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thebrightsessions · 4 years ago

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Entertainment Spotlight: Ian McQuown

Ian is an LA based actor and producer known for the YouTube comedy group, Extremely Decent, as well as a voice actor in the popular audio dramas: The Bright Sessions, The AM Archives, StarTripper!! & Deck The Halls! His credits inclue American Housewife, Trial & Error, Better Things, and For All Mankind. Ian took the time to answer some questions for us. Check it out:

You’ve worked on multiple podcasts -- what drew you to the medium?

Well, to be honest, Lauren drew me to it because TBS was my first narrative podcast. We met at a Rocky Horror Picture Show show. Anna Lore is our mutual friend and I think Anna is just talented as all get out, so anything she’s involved I want to be in. And, I don’t know, it was just one of those lucky breaks you get where a door opens and takes you to all these cool places you never anticipated.

On podcasting though, I really appreciate how much more possible it is to tell engaging stories without the boundaries of having to afford a set and a camera and insurance and etc etc etc. Like, I grew up with Star Wars, The Matrix, Cowboy Bebop— so when I imagine the stories I like, I’m usually picturing other worlds, space ships, people with super powers and those types of stories used to have a lot higher barrier to entry to make than they do now, which is just awesome.

If you could give a character from The Bright Sessions a spinoff series, who would you choose and what would the series be called?

I mean, no surprises here, but I’d love to see Damien’s early years. And I’d be super clever and call it something like... Damien: The Early Years. I'm dying for that content a little bit actually: Damien, before he became such a bad guy. Maybe a love story that doesn’t work out and leaves him really scarred? Villains so bad they created a villain instead of a victim— that moment where we see the two roads Damien has to choose between and it totally shreds us when he makes the choice we all know he’s going to make, I mean, come ON you can see that, right? It’d be like the Star Wars prequels but without all the youngling killing and “NOOOOOOOO”’s and I want it.

Can you share a fun story or anecdote from the making of The Bright Sessions?

Haha, ok well it’s not really anything of note BUT: I remember Lauren had this area rug in her room, which as you probably know is where we would record, and it was this really nice, I think, red sort of floral rug that took up pretty much all the floor space because it was covering up the older apartment rug-floor underneath it. And it was, as I said, really cool, except it wasn’t a rug on a wood floor, right? It was a rug on a rug so it was a bit taller than the people who designed the room had planned for— the result of which was that you’d walk in and the room had this really awesome little vibe with this cute rug, and it was all very cozy, unless you looked directly behind you at the corner where the door had just spent ages scraping the surface of it, catching the corner, tearing little pieces out. And I may be getting apocryphal at this point, but I feel like by the time I had started coming around Lauren had straight up duct taped it to the floor, which really didn’t help the problem. And, I don’t know—again it’s not really anything momentous—but I just remember giving Lauren a particular amount of shit about it one day and us all having a really good laugh. And I really love that— there are jobs where you show up, keep your head down, do your work and leave, but then there are jobs like The Bright Sessions where you all get to become friends, and even if you don’t see each other for a while you sort of just get to pick up where you left off. And then those jobs turn into other jobs and you get to keep hanging out with your friends and peers and just making stuff you like— I’m a big fan of that.

If your life was a choose your own adventure, what decisions would viewers have to make on an average day?

OKAY, you wake up...

Water your garden before it gets to be 110 today, you cannot skip this step. You may however:

A) Stay out in the garden for longer if you get inspired and check if the tomatoes and peppers are ripe for picking.

Great! Now let’s make breakfast:

A) Make eggs, toast, fried tomatoes, and hash browns?

B) Make (A) But also with Bacon?

C) Make a smoothie?

D) There’s no time today, run to Whole Foods and get their incredibly priced $6 Egg, Bacon Cheese Breakfast burrito.

Awesome! You’ve eaten and now you can think. What work do you have to do?

A) Prep your audition, dummy! It’s due this afternoon, go fix your hair.

B) You have a zoom meeting with actor friends at 11 to play around with some new material, put on a hat.

C) There is nothing you have to work on so stare at your computer and wonder if there’s new project you could be working on. Try to find that project, leave your hair as it.

Wow! You really had a great (insert previous choice here), let’s get you a coffee and take a TV break. What should we watch?!

A) That new show you haven’t seen yet because you need to watch everything so you know how to work on it should you get an audition for it.

B) Harley Quinn (your favorite new cartoon).

C) Teenage Bounty Hunters.

D) Farscape.

E) Nope, you just got an audition for tomorrow, everything is off the table, start working on it (Level Complete).

Lunch Time!!!

A) Turkey sandwich with pickles from the garden?

B) Trader Joe’s Margherita Pizza with basil and peppers from the garden?

C) Are we going to start another loaf of sourdough you basic mf?

D) Yes we probably are, but also (A) and (B).

Cool! I’ve eaten lunch. Now what?

A) You haven’t finished that work from this morning. Riiiight.

B)…More Harley Quinn…?

C) Let’s make pasta from scratch!

D) Let’s make ribs! From…ribs!

F) You just got an audition for tomorrow, everything is off the table, start working on it. (Level Complete).

Bangarang! You probably chose to start cooking dinner immediately after eating lunch. You ate it (and it rocked), what now?

A) You just got an audition for tomorrow, everything is off the table, start working on it. (Level Complete)

B) DnD with squad.

C) Go on a run, dude— you’re getting a Jaba chin….

D) Bring on the chin! Let’s watch TV until 2am! Here are your options:

A) Harley Quinn (your new favorite cartoon)

B) Teenage Bounty Hunters

C) Farscape

D) Put The Office on in the background and clean your house.

Level Complete.

As you can see I’m a very food-focused person. Also, I’m going to be real, that is truly what most of my days look like and I’m low-key a little mortified that ’taking a shower’ wasn’t a game option...

Can you share your favorite piece of Bright Sessions / AM Archives fan art?

I love all the fan art that people make for my characters but this one from Franartz has always been really special to me. It’s so GQ, I just love it — and some of my favorite early AG moments are with Damien, who looks a little like he stepped out of a Gorrilaz album here— big fan. I’m a little obsessed with fan art actually, I save everything I come across— there’s a freckled red-headed series of Owen by TheFigureInTheCorner that makes me really happy. Seeing that my work has inspired someone else to make something of their own is really what’s up, you know? It makes me think about all the art and entertainment that has touched me over the years and I get a lot of joy from being a part of that cycle.

Thanks for taking the time, Ian! Give I Can Die When I'm Done a relisten right here.

#entertainment spotlight #the bright sessions #the am archives #Ian mcquown

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missmentelle · 5 years ago

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This might sound very silly but I just don't know how to be more proactive. I've been very passive all this years until this point where I feel like I can't anymore. I wish I could be more hardworking for the things I want but I get all overwhelmed and don't even know how other people have the energy or the motivation. People think Im just lazy. I don't have almost any skills let alone any that I can monetize, I feel like Im going to be a looser forever.

I think this is a problem that a lot of people - especially younger people - are struggling with right now. We want to achieve great things, and we feel like we should be achieving great things, but many of us are so paralyzed by doubt/anxiety/apathy/uncertainty that we have a hard time mustering up the motivation to run basic errands, let alone chase our dreams. I’ve certainly spent more than my fair share of time beating myself up for the countless days that I’ve fucked around on Reddit all day instead of actually achieving anything, even when I was fully aware that I was sabotaging my own dreams and goals by doing so. I just couldn’t always muster up the ability to care about the things I needed to be doing, even if there were dire consequences for not doing them. The good news is, there are definitely ways to overcome this issue, and reach a point where you are happier with your progress and your life. To get started, I recommend:

Decide what it is you actually want. Telling yourself to “be more proactive”, “work harder” or “have a better life” is not helpful if you don’t actually have specific goals that you’re working towards. It is very, very easy to find ways to be “busy” for 8 hours per day - but being busy doesn’t necessarily mean progress. Take some time, and think about some rough goals that you’d like to actually work towards. Don’t worry about how much work or effort it would be to achieve those goals, just start thinking about what you want in life, and what’s the most important to you. Think about the kind of life that you would like to have someday, and start figuring out the steps you need to take in order to get yourself from your current life to the life that you envision. It’s okay if those things are very far apart - the point is not for you to get overwhelmed, but for you to have something to be proactive about.

Start slowly. You cannot go from “spending 8 hours per day mindlessly browsing the internet amidst a pile of old take-out containers” to “running 5 miles every morning before making art for 8 hours in a spotless apartment with a fridge full of vegetables” overnight. Trying to change your routine too drastically and too quickly will lead to you burning out in a couple of days and going right back to your old ways, with an added dose of self-hatred because you tried and failed. Trying to be more productive and more functional is a process, and a long one at that. It’s not at all unusual or abnormal to take several years of work before you get your life to where you want it to be. Start slow. Start with incredibly tiny changes, and slowly build up those changes over time. If you currently live on a diet of fast food and candy, and you want to be a shredded, clean-eating fitness guru, you can’t rush into that all at once. Start by swapping out full-sugar pop for diet pop for the first month, and trying to drink more water. That’s it. Don’t make any other changes. Then the second month, switch out diet pop for flavored water. And so on. Change only sticks when it’s gradual.

Focus on one thing at a time. Again, trying to do too much, too soon is a recipe for fast burnout and self-hatred. Start by trying to change one area of your life, and one area of your life alone. Once you feel like you have a pretty solid handle on that part of your life and you have established some new habits, then you can add on a second area of focus. Spend some time, and really think about which area of your life is the most important for you to change, and which area of focus will improve your life the most. If it helps, envision your problems as rocks that you are carrying around in a backpack with you at all times. What’s the heaviest rock in your backpack? If you are overweight, unhappily single, making no progress building your YouTube channel and failing out of college, then your college grades are probably the thing causing you the most stress in your life, and they’re your most urgent concern - focus on that, and give yourself permission to let the rest of it sit on the back burner until you have boosted your GPA. Only then will you be ready to start changing something else.

Go easy on yourself. I think one of the pitfalls that many young people face these days is that they absolutely crush themselves with unrealistic expectations of what they “should” be doing with their lives; it’s hard to get up the motivation to do anything when you’ve convinced yourself that the bare minimum for success is an impossible ideal. I have friends with master’s degrees who still consider themselves failures that haven’t done anything in life. Remember that you are not a machine. Even at your most successful and high-functional, you will not be perfect and productive 100% of the time. You will still have lazy days where you don’t get much done. You will still occasionally order takeout instead of making a home-cooked meal. You will still occasionally procrastinate. Don’t set yourself up for failure by comparing yourself to an unattainable ideal - just aim to be a slightly better version of what you are right now.

Get used to tracking, even without making changes. It’s hard to set goals for improvement if you don’t have a solid idea of what you’re actually doing right now. Telling yourself things like “stop being so lazy and do more things” is setting yourself up for a spiral of self-loathing if you don’t actually track what you’re doing, because you won’t be able to see the small, gradual progress that you’re making. Being able to actually see yourself taking baby steps toward your goal is important for keeping you motivated, and keeping you from beating yourself up. Don’t track absolutely everything in your life - that becomes obsessive after a while - but keep an eye on some of the major things that you might want to change in the future. Install apps on your phone and laptop that track how much time you spend doing what. Set up the step tracker on your phone. If you want to eat better in the future, start tracking roughly what you eat now. I’m a pretty avid bullet journaler, I track a lot of my daily habits. Keeping track of the things you do, even if you’re not proud of them, and even before you start to work on them, gives you a baseline to work with, so you can establish how bad the problem is and see when you’re heading in the right direction.

Forget the obsession with monetizing. A lot of us have gotten this idea in our heads that we need to find ways to monetize everything that we’re even remotely good at, or doing that thing is somehow a waste of our time. I don’t want to generalize about millennials and gen z too much, but I do feel like our generation was raised on the belief that “doing what you love” is the most important thing in life; I personally have many friends that are obsessed with monetizing, to the point that they no longer do anything unless they can find some way to funnel it into advancing their blogger/influencer/creator career. I think this is a mistake. When you monetize something that you love doing, you turn it from a hobby into a job, with all the stress that comes with that, and I think it’s important for everyone to have at least one thing in their life that they do just for the joy of it. It’s okay to let work be work, and play just be play. And I say this as a person who has monetized one of my hobbies; I love true crime and forensic psychology, and I co-host a true crime podcast that has recently had a huge surge of popularity and is on the cusp of being monetized. I could write an entire post about the mental health side of being a creator with a public online presence, but in a nutshell, turning my podcast from a hobby into a business has required me to take it a lot more seriously, and it now falls more into the category of “work” than it does “fun”. My enjoyment of life requires that some of my other hobbies - like playing music - just stay un-monetized hobbies. Let yourself create and do things that don’t have economic value.

Don’t compare yourself to what you see on social media. I have had both personal friends and followers on this blog tell me that they feel bad about themselves because their life doesn’t measure up to what they see on Instagram, or because they feel that their own lives would not be worthy of posting online. This is a toxic mindset to get into. The things you see on social media are not reality, no matter how much they appear to be - people put incredible amounts of effort into carefully cultivating an online persona that makes them look more productive and accomplished than they actually are. I have a brother who who is a somewhat successful Instagram “influencer”, alongside his more successful girlfriend, and I could write an entire post about the lengths they go to to fake having perfect lives on Instagram, and the toll that their Insta careers are having on their mental health. If you are looking to be a more productive version of yourself, it’s best to steer clear of “motivation” from people who are paid to pretend to be successful online.

Set measurable, achievable goals. Goals like “be healthier” and “do more stuff” won’t get you anywhere - they are so vague that it’s not possible to tell when you’ve actually achieved them, or how much progress you’ve made. If you want to be more productive and feel like you’re getting more done, you need to set goals that can actually be worked towards and checked off when they are done. Instead of “go to the gym more”, aim for “go to the gym 5 days per week” as your end goal, and start with a solid couple of months with “go to the gym at least once per week”, and slowly increase from there. If you’re aiming for something big like “have an awesome job”, break that down into medium-sized goals like “finish an undergrad degree”, and then break that goal down even further into “hand in all my assignments on time this semester”, and break that down further into “write the first 10 pages of my paper by the end of the week”. Set tiny goals for yourself that you can easily achieve, and that will gradually accumulate into big accomplishments.

Remember that slow progress is better than no progress. If you write one sentence per day, it is going to take you a really long time to write a novel. It will take you a whole lot less time, however, than if you get overwhelmed at the thought of writing a novel and never write at all. Sometimes you need to break goals down into steps so small that they also seem not worth doing. It can feel a little silly to congratulate yourself for things like “brushed my teeth today” and “texted someone back today”, but those are little habits that add up into bigger things, and giving yourself that positive reinforcement is important. “Greatness” and “success” are not things you achieve all at once, they are made up of tiny habits that you’ve been working on for months or years at a time.

Take care of your mental health. Not feeling the motivation to do anything, even things that you enjoy, can be a symptom of depression. Everyone beats themselves up from time to time for not being more productive, but if your brain is constantly on a feedback loop of “I’m human garbage and I’m wasting my life”, that’s a pretty serious problem, and a solid sign that it’s time to seek out some professional help. Trying to make major life improvements without addressing underlying mental health concerns is kind of like trying to drive a car without wheels - you’re just not going to get anywhere until you’ve dealt with the obvious problem.

Remember that setbacks are okay. Even the most highly proactive and high-functioning people have days where they say “fuck it” and order takeout to eat in front of the TV. Everyone occasionally misses deadlines or leaves things to the last minute when they shouldn’t. Everyone shows up late occasionally. These things happen - we are humans, and none of us are perfect. The key to long-term proactivity and productivity, though, is not to let those small setbacks define you, and not to throw away all the progress you’ve made over a bad day or a bad week. Eating healthy six days per week will put you in a much better position than deciding “fuck it, I blew it” after one bad meal and returning to eating unhealthy meals 7 days per week. As the saying goes, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good - in other words, perfection is not attainable, and getting hung up on being perfect will prevent you from achieving many things that are good. The idea is not to be perfect; it’s just to keep striving to be a slightly better version of yourself.

Best of luck to you!

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content-to-convert · 4 years ago

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VIDEO DIDN’T KILL THE RADIO STAR...

VIDEO DIDN’T KILL THE RADIO STAR it just made him dress nicer

By Pat Mellon

Speaking of your brand evolving, PODCASTS are now a wise bullet to have in the arsenal of promotional weapons. In the early 2000's, for instance, you didn't have the option to record and distribute a PODCAST. The technology didn't exist to even IDENTIFY, much less create one- if you typed PODCAST into an email in 2002, it would have been flagged as a misspelling.

But now, thanks to Audioblogging, re-branded as PODCASTING thanks to the iPOD, you can reach a targeted captive audience in a car on a long commute, with content that they've actually sought out. It's essentially a radio infomercial for the lifestyle of your product, without the PAID-PROGRAMMING aftertaste. Plenty of people have been slow to warm to the idea of such self-promotion and have waited to see if the technology and its effectiveness sustained or if it waned, the way QR codes did, or video discs did until the invention of the DVD. It can be an amazingly powerful part of your brand.

