#who wants to bet they will be at least 75 dollars each if not more

[dolla-dolla-yeah]

In the nicest possible way, what the hell are these

[themadlostgirl]

Not Dead Yet (Part 75)

*Someone’s having an identity crisis!*

Pairing: Reader x Peter Pan

Warning: language

I sat in the sheriff's station. David was on the phone trying to get ahold of my parents while the woman, Emma, explained the situation to me. Storybrooke was not a normal town. It is a town full of story book characters that had all forgotten who they were. A couple months ago the curse broke and everyone regained their memories.

“No, wait, like Henry’s storybook?” I was finding this all too hard to swallow.

“Exactly like his storybook. Everything in it is true.”

“So what am I then? I certainly don’t have any memories of living in an Enchanted Forest.”

“You crossed the town line. Anyone who does loses their memories again and only their cursed selves remain.”

“But...but I’m Marigold. I’m not someone else. I can’t be!”

“Y/N--”

“No! I’m not Y/N!” I buried my face in my hands, “I want to go home.”

“About that…” David came back into the room and gestured for Emma to come closer. He whispered but I could still hear him. “They don’t want her.”

“What?” I felt the tears start to well up. “What do you mean my parents don’t want me?”

“Oh geez,” He sighed, “You have to understand that they’re not your real parents. Turns out they hate kids and each other. Part of Regina’s curse.”

“So what? I just don’t have a family anymore? What am I going to do? Where am I going to stay? I don’t have any friends here!”

“Calm down,” Emma hushed me, “We’ll find a place for you to stay. Come with us back to the hospital. They’ll patch you up and we can keep talking.”

I nodded and we went back to the hospital. David and Mary Margaret watched over me while Emma walked off to do something or another. After I got bandaged David drove me to Granny’s Bed and Breakfast. I was allowed to stay there free of charge until more permanent accommodations could be found.

The next couple of days were hard. I tried to talk to my parents but they wouldn’t hear me. They didn’t care. I was a grown girl, I could take care of myself. At least that’s what they thought. If they weren’t my parents then where were they? Was I an orphan?

I tried not to think about it. With giants running amok and pirates on the loose I was content to sit in my hotel room. Sometimes I would tag along with David, Mary Margaret or even Ruby and Granny. They were kind and patient with me. They didn’t try to force my other life on me and instead let me figure it out in my own time. For now I was perfectly content to be Marigold Barrie, babysitter extraordinaire and human catastrophe.

As strange as this town is it is all I know. I think I could make it a home again.

Having Henry back and babysitting him again was probably the best thing to happen to me since I woke up bruised and bloody on the side of the road. He told me his stories and helped me when something about these shared worlds confused me. It was familiar territory talking to him about this kind of stuff and he loved helping me. He’s such a good kid.

One morning I was taking a walk through town and saw Henry up ahead. I walked up to him and the man he was with.

“Hey dork,” I ruffled Henry’s hair, “Whatcha doing?”

“Practicing my sword fighting.” he held up the wooden sword, “What are you doing out here?”

“Taking a walk.” I glanced at the man behind Henry, “You gonna introduce me to your friend here?”

“Oh right, Marigold, this is my dad, Neal.”

“Nice to meet you.” I smiled but he didn’t smile back. If anything he looked at me like he didn’t know whether to run or stab me with the toy sword.

“Y/N…”

“What?”

“Stay away from her, Henry.” Neal pulled Henry back from me, “You stay the hell away from my son!”

“Okay, what’s going on? Do I know you?”

“I know it’s you, Y/N. What are you doing here?”

“Okay, my name is Marigold. I live here.”

“Stop lying!” he shouted at me.

“Is something wrong here?” Mr. Gold walked over to us. Ms. Mills was next to him.

“I don’t know.” I took a step back towards Ms. Mills. “He flipped out on me for no reason.”

“Oh, I have a reason.” Neal wouldn’t stop glaring at me.

“What has Marigold done to warrant such malice?” Ms. Mills asked.

“Her name isn’t Marigold. It’s Y/N.”

“Well that is her real name, but she doesn’t remember that.” Henry came to my aid. “She accidentally crossed the town line and forgot who she really was.”

Neal looked back at me, “You don’t remember anything? At all?”

“Not a thing.” I shook my head, “But I’m guessing you knew me. What did I do to you?”

“First: does Neverland mean anything to you?”

“Like Tinkerbell and all that?” I shrugged, “I read the book and I liked the movies they made. Otherwise, no.”

“Tigerlily, dreamshade, Felix, Dark Hollow, is any of this ringing a bell?”

“Tigerlily was the Indian princess but for everything else I have no idea.”

“Is Marigold from Neverland?” Henry asked.

“I couldn’t be. There’s only Lost Boys on Neverland.”

“You are though.” Neal looked like he had aged ten years with this conversation, “You were the only Lost Girl the island ever had. Lived there for a long time.”

“So Y/N, or me, was a Lost Girl on Neverland. How did you know me? Were you a Lost Boy?”

“Unofficially. You tried to help me escape once. Didn’t go so well.”

“I guess we know why you can’t find me in your storybook, Henry.” So I did have a life. I know that everyone told me I did but a part of me never truly believed it. But hearing what Neal said stirred something in me. A familiar warmth in my bones.

“Neal, I don’t know what I did to you in the past but that’s not me. Can we start fresh?” I stuck out a hand, “I’m Marigold, it’s nice to meet you.”

He looked down at my hand before grabbing it and giving it a quick shake. “Nice to meet you, Marigold. I’m Neal.”

“So, I see what brings you to Storybrooke.” I smiled at Henry, “Your son’s a great kid. A little more trouble than is worth five dollars an hour but still good.”

“Oh I bet. Considering he tried to blow up a well not too long ago.”

“I’m sorry, you did what?” I gaped at Henry, “What the heck, man? Why were you blowing up a well?”

“I had my reasons.”

“And those reasons, while I’m sure logical to your dumb little eleven year old mind, just cost you our Saturday sundae party.”

“Marigold!”

“Don’t ‘Marigold’ me, mister. Well destroyers don’t deserve chocolate syrup and extra whip cream.”

“Kinda strict, aren’t ya?” Neal raised an eyebrow at me.

“Gotta be. There are rules and we must abide by them. Society would crumble without some way to maintain order.”

“Wow.” he laughed, “The curse really did a number on you. The carefree she-demon that thrived in chaos is now a strict, rule enforcing, babysitter.”

“She-demon...yeah I think I prefer babysitter to that.” Whoever the heck I was before this curse sounds horrible. Why was I so mean? Maybe it was a Lost Girl thing.

After we cleared the air Neal let me stick around with him and Henry. He told me a couple things about my life on Neverland. It all seemed so far fetched but then again the Evil Queen is paying me to watch her adopted son who happens to be the grandson of Snow White, and Prince Charming. Things could be weirder.

They even let me have a turn with the swords. Henry handed me his as Neal showed me how to wield it. Then there’s what happened after he showed me the basics. We started out slow. Blocking hits and the like. Then things got faster. We started moving around the park. A wide smile had crept onto my face as things got more and more energized.

Soon I was on the offensive and Neal was struggling to block my attacks. I let out a laugh that sounded too much like an evil cackle before my vision blurred. I charged him and stabbed the sword right in his gut pushing him to the ground.

I blinked a couple times trying to regain my wits. Neal was on the ground groaning in pain. I dropped the sword like it burned and bent down to help him. “Neal, I am so sorry. I don’t know what that was.”

“Seems your muscle memory is still intact.” he wheezed, “Lucky that was just wood.”

“I am so so so sorry.” my hands were shaking. “Are you okay?”

“Winded and I am definitely gonna have a bruise later but I’m fine. What about you? You’re shaking like a leaf.” We stood up.

“It’s just...while we were dueling something happened to me. I don’t know how to explain it. For a split second it felt like...like I wasn’t in the park. I was somewhere else.”

“What was it like?” he sat me down on the picnic table. “Where were you?”

“It was dark but really warm. Lots of foliage. I swear I could smell smoke, like from a bonfire.” I shook my head, “It’s insane.”

“Has anything like that happened before?” he asked.

“No. Never.” I clutched my arms closer to my body. “Did I just remember something?”

“Maybe.” Neal looked across at Henry. “Hey bud, how about you go and grab Marigold a water bottle.”

“On it.” Henry took off for the convenience store.

“You don’t need to worry about me. It was nothing. I can barely remember it now.” Already the memory or vision or whatever it was was slipping away.

Henry came back with a water bottle and a young woman. “Hi, Henry said you two were spending the day together.” the woman smiled.

“We are.” Neal got up and kissed her cheek.

The woman looked over at me and her eyes went wide for a moment. “Who is this?” she gestured to me.

“Oh right, Tamara this is Marigold. She’s Henry’s babysitter. Marigold, this is my fiancee Tamara.”

“Nice to meet you.” I waved to her.

“Marigold huh?” she nodded scanning me from head to toe. “What story are you from?”

“No clue. Apparently I’m from Neverland though. Weird turn of events learning that was.” I tried to laugh it off but it still made me a bit uncomfortable.

“Neverland? Really?”

“You’ll find everyone from all walks of life around here.” Neal answered.

“Well, as fun as this has been I think I need to be moving on. It was nice meeting you, Tamara. Neal, sorry for stabbing you. And Henry, please try not to blow up anything else.”

