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ideahat-universe · 1 year ago

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Youtube's insane war with Adblock

Anti Adblock has been the bane of any casual website viewing experience and any website I visits that had those banners is typically written off entirely, and now Youtube is one of them but they take it to a whole nother level. Apparently on the Ublock reddit. They have to routinely change up how they block the banner every couple of days and by extension, you will have to update your ublock every couple of days for it to work and may have to only use Ublock because it can conflict with other blockers.

How did we get here? Oh right, every multi million dollar corporation keeping the lights on with advertisements. Advertisements so bad the our governments actually consider it a good idea to have ad block on because advertisements are a hotbed for malware to speak nothing of deepfakes or outright scam ads that the FTC considers too small a problem to get rid of.

I mean ever since Ross from the game dungeon released his video where he said that Games as a Service are Scams I've been workshopping basically the same sentiment for advertisements.

Companies sell ad space with no expectation that customers will click on the ads, only that for all intents and purposes, they presented the ads to you and are thus owed money for providing that service.

Advertisers dump tens of thousands of dollars just so the advertisement can be clicked on with the possible chance of making a sale as that's the only way to actually get a return on the investment of the advertisement in the first place.

After all a really great product doesn't even need an advertising budget per se. Word of mouth is so powerful, hell, a 7-10 review of a product from a random youtuber generates more attention and sales than a million dollar super bowl advertisement. As long as you get the right Youtuber it's way more cost effective to not have traditional ad spaces.

Not that sponsors are free from guilt. Sponsors are often scams as well. There's been more than a couple sponsored products that were scams but unlike Youtube/Google which can sell ad space to con artists and never suffer an issue, one video from Scott Schafer can convince the youtube community to effectively deplatform a bad product or service.

I mean Raid Shadow Legends still falls through the cracks but it's better than nothing.

But I've been preparing for this, actually a few people have. Louis Rossman has been working on some Manhattan project called Grayjay that will bring multi platform streaming all under one app.

There are of course other streaming platforms with different, more affordable hosting methods as well as ways to monetize content that hopes to not make the same mistakes Youtube makes with budgeting.

There's my method which is downloading every video you think you'll ever want to watch more than once, putting it on a single hard drive and then using some server hosting service like Plex and you just stream your own content to yourself (which by the way is really affordable to do as long as you are okay with 1080p to 360p as higher resolutions on very long videos like streams will soak up a lot of space for what is just one video).

A third method is installing Linux on a machine and gain access to some linux exclusive apps like Freetube which removes the bad aspects of Youtube and only has the videos as well as sponsorblock with no ads to boot (you won't be able to block content though and there's no algorithm so you better know what you want to find because you are on your own for real).

The last method is Vanced. It was supposed to be dead but like a building that's closed 11 months in a year, it sprung to life one day and now lives although you will have to have a android device and learn the side loading method to get it really working.

I've been saying this about Youtube and Twitter X for awhile now but you really should consider a future where Youtube doesn't exist, companies are tightening their budgets across the board, once the advertising firm gets slashed basically everything dependent on it will evaporate. Not enough people will ever use Youtube Red to keep the lights on for Youtube as Youtube's budget is constantly scaling and impossible to price in.

The lost media Youtube will create when it shudders is beyond your comprehension.

#youtube #advertising #controversy #youtube video

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heyheyto · 2 years ago

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Hello World! Again!

After 3 months of non-stop development, many missed college classes, 1000+ commits on GitHub, and definitely more cups of coffee, HEYHEY is finally reaching its initial design goals. Just like we mentioned in our introductory blog post, HEYHEY is all about helping you centralize your digital presence while expanding on what a personal web page can be.

Today, as a free user, you already have access to 4 beautiful themes, animated profile pictures, the ability to post basic content, and your own username that points to heyhey.to/[USERNAME]. We even innovated on usernames: no longer are you bound to using the 26-letter English alphabet — you can use ANY alphabet you want. For instance, heyhey.to/Gün is possible on HEYHEY but not on other platforms.

As a Pro user, you get access to more themes that let you express yourself in different styles; Analytics, which allows you to see valuable information like how many people visited your page, how long they hang around, and if they clicked on anything; and The Shop, which lets you sell digital goods without any DRM.

In our first devlog, we outlined HEYHEY's tech stack. We are extremely happy with all the decisions that were made as they allowed us to quickly build software without causing any performance degradations. Fastify, TailwindCSS, and DaisyUI are simply the best tools for one-person-army type of development flows. If you're thinking about starting your own web-based venture, consider using them!

Now, we want to be clear: we are far from done. There are some rough edges, not every feature that's on the roadmap has shipped, and we're STILL debating how to do Widgets (we need to create a uniform way of embedding content that belongs to other websites — like a Twitch stream or a YouTube video — while respecting theming).

For Analytics, HEYHEY actually collects more information (in a privacy-preserving first-party way) than what's shown on the panel, we are exploring ways of displaying them as well. That means, in the future, you should be able to see where exactly people are coming from (digitally and geographically), and where they're headed on your profile page.

The Shop is missing many quality of life improvements, and we want to give more control to creators on how they choose to fund themselves. So a Tip Button, for instance, might be a reality!

The biggest problem, and what's blocking us from releasing The Shop, is a legal issue. We still haven't set up a company to manage HEYHEY. We are working on it, though!

We invite you to take HEYHEY for a spin, give us feedback (it has a considerable chance of shaping the product), and, if satisfied, support us by subscribing to Pro.

See you soon, hopefully with more feature announcements!

#HEYHEY

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lovesanmotion · 4 years ago

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yandere!ateez as fanboys

Hongjoong:

The moment he hears one song from your latest album, it immediately swept him off his feet from the ground and made the decision to stan you. You are his favorite soloist. The moment he hears your latest comeback album, he immediately listened to all your other songs and made his research about you that night. Of course, the caffeine boosting him.

He made a lot of social media accounts just to follow you. Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, you name it. He would follow your every move and post. But is still didn’t feel the same. To Hongjoong, he felt like he was still missing a large chunk of your life and he didn’t want that. The next night, he pulled a couple of strings and ta dah! had access to your very personal information. And he felt so complete afterwards.

To you, Hongjoong was just one of your few male fans that you adore. I mean, the guy makes covers of your songs. And part of you agreed that when he made his own remix of your songs, it would sound 10000% better than the original. However, you just didn’t noticed the subliminal messages and tones he inserted in his remixes.

Seonghwa:

Seonghwa was one of those rare male fansites you have. Being in a 7 member girl group called Starlight, you are the group’s visual, main dancer, lead vocalist, center and face of the group. Once your group made its debut, fame automatically found you.

Endorsements here and there, landing yourself in various commercial films and even coming to be a guest of variety shows. Your popularity instantly swept off and in a blink of an eye, the whole of South Korea knew your name. And your name tasted delicious in HwaLight_Y/N. Seonghwa’s fansite name dedicated to you. He thought of a name that would connect him to you. Hwa meaning star, replacing the english word and thus the birth of the fansite name.

With his good looks, he too became known amongst the fans. He was known as your handsome fansite master. And since he was one of the rare male fansites you have, you would immediately recognize him from afar. Smiling at his camera and waving at him. Much to Seonghwa’s delight, he felt like there was already a deep connection between you two. And he wanted more of that.

He started coming to your unofficial group activities. Slippiing his way inside the venue just to be able to feel your presence a few feet from him. He started purchasing flight and hotel information from other “fans” and would purchase the seat closest to you or the room nearest yours.

Didn’t noticed those red beaming lights hidden inside your hotel room when you’re changing clothes or taking a shower? Click click! Or you were dead asleep tired from rehearsals when someone barged into your room? Click click! Ever noticed how your favorite red lace underwear went missing only to come back with a stain? Click click!

Yunho:

At first, he wasn’t entirely dazzled by you. Yunho was just a regular idol manager who would follow you into your every activities and schedules. He needed the money, plus, companies like him for his tall and muscular physique. The kind of person that can ward off creepy or scary fans that tried to get close to you.

You, on the other hand, is an ex member of your former girl group but found fame as a solo artist. Your debut song swept the charts and immediately won every single music show chart. Topping music chart billboards in every country. Despite all the glitz and glamor that followed you, you felt lonely and desperate for human touch.

It wasn’t supposed to be how Yunho, naked and in between your legs. How such alcohol can make you two do things that violates his contract with you. One night was all it takes for him to see a completely different side of you. And he wanted more of that.

Yunho became more protective towards you. Becoming more aggressive to anyone who dares lay a hand on you. Even going as far as sleeping in one bed with you as he thinks “its completely necessary, who know, someone might be barging into your room in the middle of the night?” You can never get away from him. Companies like him, remember? With his clean records, your company would do anything to keep him signed with you.

Yeosang:

Channel YNbyYS is a youtube channel run by Yeosang. It’s the platform wherein he posts his dance covers to your group’s songs. With a bit of his dancing elements and the original choreography of your group, the blend came out much nicer than what everyone expected. His heart leaped more at the idea of you endorsing a chicken brand. From that day forward, he became a regular of the certain chicken brand nearest to him.

Yeosang may seem like a complete innocent and harmless fanboy. But do you ever what he is behind his dance covering youtube channel? Why, he is the second most influential person in your company. The son of your own CEO. He had his very own place within the company. And he uses it to the extent of getting closer to you.

The gifts that came into your company? Those are ALL Yeosang’s gifts for you. From the dresses to the shoes. He shamelessly threw away other gifts’ that were for you because according to him “he is the only relevant and special person that can offer you gifts”. Anything else is directly to the bin.

And you wonder how your “fans” know your taste in fashion.

Mingi:

Mingi, before being blacklisted by your company, was just a regular fanboy of your group. You were the group’s main rapper and the lyrics to your bars spoke volumes to him. He was just casually listening to your verses and mixtapes until one day, he realized that he wanted to be more than just your fanboy.

It started slowly when he would attend your group’s fansigns and even follow you towards the airport. But the bodyguards prevented him from coming anymore closer to you. And so he did the unthinkable. Knocking down a bodyguard that was shielding you and enveloping you in his arms. His heartbeat raced and he felt a second heartbeat between his pants. With you in his arms, he only realized how petite yet handful you are. Hands running all over your body, burying his nose in your hair inhaling that soft and sweet strawberry shampoo that you use.

Despite being blacklisted, he never cared about going public and meeting you at your group or individual activities. Instead, he resorted to barging into your dorm. Whether you’re home or not.

San:

You are your group’s maknae and visual. Dubbed as Korea’s IT Girl, your face can be found anywhere in Seoul. From commercial films to leading Korean dramas, releasing your own solo album and attending fashion weeks, you are always the talk of the town. Whenever your name comes up, its always met with praises. Of course, the people loves you! You are a crowd and fan favorite.

And you had managed to capture the eyes and heart of San. Calling himself as your number 1 fan. He was never absent in any of your activities. Getting front row seats in your concerts, being present at your variety shows and even buying products that you endorse - soju, cosmetics, literally anything.

To your fans, he is the biggest fanboy you ever had. And it was quite entertaining to watch him profess his love to you. You even chuckled a few of his pick up lines that he threw at you during your fansigns. When asked if you had anything memorable that a fan ever did to you, the answer would always be San.

Behind closed doors, San kept a dirty secret. Remember how he always gets front row seats to your concerts? He hid a camera in his clothes to film your upskirt. Beating his meat every night to his own collection of your tight and revealing clothing. Remember how you would endorse anything? He’d buy it and imagine how ripping it off your body feels like. His greatest possession? Your black lingerie. Too bad, you’re never getting it back.

Wooyoung:

ForYN is a website account run by Wooyoung. He regularly updates his content - from posting your pictures that are uploaded today, to your daily activities, the products you use and a little sub website from his channel wherein he writes poems and graphical fanfiction of himself with you. But of course no one would ever read between the lines. The way how Wooyoung would write would be so poetical and endearing that it? doesn’t? have? any? hidden? meaning?