Many rejected podcasting, as I did initially, as a waste of energy. In fairness, early on when there were no networks for podcasting and its business model was less focused than now, it smacked of self-congratulatory volunteer work. I saw it as an infringement on my profession. I have 15 years of radio hosting experience. I saw podcasts as competition. In my short-sighted view then, I didn't see the full potential of a podcast. I just saw it as people wanting my job. But as time went on, I began to see the ways, at least in terms of in-car entertainment, that podcasting was the future. And like the cryptic fortune cookie says, "Kill Your Darlings". Or maybe go with the less-confusing, "Reinvent Your Business Constantly. The End Goal May Be The Same But The Tools and Methods Evolve Constantly" which is a Ken Tucker quote I saw on a Snapple Cap. Or even the more direct, "You Have To Reinvent To Stay Fresh and In The Game" which Madonna said once.

But early on, I saw it as the enemy - the way news journalists must have felt when FREELANCERS started getting a lot of the work in the late 90's. I thought, "If all you need to broadcast is a computer and an opinion, why the hell did I major in Broadcasting? It's like everyone becoming a Youtuber or a Social Media Influencer (seriously, that is NOT a good name. It's just saying what you're doing. It lacks creativity, like naming the glass thing you drink out of a "glass". Or the room with the bed a "bedroom". Or the thing you swing on a "swing". Or the... Sorry-I'll move on.) Anybody can become a Social Media Influencer these days, (and if they're under 14 and haven't been trying for half their lives then you might want to make sure they're breathing) and that means fame, sometimes money, but more important: LIKES. I overheard my 8 year-old playing with her friends and they were pretending there was a genie or something granting wishes and one girl asked for a pony, and another asked for a house of chocolate, and my daughter asked for a million LIKES on her video. LIKES are currency for pre-teen popularity. And LIKES or even merely PAGE VIEWS can be currency in the grown-up world of business. My point is that anyone with a computer and a camera can make money on Youtube if they hustle. It's simply the new normal. It's great, if not dangerous. We've yet to see the fallout of a generation raised on Youtubing, unless, of course, you count cautionary tales like Logan Paul or Jo Jo Siwa, both of whom are rich. It's simply another entertainment option for kids. I kinda thought podcasting was that, but for adults who only wanted quasi-fame; to show-off. But it's bigger than that.

If you're a plumber, for instance, and you want to maximize business, you probably want a decent social media footprint, some solid YELP reviews, and maybe even a podcast. Toilet clogged? Click here for an interview with master plumbers from all over. It's not the ONLY thing you should do. It's ONE of the things you should do.

On the consumer side, you have to realize that traffic, especially the bumper-to-bumper kind, is GOLD to a radio talk show host. People listen the most in their cars, so DJ's in New York and Los Angeles, the #1 and #2 radio markets depending on who you ask*, for instance, who entertain on the radio, are always on their toes to stay funny and relevant because it's so easy to push a button and change the station.

Then suddenly there was a new game in town. People were bypassing the radio altogether and plugging external sources into car sound systems, removing the commercials and unwanted Morning Zoo shenanigans, and rendering my entire college education and training void. My only hope was wishing death to the podcast movement, which I think I did a couple of times on the radio accompanied by a sound effect of a toilet flushing (Take THAT, Podcasting!). It didn't work. I kept hearing the word. Podcast. (eerie voice) PODD CAAAST! My head was in the sand. People would say to me, "you should do a podcast" and I'd cringe and wildly swing fists at imaginary ghosts who were accusing me of "Resting on your laurels" and "Holding on too tight.”

It took a while, but I get the appeal and, more importantly, the power of the Podcast. It's like a book-on-tape for the 21st century- 10 times as cool, though, because it's technologically relevant, and can be different every time you listen. So we agree that podcasts are real. And we acknowledge that there is room for many things on the dashboard of a car, be them outlets, or additional buttons. And we agree that the the way we do business is always changing and we have to adapt to some degree. So why all the hub bub? Because we can't have an intelligent conversation about the delicate existence of Podcasts without talking about Shane Gillis, the comedian who was hired and fired by Saturday Night Live in the same week last year. We need to understand the power of what it was that torpedoed his streetcar (tune into Mixed Metaphors with Pat Mellon Tuesdays on The Podd Couple, right after Poddamnit at 8, and Pod of Thunder with Gene Simmons at 8:17) He and a buddy do this show, this podcast, it's like a radio show but you don't listen to it on your grandpa's Victrola, you tether your MP3 player to the radio inside grandpa's Camry, and there's bad language, which there never is on traditional, boring old dumb talk radio, so right away, it's awesome (honestly, the only difference between Howard Stern on radio and Howard Stern on satellite is the F word) and the internet allows curses and take that, Mr. Suit and Tie, and this is going to be amazing. And on one particular show from 2018, Gillis said "chink" when describing someone in Chinatown. Not a huge scandal, but I guess you'd have to ask Roseanne Barr if the internet can get you into to any kind of trouble. She was exiled from the the entire US for a social media post that mentioned race and monkeys. And the same new normal that allows John Q. Anybody to do a podcast ALSO watches everything you do online and will sink you if it sees something it does not like. America can be confusing that way. Freedom of speech and freedom of complaining about freedom of speech are always at each other's throats, it seems. And you can't have it both ways. The guy who alerted the world to Bill Cosby's dating rituals online is loved by many but is also shunned by others, but that guy knows what he did and he knows not to complain about the ones who, well, complain. It's the price you pay.

The point is, you need to constantly be hustling and using all of technology’s modern tools to get your product out (they’re not burning DVD’s anymore) and maybe one of those avenues is a podcast with salty language, and maybe that podcast exists among your body of work that clients can enjoy whenever they want.

But we live in a new age of retroactive outrage. Eddie Murphy was on SNL and is arguably the most talented person the show has produced. He did a stand-up special in which he explores “What if Mr. T were a Faggot?” It was inflammatory and it was insensitive and it was homophobic (though that buzzword was still a decade from conception) because the premise of the joke- the attribution of homosexual behavior to a big, strong, black man being marginalized as solely predatory sodomy - crossed the line. When I spell it out like that it looks horrible. But it’s a simple comedic device: assigning unlikely behavior to someone for comedic purposes. It’s the fish-out-of-water gag. It’s why we had Mork, and Alf, and Balkie from Perfect Strangers. It’s Freaky Friday. It’s why The Rock playing a babysitter or a tooth fairy is funny. Murphy did this AFTER he was on SNL. But if has been released before he auditioned, do you think he’d have been hired?

Of course he would have. Because the Mr. T thing was a small part of that special (though, I recall, an extremely quotable part) and the people who didn’t like or appreciate the language didn’t have the bionic megaphone of the internet so they could get their outrage all over your conscience. The point is that your podcast is a reflection of your brand. You have to weigh your desire to speak freely and loosely with your desire to keep the Cancel Culture at bay. At a MINIMUM, though, you should keep things clean for your clients, listeners, and most importantly, your potential customers. Shane Gillis missed out of being on SNL and fame, instead on infamy because he broke one of society's biggest rules:he said something controversial out loud. Granted, it was in bad taste, but if that were a crime half of us would be in jail. It's just important to remember that your language on a work-based podcast should be professional, which I realize cannot be defined easily, but maybe stay away from slang and cursing. Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD.

#podcast comedy hilarious

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cindylouwho-2 · 5 years ago

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, September 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across in the past 5 weeks, although some may be older than that.

I am still working on scheduling enough time to post these every 10 days or so, but lately luck is just not on my side. Writing this elsewhere then cutting & pasting it here is creating some significant formatting issues, so if you find any errors or broken links, please let me know.

Are there types of news you would like to see here? Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Etsy introduced Etsy Ads at the end of August; I covered it on my blog. Some people are seeing decent returns, but many are not. I started a forum thread here for continuing discussion.

A day later, Amazon announced it has waived their $40 a month shop fee for Handmade by Amazon shops. See the pinned post on their Facebook page.

A large study of click-through-rates (CTR) on Google reveals that the top link gets over 30% of the clicks, titles with questions get 14% more clicks than those without, and moving up one slot in the results leads to more clicks, unless you move from 10th to 9th. They cite Etsy’s study of titles & CTR (which showed that shorter titles get more clicks, something that this study also found).

Trend watch: a suggestion that Americans can avoid most of the tariff pain in the pocketbook by buying used clothing & other items. “Secondhand and vintage is no longer synonymous with a dusty pile of outdated sweaters in the corner of a church basement, or a yearly rummage sale. Online resale, including high-end designer items, is booming, thanks to start-ups like The RealReal, Depop, Poshmark, eBay, and Etsy. It’s possible to fill your entire closet this way”. Pre-owned & rented clothing also makes fans of sustainability happy.

Also, “grandmillennials” are a thing.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy US searches often now have a full first page of items that ship free or have the $35 free shipping guarantee, as of September 6 (although they were testing it earlier than that.) I was seeing the rare exception, beyond searches that have fewer than 48 items shipping free, but it wasn’t clear if these are tests or personalization. Then on September 21, we started seeing many items with shipping charges on the first page of even very large results, & most smaller results didn’t give much if any priority to free shipping at all. There has been no statement from Etsy, so your guess is as good as mine ...

In the meantime, they’ve begun promoting free shipping to buyers, which has led to some media coverage. Some note that the timing is good, since most US holiday purchases online in the past several years have included free shipping.

There is a new chapter in the Ultimate Guide To Etsy Search, involving attributes. The accompanying podcast with Etsy’s head taxonomist [transcript with links to the podcast] is quite interesting. She says that one of the reasons that some attributes haven’t shown up yet as search filters is that not enough sellers have applied them to listings. “If we have 100,000 items in the search results and a buyer uses a filter, and that filter causes the results to return just 20 items, that makes it seem broken. The buyer no longer trusts the results. If only 20% of sellers fill out an attribute, showing a filter based on that attribute to buyers isn’t going to be helpful because such a drastic reduction in results makes them lose confidence in those search results. We have to wait until a large number of sellers fill out that data to show it to buyers as a filter. When we do, sellers who have filled out that attribute show in those filtered search results. Sellers who haven’t, don’t.” Also, “[w]e know that shoppers who interact with these filters tend to buy more expensive items.” And, there aren’t separate jewellery attributes for “gold”, “gold-filled” & “gold-plated” because “[m]any jewelry buyers don’t have your experience and don’t know the huge difference between these things.”

The new commercials were launched earlier this month; you can check them all out here, and here is some media coverage. Some analysts think this is a good thing for the stock.

Vox published a review of Etsy’s latest free shipping push, in contrast with its history. [I am sure most of you have seen that, but if not, it is a good read!] “Silverman doesn’t like the words “handmade” or “craft” because they “don’t communicate anything to buyers about when to think of Etsy.” he says now. Nobody wakes up thinking, “Gosh, I need to buy something handmade today,” he tells me, which may be true but I rarely wake up thinking I need to buy anything at all, and more commonly wake up in horror because I’ve already bought way too much. “You need to furnish your apartment. You need to prepare for a party. You need to find a gift for a friend. You need a dress. Handmade is not the value proposition — unique, personalized, expresses your sense of identity, those are things that speak to buyers.” [emphasis added] Also, apparently Etsy founder Rob Kalin “didn’t know what seed funding was when he took it” 😮

The new tool for creating country-specific sales is finally out. You still can’t create the equivalent of the $35 free shipping guarantee for countries other than the US, however, which makes this pretty useless for people wanting to offer free shipping in the US and to their own country. The only way to come close is to set a 30 day free shipping sale to your own country, but it won’t show up in search (unless people filter for free shipping) or get the Canadian search boost for items that ship free, and you still need to renew it every 30 days. In short, Etsy is telling us to overcharge our customers in other countries with no way to offer them the same deals Americans are getting.

Sellers can now use Etsy Labels for USPS First Class letters & flats.

Holiday tips continue to roll out: here are some ideas for running holiday sales and promotions on Etsy.

Advanced content on machine learning: Etsy is employing its data on styles to serve up personalized recommendations, including the “Our Picks for You” section on the home page. The purchase and favouriting rates are part of what gets shown. They’ve discovered that some styles are more popular are different times of the year.

For those of you who think Etsy doesn’t spend enough on advertising, they are actually buying spots on tv shows now, including this Las Vegas morning show. [video]

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Sad to report that Keywords Everywhere is becoming a paid tool starting October 1st (although it may take longer to roll out to your account). https://keywordseverywhere.com/news.html They need to do this because they were being scraped by bots, which was affecting user experience & costing them a lot of time and money. Fortunately, it is still going to be very cheap - 10,000 keywords for $1 USD, purchased ahead of time as credits. They say that the average user will spend less than $2 a month, & I suspect that the average Etsy user will spend less. Once your account moves to a paid one, you will no longer see the search volume, cost per click & competition numbers under search terms until you buy credits, although the "related keywords" & "people also search" sections will still show up on the right side of Google search. I usually do not recommend any paid tools, but I do think this will still be worth every penny, especially if you remember to turn it off when shopping instead of researching! Every comparable paid tool costs way more than this. And despite the rush of attention since their announcement, I still received a personal reply to my email within 24 hours.

You know how I always talk about nofollow links? They still exist, but Google has expanded their link attribution codes to include “sponsored” & "ugc" (user generated content), and all might be crawled at any point after March 1, 2020. Moz did a top level explanation, and here is Google’s (shorter) summary. But it may not really matter much to the average site.

Want to rank well on Google and other search engines? Create “complete content.”

A followup on last edition’s discussion of canonical URLs - Google gets the final say. [video]

Google is now releasing monthly videos of their search news; first one is here.

Some of you will remember Moz’s Whiteboard Friday series on learning SEO in one hour. They’ve now compiled all 6 videos in one place.

And if you want to learn the basics of link building quickly, Moz has a short version of that chapter from their Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

If you are afraid you are missing some SEO rules on your top pages, check out this complete checklist for on-page SEO.

There are tons of SEO tools for Wordpress; here are 15 of the best.

Many people will find your blog through search engines, so make sure you use keywords in your blog posts.

If you have a website, check out 16 things that can harm your search engine rankings [semi-advanced in part, some points are discussing coding]

Success on YouTube involves SEO, something I find many users forget.

Mostly advanced: reminder that as of September 1, you can’t use robots.txt to tell Google not to index pages or sites.

Advanced content for website developers: you need to make sure the site is ready for SEO work.

There are always more Google updates; this one is still rolling out, and was confirmed by Google, but very few details were given. Sistrix did the first comprehensive analysis, although it is still early, and health and media sites seem to be the most dramatically affected.

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Marketing emails need to be carefully designed for success. Everything from the layout to the “preheader” matters.

If you have content on one medium that is doing well for you, it’s time to “repurpose” it for different platforms.

Infographics are very popular in content marketing; here’s how to make one, with 15 free templates.

Some Instagram posts do better than others; here’s why. Among other study findings, “smaller profiles which use more hashtags actually do see better engagement rates per post.”

If you aren’t getting much interaction on Instagram, you could be “shadowbanned.” There are ways to avoid that happening, and ways to fix it when it does.

“Content factories” are a big part of Instagram traffic. Maybe Facebook should crack down on this?

Pinterest is combining image recognition visual search with Shoppable Pins.

Facebook is considering hiding the like counts on News Feed posts, as Instagram is testing in 7 countries right now. “The idea is to prevent users from destructively comparing themselves to others and possibly feeling inadequate if their posts don’t get as many Likes. It could also stop users from deleting posts they think aren’t getting enough Likes or not sharing in the first place.”

Video app TikTok can be confusing, so here is a step-by-step guide for beginners. And here’s a podcast [with text] on the basics.

Twitter chats are a great way to attract interest in your business.

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

Facebook is testing new shopping ads, but they are only available to small groups at the moment: checkout from the Facebook app, and turning Instagram shopping posts into ads. Here’s more on the latter.

Snapchat now has longer ads and different formats.

I see a lot of questions on what you can advertise on various platforms; here’s a good summary of items/topics prohibited on major sites.

Since so many sellers are interested in other types of advertising right now, here are a few primers, most of which I have posted here before: Setting up Google Shopping for your website Instagram Sponsored Posts How to beat Facebook’s ad algorithm Setting up Pinterest ads

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Have Google Analytics set up on your website but don’t know how to use it? Here are some common features [text and video] you may want to take advantage of. Note that the part about setting it up doesn’t apply to most marketplaces and many website builders, which have a more simplified set up, as Etsy does.

