#well at least their site is easy enough to download from

[diseaseriddencube]

downloading all the camp camp episodes before roosterteeth shuts down 😍

[shinesurge]

I think it's a side effect of having a slightly bigger audience than before, but this year I've been getting a LOT of questions about offering digital editions of the KC books so I wanted to talk about it out loud for a bit.

There are a bunch of complicated reasons I've never offered the volumes as digital downloads, and I think they mostly boil down to concerns about the pretty embarrassing lack of significant internet presence Kidd Commander has accumulated over the 11 years it's been running. The audience I DO have is very enthusiastic, and let me be clear that I appreciate how unique and cool that is, especially in the era we're in where I really have no business running things the way I do lmao

The problem is, in refusing to do any of the predatory social media bullshit that tricks people into doing advertising for my comic while pretending it's a fandom, and by taking initiative to build fandom spaces for people to hang out in myself, I've created an extremely insular community where folks don't really feel any need to help it grow. "If you build it they'll come" is true, but the other half of that is people going "hey neat this thing builds itself!" and you end up with dozens of fandom posts, hours of discussion, and even fanwork locked away in inaccessible spaces while the pages on the site consistently get no comments or interaction and the public tags are empty.

WHAT does this have to do with digital editions lol

The idea was, a thing that helps set KC apart is the webcomic thing where you're not only checking a site regularly as a routine, but you're building some impression of the author as well. My little news posts are bundled with the pages, the site gives a sense of Environment in way static editions don't. In return for offering nearly a thousand pages of completely free content the reader has to Encounter Me at some point, and be made aware that this is an operation being run by a single person, and that its survival is entirely dependent on other people reading it and supporting it. Going to the site ALSO at least lets people know a comment section /exists/, and there COULD be a community to participate in. You don't get that with the books as much, but the books are almost exclusively going to folks who already read the comic, I don't think they're floating around out there to many people who didn't buy them directly from me after reading it online.

It is objectively easier for people to binge an archive they can carry around offline with them, I completely get it. But I've watched SO many new readers fall in love with this thing in real time as they leave comments behind them through the archive, and even just forming the habit of checking the site regularly really goes a long way towards forming enough of a connection with a reader for them to stick around for the long haul. If you just read it all isolated on your phone, it stops there; it's easy to forget it's an independent operation that desperately needs your support, /I/ have no idea whether you liked it or if people are even reading, and when you're finished you'll move on to something else because there's no visible fandom to engage with.

I don't WANT to think this is what will happen, but it's already been happening here for years even without proper channels. I sort of feel like this would just be facilitating my own demise lmao. All the comics who run the way I do were ALREADY popular back before the landscape shifted to fast-fashion sensibilities, so Girl Genius offering digital editions doesn't really harm them, you know? By the time forums died their community was already so stable and self-sufficient they could quit updating the main story for a whole year and not even feel it. Gunnerkrigg is signed on with fuckin Dark Horse now. People doing the things KC does got in early and stabilized before I even got started, fandom is a different world now and I'm already barely keeping this train running on my own as it is.

But on the other hand: accessibility!! HOW many times have I wanted to engage with something but they WONT LET ME PAY THEM FOR THE THING I WANT so I just leave!! The alternative here isn't "oh if i FORCE THEM to read it online they'll stick around" it's "if i can't read it how i want then i'm skipping it". That makes total sense, /I/ do that! What about people who want the extra content in the books but can't pay international fucking shipping!! It's also an Archival issue, which absolutely kills me, but that's a whole other post lmao. There are extremely good reasons to offer another option for reading my work, but I am so anxious this would just be putting a nail in this stupid coffin I've been building already.

I've been having this conversation a lot, mostly with Lee, but it came up again this morning in an email and regardless of my own feelings: this is a thing people want, a very reasonable thing, and if I fail to provide it that's just bad business. Do y'all here have any thoughts about all this? I would like to give the people what they want and y'all are The People.

Anyway buried way down here so far I'll make another post about it: I /am/ going to offer the specials as digital downloads, permanently in the shop. They're old books by now, I'm having issues keeping them in stock anyway, and they DON'T exist online anywhere, so this isn't technically any skin off my back outside of piracy issues, which. would be a stupid thing to fret about lmao

thanks for reading all this! I'm gonna go sort through pdfs for a while

[1eos]

mx kendra, do you have any advice for job hunting? I'm about to start looking(again), but its always so intimidating - have a lovely day!

how it feels to start job hunting in the 2020s:

but yes i have advice for you anon! last time i went job hunting i got serious enough where i was reading 'askamanager' blogs and shit like that to really make sure i wasn't wasting my effort

so kendra's advice to job hunting in the most effort effective way:

first and most importantly is to understand that job hunting rn is simply a numbers game. it's not you it's just that the society we're living in is full of shit. for every 10 job postings, 4 are fake, 1 has an internal candidate in mind already, 3 are just posting jobs to look good and the rest are legit but slow af

bc job hunting is a numbers game its easy to be discouraged if you're not receiving responses consistently as proof that you're not just throwing shit into the void so its superrr imperative to try your best to apply to legit jobs. ive found my best success using indeed as a method of jobs being brought to me and then going on the company website myself and applying. this also doubles as a way to make sure a job posting/company is real

keep a spreadsheet of applied jobs. i just googled 'job application spreadsheet template' and picked one of the first ones i saw, made a copy, and then modified it to suit my needs. keeping a spreadsheet was one of the best things i did bc it can help keep track of jobs you've found and haven't applied to/ones you have applied to/and if you're like me and had a goal of getting a state job i could pre-empt when the interview requests were gonna come in lol 😭

resumes/cover letters. whew. probably the most important part of job hunting. ai scanning or not its a good rule of thumb to have skills mentioned in the job description to match the job posting. what i did was dedicate a folder in my google drive to job stuff and made a folder for each kind of jobs i was interested in. from there i would find a job i wanted to apply to and tailor an old resume to have a bunch of the shit mentioned in the posting on the new resume. i'd save it in the appropriate folder with the date i edited it. if you haven't been in the habit of tailoring your resume you may be doing this a lot but eventually you'll have so many variations you won't have to do much editing if at all. and i do the same with cover letters. i have a general template for my cover letter and then tweak them for each kinds of jobs im looking for. this + ditching linkedin helped me A LOT

create an interview cheatsheet. you probably already know the job hunting sphere has a language and culture all its own. personally as someone with a touch of the 'tism it do not make sense to me so i have unknowingly not navigated interviews as well as i could have. what's helped? ask a manager. seriously. miss allison has helped me blend in as a normie soooo much 😭😭😭😭 if you have any specific questions/have any specific weaknesses just search the site but what really helped me was the list of good interview questions. oh and for the longest i could never come up with a good question to ask my interviewer but one day google recced me this article and now every time i ask 'so what would separate a good candidate from an excellent candidate in this role' and when i tell you my interviewers gag every time lollllll. i also went through 'boost your interview iq' [pdf download link here <3] and jotted down notes on how i can answer common interview questions to quickly be able to go over the night before

study the job posting before the interview btw and try to drum up at least one correlating anecdote for some of the major points of the job bc they WILL ask you that lollllllll

[firadessa]

No cause your so right on how it's one of Disney's best franchises but it doesn't get the recognision it deserves and I'm still made about it

Here's some things I don't like on how Disney treated the series

1. Removal of classic Flash games in 2013 from the Disney website like Lightball challenge, Tink's Fairy Tag, and Dragonfly Race leaving them lost/nearly impossible to find, or in a seemingly broken and unplayble state. Additionally, printouts and other downloadables that could have stayed were often removed after website updates. I hate when normal features of a website get removed, and Disney Fairies had this the most as someone who spent a lot of their time on the disney website as a kid

2. Having the audacity to make an html5 game called Pixie Party Couture with pixie hollow assets, like a year after the game shut down. Like literally Tabby of the Never Council was in the dress up game

3. It's mostly mismanagement, but cancelling the original draft for Tinker Bell and not updating the marketing material, even when it had been pushed back by a year. Especially on the 2007 website for the first year it was out.

5. Not crediting people enough? like for the original TB draft and the books authors being "Disney Storybook Art Team" even in the book, leading people to dig to find who worked on their damn books

6. Failing to capture an audience for Pixie Hollow, yet Toontown which had been somewhat slow on content iirc yet Pixie Hollow still never had a problem with new and original concepts, as well as fun events. Again, mismanagment, but it sometimes makes me sad knowing Pixie Hollow, while it was popular, had a signifigantly smaller audience then the others. And honestly, I don't think it's the fault of Pixie Hollow, but poor marketing. Which puts the stress on the employees for working on an "unpopular" game, which clearly had people playing it and a good retention of players. It was cancelled like 5/6 years in, when it could have at least lasted another few years because it was 2013.

7. Keeping Pixie Hollow's "beta" on internationally, and showcasing that they could have still kept the smaller more relaxed experience of creating a fairy and creating a page for the character. But since they wanted to transition to mobile apps in the US, most people who grew up with the site did not know of the international versions. Which closed around 2016/2017. Meaning if you were a hardcore Pixie Hollow fan or lived outside of the US, you got 3 more years of PH- just a more toned down version

8. Pages were found on the Disney website that misleading people that the game was going to come back, but they were just leaks/archived pages from the original website. These pages were easy for others to find, one person even found a login page confirming Disney still had the account data for Pixie Hollow.

9. Removing the book characters from the franchise almost entirely except as side characters or very specific instances like in Pixie Hollow. Even if those characters could still be recognizable or interesting, they never started pushing them as actual characters within the movie's shared universe until like 2014. The characters had 3 years to exist and existed for longer than that because they waited for the release of Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg to even debut the franchise.

