. As a platform overall, we’ve grown the amount of total time spent engaging with our Shows product, almost tripling since the beginning of the year. Our audience for Publisher Stories has increased over 20% YoY, and we believe there is a significant opportunity to continue growing the number of people who engage with Discover content . . .We are also working to identify content that is performing well outside of Snapchat so that we can bring it into Discover. “ Discover remains Snapchat’s biggest differentiator, scoring with premium video content purposefully made for mobile. What it really needs, though, are a few must-see tentpole shows to drag in a wider audience that can get hooked on the reimagined digital magazine experience.

5. But Discover Is A Mess

“Our content team is working hard to experiment with new layouts and content types in the wake of our redesign to drive increased engagement.” Snapchat Discover is an overcrowded pile of clickbait. News outlets, social media influencers, original video Shows, and aggregated user content collections all battle for attention in a design that feels overwhelming to the point of exhaustion. Thankfully Snapchat seems to recognize that more cohesive sorting with fewer images and headlines bombarding you might make Discover a more pleasant lean-back consumption experience.

6. Aging Up To Earn Money

“Most of the incremental growth in our core markets like the US, UK, and France will have to come from older users who generate higher average revenue per user . . . Growing in older demographics will require us to mature our application . . . Many older users today see Snapchat as frivolous or a waste of time because they think Snapchat is social media rather than a faster way to communicate. Changing the design language of our product and improving our marketing and communications around Snapchat will help users understand our value . . . aging-up our community in core markets will also help the media, advertisers, and Wall Street understand Snapchat.” Snapchat can’t just be for cool kids anymore. Their lower buying power and lifestage make them less appealing to brands. The problem is that Snapchat risks turning off younger users by courting their older siblings or adults. If, like Facebook, users start to feel like Snapchat is a place for parents, they may defect in search of the next purposefully built to confuse adults to stay hip.

7. Finally Prioritizing Developing Markets

“We already have many projects underway to unlock our core product value in new markets. Mushroom allows our community to use Snapchat on lower-end devices. Arroyo, our new gateway architecture, will speed up messaging and many other services . . . It might require us to change our products for different markets where some of our value-add features detract from our core product value” Sources tell me Snapchat’s future depends on the engineering overhaul of its Android app, a project codenamed ‘Mushroom’. Slow video load times and bugs have made Snapchat practically unusable on low-bandwidth connections and old Android phones in the developing world. The company concentrated on the US and other first-world markets, leaving the door open for copycats of Stories built by Instagram (400 million daily users) and WhatsApp (450 million daily users) to invade the developing world and dwarf Snap’s 188 million total daily users. In hopes of a smooth rollout, Snapchat is already testing Mushroom, but it will have to do a ton of marketing outreach to convince frustrated users who ditched the app to give it another try.

8. Fresh Ideas, Separate Apps

“We’re currently building software that takes the millions of Snaps submitted to Our Story and reconstructs parts of the world in 3D. We can then build augmented reality experiences on top of those models and distribute them as Lenses . . . If our innovation compromises our core product of being the fastest way to communicate, we should consider create separate applications or other ways of delivering our innovation.” Snapchat has big plans for augmented reality. It doesn’t just want to stick animations over the top of anywhere, or create AR art installations in a few big cities. It wants to build site-specific AR experiences across the globe. And while everything the company has built to date has lived inside of Snapchat, it’s willing to spawn standalone apps if necessary so that it doesn’t bog down its messaging service. That could give Snapchat a lot more leeway to experiment.

9. The Freedom Of Profitability

“Our 2019 stretch output goal will be an acceleration in revenue growth and full year free cash flow and profitability. With profitability comes increased autonomy and freedom to operate our business in the long term best interest of our community without the pressure of needing to raise additional capital.” Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter. Snapchat ended up selling 2.3 percent of its equity to a Saudi Arabian prince in exchange for $250 million to lengthen its rapidly shortening runway. And last year it took $2 billion from Chinese gaming giant Tencent. Deals like that could threaten Snapchat’s ability to prioritize its goals alone, not the moral imperatives or developer platforms that would benefit its benefactors. Once profitable, Snapchat won’t have to worry so much about struggling with short-term user growth and can instead focus on retention, societal impact, and its true purpose — creativity.

Via: Techcrunch Read the full article