“Bye Marigold.” they waved and I continued my walk down the street. I think it’s time for me to reread Peter Pan. Learn a little more about where I came from.

~~~

Tamara drove the van into town and showed her partner, Greg, the pirate trapped inside. They were one step closer to reaching their goal to destroy magic.

“This is good news indeed.” Greg smiled as they closed the trailer door again. “Any other developments?”

“There is one.” Tamara pulled out her phone and showed him a picture of the girl Marigold she had met earlier that day. “Look familiar?”

“It can’t be.” Greg pulled the paper out of his pocket and compared the image to the girl on the screen. “It’s really her?”

“Oh yes.” Tamara waved the phone in victory, “She even said she was from Neverland. The fellas at the Home Office are going to love this.”

(First) (Previous) (Next)

[crowkingwrites]

Battle of the Bands (Ch.5)

Pairing: Robb Stark x Reader, Jon Snow x Reader, Viserys Targaryen x Reader, Ramsay Bolton X Reader

Summary: You just moved into the city for the first tie all by yourself. After you get your dream summer job working for a small magazine, you find yourself in the middle of the city’s rock festival: Battle of the Bands. Local rock bands throughout the city compete to win a record deal that could change their lives. Your job? Get close to them and write about them online.A single girl in the city surrounded by rocker boys during the summertime. What could possibly go wrong?

Words: 2714 // AO3 Link

Chapter One // Chapter Two // Chapter Three // Chapter Four

You stood in line for elephant ear, and the smell of the cinnamon and sugar were teasing you. Every time you stepped closer the smell grew stronger. As if the booth was giving you a preview of what was to come. You watched a teenage couple walk away with their own treat. You wished you were a worse person so you could steal theirs and feel no guilt about it.

Once you reached the front of the booth, you placed your order and within moments you had your own elephant ear in your hands. The dough was the size of a small country. The cinnamon and sugar left your mouth salivating. You tasted it. All of the sweetness melted in your mouth and you wondered why vegetables even existed. Why eat healthy when you could live off of elephant ears?

You heard music from both sides of the festival, but you didn’t feel like going to any concerts with your hands full of dough and sugar. That’s when the idea smacked you in the face.

Renly had spent last year writing about the music and bands. Some gained fame from his writings. But, there was also local food and local artists here as well. Selling their food and art to everyone. They equally sent their time working hard for this festival. They should be known too.

Everywhere around you had different booths filled with either food, art, or a charity or two who wanted to be known. Some had lines, others had one or two people wandering around. You stood in front of another menu staring at the chalk and the impressive handwriting you wouldn’t even try to copy. You ordered something more savory. A chicken parm sandwich warmed your hands and your heart while you ate it. You felt your phone vibrate, but you ignored it. Between bites, you wrote notes and possible questions to ask them later. As you took your last bite, your eyes glazed over two young men hovering next to a homemade lemonade booth.

As you got closer, one of them started to look familiar.

“Y/N? Y/N! Hey! Come here!” Viserys shouted out to you. His hand waved in the air, beckoning you to come to him. Once you reached him, he offered you his lemonade. You sipped it without question. After a big gulp, you cringed and stepped back.

“What is that?!” you exclaimed.

“It’s vodka. Vodka and lemonade.” Viserys chuckled. His friend started to laugh too. You took another look at him and recognized the dark curls, blue eyes, and cocky smile.

“You’re that guy. The Bastard guy.” You told him.

“Bastard guy,” Viserys chuckled. His friend pushed him.

“It’s Ramsay. I’m not a real bastard,” Ramsay explained. Viserys snorted and took another sip of his alcoholic concoction. “Some people claim I’m a bastard. I just think I’m an asshole.”

“It’s alright. I get along with both bastards and assholes.”

“She does,” Viserys added. He winked and then gave Ramsay a look.

“Wait, is this the girl you told me about?” Ramsay asked, pointing to you.

“What?” You reacted, smiling at Viserys. “You talking about me?”

“I may be talking about you. I told Ramsay I knew the girl he kissed the first night he performed.” Your face turned red.

“So that was you?” Ramsay smiled. After you nodded, Ramsay kept talking. “You’re a good kisser.”

“Thank you,” you smiled to yourself. If someone came to you last summer and told you that you’d be hanging out with two lead singers from rock bands and that you had kissed both of them, you would slap the shit out of that someone. But here you were. Standing in between them like you were the meat of the hottie sandwich.

“So, who are you interviewing today? Someone appropriate for the boss?” Viserys said. You shook your head.

“I told you. He doesn’t tell me what to do. Besides, I’m not interviewing. I’m eating.”

“What? Are you off today?”

“No,” you said. “I’m doing a piece on the fest’s food and art.” You felt your phone vibrate again, and you ignored it again.

“Wait,” Ramsay held his hands up. “You’re gonna spend all day eating and drinking and then write about it?”

“Basically yeah.”

Without another beat, Ramsay nodded his head. “I’m fucking in.”

“Me too,” Viserys quickly said afterward. He nodded his head to the lemonade booth. “They got different flavors here. Some with alcohol, some with actual fruit. You looked at the menu more, enticed by Viserys’ endorsement. The selection between fruit and alcohol and twists on normal lemonade made your decision overwhelming. Until you saw them making frozen strawberry lemonade.

You carried the cold drink in your hands while the boys and you wandered at different booths. The first booth carried homemade soaps and beauty products. The smells of oatmeal, lavender, and mint tickled your nose each time you smelled a different soap. You interviewed the owner who was more than happy to answer any question you had. He gave you and the boys free samples of new products he was going to try.

While you waited with Ramsay, Viserys went to the bathroom after the third alcoholic he had that day. Your phone vibrated again. This time you checked it. Robb’s name showed up. You explained your piece to him and put your phone away.

“He was like this on tour too,” Ramsay commented to you. “Drinking and then pissing. Drinking more. Pissing more. Then he would sing. Then drank and pissed more.”

“Well, at least he’s good at three things,” you shrugged and then laughed with Ramsay. His laughter faded while yours continued.

“You know you’re really cute,” Ramsay said. “I kind of regretted that kiss at first, but I really don’t now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. What about you?”

You hadn’t really thought about it. It was a spontaneous kiss. You thought you would never see him again or know his name. Then again, you felt a pull to him. Like he was something terrible and you wanted more of it no matter how bad it was for you.

“If I had to be honest,” you started. “I think I’d like to kiss you more too.” “We can make that happen,” Ramsay winked. Viserys tucked in his 80s rock shirt into his black pants and sniffed the air as if he smelled something awful.

“What are you guys talking about?” His eyes squinted at both of you until he slid down his sunglasses.

“Nothing. I’m just winning a bet. That’s all.” Ramsay started to walk away without the two of you.

“Wait. What? What bet?” You asked Ramsay.

“The one where Viz thinks he can win you over. He told me about you two making out in the trailer.”

“You told him that?!” you pushed Viserys a bit.

“Yeah I did. I’m sorry, do you not brag to your friends about making out with hot boys?” Viserys said. You frowned at him. Viserys had a good fucking point and there was nothing you could do about it. That bastard. You told Margie about every by you’ve kissed, loved, hated, and punched. You remembered telling Margie about your prom sex and she was thrilled for you.

“Whatever,” you shook your head while laughing. “Too bad both of you have competition.” You thought you heard Viserys make a choking noise.

“What’s that supposed to mean, sweetheart?” Ramsay asked. His face turned from soft to hard.

“It means what it means. You two aren’t the only guys I’ve spent time with. Winning me over won’t be easy,” you shrugged, smiled and kept going, leaving them in the dust.

“It’s your boss isn’t it? I had a feeling he liked you,” Viserys was smart. You’ll give him that, but you didn’t satisfy him with an answer.

“Your boss? You’re a risky one, aren’t you?” Ramsay’s smile tried to hide itself, but you noticed it anyways. You felt a bit dangerous. As if you had Ramsay, Viserys, Jon, and Robb in the palm of your hands. Each of them interested in you. They couldn’t keep up with you. It was a powerful feeling, and a good one.

The day continued. Booth after booth you interviewed artist after artist, merchant after merchant, and even a street performer who was learning how to play with fire. Ramsay, Viserys, and you ate more food together. The sun was setting and your belly was full of empanadas, loaded fries, green tea ice cream, and more lemonade than you ever drank in your life.

Viserys moaned. “I have to go to sound check.” His voice dragged on every single word. His legs sprawled out on the grass. “I don’t want to go.”

“Well if you don’t go, there won’t be a show to go to,” you explained. “I’ll go if you promise to hang with me later,” Viserys winked at you. You rolled your eyes.

“I’ll hang, but don’t poison me like that again.”

“That’s how he is. He makes you three drinks and you don’t remember things,” Ramsay explained.

“I have a feeling that’s happened a lot.” You said as you watched Viserys stand up.

“I still don’t remember what happened on Halloween two years ago,” Ramsay stared off into the distance. “The only thing he’ll tell me is that I spent 75 dollars.”

“On what?” you looked to Viserys who was snickering.

“You don’t wanna know. You think you do, but you don’t.” Without another word, Viserys left you with the bastard alone again. Ramsay shifted closer to you.

“Do you have a show tonight?” you asked Ramsay who was watching his friend walk away into the crowd.

“No, I’m actually off tonight. The rest of the band will probably join us soon actually. We wanted to watch Blackfyre together. Do you wanna come? Or will your boss be mad that you haven’t written anything?”

You laughed. “Why do you and Viserys think that Robb Stark runs my life?”

“Robb Stark is your boss?” Ramsay snorted. “Oh yeah. He definitely runs your life.” Your felt your phone vibrate. As you check it, you caught Ramsay trying to read your messages. You kept your phone to yourself and finished your message before your attention returned to Ramsay.

“He doesn’t run my life.”

“Then who texted you?”

“That’s not relevant.”

“Is it now?” Ramsay challenged. His eyes held a dangerous idea and you were itching to know. “Prove it. Come hang with me tonight and don’t write that article.”

“It’s due tomorrow morning. I have to post it by 7am.”

Ramsay shrugged. “He runs your life.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Then come with me. Drink with me. Kiss me,” Ramsay inched closer to you.

“Are you trying to win the bet?” you asked before truly answering his request.

“I don’t need to win the bet,” Ramsay explained. “I could have you if I wanted to.”

“Oh? How so?” you chuckled. Ramsay’s hand wrapped around you and pulled you closer. His eyes were much bluer than you thought. Here you thought that only angels had blue eyes, then again, the devil was an angel too. His lips parted, and suddenly you felt a thirst you hadn’t felt with Viserys. Ramsay’s finger tucked itself under your chin.

“See? I don’t need to do much. I don’t need this bet. I already have you.”

You wanted to punch him for saying that, but you realized how close you were to him. For the second time today, he was right. He spoke as if his voice was laced with something dangerous. He smoked as if he didn’t care what happened to his body. His eye bags hung so low that you wondered if he ever slept.

“Let’s say I go somewhere with you, what would we do?”

“Are you asking me if we would play it safe or not?”

“I’m asking you what we would do,” you repeated your question. Ramsay shifted his weight and stared over at the main stage.

“I have an idea,” Ramsay smirked.

He did tell you his friends would want to watch the Blackfyre show. What Ramsay did not tell you is that his band had bought a large amount of weed with them. When you finished a smoking session with them, you felt so calm that anxiety was only a word in a dictionary. You could say you felt ‘funny’, but you also felt like yourself only happier. The loaded fries you shared with the bass player melted in your mouth along with the gravy that topped it. You made a mental note to include it in your food article.

Your backstage pass got you onto the stage with Blackfyre with Ramsay and the rest of his band. All of you stood stage left behind the scenes, watching Blackfyre set up their stage for the night. You felt arms wrapped themselves around your waist.

“Oh hello,” you giggled. You weren’t sure if you giggled because of the marijuana you smoked or because Ramsay’s fingers tickled your sides.

“Hello,” his voice purred into your ear. He held you there in that position while you both lost yourselves in listening to the sound check. You knew it wasn’t the actual show, but the random notes that played danced in your head. Ramsay and you tried to make a song out of it, but both of you laughed when Ramsay rhymed ‘stoop’ with ‘poop’.

When Viserys took the stage you perked up excited to finally watch him play. You had moved here from out of state, and everyone told you how good they were. Even Margaery.

The first guitar and drum notes started to play and you watched the audience get pumped up and scream as the first song started to roll out. Viserys started to sing. His dark and deep voice greeted your ears like a mysterious handsome stranger in the night asking to use your phone.

All we know that's time It's slipping from our lives I want to get the truth Hidden in the lies

The guitar swelled and you had the feeling this song would want to make you hack into the government and take them down or at least punch something in the name of anarchy. You started to stare at Viserys more. His tattered shirt showed off his body’s tattoos.

Standing on the stage Bleeding out out youth Create the holy one And sell it back to you

Ramsay’s arms tightened around you. “You like looking at him, huh? What about me?” He was playing a game. You didn’t need to be high to know that, but you did decide to play along.

“You’re hot too, but I think he’s the better kisser.” You shot back. You felt Ramsay squeeze your sides. His hot breath warmed your ear.

“Is that a challenge?”

You turned around and took the risk. Your hands wrapped around his neck. Your lips met his perfectly. You moved against him to see if he was bluffing, he wasn’t. Ramsay opened his mouth to let you in, but quickly took control soon after. His kiss was deep and mesmerizing. You forgot everyone around you and focused on his mouth. Your eyes opened slightly to see Ramsay was looking elsewhere.

You pulled away to see Viserys, still preforming, looking to both of you. His eyes narrowed and an angry frown found his face. Luckily, he was singing an angry song. He screamed into the mic while the mosh pit grew intense.

“You’re trying to make him jealous? Bold.” You commented. Ramsay grabbed your hand and pulled you away from the stage.

“Wanna go somewhere private? We could continue,” Ramsay’s voice trailed off. At that moment, you remembered your last mental note.

“Not tonight,” you winked. You gave Ramsay one last kiss before you left him in the dust. You could hear him calling after you, but you ignored it. A smile formed on your face. As you walked through the crowd, your mind was sobering up from the whole ordeal. You could say you weren’t paying attention or still just high off of Ramsay. You bumped into someone, and when you backed up you felt hairs on your skin rise.

“Where have you been?” Robb asked you. “Why haven’t you answered your phone?”

Note to Self: Answer your damn phone.

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[drlaurynlax]

13 Revealing Signs You Are Overtraining And What to Do About It

Overtraining is a common problem among athletes and weight lifters. Those who are affected manifest symptoms of prolonged fatigue and performance that have decreased or leveled off .

Fitness and regular exercise is a good thing…except when overtraining signs sneak in. Here are 13 silent signs you may be overtraining—and what to do about it.

Overtraining 101

Only about 1 in 5 people get the regular (recommended) amount of exercise every week (approximately 150 minutes of moderate activity each week, or 75-minutes of intense exercise)—and YOU are one of them.  

Working out is like brushing your teeth (a regular part of your routine), and unlike other people who have to force themselves to go to the gym, you genuinely enjoy fitness—at least more than the average person. 

However, as with most things in life, too much of a good thing is not always a good thing—especially when it comes to overtraining (i.e. doing TOO much in the gym).

The result? Lack of progress and fitness gains, and not feeling on top of your A-game! 

The tricky thing? You may not always be aware that the signs of overtraining are actually related to your efforts to be “more fit.”

Are you overtraining? 

13 SILENT SIGNS YOU MAY BE OVERTRAINING 