10. Shortening down a full length movie Race through the Seasons, into Pixie Hollow games leaving the director to scramble into making it a 30 minute TV special, when that wasn't the assignment.

11. People made more ideas for Disney Fairies projects. And they just sat there and waited until they wanted to shut the studio (Disneytoon) down, barely producing anything!

12. Prioritzing another franchise so much that when people ordered a Disney Fairies magazine they sent out the other one when they pulled it instead of cancelling the orders. When there was a Youtube channel, it got replaced and the videos were unlisted with uh *this more popular*! franchise 👸😮‍💨 Only lead to confusion in both cases I assure you

13. Playing hot and cold with us because people didn't know they didn't cancel the entire thing, or if it was offically completely done. Which is understandable because of the whole Youtube rebrand as Disney Princess, and also poor marketing and releasing in the US

14. The first book was the first to release internationally, yet a lot of international translation ceased completely around the mid 2010s

15. They made another Iridessa book. And they only released in Japan and Australia. Written by a prominent Black author. Extremely rare. Leading to someone in 2017 having to scan it for people to read it. Iridessa and the Secret of the Never Mine

16. Not including Joel Mcneely's songs on the inspired by Tinker Bell soundtracks. Which again, mislead people because they are not the actual soundtracks

17. This is more on the Pixie Hollow team, but the lack of support from the closure is not something I liked. Like I get it if they weren't properly able to add a proper farewell celebration like Club Penguin's in 2017, but naming the closing event Pixie Hollow Farewell wasn't a good move. Like did they forget that's a fictional place that many kids are attached to and a game? Wish it was the "Fly with You Forever" party or something more creative. The closing announcement felt very out of character and was assigned one of the NPCs, which I remember recieving mixed announcements. Leading them to make a new post that came across as more sympathetic, and add free membership for the remaining period. But there was a lack of attention when it came to the games closure, probably due to the fact it was rushed and 4 games were planned to close on one day. And we deserved a proper goodbye and tribute to the characters of Pixie Hollow like the council and others, making the ending more bittersweet instead of just bitter. Oh, but they'd actually have to code that in the fairy game so they didn't bother.

You know what maybe I’m just tired and feeling the existential dread of growing up, but actually my small, petty hill to die on is that I don’t think I will ever forgive Disney for abandoning the fairies franchise. I cannot even properly express what those movies were to me as a kid. They very well may have been my first hyperfixation. But come on beyond the sentimental value, those movies:

Encouraged kids to take an interest in nature and be nice to plants and animals.

Depicted a (mostly female) friend group that spent virtually every scene they had together onscreen building each other up and supporting each other.

Featured a female lead who is essentially a mechanical engineer, and is not treated as any less magical or important for it than her friends who can magically make flowers grow or bend light (except for the first movie wherein her feeling less magical and important is the central conflict).

Gave said female lead a “love interest,” I say in quotations because while they are definitely implied to have romantic feelings for each other, he is never called anything other than her best friend and the two of them ending up together is never treated as an urgent priority. Their friendship is incredibly important to both of them, but no one acts like it’s a problem that they’re just friends for now.

Redeemed the mean girl pretty damn successfully (in my opinion), Vidia never apologizes for most of her actions onscreen, but she does realize when she’s gone too far and makes an effort to fix her mistakes, and from that point on she is integrated into the friend group who, as I mentioned before, spend 90% of their screen time uplifting each other.

In The Lost Treasure, let Tink’s temper have consequences, a good lesson for kids in not taking their friends for granted and treating them kindly, but also teaching respect for boundaries and personal space through Terrence’s end.

In Secret of the Wings, demonstrated that sometimes rules are there for safety reasons, but you can try to think of a creative solution to do what you want while still keeping things safe for everyone.

In Legend of the Neverbeast (admittedly not the greatest movie in the series), depicted the fairies having to say goodbye to an animal companion permanently, something most kids will probably experience at some point.

Inspired a banger of an online game and several banger songs.

And what has Disney done with this franchise they spent 7 years on (longer if you count the books)?

Allowed a massive decline in quality on the last movie made (Legend of the Neverbeast) and then acted shocked when it didn’t do as well as the previous ones.

Cancelled all fairy projects after that.

Shut down the game in 2013.

Made a bunch of the songs from the soundtracks seemingly disappear off the face of the earth.

I know it doesn’t make the top 100 shitty things Disney has done, probably not even the top 1000, but I am still extremely salty about it, even though it’s been almost 10 years.

[blech]

Automatic image tagging with Gemini AI

I used multimodal generative AI to tag my archive of 2,500 unsorted images. It was surprisingly effective.

I’m a digital packrat. Disk space is cheap, so why not save everything? That goes double for things out on the internet, especially those on third party servers, where you can’t be sure they’ll live forever. One of the sites that hasn’t lasted is ffffound!, a pioneering image bookmarking website, which I was lucky enough to be a member of.

Back around 2013 I wrote a quick Ruby web scraper to download my images, and ever since I’ve wondered what to do with the 2,500 or so images. ffffound was deliberately minimal - you got only the URL of the site it was saved from and a page title - so organising them seemed daunting.

A little preview- this is what got pulled out tagged "maps".

The power of AI compels you!

As time went on, I thought about using machine learning to write tags or descriptions, but the process back then involved setting up models, training them yourself, and it all seemed like a lot of work. It's a lot less work now. AI models are cheap (or at least, for the end user, subsidised) and easy to access via APIs, even for multimodal queries.

After some promising quick explorations, I decided to use Google’s Gemini API to try tagging the images, mainly because they already had my billing details in Google Cloud and enabling the service was really easy.

Prototyping and scripting

My usual prototyping flow is opening an iPython shell and going through tutorials; of course, there’s one for Gemini, so I skipped to “Generate text from image and text inputs”, replaced their example image with one of mine, tweaked the prompt - ending up with ‘Generate ten unique, one to three word long, tags for this image. Output them as comma separated, without any additional text’ - and was up and running.

With that working, I moved instead to writing a script. Using the code from the interactive session as a core, I wrapped it in some loops, added a little SQL to persist the tags alongside the images in an existing database, and set it off by passing in a list of files on the command line. (The last step meant I could go from running it on the six files matching images/00\*.jpg up to everything without tweaking the code.) Occasionally it hit rather baffling errors, which weren’t well explained in the tutorial - I’ll cover how I handled them in a follow up post.

You can see the resulting script on GitHub. Running it over the entire set of images took a little while - I think the processing time was a few seconds per image, so I did a few runs of maybe an hour each to get all of them - but it was definitely much quicker than tagging by hand. Were the tags any good, though?

Exploring the results

I coded up a nice web interface so I was able to surf around tags. Using that, I could see what the results were. On the whole? Between fine and great. For example, it turns out I really like maps, with 308 of the 2,580 or so images ending up with the tag ‘map’ which are almost all, if not actual maps, do at least look cartographic in some way.

The vast majority of the most common tags I ended up with were the same way - the tag was generally applicable to all of the images in some way, even if it wasn’t totally obvious at first why. However, it definitely wasn’t perfect. One mistake I noticed was this diagram of roads tagged “rail” - and yet, I can see how a human would have done the same.

Another small criticism? There was a lack of consistency across tags. I can think of a few solutions, including resubmitting the images as a group, making the script batch images together, or adding the most common tags to the prompt so the model can re-use them. (This is probably also a good point to note it might also be interesting to compare results with other multimodal models.)

Finally, there were some odd edge cases to do with colour. I can see why most of these images are tagged ‘red’, but why is the telephone box there? While there do turn out to be specks of red in the diagram at the bottom right, I’d also go with “black and white” myself over “black”, “white”, and “red” as distinct tags.

Worth doing?

On the whole, though, I think this experiment was pretty much a success. Tagging the images cost around 25¢ (US) in API usage, took a lot less time than doing so manually, and nudged me into exploring and re-sharing the archive. If you have a similar library, I’d recommend giving this sort of approach a try.

[furbland-channel]

Tutorial: How to use the Discord webapp in place of the mobile app

It has come to my attention in a rather rude awakening that the new mobile UI has finally crawled (or oozed, or sludged, or however disgusting things get about) onto tablets as well. It has also come to my attention, in a related matter, that I had never experienced true pain before. The app was deleted in under a minute. A third matter has also come to my attention: longer messages and cross-server emojis are no longer worth my time or money. Anyways, enough rambling. I have made the (understandable) decision to switch to the web app. "The web app? On mobile?" is what no one is probably asking right now, so let me clear things up here. Yes, the web app does work on mobile, surprisingly well in fact. "But how do you access it?" quoth the zero people reading this post. It’s pretty simple, just do it as you would on a desktop device; go to https://discord.com/app and use it there. But let's say you want to add it as a PWA. For those of you unfamiliar, a PWA (or Progressive Web App) is a webpage you can add to your Home Screen that behaves like an app instead of just opening in Safari when you click the icon. Unfortunately, Discord devs apparently despise happiness and easy solutions (oh wait, we figured that out already from the new UI) so you're going to have to do a bit of trickery to get it to behave the way you want it instead of just opening in Safari. First, let's get this out of the way: there's no easy way to go about this on Android, but thankfully you can just download an older version (version 205 is the last one before the UI update became forced) and sideload that (MAKE SURE YOU GET THE APK FROM A TRUSTWORTHY SITE, I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU ACCIDENTALLY INSTALLING A VIRUS). Now for how to do the PWA thing on iOS (iPhones, iPads, and iToasters¹). First, read through this guide and get + configure the Shortcut there. You'll also need a discord icon in your Photo Album to set as the app icon (you could also download one of the Nitro exclusive ones and use that, they'll never know *evil smirk*). Anydangway, what were we talking about? Oh right, PWAs. Now, when it asks you to type in the URL of the app you want to add, don't just type "https://discord.com" or "https://discord.com/app". No, you have to type a very specific URL: https://discord.com/channels/@me (TYPE IT EXACTLY LIKE THAT). Otherwise, it'll work just fine but you'll constantly have browser UI at the top and bottom of the screen. It's not fun. On the other hand, you can name the app anything you want (so you could have "Discord" and "The cooler Discord" side by side). Once that's all said and done and done and said and daid and sone, all you have to do is open the app, sign in, and enjoy! Sure, a couple of gestures don't work, but at least you don't have to endure this. Welp, that's our show. Tune in next time for "Top 10 Ways to Make a Pizza out of Entirely Cucumbers".