The old Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is now almost entirely converted to the new version. Expect all of the old reports to be moved to the new version soon.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

There’s new evidence that Amazon has skewed its search algorithm to favour its own products & third-party products that make Amazon the most money. ”Executives from Amazon’s retail divisions have frequently pressured the engineers at A9 to surface their products higher in search results, people familiar with the discussions said.” In case that WSJ article goes back behind a paywall, here is some news coverage of it. “Instead of adding profitability into the algorithm itself, Amazon changed the algorithm to prioritize factors that correlate with profitability, the article said.” Amazon denies this, of course.

Despite the legal agreement in Germany, Amazon is still suspending accounts without 30 days notice.

Want to use cash to pay for online purchases? Amazon is now offering that option in the US.

eBay listings now default to 1-day handling; if you ship slower than that, make sure to remember to change the default on each new listing you make.

eBay managed payments (the equivalent of Etsy Payments) are now available in Germany.

A review of major shipping trends in ecommerce notes that “[t]he accelerated supply chain is putting small sellers at a crossroads regarding if they can afford to take a hit on margins” when discussing Etsy’s free shipping push.

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

Over ⅓ of US adults have bought something on social media, over 50% of 18-34 year olds are in that group. Far fewer had used visual search or virtual reality.

More people are shopping online late at night; women are more likely to do it, but men spend more when they do. [I’ve noticed this trend on my site and Etsy shop for a few years now,compared to when I first started selling in 2008.]

The majority of shoppers worldwide who are online use videos to make some purchase decisions, as shopping lists, how-to research, and to check reviews.

Gen Z (the generation after millennials) is more concerned about their health than the the previous 2 generations, and sometimes avoid the stresses of social media by shopping in brick & mortar stores. “About two-thirds (67%) of Gen Z prefer products made with ingredients they can understand, and tend to buy products in health and wellness categories more frequently than other generations. On environmental issues, 65% said they prefer simple packaging and 58% said they want eco-friendly packaging. Half of the group seeks products that are locally sourced or made, and 57% are seeking products that are environmentally sustainable, but fewer are willing to pay a premium price for them.”

For the 2019 holiday season, “65% of holiday shoppers will use a mobile device to shop, and 65% will make an online purchase via mobile.”

How do different industries get their online traffic? Google sends sites 8 times more traffic than all social media sites combined, and Facebook drives nearly ⅔ of all visits from social media. Instagram is responsible for less than 1%, while Twitter tops 10%. The author notes that “faster-growing social networks like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are designed from the ground up in a way that makes it difficult to drive traffic to external sites.”

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Google is working on letting you search your Google Photos for text; it seems to be using AI to identify & store the text in your screenshots and other images. It’s interesting technology that will likely be used in many ways, including search engines, if it works well.

If you like convo snippets on Etsy, here’s a tool that will make them possible in many more places.

Need a photo editor that works on mobile? Here’s a list of 12, most of which are free or cost only $1 USD.

This one simple trick makes everything faster and easier.

Stuff that probably shouldn’t taste like pumpkin spice. [humour]

#seo #search engine optimization #search engine marketing #etsynews #analytics #stats #social media #contentmarketing #content marketing #Ecommerce #smallbiz #CindyLouWho2NewsUpdates

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annashipper · 6 years ago

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An open letter to Ophie Hunter from Interview Anon

(Hi Anna,

After reading the news today, I was really scared with the possibility that such an amazing and groundbreaking project as this movie might never see the light of day due to lack of funds. And you know me. Always eager to help Ophie, I immediately started to think of ways that could enable the well renowned Producer Ophie Hunter to raise the money necessary to make this movie a reality.)

——–++++++++++—————

An open letter to Ophie Hunter

And now that your husband has been publicly shamed by The Daily Fail and forced to begin the process of fully severing Sunny March’s relationship with the multi-millionaire son of the Malaysian prime minister (a man who is known around the world for his controversial anti-Semitic views), where will you find the money you need to produce that movie based on your sister-in-law’s book?

1. Crowdfunding

One of the most popular methods to raise money. The most popular sites are Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Indiegogo.

It’s important to let people know what they’re investing in, so you’re going to need some promo pictures and videos of your husband even if he is not on the movie.

Use him as a decoy to attract people to your project(s). You can make him shoot a promo, a teaser, a mock trailer, a pitch video, or even the opening scene of the movie.

Again, do not be shy and milk your husband’s image as much as you can.

And don’t forget to share the links every day!

NOTE: As tempting as it may be DO NOT use one of your moodboards for this effect. I repeat: DO NOT use one of your moodboards for this effect!

2. Fundraisers

Like many other methods, this one requires a lot of creativity. Organize an event but be aware that you will need to give people a reason to show up to your event. You can’t just trow a party and expect everyone to show up - unless you casually let it slip online (a sockpuppet Twitter account should do the trick) that your famous husband will be attending this party.

You know the drill. Wink-wink.

NOTE: As tempting as it may be, during the party DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT ask your artsy-friends to put up one avant garde performance using knives, blood, and/or dead animals.

3. Merchandise

There are lots of options that can make you some money. You can get hats, t-shirts and 8x10 posters made, and make your husband autograph them. You can even get a custom-made action figure of your husband and raffle it off and also get a percentage of the profits. Again, it does not matter if he will not be on this movie. Don’t let those small details stop you.

Convince your husband to wear some of these t-shirts and hats, and make him become your personal walking billboard! ( NOT moodboard. Billboard!)

4. Appearances

Of course, there are other ways to fundraise without selling and raffling things, like making appearances. Convince your husband to go on podcasts and radio shows. Make him appear on people’s YouTube channels. The more you spread the word the better. Get him a table or panel at a convention and that’s another opportunity to sell merchandise. You also want to get as much press coverage as possible, so send promo videos and posters (NOT moodboards!!) to all the tabloids and newspapers. Or just call them up asking for coverage in exchange for exclusive photos of your “husband” and your “children”.

You know you need to get a buzz going so organize your own Pap walks, sell your privacy!

Note: As tempting as it may be, Do NOT, I repeat DO NOT not blurr your husband’s face from photos where you two are appearing together. Of course, we all know you are the real star here, but for some strange reason blurring his face is not a popular move and it does not sit well with a part of his fanbase. Go figure!

5. Networking

This is one of the most crucial methods. Many of the other methods can fall into this one. Be sure to make your husband go to these networking events. Make sure you talk to all the people who come to support your husband and use these opportunities to sell yourself and your work. Also, it is very important to have business cards made. They are very cheap and easy to design on Vistaprint. And as a Bonus, you can Finally use your Custom made logo!

7. Social Media

This is the most important method of all. All of the other methods fall into this one.

Everything comes back to social media. Most marketing is done through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, and all the others.

But you already know this!

You already know you can’t be famous and sucessfull anymore without Social Media. You have been trying for the past 5 years.

So keep on trying! Don’t let Mediocrity, lack of Talent, Skill, Intelligence and Merit stop you!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Interview Anon,

#Interview Anon

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prodigaldaughterlove · 6 years ago

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Dangerous, but Good

“‘Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.’

‘Ooh’ said Susan. ‘I'd thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion...’

‘Safe?’ said Mr Beaver … ’Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

- The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch & Wardrobe

I have been listening to a podcast called “Catholic Stuff You should Know”, which is quite popular in the Catholic social media world. The priests are a diocesan community called the Companions of Christ and they are really entertaining and funny. Well, their latest podcast is on the theme of Stay Dangerous, and they reflect on the theme of God’s being dangerous but good, with two quotes from Narnia and another from the Lord of the Rings, two series which are very close to my heart.

Like many kids of my generation, I grew up reading and watching the fantasy trinity of Narnia, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. The nuanced writings of Tolkein and Lewis especially, requires both age and experience to grasp their deeper meanings. Aslan was easily my favourite character in the movie and not just the Jesus references. We hear so much about Aslan from the animals, the citizens of Narnia, and Father Christmas, about what a good king he is. When he appeared from under the tent flap, he did not disappoint at all, with his royal presence and deep voice. In his first interaction with the White Witch, he clips her off with a roar, and I thought “oh, wow, he’s still a lion”. When he went with the girls to his death, I remember wanting them to run away because we all knew he was going to sacrifice himself. Seeing Aslan going defenseless to the White Witch was like watching the Passion of Christ again.

As an adult, I realise how true the phrase is - not safe, but good, when it comes to God. At this season, I realize how much I desire for the Lion of Judah to fight my battles with me, because I cannot do it by myself. I need his teeth and claws, his bites and his roar, to tear all the white witches into many pieces, as well as the foxes that tarry in my vineyard still. I need his breath to breathe life in me once again, and his roar to signify that the season of winter is over, and spring has come.

'Dangerous!' cried Gandalf. 'And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord. And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Glóin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly the forest of Fangorn is perilous — not least to those that are too ready with their axes; and Fangorn himself, he is perilous too; yet he is wise and kindly nonetheless... A thing is about to happen which has not happened since the Elder Days: the Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong.'

'What will they do?' asked Legolas in astonishment. 'I do not know,' said Gandalf. 'I do not think they know themselves.' The Two Towers, LoTR Book 3, Ch 5, The White Rider

The CYSK priests gave a good breakdown on why we sometimes fear God’s danger. For those of us with trauma, the word danger has become synonymous with evil It’s the guy walking behind us in a dark alleyway. It’s the adult who abused us when we were little. It’s the kids who ganged up on us in a room. Whenever abuse of power or authority is perpetuated on us in the past, we start to fear the word danger. We then succumb to the danger (pun totally intended) of making God small, limiting Him to our narrow and small ways of seeing Him and accepting only some parts of Him. When that happens, we begin to see our problems as bigger than God, and believe He couldn’t possibly save us from such a situation. We also fail to see our own danger and the threat we pose to the Enemy.

To be honest, this season started roughly around two months back, where I was listening to Brooke Fraser’s “There is More” sharing on YouTube. Her sharing broke down the theme of their 2018 album of the same name. The album showed a man wrestling with a lion - Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis. Before, he had been a trickster and a deceiver, his name meant “heel” as he was born clutching Esau’s heel. But he wrestled with God and God gave him a new name, Israel, which means “he who wrestles with God”. Thus, we would have a forefather in faith who would be a role model in the wrestling that every man or woman would have to go through once (or many times) in their life. Brooke also exhorted the worshippers, something which spoke so profoundly to me. I will end of with this quote:

“Because this might just be a few thousand people in the room, but on the other side of each one of your freedom there are hundreds more people and thousands more people. So you take this room and you multiply it and there is an army on the other side of you getting free tonight. Bobby spoke so profoundly earlier. He said that the enemy has come to destroy lineage.Well, in Jesus name tonight, we take it back. There is more at stake for us. Will we be people who are willing to wrestle with God, no matter what it cost us? Because we understand there is more at stake than just our lives, there is more at stake than just our freedom. There is lineage, there is generations, there is an army who will be missing a contingent if you decide to draw back from the wrestle tonight. I came to ask, will we be a people who are not content to sleep through the night and wake unchanged? Will we be a people of God who are prepared to wrestle until daybreak to find out who we really are and walk forward in who we really are at the knowledge that He is the King?”

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copperbadge · 7 years ago

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There was a recent discussion on tumblr, which I didn’t reblog for obvious reasons, about how people with a large readership cope with a heavy interaction load -- how the person would be anxious if they dealt with that volume of notes on each post, that amount of interaction and contact. I was tagged in it because of my habit of "lochnessing", where I cause an activity spike on posts I reblog that looks like the loch ness monster.

It never occurs to me, because I’ve dealt with high-volume social media for so long -- realistically about ten years, probably closer to fifteen -- that it’s difficult for people to handle that, because they don’t have the systems in place that I do. I mean it does occur to me in the sense that I have become more cautious about what I reblog and its impact on the OP; there are things I’d like to share with you but don’t because I recognize it would be harmful to the person who wrote them. But it doesn't occur to me that someone might struggle with a high volume of notes purely because it's a volume that they don't have a system in place to deal with the way I do.

So I said I'd do a writeup on the "entire ecosystems" I had in place for handling the high volume of interaction I receive online. I sit at a weird place where I'm not so well known that I can just ignore most of what comes at me with impunity because everyone acknowledges I can't answer it all, like say a youtube star. But at the same time I do get too much attention to return it at the same level I receive it. I am one and you are sixteen thousand. So I had to make systems to return as much as I could and feel okay about not returning the rest.

Reading through this, of course it sounds like a weird humblebrag: "Here's how I deal with my MASSIVE POPULARITY". There's no real way around that; I can't talk about how I deal with comments without talking about how I get a disproportionately high number of them. The fact that I do is what leads me to do things like the Zero Comment Challenge, or Radio Free Monday, to try and balance shit out. So, as I mention occasionally below, you can think I'm an asshole for talking about how I am popular, but I can't talk about how to deal with that popularity without acknowledging the reality of it, and someone somewhere's gonna think I'm an asshole anyway, so whatever.

These are the systems I use to manage my life -- work, play, the weird inbetween space that's kind of both. Many of these are akin to the systems that I use in managing my depression, in that they involve a lot of small steps building up to a big result, but each small step on its own is manageable.

Let's start with AO3, because it's actually probably the simplest.

I clean out my comments once a week. Usually there are between forty and a hundred and fifty, depending on if I’ve published something recently or been recommended by someone.

I go through all the one-sentence comments first, because those are the ones that are least likely to require a response. I read all comments but I learned through trial and error, twice in ten years, that I am physically and emotionally incapable of responding to every comment I receive even if it's just with a "Thank you!" and I'm just going to live with the fact that people think I'm an asshole for that. Also while I appreciate someone who leaves a "Great fic! <3" comment, that's genuinely really cool and validating, I don't think they truly need or expect a response. So most one-line comments, unless they are super weird or contain a question, get read, appreciated, and then deleted.

Then I go through the longer comments that need a closer reading, and delete any that are cool but still don't seem to require responses. If someone has left a ton of comments, I'll find the one I think is coolest or most needing of response, delete the others, and reply to that one comment with a thoughtful response including a line thanking them for all their other comments.

Finally, I respond to comments that are in-depth or have questions that require some thought. I find that if I don't respond to these on a weekly basis they pile up and then someone who asked a question like six months ago is still waiting for an answer, so this one is non-negotiable: my AO3 inbox has to be empty at the end of each week, and everything that needed a reply has to have one. (I do have one or two that just live in my inbox because they are cool ideas I will one day get round to writing, and I want to credit them when I do, but it's never more than two.) For me, it's easiest to wait until Friday or Saturday and just take an hour to clear them all out, rather than clearing as I go, because I don't have AO3 open all the time the way I do some other sites.

Tumblr: Every morning, before work, I go through the previous night's responses; I open all reblogs/mentions in new tabs to read and reply-as-necessary, and I reply to all comments that need responses. (This is also something I'll do throughout the day, but especially if I'm tired or pressed for time, the comment replies might be saved as a draft or left in an open tab until I can get to them). Occasionally shit doesn’t show up or I miss stuff but I’ve learned to just live with that as the price of doing fandom on Tumblr.

If there's a post by someone else that requires a response from me -- either a reblog of one of my posts, or someone tagged me in a post -- I Like it to find it later or I save it as a draft. I don't use Likes as anything other than "I want to be able to find this again in less than a week's time" and I never have more than about 20 Likes in my files. (Unless I’m traveling; it’s easier to Like something than save it as a draft or respond, so when I get home from traveling I often have 30-50 Likes in my file.)

Often on Tumblr I go through what I call the Line Cycle -- I read my dash, and then I go "down the line" and open all the other pages that might need attention, in specific order. I open asks and try to respond to a few -- I try to answer at least five every time but sometimes I don't manage to answer any for whatever reason -- then I open likes and try to convert as many likes as I can to either queued reblogs or drafts. I open drafts and try to convert some of those to queued reblogs. Then I go through the same process for one or two side blogs.

(Also in drafts are a lot of things that I'm not sure I want to put in my queue yet, or things that I put in the queue weekly like the Zero Comment Challenge post, which I dust off when I'm ready to queue it, then immediately re-save to drafts when it posts.)

Occasionally if I feel shit is getting out of hand I dedicate myself to, every time, not leaving the page I'm on until I've reduced its "count" (number of asks, likes, drafts, etc) by five, or at least to below the next multiple of five -- if I have 23, for example, I'll try to get it below 20.

Sometimes posts in tabs sit open for a while because in order to respond I have to read an article or watch a video, which take a lot of focus and attention. It used to be that recommendations for books or stuff to watch also sat open forever until I could get round to doing it, but now I just have a "reccs" file on the cloud that is a list of what I've been recommended and who recommended it, and I work my way through them slowly.

Email: Once I've read them, site notifications in my inbox get deleted; I've turned off follow/kudos notifications because they tend to be white noise.

Email is tough for me, it requires a lot of focus and emotional attention to answer emails, so I treat it the same way I would asks or likes or whatnot, but much more slowly. I tend to have a backlog of about thirty emails in my inbox, though often five to ten of those are emails that don't need response and that I'm saving (I star them to mark them as not needing attention). I have the multiple-stars function in Gmail turned on, and when it gets really bad, I start opening emails and triaging -- "This will be easier to answer" "This will take some time" etc. by starring them different colors.