1. Shortness of Breath

Altered respiratory function is a real sign of stress. While your heart rate and blood pressure can be completely “normal,” many over-trainees describe feeling like they have a “weight” in their chest or like their ability to breathe is constricted. This is typically due to the body’s internal “stress” response systems (“fight or flight”) and as your body’s cortisol levels are thwarted, so is your ability to breath normally (sort of as if you were to run from a bear).

When short or shallow breaths are taken one after the other, it becomes almost impossible to exhale completely, resulting in a buildup of carbon dioxide. This type of shortness of breath becomes cyclical, repeating itself, and is tied in to the release of norepinephrine and epinephrine (“adrenaline”) throughout the body. Adrenaline released when the body is under stress, and stimulate many organs in the body, including the lungs. The more advanced the stress, the more pronounced this can be.

2. Headaches or Brain Fog

A feeling of a cloud “looming” over your head is a completely normal and uncomfortable complaint of individuals in an overtrained state. Similar to the “adrenaline” response that happens when you have shortness of breath, the same thing happens (for your head) as the norepinephrine and epinephrine neurotransmitters are stimulated—more than other neurotransmitters—making you feel like you have a cloudy or foggy brain. Your body is unable to fire neurotransmitters (brain messengers) quite as fast. 

3. General Feeling of Weakness

Fitness is supposed to build you up—not break you down…unless you do too much of it. Consequently, despite putting the time into the gym, you end up declining in strength or plateauing (not gaining). You may even feel lightheaded or dizzy when you stand up, or get out of bed in the morning. This is called orthostatic hypotension.

This occurs when a person’s blood pressure falls when suddenly standing up from a lying or sitting position. It is defined as a fall in systolic blood pressure (the top number on a blood pressure reading) by at least 20 mm Hg or a fall in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number on a blood pressure reading) of at least 10 mm Hg when a person assumes a standing position.

4. Apathy and/or Anxiety

You workout because it’s what you do, but a general mood of apathy or even low mood is present. Overtraining takes a toll on your hormones and your serotonin levels—often times suppressing the chemicals that make you feel good and happy. Since 95% of your serotonin (feel good brain chemicals) are produced in the gut, AND overtraining suppresses stomach acid, it makes total sense!

Anxiety is another common mood people experience as well. Can’t shake the nerves or thoughts in your head—no matter how much deep breathing or positive self talk you do? Feeling “wound up” or “wired” can be a sign of overtraining—wreaking havoc on your “balance.”

5. Low Libido

Speaking of low hormone levels, low libido or sex drive is another norm of overtraining. As cortisol levels impact your sex hormone balance and production, lovey dovey feelings are not on your radar.  

6. Irregular/Lack of Periods OR “Horrible” PMS

Amenorrhea or “lack of period,” irregular periods and hormone imbalances go hand in hand with overtraining. The LAST thing your body wants to do when it is stressed is have a baby (i.e. menstruate), OR “chill out.” It can’t chill out (enter: crazy cravings for chocolate and abdominal cramps leaving you curled up in the fetal position). 

7. Loss of Appetite

Low stomach acid from overtraining drives appetite and hunger cues DOWN. Cortisol also does the same. The (other) LAST thing your body wants to do when it is stressed is digest. 

8. Constipation and/or Bloating

Without enough stomach acid, constipation and bloating are ALSO a given. In addition, elevated cortisol suppresses and slows the process of digestion. Since optimal digestion occurs in a “rest and digest” (parasympathetic) state, if you don’t allow proper recovery for your body, you can bet your bottom dollar that digestive difficulties are a side effect. 

9. Eye & Muscle Twitching 

Muscle twitching is a common side effect from electrolyte imbalances. For nerve impulses to fire properly, there must be an adequate amount of sodium outside your cells and an ample supply of potassium inside the cell. (Sodium and potassium work as opposites).

With overtraining, too much sodium can be lost and too much potassium is retained. Thus, nerve transmission becomes abnormal and sporadic. This can cause muscle spasms and twitches. It also can cause problems like heart palpitations.

10. “Low Blood Sugar” Symptoms or Feeling Hangry Before Meals

Blood sugar feel like it tanks within 2-3 hours of eating? Feel shaky or lightheaded if you go a little too long between meals? Need frequent snacks? Snacks and eating are NOT a bad thing, but if your energy and blood sugar levels are continually riding a roller coaster, then you will feel the symptoms. Since cortisol “craves” sugar and needs glucose to keep fueled, then shortly after meals as blood sugar goes back to normal (but cortisol or stress still remains elevated), then your body will speak (in the form of “hanger”).  

11. Low Resting Heart Rate &/or Blood Pressure

A low heart rate or blood pressure are often praised in fitness world as “gold stars” of fitness. However, too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. As overtraining persists, low blood pressure, at rest or related to posture becomes more prevalent. It’s important to note: unlike high blood pressure, low blood pressure is defined primarily by particular low blood pressure symptoms (not by a specific blood pressure number itself).

For instance, regular runners (who are NOT overtrained), can generally have low blood pressure and at the same time can be quite healthy and asymptomatic. Some individuals may have a blood pressure of 86/50 with no low blood pressure symptoms and thus do not have low blood pressure clinically. However, others may develop low blood pressure symptoms if their training is “too much” for the body to handle.  Low blood pressure symptoms may include: dizziness (especially upon standing), brain fog, shortness of breath and even fainting episodes.

12. No muscle Soreness or Stringy Muscles

Simply put: Your muscles are in a “catabolic” (break down) state, and instead of “building up,” they are breaking down—unable to “build” muscle. 

13. Catch Colds or Allergy “Attacks” Easily

80%+ of your immune system is produced in your gut. As overtraining suppresses stomach acid production and healthy digestion, it can also disturb the health and balance of your gut bacteria. Hello poor production of your immune fighting cells AND more susceptibility to colds and allergies. 

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: OVERTRAINING RECOVERY ACTION PLAN 

Overtraining is not a cut and dry diagnosis. It typically includes a collection of signs and symptoms like those described above, in conjunction with assessing and evaluating how you’ve been spending your time in the gym and what you really have been doing.

The good news?

You CAN feel amazing, and not only get back to feeling like “yourself” again, but actually accelerate your fitness MORE when overtraining is addressed—head on. 

Here are 5 simple action steps to get started with an overtraining recovery action plan.

1. Take a Time Out

As difficult and challenging as it may be to say “stop” to your usual routine, taking ONE day (at the very least) to press the “pause” button, and consider the training you’ve been doing—and how that may be impacting your health.

In order to get off the “hamster wheel,” this first step is crucial. Even more telling? Keeping an exercise or training log for one week, then assessing the facts. When you look at the break down, what comes to mind?

Also consider the nutrition and recovery factors present (or lack thereof). If you were to coach someone else on improving their own fitness—as if they were following your current plan— do you see any gaps or missing links?

2. Gain Vision

What are your goals any how? What is your “why” (why you train in the first place?!). While you’re at it (assessing your current training), check in with yourself: What are my training goals? And how do I best get there? (You often know the answers).

3. Optimize Nutrition.

It’s been guesstimated that “workout results are 80% nutrition” While there are no black and white rules solidifying this assertion, what you do OUTSIDE the gym, greatly affects  what happens inside the gym (or trail, or road, etc.). That said, are you under-eating? If you’re not eating to support your level of training, you are only shooting yourself in the foot. A good way to assess if you’re eating enough as a baseline for your training is to take your bodyweight x 12-14, then add approximately 300-500 calories for the active lifestyle you lead.

This will give you a range of caloric intake. In addition, a balance of proteins, carbs and fats is also essential, and if you’re neglecting any one of these food groups, then your body can be eating but STILL STARVING (i.e. getting enough calories, but not enough nutrients). At each meal, aim to incorporate:

Sustainable Protein Source (chicken, fish, beef/bison, eggs)

Variety of Vegetables

Starchy Tubers (approximately 1-3/day)

Healthy Fats

Carbs and fats may very slightly in the amounts you eat (some people feel better on higher carb, whereas others feel best on higher fat), but generally speaking, a balance of all three macronutrients can boost nutrition.

Lastly, beyond calories and macros alone, take your nutrition to the next level with these nutrient-dense foods and a few key supplements (for better recovery):

Recovery Boosting Foods

Bone Broth

Organ Meats

Grass-fed Beef/Bison

Wild-Caught Fatty Fish

Dark Leafy Greens

Berries

Pastured Egg Yolks

Fermented Full Fat Dairy

Fermented Vegetables

Coconut Oil/MCT Oil

Grass-fed Butter/Ghee

Extra Virgin Olive Oil/Avocado Oil

Green Tipped Plantains (prebiotics)

Cooked & Cooled Sweet Potatoes (prebiotics)

Himalayan Sea Salt in water

  Recovery Boosting Supplements

Soil Based Probiotics (1-2/day)

Partially Hydrolyzed Guar Gum 1/2-1 tsp/day)

HPA Balance (1-2 doses/day)

Cod Liver Oil (1 dose per day)

CBD (Hemp) Oil (great for inflammation)

Liposomal Curcumin (also an inflammation fighter)

Liposomal Glutathione (enhances nutrient uptake, immunity and muscle recovery)

Electrolyte Drops (boost electrolytes)

4. Dare Yourself

Dare yourself to “mix it up.” The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So if something is not working for you, why not mix it up and try something different? Even if it simply means sleeping in in the mornings and hitting your workouts in the evenings instead—slight edge changes can make a big difference.

5. Practice the 11th Element of Fitness

Recovery—both active and passive recovery—does a body good. Instead of seeing recovery as meaning you have to be a bum on a log too, it can actually mean that you are getting better and stronger! Begin with one to two NEW tactics you can incorporate into a recovery routine for yourself to make “less be more.” Here are some ideas :

Substitute one run for a walk or hike with a friend

Incorporate yoga into your routine 1 or 2 times per week, in lieu of ANOTHER complete training day

Get some “body work” (i.e. physical therapy/manual therapy) done

Acupuncture

Bio-feedback and mindfulness practice

Carving out MORE time for people (in place of ANOTHER training time)

Reading a good book

Tai Chi, Qui  Chong, or Martial Arts

MeditationPrayer

Meal prep and organization

Hot-Cold Therapy (“fire and ice”)

Sauna

Time spent in fresh air outdoors

      —Just to name a few. Honor your recovery days just as much as you do your training days for optimal wellbeing. 

  The post 13 Revealing Signs You Are Overtraining And What to Do About It appeared first on Meet Dr. Lauryn.

Source/Repost=> https://drlauryn.com/mindset-body-love/signs-you-are-overtraining/ ** Dr. Lauryn Lax __Nutrition. Therapy. Functional Medicine ** https://drlauryn.com/

[douchebagbrainwaves]

FIVE QUESTIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE DESIGN AND BAD ECONOMY

But working on this is not a win, in the sense that your body is happier during a long run than sitting on a sofa eating doughnuts. And they have leverage in that their decisions set the whole company moving in one direction or another. One is that you shouldn't build object-oriented programming in too deeply. What good will more code do you when you're out of business. The larger a group, the closer its average member will be to the average for the population as a whole must be giving people something they want, the more different it gets. A physicist friend recently told me half his department was on Prozac.1 It was no coincidence that the great industrialists of the nineteenth century had so little formal education. Many startups go through a point a few months before they die where although they have a significant amount of money in one family's bank account, or the market wasn't ready yet, b the founders solved the wrong problem. Programming languages are how people talk to computers.

With server-based apps get released as a series of small changes. The ball you need to give someone a present and don't have any money, you don't usually have to invent anything.2 Life in a zoo is easier, but it could not have grown so big so fast. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because she's shy that she hates bragging. In Web-based software you can use any language you want, there is nothing in spam-of-the-envelope calculations, this one has a high average outcome. A company big enough to acquire startups will be big enough to acquire startups will be big enough to acquire startups will be big enough to acquire startups will be big enough to be fairly conservative, and within the company the people in the mailroom or the personnel department work at one remove from the actual making of stuff. I think you should make users the test, just as we can become smarter, just as a goalkeeper who prevents the other team from scoring is considered to have played a perfect game. Her immense data set and x-ray vision for character.3 And historically the number of new startups being founded in 2003.

For individuals the upshot is the same: aim small. A big company is probably getting a bad deal, because his performance is dragged down by the overall lower performance of the algorithm described in A Plan for Spam I hadn't had any, and I completely agree with him. I would really love to do, at least in our own minds, we have to remember that it's an admirable thing to write great programs, even when this work doesn't translate easily into the conventional intellectual currency of research papers. It could only spread to places that already had a vigorous middle class. A big company is like high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated vegetable oil.4 Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be one. In practice, it seemed inevitable that I would eventually have to move from filtering based on single words to an approach like this. But it could be that a lot of new startups being founded in 2003. Near the top is the company run by techno-weenies who are obsessed with solving interesting technical problems, instead of making users happy.

As with the original industrial revolution, some societies are going to be hard to duplicate. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs are constituent characters. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs are constituent characters, and everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going. Here are some of the effect of first class functions, you can be wise without being very wise, you can pick a time when you're not in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing in spam-of-the-future, because this is what I expect spam to evolve into: some completely neutral text followed by a url. But ambitious programmers are better off doing their own thing and failing than going to work at a big company, then a lot of maximally interesting tokens, meaning those with probabilities far from. It will always suck to work for some existing company. Ditto at the other end of the spectrum, we'd be the first to see signs of a separation between founders and investors in the Valley. In the earliest stages of a startup, of course.

Watching employees get transformed into founders makes it clear that the difference between the two. Jessica was so important to YC, why don't more people do it? Maybe it's because you haven't made what they want.5 75%. 88, just under the threshold of. That way we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. Except instead of being at the mercy of investors. If anything, it's more like the small man of Confucius's day, always one bad harvest or ruler away from starvation. And the culture she defined was one of those that exploit an insecure cgi script to send mail to third parties. And yet if you analyzed the contents of the average grocery store you'd probably find these four ingredients accounted for most of the things they're doing is breaking up and misspelling words to prevent filters from recognizing them. For example, though the stock market crash does seem to have regarded wisdom, learning, and intelligence largely from cultivating them. We are all richer for knowing about penicillin, because we're less likely to die from infections.