He only came once to your fansign and gave you a pink teddybear. It wasn’t the best gift you owned but you liked it somehow. There was something about the teddybear that you didn’t know why you’re into it. Its just a plain gift but everytime you look at it, its as if you’re drawn to it.

Maybe becuase you didn’t noticed how it has camera eyes?

Wooyoung’s love for you deepened when he caught you humping on the pink teddybear. Cum splattering all over its face. It was just one gift, but it was everything to you.

And Wooyoung’s working on the next entry for his fanfiction.

Jongho:

For today, you were having your own vlive. Doing what you called a YN mukbang. As the convenient food store you bought was placed on the table, you began to greet yours fans, asking them how they are feeling before digging in your food. Among the hundreds and thousands of viewers, Jongho was one of them.

He was engrossed in two things: one, how adorable and beautiful you look despite just eating. Second, the rude comments that were popping up in your live video. Rude remarks of body shaming were what caught his attention. He took his time digging deeper into someone else’s username and IP address. Once he got a hold of their information, he would report those comments and head out. In his disguise while hunting the people who made disguisting remarks at you. No one should ever make such remarks to a goddess.

#ateez #Ateez hongjoong #ateez mingi #ateez yeosang #ateez san #ateez wooyoung #ateez seonghwa #ateez x reader #ateez yunho #ateez jongho #ateez yandere

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freelancershubseo-blog · 3 years ago

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The Top 3 Things You Should Spend Your Marketing Budgets On

With so many different areas you can focus your marketing efforts, it’s more difficult than ever to outline a comprehensive marketing budget. Plus, since you’re operating with finite resources, it’s impossible to spread money out across all the different platforms available to you. Today, we’re going to try and make it a bit easier to decide where to allocate your resources to achieve the best return possible.

Preparing Your Budget

If the Wall Street Journal is correct, then the average company will allocate about 11% of their total budget towards marketing expenses this year. Depending on your industry, this number is going to be higher or lower. For example, companies selling consumer products often spend up to 25% of their budget on marketing expenses. Meanwhile, companies in manufacturing or energy spend 7-8% of their budget on marketing.

If you’re still in the weeds with regards to setting your marketing budget, this helpful marketing budget calculator can help steer you in the right direction. Once you’re able to nail down your budget, you’ll be able to implement your plan, track its performance and measure the ROI it’s generating.

Top 3 Marketing Budget Expenditures

While the sheer volume of different areas you can focus your budget on doesn’t make it any easier to plan your budget, there are certain areas that you just can’t overlook in 2018. Let’s take a look at the top 3.

Content

In 2018, content will remain king. Content has dominated seemingly every activity central to marketing over the past few years, and it will continue to play an important role moving forward.

Focusing on quality content production is going to be one way you can differentiate your company from your competitors while creating customer relationships that will hold serious weight when it’s time for your customer to decide where to spend their money.

Most importantly, content is easily re-purposed to fill the needs of different platforms. Often, the video you’ve produced for YouTube, or the infographic you’ve created for your blog will also be just as home on your Facebook or in your guest posts.

Social

For years, the idea of organic reach on social media has been dead. But, if you’ve been reluctant about opening up your wallet to reach your audience on social media, you’re missing the boat. Besides, social media continues to be a more cost-effective way of reaching your customers than other forms of paid digital promotion.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the growth of video on social media platforms, especially live video. Video will remain a vital part of a successful social media mix.

Video growth on Facebook is especially noticeable. Analytics firm eMarketer found that Facebook users engage with 6.3% of the videos they see. Considering the sheer volume of content that’s available today, that’s a pretty staggering figure.

Further, video posted directly to Facebook has significantly more engagement than video which is shared from other platforms, as the chart below illustrates.

Source

An often overlooked expenditure that should probably be part of your digital marketing budget is user experience. This is particularly important for companies with transactional websites. Often, companies with a quality website that converts well overlook this aspect. This is foolish, considering that UX could be the difference maker that pushes them over the edge.

A memorable user experience is also one of the best ways to inspire trust in consumers as they browse your website, and trust is of the utmost importance in 21st-century marketing. This animated video does a great job of illustrating why UX needs to be part of your 2018 marketing budget.

Further, UX becomes even more critical when you consider it in the scope of building new websites or digital products. Robert Pressman’s Book Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Guide does a great job of further reinforcing the importance of UX.

In the book, Pressman asserts that “for every dollar spent to resolve a problem during product design, $10 would be spent on the same problem during development, and multiply to $100 or more if the problem had to be solved after the product’s release.”

Of course, this may be a bit of an overstatement. But, the fact remains that UX should certainly be an integral component of your marketing budget for 2018.

Originally posted in: https://freelancers-hub.com/the-top-3-things-you-should-spend-your-marketing-budgets-on/

#Marketing Budgets #Marketing

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zabreti · 4 years ago

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the time has finally come for me to start expressing what i have been overwhelmingly feeling for the past week, since i started to properly listen to this sunshine of a woman named joanna newsom. i want to- actually, i need to vent a little about the album ys, since it’s the one i first listened to. plus my initial contact with joanna’s work and thoughts that came with it

even though i only found out about her a few months ago, i guess everyone knows her(?); if you don’t, you should. there’s not one single moment in which i’m not mad at myself for not finding her sooner. so fyi, she’s a harpist, pianist, singer and songwriter from nevada. according to some sources, she may be the most famous harpist alive today; i really don’t know about you, but it really sounds quite badass for me.

i started searching for her stuff after watching her husband’s - andy samberg - multiple interviews, where he would be sometimes asked about their marriage. i’ve been binge watching random interviews with people i like for the last weeks, and i found myself actually watching some interviews of hers before i even got to listen to her music.

btw, look at this fucking adorable couple. just look at them for a second.

first of all, what a lovely woman! each answer, each laughter, each little thing she did on camera caused an admiration for the idea of andy and her together to grow strongly; i wasn’t even sure if it was ok for me to feel so strongly about someone else’s relationship. my curiosity grew when i started to read the comments on these videos on youtube, pretty much 100% of them being about her intelligence, her talent and how her music sounds angelical, mystical and perfectly constructed. (let it be said that it only grew more and more as i watched every single interviewer asking both andy and joanna about how different their works are, and how different they appear to be as individuals; not only was suggested that andy would probably not rise up to such an intelligent, serious taste as to fall in love with her (he doesn’t even need to say a word for anyone to realize how passionately in love he is with joanna and her entire work), but also said that no one could believe she was actually able to be a goofy, easy-going, good-humored person because of the lyrics she writes. ok, i could spend hours listing the unnecessary questions i identified in these interviews, and how i get easily annoyed by these famous hosts assuming stuff or trying to create an uncomfortable environment; and don’t even get me started on the fact that most of the interviews she was invited to would revolve around her relationship with andy. i’m choosing to let this feeling pass for now, since it’s not my focus today.)

i couldn’t help but start by saying all this since i truly adore andy’s works, and nothing feels warmer than realizing two amazing people are in love and have a family together by choice.

i mean..... ??????? c’mon. greatest couple alive. try and fight me on this.

another interesting thing i found out was that she dislikes streaming platforms similar to spotify, which probably (?) justifies the fact that i never came across her songs, since i use spotify on a daily basis and have been using it to find new artists for the last years. call me ignorant, it’s fine, truly; but i haven’t heard of similar opinions coming from artists, and it made me even more curious to know what this woman was expressing, creating, thinking. she actually told larry king:

“spotify is a business model. it’s not good. it’s based on the idea of circumventing the payment of artists. (...) i’m not opposed to streaming. i understand that the world is shifting and that the way music is valued and monetized is shifting, and i’m ok with that. and i’m even ok with people not paying for music (...), i just wish that there was a better way to do it that didn’t only pay a company. (...) i haven’t heard of one [alternative to spotify] that seems built the way that i would prefer it to be built.”

one of spotify owners (owners or directors, idek and idec) even replied to her many critics, but she never changed her mind or retreated from defending even her honest, harsh comments about how spotify is “like a villainous cabal of major labels”. for me, that’s a badass woman. not only for expressing herself without giving a damn about anyone who might be offended in this process, but also for choosing the path that felt ethical and worthy, and being recognized all over the world for her talent while following her own ways. i know, right? simply awesome.

there i was, reading the endless comments on her interviews’ videos and wondering what the fuss was all about. there was nothing left for me to do other than to actually start listening to her songs. i could have done it by looking up her discography and starting from her first project, but somehow i stomped into the ys album, which was released in 2006, in youtube itself.

first of all, would you look at this freaking cover?

i found it absolutely gorgeous in each detail; in fact, i really wish to know if there are meanings in the little specific parts of the painting. maybe there aren’t any and i’m just trying to create a more complex joanna in my mind? sure, sounds like me. or maybe there are lots of ‘em and she already said it on camera and i simply missed this video? sure, sounds possible. i won’t lie, i spent so much time thinking about this cover... maybe way too much time. alright, on we go.

there are 5 tracks on the album: emily, monkey & bear, sawdust and diamonds, only skin and cosmia.

at first, i didn’t quite understand what i was listening to. and i’m not talking about the lyrics, i’m talking about the whole idea of the album, the artist, the genre. the conjunction formed by her high pitches and soft, delicious vocal variations, surrounded lovingly by the harp and the violins was very mysterious to me. at first, i wouldn’t be encouraged to keep listening to her. but something kept me there, seated, staring at the screen and paying attention to each second of it. it was an experience. a real transportation. i searched for the lyrics on genius, and anyone that would pass by my bedroom’s open door would see me completely enamored by what i was listening to, like a concentrated kid being told an epic, adventurous, huge, beautiful and complex story. that is exactly how i felt: in the middle of a field, picturing each image she described in the song; each figure, each feeling. she described it all in a way that made me wonder how can someone describe a dream so vividly, how can someone describe anything so perfectly, so fully, and not sound redundant, not sound at all boring. the way the melody and the lyrics fit together, as a gift perfectly wrapped and tightly involved in the most beautiful way. i repeat: it was an experience. it is an experience. this is not something you can listen to at any given time, at any given place; i would not dare to not pay attention each time i would plan to listen to it. this is how seriously submerged i felt by joanna in that moment; in that entire day.

all of this, all of this immersion, all of this dream-like state in which i found myself in, kept growing its roots in me throughout the entire album, in a way i needed to show someone - anyone - joanna before i even got to finish the five songs; and the first one that came near me happened to be my mother. while listening, she actually found it quite pleasing, “like some old movie’s soundtrack” when listening to emily, “like an 1960′s melody” when listening to sawdust and sand, and on she went about the entire album. and this got me thinking about how i would describe her genre; of course, after following her on bandcamp i found out i was actually listening to some folk/pop/avant-garde/baroque pop/chamber folk/indie stuff. sounds about right, but at the same time not right at all, for some reason. i believe it’s fair to say that joanna has a magical, rare quality to her music that makes it different to each one listening to it. i’ve said it too much and i’ll say it again: it’s an experience, a complete, true one. it ressonates with deep, personal places. and, strangely, it makes many people describe the feeling that urges to grow inside their hearts as “home”; and i share this exact same sensation.

i really don’t know if it makes any sense, but see: i cherish my alone time probably more than anything in the world. i have learned to be my own best friend in many ways, and being by myself in some quiet days, at my house, reading, listening, watching and creating is when i can truly be myself. with that said, listening to this album, i felt at home. it made me feel even more alone, and i mean it in the most loving, warm, hypnotizing way.

the ys album is a relatively quick production to be heard, even though it feels like you’ve been gone for hours, days, weeks on end while listening to it. the amount of literary, historic and philosofical references in the lyrics is magically overwhelming; i simply wasn’t able to snap out of it for a long time, and i have, to this day, re-listened to the album about 5 times. still reading the lyrics again and again, still grasping at some expressions faintly but amazed, still finding out about hidden and not so hidden meanings behind each track. still defining it, every single day.

i hope for the great discoveries i feel like pursuing from her work, and the diverse new singers, song-writers, harpists, pianists, violinists, chellists and musicists in general i’ll try to find, understand and support from now on. i’m thankful for finding out how much i love the mix between an orchestra-like atmosphere and a sweet, honest voice ringing in my ears; and how the words assembled together feels like a psychography.

i thank the universe every single day for the opportunity to discover people like joanna newsom.