¹The iToaster may or may not exist.

[annavifixx]

How to Start a Tech Podcast - A Comprehensive Guide

Whether you want to share your expertise on a specific topic or just have an ongoing conversation with your audience, podcasting can be an effective way to grow and engage with your audience. But starting a new podcast isn’t easy, and the initial set up can feel overwhelming for a first-time creator.

The first step is identifying your theme. Once you have a clear idea of your topic, you need to stress test the concept by writing out at least 20 episode ideas. This will help you understand if your idea has longevity and whether it’s possible to create enough content on a regular basis.

You’ll also need to choose a title, description and artwork. It’s important to choose unique, eye-catching artwork that represents your show. Your podcast’s artwork will be one of the main ways people evaluate your show and determine if they’ll listen, so you want to take the time to design something that will stand out from the competition.

It’s also helpful to have a podcast website where you can host your episodes, share show notes and transcripts, promote your guests and more. Most podcast tech ogle hosting services provide a website builder that makes it easy to get started.

Your podcast’s name, description and artwork are the first things listeners see. Spend time deciding on these before you start recording. The more thought you put into these elements, the easier it will be to attract and retain listeners.

Next, decide how long your episodes will be and what type of format you’ll use. Most podcasts are 30-40 minutes, but some can go as long as an hour or even longer. There is no set formula for podcast length, so experiment with different formats to find what works best for you and your audience.

You’ll also need to decide if you will gate your podcast episodes. This can be through a platform like Patreon or by using software like Switcher Studio to gate your podcast directly on your website. Gating your podcast allows you to offer exclusive or premium content, such as bonus episodes that delve deeper into a certain topic or interview special guests. This is a great way to monetize your podcast and reward loyal subscribers while still offering your free content to the rest of your audience.

Once you’ve launched your podcast, it’s important to track listener metrics and keep making improvements. You can do this by monitoring your podcast’s download and retention rates on iTunes and other directories. You should also pay attention to reviews on those sites and respond to any constructive criticism.

Another important technology website metric is your podcast’s overall performance, which you can track with most podcast hosting services. You can also measure the success of individual episodes by checking their download and retention rates, as well as listener feedback. Finally, don’t forget to promote your podcast by reaching out to other tech podcasters and bloggers in your niche and asking to be a guest on their shows. This is a great way to reach a new audience while earning backlinks to your site.

[megid0nt]

I got a fun dm the other day from someone impersonating the developers of a real actual game called Ingression, where they had created a fake homepage for the game and were advertising it in a similar way, so I thought I'd look into this a lil closer :3

Turns out, this is a fake website based on a game called Faeland by the developer Talegames - the MO for these attacks is typically find a game that looks sick, rip off what art assets they can find for it, construct a spiffy looking page that COULD be for the game that they're pretending it is, and then link you to something that is decidedly not the actual game.

These sites tend to go down pretty fast after enough people get caught in them, but that's not Always effective - as you can see, skyworldgame(.)xyz is now offline, but hey hey! They also have this site again, under the name Skyday instead of skyworld, at skydaygame(.)xyz

Some things to consider if someone links you to a website to test their game: Usually nobody legitimate will do this. But if you want to have trust in your heart and vet the page yourself, some things to consider:

If there is a download link but the URL for the link does not match the URL for the website you're on, it's usually fraudulent - ESPECIALLY if it's for an anonymous hosting platform like cdn.discordapp.com!

A real developer will in almost every case have their company name somewhere on the site. In the case of this game, the only place you can see a developer name is at the beginning of the embedded trailer - yikers.

If you're worried about online privacy, you probably shouldn't engage with these even if you want to without obfuscating your IP address in some way. I haven't proof any of these attackers actually ARE doing this, but it's disgustingly easy if you host a website to get the IP address of every single user who visits it, which isn't TOO too awful but still not really ideal if you already have suspicions that the user on the other end does not have your best interests at heart. (they can also do things with javascript, but if you're worried about online privacy enough to have read this far you probably know that <3)

Did not happen here, but the one who tried to get me was very insistent about my scanning the file using a specific website that IS reputable, but if someone suggests a specific virus scanner it's usually because they know they've beaten it.

Anyway, looks like this used BBYStealer, which is open source, and you can expect a lot more of these guys coming in soon because it seems like well obfuscated JavaScript (esp after a run through JSConfuse) in an electron app is pretty hard to detect as malware - the most I've seen is them noting some of the capabilities the application has without being able to sus out that it's actually malicious!

Finally, if you really wanna poke at malware you're sent, do it in a Virtual Machine (or at least Windows Sandbox if it's available to you!)

TL;DR don't run strange programs people send you, figure out who made the games you're gonna test before you test em, and ABSOLUTELY do not trust the virus scan results if someone recommends you use a specific virus scanner.

And if they say "it doesn't work in a vm, please run it on your normal computer uwu" it's bc they know that what should have happened did not happen.

If you get any dms on Discord about playtesting a game called "SkyWorld", BLOCK AND REPORT THE ACCOUNT.

This is a virus that takes over your Discord. The website looks like this:

DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE FILES ON THIS SITE. YOUR DISCORD WILL BE HACKED.

Please reblog this so no one else gets this virus.

[nickgerlich]

One For The Team

Maybe you saw their commercial during the Super Bowl. More than likely you have stumbled over their ads in your social news feeds. The odds are good that you have at least heard of them, even if you haven’t shopped there yet. Their tag line? “Shop like a billionaire.” And Temu has surpassed Amazon, Walmart, and Target put together as the most-downloaded app.



Temu (pronounced “tee-moo”) is the new online shopping site that wants to give Amazon a run for its money. And just like Jeff Bezos upset the apple cart back in 1995 when Amazon launched, Temu, which debuted in September 2022, aims to do the same with its rock-bottom prices, and by eliminating a middleman along the way.

Temu is based in Boston, but is owned by PDD Holdings, a company based in Shanghai China.  PDD also owns Pinduoduo, one of the most successful e-commerce companies there. Items are shipped directly from Chinese vendors, instead of relying on US warehousing and shipping.

In three short paragraphs, I have already tossed out several potential red flags that should give would-be customers pause:



a) ridiculously low prices b) Chinese-owned c) Chinese-made d) overseas shipping



In the era of TikTok bans by more than half of US states, worries about weather balloons, quality, data, 7-15-day arrival times, and…I could go on, but I won’t…I can see this one having a tough time gaining traction right now. And yet they are aggressively pursuing us. I can’t go a day without seeing them in my feed, and now the media have latched onto them as well. 



There is no doubt that PDD is cash-rich. Their $7 million ad on the Super Bowl is testament to that, not to mention the 8900 ad placements on Facebook and Instagram. They clearly want to make a splash.



But will people take the bait? I realize that low prices, especially during a period of high inflation, can be appealing, at least on the surface. But even though we have all embraced—willingly or not—the idea of Made In China products in our homes and on our bodies, will we provide our personal information and credit card numbers to buy things more or less directly from a company that is clearly tethered to a nation we don’t exactly trust very much?

I am not one for conspiracy theories, but I can see how skeptics might think that both TikTok and Temu are the new Trojan horse, and not a lot unlike that balloon. It’s just that these are more subtle, because they offer entertainment and shopping, yet manage to get their foot in the door. Lots of doors. And maybe more than just their foot.



Of course, you may also be wondering how Chinese fast-fashion purveyor Shein (pronounced “she-in”) fits into this. Shein is a competitor to Temu and Pinduoduo, and offers similarly low prices for what is arguably disposable clothing. But hey, you’ll look good for one or two nights of clubbing.

I could be wrong on all of this. Maybe Temu is for real, and everything will turn out OK in the long-run. Maybe Amazon will be forced to react, although their 2-day shipping and easy returns are hard to beat. What are you going to do if that dress doesn’t fit just right, or the sunglasses you bought fell apart the first time you wore them? Send them back to China? Good luck with that.



You see, we really have no problem with buying Chinese-made products. That ship sailed long ago. It’s just that we have American filters in place, like Amazon, to—we hope—properly vet and manage everything. They ostensibly keep us safe from those Trojan horses and balloons.

Color me wary. I’m watching and waiting, but I am in no hurry to go shopping just yet. Besides, I really don’t want to shop like a billionaire, much less be one.

Dr “Amazon Is Good Enough For Me“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

[utau-bowl]

Sibella Review

Hello again! I have an abundance of free time and motivation, so let’s talk about some UTAUs! We’re a couple months into summer already, and I’ve finished almost none of my goals, but I CAN clear out the review backlog! 

This review was requested by @muni-is-never-ready​.

*Art by t0bey

Hear a Sample of Sibella

Bio

Name: Sibella/ シベラ Age: 19 Height: 5'4" Pronouns: She/Her OTO: NegaiUta/ryankun12 

Sibella is a young Black girl living and studying in Japan, who found happiness in dressing in Lolita fashion as well as singing. She is someone dedicated to what she loves and can be over the top, but always in good faith.

Official Site

Sibella has a simple official site available on Carrd. The download is hosted on Mediafire. She only has one voicebank at the time of writing, which makes this easy! They’re technically two voicebanks, but they come in one download.