I like to have no more than fifteen emails in my inbox but that is a rarity.

The Internet: Because social media takes up a lot of my time and I also work eight hours a day (well, four, we'll get to that in a bit) I have streamlined the way I encounter the internet, as well. I have a list of "daily reading" bookmarks that I open every morning and check through -- the horoscope page, the mustard tag on tumblr (which I don't follow because then the same dumbass two hipster fashion posts keep showing up on my dash), a blog that follows and posts about new small flash games that I might enjoy playing, a few others. (I also have a Monday file that I open once a week, it's calendars of events and such, and I go through on Mondays and add anything to my calendar that looks interesting.)

But if I can, any regularly-updated page that has an RSS feed gets converted to RSS and put into my Netvibes reader account, where I peruse it at my leisure. The Netvibes reader account includes a direct feed from the Steve/Tony and Steve/Sam tags on AO3, plus a few others; longform.org, some cooking blogs I follow, a bunch of podcast pages, a few webcomics, and one or two tumblrs that I don't want showing up on my dash (mainly artists' porny sideblogs, what up you glorious pervs) or think I would make the person uncomfortable by following them.

I have five tabs pinned to Chrome at any given time, and four tabs pinned to Firefox. The Chrome tabs are my personal Netvibes, Google Drive, a Google Sheets spreadsheet with my calendar and accounting tabs in it, Gmail, and Tumblr. The Firefox tabs are a second Netvibes account I use for work (we have several news sources we all monitor daily), my non-fannish gmail, my non-fannish facebook with a custom reading page so I never see anything twice, and the Google "family calendar" that I and my family use to track where we all are and what we're doing.

My parents use this more than I do, which is why I often open the calendar app on my phone to check my work schedule and find that my parents are taking the dogs to the groomer's today (yes, I know I could turn this off, but it amuses me). When I introduced my mother to Google Calendar her eyes got super big and she fell in immediate love; the first three things she added were the birthdays of her two dogs, followed by the birthday of Jesus. I would be more insulted by this but I had already added all the family birthdays, so at least I didn't come in behind the dogs AND the Christ Child.

Once in a while, when I'm at work and I feel like I'm not sure what I should be doing or that my day is spiralling out of my control, I'll take a deep breath, pull up Chrome, and go through all my pinned tabs, one by one, changing or fixing something on each -- I'll clear out my Longform reading, answer a few emails, check the calendar, etc. Then I'll go through any open tabs and try to close at least one. I get anxious if I have more than five or six non-pinned tabs open. Like having an inbox that's rarely over thirty emails total, it's not a sign I'm more effective or efficient than anyone else, it's just a sign I'm debilitatingly anxious about this kind of thing.

Work: I've read, many times, that people who work eight hours a day in a white collar job like mine really only do four hours of actual work. And for a while I joked that I wondered if I even did four, because I dick around on the internet A LOT. But lately I started to genuinely wonder, and so for the past six weeks, I've put that statement to the test.

When I arrive at work, I immediately put in two hours of solid work. I don't read tumblr, I don't read anything but work-related material. I triage all my work emails, I go through my Google Task list for the day and sort things by most to least urgent, and then I work my way through them for two solid hours. It's not easy at all, but any time I think "This is when I would stop and read tumblr" I shake my head and try to do one more work thing, and then I get back in the groove and can do like, three more. I also use this first morning period to take care of "personal work", stuff which has to get done to keep my life running smoothly, like mailing packages or replying to my parents' emails or whatnot.

Then I get a half-hour break to read tumblr, play a flash game, maybe read a piece on Longform. (I don't read fanfic at work; I sometimes clean out Netvibes of fics that from the tags and summaries I know I won't be interested in, but I don't open fanfic at work at all.) I also use this time to get some food in me.

Then I do another two hours of work, same deal. And that's four hours of work. And I get a shitload done, let me tell you.

For the next three hours after, I am basically free to do whatever I want. I usually use about an hour to do some freelance work, and I spend time on tumblr or on personal email, reading articles, listening to podcasts, playing games. I eat a snack, I talk to my coworkers. I find I actually run out of new stuff to read, and I do try to process the old stuff, like empty out my drafts and likes. And of course the nature of my job means that sometimes there is work to be done that comes up suddenly, but it's usually just a matter of teeing it up for the following morning's work shift.

For the last hour of my work day, I go through my work inbox, make sure everything's set up for tomorrow, send any last emails, do any last wrap-up, and make sure all my documents are either saved or closed. (Our IT team likes to run updates and involuntary restarts without warning, so I've learned to always save at end of day.)

So, yeah. Those are some of the systems I have in place in order to run a very mentally busy life. I'm not necessarily recommending them; a lot of them won't work for everyone because everyone is different, and I recognize that some of them are inapplicable (I work a job with no outward-facing element to it; a barista or a librarian or a teacher can't do what I do, schedule-wise), and some of them are a level of regimentation I'm not sure most people would find healthy. But that's how I do my thing, and maybe some of my techniques will sound appealing to other people who occasionally feel, as I do, like they're drowning a little bit.

(Did you find this useful or interesting? Keep me organized and drop some change in my Ko-Fi or at my Paypal!)

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theibgirls · 7 years ago

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CAS is an essential part of the IB programme, but coming up with ideas for it can be very challenging, especially if money is tight. Therefore, I present to you 99 Free (or at the very least, inexpensive) CAS ideas!

Please like/reblog if this helped you, and so that it can help others! ❤︎

Creativity

1. Learn a new language: Free apps or websites like Duolingo or Mondly can help you learn a variety of languages. Here is a post about the language availability on various apps. You can even practice by manually translating song lyrics, which really is just an excuse to listen to Bollywood hits, K-pop, or even Shakira- there’s no reason to not have a little fun with it! If you do just 10 minutes a day you’ll get over an hour of CAS done every week. If you do 20 minutes a day, you’ll get over 2 hours a week, and by spending a little more than 20 minutes on one or two days you can easily get 2 and a half hours of CAS a week. 10 weeks of this and you’ll have 50% of your creativity hours done, and all while having fun listening to songs, and not having to spend a penny!

2. Making gifs or edits: You’re already on tumblr, why not use it as an opportunity for CAS? Making original content takes time, and will quickly fill up those 50 hours! If you don’t want your CAS supervisor see which fandoms you’re a part of, make school related content, for example making subject moodboards (self spon), edits of your required reading (maybe typography for your favourite quotes?), or giffing your favourite historical figures. If you’re experienced you can mass produce content, and if you’re a beginner you can check that “new skills” box! GIMP is free, and Photoshop has a free trial. After that you can either pay for it, or perhaps scour the internet for alternative ways to keep it (though you didn’t hear it from me). If you fulfill requests then it counts as service as well.

3. Art: You can either create digital art using the programs listed in the previous suggestion, or you can do it the old fashioned. While art supplies tend to cost a lot, there is no shame in making sketches or comics using good ol’ ink and lead pencils that you already have in your pencil case, and doing it in a notebook. If you’re willing to splurge, there are tons of ways to go with your art!

4. Photography: While a good camera is expensive, you probably already have a camera in your phone. The quality won’t be ideal, but you can easily practice photographing different motifs in different styles. You can also retouch and enhance the photos with GIMP and Photoshop, as mentioned above.

5. Join or create a low maintenance club: Baking and music may be fun, but ingredients cost money, and so do instruments. A debate club or film club won’t cost anything, except maybe if you buy popcorn! Regular meetings will ensure regular CAS hours.

6. Write poetry: Writing a good poem can take many, many hours, which in the context of CAS is a good thing! Take a stroll in the forest or by the seaside and feel those creative juices flowing!

7. Write a book: You know that idea for a novel you’ve had for ages? Write it down. It may feel awkward to show to your writing to your supervisor, but think of it as a free editor or focus group. This is a great excuse to fulfill your dream of becoming an author. Who knows? Maybe the final product is good enough to send to a publisher, or to self-publish on amazon so you can make some money!

8. Make Redbubble designs: A spin-off of the digital art suggestion. Whether it’s simple text or intricate fanart, Redbubble is a great place to display your creativity, and can even make you some money if you’re lucky!

9. Join a choir: Privately owned choirs may cost to join, but your local church will probably let you in for free.

10. Play an instrument: If you don’t already own an instrument, this isn’t a great option on a budget. However, some of you will already own a keyboard or a guitar, and may even already be taking lessons. If you are, then there is no reason not to use it for CAS. And if you own an instrument but don’t go to classes, simply practice on our own or watch tutorials on YouTube.

11. Dungeons and Dragons: Shocking, I know, but it is actually quite easy to justify D&D as creativity. A friend of mine succeeded in doing this, stating that it involved team work, initiative, commitment and problem solving. It goes to show that most things can be justified as CAS if you word everything well enough.

12. Makeup, nail art, or body paint: I highly doubt that applying mascara in the morning counts, but there are certainly many ways to express yourself with makeup. SFX, intricate patterns and new techniques certainly require creativity.

13. Dance: Dance will be expanded on in the Action section, but dance is not only exercise, but a form of expression which requires passion and creativity.

14. Learn coding: Coding has become a valuable skill in the recent years. There’s an endless amount of sources online, many of them free. Not only is it an interesting skill, but it’s an impressive skill to see on a résumé.

15. Make a game or an app: Game development is certainly not easy, but that just means that there will be plenty of hours for you to log! It also has the potential to make you money, which of course is a plus!

16. Start a YouTube channel: Buying a microphone and camera is expensive, but unless you’re aiming to become a YouTube star there’s no reason to spend money on equipment. CAS doesn’t discriminate between a $500 camera and a built in webcam, or between Adobe Premiere and Windows Movie Maker, so utilize what you have.

17. Join the school newspaper: The school newspaper is a great way to ensure regular hours, and can even count as service. There are many different types of articles, so you can get some variety in it too.

18. Send in articles to a newspaper: If you think the school newspaper is aiming too low, you can always submit articles to local newspapers or online magazines such as Buzzfeed. Your submissions may not always be published, but it’s worth a try, and the hours will count anyway!

19. Make a PSA video: There are tonnes of important causes you can promote, and a PSA video is a great way to do it. Furthermore, the service aspect will count for service hours, and if you do it with a friend it can count as a CAS project.

20. Acting: There are plenty of auditions around, whether it be to a school play or primetime TV. You don’t even need to get a role, simply auditioning is enough as you’ve been a risk taker (your coordinator will appreciate you using the IB learner profile in your reflections), and been creative.

21. Making a short film: Combining he last two points, making a video and acting, take this chance to make a short film (or a full length one depending on your ambition) and Kenneth Branagh’ it as producer, director, writer and lead.

22. Learn animation: Self-explanatory, and a very impressive skill to have.

23. Free online courses: Whether it be public speaking or anthropology, there are many free courses online which can be justified as creativity. Some courses may even look good on your résumé.

24. Make a board game: Board games are a lot of fun, but harder to make than they seem. Your creation might not be the next Monopoly, but it may provide some entertainment when you’re meeting your friends, and wouldn’t playing games with your friend be a great way to get CAS hours?

25. Gardening: A beautiful garden is a challenge to create, but challenges are a part of CAS! From a terrarium to a full scale English garden, there are many options for gardening. Here are some cheap ideas.

26. Make a podcast: Podcasts have become quite popular in the last few years, so try it out for yourself! There are many different topics you could cover, some which could count as service. Discussing one of those topics with a friend could be a great idea for a CAS project.

27. Make a website: This one is quite self-explanatory. Like the podcast, you could easily add a service aspect into it, and working with a friend could make it a CAS project.

28. Translating transcripts of spoken word poem: this one comes from @kahvia, who says “I found the transcripts of the poems on the Internet (some are hard to get, so once I just messaged the author on Facebook) and translated into my native language. It's hard and time consuming, but can be done on the go, so you can do CAS when commuting.”

29. Calligraphy: I must confess that I don’t know a lot about calligraphy, but I assume that amazing tools can cost quite a bit. But remember, CAS isn’t about quality, it’s about quantity, so screw expensive tools and just go for it!

30. Create your own font: Like with most things in life, wikihow has got your back.

31. Make an interactive story: Cool and largely uncharted territory, and definitely a unique experience. This will help you out.

32. Learn origami: Origami is beautiful, and the possibilities are endless. Although origami paper is preferred, it is possible to use regular paper too, which will save you some bucks. Google and YouTube have a million tutorials, so they got you covered.

33. Make a Studyblr: Do you have any idea how many hours I’m getting just by making this list?

Action

1. Go jogging: Perhaps the most obvious free exercise is jogging. All you need is a pair of sneakers and you’re good to go (jogging)!

2. Play Pokémon Go: If you are still one of the few people playing Pokémon Go, walk until your eggs hatch. You could simply walk, but games make it a bit more interesting. On your CAS worksheet you can simply say you plan on walking 2km a day, but in your head and your heart it’s an epic quest for Pikachu.

3. Yoga: Yoga has numerous health benefits and is a great choice for those who don’t like exercise. Power yoga is an option for those who prefer a challenge, but beginner’s yoga isn’t too strenuous and can easily be done at home. Although a yoga mat is preferable, a lot of the moves can be done on the bed or just the floor. YouTube and the app store have thousands of free options, so there’s plenty to choose from, from 10 minutes to an hour. Half an hour before bed each day will have you finishing up your activity hours in no time!

4. Swimming in a public pool, lake or ocean: There are some public pools, but many pools require an entrance fee. The ocean does not. It’s not as easy to swim laps as in a pool, but it will do in a pinch.

5. A 30 day exercise challenge: The internet is full of 30 day exercise plans. Although they’re usually not an ideal fitness plan it will challenge your commitment, and you can get a month worth of CAS.

6. Biking: Assuming you already have a bike, biking is a very cheap method of exercise, but very efficient. Biking to and from school will count, and if takes about 20 minutes back and forth a day, you’ll get 100 minutes in a school week. It’s regular exercise, and therefore it’s regular CAS.

7. Free apps: There’s an almost unlimited amount of exercise apps in the app store, and many of them are free. Try them out! Even a 7 minute exercise app can be useful. 49 minutes every week can be rounded up to 50 minutes, which is a great place to start if you’re new to CAS.

8. Dog walking: If you have your own dog, good for you! Take the adorable little pupper out for a walk. And if not, ask a neighbour if you can steal their dog take their dog for walks. Another case of regular exercise resulting in regular CAS hours.

9. Dance: Not all dancing has to be taught in class. Online you will find numerous tutorials for various dance styles, from belly dancing to hip hop. And if you choose to learn a dance style from another culture, like India’s kathak or the Latin samba you get to learn about other cultures and therefore be a global citizen (as the IBO likes to tell us to be).

10. Dance apps or games: This activity isn’t as focused on independent learning as the previous dance suggestion, but it works nonetheless. Games like DDR or Just Dance are found in many households, so you might already have access to them at home. Just Dance includes an exercise mode, so give it a go! And if you don’t have them, there’s always the free Just Dance app, which should do the trick, memes aside.

11. PlayStation or Wii games: Certainly not a cheap option if you don’t already have the consoles or games, but if you have Wii Sports or PlayStation 3 Sports Champions you have a great way to exercise without leaving your living room.

12. Self-defense: When you can’t afford to go to a self-defense class, we have the internet. Learning proper self-defense is sadly very important, but since it’s important to learn, why not learn it for CAS? Practice with a friend until you’re a ninja, or until you have 15 hours of activity completed.

13. Celebrity workout tape: You know the ones. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Jane Fonda tape from the 80s which you recreate in a leotard, but then again, why not? You could use a random person’s workout tape, but I think Jane Fonda can be trusted (I mean she’s 80 and have you seen how good she looks?). Cheesy as celebrity workout tapes are, especially the ones from the 80s, there’s something special about them. Many of them can be found online, so give them a go, leotard or no!

14. Jump rope: Chances are you still have a jump rope lying around the house from when you were a kid. Rope jumping is actually very good exercise, so try to find your old toy again- it will come in handy!

15. Chair workouts: Fulfill your dream of becoming Britney Spears with some chair exercises. There’s no need to buy fancy equipment when you can just go to your kitchen instead.

16. Basketball: No need to join a team as long as you have a hoop at home. Many people still have a hoop over the garage door from when they were children, why not utilize them?

17. Join a school club: Of course, any club works, but most clubs will require an entry fee. School owned ones are unlikely to ask for one.

18. Hiking: Fresh air, breath-taking views, and all that crap.

19. Running competitions: 5k runs are frequently put on, why not join one?

20. Walk home: Is it cheating? Probably. But walking is activity, so why shouldn’t you take advantage of it? You don’t need to specify that you’re walking home, you can simply say a daily walk of x minutes.