#r #joanna newsom #ys #joanna newsom ys #review #shes a mystical creature and i could not be happier to have found such a raw talent #i seem to seriously not get bored of her and talking about her in general #literally everyone around me during quarentine has heard me talking about this woman #album review #ys review #music review #newberg #andy samberg #m

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cindylouwho-2 · 4 years ago

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, May 2, 2021

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy. If you are interested in Etsy news, please read my top story below, as there seem to be a lot of changes afoot. (There is also a section general Etsy news below that.)

If you have any questions or news you would like me to cover, please drop me a line here on Tumblr, reply to this post, email me, or contact me on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Something is brewing at Etsy: as of April 26, people in almost all non-Etsy Payments countries “temporarily” cannot open new shops. They hid this development in a Help file, but someone reported it to Ecommerce Bytes, which garnered more attention. Why does this matter? Currently, Etsy Payments (EP) is only available in 44 countries; i.e., most of the world cannot currently open a new shop on Etsy. [Updated May 3 2021] Apparently the only exception is India; see the screenshot below, which someone kindly sent me:

(please click to see it in more detail, or check it out on Twitter)

There was no warning, and no published end date, even though they say it is temporary. Of course, they say it is to protect buyers, but they said that when they removed standalone PayPal too, and we know that was just about making more money. It’s possible they are adding new payment companies to the backend which will be able to operate in most of these countries, greatly expanding their take from EP. The first quarter report is scheduled for May 5, and that is often the time they announce new or expanded income streams. Expect to learn more sometime around then. In the meantime, watch for payment glitches.

It is also possible that the above situation is related to the glut of bad press Etsy has garnered recently. They released a blog post on April 29th, explaining how they plan on spending $40 million extra this year on marketplace enforcement. Turns out, they were just trying to get out in front of an April 30th report from Business Insider [paywall], which describes 800 policy violations in listings on the site. You can get the details in articles from Engadget and Gizmodo. This might get more traction, as both Insider and Gizmodo noted it is very easy to find more prohibited and even illegal items on Etsy.

“After Etsy deleted the listings the outlet identified, Insider reports that it was still able to find several others for ivory products, brass knuckles, mandrake roots, tools for using cannabis concentrates, mass-produced products, and other banned items. We poked around Etsy’s marketplace as well, and within a few minutes found a bunch of prohibited products, including a vintage ivory bracelet put up for sale as recently as March, several weapons that are plainly marketed as such, and a shop with more than 1,000 reviews selling all manner of spells for attracting love, wealth, and what have you.” [from Gizmodo]

Note that Etsy has also changed the wording of its Prohibited Items policy to include new definitions for counterfeit items. See discussion on this Reddit thread. Etsy is also still getting negative attention for allowing fake COVID-19 vaccine cards to be posted for sale. Vice has the most recent article, and Forbes has an overview of this hot new scam area.

So, is all of this linked, and if yes, what does it mean? Etsy hasn't cared about enforcing its listing policies for many years, as long as the media doesn't notice. Heck, you can still buy gift boxes of manufactured candy in thousands of shops, which is expressly prohibited, yet reporting never removes them. Is the media finally noticing enough to make a difference, or is Etsy really embarking on a huge cleanup that includes (at least temporarily) banning people from most countries from opening new shops? We will likely learn more this month, and perhaps even this week.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy says that shoppers are searching for “eco-friendly” items more often this year, and released a trend report on the topic. Insights include “42% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for reusable cotton menstrual pads...100% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for reusable straws...76% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for food covers...54% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for reclaimed wood shelves...176% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for environmentally friendly candles...712% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for eco-friendly tissue paper...285% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for vintage hoodies.” Definitely read the report if you want to know everything that people are looking for.

They also did a UK-based article on trends in outdoor items. Search tips of note: “2,644% YoY increase in UK searches on Etsy for patio furniture...Over 1,000% YoY increase in UK searches on Etsy for spring wreaths...1,266% YoY increase in UK searches on Etsy for garden lights or lanterns” It is hard to say how much these trends can be extrapolated to other countries, as the UK appears to have embraced online shopping much more during the pandemic than some other countries (see story below).

The latest Etsy Success podcast [transcript with podcast links] covers their buyer research, as well as a few questions from sellers. Not much here, except for the fact that they do expect wedding sales to pick up.

Reverb had a really large data breach, exposing the personal information of over 5 million customers.

As mentioned above, Etsy’s first quarter financial results for 2021 will be out on May 5th.

Apparently, Etsy is testing videos in search; here is a forum thread on the topic.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Here is an intermediate/semi-advanced article on ecommerce websites and common SEO issues. If you don’t do any of your own coding and don’t have much control over site design and indexing, skip the first 3 points.

Link building: what is a high-quality link? (you know, the type we are always told we need.) Moz’s Whiteboard Friday covers the basics. [video & transcript]

If you are new to blogging or writing instructional articles for your website, this template for writing for both readers and for Google SEO should be very useful.

Google introduced an algorithm update for product reviews starting April 8th. If you review other products on your website or blog, you will want to get the details here and here.

The Google page experience algorithm update has been delayed; it is now going to start in June and be completed by the end of August. That and more is covered in the Google Search News video for April. [YouTube video with highlights and links in the comments]

Yes, you can use SEO to get more attention to your podcasts. Here’s a detailed how-to.

Focussing on YouTube? Here are some tools for YouTube SEO. (Some are free or have free versions.)

There are probably as many Google SEO myths as there are Google algorithm factors, but Google saying something isn’t true isn’t always proof it is a myth. With that in mind, please enjoy this summary of 15 Google ranking factor myths (some of which are in dispute).

[semi-advanced content] The current state of long tail SEO has changed due to both searcher behaviour and Google, and that has led to both more and less opportunity. [Google redirecting results to what it thinks the searcher really wanted, even when the exact words aren’t on the page that they rank first, reminds me of what is happening with Etsy search lately.]

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Facebook still has the most traffic in the US, compared to all other social networks, but YouTube is even more popular. YouTube and Reddit are the only established major platforms with significant growth since 2019. You can read more details from the actual study here.

Instagram is working on new ways for creators to make money on the platform, not just those with business accounts.

HubSpot put together a summary of how the algorithms work on Facebook, Twitter, And Instagram.

Reddit appears to be testing a group voice chat feature, which would compete with Clubhouse.

TikTok isn’t just for young people; parents and grandparents are now on the platform too.

Twitter’s timeline algorithm (active if you are seeing “Top Tweets” on your feed) tends to ignore a lot of external links, and more than half of the posts can be “suggestions” from people you don’t follow. I’ve noticed lately that Twitter rarely makes suggestions in my chronological timeline anymore, except when I don’t have any activity for over 24 hours.

Twitter obeyed an order from the government of India and removed several dozen tweets which criticized the government’s COVID-19 response. The tweets in question can still be seen outside of India, however.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Understanding the definition of “return on ad spend” (ROAS) is the first step to making sure your ROAS is good for your business. “in general, a ROAS of 4:1 ($4 in revenue for every $1 spent) or higher usually suggests a successful campaign. But keep in mind that this is just a benchmark, not something to swear by. Some businesses need a ROAS of 10:1 to stay profitable, while others can do well with just 3:1...A large profit margin means you can continue the campaign with a low ROAS, whereas smaller margins demand a relatively higher ROAS and low advertising costs to maintain profitability. ROAS can also vary by platform. For instance, the average ROAS for Google Ads is 2:1.”

10% of money spent on US online ads last year went to Amazon, but they are still well behind Google. Meanwhile, Facebook’s ad revenue was up 46% in the first quarter of 2021, Google’s was up 32% & Bing's increased by 17%.

eBay launched the ability to automate their Promoted Listings.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Payment processor Stripe purchased TaxJar, with a plan to integrate it into Stripe. This would provide new options for calculating & filing US taxes to Stripe customers. TaxJar will also have a standalone version for the moment. While TaxJar does do US taxes for business from many countries, it has almost nothing available regarding non-US taxes at this time. (Someone needs to do this for other taxes including UK VAT registration, since they don’t have a minimum threshold for micro businesses, and are no longer in the EU, so won’t be included in the new VAT collection rules come July 1. How many sole proprietors want to be registering for & remitting all of these countries by ourselves?)

In related news, Florida has joined most other US states in requiring online businesses to collect state sales tax even if they have no base in Florida. Missouri is now the only state with sales tax but without such a law, and they are working on it.

eBay has rolled out its new coupon code tool. Also, they released lower than expected projections for the current quarter, which has disappointed the analysts.

Meanwhile, Amazon hugely beat its first quarter expectations, and projects the growth will continue. Prime Day will be in June instead of July this year; date to come.

Also, Amazon is letting its larger brands email customers directly, which was previously not allowed. Customers do have to follow the brand to receive these messages.

Mailchimp will soon be offering ecommerce stores, including a free option that has a 2% transaction fee, or more advanced versions with lower transaction fees for $10 and $29 a month respectively. US and UK customers will be able to start a store as of May 18th.

Shopify probably doesn’t feel that threatened by the new competition, as their first quarter revenue was up more than 100% over the previous year. Note it is estimated they got 8.6% of US ecommerce revenue in the quarter, while some believe that eBay, Apple and Amazon lost market share.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Mastercard says that people worldwide spent $900 billion more online last year compared to 2019. They expect the ecommerce trend of grocery shopping and bargain hunting to continue more than other retail areas.

Regions that had stricter lockdowns during the pandemic may have had a greater increase in ecommerce activity; this report compares the US and the UK.

Generation Z is likely to stop shopping with you if your site has issues. “Seventy-one percent of respondents want the experience to be personalized, and 76% said their favorite brands should reward them for their business, the survey found.”

MISCELLANEOUS

Brave browser has disabled FLoC, Google’s new tracking that is supposed to replace cookies in the next year. They explain why here. If you like Chrome but don’t want FLoC, try DuckDuckGo’s FLoC blocking Chrome extension.

#etsysellernews #Etsynews #search engine optimization #social media #ecommerce #smallbiz

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brookewhitney · 4 years ago

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Social and Experiential Aspects of E-Shopping

According to Mirriam-Webster’s dictionary, to “shop”, when used as a verb, means “to examine goods or services with intent to buy”, or “to hunt through a market in search of the best buy” (n.d.). The third definition likely moves more towards the online aspect of shopping, as it reads “to make a search” or “hunt” (n.d.). While shopping, in the bare-bones definition, is nothing more than merely searching for products that fits a customer's wants or needs, when we look at the vast amount of data that surrounds what makes a great shopping experience for consumers, we find that it is far more than finding the best deals or even finding the best quality products. What also makes or breaks the sale is the experience that the consumer has while visiting the website and even opening the package for the first time when it arrives. With the wide array of e-commerce platforms out there, consumers want more than to just find their product. If the companies want their loyalty, then they will also provide them with the experience that will supply said loyalty.

When looking at why consumers prefer brick and mortar stores over e-commerce stores, the book “Internet Retailing and Future Perspectives” mentions that most of the surveyed participants liked the fact that in-person shopping was more “sociable” than in an online retail setting (Pantano, Nguyen, Dennis, Merrilees, & Gerlach, 2017, p. 111). In fact, they go on to say that “Internet shopping is not a personal experience. You cannot try and see what you’re buying… Shopping… [should] be very sociable” (Pantano, et al., 2017, p. 111). When questioned further, the surveyors found that participants also liked the fact that brick and mortar stores tended to have better, and more personal, “customer service” employees working with them to find the best solution to whatever the consumers needed while at the store (Pantano, et al., 2017, p. 111). While shopping online, consumers can understandably lose that touch, because they have not entered a new environment, nor have they seen anyone new when entering a website. The problem is, without these changes, the consumer is no longer immersed within the entire shopping experience. Instead, they may simply be at home, in the same couch or chair that they usually inhabit, and scrolling through another website that looks interesting, but may not necessarily be catching their attention.