The voicebank is 274 MB when fully unzipped and has fully generated frqs and llsm files, with some other files generated like pmk and dio.

First Impressions

Sibella has a unique concept, being Japanese and English compatible all in one. It works well enough and means the languages have identical tones and quality. Her voice is a bit androgynous but high and airy. The art included with the voicebank (at least for me) wasn’t saved as an image file, and I couldn’t open it. So I had to download it separately off a Tumblr post.

Configuration

Sibella comes with one monopitch VCV and one monopitch Arpasing put together in one .zip file. She can go down to about F3 comfortably and up to C5. Her Japanese OTO is decent enough, though I’d recommend clearing any USTs completely before using her with them, since the preutter/overlap is very high at times.

Using each language together works surprisingly well, and can be used for better English pronunciation in Japanese songs with English phrases. This is also one of the most quality Arpasing banks I’ve ever seen and I’ve downloaded a lot. She’s also a lot clearer than Alta English which makes me kinda jealous (´･ω･`) It’s also compatible with Arpasing assistant, which is a huge plus! You may notice I haven’t talked about her voice type much yet, but that’s because I couldn’t hold myself back from comparing her to a Luka-type voice. It’s demure and feminine but still with that peppy anime girl edge. 

One weakness of Sibella is that her reclists are rather bare minimum, but she has end breaths so that’s one thing I can commend. Also her Arpasing pitch only has 130 samples, yet they’re labelled with numbers up to 334. This literally only matters to me but I wonder what reclist this is. It also has pretty minimal duplicates, which is ordinarily needed for a small Arpasing bank.

My recommended flags: F2Y0H10c0B0C30

My recommended resamplers: doppeltler, world4utau

Final Thoughts

Sibella has a nice concept and design that is executed well. Using her to get into English UTAU while staying in the more commonly used VCV Japanese bubble wouldn’t be such a bad idea!

Got any other UTAUs you want me to review? Send an ask!

[itsclydebitches]

Here's a quandary I've suddenly found myself in: where do you stand on writers deleting their own works, fanfiction or otherwise? I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion - I go to look for an old favorite and find it's since been deleted from whatever site I read it on.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to think that, "Sure. The author wrote it, it's their call. I don't own the work - I certainly didn't pay for it. It's their decision, even if it's disappointing."

But at the same time I can't help but consider the alternative - if I believe in death of the author (and I do), that an author's work fundamentally isn't solely theirs once it's been published, posted, etc., then it also seems wrong to have a work deleted. Stories aren't the sole property of their creator, after all.

But then I circle back. D'you think there are different obligations between authors and readers and the works being made in fandom space? I know if I had bought a book and the author decided they wanted it back, I would feel pretty comfortable telling them no, given I'd paid for it and whatnot. But that's a different world from fanfic and fandom space generally.

So. You're insightful Clyde, I'm curious as to what you'll have to say here (and to all y'all thinking about it, don't flame me. I haven't decided where I stand here yet - haven't heard a good nail-in-the-coffin argument for or against yet).

Val are you a mind reader now? I’ve been thinking about this exact conundrum the last few days!

(And yeah, as a general disclaimer: no flaming. Not allowed. Any asks of the sort will be deleted on sight and with great satisfaction.)

Honestly, I’m not sure there is a “nail-in-the-coffin argument” for this, just because—as you lay out—there are really good points for keeping works around and really good points for allowing authors to have control over their work, especially when fanworks have no payment/legal obligations attached. In mainstream entertainment, your stories reflect a collaborative effort (publisher, editor, cover artists, etc.) so even if it were possible to delete the physical books out of everyone’s home and library (and we're ignoring the censorship angle for the moment), that’s no longer solely the author’s call, even if they have done the lion’s share of the creative work. Though fanworks can also, obviously, be collaborative, they’re usually not collaborative in the same way (more “This fic idea came about from discord conversations, a couple tumblr posts, and that one headcanon on reddit”) and they certainly don’t have the same monetary, legal, and professional strings attached. I wrote this fic as a hobby in my free time. Don’t I have the right to delete it like I also have the right to tear apart the blankets I knit?

Well yes… but also no? I personally view fanworks as akin to gifts—the academic term for our communities is literally “gift economy��—so if we view it like that, suddenly that discomfort with getting rid of works is more pronounced. If I not only knit a blanket, but then gift it to a friend, it would indeed feel outside of my rights to randomly knock on their door one day and go, “I actually decided I hate that? Please give it back so I can tear it to shreds, thanks :)” That’s so rude! And any real friend would try to talk me out of it, explaining both why they love the blanket and, even if it’s not technically the best in terms of craftsmanship, it holds significant emotional value to them. Save it for that reason alone, at least. Fanworks carry that same meaning—“I don’t care if it’s full of typos, super cliché, and using some outdated, uncomfortable tropes. This story meant so much to me as a teenager and I’ll always love it”—but the difference in medium and relationships means it’s easier to ignore all that. I’m not going up to someone’s house and asking face-to-face to destroy something I gave them (which is awkward as hell. That alone deters us), I’m just pressing a button on my computer. I’m not asking this of a personal friend that is involved in my IRL experiences, I’m (mostly) doing this to online peers I know little, if anything, about. It’s easy to distance ourselves from both the impact of our creative work and the act of getting rid of it while online. On the flip-side though, it’s also easier to demean that work and forget that the author is a real person who put a lot of effort into this creation. If someone didn’t like my knitted blanket I gave them as a gift, they’re unlikely to tell me that. They recognize that it’s impolite and that the act of creating something for them is more important than the construction’s craftsmanship. For fanworks though, with everyone spread around the world and using made up identities, people have fewer filters, happily tearing authors to shreds in the comments, sending anon hate, and the like. The fact that we’re both prefacing this conversation with, “Please don’t flame” emphasizes that. So if I wrote a fic with some iffy tropes, “cringy” dialogue, numerous typos, whatever and enough people decided to drag me for it… I don’t know whether I’d resist the urge to just delete the fic, hopefully ending those interactions. There’s a reason why we’re constantly reminding others to express when they enjoy someone else’s work: the ratio of praise to criticism in fandom (or simply praise to seeming indifference because there was no public reaction at all), is horribly skewed.

So I personally can’t blame anyone for deleting. I’d like to hope that more people realize the importance of keeping fanworks around, that everything you put out there is loved by someone… but I’m well aware that the reality is far more complicated. It’s hard to keep that in mind. It’s hard to keep something around that you personally no longer like. Harder still to keep up a work you might be harassed over, that someone IRL discovered, that you’re disgusted with because you didn’t know better back then… there are lots of reasons why people delete and I ultimately can’t fault them for that. I think the reasons why people delete stem more from problems in fandom culture at large—trolling, legal issues, lack of positive feedback, cancel culture, etc.—than anything the author has or has not personally done, and since such work is meant to be a part of an enjoyable hobby… I can’t rightly tell anyone to shoulder those problems, problems they can’t solve themselves, just for the sake of mine or others’ enjoyment. The reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is because I was discussing Attack on Titan and how much I dislike the source material now, resulting in a very uncomfortable relationship with the fics I wrote a few years back. I’ve personally decided to keep them up and that’s largely because some have received fantastic feedback and I’m aware of how it will hurt those still in the fandom if I take them down. So if a positive experience is the cornerstone of me keeping fics up, I can only assume that negative experiences would likewise been the cornerstone of taking them down. And if getting rid of that fic helps your mental health, or solves a bullying problem, or just makes you happier… that, to me, is always more important than the fic itself.

But, of course, it’s still devastating for everyone who loses the work, which is why my compromise-y answer is to embrace options like AO3’s phenomenal orphaning policy. That’s a fantastic middle ground between saving fanworks and allowing authors to distances themselves from them. I’ve also gotten a lot more proactive about saving the works I want to have around in the future. Regardless of whether we agree with deleting works or not, the reality is we do live in a world where it happens, so best to take action on our own to save what we want to keep around. Though I respect an author’s right to delete, I also respect the reader’s right to maintain access to the work, once published, in whatever way they can. That's probably my real answer here: authors have their rights, but readers have their rights too, so if you decide to publish in the first place, be aware that these rights might, at some point, clash. I download all my favorite fics to Calibre and, when I’m earning more money (lol) I hope to print and bind many for my personal library. I’m also willing to re-share fic if others are looking for them, in order to celebrate the author’s work even if they no longer want anything to do with it. Not fanfiction in this case, but one of my fondest memories was being really into Phantom of the Opera as a kid and wanting, oh so desperately, to read Susan Kay’s Phantom. Problem was, it was out of print at the time, not available at my library, and this was before the age of popping online and finding a used copy. For all intents and purposes, based on my personal situation, this was a case of a book just disappearing from the world. So when an old fandom mom on the message boards I frequented offered to type her copy up chapter by chapter and share it with me, you can only imagine how overjoyed I was. Idk what her own situation was that something like scanning wouldn’t work, but the point is she spent months helping a fandom kid she barely knew simply because a story had resonated with her and she wanted to share it. That shit is powerful!

So if someone wants to delete—if that’s something they need right now—I believe that is, ultimately, their decision… but please try your hardest to remember that the art you put out into the world is having an impact and people will absolutely miss it when it’s gone. Often to the point of doing everything they can to put it back out into the world even if you decide to take it out. Hold onto that feeling. The love you have for your favorite fic, fanart, meta, whatever it is? Someone else has that for your work too. I guarantee it.

So take things down as needed, but for the love of everything keep copies for yourself. You may very well want to give it back to the world someday.