21. Basic gymnastics or acrobatics: When I say basic, I mean basic. Somersaults, cartwheels, the works. It’s technically exercise, and you can say you’re doing acrobatics without going into further details.

22. Tree climbing: An alternative to rock climbing, only it’s free.

23. Use stockings as resistance bands: I honestly don’t know how well this works, but google said it works so it must be true.

24. Water gymnastics: Once again, doing things properly is overrated. Go to a pool and try to figure it out yourself, or with a friend. It may look ridiculous, but you’ll be trying. Another option is to do it some meters away from an ongoing class, because stealing exercise kinda works according to an episode of Will and Grace.

25. Badminton: When I say badminton, I don’t mean fancy professional badminton, I mean “get a gas station badminton racket and play in the park or your lawn”.

26. Foraging: Go look for mushrooms in a forest and keep track of how long you’ve been out and how long you’ve walked.

27. Orienteering: Although I personally despise orienteering with a violent passion, I have many friends who enjoy it, one who even does it for fun. Orienteering can be planned with friends, and can take place in a forest or a city.

28. Treasure hunt: Almost an extension of orienteering, you can plan a treasure hunt in a city or a forest. With the added element of the treasure hunt, there’s a case for creativity, and doing it in a group can work as a CAS project.

29. Frisbee: Frisbees are cheap and can be bought at a gas station, and work as a fun group activity.

30. Help the elderly: As you will see in the Service section, elderly neighbours might need some help cutting grass or shoveling snow. And as anyone who has ever shoveled snow knows, it’s a surprisingly efficient exercise.

31. Gym trial: Many gyms offer a free trial for a day or a week, or even a month, which is easy to take advantage of. Use the free days to their full extent, and if that isn’t enough, go to another gym chain and use their trial. Obviously this won’t be a long term thing, but if you work long, and not necessarily hard, 15 hours should be manageable.

32. Pilates: An alternative to yoga that works as well at home as at a gym.

33. PARKOUR: … don’t die.

Service

1. Join Amnesty: Amnesty is an organization that raises awareness for a number of important issues, and often collect signatures for their causes. Be the one who hunts for signatures and watch the service hours roll in.

2. Join the Red Cross, or any other charitable organization: The Red Cross needs no introduction. It is perhaps the most famous charity in the world, and does a lot of good. However, there have been controversies surrounding it in the past, so if you want to support another charity instead, go for it! Find a charity that is important to you and the service hours will feel even sweeter.

3. Blood donation, or spreading awareness for it: Donating blood will often get you a small payment, and you can’t do it often, so it isn’t ideal for service. However, going to your local donation center and asking for pamphlets and sign up forms to bring to school or a stand at the mall is a great way to raise awareness and encourage other people to go donate blood. It’s one of those things people talk about doing but always put off, so be the person that changes their mind-set!

4. Helping out at school events: School discos, bake sales, or bazaars always need volunteers, and it’s a great way to get many hours done at once. Contact the PTA at your school or other schools in the area and see when upcoming events are taking place and you’ll easily get at least 15 hours of service done. If you really phrase things well you might even be able to get some creativity hours.

5. Dog walking: Expanding on the point in Action, you can walk other people’s dogs as service. Ask a neighbour if they need help, or post an ad at the grocery store. Service hours and spending time with dogs, what more could you want?

6. Volunteer at an animal shelter: Like the previous point, this really is just a great excuse to hang out with animals. Check the local shelter to see if they need any helpers!

7. Volunteering at a senior center: Senior centers are always in need of more hands. Whether it’s cleaning the resident’s rooms, walking with them or just making sure they have some company, there will always be something the center will need help with.

8. Volunteering at a hospital: Not all hospitals allow untrained volunteers, but some hospitals do. If you volunteer at a hospital you will not perform the duties of a nurse, but instead simply provide some company for the people staying there.

9. Homeless shelter: Homeless shelters always need more volunteers. There’s a variety of roles you can fill, from handing out food to collecting donations. No matter what it is you do, it will have a great impact on the people who rely on the shelters.

10. Make a PSA video: As mentioned in the Creativity section, making a PSA video is a great idea for a CAS project as it combines creativity and service, and results in lots of hours.

11. Bake sales: Baking yourself will obviously cost a bit, but most ingredients can probably already be found in your home. Set up a stand in the school corridor, and find a charity to donate the profits to.

12. Volunteer at a library: Most libraries have a variety of volunteer opportunities, from tutoring children to teaching seniors how to use technology. Go to your local library and see what volunteer programs they have!

13. Shoveling snow: Winter doesn’t treat people who live in cold places well. In case of snow you might have several neighbours struggling to clear the snow from their lot. Offer them a hand and feel the CAS hours piling up!

14. Cutting grass: Like shoveling snow, cutting grass is something people need to get done, but it’s backbreaking and time consuming. Go around the neighbourhood and see if anyone needs any help with it!

15. Assisting elderly neighbours: If you have any elderly neighbours, offer to do chores for them, like cleaning and cooking. They’ll be sure to appreciate it, and it can get you semi regular CAS hours.

16. Car washing: No, this does not have to include a red bikini, but it does give you two options: either offer to wash cars for free as service, or to set a price so you can give the profits to charity. All you need is a sponge and some water, so get scrubbing!

17. Scouts: Most scout groups require a member fee, so it’s not ideal to become a scout if you aren’t one. However, if you’re already a member, being a scout leader will get you many, many hours, so take advantage of it!

18. Student union: Student unions work hard, and can therefore get you many hours. There will be a wide range of activities to organize and participate in, so you’ll have some much needed variety.

19. Prom committee: If you’re not interested in joining the student union, there may be some committees that are separate from the union. Prom committees, graduation committees, etc., are all great options that can get you plenty of hours.

20. Babysitting: Give your neighbours a night off by offering to babysit for free. Remember, it doesn’t count as service if you get paid, so make sure the only money you get is to pay for dinner.

21. Tutoring: Some schools have study halls, or a homework club, aka after school homework help for the younger kids. And if your school doesn’t offer it already, ask if you can start it. It’ll be a chance for you to tutor younger kids, and if nobody shows up and wants your help, so what? You offered the service, and even if no one came, the hours count.

22. Start a club: Being a member of a club will get you creativity hours, starting one will get you both. Do it with a friend and you’ve got a CAS project.

23. Join a big brother/big sister organization: There are several of these organizations going around, and a popular one in the US is bbbs.org, which states that their mission is to “Provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported one-to-one relationships that change their lives for the better, forever.” A noble cause for sure, and one which your CAS coordinator will adore. It will tick most outcome boxes, and you will gain something from it too.

24. Volunteer in a political campaign: If there are any elections happening in your country soon, get involved for the good of your community, and your CAS hours!

25. Volunteer at a hotline: Many countries have crisis hotlines that often need more volunteers, why not help out?

26. Start Kiva team: kiva.org is a great website that revolves around microloans. It has the option to make or join teams of lenders. Make a team and try to gain members, spread awareness and get donations to lend money to people in need around the world. As they are loans, you get money back in kiva credit which you can then donate to someone new, thus creating a circle of good. Team meetings to decide which individuals, countries or field partners to donate to next will get you many CAS hours.

27. Plan an athletic event for charity: Whether it be a 5k, orienteering, a treasure hunt (all as mentioned in the activity section), or anything else you can think of, it’s a great way to involve a community, and any entrance fee can be donated to charity. By participating yourself, you can tick all three CAS boxes, and doing it with one or more people makes it a great CAS project.

28. Writing letters to soldiers: This may not be an option everywhere, but some countries have organizations where you can write letters to the soldiers overseas who don’t have anyone writing to them, which is sure to be a morale booster.

29. Host a free workshop: Workshops are a great way to learn new skills, or to teach your skills. Maybe you can teach something you learned from/for your creativity hours!

30. Neighbourhood watch: Neighbourhood watches are a great way to help ensure safety in your local area, so either join one or start one.

31. Volunteer to help immigrants and/or refugees: There are many organizations that work to help immigrants and refugees become integrated in society, whether it be activities for children or events to help newly arrived people learn the local language. Look up any local organizations and see if they’re looking for volunteers!

32. Park maintenance: Many parks need help with a lot of maintenance, from cleaning to repainting benches. Contact whoever is in charge and see if they need any volunteers.

33. Studyblr: Coming up with 99 free CAS ideas is surprisingly time consuming, and so is everything else about a studyblr, so give it a go and get those hours!

#International Baccalaureate #ib #creativity action service #CAS #studyblr #CAS ideas #ibo #study blog #study #school #ib programme #ib program #IB problems #tagging everything i can think of because this took SO LONG TO MAKE #y'all... i started mid november #hanna was here #i got 99 problems but CAS aint one

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makingmoneyonlinemethod · 4 years ago

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HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE: 28 REAL WAYS TO EARN MONEY ONLINE

From online poker to selling your collection of Beanie Babies, there are lots of popular get-rich-quick, money-making ideas that always pop up. Do they work? Not really. Will you make money doing it? Maaaybe. But you’d probably make more money from your 9 to 5 job. At least then it’s a guaranteed paycheck.

The truth is there are real ways to make money online – millions of people are doing it each day. From freelance digital nomads to savvy marketers to rising entrepreneurs, there are plenty of business ideas you can try at home using your laptop and a solid internet connection. So let’s break down how to make money online… the real way.

How to Make Money Online: 28 Real Ways

1. Start Dropshipping

Let’s start our list off with one of the most popular ways to make money online. According to Google Trends, dropshipping’s popularity is rapidly growing, highlighting its viability as a way to make money online. With success stories about how an entrepreneur made $6,667 in eight weeks or how a store owner made six figures selling just one product, there’s plenty of proof that dropshipping is a real way to make money online.

In case you don’t know what dropshipping is: dropshipping is a business model where you sell a product to a customer, but the supplier stores, packages, and ships the product to your customers on your behalf. With Oberlo dropshipping, you have access to millions of products that you can add to your store. Oberlo’s toolkit also allows you to hand-pick your product images, edit item descriptions, and give your business a personalized vibe, so people love shopping from you.

The best way to make money online dropshipping? Most entrepreneurs have been focusing on a few marketing strategies: running Facebook ads, having influencers promote your products, and sending Direct Messages (DMs) to potential customers on social media.

P.s. if you want to build your first dropshipping store, don't miss out on our Dropshipping 101 course.

2. Try Print on Demand

Print on demand is proving to be a popular option too. Graphic designers are turning to the business model to sell their designs on clothing and other products to monetize their art better. With their unique designs, they can create a consistent and established brand for their business.

Print on demand is similar to dropshipping in the sense that you don’t need to carry inventory or ship out products to customers yourself. There are two slight differences, though. First, you can add branded labels on packages. Second, shipping costs are excessive, making it difficult to create a sustainable business unless you charge higher prices or sell higher quantities.

The best way to make money with your print on demand business? Free marketing channels. Your best bet would be to promote your products for free on Instagram, Pinterest, or with Instagram influencers who convert their audiences well.

You can get a complete overview of print of demand vs dropshipping by watching us get into a healthy debate with Wholesale Ted about the pros and cons of each business model.

3. Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. Throughout the years, its popularity has gone up and down, but it continues to prove to be a stable way to make money online. The best part about affiliate marketing is that you can be an affiliate for nearly any company, from Shopify to Amazon to Uber to FabFitFun.

Affiliate marketing allows you to earn a living by promoting other brands. If you’re a savvy marketer, you can earn a commission from sales by promoting retail products, software, apps, and more. While earning a commission may seem small, keep in mind that you can be an affiliate for several brands and include several affiliate links on a single blog post.

If you really want to make money online doing affiliate marketing, your best bet is to focus on content marketing. By building out a blog with several pages of high-quality content, you essentially create an asset you can call your own. The best part about focusing on content marketing is that if an affiliate program shuts down, you can switch the affiliate link to a competitor without negatively impacting your side hustle income.

4. Start a YouTube Channel

If others can make money from YouTube, so can you. The highest-paid YouTuber is 7-year-old Ryan, who reviews toys on his YouTube channel, which made him $22 million in 2018. Another high earner is Jeffree Star, who’s made more than $18 million on YouTube and has a cosmetics brand that sells about $100 million in products annually. His YouTube (and Myspace) fame helped him use his influence to make money online beyond his YouTube earnings.

Your YouTube channel should focus on a single niche so you can build a strong, loyal audience. For example, you can create makeup tutorials, stream video games, review products, teach skills, create prank videos, or anything else you think there’d be an audience for.

The secret to making money on YouTube is to create content people want that either educates or entertains. You can use a headline that’s witty to entice people to watch, or you can use keywords that are optimized for YouTube search. Once you’ve reached the 1,000 subscriber milestone, you can officially monetize your channel with YouTube ads.

5. Become an Influencer

Building a personal brand can also help you make money online. Did you know in 2019, Cristiano Ronaldo earned $975,000 for every sponsored Instagram post, making him the highest-paid influencer? While it may seem like reality stars, singers, and athletes are the biggest influencers, keep in mind that even smaller-scale influencers can make more money today than they did a few years back

To become an influencer, you need to build a healthy following. The easiest platforms to do that: YouTube and Instagram. Some of the biggest non-celebrity influencers often gained their first taste of exposure on these platforms. You might want to check out how to get more Instagram followers if you want to build a big Instagram audience.

To make money as an influencer, you can charge for sponsored posts, speaking gigs, create your own online store and sell products, add affiliate links in your bio, sell your photos, sell ads on your own podcast, get paid as a brand ambassador, create a book, get paid to appear at events, and more.

6. Create an Online Course

Sharing knowledge is one of the best ways to make money online. If you’re an expert on a subject, you can monetize your knowledge by creating courses online. You can sell your course on Udemy or, if you already have your own audience, on your own website. Some entrepreneurs earn as much as $5,000 per month with online courses.

To create a popular and successful course, your best bet is to watch other courses on your topic. Then, look at the reviews. What are the aspects that people praise, and what are the things people hate? How can you create something better than what’s already been created? Focus on creating content that solves the biggest complaints while emulating the positive aspects people rave about.

The platform you sell your course on will determine how to best make money. If you sell your course on Udemy, you don’t have to do much to promote it. You can almost set it and forget it. Maybe promote it to some blogs or on your own website. However, if the course is hosted on your own website, you might want to run ads to promote the course. You can also build an email list so you can continue to promote future courses to that same audience.

7. Publish an Ebook

With Amazon KDP, it’s never been easier to publish an ebook. All you need to do is write the ebook, format it, create an ebook cover, publish, and promote it. Back in 2013, I created several ebooks on Amazon (took all but one down), and even though it didn’t make me rich, I still make some money from it.

You can choose to hire a writer for your ebook, a graphic designer to design the cover, or a freelancer to format the ebook for you to help minimize the work you need to put into it. It’s best if you focus on keywords based on popular searches on Amazon. I often use the Keyword Tool, which allows you to find the words people use while searching so you can craft your title around it.

To make money online selling ebooks, you can market it in a number of ways. You can give away your ebook for free for a few days. This helps you rank high in search results for some time and get some reviews, which helps you rank better for paid listings. Plus, I like to create custom graphics on Pinterest that match the “Pinterest style” rather than just placing the ebook cover as a pin. This has helped me get some clicks to my ebook from Pinterest.

8. Start a Blog

Blogging is one of the oldest methods for making money online. People who love writing tend to start blogs with a niche focus. For example, a blog about procrastination, cars, dropshipping, toys, etc., is often a narrow enough focus so you can build a loyal following, but big enough that you can cover a lot of ground.

You can start a blog on various platforms, from Shopify (remove the checkout feature, so you don’t have to pay a subscription as you build it out) to WordPress. When you start your blog, focus on very specific keywords with a tight focus and continue to expand into other but relevant categories as you grow and dominate new spaces. This will allow you to build a massive blog over time. Remember that design is also important for making a good first impression on visitors. Here are 20 blog design inspirations to help you launch your blog.

There are several ways to make money blogging. You can add affiliate links in your posts (don’t forget a disclaimer). You can monetize with AdSense by placing ads strategically on your website. Sponsored posts can help you make money from specific brands – this is popular among review bloggers. Bloggers can also sell digital or physical products on their website either (hint: you can add Oberlo products to your website). You can also use it to build authority so that you can eventually get speaking gigs, television deals, or big contracts from clients.

9. Consider Freelancing

The easiest way to make money online is to take your current job in your 9 to 5 role and do it online instead. For example, if you’re a writer, administrative assistant, graphic designer, teacher, developer, etc., you can market these skills and find clients online who are willing to pay you for them.

There’s a never-ending list of websites for each sector of freelance jobs too. For example, freelance writers can apply for jobs on specific online writing job boards, but also general freelance websites like Fiverr, Freelancer, Upwork, and all the others. If you find that your job doesn’t have direct online money-making streams of income, you can look for other transferable skills you may have.