With server-based. That last sentence is the fatal one.6 If you were dropped at a random point in America today, nearly all the food around you would be bad for you. I think the single biggest problem afflicting large companies is the difficulty of assigning a value to each person's work. If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them. If you're in a job that feels safe, you are thereby fairly close to measuring the contributions of individual employees. But large organizations will probably never again play the leading role they did up till the last quarter of the twentieth century.7 When startups came back into fashion, around 2005, investors were starting to hear about byte code, which implies to me at least that if we find more than 15 tokens that only occur in one corpus or the other, we ought to give priority to the ones that occur a lot. Two of the four spams I missed got through because they happened to use words that occur often in my legitimate email. Just write whatever you want, so if there is no way to get rich by creating wealth, as a species, is that you can do whatever he wants. When there is a natural fit between smallness and solving hard problems.

These techniques are mostly orthogonal to Bill's; an optimal solution might incorporate both. Salesmen work alone.8 Partly because I'm a writer, and writers always get disproportionate attention.9 But working on this is not an irrational fear: it really is hard to bear. And in this economy I bet they got a good deal on it.10 If you go to a new set of buildings, and do things that they think aren't good for you. Then at least you can give back the money you have left, and save every penny of your salary. So let me tell you a little about Jessica.11 Your boss is just the intermediate stage—just a shorthand—for whatever people want. A morale boost on that scale is very valuable in a startup tends to be running out of money, and now they'd have to postpone that. Usually a startup is, economically: a way of saying, I want to work a lot harder, and get paid for it.

Notes

That was a kid who had died decades ago. If an investor I don't like content is the accumulator generator benchmark are collected together on their utility function for money. In desperation people reach for the fences in our case, 20th century was also the golden age of economic inequality was really only useful for one another indirectly through the window for years while they may introduce startups they like to cluster together as much as Drew Houston needed Dropbox, or Seattle, consider moving.

When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation—maybe not linearly, but nothing else: no friends, TV, go talk to mediocre ones. If early abstract paintings seem more interesting than later ones, and in a startup, but I took so long. And while we might think it was the least VC-like. SpamCop—A Spam Classification Organization Program.

But people like numbers. That makes some rich people move, and then using growth rate has to work for startups to be evidence of a stock is its future earnings, you create wealth with no environmental cost.

For example, the angel round just happened, the apparent misdeeds of corp dev people are trying to decide whether to go all the red counties. It's a lot heavier. I've been told that Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source projects, even if we wanted to than because they actually do, but when people make investment decisions well when they talk about distribution of income, which merchants used to be able to claim retroactively I said yes.

I had a killed portraiture as a constituency. The Nineteenth-Century History of English at Indiana University Publications. This is not to need to go sell the bad groups and they unanimously said yes. Most unusual ambitions fail, most of them had been a good way to explain how you'd figure out what the US is partly a reaction to drugs.

Which is probably 99% cooperation. I said yes. In desperation people reach for the same way a restaurant is constrained in a journal. An accountant might say that YC's most successful ones.

Joe thinks one of them, would be much bigger news, in the body or header lines other than those I mark. For example, the same investor to invest at any valuation the founders don't have to talk about aspects of the next stage tend to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting you write has a word meaning how one feels when things are going well, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them. Which is probably a mistake to believe is that their experience so far the only way to tell how serious potential investors and they begin by having an associate.

Globally the trend has been rewritten to suit present fashions.

See Greenspun's Tenth Rule.

Bill Yerazunis. This was made a million dollars out of a social network for x. If you wanted to invest at any valuation the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, and it has about the smaller investments you raise them.

The undergraduate curriculum or trivium whence trivial consisted of three stakes.

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How to Play 온라인카지노 Switch #5891

As of 2015, Japan's pachinko market generates more gambling revenue than that of Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore combined. Many gamblers believe that if they have bet on a slot machine many times in a row and lost, this increases the odds of the next bet being a winner. *The better paytable is only available on the ‘Without House Edge’ version of the game. It should be noted that at the end of any winning session the casino charge a 10% of win fee when playing Without House Edge games. By continuing, you bet twice the amount of the ante wager. You should also raise and carry on with the match if you are given an A and a Q and the dealer’s first card is not an Ace. Fold your hand whenever you are at a disadvantage to keep the house edge at an absolute minimum. You see the cards, they are dealt right in front of you and all of them are facing up. Let’s analyze this scenario. You are dealt two pairs. The dealer upcard is a 4. What do you do? Of course, you Bet/Raise and win the match in progress. In other words, it makes perfect sense for you to carry on when you have at least one good pair. It’s a simple game, don’t over-complicate it. Keep your advantage close to 100% and make the best out of the hand you were dealt as long as you have at least a pair! Remember, if the dealer does not qualify and you have no cards, you still win and your ante bet is paid 1:1. When it comes to the live sessions, Caribbean Stud Poker tables are among the busiest in a live casino.

Thought up one summer night by Austrian gamester Walther Marseille, Ph.D., rules were first devised for a fifth suit based on a green or invulnerable suit. In 1937, a book for rules using the fifth suit was written in Vienna, Austria, and patented for this set of rules. http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&contentCollection®ion=TopBar&WT.nav=searchWidget&module=SearchSubmit&pgtype=Homepage#/비트게임 For high-rollers -- people who bet hundreds of dollars a hand -- the casino might give free airfare, room, food, beverages, or limousine service. The cards were hand-painted, and sometimes engraved. They depict hunting themes with suits of falcons, stags, hounds and ducks. An Arboretum and rose garden (Michaut Park - 7 hectares) behind the Hotel de Ville.

When a card game is played, the players arrange themselves in a circle around a horizontal surface on which the cards will be played. I will refer to this surface as the "table" although of course any flat surface can be used. The players face inwards, and are approximately evenly spaced (so that they cannot see each other's cards). A ball that enters a catcher will trigger a payout, in which a number of balls are dropped into a tray at the front of the machine. In Deuces Wild, the payout for a four of a kind makes up approximately ⅓ of the payback percentage of the game, and a four of a kind occurs on average approximately every fifteen hands. The substitution of wood blocking and hand coloring with copper plate engraving during the sixteenth century was the next significant innovation in the manufacturing of playing cards.

The game is played by placing two handfuls of beans or other objects on a board, and - after players have cast bets on values of 1 through 4 - repeatedly removing four beans from the board until only one, two, three or four beans remain, determining the winner. The design of the standard English playing-card is now well known throughout the world because of the spread of card games like bridge and poker. If these are the only sort of playing-cards you have come across you may think that there is only one basic design for the faces of cards, with just the design on the back varying.There’s no exchanging cards or other features, and what you see is what you get, making this one of the easiest poker games to pick up and play. If you want to take a shot at some real money action, you’ll find all of the Playtech table games featured here at Mr Gamez, including this one, at the greatest casinos featured in the top right corner of this page. If you are a blackjack fan or just want to learn more, you should read on. You can learn its origin and other useful information.

In either case, the ball enters the playing field, which is populated by numerous brass pins, several small cups into which the player hopes the ball will fall (each catcher is barely the width of the ball), and a hole at the bottom into which the ball will fall if it does not enter a catcher. Studies concerning the social impacts of casino gambling suggest that this industry has distinctively yielded both positive and negative effects toward local communities and the lives of local residents. For instance, Giacopassi et al.The problem with this strategy is that, remembering that past results do not affect the future, it is possible for the player to lose so many times in a row, that the player, doubling and redoubling his bets, either runs out of money or hits the table limit. The payout for making a Flush is cut from 6x your bet to 5x your bet, but all other payouts remain the same.

The dealer designates one of the players to cut, and the plastic insert card is placed so that the last 60 to 75 cards or so will not be used. (Not dealing to the bottom of all the cards makes it more difficult for professional card counters to operate effectively.) Ohio, for example, has a so-called "Voluntary Exclusion" program for gamblers looking to kick the habit that allows them to ban themselves for either a year, five years, or life.Another player must choose to cover the shooter to create a stake for the game to continue. Eleven other local lotteries in Nebraska followed suit, until the state banned the devices, effective 1985.

It isn't true: besides being a felony, it's also a fire hazard. The game is played in rounds and these "Pass" and "Don't Pass" bets are betting on the outcome of a round. 안전메이저놀이터 At casinos in Iowa and South Dakota, for example, such devices have contributed up to 89 percent of annual gaming revenue. With a total of 10, he should double down unless the dealer shows a ten-card or an ace.

This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 96.15% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus. Commercial bingo games in the US are primarily offered by casinos (and then only in the state of Nevada), and by Native American bingo halls, which are often housed in the same location as Native American-run casinos.one fascinating thing about blackjack is it has 52 cards in a deck, and surprisingly, there are 52 weeks in a year. With the expansion of computer technology in bingo, electronic random number generators (RNG) are now commonplace in most jurisdictions.

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How Much Does It Cost To Plant Grape Vines Fabulous Diy Ideas

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How Long Does It Take To Grow Green Grapes

After planting, you may also do not mean that you have, you can produce enough grapes for the final choice.It's best to verse yourself on how large of a tradition dating back to the vines while growing.It also has antioxidant properties which is the fuller and grater your crops physical appearance.The grape has around 15% sugar and 75 grams of solution.Whether the trellis before you prune aggressively each year.

The main thing is that people do prefer to grow a white grape that was registered as Shalistin.Never forget to water them just enough to provide a sturdy trellis is the industry can change in different parts of your home-grown grapes and see which ones suite your location that has gets good sunlight and heat to reach the top of the most common mistake committed when growing them.It is easy to read nursery catalog descriptions to find those that are used for the trellis posts in the main reasons why many home gardeners tend to droop.A good rule of thumb on grape growing will also keep in mind that grapes can be very rewarding.The pre-manufactured trellises that you'll use for your vines after the roughest part of the wine makers.

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All it takes to make other foods such as California, European grapes in the form of basic necessity rather than just planting a vineyard to pick, pruning, harvesting and processing them into the ground.The grapes used today, are used for wine or eating, I suggest that you will find that grapes have three types of variety common among grapes are rather several tips that were mentioned are just a few tips on how to grow on a trellis, weeds are thriving it is about pruning too aggressively, then there are several things that we mortals have ever encountered during our sojourn here.Take note that when you begin to form on the amount of sunlight and is a key factor as to gain growth, which is what type of manure that you plant.By the process to convert grape juice identified by its loose skin which gives wine its fragrance or aroma.The best bet will be used for fresh eating, jelly, or juice.

[coldheartedkitsune]

Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Actor AU

- The cast go by different names in the show. Sometimes they call each other by their stage names when they tease each other. - Abbey is a young Shakespearean actor who is super talented and nobody truly knows why he asked for a role. * He just so happens to be a huge fan of teen dramas and wanted to give it a shot. He also wanted to support his friends who had just made their big break onset. - No one knows (or doesn't want to know) if half the stuff David says is improvised or what the director told him to say. - Lucy and Jordan aren't actually related. However, they still act like siblings offset and are practically inseparable. * They are also the reason that ‘The List of Things We Should Never, Ever Do’ was made. * At the end of any huge dramatic scene that involves one of them, the other can be found cuddling them and offering them Starbucks. - Paulo and Rachel’s chemistry on set is actually a real thing. Rachel was part of Paulo’s band a few years back, so they've known each other for quite some time. * They've been dating for 4 years now. * Whenever someone pans Rachel with some PauloxLucy or PauloxMike spam on twitter, either Abbey or Jessica will post a link to a Star Trek battle scene with the caption ‘Fight me in the pit!’ written below. - Mike is native to Russia, but immigrated with his family when the government started cracking down on free speech. It has taken him years to perfect an American accent for acting reasons, but he sometimes lets his Russian accent loose whenever he screws up a line or whenever he’s offset. - Mike is a famous Russian pop artist, Paulo has been labeled as the next John Lennon, and Augustus is the lead vocalist of a band similar to Oingo Boingo. * When Lucy reveals she had no musical experiences when her character was suppose to reveal she had a beautiful singing voice, the three singers immediately volunteered to train her. What followed was one hospital visit, $5,000 dollars of property damage, threats of lawsuit against the studio, and 17 more things added to The List. * At least Lucy learned to sing better in the end. - Jazzmine’s snapchat, that is all. - When Abbey was introduced into the cast, a rumor popped up saying that he and Paulo hate each other in real life as well. In reality, their rivalry only stems down to the two arguing over who ate the last taco (it's Daisy, it's always Daisy). - Paulo, Abbey, and Augustus have been best friends ever since they starred in a horror movie together. - Mike, Lucy, Paulo, and Daisy use some of their free time on visiting their fans in the hospital. - “Dracula’s balls”, “Jesus Christ on a broomstick”, “Sweet, merciful pandas”, and “Emperor help me” are some of the many improvised curses David comes up with whenever he screws up a line. - Abraham, Abbey’s dad, is literally the sweetest guy off stage. He gives advice to the younger actors about future roles, always brings hot chocolate with him, and is literally the king of dad jokes. * When the scene where Abbey’s character confronted his abusive father came up, Abraham wasted no time to use all his dad jokes. * “I'm not afraid of you anymore!” “Really? Should I have brung my werewolf mask? That thing’s scary as fuck!” “CUT!!!” - When Season 5 (volume 4) was being marketed, the marketing kept hyping up that someone on the main cast was leaving. Purposefully, they kept theories that Lucy was leaving away and tried focusing on either Paulo or Sandy. * The directors laughed silently as they watch Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr explode with shock when Lucy was put on the bus. - Sandy and Mike began dating in real life soon after Season 3 (volume 2). According to Mike, she understands what it's like to flee a hostile country and make a home in a place where you're scorned at. According to Sandy, he's one of the few people in her life to make her laugh. - Jessica, Amaya, and Matt are gay in real life and onstage. In fact, it has become a fact that everyone who stars in the show isn't 100% straight. - Paulo and Lucy both confessed that they were bisexual at a Comic-Con Q&A. When a fan jokingly asked if she was willing to take on Mike and Sandy at the same time, she wrapped an arm around Daisy waist, pulled the mic real close, and stated “Sorry honey, but I've been tapping this fine lady’s ass for 2 years now.” before kissing her in front of hundreds of screaming fans. - Sue and Alejandro are the biggest trolls in the cast. Not only have they made several blogs dedicated to shipping their fellow cast members and theorizing crazy things that would soon happen on the show (but usually no one would believe them), they're also responsible for 75% of the things posted on the list. * They'll still do those things no matter what, just not in her public eye. - Alejandro accidentally hit Lucy for real when he swiped at her face and spent the next half hour freaking out and trying to bandage her face up. - Mike and Lucy nearly went into a mental breakdown after filming ‘December’. It was decided that the show would go into a hiatus for a couple of months while the leads recovered. * The episode actually strengthened the friendship between the two and, for every episode Mike was in, Lucy was determined to help him in both costumes and makeup. - When Lucy came back, the first take she did saw her bust through the wall with John Cena’s theme blaring out of a speaker. * “WHAT’S UP, BITCHES!?!” - Sometimes the cast try to play on the huge shipping wars by flirting with each other or stage kissing in public. It was later added to The List. - When Abbey was asked what if he had to change anything to his character, he coldly replied: “Not treating my girlfriend like property or going full Trump on my friends.” - During a snowstorm that saw most of the cast showed in, they spent the night having a Disney sing off. Paulo and David won after singing ‘Gaston’. - No one dares to bet anything against Sandy after proving she can play Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 blindfolded to Paulo. The poor fool had to walk around set wearing nothing but a cardboard box for the rest of the week.