This is where the new wave of shopping online is going to thrive: Experiential eCommerce.

According to Marketing Interactive (2020), “Experiential eCommerce is a customer-centric strategy that strengthens the bond between brands and consumers through a virtualised shopping experience” (Belchere, para. 5). This type of shopping experience can be as simple as recommending a product based on what the consumer searched for previously (Wylie, 2020, para. 14), or something as complex as introducing an element within a 3D version of the store that not only changes appearance given the time of day, but even changes given the weather that the consumer is experiencing on their end (Belchere, 2020, para. 16). With personalization models such as this, it is helping the consumer enter the world of online retailing, feeling more immersed because what they are experiencing currently within their world is what they are also experiencing in the online world as well. If the website does this strategically enough so as to look innovative without appearing a bit too close to home, this could help bring more consumers in, and really help change the way that businesses approach the idea behind online retailing.

Another idea businesses can incorporate in order to bring consumers who love the social aspects of traditional retailing back into the online shopping platform is to offer personal shoppers, or personal stylists, to video chat with consumers while they shop (Briedis, Kronschnabl, Rodriguez, & Ungerman, 2020, para. 13). This type of shopping can be done by setting up a “virtual [appointment]” with the sales person, then during that appointment, the “sales [associate uses a videoconferencing platform] to offer personalized attention to customers” (Briedis, et al., 2020, para. 13). This type of attention would help provide a more one-on-one experience that consumers may remember fondly from back when they had physically gone shopping in the past, therefore providing a better feeling while shopping with this retailer over other retailers who do not offer this personalized option. While this type of shopping would be largely ideal for those who have shopped at the place before, and thus know what they are looking for, smaller businesses could theoretically use this mode of shopping as well to show customers what they have to offer. This style of shopping would also allow the consumer to ask any questions about the individual products at the store, the shipping methods that are used in this business, and all the while getting to know the owner of the store in a more personal manner. With an option such as this for small businesses, this could help them further connect with consumers who may have never walked into their shop before, and it also would help consumers find them and get to know them in a more personal way than they possibly would have if they had come in off the street. This way, at least, the two are expected to talk and get to know each other while the consumer shops, building relationships, and, through that, loyalty with the company.

While that is one option that a small business can take, it is far from the only one. Shopify released an article giving small businesses “5 Ways [They] Can Offer Experiential Retail Like Big Brands (Without Big Budgets)” (2020). In this article, one way that largely stood out was the idea of “In-store co-branding initiatives” (Voidonicolas, 2020, para. 40 - 42). While this does retract the idea of Experiential eCommerce instead of Experiential Retail, this mode of co-branding can be used for online events as well by utilizing live streaming on social media platforms. This can be very beneficial because, according to TechJury (2020), “The live streaming industry has grown by 99% between April 2019 and April 2020” (Yanev, list #9). The industry has expanded so much this past year that, according to Restream (2020), “91% of business streamers plan to keep streaming after COVID” because their business efforts while doing so were such a success (para. 33). Keeping this in mind, by allowing small businesses to perform online co-branding events, they are not only boosting their own content out to a new audience that may be similar to their own, but they are also boosting another small business in the community, therefore sharing business growth and encouraging relationship growth through communicating with their audiences during the stream. The idea could be as simple as “[popping] in” and featuring the products of the other business, while showing how it could pair with the original small business’ products as well to create something even better and unique (Voidonicolas, 2020, para. 42). By hosting these consistently with different business owners, or even the same business owners when they have new products to feature, the audience is able to stay engaged and excited for new products coming out, or finding out about new local businesses to support. With the addition of the comments interacting throughout the video and the business owners replying and giving shoutouts, this is bringing back the “social” aspect of shopping online that consumers may have missed when everything went more virtual.

While we continue our transition from traditional retail to e-retail, let us remember that shopping is more than a trip to find an item that is needed. It is an experience that brings multiple senses together, and a social event that can come from speaking with a sales associate, or chatting with a local business owner as they get excited over a new product they are selling. As we market to new consumers on various platforms, we must focus on finding pieces of traditional marketing that consumers cling to, and see how we can further replicate that feeling into the online platforms we work with every day. Paraphrasing Kyle Nel’s Tedx Talk, “How Science Fiction is Shaping the Future of Retailing” (2015), no matter how in doubt people are with the latest technology updates, we must always keep working forward through the steep incline of progress.

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Reference List:

Belchere, K. (2020, July 2). How experiential eCommerce virtualises the in-store experience. Marketing Interactive. https://www.marketing-interactive.com/how-experiential-e-commerce-virtualises-the-instore-experience

Briedis, H., Kronschnabl, A., Rodriguez, A., & Ungerman, K. (2020, May 14). Adapting to the next normal in retail: The customer experience imperative. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/adapting-to-the-next-normal-in-retail-the-customer-experience-imperative

Merriam-Webster. (2021). “Shop” Definition. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shop

Pantano, E., Nguyen, B., Dennis, C., Merrilees, B., & Gerlach, S. (2017). Internet Retailing and Future Perspectives, Second Edition. Routledge.

Restream. (2020, December 9). The state of live streaming in 2020. https://restream.io/blog/state-of-live-streaming-2020/

TEDx Talks. (2015, March 30). How Science Fiction is Shaping the Future of Retailing | Kyle Nel | TEDxUniversidaddeNavarra[Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/k8tg-eL8Y68

Voidonicolas, R. (2020, February 6). 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Offer Experiential Retail Like Big Brands (Without Big Budgets). Shopify. https://www.shopify.com/retail/experiential-retail-for-smaller-brands

Wylie, C. (2020, October 16). How retailers can recreate the in-store customer experience online. The Drum Network. https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2020/10/16/how-retailers-can-recreate-the-store-customer-experience-online

Yanev, V. (2020, July 2). 37+ Live Streaming Statistics Every Marketer Should Keep In Mind in 2020. TechJury. https://techjury.net/blog/live-streaming-statistics/

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jeanvaljean24601 · 4 years ago

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Full-Frame Showdown: Canon R5, Panasonic S1H, and Sony a7 IIICanon, Panasonic, and Sony.

Japanese camera makers that have played a huge part in major advances in video production over the last 20 years. While they have lost some ground at the top end to innovators like RED, and to market leaders like ARRI, they are massively dominant in the budget range most of us can afford. And for the first time in a long, long time they have relatively comparable cameras in their lineup. The reason why it's the first time in a long time goes back to the beginning of the DSLR/mirrorless revolution. Each company really targeted different markets. Sony was ahead of the game in moving towards full-frame mirrorless back in 2014 with its Alpha line. At the same time, Canon was still pushing hard on DSLR cameras with an internal mirror system that could adapt to PL mount, and Panasonic was out with the very popular, but smaller sensor GH line of cameras. Not only was Sony out early with full-frame mirrorless, they then came out with the a7S II which was a huge hit among filmmakers for its high resolution and great low light performance. For nearly a decade, the three giants were competing in different spaces. Panasonic was up against Olympus and Fujifilm for the MFT market, Canon was up against Nikon for the DSLR market, and Sony had full-frame all to itself. That almost changed two years ago with the release of the RF line from Canon, a series of full-frame mirrorless cameras built around a brand new lens mount. But the resolution wasn't exciting. It was a 4K crop, and it just didn't sing to filmmakers. In 2019, Panasonic generated a ton of buzz with the LUMIX DC-S1H, a very filmmaker-focused full-frame mirrorless offering that shot 6K video, could do RAW over HDMI, 4K up to 60fps, and created very pleasing images. Combined with the same color science and log format as the very popular VariCam line of cameras made this an especially appealing choice for filmmakers who frequently rented or even owned that larger cinema platform. If you were on a VariCam show, you could feel comfortable using the S1H as a C camera or for crash setups. Now Canon is catching up with the EOS R5, which is targeted towards filmmakers with a completely new sensor that is able to shoot 8K internal RAW footage. Now all the big players have options that are broadly in competition with each other. The Canon R5 does 8K RAW internally. You can shoot 6K on the S1H, but to get RAW you need an external recorder. For Sony, the current "filmmaker" camera is the a7 III, which tops out at 4K. In truth, though, we don't care about the resolution number as an end in itself. The key is not the resolution of the file that is created, but the actual measurable perceivable resolution of the final image. If when projected on a movie screen you can't see any resolution difference between the 6K and 8K, then does it really matter? Canon currently is ahead based on the 8K number, but we're going to wait for real-world side-by-side testing with the cameras to see what actually passes the most information along. 8K also requires lenses to actually resolve 8K, which might not even matter if you are shooting with a vintage cinema lens. If you are picking this camera and hoping to shoot with a set of old Super Speed primes or the even older and softer Cooke Speed Panchros, you may not see any difference in resolution at the camera level. Canon has Dual Pixel Autofocus II on the EOS R5 that uses "deep learning" to identifying subjects. Autofocus development is likely going to be one of the key battlegrounds between the cameras. This is vital since Sony has gotten a major lead going in autofocus with some truly impressive results. Autofocus that actually feels like a tool filmmakers might really appreciate makes the a7 III very appealing. Panasonic has a whole host of lenses custom-built for the S1H but hasn't pushed its autofocus hard. While this shouldn't be the main reason a filmmaker chooses a camera, it can be a lifesaver in an interview setup with a subject who keeps leaning forward and back, for instance. If autofocus is a key decider for you, you should focus your attention on who's really ahead of the pack: Canon and Sony. Panasonic S1H As a reminder, in the end, you can make most cameras look like anything. As Steve Yedlin points out, there is so much power in post-processing that a lot of what we talk about when we discuss camera color science is just "wine language." However, color science does matter somewhat on smaller jobs when you won't have much time in post. If you are shooting something where you won't be invited to post, or where it will be online the next day, or even later that night, you want pleasing color straight out of the camera. This category, to me, leans towards Panasonic and Canon. Sony has traditionally had the strangest color science choices, with greens looking a bit off and skin tones a bit shifted towards the orange as well. It's improved over the years, but footage from the FX9 still looks a bit too saturated in the greens for me, and the a7 III fits in that space as well. The first Sony camera to really look good in this area was VENICE. Compare that to Panasonic, who has done an amazing job rolling down the VariCam look into an affordable package. For that alone, Panasonic wins the color competition. While Canon looks quite nice out of the gate, its look is the "look of YouTube," and while it's pleasing, it's very associated with vlogging and the DIY space. Based on footage seen so far, the S1H is the winner here to me. It was also the first Netflix approved mirrorless camera, despite Sony having had 4K cameras available for several years prior. Panasonic felt like a real contender with its 4K 60fps, but the Canon R5 stomps it with a 4K 120fps shooting mode. If you are doing sports, action, or even a certain kind of narrative filmmaking, that 120fps is going to be killer. Sony is carrying the rear here with only 30fps in 4K mode from the a7 III. But that will most likely change with the up-coming a7S III. Canon uses the proprietary RF mount. Sony uses the proprietary E mount. Panasonic uses the open format L mount, part of the L-mount alliance with Leica and Sigma. While that isn't the biggest industry group, I tend to prefer open formats to closed formats, and that has some appeal. However, the E mount has a more robust lens offering at the moment than either RF or L. If you need to shoot today, and you need a lot of lens choices, E mount is the way to go. But then again, most lenses can be adapted. h96 max x3The only reasonable conclusion I can make is that it's a good time to be a filmmaker looking for a camera around $4,000. There are three very strong choices that are going to give you amazing images no matter what. If you already shoot a lot of VariCam, the S1H is the obvious choice. But the R5 deserves a lot of attention and testing for its new autofocus, IBIS, and 8K RAW, which is a real game-changer at this price point. Sony isn't out of the game by any means with its arsenal of lens choices and famous low light quality. It will come down to what your personal expectations and preferences are in a camera. h96 max tv boxSo which one makes the most sense for you?