[callmearcturus]

the fucking problem with nintendo and why you absolutely should pirate from them is this

lets say you want to play earthbound. hell, you are willing to pay money to play earthbound. you would like to own this game.

well you can get it exclusively two places: the 3DS eshop or the SNES Classic

unfortunately the SNES Classic is widely sold out. there isn’t one for purchase with 100 miles of my location. you could get it used on ebay but that’s not actually paying Nintendo. the original creators will not see a dime of that.

so the only other way is to buy a 3DS/2DSXL, which will run your at least a hundred dollars but probably more, and then buy it digitally for 10$ through that eshop.

wait, why isn’t it on the switch? after all, nintendo switch online provides a library of games for you to play!

well the library isn’t static, it changes every month or so, with some games leaving and some new ones appearing, but at any given time, you’ll have 3 kirby games, a zelda game, four mario games, and star fox.

do you want to play anything outside of that? well gee golly, the thing is nintendo absolutely can do that, they have the ability, it would frankly be easy..... but they aren’t gonna.

why?

because.... i actually don’t know. a lot of people speculate on why. if you missed it, a few years ago, before Switch Online was announced, nintendo sued a lot of ROM sharing sites to get them taken down and collect damages on the downloads. at that time, the games journalism sphere speculated “oh that fucking sucks but maybe that means Switch Online will finally give us access to the back catalog for a monthly fee. that’d be great!”

so you can play mario now if you want. that’s about it.

i do not know why nintendo is like this. i don’t know why they simultaneously place immense value on their work (how DARE you pirate their games) but also place zero value on their work (uuuugh you want to like buy an OLD GAME? why. no) but it’s frankly horseshit.

also i use the example of earthbound to show just how much you have to pay to play one fucking game that they HAVE, that is EASY for them to make accessible to you, that they CHOOSE not to. but what about more obscure games? did you ever hear of ardy lightfoot? no? well its a game i played as a child for literally weeks. i was never good enough to finish the game bc i was a kid, but i’ve always wanted to play it again.

i can’t, bc it’s not part of the CLASSIQUES and so nintendo will never make it available, even though we literally know from reporting they have all these games ready to go anytime.

and that is why its moral and right to pirate from fuckign nintendo. because they helped forge the history of gaming, but they don’t give a shit to preserve it in any way, so we have to do it ourselves.

[anjalena123]

Profit Mate Review 2021.. Build an email list in 42 seconds

Profit Mate Review 2021 = Introduction If you're trapped in this extraordinary age, being quarantined or stagnant with social isolation, losing employment or getting tired of endless bills, it's time for you to think out of the box and start a versatile company. Of course, there's nothing more agile and productive than online business, the ideal option to start making money without leaving home. If you want to set up an online company, but you don't have any clients, and you don't know where to find those customers, then you've come to the right location. I truly appreciate the strain, and I'm trying to assist you with the launch of an awesome app to transform the conditions, which is Profit Mate. It is no wonder that Internet Marketing (IM) has brought some excellent advantages relative to other ways of earning profits. It helps you to work on a flexible basis (so that you can be with your wife and kids anytime you need to) and finish your job anywhere you choose (as long as your laptop has Internet access). Particularly now that the pandemic creates such chaotic results on Earth, you can easily create your own IM company while socialising and staying healthy.

Being mindful of these fantastic benefits, more and more consumers are entering the online market, making it much more lucrative than they were years before. But there's nothing to do with it, it's only a matter of time for the market to get crowded. The only thing that matters here is whether your company is strong enough to battle the highly competitive market, or whether it will quickly be out of date and removed from the competition.

To remain strong amid the rivalry and not to be omitted by all the other vendors, your company really needs this hidden tool that I've been investigating lately. This machine’s called Profit Mate. The name is quite self-explanatory as it will be your great friend to make easy commissions. I will show you more interesting information in the next parts of this review. Profit Mate Review 2021= OverView Creator

Brendan Mace

Product

Profit Mate

Launch Date

2021-Feb-24

Launch Time

09:00 EDT

Front-End Price

$16.93  

Bonus

Yes, Huge Bonus

Skill

All Level

Guarantee

30 days money back guarantee

Niche

Software

Support

Еffесtіvе Rеѕроnѕе

Recommend

Highly Recommend!

Profit Mate Review 2021=What does Profit Mate Mean? Profit Mate is a cloud-based software that helps you quickly create an infinite email list from the internet in 42 seconds? All you need to do is check for "some keyword" & Profit Mate will instantly create a profit list. Would it sound very unlikely for you? Join me to see how true and beautiful it is!

Or

Profit Mate is the amazing app that automatically collects up to 1,000’s of leads from “Contact Us” pages on the internet. The system also includes offers to present to newly generated contacts.

Without a doubt, this can be the future of Internet Marketing that you can stand the chance to reach your customers easily at a very short notice.

Profit Mate Review 2021=Features and Benefit There are a number of features and a lot of benefits with Profit Mate that I've mentioned a couple of them below:

Instantly producing 1,000 lead

Connect to leads right away through social media sites or email campaigns

Share campaigns directly on social media sites

Build email templates to contact the lead

Allows you to directly threaten website owners on the grounds of their own This may sound too good to be true, but the fact is within half an hour, you will get results without websites, autoresponders or tech things. Even if you start from scratch, this approach is designed to build a shortcut to success.

Imagine the same tech that produces huge passive income every day within 30 minutes of accessing the member's area. Profit Mate makes things possible for someone to get started with as little as 10 minutes from now, and you're not making something from scratch, you're immediately producing leads on demand, and delivering it to the "top offer."

Profit Mate will only take you 5-10 minutes to set up. When you've got it rolling, you should leave it in the background.

With the automation attached to it, you will waste too much time on something else and also collecting commissions from this wonderful computer.

You are collecting leads from the “Contact Us” pages on Google for any topic, which means you are just legally reaching out to people via contact data they have offered you, the app just automates it.

And the best part… this is 100% legal, and nobody can stop you from doing it over and over.

This technique has been embraced by several gurus for years and is now undergoing final review by beta users of the Profit Mate software. You don't have to think about whether the app will really work. A lot of people have made money out of it for such a long time. Profit Mate Review 2021= How to use Profit Mate ? Well, this is the crucial issue.

Not everybody is going to use Profit Mate in the same manner.

And if you're new to internet marketing...

...you will not know whether to advertise or how to get in touch with leads. As far as I can see, there are three key ways to make use of Profit Mate:   

    Selling Services To Local Businesses

CPA     Marketing

Affiliate     Marketing

The most difficut part of Profit Mate is finding the right keywords.

After all, you don’t want to sell services to those selling the services you’re offering.

So, in my bonus I will show you how to go after the right audience.

As I already mentioned above, Profit Mate is simple but work as a charm. Let’s me breakdown how it works so that you can understand why I can say so:

First of all, it downloads “contacts” in any niche from the “contact us” page of any search keyword on Google.

All you need to do is put in your "target" and click "Search Now!" Take, for example, the keyword "Dog Training." Then Profit Mate searches the internet and discovers all the website operators of the "Dog Training" affiliated pages.

In other words, you are immediately bringing together a list of heavily selected future clients to deliver your preference. All in "seconds" from the GO news. See more info in the section below part of my article.                                    Profit Mate Review 2021= My Personal using experience It has been mentioned on a daily basis that data is the future of our planet. And thankfully, data is the biggest component of what you will get from Profit Mate. It's real that people pay a costly price to dig into the data field. That's why I'd deem Profit Mate to be the No.1 option for newbies. With Profit Mate, you just need to pay once for leads that are categorised into separate niches, which effectively ensures that you will run tailored campaigns so as not to spend time on something else.

In comparison, this Profit Mate is working on an autopilot. No additional activities will be involved in designing, customising, or "secret" pages. You have removed all the hard work and are free to spend more time with loved ones. I’ve tried this software as a tester recently. I’m going to instruct you how to use this amazingly handy machine and make the most honest review for you.

Finally, given the fact that the system is really convenient to users of all level, you will never believe how much it costs to grab one copy of the offer.

Let’s see the price in the next part of this review!

Profit Mate Review 2021= Price and Evaluation You just need to pay $16.93 to get access to this exclusive software that turns "Searches" into "Email Lists" on request. This discount offer is only available in a very short period, and this is your precious opportunity to hop on!

The FE offer of Profit Mate is set on a dime sale, which means the price will increase per sale. If you are interested in this product or find it useful for your business, just go ahead and take it right now! OTO 1: PLATINUM EDITION ($67)

Comes with UNLIMITED EVERYTHING as well as way more features.

OTO 2: DONE FOR YOU LEADS IN THE BEST NICHES ($197)

Get monthly campaigns from us for life. This is a “one time” payment with no recurring fees whatsoever.

OTO 3: DONE FOR YOU CAMPAIGNS ALREADY COMPLETED ($97)

Everything all set up and good to go for easy profits.

OTO 4: DONE FOR YOU API INTEGRATION ($77)

We are going to allow 100 people siphon the traffic directly from our sales pages. An excellent investment…

OTO 5: UNLIMITED TRAFFIC ($197)

License Rights: 100% commissions on the entire funnel.

Profit Mate Review 2021= Which person should buy this? Affiliate

Online Marketer

ECom Store Owner

Agency

Freelancer

Designer

Website Developer

Content Creator

Blogger Profit Mate Review 2021= Pros and Cons of Profit Mate

Pros Cloud-Based App – nothing to install or download, access from any device

Fully-fledged, online business solution!

  100% newbie-friendly cloud app!

 It’s all there… 100% automated

Turning those leads into sales

If you set up your Profit Mate, and don’t make at least $100-$1,000 in your first 3 days, then we will give you back double your investment. 