To make money online as a freelancer, you need to start by building out a strong portfolio. That may mean doing some free work with some reputable mid-tier brands to start. Once you gain a strong portfolio, you can start reaching out to potential big clients to earn more money online. Remember, freelancing is a numbers game: the more personalized emails and applications you fill out, the more likely you will get a response back.

10. Create an App

If you’re not a developer, you’re probably looking at this money-making idea and feeling a bit stuck. Fortunately, there is a way to have an app made that doesn’t involve any programming skills.

These days, marketers are using freelance platforms to find affordable developers to create apps for them.

When it comes to making money on your app, your best bet will be to add it to Google Play and the App Store. And while it may seem counterintuitive, having a free app can help you make more than a paid app. With a free app, you can add ads or premium features to help you make money. Since the free app will attract a higher volume of people, it’ll be easier for you to upsell them.

11. Become a Writer

With a growing interest in content marketing, more brands are looking for great writers to create content. The secret to succeeding as a writer is to be an expert in a niche. A lot of writers try to be generalists, writing for a wide range of categories, from food to tech. However, having a niche focus as a writer allows you to write better content.

When you have experience in the niche, you can add a different perspective to a piece of content. That means you’re not just saying the same thing as every other article online. And that’s what brands really want to pay for — your thoughts, experiences, and inside information into their niche.

If someone asks for a marketing writing sample, send them marketing writing samples. Don’t send a finance article. Or a fitness one. It’s hard for a hiring manager to know how well you understand the niche’s industry if they can’t see a relevant writing sample. Apply to opportunities suited to your skills and experience. Also, if your pitch doesn’t have a list of links to writing samples, it’s going to get ignored.

12. Create Side Gigs

Side gigs can help you make money online while you keep your full-time job. If you’re looking to make an extra couple hundred dollars per month, this is a great idea. The work doesn’t always last long-term, but it can.

Use platforms like Fiverr to create gigs. When you’re new to Fiverr, you’ll want to focus on offering a low price so you could get your first review. I’d recommend getting a friend to buy your gig to leave your first review so you can get started faster. Treat the friend like a client and actually deliver a finished product that you can feature on the platform on your portfolio.

The thing with Fiverr is that it’s also a numbers game. If you look at top Fiverr users, you’ll see that they have multiple gigs available. The more gigs you have, the more likely you are to be found.

If you don’t want to get paid Fiverr prices, you can turn to platforms like FlexJobs to find side gigs. Under their jobs section, you can search for contract or telecommute opportunities. The great thing about the telecommute opportunities on FlexJobs is that you can apply for them in any city in the world.

FlexJobs has a variety of side gigs from writing, business, design, accounting, and more. So if your talents don’t match up with anything else on this list of money-making ideas, you might want to try a side gig from FlexJobs, and start making money online. Apply to multiple opportunities to land a few small side gigs.

13. Do Translation Work

If you need to make money now, translation work is a fairly underserved niche. You’ll need to be fluent in at least two languages to do this successfully. So if you’re bilingual or majored in a popular language in school, this may be a great money-making idea for you to try out.

You will need to show proof of your ability to translate. If you have a language degree or experience translating text, make sure to show samples of your portfolio. Most companies will require a translation test. Keep in mind that you need to be fluent in the languages you’re applying to be a translator for. So you can’t use translation tools.

14. Sell Your Stuff

When you’re desperate to make money now, sometimes the only option is to sell your stuff. If you’re unemployed and struggling to find a job, selling your possessions is a great way to make money fast. You can earn money online using the links below, or you can head to a pawn shop. Keep in mind the shipping costs associated with selling online. Be sure to charge the buyer for it if you’re shipping products internationally.

Most people immediately think of selling their junk like books, DVDs, and CDs. But most people don’t want to buy those things. It’s 2021 – are you really going to buy a CD? Probably not. So don’t waste your time trying to sell it. When you’re thinking about how to make money fast, focus on items of value like laptops, TVs, phones, furniture, designer handbags, or clothing. Try selling the same items on multiple platforms. For example, you might try selling your product in Facebook groups and Instagram instead of just one of them. If you sell your stuff everywhere, there’s a chance of someone finding it.

Be sure to take amazing photos and edit them. An online retailer doesn’t upload images as is. They hire a photographer to take great photos. Images are enhanced. The background is often removed. Approach your product post like an online retailer. Avoid taking pictures of products on tables. If a product is on a table, remove the background to make it white. If you don’t own high-end photography equipment, you can consider taking this product photography online course to learn how to take stunning product photos without the fancy gear.

After you’ve figured out stuff to sell online, start your own online store using Shopify. You’ve proven that you’ve got what it takes to be an online retailer. So, now you can start making money from home.

15. Become an Online Tutor

You can make a lot of money online and choose your own hours by being an online tutor. According to Studenomics, Bohdan made $2100 from tutoring. What’s interesting is that he built up his client base through word of mouth, visibility, and great group rates. While sciences and maths often have a high demand for tutoring positions, you’ll also find English popular among international audiences. If you’re an expert on a topic, tutoring may be the right platform for you to make money fast.

Having a degree or experience in a language is essential for this type of job, so showcase your degree, high grade average in a course, or other proof that you’re qualified to tutor that topic. If you have a teaching degree, you may be more likely to land a tutoring position. If you’ve spoken at a conference or event about the topic, you might also be considered for an online tutoring, teaching, or mentoring position. Focus on tutoring in your field of expertise. If you’re not the best, you probably shouldn’t be tutoring on that specific topic.

16. Drive Your Car

If you own a car, you can make some spare cash as an Uber driver or delivery person. If you don’t own a car, you can still be a delivery person using your bicycle or moped. Uber drivers looking to make even more money off their car can turn their car into an advertisement using Free Car Media. Your car will be wrapped with a removable vinyl decal. There have also been cases of Uber drivers selling products in their cars. As a driver, you’ll often start talking about what you and your passenger do for a living.

Want to know how to make money fast driving Uber? If you own your own side business, you can showcase your products to your passengers if they’re interested. Not all will be, though. However, if one expresses interest in your products, you can have products for sale under the driver’s seat for a passenger to sift through. If customers don’t have the cash, you can ask them to pay its cost with Uber’s tip function.

17. Become a Virtual Assistant

With so many entrepreneurs building businesses, the demand for virtual assistants is increasing almost daily. As a virtual assistant, you’ll do a variety of tasks. Writing, order processing, bookkeeping, social media, and customer support are just a few of the tasks you might be asked to do as a virtual assistant.

You can earn money online on websites like Virtual Assistant Jobs, Indeed, or Upwork. Many virtual assistants have also found ways to make money online by reaching out to brands and entrepreneurs, asking if they’re interested in hiring a virtual assistant. Using a combination of job posting applications and outreach, you’ll be more likely to make money fast. Build an active social media presence on Twitter and LinkedIn to help you find new clients.

18. Become a Twitch Streamer

Twitch streaming is becoming increasingly popular. While it started out as a gaming platform, it’s quickly evolving to include other types of content. To make money fast on Twitch, you’ll need to grow your following. If you’re consistent, streaming on Twitch can help you build a sizable audience fast.

You’ll need to find a popular game or channel that isn’t overly competitive so that people can easily find your content. In order to make money online from streaming, you’ll need to have a consistent style to your channel: is it going to be funny, educational, or entertaining? Engaging in the chat feature on Twitch is another way to grow your following. You’ll want to communicate in popular chats. However, you’ll also want to engage with those chatting on your streams as well.

There are five ways to monetize your Twitch channel: selling products, brand sponsorships, fan donations, subscriptions, and Twitch ads. As a Twitch streamer, you’ll want to focus on tapping into all five monetization methods to ensure the highest financial gains. You could make more on Twitch than YouTube, making it one of the best money making ideas for video creators.

19. Invest in Stocks

You can also make money fast by investing in stocks. If you aren’t an expert in picking stock, you might want to skip this money making idea. While it can have one of the highest rewards, it can also result in money loss if you’re inexperienced. If you currently hold a 9 to 5 job, look into your company’s financial programs.

Do they allow you to invest in company stocks? If so, sign up for it. At least with a company stock program, you have some influence in the company’s success as an employee. If your company has an RRSP matching program, you can also sign up for that if your goal is to save up for retirement or a down payment on your first home.

20. Sell Your Photography

Whether you’re a professional photographer or just love snapping great pictures, you can monetize your photography in several ways. You can make money fast by posting your photography services in local Facebook groups for your community.

If you’re looking for more exposure, you can use a site like Burst. However, if you’re looking to monetize your phone photography quickly, you can use Foap. Learn more product photography tips to help you start making money with photography.

21. Sell Your Clothes Online

You likely have clothes you haven’t worn in the past year. And you don’t have the intention of wearing them ever again. Rather than letting them take up space in your closet, why not make money off of them?

Whether you sell your clothes, handbags, or shoes, there are quite a few websites that allow you to sell your used fashion items. Poshmark, Refashioner, TheRealReal, ThredUp, and Tradesy are a few of the online sites where you can sell your used apparel.

You could make money online by selling on several different platforms. If you’re looking to sell items in person, you can use Facebook buy and sell groups in your community to find people online and sell the items in person. I’ve personally sold in these groups before and know they work.

22. Become an Extreme Couponer

When money is tight, using coupons can help save you a few bucks. However, with websites Coupon Chief, it can also help you make money online. Such websites offer a Pays to Share program where you’ll receive some percentage of sales from the coupons you share on their platform. You’ll need to add coupons that haven’t already been shared. In return, you’ll make a 2-3% commission.

It’s like affiliate marketing where you share referral links and get a commission when someone buys through your link. Coupon companies are known to pay their affiliates regularly, so it’s a legit way to earn money online. Coupon Chief has already paid out over $1.4 million in commissions.

23. Sell Domains

If you regularly buy domain names but fail to use them, you can always try to sell them for a profit. Selling domains is ultra competitive, though. If you own a one word .com domain, you’ll have a better chance of selling. Words that have high search volume sell well too.

Also, domains that are on trend at that moment have a better chance of selling. For example, a year ago, fidget spinner domains were an easier sell than they are now. You can search for available domain names and buy a custom domain through the Shopify domain registration platform.

You can sell your domains on GoDaddy’s Domain Auction. Look through the domains with the highest bids to see what type of domains sell well. It’ll help you know whether or not your domains are worth selling and how much money you can make selling them.

24. Sell Your Designs Online

Graphic design is an amazing skill that you can monetize in several ways. You can go the print on demand route and sell your designs on your own custom products. Alternatively, you can pitch your designs on a crowdsource platform like 99 Designs. You can create your own graphics, templates and more and sell them on marketplaces like GraphicRiver or Creative Market. Or you can pick up some clients and work as a freelance graphic artist.

25. Review Websites, Apps, and Software

If you’re passionate about user experience, User Testing pays reviewers $10 to give other entrepreneurs feedback on their websites and apps. That’s one fast way to make money online. You’ll be given a set of questions that you need to answer as you browse through their website.

Through a video, you’ll communicate your ideas and feedback to the entrepreneur while navigating their website or app. Your video is only 20 minutes in length, so if you do three videos per hour, you’ll make $30. It can be pretty competitive, so you have to act fast when a new website or app is added to be reviewed. Those who want to earn money online by reviewing software can use a tool called Software Judge.

26. Get a Part-Time Job

When you’ve done whatever it takes to make money fast but struggle to make an impact, sometimes you’re left with no choice but to get a part-time job. A lot of the money-making ideas on this list are great for building up to. They can be really successful over the long-term too. But if you’re struggling to make money fast enough, you might need to apply for a part-time job in your field. You can browse part-time jobs on job bank websites like Indeed, Monster, or a job website for your industry.

Whether you’re looking to make an extra couple hundred a month or grow a successful six-figure brand, I hope these money making ideas have inspired you to take action. Learning how to make money fast or how to make money from home is an important part of success, but the execution is what helps you make money now.

27. Become a TikTok Consultant

One of the trendiest new ways to make money online is to become a TikTok consultant. Brands will contact you for brainstorming video ideas, developing engaging bios, and more. It’s the perfect money-making opportunity for digital nomads – you can run the entire business from your smartphone. Compared to Instagram, TikTok is relatively new and untapped, so helping brands grow brand awareness on the app might turn fortunes.

However, you need to have a few talents before you begin offering TikTok consultancy to businesses. The most important is knowing how to create viral videos that get people to engage with brands. If you don’t have the expertise in this platform, you can still learn how to create killer contact by taking this TikTok course.

28. Sell Greeting Cards

If you have a knack for picking out the perfect greeting card for different occasions, this might be an easy way to make money online. However, I don’t recommend that you market your services to anyone and everyone – it’s not a smart way to do business. Instead, you can open a greeting cards brand geared towards a certain segment of the population.

For example, you can make greeting cards that cater to C-level executives wanting to thank their Senior Vice Presidents for making profitable decisions last year. Or you can target healthcare professionals wanting to thank their patients for choosing their clinic. For designing the cards, you can use an online graphic tool like Photoshop or Canva. These tools make it easy to put together nice-looking cards that will cheer anyone up.

Conclusion

Making money online can help you earn some extra side hustle money, but it can also help you escape your 9 to 5 job so you can become a full-time entrepreneur. By making more money, you gain more financial freedom, improve your financial security, and inch closer to living life on your terms. It really is possible to earn a living online if you work hard and stick with it.

#make money online #make money as an affiliate #make money 2021 #how to make money from home

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itslikethatfrenchthing · 4 years ago

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079: How To Have Consistent Successful Launches With A Small Audience

✨ FREE CLASS: How To Know What Tasks To Focus In Your Business (Without Working 24/7) ✨

Catch up on some related episodes:

The secret formula to creating content that sells

How to get the most out of your content (and sell without selling)

How to create less content with more impact

Today’s talking point:

Would you love to know how to have multiple successful launches with a small audience? Would you love to know how to monetise a small audience? Whether you are just getting started with an online business or you've been at this for a while, if you:

Have a small audience

Haven't paid attention to your social media in a while

Have been putting loads of effort in and nothing seems to be working

This is for you. We are going to go over exactly how to make money and how to actually sell your products, programs, and services.

back to the basics

I learnt about online marketing and business in an agency setting. I learnt it from people who had been doing this for years.. basically since the internet was a thing. I learned the basics:

Building value

Building relationships

Understanding the psychology behind what actually makes someone want to buy something from you

I am not about this whole new societal pressure to be super popular and super famous. Sometimes I listen to the Instagram experts or the Pinterest experts, and they're talking about how they're spending four or five hours every single day analysing hashtags or commenting on people's posts and that's how they're blowing up their Instagram. That is just not sustainable for the everyday entrepreneur and business owner.

I look at what is actually going to be the most effective strategy for me to grow my business online for the long-term. I don't really care about being popular and about being famous. I want to be doing business, not just today, or in five years, but for life. I am in this for the long haul.

There are way more effective ways of growing and monetising your brand, that don't involve spending 24 hours a day chained to your desk, hyper focusing on trying to get as many likes and comments and followers as you can; because, you just can't take those to the bank. Yes, they're important. And yes, it's great to build a brand and build awareness and build relationships, but it doesn't mean that you have to spend hours upon hours a day working on Instagram.

So how CAN you have consistent successful launches with a small audience? Let’s get into it.

#1 | Have The Right Offer

You need to have an offer that people care about. Whether it's a product or service or program, you have to be providing something that your audience actually is looking for.

From the words of Seth Godin, people do not buy goods and services, they buy relationships. This means that it's so important to understand why people make a purchasing decision. They make a purchasing decision based on emotions, they don't buy based on rationale or logic.

People buy things based on emotion and justify those purchases with logic. So if you build a quality audience, even if it's just 500 followers on Instagram, if you build a relationship with them and give value, they're going to be inclined to say yes when you have something to sell. That's the entire premise of monetising a small audience. It's attracting people that actually care about what you have to offer that will actually pay for your goods and services, instead of just people who are there to entertain themselves, but never really buy into your message.

I know it sounds basic, but basic really isn't basic unless you don't do it. If you get your foundation nailed down, you will understand how to sell in any economy, you'll know how to sell in any platform in any environment. To attract a quality audience you need to get clear on your message (and share what they actually want to hear).

Reverse engineer the sale and ask yourself:

How do I get people to respond to me and buy into me as a service provider?

How do I position my knowledge?

How much do they want to pay?

What are the challenges, what are things that they are struggling with?

How can I prove to them that I can actually get them that result?

Whatever you need to do, getting to know your ideal customer is really going to be the source and the secret sauce to selling with a small audience. When you can prove to a group of people that you understand them and have the solution to their problem, it's going to be so much easier to sell because it's the right offer for them.

So right now, I want you to pull out a pen and a piece of paper and answer three questions:

What is my offer?

Who is actually going to buy this product?

How can I create content around those challenges?

Remember that online marketing and being a brand online is all about sharing value. It's all about sharing your expertise.