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blackpinkfanpage3-blog · 4 years ago

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Blackpink Became the Biggest K-Pop Female Band in the World

Blackpink fan page

It is very taken just four several years for Blackpink to become most significant girl bands in the world, having members Jennie, Jisoo, Rosé, and Lisa continuing to be able to smash new records along with forge new ground. These folks were the first K-pop girl class to play at Coachella in order to reach 1 billion Dailymotion views-now they’re the most-subscribed-to music group on the platform, as 2019, they broke several Guinness World Records together with the single “Kill This Like, ” which has had in excess of 312 million plays in Spotify and over 824 , 000, 000 YouTube views, a mere tiny proportion of the quartet’s billions of revenues, downloads, views, and admirers. That same year in addition, they undertook the most financially productive concert tour by a Korean language female group. They’re front-row fixtures at runway demonstrates and the faces of brilliant brands, including Chanel, The puma company, Louis Vuitton, and Dior. Or any this with just a few songs in their repertoire.

Blackpink fan page

Currently, as they prepare to release their particular latest album in Summer, it may be time to ask: The way on earth did they do the item?

Excitement prior to Blackpink’s July 2016 debut had meant to a fever pitch, when they were the first girl set in seven years beyond YG Entertainment (home for you to K-pop legends Big Fuck, 2NE1 and formerly, Psy). There were big shoes to help fill: The reign with the trailblazing four-member girl team 2NE1 was over, in addition to Blackpink was expected to resuscitate the bold EDM go crazy sound they’d embodied. All their debut, Square One, ended up being an overnight smash, the particular insistent build of “Whistle” and cocky chorus about “Boombayah” making for a small but thrilling introduction.

With November 2016, their secondly single album, Square A couple, featured a pop banger (“Playing With Fire”), a acoustic version of “Whistle, ” and “Stay, ” a country-influenced track that will allowed them to spread their very own vocal wings away from all their “girl crush” concept (K-pop vernacular for a fiery search and sound that’s shown immensely popular with international audiences).

Though they were dubbed “the new 2NE1” during their novice days, some of their first hearings on Korean variety indicates bring into focus but not only Blackpink’s chaotically entertaining reputation but the determination to create their own identities. Vocalist Jisoo has become a face for magnificence brands Kiss Me as well as Dior; rapper and performer Jennie has branched available as a soloist and a powerful influencer; New Zealand-born Rosé’s particular vocal sound has found her on hits with regard to G-Dragon; and Thailand-born artist and dancer Lisa is a most-followed K-pop star with Instagram.

Then, and now, many people recognize the need for each other to carry out the group alchemy here is endeared them to millions. “I don’t think a specific new member should do more dancing as well as one member does considerably more singing. I think Blackpink’s relaxation is complete because of each one person’s energy, ” Jennie told Vogue Korea prior this year.

The long-standing imaginative and prescient vision of K-pop as a blinged-out, ultra-slick fantasy world is made by three labels: YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and also SM Entertainment. YG is acknowledged for maximalist visuals and a hefty, club-friendly sound devised by simply in-house writer-producer Teddy Park your car, the man behind some of K-pop’s biggest, hookiest hits. With Blackpink’s 2018 “Ddu-du Ddu-du” (“DDDD” for short), these elements aligned to produce the irresistible pop package.

Achievements lay in the catchy se?alar refrain, the memorable finger-gun dance, and a gloriously increased video, but also in Blackpink themselves as aspirational yet emulatable, aesthetically fierce and not intimidating, killer onstage nevertheless adorable off it. Often the four-track EP, Square Upwards, would go platinum in Sth Korea, “DDDD” would arrive at gold in the U. S i9000., becoming their first billion-view video, and “Kill That Love” would make them typically the first-ever Korean girl party to enter the U. E. singles chart.

These milestones came via a fandom in which had grown rapidly due to the fact late 2016, but which will had to wait eight several months for 2017’s single “As If It’s Your Continue, ” then an entire calendar year for its follow-up, Square Right up. One release per year used to be standard in K-pop, if there were fewer groups dealing with for a share of a modest domestic market. Groups currently average two or three releases (known as “comebacks”) a year in a very bid to grow and maintain fandoms, but YG Entertainment, considered one of South Korea’s oldest K-pop agencies, remains unapologetically invested in less is more.

It’s not really a huge fail-safe plan-it draws continual fan criticism, petitions, along with boycott threats-but the old-school approach, in an era connected with oversaturation and instant prime, has created heightened desire in addition to demand. It’s turned just about every comeback into a global affair and has funneled the fandom’s streaming power into the types of headline-making, spreadsheet-melting numbers that contain seduced many a point executive.

Like many profitable musicians, Blackpink understands the capability in marrying the oceans of music and manner. Their innate understanding of model has made them hot residence, with the girls now front-row fixtures at Fashion 1 week. In September 2019, Jisoo popped over to London regarding Burberry, while Rosé wowed at Saint Laurent (and was also asked by means of Anthony Vaccarello to be it has the brand ambassador). Meanwhile, Jennie found herself next to Cardi B at Chanel, intended for whom she is a brand ambassadress.

In February 2020, Lisa-currently a muse for Hedi Slimane’s Celine-took a trip to Hong kong for Prada’s fall 2020 show, and just this week, placed a #WFH look to seducre her Instagram account (high-waisted light-wash denim, a Celine button-down shirt, and Bottega Veneta’s latest envelope clutch) this garnered more than 5 zillion likes.

Given their tested selling power-magazines have claimed needing to print quadruple reports to supply demand; their adventures sell out in seconds-the romance between the band and fashion’s leading houses will longer continue to flourish.

Blackpink seemed to be signed to U. Nasiums. -based Interscope Records at the end of 2018, a direct play for any American market and something not any South Korean girl class had tried since Girls’ Generation in 2012. Even with their skill and practical experience, Blackpink’s awkward, lackluster January 2019 performances on Hello America and The Late Indicate With Stephen Colbert ended up widely panned. But in the front of a vast, mostly K-pop-unaware audience at Coachella, often the universality of the group’s sounds bloomed, earning rave critiques. A high point was the great “Kill This Love, ” the title single from their completely new EP.

It’s rare the fact that members aren’t busy, regardless if there isn’t a let go to promote. They often turn to Instagram to communicate with their blended 128 million followers (including the main Blackpink account), and get focused on solidifying their A-list status as fashion building (such as Jennie’s new collaboration with luxury glasses brand Gentle Monster), marketplace mentors, and accidental virus-like queens (Lisa’s stint for the survival show Youth To you and her performance videos that became a Made it happen Work? meme).

And finally, 1 year after their last file, the wait is almost over. There are the forthcoming Lady Gaga relationship, “Sour Candy, ” for a laugh album Chromatica, and a July comeback from the band themselves. Could Blackpink eventually as the first K-pop girl set to break through in the West? An opportunity is there for the taking, although that means new successes need to be capitalized upon and previous strategies reexamined and polished. Now might be the time to get Blackpink to really be the emerging trend.

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is6621 · 6 years ago

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How many services does it take to satisfy your entertainment appetite? - Caroline Kelly

As an avid movie and television consumer, I have loved the ease of these subscription services bringing thousands of titles to my fingertips. From Netflix to Hulu to Prime I can find just about anything. The biggest issue I have is having to go into three different apps to see if they have what I want. I can not imagine how that is going to change in the next few years.

What is happening to cable?

Over the most recent years, less and less people are paying for cable. Why should they? People that are paying for different streaming services can often find shows the next day or get the highlight later. Some services like YouTube and Hulu live (in certain areas) even let you watch your shows in real time. This is posing a huge problem for cable companies who have consistently seen drops in customers since 2015. Comcast and DIRECTV are losing tens of thousands of customers every quarter. Through bundles of Wi-Fi and cable, these companies are trying to entice customers to hang on but with the expanding subscription network, people will most likely be more inclined to drop cable and pick up another service.

How much is too much?

More and more companies have launched streaming services or additional services in the past few years. YouTube has added add-ons for no adds, music and television. Their TV program is $40 a month. Other streaming services like Netflix and Hulu also have services ranging from $10-50 a month. With new services from Apple and Disney people may be getting even more subscriptions. This all seems a bit excessive. Why would people want to have to have (and pay) for five different services just so that they can watch what they want? (This is also only focusing on television/movies not to mention they other music, gaming and other subscription people subscribe to on a monthly basis.)

Can these companies all sustain?

My quick answer is no. Right now it is a mad dash to get some skin in the streaming game. Companies like Apple and Disney will try to create niche programming and exclusive rights/content that will entice people to add or switch. All of these streaming services will not be able to survive because people can not pay for all of them. As someone who will be on her own soon, I will still use my parents Netflix but all the additional services and tech will be on me and I can not afford to have them all despite wanting to watch it all.

With cable declining, I also wonder about the networks’ reactions and plans. With less people watching TV they are losing money. CBS introduced CBS All Access a few years ago and began creating shows exclusively to this platform which may be how the television industry evolves. Recently there were rumblings about Friends leaving Netflix even after Netflix paid $100million to have the rights for 2019. In addition, other shows like The Office only have a few more years on their contract, which may not be renewed. This is because NBC is also planning for their own platform and will want their shows. Will all the Networks end up doing this? Will you pick and pay for the rights to watch certain networks?

This seems like backtracking. Cable saves you money because it bundles all of the networks together and you only have to pay a flat fee. Also with established platforms like Hulu, Prime and Netflix they have already invested millions into the production of original content that will go head to head with WTP for the networks’ content. The networks would still have the advantage of having the rights to they old shows, however, it will be more successful for certain networks over others and may lead to large players losing more money in this shift.

Consumers, while loving the ease of streaming services do not like the emergence of there new platforms. The response to Apple’s reveal last week of all of their services was extremely telling with the drop in their stock price. Apple is not revolutionizing anything or giving the consumer something new they are just trying to keep up with the times. The whole presentation was very vague since they did not have pricing releases or any real details about their different programs. For Apple TV + they will need to invest a lot of money into licensing, production and development which may not end up paying off if they do not really give the consumers what they want at a price they can afford. The next few years will definitely see an overpopulation of this market and only those who can truly provide the best WTP will survive.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/28/apple-tv-app-beta-ios-tvos-12-3/

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/26/18282776/apple-tv-news-plus-subscription-services-announcement-keynote-cost-bundle

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-tv-subscription-has-limited-pricing-power-at-launch-analysts-say-120756187.html

https://www.inc.com/sarah-jackson/best-tv-streaming-services.html

http://fortune.com/2018/04/29/viewers-cable-streaming/

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years ago

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There Was Heavy Tech Lobbying On Article 13... From The Company Hoping To Sell Everyone The Filters

One of the key themes we've been hearing for years now concerning the EU's awful Article 13 section of the EU Copyright Directive, was that no one should pay any attention at all to the critics of Article 13, because it's all just "big tech lobbying" behind any of the criticism. In the past, we highlighted a few of these claims:

Here's Geoff Taylor from BPI:

The US tech lobby has been using its enormous reach and resources to try to whip up an alarmist campaign...

And here's Richard Ashcroft from PRS for Music:

the Internet giants... have whipped up a social media storm of misinformation about the proposed changes in order to preserve their current advantage.

And how about UK Music's Michael Dugher who really wants to blame Google for everything:

Some absolute rubbish has been written about the EU’s proposed changes on copyright rules.

Amongst the ludicrous suggestions from the likes of Google is the claim that the shake-up will mean the end of memes, remixes and other user-generated content. Some have said that it will mean ‘censorship’ and even wildly predicted it will result in the ‘death of the internet’.