Simple but efficient

Perfect to start your business

It can pretty much guarantee you’re as excited as we are right now… 

Setup is fast and can be in as little as 10 minutes

You don’t need ARs, websites, other softwares, etc

You are “shortcutting” lead generation

This is 100% legal and safe

Cons Right now , There is no cons Profit Mate Review 2021= Conclusion

Profit Mate is, without a doubt, a perfect tool for you right now. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leap straight into this gold mine and raise some money on the contributions of others from their traffic to their goods when you don't have to do any hard work at all! I highly recommend this product and you never have to think twice about purchasing it. REMEMBER! If you purchase through my link, you will be supported 24/7; That means you can contact me ANYTIME when you get trouble in using or can not contact with the authors/ product supporters. I will help you RIGHT AWAY!

This is the end of my Profit Mate Review. I hope that my article will lend you a hand in choosing the right tool for your business.

Well, I bet that you want to own this product now. So, click the sales button now before the price goes up.

Lastly, if you like this product, comment below and let me know!

-DISCLOSURE- I am affiliated, but not sponsored by any product featured in this article. The links in the article are my affiliate links which means if you click on one of them and buy the product I’ll receive a small commission. Not being sponsored allows me to keep my own opinions and provide product reviews without bias. From the millions of products, I pick the ones I personally have tested and have been highly impressed which I’ll then recommend. This is how I feed my family by making honest and useful reviews so that you can make informed buying decisions. I appreciate your support.

[readyplayerhobi]

Flower | 01

; Hoseok x Reader

; Genre: Fluff, future angst, future smut

; Word Count: 2.8k

; Synopsis: You finally decide to take a dip into the world of online dating and find the Flower dating app. One of the top matches for you proves to be a guy who looks to be your complete opposite; tattooed, pierced, a metalhead and oh...incredibly handsome. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and reach out to him?

; A/N: This is going to be a drabble series. It’s not planned out, it has no planning. It will be written as and when I get the inspiration for it. The Flower app is inspired by the Bumble app in which women make the first move on it. This is just purely something to try and get me back into enjoying writing again so...please show it and me some love because I already love this Hoseok? I haven’t proof read lol

Flower Masterpost

“Okay...okay. Let’s do this...you can do this. It’s easy. Just...download the app and go. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? Well you could get murdered. That would suck. But it would resolve a lot of issues I guess. On the other hand...I could meet the love of my life. I mean...is that likely?” The soft sounds of your muttering are probably barely heard over the soft playing music through the speakers connected to your television, YouTube playing mindlessly to itself on the screen.

Your focus though, is solely on the phone in your hand. Soyeon, your best friend, had been bugging you to join some online dating sites for a while and it had only gotten worse when your other friend Chungha told her that she fully agreed with her. Part of you felt cornered by them both but another part of you understood them.

They were just looking out for you. You were naturally quiet and shy, introverted and preferring to remain inside or on the sides if you were dragged to a party. An inability to engage in small talk meant that that you struggled to make conversation with people as well. That all resulted in a small circle of friends who understood you well but that was it, everyone else was merely acquaintances who would hang out with you simply because they were friends with your friends.

As such, it meant that you struggled with dating. And by that, you mean that you hadn’t been in a relationship for a long time. Nor could you do flings like some of your friends did, the very thought filled you with anxiety.

This was why they had suggested trying online dating, because you’d lamented to them about how lonely you’d started to feel. You were still relatively young, and you knew that relationships weren’t the be all and end all. But when you haven’t dated since college, it starts to feel like no one is interested in you at all. And that was a hard feeling to take in.

You wanted to be like your friends. To have someone to talk to about things without feeling embarrassed, someone who would enjoy being in your company and actively seek you out, someone to be intimate with. Someone to fall in love with. It sounded cheesy and stupid but both Soyeon and Chungha had taken your concerns to heart.

They’d asked if you wanted to be set up on blind dates but the very idea of that made you lose your breath with anxiety, the fear of failure or judgement from someone who has never met you before overwhelming. So Soyeon had suggested online dating and now here you were, curled up on your couch on a Saturday night, a glass of water on the side because you don’t like alcohol and the app store open to dating apps.

“Tinder...isn’t that just for hookups?” You murmur, frowning as you look at some of the reviews. There were probably people who had managed to get lasting relationships on Tinder, but the idea of having random people actively deciding whether or not you were worth trying simply from a photo or something was horrible. Not that you had any idea how it actually worked, but still…

A few other apps look to be the more traditional online dating route and you consider whether to download one of them. But then you see an app that attracts your attention, a small soft pink and orange logo with the outline of a white flower in it. The title is simply ‘Flower’ and you take click on it to read the description.

‘Find the perfect partner and watch love or friendship bloom like a flower! 

The Flower app asks you to set up a profile by asking you a series of questions to determine your interests and personality. We then set you up with a series of people we consider to be a good match and give you the opportunity to initiate a conversation!

Here at Flower, we want to make sure that dating is fun and most importantly, equal. As such, we allow women to be the one to initiate contact with their matches. This means that if you’re looking for a same sex relationship, then you can both reach out. The same goes if you don’t identify as female or male. If you’re looking for a heterosexual relationship, then you can reach out to your match and he can decide whether he wants to respond. 

We don’t tolerate any form of hate speech or intolerance and will respond with quick action against this. At Flower, we promote inclusivity, diversity and tolerance. We want the world to grow and bloom with love, one relationship at a time!’

The reviews for the app seemed to back up their description and you felt curious. An impulse takes over and you download it, tongue sticking out as you wait before loading it up once it’s done. The interface is clean and take a moment to chew your lip before clicking the sign up button.

Everything seems to be rudimentary at first, asking for your age and location, name and occupation. But then it starts to ask some other questions. Your favourite film genres, a list of favourite films, your favourite books, where you’d like to go on vacation, favourite music and songs and so much more. Some of it felt bizarre, like would you rather eat chicken or beef? Would you rather drive an Audi or a Ford?

You presumed it all had a reason though, and after what felt like five minutes of answering questions, you finally had a profile. Flicking through the gallery on your phone, you found a picture that you felt was flattering while still showing your personality. It’s from a few months ago and was taken with a Polaroid camera, giving it that distinctive filter that always seemed to be flattering everyone.

You were giving a small smile, eyes looking to the left of the camera while your chin was in your hand. Nose wrinkled slightly, a soft and fluffy white cream sweater covers you while a cherry blossom scarf is wrapped elegantly round your neck. And on top of all that...a bright yellow Pikachu hat sits on top of your head.

It had been your birthday and the girls had managed to coax you out for dinner before presenting you with a bunch of presents. They’d been a random assortment, as usual, but you’d loved it all. A skin care gift set, the Pikachu hat and a Pusheen stationery set. Your colleagues at your admin assistant job had given you the side eye when you’d added yet more cute and strange things to your already colourful and cluttered desk but you’d ignore them.

This picture had been one of the best taken of you recently and you smiled gently as you made it your profile picture. You didn’t like being photographed, constantly convinced that you were unattractive but your friends were convinced otherwise.

Everything looked to be set up and you wondered what you meant to do now, when a sudden notification pops up on the screen with ‘20 Matches Found’. Sudden anxiety makes you feel sick, stomach rolling with nerves as your veins practically fizz as you click on the view more button. These were people who the app had compared your own answers to and considered to be the best matches.

There’s a tiny moment of waiting as a tiny flower in orange and pink blooms and you sigh when it finally clears. The profiles are shown in descending order with those most matched to least. A tiny refresh button in the corner let’s you see that you can refresh your matches if necessary.

Each profile shows their profile image, their name, age and location. Scrolling through them, you note idly that you seem to have got a wide range of people that you had matched with. A 24-year-old swimming instructor named Kim Chaeyoung, a 31-year-old high school English teacher named Seo Jinwoo, a 29-year-old mechanic called Park Jisoo and more.

It was interesting to see the wide range of people that had come back and you perused their profiles carefully, reading the little description they’d written for themselves along with a few answers to questions similar to what you’d had to answer. The app seemed to pull a range range of questions for you read, with each person’s being slightly different.

You supposed it meant that you would need to ask for that information and you found yourself curious about one or two people, pressing the little button that indicated it would bookmark their profile for later viewing. Apparently you had a week to make the first interaction before it would vanish.

Humming lightly, you wondered if anyone would be interested in talking to you? 

Everyone looked so pretty on here and you wondered if you matched up to them. Would they consider you worth their time? Biting your lower lip, you shrug your shoulders and decided you had nothing to lose really. You didn’t know these people in real life and no one would laugh at you for simply reaching out and trying to make a connection.

You come across one profile that makes you pause though, your brow lifting in surprise as you wonder why on earth the app has matched you with this guy. The two of you don’t even look like you come from the same planet, nevermind have enough aligning interests to warrant being in your top 20 matches at the moment.

Clicking on his profile, you read through his basic info question while you purse your lips, making soft noises in your throat.

Jung Hoseok. 28 years old. IT Technician. 

He sounded pretty normal and you wouldn’t even give it a second thought normally, but his appearance did not match the casual job description he had. Maybe you were just being stereotypical here, but most of the IT people in your workplace were of the nerdy looking variety. And you only say that because every one of them wore some form of Rick and Morty or other pop culture shirts.

Which you were fine with, because you enjoyed most of the same things too. But no one looked like this guy.

The reason you were so surprised was because of his profile picture, and despite your earlier thoughts about just sending messages to everyone for the sake of it, you felt a well of anxiety rising again as you looked at him. This guy is quite possibly the most handsome man you’ve ever seen, the kind of guy that people only think exists when they’re rich and famous.

But he’s also completely unlike you. He’s evidently at some sort of event as he has a bottle of beer in his hand while his other hand is making the metal horns shape. One eye is closed to camera, winking while his tongue is poking out of his mouth on one side, white teeth visible beneath pink lips amidst gold skin. A silver ring pierced his lower lip on the right while a small ball is visible in his tongue.