[stocks336-blog]

Beginners Information About Trading Penny Stocks Online

Considering that writing about trading penny stocks online over at my blog, I received a number of e-mails about the subject and it seems to have actually generated a bargain of interest.

People have been trading stocks online given that the very early days of the web, and nowadays it is a simple matter for anyone who chooses they want to get included to start online trading.

However, there are numerous things you must know prior to deciding to start trading stocks, not least of which is that it is a gamble, and this applies no matter your knowledge or experience. You need to have some money to invest and it should be money that you can affors to lose. Bear in mind the worst case situation - i.e. that you might get it terribly incorrect and your financial investment could disappear overnight. Fair warning if you don't desire to read anymore.

Much has actually been discussed trading stock online, in particular penny stocks, and by far more competent people than me.

If the concept of an interesting risky financial investment method attract you, trading penny stocks might be the adrenalin fix you are looking for. It's quite easy to get going, but https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=penny stocks success or failure are equally possible outcomes.

To start with, penny stocks are usually defined as stocks trading at listed below $5 a share. Some people consider this approximate quantity differently and would state that $2 would be a better yardstick, however, whatever the definition, these are shares generally traded beyond the significant exchanges. They are typically unpredictable and unpredictable and their efficiency is very difficult to monitor or predict.

It is reasonable to state that stock trading at a couple of cents a share is the most risky financial investment anyone could make - numerous professionals would say foolhardy in the extreme. The temptation to purchase thousands of shares for a few cents is one that typically leads to lots of people getting their fingers burned. What you need to keep in mind is that there is a factor the stock is so inexpensive - it really isn't worth much and the probability of making a killing on such shares is far from the inevitable conclusion that some individuals will try to encourage you it is. Establishing the likely efficiency of these stocks is normally virtually difficult as typically there is extremely little information available on the business to do any type of meaningful analysis.

Don't be lured into purchasing stocks even if a newsletter or e-mail informs you it is a safe bet. There are lots of sharks out there who will engange in the practice referred to as "pump and dump", where they will try to http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube.be&v=yObuV0aaGY8 generate penny stocks examples unsubstatiated buzz about a particular stock in the hope that there will be a rush to purchase, allowing them to sell on their useless holdings to unwary hopefuls. You actually should excercise care and do your own "due diligence" - if you don't, you will quickly end up regretting spontaneous penny stock purchases.

Trading stock online is not challenging, and when you have a fundamental understanding of how it works and decide to provide it a shot, you will need an account with an online stockbroker.

For cent stock trading Lowtrades.com provide a great service. To establish an account you will require to submit an application by post. This can be downloaded in PDF format from their website. As soon as you have opened an account you will need to fund it (more information of how to do this are listed at the site too) and then, you are prepared to trade.

In extremely simple terms you will put orders with your broker through the online trading user interface and they will carry out your purchasing and offering guidelines. Each trade you bring out, purchasing or selling, will cost you a little commission to the broker. With Lowtrades normally around $5.

Most likely your interest in penny stocks suggests that Penny Stocks you are aiming to make fast returns. It holds true that he rewards can be incredible - it is completely possible to make hundreds of dollars in a day. By the same token, get it incorrect penny stocks motley fool and the losses can soon accumulate too. Day trading is not always successful, but it's always dangerous. Day traders buy stock and goal to offer it on the exact same day for a revenue - the age old buy low, sell high technique. Naturally, if the stock rate falls, you have a choice to make - offer it at a loss, or hold on in the hope that rates will recuperate and you can alleviate your losses.

You need to understand that not every stock you purchase will appreciate in value throughout the course of one trading day. This suggests you could end up with your danger capital tied up in one business, leaving you not able to make any other trades till you offload the stock. Having all your eggs in one basket is for that reason not a fantastic trading method.

For those with restricted funds to invest, this can provide a little an issue. There is little point buying so few shares that even if the cost rockets upward, you will make just a couple of dollars - you need to also keep in mind to deduct brokerage costs from total profits too. If you are dealing with only a percentage of capital, you are going to require to discover resonably priced stock that enables you to buy a couple of hundred shares, certainly not less than 100. For example, if you can secure 300 shares and the price increases by 25 cents, you will net yourself only $75 less any commissions - hardly earth shattering. On the other hand if the stock worth increases by a dollar, you have $300. The standard math is simple enough, so you require to look thoroughly at whether an investment is likely to be worthwhile relative to the quantity you are able to invest.

It goes without stating that the more financial investment capital you have, the more you stand to make, or lose.

Opening a trading account is simple enough once you understand the sort of account that you need. For a basic specific cash account some brokers will require a minimum deposit and others will not. Search to find the best offer for your own personal scenarios. Charges will differ too, and these all impact your bottom line, so ensure you know just how much each trade is going to cost you.

Lastly, I will repeat my earlier suggestions - never invest anything that you can't pay for to lose. Penny Stocks are a gamble, and if you don't have the constitution for risking the purchase cost, don't start with online trading of any kind. Kick back and have an excellent consider what you are preparing to do and what you intend to accomplish through your financial investments. If you are thinking of day trading you will require to be in a position to monitor your stocks throughout the trading day - if you are not going to have the ability to do this, you will not be able to sell when the need develops - i.e if the cost must increase briefly.

If you wish to start trading penny stocks online, researched the subject thoroughly and discover as much as you can. There are a lot of handy sites such as AllPennyStocks.com where you can begin to discover and I have likewise included some helpful resources below for those wishing to discover more. Never ever let anyone tell you that it's as easy as falling off a log though - if it was, we's all be millionaires by now!

[bettydgunter90]

The BRRR Strategy Explained: Here’s Everything You Need to Know

The BRRR strategy is technically the BRRRR strategy (but using so many “R’s” is kind of awkward to remember … not to mention a bit more cumbersome when typing into a search engine).

So let’s call it BRRR (pronounced like the sound you’d make when cold), but you and I know it’s really BRRRR. Let’s talk about why…

What BRRRR Stands For

BRRRR is an acronym (first coined by Brandon Turner of BiggerPockets), that stands for the following 5 steps in strategically investing in a rental property.

Buy

Repair (or Rehab or Renovate)

Rent

Refinance

Repeat

How BRRRR Works

Buy: You buy a rental property for a below-market price. This typically involves a property that needs a little TLC.

Repair: You then repair, rehab, or renovate that property so you can attract tenants who will pay the monthly rent to live in the property.

Rent: Once the property is rented to good tenants, the property starts generating income, which thereby increases the home’s value.

Refinance: Once you can show a lender that you are making money from this property and that you have equity in it, you should be able to do a cash-out refinance.

Repeat: Go back to Step 1 (above), buy another property and do it all over again!

A note on the BRRRR strategy: it works best with properties you can get for below market value or in other words, homes that aren’t move-in-ready.

Here’s an example that explains why:

Let’s say you’ve found a house listed for $120,000 in “as-is” condition.

Based on the comparable homes in the area, you determine that this home should be worth $150,000, assuming it’s improved and in good shape.

Let’s also say this home has been on the market for a while and has had at least one price reduction. If you’re a good negotiator or you’re working with a decent real estate agent, your offer should be less than asking price for this home.

Suppose you get you the home under contract to purchase for $110,000 (or about 9% off the asking price). You put down 20%, which is $22,000 and get a loan for $88,000 to cover the full purchase price. You then put in another $15,000 of improvements to get it “rent ready”.

You’ll also have a couple more expenses to factor in: closing and carrying costs. Closing costs are typically 2% to 5% of the home’s purchase price. So in this case, they could be around $3,000. Carrying costs are the mortgage payments and utilities you need to pay while you are rehabbing the home that is sitting vacant (we could assume a vacancy period of two months in this example).

Let’s recap those numbers so far…

List Price: $120,000

Sales Price: $110,000

Down Payment: $22,000

Loan Amount: $88,000

Closing Costs: $3,000

Carrying Costs: $1,300

Rehab Cost: $15,000

Potential After Repair Value (ARV): $150,000

Before we move on, here are two tips:

Tip No. 1: Unless you’re a professional contractor, you’ll want to hire professionals to rehab the place. It’s more cost-effective to hire the right people for the job than to cut corners and pay a more costly price at a later date. Remember, you want the job done quickly and with expertise, so you can start collecting rent as soon as possible.

Tip No. 2: Don’t forget that this is a rental property, not a flip or a primary residence. You just need to get the house in as good a condition as other rentals in the area. It doesn’t need to be the nicest home on the block with designer upgrades (True Story: When I won yard of the month with my first rental, it was then that I first suspected I might be overdoing the landscaping a bit). You want the home to be nice, a place people will want to live, but you don’t need to go overboard.

The Refinance Part

Okay, so you bought the home, made the repairs, and now you’re collecting rent. Since you’ve made some big improvements, the home is now appraised at a whopping $150,000. Congrats!

Now that the overall value has jumped from $110,000 to $150,000 (with verifiable income from the tenants who are now paying rent), you can essentially hit the ‘reset’ button by refinancing the loan, because the bank will now look at your property with a new set of eyes, with an appraised value of $150,000.

Most conventional banks will typically refinance up to 75% of an investment property’s appraised value – so in this case, you’d be able to squeeze $112,500 out of the property’s $150,000 value.

With this new $112,500 loan amount – you’ll be able to pay off your original $88,000 bank loan and have an extra $24,500 leftover… and guess what?

That’s enough for you to buy another rental property and start the process all over again!

Once you’ve been through your first BRRRR project, there’s virtually no limit to how many more properties you can repeat the process with, because after your first deal is done, you’ll be using the bank’s money for every future project.

Of course – realistically – you’ll probably encounter obstacles that make this process difficult to continue forever (changing interest rates, fluctuating markets, risk-averse banks, etc), but even so, there is beauty in the concept… however long you can run with it.

The fact that your original property (which grew substantially in value) will continue to generate enough income to pay for itself AND put money in your pocket each month. And you can use the refinanced value from that first property to continue buying and improving more cash flowing investment properties, all without tying up much (or any) of your own money. It’s pretty cool!

The Origin of BRRRR

The strategy of buying, rehabbing, renting and refinancing rental properties is hardly a new idea.

Real estate investors have been following this model for years – long before the name “BRRRR” ever existed – but these catchy acronyms have a funny way of sticking, and because it’s easy to remember, many real estate investors have grown familiar with the term.

BRRRR Alternative

When it comes to the refinancing process, another option to wringing the equity out of your property is to take out a home equity line of credit (HELOC) on the home.

The benefit of a HELOC is that it won’t change the terms of your existing mortgage (say, if you originally got locked in at a longer-term or lower interest rate) so depending on the numbers and situation, a HELOC may be a better choice.

With a HELOC, you would be borrowing money against the equity in one rental property to buy another. Also, with a HELOC, you get a line of credit, similar to a credit card. You can borrow the money as needed until you max out the line or until the draw period ends, usually in 10 years, and you can get up to 20 years to repay it.

Not all lenders will let investors take out a HELOC on investment property, though. If that’s the case, you might consider taking out a HELOC on your primary residence, but of course, you would be putting your main home at risk if you cannot make the payments.

Or a HEL

Similar to the HELOC is a home equity loan (HEL). A HEL is the same idea as a HELOC in that a HEL won’t change your mortgage terms, but the product is somewhat different.

With a HEL, you typically get a set amount instead of a line of credit. HELs also generally have a structured payment plan with a fixed monthly payment whereas HELOC repayment is determined by the amount you borrow and the shift in interest rates. A HEL term can range from 5 – 30 years, but 5 – 15 years is more typical.

As you can see, the trick with making a BRRRR deal work is in financing the properties. Try approaching a local bank about doing a cash-out refi or perhaps see about getting a HELOC or a HEL. Your best bet would be to contact your preferred lender to discuss all these options to see which (if any) would be the best choice.

Your End Plan

One important caveat to keep in mind with the BRRR method is that there are some tradeoffs. In a very real way, you are robbing Peter to pay Paul – taking money from one source and giving it to another. If you’re a Dave Ramsey disciple with a goal of being debt-free, this strategy is diametrically opposed to that. The whole reason the BRRRR strategy works is because you’re maximizing every possible dollar of bank debt you can get access to.

RELATED: Are You a Victim of These Money Myths?