This is desperate and dishonest. Whilst some of the myths are repeated by people who remain blissfully untroubled by the technical but crucially important details of the proposed EU changes, in the worst cases this propaganda is being cynically pedalled by big tech like Google’s YouTube with a huge vested and multi-million-pound interest in this battle.

However, as we wrote about back in December, an analysis that looked at the actual lobbying efforts around copyright in the EU found that it was done overwhelmingly by the legacy copyright industries, and only sparingly by the tech companies. In that post, I went through a spreadsheet looking at the lobbying of the EU Commission, and found that over 80% of the meetings were from the entertainment industry.

However, as is coming out now, there was definitely one "tech" company that was one of the most aggressive lobbyists on Article 13. However, it was lobbying in favor of it, and that's because it knew that Article 13 would lead to an artificial, but highly inflated demand for internet filters. And that's the company known for building the filtering technology behind nearly all of the non-ContentID copyright filters: Audible Magic.

Law professor Annemarie Bridy recently posted a detailed Twitter thread of Audible Magic's lobbying activities regarding Article 13. It's easy to see why the company did so, because the law, if put into effect, would be a huge, huge benefit for Audible Magic, more or less forcing nearly every internet platform of a decent size to have to purchase Audible Magic's technology. Indeed, in the run-up to Article 13, we heard directly from policymakers in the EU who would point to Audible Magic as "proof" that filtering technology was readily available for not much money and that it worked. Neither of these claims are accurate.

On the fees, Audible Magic has a public pricing page that has been frequently pointed out by supporters of Article 13, often with the claim "fees start as low as $1,000 per month." But... that's not accurate. The $1,000 only applies to "on device" databases. Hosted databases start at $2,000 per month, which is already double that... and the $2,000 per month only covers very low levels of usage. Indeed, the usage rates are so low that it's unlikely to think that any company that used Audible Magic at that rate would be making very much (if any) money at all -- meaning that relatively speaking, Audible Magic would be a huge margin killer. And the rates quickly go up from there. Indeed, on Audible Magic's pricing page, as soon as you get to a level that one might consider "sustainable" for a business, the prices become "contact us."

A few years back I spoke with one mid-sized streaming company, who told me Audible Magic was quoting them fees that were between $30,000 to $60,000 per month. An academic paper from 2017 found pricing to be slightly lower than what I had heard, but still quite expensive:

Commercial fingerprinting and filtering services, such as Audible Magic and Vobile, do not publicly release pricing. But we can guess at the ballpark: one medium-sized file hosting service reported that its license for Audible Magic filtering cost $10,000-12,000 per month in 2011 (though this provider was later able to negotiate a reduced rate based on the amount of content flagged through the system). Another estimated that Audible Magic cost its service roughly $25,000 per month. OSPs noted that the licensing fees are just the beginning. Filtering systems, several OSPs noted, are not turnkey services. They require integration with existing systems and upkeep as the OSP takes on new mediation roles between rightsholder and user (such as tracking and managing user appeals).

In other words, those things get really pricey quickly -- such that it becomes untenable for all but the largest of service providers.

And that leads us to the second part, about whether or not they work. As we've been detailing for years, the answer is clearly no. These fingerprinting technologies make both false positive and false negative errors all the time. We probably have a few examples sent our way every single day. Incredibly, the very lobbying video that Bridy points out Audible Magic created as part of its lobbying effort says that Audible Magic's technology is accurate to about 99%.

Last summer, we highlighted that Alec Muffett created a "simulator" that would look at the the error rates on such filtering technology -- and it noted that if you went with an accuracy level of 99.5% (higher than even Audible Magic claims) and ran it across 10 million pieces of content, you'd end up censoring approximately 50,000 pieces of content that were non-infringing. 50,000. And that's assuming the technology is even more accurate than even Audible Magic will claim.

And, of course, that's solely discussing the matching accuracy. It says absolutely nothing about understanding user rights -- like fair use, fair dealing, parody, etc -- none of which Audible Magic takes into account (meaning even more non-infringing works would get censored).

And, yet, as Bridy shows, Audible Magic has been lobbying hard for this:

It's not surprising that they'd lobby for such a thing. I mean, which company wouldn't lobby for a new law that would effectively require thousands of internet companies to buy your product for which there is little to no real competition (oh yeah, which almost certainly means Audible Magic would likely raise prices once the government required everyone to buy its filters).

Bridy highlights that their lobbying claims are complete bullshit as well:

Quite incredible that they highlight the "voluntary" nature of the filters while lobbying for making their technology required under law. And equally ridiculous that they claim that intermediary liability protections some how create "barriers" for online services. That, as Bridy points out, is exactly the opposite of reality. Safe harbors create clear rules that platforms understand so they know what they need to do to set up a legit platform. Removing those rules, as Article 13 does, and requiring expensive (and terrible) technology is a huge barrier, as the cost is prohibitive for most.

There's more in that thread, but as Bridy shows, Audible Magic's own presentation shows that it knows who the "winner" of Article 13 will be: Audible Magic inserting itself to become the de facto "copyright filter" layer of the internet:

So, yeah, there was some "tech" lobbying for Article 13 and its mandatory filters. It was just coming from the biggest supplier of those filters.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190121/17024041437/there-was-heavy-tech-lobbying-article-13-company-hoping-to-sell-everyone-filters.shtml

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farvn · 5 years ago

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Interview with novajam of Studio NoGood

With the upcoming Visual Novel “Nekodeito” which is about a catgirl living with you, I am glad that novajam of NoGood has taken the time to answer some questions for both NoGood and Nekodeito!

1. When did you start Studio NoGood and what was your motivation to do so? “ It was late 2018 when I started fronting publicly as NoGooD. I'd been writing scripts for VNs as early as September that year, a lot of which got trashed or shelved but it was December before I registered a domain or anything like that. The motivation was to keep my VN game development activity under a separate banner from my online handle, but I integrated my handle into the company name so I don't know how well that worked. Ahaha”

2. As an indie studio, what are your top priorities for both your games and your fans? “ I think quality is the first priority for both. Fans want good games and good stories so straight away it's in my interest to set the bar high. The very close second is communication though. Independent projects will live or die by the goodwill they can cultivate with an audience and I feel I've been very blessed to have such good reception already. It's a sort of symbiotic relationship. Provide what the fans want, what they're looking for, and they'll support you in return.”

3. Is Nekodeito your first game? “Yes. No!! Oh god haha no actually! I made a very budget looking version of Geometry Wars in University with Gamemaker ahaha. That's probably everyone's first game project, some kind of twin stick shooter or platformer. Before that I'd played with mod tools for other games, The Elder Scrolls Construction Set and such if you'd count that.” Sure, that does help in devwork so why not. Any other games I should know about? “I just remembered making this platforming engine in Gamemaker Studio 2. It might look okay here but it was very buggy and the project it was intended for quickly became overwhelming so that's abandoned now.”

4. Who came up with the look/ personality of Nekodeito's Machiko? “ I came up with the look, and most of the personality but other experts in the field of catgirl engineering were consulted though, mainly my friend TMMTO. Parts of the personality changed over time and little traits here and there have been crowdsourced here and there from fans. I made this collage and sent it to my character artist, critterpunk, as a reference when she was doing character and outfit designs for me.

It think it stayed mostly intact. The sizes are off and I think I made her a more responsible big sister type character than a lazy one in the end.” I can see her big melons stayed intact! “Big tunas” Speaking of big tunas! For Nekodeito, would there be any features like headpats, tail fluffing, tickling, etc? “Of course of course! Nekodeito has a sort of dating sim style system where you pick what order to progress through story segments, and in between segments her sprite is interactive. I hope people will enjoy booping her on the nose.”

6. As Nekodeito is developing over time, what is the hardest obstacle you have encountered? “Distraction. It's very easy to get sidetracked on Youtube or Twitter which is very annoying, but games too have been a problem. My productivity improved a lot once I slowed playing mobile games so much.”

7. Did you have any inspirations that helped you make Nekodeito? “Ha, dumbly enough, mobile games. Well you know about this, but for people who don't really play them, when you log in to Girls Frontline or Azur Lane or something you have a secretary character that greets you. I set mine in Girls Frontline to Mk23 and the greeting pulled my heartstrings a little. I really like the idea of being able to come home to someone who's happy to see you no matter what, so that's what the game is about. That kind of romance is what I want for the game, one that's very cozy.”

8. When did your love of catgirls start? “Oh jeez. I don't think I have an exact date. But who really is incapable of loving catgirls? Spice and Wolf probably played a formative role, even though that's not about a catgirl.” I don’t blame you, floofy girls all the way!

9. As a developer what goes through your mind for when you release it? Do you have any concerns? “Will people like the game? Will people even find it and engage with it? Will it be able to recoup it's costs? Will I even be able to make another after this Will there be some kind of problem with the software I'm incapable of fixing? Will I be able to deliver all I've promised in the first place? There are many worries. On the other side of that there's a good fanbase already and a fair amount of risk is already mitigated but the worries are always there nonetheless.”

10. Which types of Nekodeito merch are planned? “Hell yeah! Alright so, we have a voice actress for Machiko, and we're going to go to crowdfunding to try and get the game fully voice acted by them. Merch rewards will be sticker packs and keychains, we're trying to get some of those "ergonomic" mousepads made too. We're seeing if you can get your own TUNA shirt too, just like Machi wears in game. Digitally, you'll be able to get an art and commentary book and the original soundtrack for the game.”

All them goodies! Let’s say the crowdfund went too well, like ultra succeeded, would you consider a limited edition figure of Machiko? “If I did that I think it would probably be an extremely limited run, and probably like a trading figure or nendo sized thing rather than a 1/7 scale, but hell yeah I'd love a little Machi fig on my desk! More realistically if crowdfunding exceeded expectations then we just expand the game, offer a free DLC down the line of an after-story or add extra CGs and scenes to the base game.” DA CATGIRL FAMILY! “Oh god I gave Machiko ten sisters. That's so many sprites to get done...”

11. To your current fans and future ones, what would you like to say to them in prep for Nekodeito? “Thank you all for your support, for telling all your own friends and groups about it and spreading the word. Thank you for all the fan art and nice messages, and most of all thank you for your patience and thank you for appreciating cute Machiko! I hope to have a demo ready in June for the public to try, so please hold on a bit more.”

Would you like to add anything else? “Additional thanks to everyone who's worked with me to create Nekodeito, all the artists (chlorophill, Rialyn KV, critterpunk, ds sans, Cheschorv) my editor (Cipher), my composer (Igneus) voice director (Sandra MJ) and soon to be debuting voice actress, Wolf and Alch at Team Watercress for lots of help starting out, reps from Degica for assistance with the engine (andre and Archeia). So many people! NoGooD is officially just a one-man show, but without all these people I'd have nothing to put my game together with. This is turning into the credits section!”

A big thank you to novajam for taking the time to answer my questions! I really appreciate the game’s progress and I hope to see more!

NoGood Twitter: https://twitter.com/StudioNoGooD NoGood site: https://www.nogood.games/games.html Nekodeito itch.io: https://studionogood.itch.io/nekodeito Nekodeito Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1072790/Nekodeito/

Novajam [NoGood, Nekodeito] Interview May 29, 2019 Far2close - Visual Novel Playthroughs https://www.youtube.com/c/Far2close https://twitter.com/xFar2closex https://www.facebook.com/Far2close/

#nekodeito #visual novel #anime catgirl #dating sim #NoGood #Far2close Interviews

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skillbox-uk-blog · 5 years ago

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Are You an Adrenaline Junkie? Well, Freelancing Might be The Next Best Thing!

Wow, can you really be an adrenaline junkie and freelance? Crazy, right? Listen up! Freelancing opens many doors to wide-scale opportunities and is proven to create a career path on a full-time basis. In this article, Let’s plough through the mist of full-time work and explore the fundamentals of making your freelance career a complete success. Earning money is the end game, how do we get there? Read on to explore more.