#2 | Get To Know Your Audience

You've got to get to know your people. Really set out some time and energy into getting to know your audience:

Jump on a call

Talk to them in real life

Get a lot of conversations going on your social channels so that you can understand their pain points, challenges, and any obstacles they’re facing.

Create solutions around those things.

#3 | Create Strategies

Now that you have clearly laid out what your product is, who is going to be the ideal fit for that product, and what kind of content you can create that attracts those people, we are going to move into the next step. Create two different kinds of strategies.

Long-term Strategy

Most of us know what the long term strategy is: Show up every single week. It’s a non-negotiable. Whether that is having a podcast episode, or a video that goes out every single week on YouTube, or an Instagram Live once or twice a week, I just want you to show up and commit to doing it at least once a week.

Create content straight out of the questions, the challenges, the obstacles that your ideal customer faces. I know it sounds crazy simple, but really, you're just being a good social media manager, a good marketer, a good business owner. You are listening to your people, you are doing more of what works and less of what doesn't. There isn't a magical secret, it’s simple.

You listen to people and you create content around things that they care about. If you do that, you will always be in business.

This principle applies your products, programs and services too. When you have offers that people want to buy, you will be in business forever. If you continue to innovate, if you continue to give people what they actually need, and what they actually want, you are set. It doesn't matter how the climate changes, it doesn't matter what the algorithms do, it doesn't matter how the economy shifts, you will always have the know-how to pivot, to make changes to adjust, to innovate, to continue pushing the needle forward.

Keep changing, keep listening, keep adjusting.

Short-term strategy

How are you going to monetise right now? What does that look like? The first thing you normally hear is: you need to build a funnel. I know when we hear the word funnel, we instantly freeze. But really all a funnel is, is a customer journey. It's a selling system. It's an intentional way of bringing a follower through the process of becoming a lead and then becoming a customer.

This can happen via your email list, straight on social media, on your website, your blog, or even your physical store. It is really important that we look at this whole concept of a funnel as a way to move people to the next step in the relationship - becoming a buyer. There are four stages of a customer's journey:

Discovery: When they get to know who the heck your brand is.

Consumption: They are looking at your content, they are getting to know you, and you're building a relationship with them.

Acquisition: They have said yes to pay for your service, your product or your program.

Ascension: When they purchase from you a second time, or if they become a super-fan and they share your stuff with everyone. They are just so excited about your brand.

You don't necessarily need a fully-fledged funnel right off the bat; you want a funnel because that will allow you to create evergreen sales day in and day out without you having to do a full launch. But when you're just getting started and you want to monetise right now, start by talking about your product or your service. Do it more often than you think you need to.

So often we think that people who follow us immediately know everything about us, that they know you because they follow your brand. It’s just not the case. People are busy. They have lives of their own. They are not paying attention to every single thing that you do until they are super-fans, and most of your audience is in the discovery or the consumption phase. So with that in mind, you just want to talk more about what the heck you do.

#4 | Get More Intentional

Now let's get into a bit more of an intentional strategy, really create a systematic way of bringing people into your world so that they can purchase from you. You could do this in two different ways:

Build a baby funnel, a really small, simple funnel.

Whether it's on your website or a standalone service, have a page where you can send people to, and they can actually give you their money online.

It's not about the tools that you have, it's just about the strategy.

Take the lead magnet approach.

Create an incentive for people to give you their information so that you can follow up.

Create a checklist, a toolkit, a webinar, some kind of masterclass, any discount incentive, something of value that people would be willing to get in exchange for further information.

And again, it's still an art, there isn't a science to how you communicate, you have to find your own style. But this is just a basic strategy to get the ball rolling, to inject some cash flow into your business.

In order to monetise a small audience, you don't need to have anything fancy. You've just got to implement basic business principles that will serve you at any size.

ABOUT THE BLOGGER

Hi! I’m Holly Bray

I’m an expert at online marketing, a nerd when it comes to the numbers, and my obsession is teaching others how to know what tasks to focus on so they can create a business that GIVES them life (not one that takes it away).

BINGE THE LATEST POSTS

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pixelproductions · 5 years ago

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6 Content Formats to Boost Engagement and Brand Awareness

Every business can benefit from content, if you’re lacking the time and resources, play to your strengths when creating content to boost engagement.

Content marketing is a useful tool for any business, no matter the niche. According to the Content Marketing Institute, this type of marketing is said to be one of the most cost-effective methods alongside email marketing. The only drawback to content marketing is the time and resource it takes to create content that pays off.

Many business owners want the long-term benefits that content can bring but struggle to put adequate resources to it due to other business operations. Although content is often just perceived as words on a page, there are so many different ways you can utilize this marketing funnel.

Take a look at some exciting ways to introduce engaging and shareable content to your website marketing strategy:

Blog posts and long-form content

Starting with content marketing 101, it’s no surprise that blog posts come out as one of the most common ways to create content for all types of businesses. However, it’s also one of the ways that can waste your time and resource if not done right. Blogs are simple to create, and depending on the topic can be completed quickly, but that alone won’t save you time. Unless this content is authoritative, engaging, and likable, it will just become a page on your website no one visits.

Quality over quantity is a good starting point when creating blog posts. You only have to produce one piece of evergreen content to get people talking. So, concentrate on the quality of your blog posts rather than writing several that won’t rank well.

Video marketing

Video is set to become the next big thing in content marketing. It is one of the most influential mediums on social media platforms and often generates more leads than the written word. The beauty of video is that it is easily digestible and will engage people on a personal level. Videos don’t have to be full-scale productions to be successful either. As influencers have shown us, filming with a phone or handheld DSLR can be just as effective.

For brands, the instant and real-time feel to video make it an attractive marketing tool. You can adapt quickly to changing trends and use different formats to relay information. To speed up the creation process, companies such as Ziflow offer video proofing software to ensure you have a consistent and accurate message every time.

Video isn’t just for YouTube or your website, either. Take a look at other ways to attract attention, such as Instagram and Facebook Stories, IGTV, Tiktok, and Snapchat. These give you the chance to create shorter, impactful videos alongside your social media marketing efforts.

Infographics

Visually stimulating content is always well received. Many people don’t want to sit for hours reading through blog posts or long-form content due to time constraints. Plus, everybody loves bite-sized facts and unusual information titbits. That’s where infographics come in. To make your content digestible and fun, these types of graphics can draw attention in an instant.

However, it’s essential to make the content shareable; otherwise, it’ll be similar to a blog post no one visits on your website. Just like other content, planning is key. It’s not just enough to have some random facts and figures on the graphic; the entire concept has to be considered. Work with your creative teams to bring ideas to life and use visual marketing tools such as Canva to produce fun and quirky end results.

Polls and quizzes

Who doesn’t love a good poll or quiz!

This type of content can be hard to resist when it pops up on your newsfeed, so why not harness this by creating your own. The trick is to make it so simple and fun so that people will be happy to share with everyone they know. It doesn’t have to be formally related to your products or services, either. Polls and quizzes are a fantastic way to engage people that have shown a slight interest in your brand but failed to interact. This type of content throws an olive branch and showcases your brand image to entice them to look further. Quizzes and polls are simple to make, and tools such as Quizzr and WPForms are good starting points.

Webinars

If you produce lots of information for business-to-business activities, then hosting a webinar is a great content marketing tool. Rather than writing lengthy reports and whitepapers to explain a subject, breaking it down into manageable and explainable chunks can help. Webinars can also help to convert people, not only at the point of registering for a webinar but also during and after the event.

You can also produce free webinar content as a taster or an entire product offering. This free element creates a marked interest in the rest of the services you sell, which could lead to further conversions. This type of marketing also boosts qualified leads, as anyone signing up is already interested in what you have on offer.

Images

Simply put, images can bring attention to your brand in an instant. Sometimes more effectively than a blog post. You might be surprised just what happens every minute on the Internet. Back in 2017, 15,000 GIFS were sent on messenger, and 46,200 images were uploaded to Instagram, and that’s every minute! A picture can paint a thousand words. If you can harness the success of a shareable image, then individuals are more likely to share the content that goes along with the image. Similar to an Infographic, the image has to be appealing yet simple. Plus, something that is relevant and relatable to your audience.

Content marketing has the power to convert leads with low-cost techniques. Honing these avenues could see you reap the benefits and enjoy increased brand awareness within your niche. The above examples are just a few of the ways to use content marketing in your business.

Some other popular marketing methods include:

Podcasts

Presentations

Email marketing

Case studies and original research

eBooks

Checklists

White papers and reports

Share what you’re using and what is working for your business in the comments below!

#6 content formats to boost engagement and brand awareness #creating content #boost engagement #content marketing

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kansascityhappenings · 5 years ago

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E-scooters suddenly appeared everywhere, but now they’re riding into serious trouble

Brussels. San Diego. Bogotá. Walk around any major tourist destination these days, and you’ll see them.

Electric scooters, gliding silently around city center streets, zipping through traffic signals, or abandoned — lying on the street, propped up against trees or, in some cases, dumped in rivers.

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Scooter-sharing systems similar to city bike schemes have sprung up in more than 100 cities worldwide as their popularity has grown.

But this tiny-wheeled transport revolution could be about to end as quickly as it began.

While they’ve attracted admirers for their convenience and fun, they’ve also incurred the wrath of those annoyed at having to leap out of people riding across sidewalks or step over scooters lying in their path.

There are also mounting safety concerns and questions about environmental claims made about using them.

This month, Singapore announced a trial prohibition of e-scooters on sidewalks that could become an all-out ban next year. It took the decision, says Lam Pin Min, senior minister of state for transport, following the death of a cyclist who collided with an e-scooter. Local news reports said one Singapore hospital had reported six deaths of scooter riders in 2019.

Meanwhile in France, a sidewalk scooter ban was enforced in September, three months after a rider was hit by a truck and killed.

In the UK, scooters are also banned from all public roads, sidewalks and cycle lanes — although that hasn’t stopped them being a regular presence on all three.

The UK now insists that retailers including Amazon put safety warnings on packaging, a measure introduced in October, after a YouTube star, Emily Hartridge, was killed riding an e-scooter in London in July.

‘Disproportionately affecting’ those with disabilities

The scooter revolution has been billed as a green way to get around big cities, with rental apps acting in the same way as city bike schemes. You pick them up, pay by the minute and drop them off at your destination.

Where some city bikes often have docking stations — to which the bikes must be returned for the fees to stop — scooters can be picked up or dropped off anywhere.

A picture taken in Paris on July 31, 2018 shows electric scooters of US start-up Bird. (Photo by ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images)

And while that may be handy — apps like Lime, Bird and countless local spinoffs have live maps showing users where the nearest scooters are — it’s causing issues for other road users.

Simon Minty, a disability and diversity consultant who presents the Ouch disability podcast for the BBC, was in Brussels this summer when he came across abandoned scooters blocking the sidewalks.

“I predict these two wheeled electric scooters will become very annoying,” he tweeted. “They seem to be abandoned, in the middle of the pavement, everywhere I go. I saw three from the station to my hotel.”

Minty says that a friend who’d been to Paris said the situation in the French capital before the September ban was “exactly the same.”

People with disabilities are “disproportionately affected,” he says. “You’re going to hit these, and you’ll be absolutely stuffed.”

Environmentally friendly — if you’re replacing a car

Proponents of scooters say that they’re environmentally friendly. “Cruise past traffic and cut back on CO2 emissions,” trumpets Bird’s website.

But an August 2019 paper by researchers from North Carolina State University found that they may not be as green as you’d think.

In fact, traveling by scooter has a higher carbon footprint than going by bus or moped — as well as on a bike or on foot, according to Jeremiah Johnson, an associate professor at NCSU who led the research published in the Environmental Research Letters journal.

Instead of looking at scooter carbon footprint per journey, Johnson and his team looked at the entire lifecycle of scooters — crucial because they are notoriously short-lived, he says, with customers mistreating them.

The materials used to make the scooters — an aluminum frame, lithium battery and rubber wheels — all result in an environmental burden, he says. As does the manufacturing.

“They have a really short lifetime, especially in this application of them,” he tells CNN. “Aluminum doesn’t provide much service. They only last several months.”

What’s more, because users can ditch them wherever they like, rental apps pay third parties to round up the scooters every night, grouping them more sensibly for the morning’s customers, he says.

“They receive compensation per scooter, so there’ll be folks doing this as a side hustle, students trying to make money — it’s a prime source of income,” he says.

“It’s very competitive and done in a very short window, and they’re largely driving their personal cars to pick them up. That’s a pretty big share of the impact.”

Lime scooters are taken to warehouses each night by a local operations team, said a spokesperson. Senior director at Bird, Caroline Hazlehurst, said that Bird’s scooters are collected “regularly, but not always every day… How we collect them changes from country to country.”

But she added: “Every town and city throughout the world suffers from the same two problems: too many cars creating congestion which in turn leads to poor air quality.”

Of course, they also need to be charged overnight. And the final thing to take into account is what method of transport they’re replacing.

If you’re scootering to work instead of driving yourself solo, the scooter is a “clear environmental win,” says NCSU’s Johnson. But, he says, many people surveyed in Raleigh, where the university is based, said that pre-scooter, they’d cycle or walk to work.

While many people in the US drive to work — and Johnson is clear that “in moving away from car ownership it’s almost certainly a win for environmental performance” — in European cities, where public transport is the norm, using a scooter is therefore relatively less green, he says.

The upshot?

“Scooters look innocuous but people tend not to think about the unseen cost,” Johnson says.

Hazlehurst says that Bird has changed its scooters from “consumer grade” to a “vastly different” and “rugged” version since they launched. Its “Bird One” model now has a lifetime of around 18 months, she said, while its latest model Bird Two can last two years.

Lime says that its third generation model is “demonstrating a lifespan of more than 12 months.” Its spokesperson says that Johnson’s study “raises important issues” but “doesn’t capture Lime’s approach today.”

“We’ve already taken steps to reduce our environmental impact, including streamlining our charging operations, powering our scooters with 100% renewable energy, offsetting the emissions from fleet vehicles, and establishing a robust repair and reuse program to extend the life cycle of our products,” the spokesperson said.

Where are scooters legal?

Rules on e-scooters vary around the world. In the UK, riding one on a road can net users six penalty points on their driving license. Riding them on the sidewalk, cyclepath or footpath is subject to a £300 ($385) fine.

A report by the UK House of Commons Library in August suggested that things could change in the future, but a spokesperson for the Department for Transport declined to comment, citing rules around the upcoming UK election.

In Paris, while you can ride them on the road, using them on the sidewalk can incur a €135 fine, while dumping them in a doorway, on a crosswalk or in another antisocial place incurs a €35 fine.

“Pavements are only for pedestrians,” mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted in March this year.

Germany approved e-scooter use this year, though not on sidewalks unless in “exceptional” circumstances. Bird’s Caroline Hazlehurst says that “especially in Europe, we’re seeing cities and countries change laws to specifically allow scooters to operate.”

In Sweden, where scooters are classified as bicycles and allowed on sidewalks or footpaths, 241 accidents have been registered this year alone including one death. Tomas Eneroth, the Swedish minister for infrastructure, has called the situation “a mess.”

The law in Spain was changed this year. E-scooters can no longer be used on sidewalks. Additionally, they are banned in Barcelona. Madrid authorities in October refused to grant licenses to ride-sharing companies Bird, Lime and Voi.

In the United States, over 100 cities have e-scooters, and Americans took 38.5 million trips on them, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

Portland, Oregon, is midway through a year-long trial, following a four-month pilot in 2018.

The 2018 program “raised concerns about people riding e-scooters on sidewalks, in violation of state traffic laws, creating conflict with people walking and people with disabilities,” says a statement from the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

The PBOT will “evaluate the program” following the pilot.

It used to be illegal to use the scooters in New York City, but a law change in summer 2019 means that you can use your own, if you have one — although ride-sharing rentals are still banned.

And in LA, authorities this month suspended Uber’s permit to rent e-scooters because of its failure to share ride-tracking data with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. Seven other companies are licensed to rent scooters in LA though.

And in San Francisco, the scooter companies were dubbed “spoiled brats” by Aaron Peskin, one of the legislators who voted to clamp down on the companies when they were introduced in 2018.

In April 2019, however, the city granted permits to four companies: Jump, Lime, Spin, and Scoot, the last of which had previously been operating.

San Diego struggles to cope

San Diego has been at the forefront of scooter wars since the machines arrived in February 2018. The city is awash with more than 19,000 scooters, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune — with almost 15,000 complaints about them to the city authorities over the summer, 3,700 scooters impounded for parking violations, and almost 500 riders receiving traffic tickets.

Since April, the city has instated “corrals” — designated parking spots by the roadside for scooters, outlined with paint on the road. Riders can be fined for dumping a scooter on the street in a block that has a corral.