His hair is jet black, gleaming in the crappy lighting in a messy state that looks slightly wet while his exposed skin has a sheen of sweat on it. A red and black shirt unbuttoned on him, rolled up to his elbows to reveal toned forearms that are completely covered in vibrant and bright colour.

The tattoos make what you presume to be full sleeves on both arms, his left arm appearing to be a swirling galaxyscape with brilliant galaxies, planets, moons and more interwoven with, bizarrely, dragons that are almost transparent. They look beautiful though, and you get an image of space dragons made of fine dust flying through the vast expanse of space as you look at them.

His other arm looks to be a mesh of things together, flames and flowers and skulls and ships. None of it makes any sense to you, but you’re positive it probably means something to him. One of the sleeves expands onto his hand, the one showing the horns and you eye the clock tattoo that takes up the space.

His tattoos look to expand beyond his arms as the black top beneath his shirt gives tantalising glimpses of the black and colour tattoos that obviously sprawl across his chest. Strands creep upwards, almost to his neck and you get the impression of something fiery, the soft wisps of red and orange looking like burning embers on his skin.

This guy...looked like he belonged in a metal band or tattoo shop. And he was...beautiful, way out of your league. 

Which was why you had to have experienced an out of body moment when your finger presses the message button, the screen popping up with an automatic message pre filled out for you.

“Hey, Flower shows that we’re good matches so I’m reaching out to you! If you would like to talk to me, please respond!”

Scowling, you deleted the message, deciding it would be bad manners to just send the template message to someone that you were attracted to. That thought gives you pause, acknowledging that you are in fact attracted to him. He looked like the kind of guy who would take one look at your profile and laugh himself home at the prospect of doing anything with you.

The man clearly thrived on social situations, enough of his profile gave that away and again you wondered why the app matched you together. Maybe he had some secret love of Pokemon or something. Looks could be deceiving, obviously.

And even if you’d never listened to a metal song in your life...you were always open to trying new things. If you were going to open yourself up to the prospect of online dating, then you may as well go fully out of comfort zone.

Swallowing, you carefully type out a short message and spend the next five minutes reading it over as anxiety and fear swirl within you. Indecision causes you to wonder whether you should just delete it all and ignore his profile, going for the safe option of someone who looks like they’d be more accepting of you on your list.

But the allure of something so unlike you pulls you in and you press send, watching the message swoosh away and changing his profile to a soft pink to indicate that you’d initiated contact. Almost immediately you feel sick, body going cold as you pant ever so slightly.

Oh god, he’s going to read that message and take one look at your profile then delete the message. He probably had hookups all the time, the kind of guy you shouldn’t get involved with. You had no interest in being a one night stand and- you shake your head, clenching your teeth and taking a deep breath.

Stereotypes are damaging to yourself and others, you tell yourself quietly. There’s no reason to paint him with a negative brush already when he’s not even had a chance to do anything. And so what if he only wanted hookups? It was the 21st century, men and women could sleep with who they wanted, as often as they wanted and they shouldn’t face the prejudice you’re showing him already.

Before you can even think anything else though, your phone sends out a soft, melodic note and you look down with wide eyes. The message icon has an orange notification on it, signifying that you have a new message on there. Hesitating, you wonder if it’s just one of those generic ‘welcome’ messages that you sometimes get when you sign up for sites.

But the name of the sender tells you very much that it’s not a generic message, and the cold fear mixes with nervous excitement and trepidation as you see Jung Hoseok’s name. He must have already been on his phone to have responded so fast, and you wonder if he’s just sent a polite ‘thank you but no’ back.

It would be awfully nice of him if he did. Embarrassing, but polite.

Opening the message, your jaw drops and eyes widen as you read what he’s responded with.

You: Hi. I don’t know how to use this properly, so I’m sorry if I do it wrong. You showed as a match and...well I guess I say I’m interested? Not as a friend, unless you want that. I mean...the other way. Feel free to say no! Y/N

Reading it back over, you cringe at how...you it sounds. Hesitant and awkward and shy. Dammit, why couldn’t you just seize the moment and sound confident for once? Say something bold that would attract his attention.

And then you read his response.

Hoseok: Hey Y/N. Thanks for reaching out. How are you tonight?

[pear-pies]

Wom Journal - Oct 2000

(really, really awful google translate of the OCR scanned text below the cut)

The desires of Brian

More serious topics, healthier lifestyle more

                                 Responsibility hopes to satisfy her third album

                                            PLACEBO their greed for change

As a placebo in 1996 with their Seat        but on the English Musitnar they offered the dazzling alternative ill de inogenic bands of Brit pop. Yours Guitar rock that was clearly ambiguous tare .. Frontman Brian Molko and the urge ZtegülnICKee they turned around self-shielding lings of the music press Provocative sayings dent 'former drama student Molka about the cast Lippert. Times he sold Sex monster, sometimes he flirted with his consumption. Placebos self-destruct trip - Frustration and emptiness that the band Asii at dee, attended their second AlburnWITHOUTIfretVM Accompanied NOTHING    "We milked our music like Cow. "Molko leans on the Hoteldnigl his voice is deep his americans ground despite the many years in Londortjkrbeai We are months with the songs about the Globilige * tours. Then when we went to the studio then a bunch of new pieces about ddlniibentAtni                                        .1 + interest in wincler's own music                                     , .. " wake up. "It took nine months for Placebo'.fQr third baby BLACK MARKET MUSIC. Instead of that. A superstar producer's ego below the band produced together with Patti Coikeft for the first time itself. Never before has it unlike trio so easy Record songs. Fun and friend- determined the studio atmosphere sphere. The one they usually take care of Rock 'n' roll lifestyle was behind the Music back "Today we are focused more, our music enjoys the first Priority, "says Brian Molko." Body It will also be more strenuous shortly before the opening we celebrated like in 1997. After that I couldn't move for three days was the slogan for the studio: the party is over. Henceforth health food diet "    This time placebo were on the “collaboration trip, "says Molko. On the electronic rock single" Taste In Men "Caroline Finch from the Brit band Ling- leum the BacIdngvocaLs. Rob Ellis, drummer from PJ Harvey, arranged the strings on the hidden. Track "Black Market Blood". And for that probably The most piercing piece of "Spite & Malice" filled the friend

                 Placebo singer 1341

                                         itannitdti.dat word Oh

                                            vet gold mine "we were                                             like a hiba red,                                             Film and am Hest * eiäältill dw                                             But people are so.                                             When we started, wielanges wore                                          we Guth. Then we became the Glani.Bend But:                                         mine is a movie, and placebo is that rea * lebeg,

US rapper Justin Warfield chanted the chorus. The approach to the US market is no coincidence. Was at the debut Sex d. I% Mai balm second                                                                   Obilia11 which the Ban '                                             , to Aid SLACK MARKET MUSIC                                                                 arctic american themes iep                                                 .. 'itch placebo 2000 with political: ii •                                                 MA (jipite & Malice "), the American pop                                                 'Dissen of the parents ("Blackeyed") and init;                                                                     ,                                             ! racism, ("hemoglobin"). "We lik ''                                                 always oppose any form of prejudice. ,,                                                 globin 'is our version of Billie Holidays                                                 b.,,,                                                 fruit of old jazz from the fifties .2                                                 some strange fruit in the southern states                                                 sees dangling .. black people,                                                                                    .- ..;                                                 hangs whales. '"                                                     There is also on BLACK MARKET                                                 Placebo-typical love songs. But there are:                                                 telling and the characters that ie in the songs                                                 ebidergr Lind. "This is a natural Enrid. C3,21                                                                                           3rd,                                                     BOnpritings. If you go to 30                                                 jit you more on what's happening in the world                                                : 'biletideitständig busy with yourself. Nap                                                 . make tin * nigh flitch angry. '., Ic

                                                            Minden, healed in the lyrics                                                 to zt4Inpatiev1isen degrees around myself '!                                                 • With BLACK MARKET MUSIC you have placeh                                                 various phases of self-experimentation                                                 Reliance level reached. Even if the complete •                                                 HUG of samples now live a backup key                                                 Molko leaves no need for it                                                 that their development is only successful                                                 well the badd of the synergy of the triangle, p,                                                 i, placebo works like a triangle. On.                                                 So it will never be even more than                                                 give. "KATJA 'SC

An offer, the role of Judas Priest in You refused to play "Metal God". I got the Hollywood script for a film with Jennifer Aniston and Marky Mark. At first I thought: Wow, this is Holly- wood! When I got to the second page of the script I said: No, • we are not rent-a-band for film bizz!

With the album title BLACK MARKET MUSIC associ is forbidden. Music on the black market is also a popular topic. The album title takes up what is currently on Napster and MP3 expires, the black market of the 21st century. It is attractive, something To have illegal things that are only available under the counter. But it is illegal if our album is in the Download the Internet from unauthorized sites. About it you no longer in control. It is not fair by an artist too expect him to work for nothing. Nobody works for free. Artists bear responsibility like everyone else. We want not living poor as Van Gogh. The artist life becomes novel represented by people. the hard work, the band brings with it, do not appreciate. It would be to these people no matter if we are hungry or unemployed.

As band members you all have a very different background. What welds you together?

We have the same ideas, the same goals, what we do with placebo want. We like the same drinks, vodka red bull in large Amounts. We all grew up with the feeling that to be more. That made us extremely independent individuals, and that's probably the bond that connects us.

You worked with David Bowie. Do you look at him like fans, or is it now? a friendship? It's definitely friendship. Placebo and Mr. Bowie have mutual respect for each other. Uncle Dave supported us before we even recorded the first album. With the Friendship has grown through time and tours, until it finally worked on "Without You I'm Nothing" came. It is indescribable when David Bowie calls you and asks: "Can I sing on your song?" And then it's natural incredible when this legend sings fin studio to your music. An absolute fulfillment for me.