The power of freelancing is in your hands — it’s time to make the career decision and apply yourself.

# 1. Select a Niche

New to freelancing? You might be willing to take on any paid work that is presented to you, but is this right for your career? Well, yes and no you firstly need to distinguish the quality of work that should be delivered as you have to remember you are representing yourself and later on your name might become the brand. Also, look at the time scale, how many jobs can you realistically handle and are the potential earnings going to cover your expenditure.

As you get deeper into your career, you may want to think more strategically about the type of freelance work you complete and the clients you connect with. Understanding why you should be selective with your clients is an art in itself and can increase your revenue substantially.

Okay, what you need to know is when you specialise you automatically become an expert in a specific field, sounds easy right? It can be if you know your particular skill extremely well and master it in a direction that has high footfall and a skill that is required. Experts can charge more for their services “bit cheeky”, but this is generally how it works.

Choosing your niche early on in your freelance career will enable you to focus on specialising and retaining clients time and time again. Your expertise and focus on a particular niche will form a stronger connection between your brand and your broader audience.

# 2. Simplify the service that you are offering

A decision you will have to make early on in your freelance career is the do’s and don’ts of freelancing. More specifically, what services you should be offering and the ones to stay away from. This will help you protect the brand and control potential client misconceptions of your primary objectives when it relates to the service you are providing.

Getting this right will allow you to expand on your service and build a strengthened portfolio in the direction you intend to move forward. Another freelance tip is to utilise customisable offers to form a user-friendly experience for your clients and allow them to offer short term or long-term work. Having a choice immediately creates fewer barriers for a client and opens the doors to a free-flowing workload.

It’s crucial to mention while you still have the adrenaline to progress as a freelance professional, taking on work that is going to advance your career further is critical at this stage meaning you will achieve your ultimate goal a lot sooner in the field you specialise in, causing fewer distractions and delays while moving towards meaningful progress.

# 3. Who is your ideal client?

Wait a minute, are you looking for your ideal client right away?! Before you do this create a clear picture of who you will find it best to work with. How do you want to present your work, and what is your forte? Present clients with defined goals and objectives. Are you providing services for small businesses, high growth start-ups or enterprise sized companies? Make a clear distinction and actively direct your pitch at the clients you need to focus on for present and future growth.

Ask yourself the following questions to not only define yourself but the clients you wish to work for:

What problems will I be solving with my proposition?

Will I be affordable to that particular market segment?

Are the demographics right and, how do I pinpoint my ideal clients?

Being engaged with start-ups and working on projects that are linked to your niche can lead to proactively narrowing down your client pool and focusing on the projects that matter to your brand. These instant relations will give you confidence in your work, allowing you to replicate results frequently.

Finding your niche and making yourself known in the freelance arena will make you stand out above the rest and drive your freelance business in the right direction.

# 4. Be featured on a freelance platform

Having an outstanding profile on a freelance platform will not only boost your productivity into oblivion it will generate your sale upon sale if used in the right way. If you want to be taken seriously as a freelancer, you will need a location for clients to visit your portfolio online:

Showcase your expertise.

Provide a client with your past experiences.

Demonstrate who you are as an individual.

Add information for clients to contact you quickly.

A manicured portfolio will show to clients that you mean business and have a professional brand associated with your name giving people a reason to select your account over many others. You will soon have your first paying client in no time!

# 5. Build upon your freelancing career before you quit your day job

Did you know there are freelance secrets? Yes, it’s true! You need to tiptoe carefully when you look at the freelance option.

In addition to creating that outstanding portfolio to be recognised in the marketplace, building your brand naturally takes time, it’s a great idea to have a steady follow of clients before you go all out self-employed and run the risk of limited income.

Best practice would be to grow your side income to around 50% of your annual salary before pursuing freelancing full time this will not only protect you financially; however, it will take the stress out of the transition.

Be prepared for a tight schedule, heavy workload and being responsible for deliverables with time limits attached when going freelance, you will learn quickly what it is to be an entrepreneur.

Having the backing of your current job will enable you to be selective over your clients that being the ideal scenario as this will allow you to focus on your freelance brand and create a stronghold in your niche.

# 6. Upskill yourself

Clients are likely to want a specific skill; will you be able to offer it? Having an impressive skill set that is in high demand will mean you are on to a winner!

Practice makes perfect, especially when your valuable skills are at stake. Building upon existing skills and setting a foundation for learning new skills will make you far more employable.

Highly trained freelancers are generally paid more all you need to do is a bit of market research. This doesn’t mean you have to head back to university for a degree, all that is required is short courses, and many of these can be found online which are completed from the comfort of your own home.

# 7. Setting the foundations with credibility

There are numerous ways to build upon your credibility within your industry. You can blog about the skills you offer to the public or release high-quality content in the form of social media advertisements. Writing an e-book would give potential clients an in-depth analysis of how you started your career and where your field of expertise lay. A popular way to obtain recognition is to create online courses these can be presented on channels such as Skillbox and YouTube.

Each activity that you spend time on will allow you to add your achievements to your portfolio, increasing your evermore growing experience. Demonstrating your knowledge in this way will highlight to potential clients that you are versatile. Broadcast your message as a freelancer and find influences to help you along the way.

# 8. Price to impress

When deciding how much to charge for your freelance services, it is essential to determine the initial value of your self-proclaimed skills. Make sure you are charging enough to make it a sustainable solution and allow yourself a comfortable living. Giving your client an outstanding first impression will demonstrate that you deliver to a high standard and will potentially retain a profitable customer base.

Consider the value that you will be adding to a client’s wish list before submitting your prices, don’t undercharge as this may mean you do not meet your financial needs. Instead, charge a fair rate and do your research into what other freelancers are charging in the marketplace to arrive at the original figure. You can always increase your rate over time; however, firstly you need to lure clients into your net and deliver work that would make a client think they will use you again for future projects.

# 9. Networking is the key to success

An effective way to market yourself is to network whether it be at an event, meetup or simply conversing with people at a bar. Gaining a strong following will get your brand out there and make it easier for you to succeed in an ever more competitive market.

Friends can help with your networking efforts invite them along to events and let them help you with referrals as potential mutual contacts could be awaiting a freelancer like you, and you may even land higher-paying work.

Do your homework on companies before you make that B-line, it is essential to know what you are talking about and how best to introduce your service. Give yourself 10–15 minutes to do the necessary research and find out if you have any mutual connections on any of the social media channels as this could influence their decision to work with you as a trusted partner.

Having connections allows you to be introduced from many angles even if it is a simple e-mail in the form of a recommendation or a quick coffee with your friend and a potential client to get the ball rolling. The social element is critical, who knows you may get a better response rate leading to an increased chance of work.

# 10. Pitching for the win

Get to the point fast! Pitching is an art, and when it relates to your freelance services, this can make the difference between getting a job or not. Find online courses on how to best pitch for freelance jobs and get a better understanding of the critical points to make your introduction a success.

Craft an impressive proposal to land new clients, that is not all you will depend on as it is down to you how jobs are selected and the value of your proposition resulting in a quick win or a substantial loss.

Freelancers win new gigs based on the time put into a proposal and determining a client’s needs. Value is a significant factor in the sale of your service, however, in the world of freelancing your success may depend upon the strength of your client relationship and the bond you can create for a meaningful partnership.

Don’t forget to check out Skillbox a freelance marketplace to get your career off to a great start! You’ll find even more information around freelancing in our blog.

Freelancing

Freelance

Skillbox

Nomad

Entrepreneur

Skillbox is an online marketplace that brings together consumers, freelancers and organisations offering an open and transparent platform www.skillbox.co.uk

#freelance #freelancing #skillbox #smallbiz #outsourcing #nomand #entrepreneur #startup #smallbuisness #freelancer #gig #marketplace

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sheeping-around · 6 years ago

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Sheeping Around Retrospective: By The Numbers

tl;dr: Scroll all the way down for the numbers.

Sheeping Around has been live on the App Store for a little over ten days now. I think it is about time I look back at the development cycle, the good parts, the bad parts and also share some sales figures while I’m at it. I’m following the trend of transparency to help other indie game developers know and understand the market of premium games, for which I gained inspiration from Eric @ Slothwerks and Arnold @ Tiny Touch Tales. I’m also inspired by the way they work: solo devs working with talented people across the world on a contract basis, and I follow the same pattern.

While I’ve worked on games in the past, this is my first official release on the App Store, and I’m really glad to have been able to reach that goal. My previous games got stuck in infinite iteration loops and never got to see the light of the day.

Inception

I have written in one of my previous posts how the idea of Sheeping Around was born. The idea began as a turn based (asymmetric) strategy game, and eventually turned into a card game that it is today. You can read more about it in the below two posts:

Sheeping Around Inception

Inspired by Card Thief and More

Inspirations of Sheeping Around and its inception as a physical card game

Development

I have around 8 years of experience as a Javascript developer. While I am familiar with other languages like Java and Objective-C/C++, my core expertise and speed of development is still in Javascript. Also, I had begun using TypeScript at work since mid 2017 and had loved it. Reminded me of the good ol’ Flash and Actionscript days.

When the physical version of Sheeping Around card game was proven to be fun enough, I began working on a web-based prototype version of it using Angular.js on the front-end and Node.js on the backend in the first week of November 2017. I deployed the system on Heroku on its free plan, and used Heroku Postgres as database of choice. (It was free upto 9000 rows, more than sufficient for a prototype.)

Initial prototype version of Sheeping Around

For the native mobile version of the game, I used cocos2d-x JS with TypeScript.

I pushed the code to GitHub as private repositories. I maintained separate repos for client and the server.

Multiplayer

Initially I had planned on Sheeping Around to be a solitaire card game, but it ended up being too similar to Card Thief. It wasn’t much fun anyway either. I decided to prototype a two player dueling game on paper, and it proved to be a lot of fun. I figured it would be much more challenging to handle a multiplayer game, but given my full-stack experience, I was confident I’d be able to do it anyway.

Architecture of Sheeping Around

Sketch, GraphicRiver and GUI

Around March 2018, I began working on the GUI of the game. I had recently switched my role to Product Design at my company Sumo Logic and had begun learning Sketch and loved it. I bought some assets off GraphicRiver and heavily modified a lot of them and put them together in Sketch.

All screen designs in Sketch

I wasn’t very happy with the initial designs, but towards the end of April things had started looking much better and professional.

Initial designs

Final designs

Google Indie Games Accelerator

The progress in the initial few months was somewhat slow. I spent time refining the balance of the game and tweaking the progression. Meanwhile I was also designing some UI for the native mobile version of the game.

By the end of June 2018, Google announced the first ever Indie Games Accelerator for games made in South East Asia. The submission deadline was July, so I started rapidly working on the mobile version for Android and iterating it really fast. By mid of July, I had the gameplay fully functional. By the end of it, I had the entire progression system and marketplace fully set up.

Some charts from the progression and reward system of the game inspired mainly by Pokemon

While I was not selected for the accelerator program, it did help me accelerate the game development process anyway and I am thankful to the accelerator program for that.

Art and Animation

I discuss a lot about art style with Rashi, and we had finalized that the characters would be anthro. Check out some concept art and final artwork for some of the characters below:

I really loved the idea of in-card animations in Card Thief, and wanted to have something similar in my game as well. I was fortunate enough to run into Robinson Millaguin in the Indie Game Developers Facebook group. He began his work on animating some of the initial cards in Spine and my mind was blown already. Check out the video below:

vimeo

You can see more of the animation GIFs on the official website for Sheeping Around.

Tragicomic Theme and Music

I had contracted someone for music, but it did not sound so fitting. It was very difficult to decide what kind of music would fit this game because it was such a unique premise. I started scouting out for tracks on AudioJungle. Farms are usually associated with country music, but I had ruled it out completely. Western style music with gut guitars and ukuleles are a close second choice associated with farm themes. Somehow that style didn’t fit either, and sounded rather cowboy-ish.