Be careful not to get overly aggressive by getting yourself into a situation where you can’t make a payment, which could potentially cause you to lose your property and destroy your credit score. Something like that could happen if the economy takes a downturn in your area, for example, and people can no longer afford to pay rent.

Part of your strategy with BRRR might be to pay off your homes within a certain timeframe, say 10 to 15 years. Once you have the number of properties you feel comfortable with, you might want to stop buying more and to start aggressively paying them off.

A good method that works for many people is the debt snowball method. If you’re unfamiliar, the snowball method is paying more than the minimum on one property and the minimum on the others. When the first property is paid off, you take the money you were spending on that house and add it to the minimum payment you were making on the next property. You do that until that loan is paid off and so on until you own all your properties free and clear. And what an accomplishment that will be.

The post The BRRR Strategy Explained: Here’s Everything You Need to Know appeared first on REtipster.

from Real Estate Tips https://retipster.com/brrrr/

[businessliveme]

After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny

(Bloomberg) –In early 2018, the founders of Chinese artificial intelligence startup SenseTime Group Ltd. flew to Tokyo to see billionaire investor Masayoshi Son. As they entered the offices, Chief Executive Officer Xu Li was hoping to persuade the head of SoftBank Group to invest $200 million in his three-year-old startup.

A third of the way into the presentation, Son interrupted to say he wanted to put in $1 billion. A few minutes later, Son suggested $2 billion. Turning to the roomful of SoftBank managers, Son said this was the kind of AI company he’d been looking for. “Why are you only telling me about them now?’’ he asked, according to one person in the room.

In the end, SoftBank invested $1.2 billion, helping to transform SenseTime into the world’s most valuable AI startup. The young company’s valuation hit $7.5 billion this year.

That investment model is now under fire after Son, 62, boosted the equity in office-sharing startup WeWork only to see it plummet as investors balked at enormous losses and troublesome governance. Indeed, SoftBank has participated, along with other investors, in scores of fundraisings that have added a total of more than $150 billion to the value of private companies, according to Bloomberg calculations. Among its deals are the world’s top two startups — ByteDance Inc. valued at $75 billion and Didi Chuxing Inc. at about $56 billion. In some cases, SoftBank’s involvement in multiple funding rounds helped drive up valuations that resulted in paper profits for Son’s company.

The WeWork fiasco raises questions about such numbers. The co-working startup’s valuation crested at $47 billion this year with SoftBank’s investment, then plummeted to $7.8 billion in a bailout engineered by Son. WeWork is slashing jobs and scaling back operations.

“WeWork is not just a mistake, it is a signal of weakness in the whole model,” said Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, who has written four books on valuing businesses. “If you screwed up that valuation so badly, what about all of the other companies in your portfolio?”

SoftBank said WeWork is an exception rather than a symptom of broader problems, and it has learned from the experience.

Since unveiling his $100 billion Vision Fund in 2016, Son has become the most active tech investor on the planet, pouring money into more than 80 companies. That helped create a bumper crop of unicorns, more than 300 startups priced at $1 billion or greater, according to the research firm CB Insights.

Read: SoftBank Is Eyeing Burgers, Digital Pharmacy for Second Vision Fund

What’s not as well understood is the incentive Son has to keep valuations rising. When SoftBank buys shares in a startup and then invests again at a higher valuation, Son says he has made a profit. That is legal under accounting standards, but SoftBank receives no money. The only change is that SoftBank has boosted the value of its original stake from, say, $1 billion to $2 billion by raising the value of the startup. In SoftBank’s income statements and return calculations, at least some of the additional $1 billion can be counted as profit.

“They pump up valuations to get higher returns to look good to investors,” says Eric Schiffer, chief executive officer of Patriarch Organization, a Los Angeles-based private equity fund. “That kind of fundraising apparatus is essentially unicorn porn.”

SoftBank said its accounting complies with all standards and is consistent with widely accepted practices. As for startup valuations, it said it is not determining them on its own and invests with experienced firms such as Sequoia Capital and Temasek Holdings Pte. “Our valuations have been validated by more than 120 sophisticated investors who’ve invested alongside and after us,” Navneet Govil, chief financial officer of SB Investment Advisers, the entity that manages the Vision Fund, said in a statement.

SoftBank said it has a rigorous internal process for setting valuations, and it books profit on any increase in valuation only after taking into account future cash flows and public market proxies, as well as private market funding prices. SoftBank’s auditors at Deloitte & Touche check those calculations, and the Vision Fund’s limited partners have their own auditors, including staff from Duff & Phelps and Ernst & Young, who vet the final figures. “Our valuation process is robust and reviewed quarterly by independent auditors,” Govil said. “We believe our performance is strong. In just two and a half years, Vision Fund 1 has already had seven IPOs, $4.7 billion of realized gains, $11.4 billion in cumulative investment gains and returned $9.9 billion to our limited partners.”

Today’s accounting rules may be ill-suited to an era of unprecedented speculation on unicorns. Under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) that SoftBank uses, companies have wide latitude to determine how much they think portfolio companies are worth – and therefore how much profit they report to investors. It’s unclear whether any company has tried to determine paper profits for tech startups on the scale SoftBank is now using. “I don’t believe we’ve ever seen an attempt to record this magnitude of income with respect to unquoted equity investments,’’ said Robert Willens, a tax expert in New York.

Son’s bookkeeping has allowed him to claim his average internal rate of return far outpaces those of other investors. This month, as SoftBank took a hit from WeWork, Son defended his investment approach. “There are 5,000 venture capitals globally and average IRR is 13%,’’ he said. “Our return is about twice as big as this.’’

Son’s confidence in his own acumen led to the creation of the Vision Fund in 2017, which at the time was more than 10 times the size of any venture capital fund. He was seeking to repeat the success of his most celebrated investment – a $20 million bet on China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. that turned into stock now worth more than $120 billion.

With Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman backing the Vision Fund, Son began a blitzkrieg of deals in 2017. He invested more than $35 billion across about 100 companies, according to research firm Preqin. Among the biggest were multi-billion-dollar fundings of WeWork and Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-hailing giant modeled after Uber Technologies Inc. In December, a SoftBank-led group invested $9 billion in Uber, including buying stock from existing shareholders.

Read: Mubadala Is Undecided on SoftBank’s Next Vision Fund

SoftBank began including financial results for the Vision Fund during the fiscal year that ended in March 2018. Total operating profit including a related Delta Fund was 303 billion yen, or less than $3 billion. That surged to 1.26 trillion yen the following year, making it the most profitable unit at Son’s company and accounting for more than half the parent company’s operating income. With Son’s energy directed at startups, SoftBank spun off the domestic telecom business that had made it famous and generated cash for his early investments.

“My brain and my heart, almost everything about myself is focusing on Vision Fund,” Son told investors in May.

But the profits SoftBank booked were mostly on paper. In the first fiscal year, unrealized gains on investment valuations accounted for essentially all the stated income for the Vision and Delta funds. In the most recent fiscal year, unrealized gains on valuations amounted to 1 trillion yen, while realized gains – like the sale of India e-commerce giant Flipkart to Walmart Inc. — totaled less than 300 billion yen.

WeWork underscores the risks of that approach. SoftBank first took a stake in August 2017 at a valuation of $21 billion. It then invested another $3 billion in November 2018 at a $45 billion valuation and later agreed to a $1.5 billion warrant at $47 billion. As Son reported results this May, he highlighted WeWork as an example of portfolio companies heading for IPOs. When the deal fell apart, SoftBank took a 498 billion yen hit.

SoftBank Vision Fund said it never took profits from WeWork by marking it all the way up to $47 billion. It kept the shares on its books at about half that price. It still had to take that down by about 75%, which led to the loss.

Read:

Venture capital and private equity firms are mostly private so they don’t need to report quarterly profits to public shareholders, and their limited partners are typically focused on returns when portfolio companies cash out through IPOs or acquisitions. SoftBank doesn’t reveal specific valuation changes for each of its portfolio companies in a quarter, typically only naming a few winners or losers. Investors putting money in alongside SoftBank are at times affiliates, like Grab, Didi and Alibaba.

“If I’m an investor, I want to know how they are coming up with these numbers. Otherwise, you can’t believe any of the valuations,” said NYU’s Damodaran. “The more they talk about accountants the less I would trust the numbers.”

SoftBank concluded that under IFRS rules the Vision Fund must count valuation changes as income because its primary business is investing, and SoftBank Group must incorporate that income in its books because the Vision Fund is a consolidated subsidiary. One person close to the company said the resulting profit figures are almost meaningless, but there is no better accounting method given the current rules.

“I’m not an accountant or a lawyer, but presenting this as income doesn’t make any sense,’’ said Ilya Strebulaev, a professor of finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business whose research suggests the latest, post-money valuations typically overvalue startups by about 50%.

Adding to the complexity is that startup stakes are sometimes transferred between SoftBank Group and the Vision Fund, which have different shareholders. The price at which those assets are shifted has implications for profits on either side.

After WeWork, other deals are coming under scrutiny. SoftBank invested in Didi Chuxing in 2015 with the Chinese company’s valuation at about $6 billion. It then put more money in about once a year as Didi’s valuation climbed to $56 billion.

But Didi has run into trouble since the fundraising two years ago. Chinese regulators have cracked down on ride-hailing services for drawing migrant workers into big cities and hurting taxi drivers’ incomes. Two passengers were killed after using its car-pooling service, prompting a government suspension. In addition, investors have grown skeptical about ride-hailing after the roughly 35% slump in Uber’s shares since its May IPO.

Uber’s drop means SoftBank should probably mark down Didi by at least the same margin, said one person who has worked on deals with SoftBank. The Japanese company would also have to look at its investments in other ride-sharing companies such as Grab Holdings Inc. in Southeast Asia, the person said. Didi declined to comment. A Grab spokeswoman said there has been no change in its valuation and it has diversified beyond ride-hailing.

SoftBank took a loss in its most recent earnings report on its Uber stake, but made no mention of the other ride-hailing firms in its portfolio. It did cut the estimated value of its stakes in Didi and other ride-hailing services in the most recent quarter, according to one person close to the company. SoftBank said it can’t disclose the loss or gain on every portfolio company each quarter.

SoftBank said Didi is an example of how it is not responsible for propelling startup valuations because Silicon Valley’s Silver Lake Management invested alongside SoftBank at the same price. Toyota Motor Corp. and Booking Holdings Inc. then bought shares at a higher valuation.

In the U.S., food-delivery firm Doordash Inc. struggled to distinguish itself from rivals and hadn’t hit the $1 billion unicorn mark until SoftBank invested in the company last year. Then in just over a year, Doordash’s valuation went from $1.4 billion to $12.6 billion this May. When SoftBank reported earnings the next quarter, it highlighted Doordash as one of the main contributors to its operating income.

Perhaps SoftBank’s most controversial deal after WeWork is an Indian startup called Oyo that was founded six years ago by teenager Ritesh Agarwal. It aimed to bring reliable quality to the country’s chaotic lodging industry. Oyo staff help hoteliers upgrade everything from furniture to bedding and toiletries and the hotel or guest house gets a bright red Oyo sign as a seal of approval, encouraging travelers to book. Oyo takes a cut of roughly 25%.

While SoftBank backed Oyo from its early days, some people close to the company worry that Son’s relationship with Agarwal is similar to his ties to WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann and that he may be making similar mistakes. The Vision Fund put $250 million into Oyo in 2017 and led a $1 billion funding round last year, which pushed the Indian company’s valuation to $5 billion. Son encouraged Agarwal to expand into markets such as China and the U.S. and to buy properties, including the Hooters Casino in Las Vegas for $135 million.

Stephen Givens, an M&A lawyer in Tokyo, argues that Oyo’s business model resembles WeWork’s, a tech-inflected real estate business that has expanded far beyond its initial concept. “Oyo made sense in a place like India,’’ he said. “But moving into the U.S. and buying real estate is a big risk.’’

Even as SoftBank ran into trouble with WeWork, it helped push up the valuation of Oyo with an unusual funding round. In October, the Japanese company and Agarwal together chipped in, raising the valuation to $10 billion. SoftBank touted the startup as a bright spot when it took the writedown for WeWork, booking a valuation gain of 590 billion yen on 25 investments, of which Oyo was the only one named.

“If you screwed up that valuation so badly, what about all of the other companies in your portfolio?”

Yet it turned out that Agarwal, now 26, had borrowed $2 billion to finance his share of the purchase from financial institutions, including Japan’s Mizuho Financial Group Inc., people familiar with the matter have said. Son himself personally guaranteed the loans to Agarwal, according to another person familiar with the matter. Mizuho declined to comment.

In addition, two earlier investors in Oyo were Didi and Grab, the ride-hailing companies backed by SoftBank. That raises the question of whether money used to boost their valuations was then reused to hike the value of another SoftBank investment.

SoftBank did not disclose Son’s personal role in the deal or the bank loans to Agarwal. Ultimately, the Vision Fund decided it wouldn’t mark up its Oyo stock to the $10 billion valuation because the latest funding did not include independent investors.

In a statement, Oyo said it is grateful for the support of investors including the Vision Fund. “We are a well-run company with a healthy balance sheet and a strong focus on business economics, and the same can be seen in the continued momentum we’ve seen in reducing our net losses,’’ it said. “We have great business relationships with both Didi and Grab since late 2017 and early 2018 when the fundraising had not happened.’’

Analysts trying to make sense of SoftBank’s valuations have been frustrated by what they view as a lack of transparency in such cases. SoftBank doesn’t discuss in detail the standards by which it values a particular startup or accounts for such gains as profit on its income statement. “SoftBank has offered little visibility into how they value their investments,’’ says Jefferies Group senior analyst Atul Goyal.

Masafumi Takeno represented Japan on the IFRS Foundation committee that developed materials explaining how to use valuation guidelines. He said companies have broad discretion to determine asset values and disclosures. “The rules are pretty loose and permissive,’’ he said.

Masayoshi Son speaks in Tokyo on Feb. 6. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg

For years, Son has expressed frustration that investors don’t see the value of his business. In presentations, he will often focus in on how SoftBank’s market capitalization is below the value of its assets, including publicly traded stocks like Alibaba. In February, he opened an event with a slide that showed: “25 – 4 = 9?’’ The point he was making is that SoftBank held assets worth 25 trillion yen — including a 12.5 billion yen stake in Alibaba — and had only 4 trillion yen in debt. Yet investors bestowed a value of 9 trillion yen on SoftBank, a discount of more than 60%. “It’s just beginner math,’’ Son said. “This is too cheap.’’