It was probably a fulfillment. not meet for Calvin Klein lit placebo To take photos; which then biered in Prussia have never been published. ekuelleAmeri- Wasn't your butt 'Eärian Molko pretty enough? eg • qpitarrist, 27), My butt not pretty enough? You psexuals wanted me without makeup and in. ". ch de Stefan Olsclairriiirsist, 26) and oversized men's clothing images lietmovDirrnellsr nri H4witt I wanted to wear a skirt. Drummeh 21M out of the way. Molko and I didn't manipulate myself, A 5 first demos, leave as they would have liked. Her, Mtt acted as an alcikushilfsdrummer. The photos are then different from ChEm 1996 forth from their self-titled when she imagined it to be a Mairrer, D, LaPel, this time ben But at least I was able to use Robert Schultzlscrich * drums. Keep clothes. melee ii Jain luckid1 as she as                                             - -stifle tour ein.Hewitt                                                        ,.> ,, A5A'A •                                            came back to Drumm-lei Piacr? bo. About your buddy Marilyn ilf AnIriJrie VC'n Michgel Slkpe (REM.) You once corsored Manson, irk Dire Siind im says: "Marilyn makes the" Velrict Golf stefan". best blowjob. "Personal. cl: s yen steve orsbeirme: produ- • Experience with it? ricrte album l.'JlITHOkik 'irk!) I'M NO- Yes, but that's not exactly true. I flIflG 1999 it ii ilern theme song have never said that Marilyn makes the best DMett Florrvie again. With makes a blowjob. I already have the single hEvery 'feu, Every Me "on had better. em soundtrack "Ertl old angels" was     INTERVIEW: KATJA SCHWEMM ERS Placulko still popular in Germany                                            aier, Nettie CD: BLACK MARKET MUSIC.

[localbizlift]

SEO Pack: 21 Worksheets, Templates, and Cheat Sheets

Tired of spending tons of time building SEO spreadsheets, sorting data, and double-checking each step? Getting SEO right requires vast knowledge of data and remembering the hundreds of different steps you need to take to rank well on Google.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. That’s why I’ve gathered this list of 21 different SEO worksheets, templates, and spreadsheets to make your life easier. From tracing organic traffic to writing the perfect blog post, these resources will streamline every step of your SEO process.

1. 220 Profitable Keywords to Get a Flood of Traffic

Struggling to find the right keywords? This template lists over 200 profitable keywords users often search when they are ready to buy.

It’s ideal for e-commerce stores, Google AdWords campaigns, and content marketing.

2. Google Data Studio SEMrush SEO Report template

Google Data Studio is one of my favorite data visualization tools. One of the best things about it is the number of templates available, like this one from SEMrush. 

It outlines overall traffic, including users, bounce rate, pages, and returning visitors, in one easy-to-use dashboard. Plus, like most Data Studio templates, you can easily change the date and adjust the report with a few clicks.

3. Google Data Studio Overall Traffic Report Template

Another asset from Google Data Studio templates shows overall site traffic. It includes a chart to see the change over time and a list of pages to sort using the most or the least traffic stats. You can also adjust the time the report covers with the click of a button. 

4. On-Page SEO Cheat Sheet

Not sure what on-page SEO factors matter the most? This SEO cheat sheet runs through the top five factors impacting page SEO, including mobile-friendliness, crawlability, and content that actually drives traffic. 

This isn’t a quick rundown, either. It dives deep into the small changes affecting each factor.

5. All-In-One Search Console Template

Looking to track or present your Google Search Console results? This Google Data Studio report template from Data Bloo makes it easy to see where you stand in one dashboard. 

The report covers an overview of traffic, the ability to see where you stand for brand versus organic keywords, page rankings, and also allows you to see KPIs for organic search. You can also sort data, change the date, and more.

6. Verify Backlinks Spreadsheet

Backlinks are a core component of SEO. This Excel spreadsheet from SEO Tools for Excel verifies a backlink is present and uses the correct link text. It’s an easy way to make sure your backlinks are doing as much as they can for your site. 

7. Optimal Breakdown of Optimized Landing Page

The perfect landing page can make or break your conversion rate.

Getting it right, however, can be a challenge.

This template outlines the significant features an optimized landing page should have and why.

8. Ubersuggest Keyword Planner Spreadsheet

Need help keeping your keyword planning organized? This Excel spreadsheet (it’s an automatic download, by the way) can help you stay organized and make the most of your research. It makes it easier to track top keywords and includes columns for average search volume, keyword difficulty, search goal value, time to rank, and more. 

It’s the perfect companion using my (free!) tool, Ubersuggest, to dig into keyword research.  

9. SEO Factors Cheat Sheet

More than 200 factors impact Google’s algorithm. Trying to nail all 200 is almost impossible—and it’s also not necessary. The biggest SEO gains come from just a handful of SEO factors.

This cheat sheet walks you through the ten core factors of a fully optimized web page, including titles, headlines, links, and more. Each point includes tips for getting those optimizations right. 

10. SEO Audit Checklist

If the ten factors in the above spreadsheet aren’t enough, this full SEO checklist has you covered. It reviews just about everything you need to do for SEO, from checking your ranking to page title lengths and redirecting errors. 

Even better, it walks you through how to fix any problems.

11. Meta Tag Analyzer SEO Spreadsheet

Are your meta tags driving your SEO or holding you back? This meta tag spreadsheet can help you see which meta tags are doing well and which need tweaking. 

The sheet combines data from Search Console and a Screaming Frog export to find which meta descriptions you should update and why.

12. Content Creation Template

Creating killer content is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your site. What makes content great? This template walks you through how to publish top-tier content with tips for creating great titles, introducing your topic, and other tricks to help your content stand out. 

13. Content Editing Checklist

Do you struggle with self-editing content? This two-page editing checklist helps ensure every piece of content you produce is the best it can be. Tips include replacing complex words, checking reading level (e.g., sixth grade vs. college), and matching content to users’ pain points. 

14. Editorial Calendar Spreadsheet

Creating consistent content is crucial to long-term traffic growth. This Excel spreadsheet should help you stay on track and keep your editorial plan organized. It includes columns for date, topic, author, editor, type of content, CTA, keywords the content targets, and distribution channels. 

15. 6 Free Blog Post Templates

If you’re tired of getting writer’s block when you sit down to write, these templates could help. It includes outlines you can use to create posts like how-to guides, list-based, comparisons, pillar posts, and more. 

Each template includes tips for titles, introductions, and headings to include.

16. Content Gaps Finder

Content gaps refer to topics users are searching for that your site doesn’t currently address. It can also refer to gaps in overall search results.

For example, if tons of people are searching for “best stainless steel dog bowls” but no articles target that key phrase, you can swoop in with a great piece of content and grab all that traffic.

This spreadsheet combines Google Search Console and Search Analytics add-ons to highlight specific topics you can target to drive traffic to your site. 

17. Link Building Search Operators

Finding good backlink opportunities doesn’t have to be a hassle.

This worksheet outlines search parameters you can use in Google searches to find backlink opportunities. For example, use “Keyword + Intitle:contact me” to find the contact information for people who write or post about your core keywords or find guest post opportunities. 

18. Link Building Email Outreach Templates

Link building through outreach is uncomfortable for a lot of people. What do you say? How do you build a connection? How do you avoid saying the wrong thing?

This template sheet from HubSpot goes through all the rules and best practices for building links through email outreach and shares nine email templates you can use to reach out to websites and build links. 

19. 22 Outreach Email Templates

If you’re looking to build relationships with other sites for opportunities like guest posts, broken link building, and networking, these email templates will help you get started. 

I strongly suggest using these templates as a jumping-off point. Add personal details, links, and other information that shows you know who they are and what they do.

20. Improve Organic CTR Spreadsheet

You’ve got fantastic content, you’ve optimized your site, and traffic is starting to pick up. But maybe a few pages are still lagging behind. This spreadsheet will help you locate opportunities to improve click-through rates for organic traffic by finding opportunities to include title tags and meta descriptions. 

21. Local SEO Checklist

Local SEO is crucial to helping brick-and-mortar businesses rank high on search engines. It’s especially important for small to medium-sized companies going up against big-name brands with million-dollar budgets.

The local SEO checklist from MOZ will help ensure your local SEO efforts are paying off. 

SEO Spreadsheets and Templates Frequently Asked Questions

What is an SEO template? 

An SEO template is a spreadsheet or guide that serves as a blueprint for following SEO best practices. It might help you sort keywords, find content opportunities, improve CTR, or find linking opportunities. 

How can SEO templates help my business? 

SEO is complicated. Business owners often don’t have the time to research and build dashboards from scratch. Even marketers who have been in the industry for years spend a good portion of their day researching and learning new things.

Many SEO templates allow you to connect to a data source (like Google Search Console) and automatically import data into an easy-to-use dashboard. This enables you to see where you stand in just a few minutes. 

How can I use Excel to improve my SEO? 

Excel is a powerful SEO tool, but only if you know how to write formulas. It can be used to sort data, add sums, and so much more. If you’re new to using Excel for SEO, I suggest starting here.  

What are the best SEO templates for Google Data Studio? 

I suggest starting with the all-in-one template here. Google Data Studio also has a category of marketing templates here. 

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SEO Spreadsheets and Templates Conclusion

SEO is an ever-changing, ever-evolving field. While that helps keep things interesting, it can also make it a pain to present your findings and remember all the different factors that impact ranking. 

Whether you are just getting started in SEO or are a professional looking to wow your clients or boss, I hope these SEO spreadsheets and templates will make your workday a little easier.

What SEO templates do you use? Are there any I should add to this list?