I explored all kinds of genres of music and tried to see if they fit in the game. Finally, I found that the music in Comedy genre seemed to be the most fitting. I stumbled upon the profile of AudioAgent, who had an amazing portfolio of comedy tracks. His tracks are tragicomic themed, and coincidentally, he kept adding more tracks in the genre as the game progressed.

The game now features a total of 9 comedy audio tracks by AudioAgent. (The tracks change every 10 levels.)

You can check out the tracks in the below Youtube playlists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Ajh9Cn23k&list=PLnTakDx63B8L0pBpjPD10VB3NJEcXj2l4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXeq713R444&list=PLnTakDx63B8IS3hr4Sd-tnZXgu5vCIoi6

Sound

I had already made a list of suitable sounds from AudioJungle, but it was from a variety of artists and didn’t seem to fit together. I was not sure if I should hire a sound designer for the project. I figured it would be a good idea to ask around anyway.

I am active on Twitter in the gamedev community, and I found Elise Kates’ profile there. She had done some amazing work in the past for games like Moss, and I thought she’d be a good candidate to help me out with the sound. And it was a great decision afterall. The sound effects added the finishing touches to the polish in the game and really brought the characters to life!

Putting It All Together

I’m glad I’ve been able to put all of this together in a single package. The pun in the name, gameplay mechanics, art, animation, sound and music all come together really well. It would be perhaps be one of my proudest achievement since it is an important skillset to have.

Translation, Screenshots, Trailer and Preview Videos

In December, I took help from the Indie Game Localization community to get the game translated in 12 languages. It was an overwhelming amount of work, about 5000 words. I maintained separate Google Sheets for each language.

But what was harder was designing screenshots and preview videos and localizing them into all languages. But it did pay off eventually because it got the game featured in most of the regions that I had localized for.

Check out the preview video below:

youtube

Robinson helped in creating a landscape trailer for the game as well, since Android needs a landscape video regardless of whether the game is landscape or not. it was more of a theatrical trailer that served as an introduction to the premise of Sheeping Around and dab a little bit into its gameplay:

youtube

Freemium, Premium or Paymium?

The hardest decision for me to take was whether to go premium or freemium (or paymium), and if premium, what would be the price point of the game. Early on I had decided that the game would be premium on iOS and free-to-play on Android, given how easy piracy is on Android (more on piracy in the Piracy section below). I had thought of keeping the game’s price to $4.99, as I had read that Card Crawl had recently upped its price to $4.99 from $2.99 and it increased their month-on-month sales by more than 2x. Turns out, it won’t work very well during release when both developer and the game are new to the market and there are no ratings and reviews. This is also why my day 2 sales were more than day 1 sales, when I dropped the price to $2.99.

My game also has in-app purchases, and most people object to the idea of IAPs in a premium game. But if you look at the top paid charts in the card game category (or even any other category for that matter), you will find that more than 70% of the games have IAPs. This model is called paymium on mobile platforms, and has only recently entered the debate alongside freemium and premium. In the PC world, most games are paid, and the concept of DLCs is fairly normal and accepted, so I don’t understand what the issue with IAPs in premium mobile games is about.

Besides, the IAPs in Sheeping Around aren’t your typical in-your-face popups that appear at the end of every game to give you a reward or to increase your life. They are subtle, just two coin packs that you can buy if need be. You probably won’t need to though.

Pre-orders and the Coming Soon Feature

I set the game to be available for preorder on 31st December 2018. That would make my first new years’ resolution to be to release this game. I set Thursday, 17th Jan as the release date. That is because App Store refreshes every Thursday and it would get greater number of days in visibility if it gets featured then. (Most features last at least a week.)

That is also when I also submitted my game and my story to Apple via App Store’s promote link, hoping to get featured.

On January 5, the game got featured in the Coming Soon section, and it started getting a little spike in pre-orders. From 1-2 per day to around 25-30 per day. On January 20, the game got featured in a lot more territories, including US, UK, South Africa, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. I netted about 250 pre-orders from this feature. But it turns out that in some places, since Apple lets you preorder without having a linked credit card, they would fail to be billed on release of the game. Because of this, only about 200 pre-orders went through successfully. App store still shows -1/-2 net preorders days after the game’s release.

New Games We Love & Top Charts

Upon release, the game was featured in “New Games We Love” in US, China and the Greater China Area (HK, Macau, Taiwan), South-East Asia, India, UK, Europe, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. It also went on to become #3 card game in US (iPhone) during launch and stayed between #3-#5 during the first week. In China, which is the second biggest market for me, the highest it went was #9 in card games. (Competition is quite high in that category there, with most paid games priced at ¥1 ($0.15).)

I especially love the words UK editorial team used to describe the game in Games We Love.

Reception

The reviews so far have been positive, with occasional negative reviews talking about some bugs, most of which I have fixed in the week after release. Here are the current reviews and ratings stats for the game so far:

US: 4.6 / 5 (56 ratings, 32 reviews) China: 4.3 / 5 (41 ratings, 23 reviews) Thailand: 4.7 / 5 (15 ratings, 11 reviews) Germany: 4.0 / 5 (11 ratings, 6 reviews) Russia: 4.6 / 5 (8 ratings, 7 reviews) UK: 3.7 / 5 (6 ratings, 4 reviews)

Some encouraging reviews:

“I’ve only played this game for 20 minutes, and I love it already. The creativity, the idea, everything about this game is just beyond my expectations, and I can only assume how addicting this game will be.”

“It a really good game. You should make a physical card game for this game. I really like it and it’s definitely worth buying it.”

“Don’t really review apps, let alone end up playing one a day or two after I started. But this one... this one got me hooked! It’s fairly simple gameplay but sometimes it gets pretty exciting.”

“Pre-ordered it, I've played Card Monsters since release & Hearthstone for 4 years & this game is very solid & entertaining.”

“I think this game is another new twist to a card game, I can definitely see potential for this game. I can’t wait for the next update, hopefully with some new cards to use.”

“This game is family oriented and so easy to play. It has the simplicity of UNO yet with enough strategy to keep you engage but not overwhelmed. This is highly addictive and fun to play. The element of luck is always a factor but how to use the cards given is the key. The games are short but competitive. Those who love card/card battle games should download this without hesitation! Kudos! Look forward to updates to see what you guys come up with next!”

DAUs, Screen Time and Retention Rate

I use Tableau for my data visualization needs, and have custom graphs and dashboards created for all kinds of metrics. 27% of the players have played the game for at least one hour, which is quite encouraging. 4.5% of the players have been addicted and have played for more than 5 hours. I’ve been seeing an average DAU of around 750 and average total session time of over 450 hours. Not that it matters much for a premium game, but I’m tracking it anyway. In terms of retention, my day 7 retention is about 10%, which isn’t so bad. I will give it more time to see what my day 30 retention is.

Press Coverage and Critic Reviews

I had mailed a lot of media sites and YouTubers to review the game. A lot of them covered the game. Thanks to the localization effort, the game was featured in a lot of foreign language blogs.

Specifically Pocket Gamer and Pocket Tactics wrote about the game. The review from Pocket Tactics was negative with a 2.0 / 5 rating, and from Pocket Gamer was somewhat above average at 3.5 / 5 rating. Pocket Tactics review, though negative, gave me a chuckle because of their words of choice.

You can check them out here:

Pocket Gamer: A surprisingly tense, exciting and fun card battler that doesn’t quite have the tactical depth for the long haul.

Pocket Tactics: Sheeping Around looks the part, but sadly the game turns out to be as dull as you would expect for a game based on an animal that stands around in a field all day chewing grass.

The criticism though has been pretty good in these reviews, and I will add more content and depth in the future updates to address the weaknesses they have mentioned.

Piracy

One thing I wanted to point out was that about 25% of the users of Sheeping Around are using a pirated version. I was under the impression that it would be very hard to pirate an iOS game, because it would need jailbreaking and it isn’t very easy to jailbreak your iOS device. Turns out I was very wrong. There are pirated App Stores like AppEven that you can install on your device, and you can install premium iOS games for free using those stores. You don’t need to jailbreak your phone and the whole process is dead simple. Turns out these folks are abusing Enterprise App certificates for ad-hoc app distribution, and Apple hasn’t been paying much attention to them.

Within about two minutes, I was able to download a pirated version of my own game from AppEven. It even added its own ads that pop up once every few minutes that bring revenue to the owners of the pirated app store. It made me a little sad, but that’s the way it is. No matter how many attempts you make to prevent piracy in your app, the hackers will have a workaround to bypass it. They can remove the code in your app that prevents piracy, replace your ads with their own. It is their daily business.

Promotional Artwork

For games that Apple finds worthy of promotion using a banner feature or on the Today page, Apple requests developers for promotional artwork. I got this request last Monday and I submitted the artwork by Wednesday. The game hasn’t gotten a banner feature or Game of the Day yet, so I can only hope it will happen one day in the future.

By The Numbers

And finally, the moment you’d been waiting for. Sales. Sheeping Around was able to break even about 50% of its outsourcing costs (art, animation and sfx) in 10 days since launch.

The top 2 territories where the game made some decent revenue are US and China, followed by Germany and UK.

What’s next?

I’m already working on some new cards that add more variety to the gameplay. These include:

Bonus cards

Peek - Look at the opponent’s hand.

Undo - Undo the opponent’s last move. It can also potentially undo a stolen or whistled sheep.

Lucky Pendant - Draw half the number of cards in your hand (rounded off).

Shepherd cards

Fence N (N = 2, 3, 4) - Build a fence around all sheep preventing any of them from being stolen for N turns.

Electric Fence N (N = 2, 3) - Build an electric fence around all sheep preventing any of them from being lured or stolen for N turns.

Quarantine N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Cure all sheep of Infestation or Intoxication by N turns.

Vaccinate N (N = 3, 4) - Prevent Infestation or Intoxication on all sheep for the next N turns.

Thief cards

Infest N (N = 2, 3, 4) - Infest all sheep with pests to prevent them from being whistled for N turns.

Intoxicate N (N = 2, 3) - Intoxicate sheep to prevent them from being grazed or whistled for N turns.

Thrash N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Damage a Fence or an Electric Fence and reduce its value by N turns.

Termites (N = 3, 4) - Spread termites to prevent building a Fence or an Electric Fence for the next N turns.

Changes to existing cards

Rescue N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Reduce the effect of Trap, Infestation or Intoxication by N turns on one sheep.

Distract N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Reduce the effect of Guard, Fence or Electric Fence by N turns on one sheep.

You can already add an ally that unlocks at Lv. 20 to the game. Future updates may include upto 5 allies in total:

Shepherd’s side

Beaver - Jack Kim (Lv. 10)

Llama - Fuzzy Wumpkins (Lv. 20)

Sheepdog - Casper Cloud (Lv. 30)

Emu - Emily McCoy (Lv. 40)

Donkey - Muriel Miller (Lv. 50)

Thief’s side

Raven - Merlin Kook (Lv. 10)

Eagle - Cradoc McClaw (Lv. 20)

Coyote - Roxy Fang (Lv. 30)

Badger - Agent Chaos (Lv. 40)

Bear - Boris Rockpaw (Lv. 50)

Additional Features I’ll also be working on some features like: - Expressions and dialogs - Offline mode vs AI - Pass and play multiplayer - Quests

Conclusion

Sheeping Around was a fun project, and unlike my other shelved projects, it saw the light of the day, and it is a proud achievement for me in that regard. For the past 14 months, I’ve worked part-time at a consistent pace on this project (and full time for a few months). Especially as a solo developer being able to develop a PvP multiplayer game where people in US can battle people in China with servers located in London, I think it is a great feat.

Look forward to more updates in the future on this blog. Follow the blog on Tumblr or me on Twitter to keep yourself up to date on the progress of the game.

#sheepingaround #postmortem #indiegamedev #gamedev #gamedesign #ios #appstore

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lindegaardmckinley95-blog · 6 years ago

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Tron Wallet

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