In April, the council introduced new restrictions on scooters, including speed limits in pedestrian-heavy places like Balboa Park, and a parking ban in places with speed limits below 8 mph, including beachfront boardwalks and in Little Italy.

Council member Barbara Bry, a vocal critic of the scooters, called for a moratorium in July, although it has not been approved. In December, the council will debate banning scooters on the beach boardwalks entirely.

“Throughout the city, I continue to see riders using the sidewalk, multiple riders on one scooter, and scooters strewn about the sidewalks, rather than in designated corrals,” she tells CNN.

“San Diego was slow to respond when scooters started showing up on our streets. While it has been inactive, other cities like Portland and Santa Monica have issued requests for proposals that include a fee structure, operational standards, data sharing and insurance requirements.”

She said the City has “let a technology overtake us rather than assist and empower our communities with safe and sustainable micro-mobility options,” and said that “all of downtown is experiencing cluttered sidewalks.”

“The corrals are overflowing with scooters that leak out into the road and automobile parking spaces,” she said.

The mayor of San Diego was not available for comment.

Victims of scooter crashes are cashing in

Catherine Lerer, a personal injury attorney based in Santa Monica, where scooters were introduced to the United States, says that over the past 18 months, she’s spoken to around 400 victims of scooter injuries — both riders and pedestrians. She believes them to be more accident-prone than bikes because of their smaller, more solid wheels and a more precarious center of gravity for users.

“It’s imperative that cities get ahead of any e-scooter rollout, otherwise they will be hamstrung in terms of regulating the scooters and sanctioning the operators,” she tells CNN.

Authorities should ban nighttime use, sidewalk riding and allowing the scooters on roads that have a speed limit of more than 25 mph, she argues in a list of 25 recommendations.

She says authorities should also insist that riders wear helmets, prohibit sidewalk parking, install tech that alerts the companies if a scooter isn’t upright, and fit the devices with lights, reflectors, turn signals, kickstands and identification numbers.

She says the devices should emit noises that can be heard by nearby pedestrians, to help those with disabilities.

For its part, Lime says it is tailoring its scooter roll outs so that they work with specific destinations and urges careful consideration before new legislation is introducted.

“Lime is committed to partnering with cities to build the right shared mobility program for each community,” a spokesperson said.

“We know the positive impact micromobility can have on communities around the globe… and we’re dedicated to collaborating with our city partners to tackle these challenges together.

“We support regulations that promote safety and greater transportation access without stifling innovation or consumer choice.”

Scooter fans still keen

Despite the issues, though, the enthusiasm of scooter fans show no sign of waning — and for some, replacing a putative car journey feels like the right thing to do.

Cyndi Hutchenson, a copywriter from South Florida, commutes via scooter most days — a journey of around 10 minutes. She has a monthly pass, costing $15, which allows her 30 minutes of scootering per day.

“I don’t have a car, and I don’t really want one,” she says. “I live downtown, and everything I want to reach is a relatively cheap Uber Pool away, if it’s outside scooter limits. And I’m new to the city, so I want to get to know it better.

“I’m conscious of the environmental impact difference of riding an electric scooter versus riding in a car every day. I also know that, were I to have a car, I’d be making more unnecessary trips or traveling farther outside my neighborhood for things I can easily have a range of within a scooter ride

“The buses are not convenient (in terms of timing, cleanliness, safety, and payment methods) in my city and don’t even go to my workplace.”

The future of e-scooters

But as cities continue to clamp down, and the accidents mount up, scootering around the globe might not be free and easy forever.

“I don’t want to be a killjoy, they do look a lot of fun,” says Simon Minty. “They’re exciting, new technology, they mean fewer cars on the roads — but people have to realize that there’s responsibility that comes with them.

“It’s not just people with disabilities. Parents with prams, older people — a whole bundle of people will be affected if we have to navigate round these scooters.

“I don’t quite understand how people can just leave them in the street. It just blows my mind a little bit.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/11/22/e-scooters-suddenly-appeared-everywhere-but-now-theyre-riding-into-serious-trouble/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/11/22/e-scooters-suddenly-appeared-everywhere-but-now-theyre-riding-into-serious-trouble/

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waqasblog2 · 5 years ago

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The Future of SEO: It's Not What You’re Expecting

What do you think the future of SEO is?

And no, I am not talking about what Google will look like 10 years from now… I’m talking about how you’ll be able to rank your site in the future.

You know, that one thing that’ll just skyrocket your rankings.

So, what do you think it is?

I can tell you this… it’s not link building and it’s not on-page SEO.

Sure, those things help, but they don’t skyrocket your rankings. When you build links, it can take months if not a year for them to kick in.

And everyone is doing on-page SEO, so there is nothing unique about it anymore.

So, what do you think it is? Shall I give you a hint?

The accidental SEO hack

I stumbled on the “future” of SEO by accident. Back in March 2016, I was able to take my traffic from 185,980 visitors a month to 195,596 a month.

And it all happened within 30 days.

Here was my traffic in February 2016:

After I ran my accidental marketing experiment, my traffic grew by 9,616 visitors (to 195,596 monthly visitors in March).

I know what you are thinking… there are more days in March than February. And although that’s true, the majority of those additional 9,616 visitors came from search.

So what happened?

As I mentioned above, I accidentally stumbled upon this.

But once I noticed that the side effect of this marketing experiment was that it increased my search traffic, I ran it again.

And this time, on a much larger scale.

Let’s look at my traffic in June 2016:

And now let’s look at July 2016:

And now look at August 2016:

That growth rate is ridiculous! I grew my traffic to 454,382 visitors a month in August from 240,839 in June!

See, during that time period, I wasn’t trying to figure out any cool SEO hacks that would boost my rankings… it just accidentally happened. And it happened because I was running a marketing experiment that wasn’t related to SEO, but funny enough, it impacted SEO (in a major way!).

As you can see from the graphs above, I was able to drastically boost my rankings and search traffic over time.

So, can you guess what it was?

Let me give you a hint…

How Google deals with the Internet cesspool

The EX-CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, talked about how the Internet is becoming a place where false information is thriving. Essentially, the Internet is becoming a cesspool.

He went on to discuss how brands were becoming more important signals whether or not content can be trusted.

And in his words:

Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.

In other words, if you want to do well in the long run, you have to build a brand.

When you look at Google you can see clearly that it’s dominated by big brands. From Huffington Post to Wikipedia to CNN… the list goes on and on.

Sure, these sites have a lot of content and backlinks, but they also have huge brands.

When my traffic grew from 185,980 visitors a month in February 2016 to 454,382 visitors in August, it was due to one thing.

My brand kept growing!

Just look at the brand queries for my name over time according to Google Trends:

Over time, my brand has grown in popularity. And as it’s grown, so has my traffic.

In the last 28 days, 40,412 people found my site by Googling variations of my name.

That’s a lot of people!

But what’s cool is, the traffic increases didn’t mainly come from people Googling “Neil Patel.” It mainly came from an increase in rankings for non-branded terms like “online marketing.”

It’s so effective that I generate over a million visits from Google each month now:

To clarify, the way Google looks at brands is that if a website gets a higher amount of brand queries than their competition (the number of people searching for your website name each month), it tells Google that people prefer that one brand over another.

And when Google is determining where to rank a website for all of the terms they are optimizing for, they give more preference to the ones with the most popular brands because those are the sites that people prefer more.

So why does Google put so much emphasis on brands verus other search signals?

Why Google loves brands

Just think about it, it’s the hardest thing to manipulate.

You optimize your on-page code with very little effort these days.

Heck, if you have a WordPress blog you can just use the Yoast SEO plugin and it will do a lot of the work for you.

And when it comes to links, it is harder, but not impossible. You can do email outreach, guest posting, buying links, reciprocal link building, content marketing…

Now, I am not saying you should leverage all of these link building tactics because Google frowns upon many of them and they are short-sided (always think long-term).

You get the point… it’s not that hard to build links these days if you know what you are doing.

But the one thing that is hard to build, no matter how good of a marketer you are, is a brand.

Even if you do massive PR stunts, which causes everyone to know your brand and search for your brand on Google (that’s how they measure it), it won’t help you in the long term.

And trust me, I’ve tried it all.

I even tried to get people to search for my name by having famous people hold up signs with my name as it causes others to wonder “who is Neil Patel” and perform a Google search. I also did that throughout the world in different languages.

I even had Larissa Manoela, a famous Brazilian actress, post this on her Instagram account for her 15+ million (million!!) followers.

The concept behind this marketing stunt was that no matter what industry you are in, everyone follows celebrities (or at least knows about them). And if you can get these celebrities to talk about you, it will create buzz and get new people to learn who you are and potentially become an avid follower. Or at the very least, search for you in Google.

And if you can get a lot of celebrities (or social influencers) to talk about you during the same time, it will create even more buzz and potentially cause newspapers and news websites to talk about you as well.

Now I didn’t have enough money to pay A-list celebrities, so I took Internet celebrities (and a few big names in countries outside of the US) and got them to hold up signs with my name on both Facebook and Instagram.

This created buzz, which then caused more people to Google my name. This, in turn, increased my popularity over time. And the end result was that I increased my rankings for non-branded terms (like “online marketing” and “SEO”).

That’s how I got the big boost in traffic from February 2016 to August 2016.

Although that will help boost your search traffic in the short run, it won’t last long unless you continually build up your brand. Google is looking to see how many people are searching for your brand name on a daily basis… and ideally, they want to see this increase over time.

In other words, if you can’t maintain your brand’s popularity, your search traffic will die off if you use short-term strategies as I did. That’s why you see huge spikes in my brand when you look at the Google Trends image below.

But if your brand continues to grow in popularity, so will your search traffic for all of your non-brand related terms.

It’s hard to see it in the chart above, but before I focused on building my brand, I was only generating 18,304 brand queries per month, versus 40,412 that I am generating now.

So how do you build a brand?

As I mentioned above, you need people searching for your brand name on a consistent basis.

The only way to really do this is by creating value.

Just look at me… I blog on a regular basis, produces educational videos, I have a daily podcast, and I even speak at conferences.

All in all, it has caused my brand to grow over the years.

And this works even better for corporations. If you create an amazing product or service, people will love your brand and keep coming back.

I learned this from my Ubersuggest acquisition. When I bought the brand and merged it into my website, my number one search query become the term “Ubersuggest” and variations of it.

People love the tool… so much so that they access it by Googling the brand name. Sure, the tool has more direct traffic, but people also go to sites using Google.

But to get back to the question of how you can build a brand?

Well, there are no very detailed strategies I can give you as it will range from business to business. I can give you an overview of strategies that have worked for me though, as well as some stats to go along with it:

Blog weekly

I’ve found that if you blog on a regular basis you get more brand queries.

When people are expecting content from you on a regular basis, they’ll Google your brand to come back to your blog and read your latest content.

When I blogged daily, I generated 11% more brand queries than when I blogged once a week. This is why sites like CNN, Huffington Post, Business Insider, and every other news site generates a lot of brand queries… they blog numerous times per day.

Create videos

You don’t have to copy my YouTube strategy, but you should create some sort of videos related to your product, service, or industry. Not because of Google or YouTube, but because of social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn love video content.

So much so that it’s easier to get eyeballs on Facebook and LinkedIn for video content than it is on YouTube.

This will cause more people to see your brand, and build a relationship with you or your company.

What I’ve found is that the more videos I create the more brand queries I get. Just look at the screenshot below:

The screenshot shows how many views my videos received on YouTube over the last 28 days from people searching for my name. It’s 3,806 visitors to be exact.

I know YouTube brand queries doesn’t mean more brand queries on “Google.”

But if you can push out video content on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn, it can’t hurt. It will cause more people to see your brand, and eventually, this should cause more people to Google you.

Now, the reason I am emphasizing LinkedIn and Facebook is that it is easier to generate views on those two social networks for video content. I know they count views differently, but there is a huge difference (and even if there weren’t, it’s extra views).

Just look at my YouTube views for my video on GoogleRank Brain, it has 10,010 views:

And on Facebook it has 31,000 views:

And on LinkedIn it has 29,506 views:

So if YouTube is creating roughly 3,806 brand queries per month when it’s generating fewer views than Facebook and LinkedIn, just imagine what these videos are doing for my brand.

Sadly, Facebook and LinkedIn don’t share stats in the same way as YouTube, but you can come to the conclusion that it probably helps in a similar fashion.

That’s why you need to create videos in order to promote your personal or corporate brand on all social sites (you can use the same content, just upload it to each social network).

Speak at conferences

Every time I speak at conferences I see an influx of brand queries.

It’s harder for me to see these days as I already have a lot of brand queries, but I used to see big swings in my brand queries when I was starting out because of my participation at conferences.

Every time I spoke at a conference with at least 300 attendees (the number of people attending your speech, not the total number of people registered for the event), I would see an increase in brand searches within 24 to 48 hours of my talk.

Each speech would typically bring me 110 to 180 extra brand queries. Although that seems high, you have to keep in mind that reporters also sit in on speeches and are blogging about your speech. This creates more press related to you and your company, which helps with brand queries.

And if the conference you are speaking at uploads the video of your speech to YouTube (or even live streams the event on Facebook) you’ll see even more brand queries.

The larger the audience the better as it creates more potential searches. If you don’t know how to get speaking spots, check this out.

And if you don’t have the time to travel, you can speak at virtual events. They won’t have the same effect, but it is better than nothing.

Build an amazing product or service

I learned this one from my Ubersuggest acquisition… if people love what you are building, your brand queries will really skyrocket. It’s so effective, that it has become my new SEO strategy.

As you can see, the better product you build, the more brand queries you’ll receive.

With Ubersuggest I took a simple approach, just take what my competitors are charging for and give it away for free.

And my brand queries don’t even compare to companies like Dropbox, Apple, Slack, and the loads of other companies that have built amazing products or service.

This strategy is easy to replicate and you’ll see the results fast as long as you take what your competition is charging for and give it away for free.

Just look at the chart above: it shows a huge spike in just 1 month. That was when I released more features for free.

Performance-based press

There are companies like PRserve that charge for performance-based press. If they get you press, you then pay. If not, you don’t pay a dime. It won’t cause tons of brand queries at first, but over time it will help.

If you want to do it yourself, here is an article I wrote breaking down how to get press. It takes longer and it’s harder than hiring someone, but as long as you are willing to put in the time, you will see results.

You can also check out sites like Help a Reporter Out, where journalists ask questions and people go to help them out. When you see a question related to your expertise or industry, you should respond and you can get free press.

Release a book

This works better for personal brands, but publishing a book is a great way to get more brand queries. There are even companies that can streamline the whole process for you.

When I released my book Hustle, I learned three important things:

Don’t co-author a book – I love my co-authors, but I would have received much more of a brand boost if I self-authored the book.

Write a book about your expertise – Hustle was a mainstream book that appealed to most people versus people who wanted to learn about marketing. If I wrote a book about marketing, which is where my expertise is, I believe my brand would have grown faster (even if fewer people purchased the book).

Don’t focus on being a New York Times Bestselling author – I was on the list 3 weeks in a row, and I don’t think it did much for me. Focus on building a following within your space, versus just generating book sales from people who don’t care about your business.

Hopefully, the strategies above will give you a start on building your brand… it just takes time and a lot of elbow grease.

There is no quick solution and what worked for me may not work for you. So get your creative juices flowing and think outside the box.

Conclusion

Branding may seem like a waste of money, but it isn’t.

I used to think companies like Nike were wasting money with all of their TV ads when they could have focused on channels that produced a direct ROI like Google Ads.

But what’s funny is, when you think of shoes you naturally think of “Nike.” You don’t have to Google them, you just know about them because they’ve built a huge brand and are everywhere.

Same goes for Visa. When you think of credit cards, Visa comes to mind because they are accepted worldwide and run tons of ads.

The list keeps going on and on… from McDonald’s to Coca-Cola… the one thing you have to learn from these big companies is that you have to build an amazing brand. Not only will it create more brand searches, but it will help drive more revenue in the long-run.

Most of the companies I mentioned above don’t generate the majority of their sales from Google… they generate their sales from having a huge brand that people trust and love. The brand queries that they get on Google is just an added benefit.

And if that doesn’t convince you, here is an interesting stat. One of my friends works for one of the largest travel companies in the world. They are publicly traded and run television ads as well as spending millions on Google/Facebook ads each month.

When they run TV ads, their Google cost per click (CPC) goes down by roughly 20% because people are seeing their brand everywhere and are more willing to click on it. When they turn off the TV ads, they see the CPCs go back up.

They also own so many travel sites in the space, so they tested this out with a handful of them. Every time they saw similar results, no matter which travel site they tested it on.

I know you probably don’t like the idea of branding because it isn’t something that is instant, and it is hard to manipulate. But that’s why creating a strong brand drastically increase your non-branded rankings.

So, what are you waiting for… are you going to focus on building a brand?

This content was originally published here.

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