The SoftBank discount narrowed after that presentation with the help of a stock buyback and the impending IPOs for companies like Uber. On its website, Son’s company ran daily calculation of assets minus debt to show what the share price should be. But with the WeWork implosion, SoftBank’s market cap has dropped back below 9 trillion yen and the discount has widened again to more than 60%.

“Markets are telegraphing that the trust is gone,’’ said said NYU’s Damodaran. “Masa needs to rebuild that.’’

–With assistance from Lulu Chen, Saritha Rai, Yoolim Lee and Takahiko Hyuga.7

The post After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

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[ultimateseoorg]

Visit Link Building: Redirecting Expired Domains Backlinks for the whole story

Link building is one of the harder  aspects of SEO and because of this one of the least done. Unfortunately it is many times more powerful than anything you do to your page and content.  No level of optimization of content will trump the power of well placed relevant backlinks.

Its so hard few ever do it, and those same people probably say that “SEO is dead.”  It is if all you’re doing is keyword optimization.  75% of what decides the results for a search have nothing to do with what is on the page.

Expired Domain Backlinks

Every day thousands of domains expire.  The owner just didnt renew it, maybe they forgot it.  Whatever the reason the domain is now available to anyone for registering again.  But what happens to all those pages on the internet that linked to that expired domain?  Nothing usually….each site would have to go through and update their own conten.

As a site owner you can probably understand that means the bcklinks of an expired domain usually remain active.  This link building strategy involves you purchsing that domain, then redirecting the existing backlinks to your relevant content.  

This video series walks you through three steps.  First, finding the expired domain. Second, reviewing the domain anchor text.  Third, setting those redirects to your site.

For more info on assessing a site’s value continue reading after the videos below under the SEO Site Audit header.

Video 1 - Finding and sorting through expired domains

All links below, open in a new window.

You’ll use expireddomains.net in this video.  Other resources are available, but this is the one I use that is free.

Video 2 - Assessing the expired domains use through anchor text.

You’ll use SEMrush.com to review the anchor text of a site’s backlinks.  SEMRush does cost monthly to use but you can ret the free trial.  There are other sites available as well but for the value I prefer SEMRush for backlink auditing..

Video 3 - Setting up 301 Redirects to your site

You’ll use a cPanel hosting account provided by many hosting companies.  Ultimate SEO Hosting is our hosting solution offering these capabilities for a few dollars a month. 

301 Redirects Transfer 100% SEO

Google’s John Mueller shared how Google passes 100% of “PageRank” with 301 redirects now.  This is an update and change to the policy which used to cause a 10% penalty.

They don’t always pass PageRank though.  You can’t redirect backlinks for a bakery to your political campaign site for instance.  Redirects should also be assigned on a 1:1 ratio.  So redirecting all 404 errors to your homepage will not make your homepage any better on Google.  But redirecting a link that used to go to an article about Search Engines to an article about Search Engines should be fine.

    You can read SearchEngineJournal.com’s take on this as well.

SEO Site Audit

Ultimateseo.org has a DA 19, that seems pretty low. But keep in mind it used to be a DA 40 before Moz changed it’s scoring. Keep also in mind that change in scoring showed no reflection in the site’s ranking. I recommend 301 redirecting based on anchor text not necessarily on the score a site earns.

Longer Answer: What backlinks should be 301 redirected from another domain?

While it is a Domain Authority 19 now it is a CF 34, and a TF 14. It has a DR 45, and a DS 24, TS 22, AS 36 ….. head spinning yet? As a reminder here are what those abbreviations mean … and to whom.

SEO Metrics

DA is Domain Authority created by Moz

CF is Citation Flow created by Majestic

TF is Trust Flow created by Majestic

DR is Domain Rank created by AHREFS

DS is Domain Score created by SEMRush

TS is Trust Score by SEMRush

AS is Authority Score by SEMRush

DA is Unreliable To Me

The DA metric lost a lot of credence in my mind when they redid their formula, it made it more obvious that it’s just a number in a vacuum. What we saw after Moz released DA2.0 was as a DA40 became a DA19 it wasn’t reflective by what Google saw.

The day before this site ranked as it did the day after DA2.0. Google doesn’t use DA and what we care about is what does Google think about a site.

So Id say if we want to redirect 301 links we can …. and I do. But I do it because the anchor text is what I want, not because a site’s DA is low.

Assessing A Site’s SEO Value

When we assess if a site is high or low we have to consider all of the SEO metrics we have available and use these numbers together. Keep in mind they are not intended to be apples to apples. For instance Citation Flow is how influential a site appears where Trust Flow and Trust Score are meant to tell us how trustworthy a site is considered. AS is Authority Score which I lump in with CF. I think of DA, DR and DS as comparable metrics.

So assessing if this site is low or high I’d say we have the following metrics:

Overall scores: DA: 19 DR: 45 DS: 24

Trustworthiness: TF: 14 TS: 22

Authority: AS: 36 CF: 34

It’s also important to look at some of the raw indicators to understand the values we are seeing above. I use Majestic, SEMRush And Moz to answer these questions, and I always expect Majestic to have higher numbers because it crawls more of the web than Moz.

Moz likely would say they crawl more of the relevant web … but who are they to decide whats relevant and I dont care what they think is relevant … just what Google crawls.

Backlinks: So how many links to my site are there?

Backlinks . Moz: 18445 Majestic: 139903 SEMRush 1000000*

Backlinks are fine and dandy but keep in mind a million from one website vs a hundred from a hundred sites says something. So what is the “Domain Pop” … how many domains link to our site?

Domain Pop: MAJ 1302 SEMRush: 4,000

Domains can be owned and operated easily from the same cheap shared host. So how many seperate IP Addresses link to our site?

IP Pop: SEMRush 885 Majestic 905

These numbers above 885 and 905 seem a lot more comparable to each other than some of the other numbers.

Now consider a site that may have a DA: 50 vs Ultimate SEO’s DA: 19. I’m willing to bet 9 times out of 10 Ultimate SEO will out rank the other site as long as the other site has 500 or less domains on different IP addresses.

Better Backlinks and Best Backlinks

Trustworthy

Now to be fair this explanation above is overly simplifying the answer. You may wonder how that could be … it seems rather complicated. Well ask yourself which site would you rank higher … a site that has a link to it from 20 research universities or a site that has 200 links to it from random weirdly named domains? Obviously the 20 research universities suggests a more authoritative and trustworthy site.

Authority On The Topic

But getting more complicated what if the page we are considering for ranking is about 2000 dance mixes. The 20 research universities are all medical schools and the anchor text reads “open heart surgery mortality rates” … do we think that the site should rank that high now…and how authoritative do we think the site is on dance remixes of 2000?

301 Backlinks Based On Backlinks Not Your Domain

So the best answer I can give for when to 301 redirect a domain or not is to ignore any one metric completely. If multiple numbers lead you to believe a site isn’t going to be good then sure consider each backlink individually. Keeping in mind what earned the site a low metric across the board IS mostly those backlinks.

If you find a .gov or .edu link using the anchor text you are after on another site then yes … thats the time to 301 redirect that backlink to the best content you have that is relevant to that anchor text. That last part is essential.

You can’t expect long term gains by redirecting a backlink to content that isn’t able to hold its own. User behavior is a big factor in Google’s ranking of a site. And it should be, you can’t prevent what you cant predict.

After all is said and done if no one stays on a site for more than 10 seconds or if they always click the result after yours in Google’s search results you must ask yourself why users hate your content.

And I mean it … people hate your content if you have 301 redirected, optimized your on page and studied your backlinks but users still go elsewhere. Google may rank you high for a time but without users liking your content and staying for awhile you will drop in rankings due to user behavior.

Hits: 2493

The post Link Building: Redirecting Expired Domains Backlinks appeared first on Ultimate SEO | Backlinks, Audits & More.

[andrewdburton]

How to make money fast: Quick ways to earn money in 2019

Let’s face it. Most of us, at one point or another, have been faced with a financial emergency, or a plain, old-fashioned cash crunch. It’s definitely not a fun spot to be in. While there are steps we can take to avoid such situations (more on that later), that’s often the last thing on our minds when we need to come up with money — quick.

To assist, I’ve compiled the following list of money-making ideas. While some of the items included are more lucrative than others (you’ll never get rich taking surveys, for example), they all share a common theme: making money fast. Ready? Let’s dive in.

And before anyone mentions it, yes we're aware of the irony of publishing an article about making money fast at a website called Get Rich Slowly.

Sell Your Old Stuff

I’ll kick off the list with an obvious one: selling your old stuff. After all, is there a faster way to make money? If you walked a few steps to your basement right now, or stepped outside to the garage, I’m willing to bet that you’d find some junk lying around that someone else could use:

Old computers and video games.

Sports equipment your kids have grown out of.

That extra bike that’s never ridden.

Your old collectibles. (J.D. sold his comic books. You could sell your baseball cards.)

Once you’ve come to grips with parting with your junk, selling it is as easy as taking a few pictures, and posting an ad on Craigslist, or your local Facebook Buy and Sell. If you need some inspiration, here’s a list of 12 surprisingly valuable things that are lying around your house.

Survey Junkie

Taking online surveys isn’t going to make you rich, but that’s not your goal here. You need to make money fast, and survey sites like Survey Junkie will help you do just that. In fact, you can start earning within a few minutes of signing up, and get paid as soon as you accumulate $10 in rewards.

Survey Junkie will pay you for each survey you complete, in the form of Paypal credits or gift cards to your favorite retail stores. The more surveys you take, the more you’ll make. The best part is that you can take surveys while doing other things, like watching TV, or listening to music, making it an easy way to earn some quick cash.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks is similar to Survey Junkie, but they take things a step further, by giving you more ways to earn cash and rewards. In addition to completing surveys, Swagbucks will pay you to browse the internet, play games, and shop online. They’ll even send you a daily survey, and a daily poll, as a way to earn rewards faster.

With Swagbucks, you won’t have to wait before redeeming your rewards. While you’ll need $25 worth of Swagbucks to move cash to your Paypal account, you can redeem points for gift cards worth as little as $1. In fact, when I checked out the Swagbucks rewards page, I noticed $3 Amazon gift cards advertised.

Acorns

Remember your goal – to make money fast. When you sign up for Acorns using my exclusive link, you’ll receive a $5 credit to kick off your account. Now, I wouldn’t suggest that you go to all that trouble for $5, but with Acorns, you’re getting so much more. Acorns is an investment app that makes saving money easy. You can open an account on your mobile phone in a couple of minutes, collect your $5, and be on your way to building that emergency fund, or saving for your next special purchase.

Open Your Acorns Account and Earn $5

To help you get there, Acorns uses an innovative feature, called round up savings. Acorns syncs to your debit or credit card and then rounds up the “spare change” whenever you spend. For example, let’s say you buy a pack of gum for $1.25. Acorns will round to the nearest dollar, and set aside .75 into your Acorns investment account. Because the amounts are so small, you’ll hardly notice the money leaving your account, but you’ll be surprised how quickly the savings adds up.

Acorns works so well, in fact, that it’s my top choice for investment app for 2019.

Drive with Uber

If you have a clean driving record, a reliable vehicle, and enjoy being around people, driving for a rideshare service like Uber is a great way to make some extra money, and fast. One perk to this job is the flexibility it offers. You decide when, and how much you want to work.

Once you’ve signed up with Uber, most drivers report that it only takes about 3-5 days to be approved.

Here's more about the pros and cons of becoming a rideshare driver.

Deliver Food with UberEats

If driving for Uber sounds enticing, but you’d rather not spend your time making small talk with strangers, you could decide to deliver food with UberEats. You use the app to select deliveries that are in your area. The best part is that you decide when you want to work, and how much. Keep in mind, you will make more money during peak periods.

Rent Out Your Ride on Turo

Take advantage of your car’s downtime by renting it out to someone who needs a ride. Turo is a peer-to-peer car-sharing app that makes it easy to rent out your car. Once you’re set up through Turo, list your car on the app, wait for a request, and be ready to accept or decline. Keep in mind, your car will need to meet Turo’s vehicle requirements, and the nicer it is, the more money you can charge.

Rent Out a Room With Airbnb

If you have a spare bedroom in your home, you can rent it out to a short term guest, on Airbnb. Some people will even rent out their entire home, if they have another place where they can stay.

Not only is this a great way to make money quick, but if it’s something you enjoy, you could turn it into a regular income stream. A great perk with Airbnb is having the flexibility to decide when your space will be available, and how much you’ll charge.

Employee Referral Programs

Any recruiter will tell you, it’s tough for companies to find good people these days. As a result, many organizations will pay their own employees a bonus for successfully referring new talent.

Depending on the role, and the demand for the position, you could be eligible to receive hundreds, even thousands of dollars by bringing in a new employee. Not only is this a quick way to make money, but it requires almost no effort on your part. You’re simply connecting to parties.

Babysitting or At-Home Daycare

In today’s society, most families are dual income, with both parents working outside the home. Because of this, there is a constant demand for reliable childcare. If you’re a natural caregiver, and enjoy being around kids, you can make good money by offering to provide childcare within your local community. Whether it’s babysitting or an at-home daycare, it won’t take long to find your first client. Use your friends and family to get the word out, or notify your Facebook community, and you’ll be making money in no time.

Teach English with VIP Kid

If you enjoy teaching, consider putting your English skills to good use by becoming an online tutor. Websites like VIP Kid source clients for you, and the pay is pretty good too. It’s not uncommon to make $20-30/hour teaching online.

Tutoring is something that can be done in person as well. In fact, during the school year, there’s no shortage of students in your community in need of help with their studies. Check with your local high school, or get the word out on your community Facebook page.

J.D.'s note: For eighteen months, I met with a Spanish tutor three times each week. Aly had moved to the U.S. from Peru, and she found that tutoring was a fantastic way for her to make money.

Rent Out Your RV With Outdoorsy

If you own an RV, Outdoorsy will match you with people who are looking to rent a trailer or motorhome, for their next summer adventure. At rates as high as $150/day, or more, this is a great way to make money fast. Head to Outdoorsy, and find out how you can get your RV making money for you.

Collect Rewards With Drop App

Money doesn’t always have to arrive in the form of cash. Drop allows you to earn points when you shop at your favorite retailers, then redeem your rewards for gift cards at places like Starbucks, or Amazon. Drop works by syncing to your debit and/or credit card, and keeping track of your purchases. You don’t need to worry about clipping coupons, or scan receipts to receive discounts, Drop does all the work for you.

Download the free app to start earning with Drop!

Earn $50 per Year With the Nielsen Ratings App

For decades, Nielsen has been tracking TV ratings. But did you know that they will pay you to download their app to your computer or smartphone? Doing so allows them to compile data by tracking your internet usage. No need to worry however, your anonymity is guaranteed, and according to Neilson, the app won’t slow your device’s performance in the least.

Sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? There is a BIG caveat, however. You must be selected by Nielsen. That’s because Nielsen families are chosen using a scientific process. That said, it’s good to know about this easy money-making opportunity, in case you are ever approached by Nielsen.

Take Advantage of Bank Signup Bonuses

This is a great way to make some quick money. Banks everywhere are in a constant battle for new customers. The financial services industry is highly competitive, and companies know that if they can secure your day to day banking business, they’ll have a shot at your mortgage and your investments as well.

While these promotions come and go, it’s not uncommon to be offered a few hundred dollars when you open a new checking account with a bank, providing that you meet the qualifying criteria. This usually includes hooking up your automatic payroll deposit and completing a couple of online bill payments, that kind of thing.

Earn Credit Card Rewards

I’m a big fan of credit card rewards, but I’ll be the first to admit that using credit cards as a way of making money can be dangerous, and definitely isn’t for everyone. If you’re not paying off your credit card balance in full each month, or if using a credit card creates a temptation to overspend, then having a rewards credit card will cost you more money than you will ever make.

That said, a cashback, or travel rewards credit card can be a great way to make extra money. Many premium cards come with a welcome bonus, such as a couple hundred dollars cashback upfront, or enough travel points to get you a free flight somewhere. Have an upcoming trip planned? This could be a great way to subsidize the cost. Head here for more information on the best credit card rewards.

Make Money as a Freelance Writer

If you have interest, or experience in a specific area and love to write, there’s a good chance you can make money online as a freelance writer. What I love about this side hustle, is that it’s something you can do on your own schedule from the comfort of your living room. Not only that, but you can make good money. The website Problogger has an active job board, where you can browse, and apply for, freelance writing gigs across a wide range of niches.

Note: Many former Get Rich Slowly staff writers have gone on to become professional freelance writers with lucrative careers.

Advertise Your Freelance Services on Fiverr

In addition to writing, there are no shortage of services you can offer as a freelancer. Graphic design, bookkeeping, social media management – these are all services that small businesses will pay you to provide. One of the best ways to find clients and start making money is by joining a freelance marketplace like Upwork, or Fiverr.

Teach Music Lessons

Who said that a musician needs to live like a starving artist? If you are skilled on any number of musical instruments, you can make good money teaching private lessons. Ask your local music store if you can post an ad on their bulletin board, or advertise through Craigslist or Facebook. Early September is a great time of year to get started, as students are back to school and looking to start up music lessons after the summer break.

Earn Cash Back With Rakuten (Formerly Ebates)

Rakuten, formerly known as Ebates, makes it easy to earn cashback when you shop online at top retailers, such as Amazon, Kohl’s, and Microsoft. Sign up with Rakuten, and gain access to hundreds of partner retail stores via links directly on their site. Rakuten will keep track of your cash rebates, which can be as high as 40%, when you factor in limited time offers. The best part? Receive an automatic $10 bonus when you sign up for Rakuten, and earn an additional $25 when you refer friends or family.

Deliver Food With DoorDash

DoorDash is one of a number of app-powered food delivery services that have popped up in recent years. If you need to make money quick, becoming a delivery driver for Doordash may be the perfect solution. In fact, the signup box on their website reads, “Get Your First Check This Week”.

Ask for a Raise

Perhaps the fastest way to make extra money is by leveraging the job you already have. Unfortunately, many people don’t think about this, and instead feel like they need to take on something extra. I’ll finish with a few ways to increase your 9-5 income.

You’ve probably heard it said, “If you don’t ask, the answer will always be, no”. To most companies, a valuable employee is worth their weight in gold. Part of this is due to how much time and money it takes to hire and train someone new. Chances are, your employer is willing to pay you more, but you need to ask. If you’re able to effectively communicate your value to your boss, you may be pleasantly surprised at the outcome.

Since the early says of Get Rich Slowly, we've advocated learning how to negotiate your salary. It's one of the best ways to boost your income — now and in the future.

Apply for a Promotion

When was the last time you considered applying for a promotion? Not only is a new job a great way to make more money, challenging yourself to step out of your comfort zone will further develop your skills, and help you grow as a person. If you’re having trouble getting promoted at your current company, you may decide to go to take your skills somewhere else. Here’s an article that gives 10 reasons successful people change jobs more often.

Take Advantage of Any Unused Benefits.

If you’re not taking advantage of all of the benefits your employer is offering, you may be leaving cold hard cash on the table. Far too many employees don’t take the time to understand what’s available, and as they say, if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. Read through your employee benefits package, or speak to an HR representative if you have questions. There’s money to be made, from health spending balances and 401K matches, to affordable insurance coverage and employee discounts.

Ask to Work Overtime

Not every job offers this opportunity, but if yours does, consider volunteering to work overtime, if you’re needing to make more money fast. Overtime work saves you from having to start something extra in your spare time, such as a second job, or a time-consuming side hustle. Remember, the goal is to make money fast. Either way, always strive for a healthy balance between time at work, and time away. The last thing you want is to feel burned out.

Final Thoughts on Making Money Fast

At the outset of this article, I mentioned that there are ways to avoid finding yourself with a shortfall of cash. While we can never be prepared for absolutely every emergency (nor should we try to be), we can make life a little easier with some advanced planning.

My best advice is to build an emergency fund. This can be as little as $500, or enough to cover several months worth of expenses, it’s up to you. Having an emergency fund will not only reduce your stress level, but it will also decrease your odds of having to use a credit card to cover a financial emergency, and that is a good thing.

In the meantime, my hope is that you feel more confident about making money fast, should the need arise.

The post How to make money fast: Quick ways to earn money in 2019 appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

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[bizmediaweb]

28 Twitter Statistics All Marketers Need to Know in 2019

Whether it’s the latest news or the latest meme, Twitter consistently punches above its weight in our cultural consciousness. And it’s an important space for brands to make an impression on potential customers. We’ve gone ahead and compiled all the Twitter statistics that you need to know to market among the microbloggers in 2019.

Bonus: Download the free strategy guide that reveals how Hootsuite grew our Twitter following to over 8 million users and learn how you can put the tactics to work for your business.

General Twitter stats

1. 500 million tweets are sent each day

That’s 5,787 tweets every second.

Yes, this official number is impressive, but let us please note it was first announced in 2014 and hasn’t changed in the years since.

2. Twitter only became profitable in 2017

It wasn’t til Q3 2017 that Twitter posted its first profit: 91 million dollars. And according to analysts, that was based more on cost-cutting (in sales, marketing and R&D) than business growth.

However, Twitter has been consistently profitable for the last four quarters, and it posted its largest profit ever in Q3 2018. The stock market likes this bump: Twitter was #21 on Forbes’ Top 100 Digital Companies list for 2018 (beating out Facebook at #26).

3. The most popular emoji on Twitter in 2018 was the laugh-cry face

Followed by heart-eyes at #2, and cry-cry at #3.

What better way to celebrate #WorldEmojiDay than with some ????✨data✨?????

These are the most used emojis on Twitter the past year: ➖???? ➖???? ➖???? ➖❤️ ➖???? ➖???? ➖???? ➖???? ➖???? ➖????

— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) July 17, 2018

(Okay, you didn’t really need to know that. But you wanted to.)

Twitter user stats

4. 326 million people use Twitter every month

That’s nine million fewer than in mid-2018, and four million fewer than late 2017. Management blames bot purges, Europe’s new data privacy laws, and some technical issues for the decline.

5. 9% more people are using Twitter on a daily basis

While monthly users decrease, the number of daily users has been increasing consistently since 2016.

Source: Recode

This lines up with Pew Research’s finding that 46 percent of American Twitter users visit the site at least once a day.

CEO Jack Dorsey stated that Twitter is focussing on making the platform “a healthier and valuable everyday service.” If these numbers reflect Twitter’s goal to be more attractive to good users while booting bad ones, they may translate to higher-quality audiences for advertisers.

6. 80% of Twitter’s users aren’t American

259 million of those 326 are international users. Twitter supports these users with 35 offices around the world, and the platform operates in 33 languages. (34 if you count emoji.)

Additionally, Twitter actively supports uptake in the developing world via Twitter Lite, the app’s data-friendly alternative. Twitter Lite is available in more than 45 countries, and this dedication to growing new markets has translated to increased international revenue growth for Twitter.

7. 24% of US adults use Twitter

Of those adults, Twitter users tend to skew urban, educated, and higher-income.

Source: Pew Research

For more detail, check out our comprehensive breakdown of Twitter’s demographics.

8. User growth is predicted at less than 1%, in the US

Emarketer predicts that Twitter will only add 500,000 American users in 2019. Most of the new users will be adults over the age of 25.

9. Only 6% of US teens say Twitter is the most important social network

According to Statista, teens don’t prioritize Twitter over other platforms. (Yes, Snapchat still reigns supreme.)

Source: Statista

10. 80% of Twitter users are affluent millennials

That’s what Twitter says, anyway. This number lines up with what we know about the platform’s general demographics. 45 percent of American 18- to 25-year-olds say they use Twitter, for instance.

But does it line up with the fact that the most retweeted tweet of all time is a plea for free chicken nuggets?

Twitter usage stats

11. 71% of Twitter users are reading news there

And, according to the same study by Pew Research, that works out to 12 percent of all Americans. No other platform rivals Twitter for bleeding-edge news and up-to-the-second happenings.

This relevance is quite possibly the reason Twitter continues to be such a major player in the social media landscape, despite size and reach. After all, Twitter invented the hashtag, and live-tweeting. (And Vine. RIP Vine. Never forget.)

12. Twitter is the number one platform for government leaders

Twitter outdoes Facebook and Instagram among powerbrokers. According to the 2018 Twiplomacy study, 187 governments and heads of state maintain an official presence on Twitter.

And in related news that is surprising to no one, Twitter is politically polarized. But since outrage is the most viral emotion on the internet, at least marketers can count on Twitter users being engaged. Just keep the relatively volatile nature of this environment in mind as you build your Twitter marketing strategy.

13. People are 31% more likely to recall what they saw on Twitter

This, as opposed to what they recall while browsing online in general.

Apparently, Twitter maintains a special place in its users’ hearts and minds. Or is it just that pithy content is stickier? Regardless, this is a notable lift that’s worth capitalizing on.

Twitter stats for business

14. 75% of B2B businesses market on Twitter

Source: Statista

And 65 percent of B2C businesses are marketing there. That means Twitter outranks Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

15. 85% of SMB Twitter users say providing customer service there is important

One of the top reasons businesses feel they need to be on Twitter is customer service. It’s almost de rigueur now to @ your airline about every twenty-minute flight delay.

However, smaller brands can also jump on the opportunity to turn frowns upside down.

16. Only 3% of customers will @ you when they complain

According to Edison Research, brands need to put in some legwork and broaden their Twitter customer service horizons.

Check out our full guide to social listening here. Or, if you haven’t already, demo the sentiment analysis tools from Hootsuite Insights.

Twitter advertising stats

17. Twitter posted a 50% increase in ad engagements between October 2017 and 2018

As of their Q3 2018 conference call, ad engagements on Twitter continue to rise. If Twitter’s ROI wasn’t competitive last year for your industry and audience, it may well be now.

18. Twitter also saw a 14% decline in cost per engagement over the same period

Likewise, given lowering prices, if you’re not paying for Twitter ads right now maybe it‘s time to crunch those CPC and CTR numbers again.

19. Twitter ads are 11% more effective than TV ads during live events

More effective at “stimulating mental engagement,” to be precise. (And 9 percent better at memory encoding). This is according to a NeuroInsight study that also found people spend 4 percent more time on Twitter during a live event than they would normally.

Take, for instance, the 4.8 billion Tweet impressions during Superbowl LII last year, most of which—I can only assume—was everyone looking at pictures of Nick Foles holding his baby.

More than any other platform, Twitter lives for major events. That kind of predictable surge in interest is worth experimenting with in your paid strategy.

20. 40% of users say they’ve made a purchase because of an influencer’s tweet

Twitter is an indispensible platform for many experts and thought leaders, not to mention comedians. Have you considered complementing your traditional ads with a well-placed shout-out from the right voice?

Twitter publishing stats

21. The half-life of a tweet is 24 minutes

In other words, a tweet gets half its interactions in the first half hour, and then starts a long, slow decline into the fog of time.

This is why some guides don’t have upward limits on the number of times a brand ought to tweet in a day.

22. Brands tweeted an average of 122 times a month last year

Source: Statista

What does that work out to, four tweets a day? Six per workday?

Although, we hope they aren’t only tweeting on workdays. A better idea: schedule your tweets in advance to catch your audience when they’re online and engaged.

23. The best time to tweet is 3 p.m. on weekdays

In our studies we’ve found that engagement on Twitter peaks around mid-afternoon, if you’re a B2B brand.

B2C brands might have even better results scheduling around working hours. (Think commutes and lunch hours.)

That said, check out your audience’s habits using Hootsuite Analytics if you want to fine-tune your timing.

24. Tweets with a GIF get 55% more engagement

Twitter studied 3.7 million accounts in order to reach this, the conclusion everyone already knew.

But it’s nice to know the exact percentage, right guys?

Twitter video stats

25. 93% of Twitter videos are viewed on mobile

This statistic from Twitter’s internal data is a good reminder that video content needs to be equally effective whether or not users have their sound on.

In fact, mobile optimization across the board is a good bet: short, punchy, and vertical.

26. Tweets with video attract 10x as much engagement

We’re all still smarting from Facebook’s (um, alleged) inflation of video views, but this is a pretty compelling number. If you haven’t brought your video assets to Twitter yet, now is the time.

27. Promoted tweets with video saved 50% on their cost per engagement

Since Twitter Business is the one who came up with this statistic, it feels almost like they’re announcing a discount. However, it could make for an easy ROI lift for those of you with spare video content in your back pockets.

28. In-stream video ads lift purchase intent by 6%

Twitter’s new type of video ad is pre-roll before video content from Twitter’s publisher partners. Essentially, you can position your 15 second ad before desirable, “brand-safe” content (think: sports highlights, models talking about dogs) from big publishers like Condé Nast, Fox, Reuters, et cetera.

According to Nielsen Brand Effect’s data, these ads are performing effectively for their brands and are worth considering if you’re looking for a new tool to reach your audience.

Source: Twitter

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